Wild Obsession (Rebel Rockstars #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Tim

I’M OFF.

I hear it. The rest of the band hears it. They generously say nothing as I stumble through the next measure attempting to catch up.

I wish I could say this is unusual, but I’ve always been off. Wrong, my parents might say. In my entire life, I’ve never quite managed to catch up.

I don’t manage it now either. I trip through the song, breathing a sigh of relief when we get to the end and the final notes fade into the padded walls of the studio space. My bandmates relax. Erin steps away from the mic. Cameron and Kelsey set down their guitars. I slouch behind my drum kit, sticks crossed in my lap .

“Let’s take ten,” Erin says.

We all obey without a word. Our flashy lead singer with the purple dreads has always served as our unofficial leader, long before The Ten Hours got our big break a few years back. We have a manager and a publicist and a booker and a whole team around us now, but at our core we’re still those four young, idealistic dreamers practicing in Erin’s basement and playing small-time shows in downtown Seattle. They can stick us in a fancy recording studio and trot us out on press tours, but the soul of The Ten Hours has never changed.

I’ve always been their weak link.

They’ve been kind enough to keep me around anyway. They could have replaced their crappy drummer with someone more skilled when the band blew up, yet they’ve allowed me to stay.

I slink away from my drum kit and snag the water bottle our guitarist, Cameron, holds out for me. We sink onto a beat up, smelly couch in the corner while Erin and Kelsey settle on stools.

“This album’s really coming along,” Erin says. “I’m feeling good about it.”

She should. She wrote nearly every song. That’s another thing all the big fancy music people could have changed about us, but Erin wouldn’t budge. She’s always been our song writer, with a little help from Cameron, and she’s still our song writer .

“Hell yeah,” Kelsey, the bassist, chimes in. “It’s so good. I really think it’s the best one yet.”

“You say that every time,” Cameron drawls.

“I do not.”

“You definitely do,” Erin says, “but I appreciate the sentiment regardless.”

We chuckle, and for a moment the warmth of the people around me patches over my shame at letting them down. All four of us really do treat this band like a family, even though the others have real families and I have … well, something a bit more complicated. It doesn’t matter as long as I’m with The Ten Hours, as long as they decide to keep me around. I try to be worthy of their friendship, even if I’m not a match for their musical skills.

We’re kicking back chatting when our manager Emmett pops in. It’s not unusual for him to show up when we’re recording, sometimes just to watch, sometimes simply to catch us all in the same spot at the same time. We’re not exactly the kind of people you invite to a meeting in a board room, though that doesn’t stop him from trying.

“How’s the practice going?” Emmett says.

“Great,” Erin says. “The album is really coming together. I think it might be better than our debut.”

“That’s great,” Emmett says, immediately disinterested.

He’s not really a music guy. He’s pure business, which is actually more helpful than it sounds. We’ve started to hit a point where we have actual fans — and need actual security as a result — and having someone around who is completely unimpressed by our rise is grounding.

“So, we might have to put the new record on hold,” Emmett says. “And by might, I mean definitely. You definitely have to put the new record on hold. For a tour.”

“What?” Erin says, jerking to her feet.

Kelsey scowls openly. Beside me, Cameron’s usual frown deepens. His dark eyes are piercing on his mildest days, but right now they could burn through Emmett.

I stay quiet. I’m just the drummer, the weak link. Erin is flashy with her purple dreads and huge voice. Kelsey is lively and animated. Cameron is broody and handsome. But me? I’m just a guy. Not tall, not short. Brown hair that’s neither black nor blond. A little stubble when I’m lazy, which is often, and eyes that are the sort of brown people forget about the moment they look away. So I leave it to my bandmates to object to this sudden shift in our schedule. We’re supposed to be getting our second album out there, not going on some big tour. Besides, we’ve already done one of those after the studio signed us for our first album. It was exhausting. We thought we’d get a break. What are they thinking pushing us out there again already?

Emmett puts up his hands in a placating gesture. “I know, I promised you you’d get a chance to work on the music. The thing is, you only have one album. People are going to forget about you if you don’t get back in front of them.”

“We’ll get back in front of them with the new album,” Erin says.

“You will, but first, you’ll go on this tour.”

Cameron groans and sinks back onto the couch. “Julian is gonna freak.”

“We can arrange for him to meet you at whichever tour stops you want,” Emmett says.

Cameron doesn’t respond, but his jaw goes tense. He’s a quiet guy, but we’ve learned to read his tiniest expressions, and this one is not a good sign. I can’t blame him. He and his boyfriend Julian barely got together before our music career suddenly and unexpectedly took off thanks to a talent scout at a music festival. After that, we banged out a proper album, mostly using the material we’d been playing for years at small bars around Seattle. But then it was time for the tour. And after the tour it was time for the press circuit. And after the press circuit there was more recording, more press, more photo shoots. All of it definitely puts a strain on our interpersonal relationships. Or so I assume. I don’t have anyone who’ll miss me if I’m touring around the country for a few weeks.

