1. Evangeline
CHAPTER ONE
evangeline
EVA 20 | WILDER 22
T he voices around me melt together, pooling into a backdrop of discordant static. Words drift like debris through my exhausted mind, knocking together, drifting apart. Shapes and sounds. Rhythms and melodies. I can’t hold any of them for more than a second before they, too, fade into obscurity.
I don’t want to be here. I should be in my backyard, relaxing in my hot tub. Cocooned by silence and reveling in solitude. Instead, the very people I’m most sick of surround me: musicians, the people who work with them, make money off them, and drool over them.
A familiar laugh pulls my gaze across the crowded living room to Wilder, who towers over a cluster of sycophants. Four out of five are displaying too much cleavage; the one man in the bunch has the same look on his face as the women, though. They all want a shot at being the lucky one tonight.
The giant potted plant I’m tucked behind partially obscures Wilder’s face, but I can see half of his smile. Straight white teeth. A dimple made more pronounced by the scruff on his face. Dark hair that’s too long after the last leg of our tour—so long it skims his broad shoulders and frames his poster-worthy face with haphazard waves.
Eddie offered to buzz it for him a few weeks ago, but Wilder declined and instead started using one of my hair ties to make a ridiculous, tiny topknot to keep it out of his eyes onstage. His flippant excuse was he didn’t trust our drummer not to make him bleed. An obvious lie; no one has steadier hands than Eddie.
The real reason is that our fanbase is obsessed with his hair. It has its own hashtag: #wildmane. And after the explosion of concert photos on Instagram in the last few weeks, his topknot has a hashtag, too: #knotmewilder.
Cue eye roll.
“What or who are we hiding from?” asks Rye, sidling up beside me. My best friend’s blue eyes sparkle at me from his handsome, freckled face, and for the first time in weeks, my smile is genuine.
“The blob mind,” I whisper.
He laughs, clinking his half-empty beer bottle to my full one. We’re both underage, but no one here cares. I don’t even know whose house this is, only that it belongs to someone from our record label.
“It’s good to have you guys home,” Rye says, hooking a muscled arm around my neck and smacking a loud kiss on the top of my head. “Life is boring without you.”
“It’s good to be home, Riley Piley.”
He pretends to gag. “You don’t call Wilder Why-Why anymore. Stop torturing me. It’s not my fault my parents gave me a girl’s name.”
I smirk. “It was your grandfather’s name.”
“That was like a hundred years ago.”
I concede with a laugh. “Fine. I’ll give it a rest.”
“Thank fuck.”
He rubs his bearded cheek over the top of my head. He may only be nineteen, but he’s built like a tank and has been growing beards since puberty. Probably why no one has blinked an eye at the fact he’s drinking.
“Did you stop by your parents’?” he asks.
“Not yet.” I wince, remembering the disappointment Mom tried and failed to conceal when I told her I needed to decompress for a day. “I’ll see them at the barbecue tomorrow. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for…” I trail off, my gaze moving across the room at the exact moment a woman strokes her hand suggestively down Wilder’s chest. He smiles indulgently at her.
Rye sighs heavily. “He guilt tripped you, huh?”
I tear my gaze from Wilder and shrug at Rye. “He had a point. It would have been weird if I didn’t show up at our tour wrap party.”
He hums. “It’s okay to say no to him sometimes, Eva.”
I don’t bother responding; the argument is ancient and I agree with him. Closing my eyes, I relax into my best friend’s solid frame, his wintergreen and moss scent as familiar to me as hugs from my parents.
Looking at us from the outside, we’re a mismatched pair. A redheaded behemoth and his lanky blond sidekick. But the bond between Rye and me began when we were in diapers and solidified into something unbreakable over the years.
We’ve known Wilder just as long, but he’s always been a few steps outside our circle. And not because he’s two years older than me and three years older than Rye, or because we never invited him in. It’s just who he is. No one gets too close to Wilder. Not even me, despite my reputation in our families as being the only one he listens to.
If only they knew.
