29. Chase
“Sleep through your alarm again?” Chase asked Zak backstage once she finally arrived.
It had nothing to do with her appearance. She looked incredible as always, made even more incredible by the memory of his fingers slipping through the laces of that corset yesterday. But as tantalizing a thought as that was, at the forefront of his mind was that he had sat out on his balcony this morning alone.
While he wished he had gotten a chance to enjoy the calm with her before the chaos of filming, Zak was also notoriously bad about keeping a routine and about hitting the snooze button. That was the explanation he’d come up with while he waited for the sound of her door opening.
However, when he brought it up, and she didn’t smile, make a joke, or roll her eyes, there was no more blowing off the missed meeting as a coincidence.
“Something like that,” she said, emotionless.
She was miles away again, and this time, there had been no warning.
No matter what she wanted to call their first kiss—a lapse in judgment, the heat of the moment—the second one had felt like a breakthrough. Like there would be no more denial, no more avoidance or uncertainty.
They hadn’t had an opportunity to talk about it afterward, but Chase had gone to sleep last night ignorantly assuming everything was okay. Now he knew, he couldn’t have been more wrong. And though he wanted more than anything to ask her what had happened, they were on in five.
The band before them was re-filming their panel responses and they were all supposed to remain quiet, but that had never stopped Zak from sparking silent conversations through amateur sign language.
He brushed her elbow to get her attention. “Is everything okay?”
“Not now, Chase.”
Not now because she was focused on the show, and she couldn’t afford to lose that focus. Conversely, his focus was shot.
His brain worked rapidly in reverse to identify what she was shutting him out over. What could be so bad that any mention of it would hinder her guitar playing?
When they stepped out on stage, he couldn’t hear the enormous crowd over his own thoughts.
While working on the show, a natural buffer had formed, insulating them from the changes taking place on the outside. They were constantly busy, nabbing most of their meals from the free buffet at the studio and spending most of their scant leisure time at the hotel. That isolation from the press and the public made it difficult to know how much Amped was doing to promote Saint of Spades until they all experienced the marked difference themselves.
Chase surveyed the audience, in awe of the contrast between their first film session and today’s. People were holding up posters of names and logos, and Saint of Spades was among them, if not dominating them. Now he wondered what viewers were saying across the nation, but he knew better than to seek out his name in the news.
Zak’s smile was an obvious ruse for the cameras, but he held out hope that maybe things weren’t as serious as they seemed. A hope that persisted as she appeared to return to her normal self during their fourth performance. Then again, Zak was a different person on stage. The purest, happiest version of herself.
His hope dissipated when they wrapped up filming Episode Four, and she had an excuse primed for the minute their mics were all off.
“I’ll see you all for sound check,” Zak said, more to everyone else than to him.
“Need any help with the equipment?” Chase tried, but she shook her head with a weak smile and left him standing there with her three equally disconnected friends.
He returned to the dressing room with the guys, making a concerted effort to stop overthinking. Staff members approached them with a few logistical details in the hallway, and he gave bland answers to questions and half-assed nods to requests.
The couch in their prep space called his name, an alternative to pacing on his sore stump. His current prosthesis was a vast improvement over the first ones he had tried—which were more akin to wearing a three-day-old gym sock on top of a knife—but walking around on half a leg all day still took twice the effort.
The four of them, surrounded by four small beige walls, coexisted in constricting silence for far too long before Chase finally rounded up the nerve to say something.
“What’s going on?”
Edge propped his hip against a dressing table, arms crossed over his chest. “I don’t know. What’s going on with you?”
What does that even mean?
“You’re confusing him, Edge.” Dallas kicked back in one of the salon chairs. He rolled open the drawer above his knees and whipped out his flask. “Just ask him what you reallywanna ask him. Are we calling you Coach Payton anytime soon, or no?”
Now Chase was even more confused. “Coach?”
“Did you read any of the papers on Saturday?” Edge asked. “There’s an interesting feature in there. Something about Atlanta.”
“Saturday…” Chase racked his brain. Either he had suffered severe anterograde amnesia from all that alcohol, or something wasn’t lining up. Because he had gotten the call about that job on Sunday afternoon.
“What? Is there another one-legged, hockey-playing Chase Payton out there?” Alex crunched his empty water bottle.
Chase’s spine straightened. “I don’t know how that got out, but I’m not going to Atlanta if that’s what you’re asking.”
He hadn’t said it out loud, hadn’t confirmed it in his own mind until now. But the moment he couldn’t bring himself to schedule an interview on the phone, he knew what his decision would be.
At the end of a single conversation, he had agreed to audition for Saint of Spades. An hour later, he had joined the band. He had never made such an impulsive choice before, but none had ever paid off so well. It was about time he gave that “follow your heart” philosophy a fair shot.
“Are you going somewhere else, though?” Edge’s brows furrowed. “Because I understand that being a singer wasn’t your idea, and maybe it’s not what you want to do forever. But if you could let us know before you start applying for jobs, it would be nice not to be blindsided again.”
