Fortunate Son Page 7

  I gave Driver a nod. “Count it down again.”

  He frowned a little and this time pointed his drumstick at Nyle. “Don’t fuck it up this time, bro.”

  Nyle looked down at the floor and angrily plucked at the strings on his bass. He gave a reluctant nod as Driver started the song over.

  This time we made it through the first song and the second with little incident. The song was fine, but it didn’t sound as good as it usually did when we practiced. I could tell something was missing, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. We weren’t off beat at all, and no one missed their part, but the song sounded dull and kind of hollow.

  When we rolled into the third song, a slower, more emotional ballad about a couple who just wasn’t meant to be no matter how hard they tried to make things work, my gaze caught Ry’s, and suddenly all the emotion and feeling that was absent from the first two songs was packed into the words coming out of my mouth… times one hundred. I’d never heard one of my songs sound so good. So rich. So full of life.

  I’d never had someone to sing to like this before.

  I’d never had the person who inspired the lyrics in the same room when I sang them.

  It was a whole new experience, and it struck me to my very core.

  Ry pushed off the wall and took a step closer to the band. The expression that crossed his face was one I had never seen before, but it was intense; it made me miss the next chord I was supposed to play. This time I was the one who was late on the bridge and sent the whole song spiraling out of control. I grabbed the fretboard, and my guitar wailed in protest. I used the toe of my boot to turn down the amp in front of me and gave my head a shake.

  “Sorry. That was my bad. Let’s take a quick break. I think we all need a minute.” I slipped the guitar strap over my head and moved toward Ry.

  I only made it one step before Nyle caught my wrist was in a tight grip. I looked at him and immediately gave my hand a tug to let him know I wanted him to let me go.

  “Let’s get something to drink. I want to talk to you about the bridge on the last song. I think there’s a way we can make it stand out more.” His fingers tightened their hold, which made me have to forcibly reach out with my other hand to pry him off of me.

  “We can talk later.” I rubbed my wrist with a scowl as I gave him a dirty look. “Don’t grab me like that ever again. I don’t like it.”

  Nyle held his hands up in a sign of surrender and glared at Ry as he stepped closer. Ry reached for the wrist I was still rubbing. He gave Nyle a look that was filled with both frost and angry heat as his thumb brushed across the noticeably red skin. “You play an instrument. Don’t you know better than to be so rough with someone else’s hands?”

  I could feel the tension build between them. It was thick enough to choke on. If I didn’t get Ry out of the rehearsal space, it was clear things would get ugly. It was obvious our practice time was going to go to shit if he didn’t leave. We didn’t have time to waste if we were going to be ready for our gig, so I needed him gone, which of course, was going to be easier said than done now that Nyle decided to get all handsy and possessive.

  I turned my hand around in Ry’s and grasped his fingers in mine. I pulled until he obediently followed me out of the room and into the parking lot. The rehearsal space was part of a building my dad used for storage. He converted several of the empty rooms in the building into practice areas for the different bands that worked with his label, or ones that just wanted to rent out a spot where they knew they wouldn’t get noise complaints. It was in a mostly industrial part of town just outside of downtown Austin, so the parking lot was pretty much deserted when I dragged Ry over to his truck.

  I’d agreed to ride with him, assuming he’d stay for the whole practice or leave when he got bored, and I could just catch a ride home with Joey. It didn’t occur to me he would be such a big distraction I was going to have to kick him out. I forgot how impressive he was to others and how he seemed to fill up whatever space he was in, even if he was doing his best to be inconspicuous.

  “You need to leave. This practice is a total mess.” I lifted my hand and pushed it through the front of my hair, hissing when I moved my wrist the wrong way. “I don’t have time for boys and their nonsense. If we sound that bad when we open this show, I’ll never be able to look my dad in the eye again.”

  Ry grunted and once again caught my marked hand. “I wouldn’t worry about you. You sound fine. I’d worry about the rest of the band. It’s pretty obvious they need you way more than you need them.”

  His touch felt like fire where his finger brushed lightly against the inside of my wrist. I felt my eyes pop wide when he lifted my hand toward his face, his lips hovering just above the surface of my skin. My heart started to pound wildly out of control, and I was sure he could feel my pulse leaping to life where he touched.

  “Why don’t you perform on your own? You wrote the songs and music. You could easily be a solo act.”

  I froze when he dropped a barely there kiss right where my pulse was racing before he dropped my hand and stepped back, almost as if he needed to put space between us just as much as I needed it.

  I rubbed my wrist against my chest, where my heart felt like it was trying to escape. I was tingling from head to toe and wanted to kick him in the shin for making me react so easily. I’d spent years away from him, telling myself I was immune to his charm and pretty face. When he was a thousand miles away, it was much easier to believe those lies. When he was standing right in front of me, I felt like a big ol’ fake.

  “I told you, my dad is in a band. I always looked up to him and thought it was super cool he had this whole other support system in his life. He traveled the world with those guys. They shared a common vision. I want that same kind of feeling. I want to share what I love with people who get it… who get me.”

