Chapter Two
An hour later, I’m sitting on the edge of the stage, legs hanging over the side, nursing a beer and still waiting for Eric. The arguing at the board ended—finally—I can tell by how they’re standing they’re only talking crap but I can I feel it in my gut nothing today is going to go smoothly.
Not the afternoon.
Not the show tonight.
And not all the after-performance rigmarole.
Just when I think it’s pointless to stay and watch over Eric, none other than the sexiest music blogger in the hemisphere appears.
“You doing all right, Ethan?” she calls out as she crosses the stage. “You look like you could use some company.”
Wrong. I’m in the mood to be alone—or rather I would be if it were anyone other than Avery Hart, aka Black Dawn’s resident social media influencer. She’s like our Marion, the heroine from the Indiana Jones movies, more kick-ass than the guys and I’m sure secretly in love with the hero. Just like in the flicks, except in our version there are two heroes—call me vain but, yes, I put me and Eric in lead billing—but for her I’m positive there’s only one hero: my brother.
I turn my head as she moves toward me—a man would be a fool not to watch Avery walk—and for about the thousandth time in the six years she’s been part of the extended band, I visualize pulling out my imaginary gun and shooting myself in the head.
True, I’d put her in the no-go zone the first time Eric met her, but that doesn’t make it any easier to be there with him. I’m a sucker for a girl with smarts and a killer smile, who can get me hot even dressed that way: worn Birkenstocks; loose, ragged jeans; long, holey sweater; nicely tight tank underneath, her voluptuous front hidden behind her wide cross-body tote strap and her unruly auburn curls that reach down to her curvy hips.
I manage every day not to tell her how I feel about her, but even though it’s got to be done, it’s living agony. If I put her into available status Eric will make a play, and I’d rather not have her than have that.
Eric had gotten that worked-up-ready-to-make-a-move expression two seconds after she’d walked into our rehearsal space asking for a job we weren’t even advertising for. One look at how they stared at each other and my protective instincts, as in protecting all women from my walking gland of a brother, put my mouth ahead of my brain and I’d classified her in the no-go zone, i.e. we both were hot for Avery so that meant neither of us could try to get anything going with her.
A juvenile thing to do for a twenty-year-old guy, indisputable, but the rule started when we were thirteen, it’d worked well in high school, and Avery was the perfect reason to resurrect the classification in adulthood.
It was the smart play.
Besides, Avery works for us now, is great at her job, and it’d just be wrong to screw that up by hooking up with her. Even if she didn’t have the prettiest face with milk-chocolate brown eyes I’d ever seen, I couldn’t go there if I wanted to. The second the band voted to hire her made her no-can-do for all of us.
We don’t fuck where we work. We’re probably the first rock band in history to make that a steadfast rule and do it. Especially being as Eric’s one of us.
But, Christ, do I want to be the one who breaks that rule…
Avery sinks down beside me, copying my posture. She lays her head on my shoulder, blasting me with a torturous tease of her scent, and widens those bedroom eyes until her glance lands in my groin with the instantly unchecked images of having her beneath me, staring up exactly that way. “Cheer up. It wasn’t that bad. Tonight’s going to go fine. Eric never screws up during a performance. He’s spot on every time, no matter what goes down before the show.”
The mention of Eric’s blowup with Dad is good; it keeps my Avery insta-woody from fully inflating and helps me rein in my impulse to kiss her.
Like a cold shower.
Thank you, God.
My face scrunches up in a grimace—part mention of Eric and part because she just put her hand atop my thigh near where I ache. “You saw?”
“Was here the whole time. Over there.” She points to her pile of stuff stage left in a familiar arrangement: pillow to sit on, pillow for legs to use as a desk, laptop, jumbo-size sports bottle, and the second cross-body bag she lugs around with her that carries her backup everything.
Damn it. “You didn’t blog about it, did you?”
Her eyes go even wider, like that question is a no-brainer. “Yeah, I did. You know my rules. You get all of me 24/7 creating miraculous buzz for the band and you let me be embedded with you and uncensored.”
Embedded and uncensored—oh, fuck my mind. Not now.
I use pulling out the tie on my hair as an excuse to straighten up and, as I’d hoped, she eases off my body.
Avery crinkles her nose. “Christ, you’re tense today. Your muscles feel rock hard.”
If only she knew how hard…
“You saw. You know why.”
She attempts an air of no big deal as her gaze strays to Eric. “Not one of his better moments.”
“Have there been any of those this tour?”
Avery’s lower lip pushes out in a sexy pout. “Lots of them. Eric can be a really sweet guy when he’s not working his ass off to prove that he isn’t.”
Interesting.
How does she know that?
Is Eric nice-Eric when they’re alone together?
No, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know anything about Avery’s relationship with my brother, especially that she knows his sweet side. That part of him only comes out these days when he’s trying to fuck a girl.