“Speaking of which,” Emmett barrels on, “you can all invite whoever you want, but let us know ahead of time. We’ll be setting you up with a tour manager as well. Rehearsals start next week.”

“We really get no say in this?” Erin says.

“You really don’t,” Emmett confirms .

“We could go back to doing our own thing,” Cameron grumbles under his breath.

It’s a non-starter and we all know it. We’d be insane to give up our big break, even if we’ve promised each other in private that the second we can get out from under the record company’s thumb and do our own thing, we will. It’s easier said than done thanks to some of the contracts we’ve signed, but I’m no lawyer, so all that stuff goes right over my head. It was kind of a blur anyway. One second I was working at a grocery store; the next I was a full-time drummer with a tour schedule.

“I’m not done,” Emmett says.

All four members of The Ten Hours groan.

“You aren’t doing the tour alone. In fact, that’s kind of the point. Rainier Talent Management has an up-and-coming talent on board, and we want you guys to work with them.”

Cameron sits up. Erin looks about to leap off her stool again. I sigh inwardly, but what difference does it make? So they want someone to open for us so they can benefit from our status. So what? We were those up-and-comers not that long ago. It only seems right we pay our dues.

Then Emmett continues, and it’s just about the worst words I ever hear in my entire life.

“Baptism Emperor is going to open for you on the tour.”

My blood drains out of my face. I feel it go, like a tide receding from the shoreline, leaving me windswept and barren. My eyes widen. I clench my jaw so hard it hurts, but I can’t pry my teeth apart. I think my bandmates respond to Emmett, but I can’t hear them over the static roaring in my ears.

Baptism Emperor is his band. I heard about them a year or so ago, just some local guys making noise on the Seattle scene. I haven’t let them out of my sight ever since. He shouldn’t even be on the West Coast. He should be back in Baltimore with my disaster of a childhood. He should be in my memories. He should be a ghost occasionally haunting my nightmares.

He’s not. I knew it a year ago, but it just got a whole lot more real.

Keannen Summers, the drummer of Baptism Emperor and my first and only ex, is horribly, horribly real.

“Hey, man, you okay?” Cameron says, nudging my shoulder with his.

I blink to find myself back in the studio with my band. They’re all looking at me, even Emmett, and I rush to collect myself. Keannen is a part of my past none of them know about. In fact, I’ve told them almost nothing about my past. I’ve kept it all secret from my bandmates, and they’ve been kind enough not to pry, even through all our years together. But now that past is crashing toward me whether I want it to or not.

“I’m just … surprised,” I manage.

That’s putting it mildly. Since the second I realized Keannen was in the area, I’ve kept him on my radar. It’s like being alone in the forest with a mountain lion and trying to watch it from the corner of your eye. I always knew Keannen’s proximity meant he could pounce on me at any moment, but this has got to be the absolute worst way for our ill-fated reunion to go down.

“You guys are a good match,” Emmett says.

For a heart-stopping moment, I almost think he means me and Keannen. Maybe we are, maybe we were, but we’ll never find out now. Not after what happened. Sure, it felt like magic and fireworks and all that stuff back in high school, but we never got the opportunity to put those budding feelings to the test before life intervened to snatch it away from us.

I doubt the years of separation and bitterness are going to help matters.

I try to smile anyway. My bandmates don’t know. They don’t even know I’m gay.

Holy shit, this is going to be a disaster.

“You’ll complement each other on the tour,” Emmett is saying. It’s hard to hear him through that buzzing noise ringing in my head. “There’s consumer overlap, which is a great opportunity for both of you. And hey, if you want to strike up some kind of rivalry, that’s fine by us. Great for social media.”

“Yeah, but we’re the bigger band, so we’re basically doing them the favor,” Kelsey says.

“Not if this works out the way we’re hoping it will,” Emmett says. “This could be huge. Massive. You think you’re hot shit now? You haven’t seen anything yet. Plus, with both bands under the same management, it’ll lower everyone’s costs if you do the tour together.”

“We don’t care about the costs,” Erin says.

It’s easy for her say. She has parents to fall back on if this whole “being a band” thing doesn’t work out.

I say nothing, and just like that, it’s settled. My bandmates stop pushing back, and I have no choice but to go along with the will of the group, but this just became the longest tour in music history.

Emmett said a healthy rivalry with Baptism Emperor might work to our advantage, but he has no idea the can of worms he’s opening there. In my case at least, that rivalry might not be for show. Not when it comes to the only person I ever fell for, the only person I ever kissed, the only person I ever loved.

It’s been almost a decade, but Keannen Summers is still the guy who got away.

If only he’d stayed away.