I was expecting to hear an old standby. Something tried and true that I'd sung along to a zillion times before. A Wrecked song.

When the unfamiliar melody teased out slowly, I felt something warm seeping into my veins as I realized that, for the very first time, I was actually hearing a song by the new band. The band they were now. I was hearing a song by Wreckage.

It was slow, almost a ballad but not quite. Niall's bassline had a dirty, swamp-blues groove that slunk underneath Ewan's spare, shimmering guitar work like a bad omen. I felt goosebumps raising on my arm even before Hudson growled the first verse into the mic.

"I'm looking behind me at you / And there's a crack in the mirror."

I snapped my head over so hard I felt my neck twinge and gaped at Ewan. He dragged his eyes up from his slow finger work and looked me dead in the eye, watching me as he played. His guitar swung low at his waist and he slung himself around it like it was an extension of himself, teasing out an echoing melody line that I felt raise the hairs on the back of my neck. My breath came faster as Hudson's voice swirled around my head, singing words that only Ewan could have written.

"For you I'll piece the jagged parts together."

I couldn't have moved if I tried. I was pinned down by the poetry of the words and the ferocity of his gaze. Had he looked at me like this last night and I hadn't realized? The words to his song made me think that he had. The words made promises about how he was feeling, but did he mean them? Was this the truth? Or were these just pretty words on paper, a song of seduction to win over millions of women, not just me? Was I being a selfish fool to think they were about me in the first place?

As the bridge of the song lifted me to my feet, I realized there was only one way to find out.

In two steps, I was in his arms, cutting off the song with a screechy clunk of feedback as my body slammed into his. In one motion he yanked the cord from his guitar and slung it behind him to catch me up in his arms before his lips came crashing down into mine.

It was true, it was true, I could feel it in the slide of his tongue swirling with mine, and the heat of his lips as he seared me. He pulled me so close he nearly squeezed the breath from my body and we spun in a slow circle in our own private dance. We were falling and flying and standing perfectly still, melded to each other as the strains of music still echoed in my head. He meant it. He had to have meant it because this kiss, this kiss meant everything.

I heard a small noise and realized it was my own gasping moan as he kissed me even harder and his growl rumbled lower than the bass of the song he'd written just for me. Breathless, I pulled back and looked at him, and slowly I realized that we weren't alone and that the entire band had just watched us kiss like that.

"Ah," Jules said, clearing his throat. "So it's like that then?"

Ewan's eyes blazed fiercely. He slung his arms over around me and pulled me tight to his side as he turned and faced the whole band. "Yeah," he growled. "It's fucking like that."

There was silence. My heart hammered but not with fear. No, this was excitement to be claimed by him like this in front of everyone. I'd cut his hair. He'd made me his.

"Cool man," Hudson finally said, coming over to us. "That's kind of rad." He looked at me with a crooked, eager smile. "Like your mom and dad, right?"

If Ewan hadn't been holding me, I would have stepped back. Instead I swallowed hard. "You know who I am?" I heard myself asking.

Hudson looked confused. "You mean you're not Ricky Silver's daughter? Oh, well my bad, but I could have sworn..."

I looked down and heaved a heavy sigh. Ewan watched me carefully as I slowly extricated myself from his arms, but without them around me I felt cold and alone. "No, I am," I confessed, the words sticking in my throat,

Hudson brightened. "So cool!" he said, looking from me to Ewan. "It is like that then, right? I mean, the whole reason your dad started Silvergate Recordings in the first place..."

"Was to give my mom a career," I finished tightly. "No one else would hire her so he decided to keep it in the family. Except it didn't really work out that well, now did it?"

Hudson raised his chin. "Shit man, I don't give a fuck if people make fun of me. Penelope Silver's got some righteous tunes. She was like the original badass rocker chick."

"Who lost all her cred once people found out her husband was the reason she got signed," I corrected. "She became a national joke and it wasn't even her fault."

Hudson looked chagrined. "She got a bum rap, I say. If she had just..."

"Not been with my dad?" I snapped, more harshly than I meant to. "Yeah maybe then she would have been taken seriously. Maybe then her talent would have been treated as talent instead of all my dad's doing. You've heard the jokes. That she's an airhead ditz who needed a Svengali type manager just to have a career." I took a deep breath, trying to rein in the defensiveness I always felt when I talked about my mom. It had actually been her career that launched my father's, not the other way around, but no one ever saw it that way. They only saw that she had the same last name as his. I could never figure out exactly what it was; habit, sexism, disbelief that a woman could really kick out the jams and tear shit up without a man pulling the strings, but my mom had suffered for being publicly linked to my father. "That's why I don't tell people who my dad is," I told Hudson, told them all, pleading with them to understand, to drop it. "Because everyone thinks he's the puppet master. Once people think you don't deserve your success they are more than happy to take it all away from you."