It takes work, but I turn my thoughts back to the problem that came onto the stage with her. “So how bad is your blog post? How awful do we come off looking? Spoiled, foul-mouthed rich assholes unappreciative of their father coming out of retirement to save their fucked-up tour and career?”
“Crap, you’re negative today. I don’t know what to think of this change. I do know I don’t like it. Snap back into happy, positive Ethan so I can continue to be your number one fan.”
“Sorry, positive jumped ship an hour ago. The capacity to be delusional went with it. Even a spin doctor—which you’re not—couldn’t make the scene with Pop come off well in print.”
She tosses me an annoyed look. “O ye of little faith. I told you, it wasn’t that bad. The post isn’t bad either. If anything, it will make Eric more swoon-worthy and loveable to your female fans. I’m a very good social media influencer. Have faith.”
The latter part is proven and confirmed by her three million followers on her blog; the first part, no, I’m not buying it. Even a genius with words couldn’t massage what happened on stage into good hype for the band.
I grab my cell from my pocket.
“You’re not checking, are you?” She looks irritated.
I shrug as I tap through the screens. “I’m a fan of your work. What can I say?”
She rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. “Try ‘I’m sorry for not trusting you’ after you read today’s post. I don’t do cheap shots, Ethan, or shock talk. You know that.”
I continue to scroll up the page. “Instead of an apology, I’ll buy you dinner. How’s that?”
“We were already going to have dinner together.”
“I’ll make it a good dinner. Not the usual joints we go to when we’re in LA.”
And yes, we hang out together. No doubt it’s a stupid move, but it seemed stupider to be friends and avoid being alone with Avery just because I can’t stop myself from thinking about how epic it would be to go to bed with her.
God, how many times have I had a sexual thought about Avery in the last four minutes? Seeing her walk. Looking at the pillows. Her head on my shoulder. Her hand on my thigh…too numerous to count. It’s not usually this bad.
I sink my teeth into my upper lip, fighting to focus on the words on the screen since I’m a guy with a one-track mind all of a sudden.
I start reading—oh Christ.
“See,” she says, gloating and happy.
“Is that really how you see my brother?”
“Of course.”
That disclosure—a relief, but unwelcome.
“As a guy trying to break out from under the shadow of his father and struggling with how much he loves him?”
“That’s exactly what’s going on with Eric.”
I stare at her, disbelieving. “Precisely when did you reach that diagnosis of the fucked-up state of their relationship?”
She lifts her chin. “The first time I met you two.”
“In the rehearsal studio when you asked for a job?”
“No.” She stares at me, eyes heavy with meaning. “The first first time.”
That memory—always blocked—comes front and center. We were ten and her stepdad, an employee for the security company that works for us, came to my house to do an inspection, and my dad sent Avery to play with us.
“It really bugs me you never remember the first first time.”
I meet the challenge in her eyes. “The way you recall it isn’t flattering to me.”
Her face takes on a pretty pert glow. “It wasn’t flattering to me. You hardly looked at me. Said hello and kept reading your book. It would have been completely unmemorable if not for Eric.”
“I was ten. And you’re a girl,” I counter in my own defense. “What’d you expect, cartwheels that my dad brought some girl for us to hang out with?”
“Well, something more than being ignored would have been nice,” she points out with exaggerated drama. “If not for Eric—”
Crud, does she have to go there?
“—maneuvering out of sight of the house to kiss me—”
Yep, she did.
“—I wouldn’t have remembered it either. It was my first kiss. Girls don’t forget things like that.”
The tension bands in my body twist tighter as I’m never sure why she says it that way every time she recalls the story. “I imagine they don’t. Unlike guys, who forget everything the second it’s done.”
Her lids shoot wide and inwardly I groan. Crap, what made me say that? I’m not even the one who kissed her that day and I can’t forget it. Childish beyond words, but I hate the thought that Eric kissed her once, even if he’d been only ten, almost as much as knowing he’s a first kiss she likes to remember.
“You’re in a grumpy mood. Snap out of it, mister, or I won’t have dinner with you,” she admonishes, and even that comes out flirty.
“Sorry. Long afternoon.”
She nods and smiles. “There, we’re friends again. Though I wouldn’t have stayed angry at you long. I never do. You’re too loveable.”
Avery ends that with a kiss on my cheek and one luscious breast pushing in on my arm.
“And it’s a good thing Eric made that day one I’d never forget. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to crash unannounced at your open call for a drummer and ask for a job if I hadn’t figured a guy kissing me gave me the right to. We would have never connected again. The band wouldn’t have given me a job that I love. My blog wouldn’t have exploded. And we wouldn’t all be fabulous friends.”
I nod in agreement because I can see Avery expects me to. But I prefer to think we would have reconnected a different way and ended up together.