“There’s no guarantee just because I’m a good singer with a couple songs that you like that I’ll be a success for you. No one comes after someone this hard based merely on those two facts. But as soon as you worked out who I was, it was the game-changer . . . you knew you had to have me.”
He turned fully to face me.
“A good voice . . .” I began to tick off his checklist with the fingers of my right hand as I stood. “Good songs, experience, and the kicker . . . a tabloid frenzy that will make my solo launch spectacular. You know I’ll be everywhere when I emerge back into the public. It’s the kind of publicity money can’t buy.”
He sighed. “You’re right.”
“So, you admit it?”
“Aye, I admit it. Lead singer of successful band disappears off the face of the planet after the authorities fail to find the men who murdered her mother and stepfather. She emerges two years later with a new look and a new sound. You’ll be the only thing anyone is talking about when the first single debuts.”
He said it so dispassionately but at least he was honest. There hadn’t been a lot of that in my life. And I offered him honesty in return. “I don’t like you.”
“You don’t need to like me. You need to learn to trust that I will make this album a success.”
“I might trust that if you keep things up-front from now on.”
He shrugged. “It seems you’re smart enough to know when I am and when I’m not, so I don’t see that being a problem.”
“True. But still. I want your word.”
“Fine. Honesty at all times.”
“Okay. Then I’ll think about it.”
* * *
Two years ago . . .
Billings, Montana
WE WERE BACK. PLAYING THE home crowd. The Pub Station no less, and it wasn’t our first time. This was our fourth year playing the iconic music venue we’d dreamed of playing as kids.
I sat in the private dressing room, glad our manager Gayle loved me enough to always demand a separate dressing room for me from the guys. We were in each other’s faces nonstop and sometimes it was nice to get some alone time.
The walls hummed and throbbed with the dull sound of live music. Talking Trees, an alt-rock band from Arkansas, was our opening act in our US tour. Billings was our last stop. We would take a break. I’d hole myself up somewhere away from the guys, attempting to claw back my sanity before our European tour kicked off in six weeks.
Six weeks and I’d have to do this all over again. But at least in Europe there were hotel rooms and space instead of a tour bus I couldn’t be alone in.
Fuck, I could barely get myself up out of this chair. The guys hated if I stayed in the dressing room on my own right up until the show. “The guys”—Micah, Brandon, and Austin. Micah was our lead guitarist, Brandon our drummer, and Austin our bassist. I could play guitar and the piano but Gayle decided my voice was at its best live when I only had to concentrate on singing, so I only played guitar on one track during our set. I wasn’t sure I agreed that was fair, but what did it matter at this point?
I stared glumly at my reflection, hating myself. Hating that I could be this unhappy when I had exactly what I wanted in life. When I saw other people pitying themselves when they had wealth and fame, it made me want to puke. They were the kinds of people who deserved someone sending them a card every day with an insulting reminder that they needed a better grasp on reality.
I did not want to be one of the many insipid morons I’d met over the years in this business. There were worse things in life than being stuck in a job that made you absolutely miserable. Like having a nonexistent relationship with the mother who raised you by herself, the mom who used to be your best friend.
I hadn’t called them. Mom or my stepdad Bryan. I hadn’t called them when we got to Billings. Micah, Austin, and Brandon, they were all going home to see their families after the show. To stay with them a while.
Yet, I had no clue what I was going to do. The last time I saw my mom was a year ago. The last time I’d stayed with her was eighteen months ago, and the last time I talked to her was six weeks ago. And even then, I couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. We texted. I avoided her calls all the time.
Guilt suffused me. Was she even still proud of me?
I certainly looked the part, didn’t I? My rainbow hair was twisted up into two high buns above my ears and I wore my red velvet blazer with gold buttons over my favorite black Metric shirt. I’d paired them with a tight black satin miniskirt with fishnets and black Doc Martens. I wore three rings on each hand, my wrists jingled with bracelets, and my bold makeup was done to perfection.
Beneath my foundation were dark circles only weeks of uninterrupted sleep would get rid of.
I stared at my phone, knowing I should call my mom.
Last year when we finished our album tour in Billings, I’d lied to Mom and told her I needed to get away from the guys. I’d spent my six-week break in Paris instead of at home, bleeding money at a five-star hotel where I locked myself in a suite the entire time.
See: Woe-is-fucking-me with my room service and three million thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.
“Let me guess, you’re thinking about your mom and why you haven’t called her yet?”
I glanced up from my phone and stared at Micah in the mirror reflection. He stood in the doorway. When I didn’t reply, he shut the door and walked over. His hair was mussed, his cheeks flushed.
I knew that look.
Tensing with anger and disappointment I should really be beyond by now, I winced when he leaned down and wrapped an arm around me so he could nuzzle my neck. “You need to talk to your mom,” he murmured, pressing a sweet kiss behind my ear.
I glared at him in the mirror, stiff in his embrace. “You smell of pot and cheap perfume.”
Micah rested his chin on my shoulder. My strange eyes tangled with his gorgeous green ones. Green rimmed with red from the pot. Still, he was so beautiful. All golden skin, tall, lanky, lean muscular frame, and thick, dark blond hair he only had to run his fingers through to style. He was a pretty, bad-boy musician, and he had the whole act down pat.
“Groupie,” he muttered, his voice rumbling in my ear. He sounded sad.
How was it possible to hate someone I loved this much?
My eyes moved from his to take in the whole package we created together.
The two of us were a social media sensation: #Miclar
Because of Micah’s inability to not flirt with me anytime we got interviewed . . . or shit, anytime we were on the goddamned stage together, fans and the media jumped on our connection. They wanted us to become a couple, always disappointed when we turned up in tabloid photos with other people. A couple? Us?
I snorted at the idea.
We were a train wreck as a couple.
Depressing, really, since we loved each other.
Staring at him, I suddenly saw him five years ago as my seventeen-year-old best friend. We’d been friends since middle school, started a band when we were fourteen, and had been working our asses off to make the big time. It was all we talked about. All we ever wanted.
But at seventeen, beyond our dreams for the band, there were feelings of jealousy and hurt anytime the other dated someone else. Until Micah’s feelings exploded all over me one night and he told me he loved me. I cared too much to lie to him so I’d returned the sentiment. However, I’d also admitted that I was afraid a relationship would hurt the band. Micah agreed. We put the band first and it worked because we got a record deal three months later. Our first album came out eight months after that.
And the hurt and jealousy and resentment simmered all the while until one night three years ago, we slept together after a terrible shouting match in my hotel room in Berlin. Afterward I was freaked out, still not sure we weren’t a mistake as a couple, so worried that we’d blow our shot just as we’d started to see success. We argued and I told him we couldn’t be together. But the hell of it was that as soon as I walked away from him, I realized what a moronic thing it was to put a band before this person I loved.