It surprised no one when the three of us formed our first band at ages ten, eleven, and thirteen respectively. We have music in our blood. Our dads are legends, members of the insanely popular indie rock band, Breaking Giants. Wilder’s dad, Julian Ashburn, is the lead singer and songwriter. Rye’s dad, Nick Henderson, plays drums. And my dad, Matt Sullivan, handles lead guitar and backup vocals. Suffice to say, our families have been enmeshed since before our births.
Nine years later, Wilder and I are still making music—music being about the only thing we agree on. Rye caught the bug, too, but realized early on he preferred to be behind the scenes. He found his niche in mixing and production, and his talents scored him an internship right out of high school at Icon Studios, one of Seattle’s oldest and most revered recording studios. He even submitted his application with a fake name to ensure he was granted an interview on his own merits and not the power of his father’s fame.
“Have you figured out what you’re going to do?” he asks softly, gaze roaming the spacious living room and the throngs of people before snapping back to me.
A lump forms in my throat. “I think so.”
Hearing what I’m not saying, he gives me a sympathetic squeeze. “No one is going to judge you.” He pauses, wincing. “Except maybe You Know Who. But he’ll get over it.”
I doubt that.
My gaze slides across the room right as Wilder looks our way. He smiles when he sees Rye—his real smile, not the one he uses on the public—but it freezes when he sees me tucked under his arm. Our eyes meet. His glisten with an apology I don’t want to hear again.
“Whoa,” Rye whispers. “Why is he looking at you like he thinks you hate him? What happened?”
My mouth opens, then closes. There’s no polite way to say a girl my age almost OD’d in Wilder’s hotel room last week while he was screwing her friend a few feet away.
He finally realized what was happening and called our manager, Mack Martinez, who called me. The two of us cleaned up the mess like we always do, and afterward, I hung back like an idiot to ask Wilder if he was okay. Still wasted, he invited me to give him a blowjob—like he was doing me a favor—because he hadn’t finished earlier.
Shoving the memory away, I lie to my best friend’s face. “Nothing. He just knows I don’t want to be here.” I hand him my unfinished beer. “On that note, I’ve done my time. We’ll catch up tomorrow, okay? Don’t let Wilder suck you into any craziness tonight.”
Rye’s eyes scan mine before he nods. “See you tomorrow. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I make it halfway to the front door before a familiar figure intercepts me. Eddie’s eyes have a telltale glaze as he grins at me.
“Don’t tell me you’re leaving!”
I force a chuckle. “I have an overdue date with my mattress. We’ve missed each other very much.”
He laughs, then clears his throat and runs a hand over his short blond hair. “Well, I’m glad I caught you. I was wondering… now that we’re home, do you want to go on a date? With me?”
For the twenty-millionth time, I regret the night a month into our tour when I found myself drunkenly making out with Eddie in a hotel hallway. The shittiest part is I hadn’t even known it was him at first—even though he and our bassist, Jax, are a year apart in age, the brothers look like twins. They have similar haircuts and both had been wearing black T-shirts and jeans that night.
As embarrassing as Wilder’s interruption was, I’m grateful he showed up. I wasn’t in my right mind.
I should say yes to a date with Eddie. He’s objectively attractive, talented, and kind. Despite the fact I essentially threw myself at him that night—I might have also begged him to take my virginity—he’s never made me feel uncomfortable or brought it up since.
In a perfect world, I’d be smitten with him. But my world is chaos.
“Sorry, Eddie. I don’t think it’s a good idea to mess with our working dynamic.”
To my relief, he lives up to my opinion of him when I see disappointment but no anger in his eyes. “I figured. No hard feelings, Eva. See you next week?”
Probably not.
I nod and give him a hug, aware that the next time he and Jax hear my name, they’ll probably curse it.
Over Eddie’s shoulder, I spot Wilder and Rye chatting. The groupies have been dismissed, which shouldn’t please me but does.
Like he can feel my gaze, Wilder turns his head. Before our stares can connect, I jerk away from Eddie and make a beeline for the door.