  Plus, I was scared. When you were a solo act, all eyes were on you and you alone. If you screwed up, if you bombed, if people hated your music, there was no one to share the blame. If you failed, there was no one there to lift you up and put you back on your feet. I loved being on stage and performing, but I wasn’t sure I had what takes to command enough attention all on my own.

  Ry gave me a hard look and shifted to lean against the front bumper of his truck. He crossed his arms over his broad chest and stared at me long enough that I started to wiggle uneasily.

  “You don’t have to follow your dad’s exact path. You can walk your own, and I bet he’ll be just as proud of you.”

  I fiddled with my hair and quickly changed the subject. “I asked you here so you could tell me what you thought of the music, not my life choices. I know it was a little rough, but overall, what did you think?”

  He was quiet for a long moment. I knew he would be brutally honest, but I didn’t expect him to pick his words so carefully when he finally spoke.

  “The songs are great. I think the lyrics are relatable, and your voice is amazing. I’m surprised you have so many songs about love for being a girl who’s never had a broken heart. But,” he paused and tilted his head to one side while looking out into the dark and empty parking lot. “They all sound similar. The tempo. The beat. The rhythm. I feel like you made them easy to play for the rest of the band, and that’s why they all sound kind of generic.”

  I couldn’t stop the small gasp that burst out of my mouth. “I’ve had other friends listen to us play, and no one else has said that.” Now my heart was racing for a different reason entirely.

  Ry lifted a shoulder and let it fall. He shrugged as if he hadn’t just torched my confidence to the ground. “You wanted my honest opinion. The songs are fine on their own, but when you play them together…” he trailed off and shrugged again. “I think you could do better. I don’t know if the rest of your band can, but I know for sure you can.”

  I fell back a step and pointed at his truck. “Go home, Ry.” I barked the words. “I don’t mean back to my house. I mean, go back to Denver. I shouldn�
�t have asked for your help.”

  His dark eyebrows lifted. “But you did.”

  I blew out an angry breath and tried to keep my frantically rising temper and equally growing panic in check. “What do you know about music anyway?”

  He pushed off the truck and bent down a little so we were nearly eye to eye. “Not much. Which is why I can only tell you what I hear. If you trust the opinions of your other friends more than mine, that’s cool. I won’t be offended. But don’t pretend like I’m saying whatever just to hurt your feelings. I know how important your music is to you. I wouldn’t fuck around like that.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket and tossed them in the air before he caught them in his palm. “You aren’t going to run me off just because I told you the truth. I’ll leave you alone to practice, but I’ll be back to pick you up in a couple hours. This place is sketchy as hell.”

  “No. I’ll get a ride home with Joey. I don’t really want to see you right now.”

  He grinned at me before reaching out and flicking the end of my nose with his finger. “Too bad. The last time you told me you didn’t want to see me when you were mad, you disappeared for two years and pretended like I ceased to exist. I’ll be back.”

  I glared at his broad back while he walked around to the driver’s side of the truck.

  It was impossible to win an argument with him.

  It was also really, really hard for me to admit he was probably right about the songs.

  They were similar and simple. They didn’t sound anything like they did when I played them by myself. I thought I adjusted them for the other instruments, but maybe he was right, and I’d dumbed them down so they were easy to play. They lacked depth and intensity.

  Maybe that was the reason why he didn’t seem to know each and every one of them was about him.

  Ry

  “I RAN INTO Aston today.”

  I looked at my cousin’s face on the other end of the video call and could tell by his expression that he was debating whether he should share that information with me.

  Zowen and I looked a lot alike. We could pass for brothers, minus the fact he inherited his mother’s odd eye color combination. The genetic heterochromia iridum gave him one blue eye, that was the same winter color as mine, and one caramel brown one that was a few shades lighter than his mom’s single, chocolate-colored one. He was also a couple of inches shorter than I was, but since he was a bit younger, there was still time for him to catch up to my towering height.

  “Oh yeah? Where did you see her?” I was honestly curious because my sister hadn’t even seen Aston since the breakup, and the two of them were usually attached at the hip.

  “My bike needed a tune-up, so I went to the garage, and she was there working the parts and merch counter. She said she’s working through the summer until it’s time to leave for college.”

  Zowen’s dad and Aston and Royce’s dad were business partners. Her father operated a custom car garage and a custom motorcycle shop. My Uncle Rome was big into Harleys and had Zowen and Remy on the back of his bike from the time they were really young. My cousin kept with the tradition of preferring two wheels to four, but he liked to go fast rather than cruise. He rode around on a foreign death machine that sometimes seemed like it might be able to break the sound barrier. He spent a lot of time at the motorcycle shop, so it wasn’t a surprise they bumped into one another there. Aston had had a part-time job there for as long as I could remember, as had Royce, before he left to live with his mom. If I wasn’t preoccupied with how pissed Bowe was earlier, I would’ve guessed that’s where the two of them crossed paths.

  “How was she?” I held the phone out in one hand and leaned on the steering wheel of my truck. I had no clue when Bowe was going to be done with practice, so instead of going back to her house, I decided to wait for her in the parking lot. I knew good and well she wasn’t going to call and tell me when she was ready to leave the disastrous practice. And after the way that lilac-haired guy grabbed her, I was leaving nothing to chance.