“I’m not applying for jobs. I took their callback number,” he said. “And I don’t know why I did that, if I”m being honest. I was just shocked, and I didn’t know what to say, but I’m not going back to hockey. Especially not to a team that’s trying to use my name for media hits when I haven’t even scheduled an interview.”
Of course, the person who most needed to know that he wasn’t going anywhere wasn’t present to hear him say it.
Edge, face paled by what Chase could only imagine was inside knowledge about what Zak must be thinking right now, told him, “That’s good to know.”
Chase muttered something about being back in ten and left the room.
It was a lie—their practice room was a fifteen-minute walk each way, at the opposite end of the studio—but surely, they knew where he was going.
Zak was alone when he arrived. She had wiped down her guitar, stowed it away, and was now adjusting the knobs on her acoustic as she did a solo run-through of their next song at half volume.
If the camera crew saw the two of them in there alone, having a private conversation, they would inevitably come sniffing around with their microphones, as they were contractually permitted to do. So Chase made sure the hallway was clear before quietly opening the door and flicking off the lights.
Zak turned around in her chair.
His guilt amplified for not telling her immediately after he got the call yesterday and avoiding any opportunity for misunderstanding, because she didn’t appear furious at all.
Chase knew she had feelings for him, too, but he’d never noticed how her expression lit up when she saw him, how her lips curved up to the brighter side of neutral. Not until they didn’t.
“What are you doing here?”
He sat beside her in his usual spot at the table and placed a hand on her knee. “I’m not taking the coaching job. I know this isn’t the time or place to talk about it, but you need to know that. Okay? Tell me you believe me.”
She stopped palming the strings and set her guitar on the table. Dull sound reverberated from the instrument. Her eyes were murky in the darkness as she took him in. “You’re not?”
“No,” he repeated immediately, definitively. Anything to fan the spark of excitement in her voice. “I’m not.”
She laid her hand on top of his, her thumb mapping his tendons. “I believe you.”
Those three words sounded more like the start of a sentence than the end of one. She had more to say, and he wanted to hear all of it, but even closed doors had ears around here.
“Are we okay?” he asked. Because her trust had seemed too easy to gain this time, and instead of appreciating that, he apparently wanted to question it.
“Nothing about us is okay.”
She closed the space between them and brushed her lips against his to show him exactly what she meant.
Instead of letting her pull away, he kissed her harder.
“We need to go,” she mumbled against his lips. “I can’t be in this room alone with you.”
As much as he wished she would, she was right. He was A-okay with letting the whole world know they weren’t enemies, they weren’t rivals, and Zak Parker definitely didn’t hate him behind closed doors. But what they did do behind closed doors was nobody else’s business.
“Be alone with me later, then,” he begged in words. Begged with his gaze, his breath tangling with hers, his touch on the side of her neck.
“You make it hard to say no.”
He kissed her again. “Then say yes.”
Saint of Spades relinquished all their amplifiers and electronics for mic’d-up acoustics during Round Five. They sat in a semi-circle on stools, a microphone at the center of the arrangement.
Regardless of how many times Zak assured Chase he wasn’t, he still felt like he was taking credit for someone else’s work. Riding their coattails from his old lucrative career to this new one.
He remembered “Wild Nights” from the time he had seen the band play at Jerri’s, but this arrangement had turned it into an entirely new song. He didn’t dare mention it out loud, but he was glad for that. It gave him an opportunity to be someone other than the man standing, diminutively, in the superstar-sized gap where Link used to be.
As they played it for the world, he thought, This is how it should be recorded.
Not to spare his ego about following in the footsteps of their first vocalist, but because this rendition showcased the very best of Zak’s talent. They could record it all in a room together like they were sitting now and leave in the unedited sounds of the back of her fingernails scraping against the strings on down strums. The added rhythm of her thumb against the body of her guitar.
This was her at her finest, back to her roots. Like the first day he’d shown up for practice and been so stunned by what she could do without tech that he had to stop and listen for as long as she would allow.
This was her story in sound.
Chase kept time with his foot on the bottom rung of the stool as he sang, but she was his real gauge for what to do next. He watched her as she traded measures back and forth with Dallas, a syncopated argument between instruments.
Hours of songwriting, rehearsal, makeup, and footage all culminated as they finished the single, four-minute performance.
“Amazing work on this one,” Kennedy said as soon as the song was over. “A sure improvement over your last showing. Whatever spark you were missing, you clearly found it before coming back on stage today.”
“I love that even though you didn’t have to choose your own song to cover during this round, you chose to put a new spin on something you’ve written.” Neil addressed Chase, the only one who hadn’t contributed to writing the original song. “Sometimes, we as musicians get so used to playing our songs a certain way that it can be difficult to break free from that mold and experiment with something new. Well done.”
“What an interesting take on a heavier original,” Dom said, no doubt referencing the footage they’d shot during their rehearsal last week of the way the song was originally written. “Is there a reason you chose classical Latin music as the inspiration behind today’s performance?”
“Growing up, there was always Latin music playing at home, never rock,” Edge spoke up. It was the first time he’d actually needed to use his microphone. “These are the kind of sounds and rhythms I remember my parents dancing to in the kitchen, playing at birthday parties and in the restaurant they own. And apart from being a reminder of home and of all the love I was raised with, it would be wrong of us to come all the way here and not to show off the skills of our incredibly talented guitarist, Zak Parker.”
Zak turned to her side, wide-eyed. They hadn’t rehearsed a response like that, but Chase was glad for the reprieve.
“Incredibly talented, indeed,” said Neil. “How exactly did you learn to play like that?”
“Oh, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to that music at his family’s restaurant, too,” she told the cameras. “Though I mostly hang out there for the queso fundido. Shout out to Marisol, that stuff’s like crack.”
The audience laughed, and so did the band.
“But honestly, I like to spend time learning as many different techniques and styles as I can. I’m a rocker at heart, but rock music owes its roots to everything that came before it. Jazz, blues, gospel, folk, you name it. The guitar unlocks all of those styles, all of those artists and stories and windows in history. There’s a million ways to play it, an infinite number of sounds, and I don’t think I’ll live long enough to try all of them—but I’ll do my best. And I think that kind of experimentation and appreciation for different genres only helps solidify our unique sound as a band.”
It felt good to hear her lose awareness of how long she’d been talking. Zak had an opinion on everything that fell beneath the umbrella of music. More often than not, a strong one. And though he assumed they would want a re-take of her response, which wasn’t nearly ego-centric enough for the caricature they’d created of her, the production team ushered them along into closing remarks.
Riding high on a successful end to their day of filming, they started back toward their rehearsal space to return the instruments and pick up their belongings.
Zak gave Edge a wry smile as she untangled her headset from her hair. “Is your mom still watching all the episodes?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “She’s going to hate that. Comparing her food to drugs? ‘Jesucristo, Eduardo. No me digas que tu has probado la cocaína.’”
“I hope it makes the cut, then.”
They all shared a chuckle, hesitantly at first. The dynamics between everyone else made Chase wonder if his job prospects were really the only problem facing Saint of Spades, or if other issues lurked beneath the surface.
“I’d love to see them spin that answer into something negative,” Chase said, finding the key in his front pocket and unlocking the Hendrix room. “Maybe you’ll be redeemed over the next couple of episodes.”
“I’m not so sure. At this point, a full dub of a voice actor saying, ‘I was born legendary at guitar, but in between slaughtering my enemies and drinking their blood, sometimes I practice,’ isn’t out of the question.” Zak laid her guitar across the table and began her meticulous cleaning routine.
“Careful, a mic might have picked that up through the crack in the door,” Alex joked.
“We might be going home in two weeks anyway,” she said. “They weren’t fans of the first one.”
“Fuck ‘em.” Dallas flung his guitar up on the wall mount. “They weren’t fans of anyone else’s ‘Rewind’ either, really. Except that stoner band from Whatever Dakota. Figures. They even look like they hopped through time from a free-love circle.”
Chase knew who he was talking about, and they were from Montana, but what did it matter? “I doubt we’re going anywhere after the way you played tonight, Zak.”
Dallas whistled. “Lordy. With all that smooth talk, I can see how Krispy Kreme gets your panties wet, Z.”
And Chase had thought he would never have to hear that nickname again.
Dallas drained a water bottle in what looked like three gulps, kept it—to refill with vodka, if Chase had to guess—and bid them goodnight. “I’m ready to pass out. Don’t worry about Round Four too hard. We killed it.”
“Same here, but I’ve gotta return this thing first.” Alex pointed to the cajón they’d rented, sitting on a hand truck. “I’m out.”
“Me too. And hey, if it wasn’t enough then at least we got the word out.” Edge rapped on the back of a chair. “We’ll have agents banging the door down back home. If all else fails, with the money from the show we’ll have enough to record a real LP.”
The demo they had given Chase had been produced at Edge’s parents’ cantina on a rented tape recorder and still featured Link as their singer. Zak told him that they had saved for years to be able to record independently, but not only was studio space expensive, it was also competitive. Especially in a city oversaturated with aspiring stars.
“You don’t have to convince me.” Her gaze flickered to Chase instead of Edge. “As much as I love being here, I don’t love being on camera all the time. Today was a drag.”
Yeah. It really fucking was.
These double-episode days were their longest workdays. It was only seven p.m., but they’d been at the studio for thirteen hours now, so it wasn’t a surprise that no one wanted to stick around and chat.
Edge gave Zak a side hug, said something low into her ear that made her smile in response, and then left the two of them alone. Exactly where they were not supposed to be alone earlier.
Zak”s eyes locked on Chase as the door clicked shut. “So.” She shifted her weight back and forth on her feet. Wearing heels all day looked like torture, and hell if it wasn’t torture to watch her walking around in them all day as well. “Coffee in my room? I owe you, after bailing this morning.”
“Sure,” he agreed.
Though he wasn’t keeping score. And he didn’t care if she made any coffee.