  Zowen shrugged and lifted the bill of his baseball hat up on his forehead. “She seemed sad. Sadder than you appear to be, that’s for damn sure.”

  I lifted my eyebrows at him and questioned, “What’s that supposed to mean? I was the one who was dumped, remember? How could she possibly be sadder than me?”

  “I dunno, dude. You definitely don’t look like a guy who lost the love of his life. You actually look pretty damn cheerful. It seems like Austin—or someone in Austin—agrees with you.” He narrowed his eyes at me in an accusing way. “You better not be fucking around with Bowe just to get your mind off Aston. Remy will literally murder you if she finds out you’re down there playing games with her favorite.”

  I shook my head a little bit and assured him, “It’s nothing like that. Bowe and I have a lot of unfinished business from before I was ever with Aston. I don’t know why, but when Aston told me that we weren’t a good match and kept the fact that she wanted to move across the country a secret made me realize some things. I needed to fix some of the pieces of my life I left broken because they seemed too hard to put back together after I purposely smashed them. I need to start straightening things out with Bowe before I can even think of talking to Aston. I was trying to keep things from being super awkward between everyone back home, since we are all bound to run into each other this summer. Do me a favor and try to keep Remy at bay if she seems like she’s coming for blood. Tell her I’m here to heal, not to hurt anyone.”

  Zowen made a sound of disbelief. “You think anyone can control my sister when she gets something in her head? You know Remy better than that. You better play nice with Bowe so she doesn’t feel the need to call in the cavalry. You know if Remy shows, she has a special skill for stirring shit up and making any situation worse than it already was. She’ll never let you unburn a bridge you already torched. By the way, when are you coming back? Your dad was not happy that you disappeared without telling anyone. Did you talk to him already?”

  I grunted. “I did.” It was one of those conversations where he didn’t say much but still managed to make me feel about two-inches tall. No one could make me feel like I wasn’t living up to my full potential like my father. And it wasn’t even that he criticized me. It was just his quiet, often confusing way of not questioning the choices I made. Sometimes I really felt like he viewed me as an alien. Like I was some foreign lifeform he struggled to believe he had any part in creating. I knew he never meant to make me feel misunderstood or underappreciated. We were just two very different people who operated on opposite wavelengths. “I’m sorry you caught the brunt of his anger. He knows I usually tell you everything, so I’m sure he thought you were just covering for me when you told him you didn’t know where I was.”

  Zowen barked out a laugh and pointed the finger at the camera. “I thought he and my dad were going to throw down for a second when he insisted I was lying. It was crazy. Could you imagine the two of them going at it?”

  I scoffed. “No. Because there is no way your mom would let that happen.”

  Zowen’s mom was a tiny little spitfire of a woman who absolutely called the shots in their household. He towered over her in an almost comical manner, but ever since we were young, she was the one he worried about catching him whenever Remy convinced him to participate in her antics.

  “You know your dad gave you a hard time because you never do anything wrong. You’ve always been such a good kid; he had no idea how to handle you suddenly acting the way he used to act when he was your age. My dad told me that it wasn’t uncommon for Uncle Rule to drop off the map for days or even weeks at a time when he was younger. He and Uncle Nash used to get up to some pretty sketchy things when they were around our ages, so I’m sure he was just envisioning the worst. You should’ve caused more problems back in the day, and then he wouldn’t be reacting so harshly now.”

  “He’s pissed that I made my mom worry.” Which I understood. I didn’t agree that he was concerned I was
suddenly turning into him and rebelling against the whole world. We had our differences, but I wanted to believe he knew me better than that. I didn’t do defiance for defiance’s sake. I only acted out with one person, and as always, managed to make her mad by doing so.

  “Yeah. But he was also very worried about you. I think he gets that you are fully capable of handling yourself, but you’re kind of an idiot when it comes to more nuanced things like feelings and emotions. You keep yours locked down so tight all the time; you’re like a robot malfunctioning when the feelings finally break free.” He cocked his head to the side and adjusted his hat again, which let me know he was embarrassed by what he just said. “I say that with love, though.”

  It wasn’t the first time he compared me to a robot, so I didn’t bother getting offended. Instead, I turned the subject back around. “You never told me why you think Aston is acting sadder than I am. I still don’t get why she would be when she was the one who wanted to break up.”

  Zowen rubbed his hand across his chin and shifted his gaze away from the camera. “She’s always such a chill girl. She just goes with the flow and always seems so happy. She’s not as unpredictable and crazy as Remy and Daire. But when she saw me walk into the shop, she bolted like she was late with the rent and I was her landlord. When I tracked her down to ask her what was up, she looked like she was ready to cry. I tried to ask her about California and very deliberately didn’t bring you up in any way, shape, or form, but she barely managed to string a sentence together when we were talking. I asked if she was excited to move, and she told me it was something she had to do. It was such a weird conversation. And she was definitely acting out of character. She didn’t even ask me how you were doing. I know you just broke up and all, but we’ve all been friends forever. I think it’s super odd she didn’t ask me how you were holding up, knowing she just stomped all over your heart.”