Chapter 21
I allowed the music to wrap around me in its comforting embrace. My fingers nimbly traced over the neck of my violin while my hand glided the bow over the strings just so. I played the last note and didn’t open my eyes until silence remained.
When my eyes opened, I saw Ben and Gavin looking back at me with gob smacked expressions. I was confused by their stillness and looked at the others. Rick, Tyler, and Mike were also in a state of awe. It was Rick that finally broke the silence, holding up his arm.
“I got goose bumps, anyone else?”
I self-consciously laughed. Gavin introduced a new song to our playlist at the beginning of the night.
It had a solemn, eerie melody and after we felt like we had nailed the vocals and tweaked it slightly I couldn’t resist pulling out my violin.
I thought it worked perfectly with the feel of the song and didn’t know if the guys would have been as receptive. It appeared as if they had been.
“That shit was fire!” Jaxson hooted.
Jaxson, Lincoln, and Troy had decided to accompany me to band practice tonight since the others were busy.
They had mostly remained silent throughout most of our creative brainstorming only reminding me to drink water or sit down occasionally.
It was easy for me to get lost in the music. I was finding solace in it tonight.
It was a welcome break from studying and completing my final paper for English. As well as everything going on with Jemmy. She had been released from the hospital wing yesterday afternoon—two days after the chip was extracted—but other than Drake, she hadn’t wanted to see anyone.
For the most part I was understanding of Drake’s presence by her side, but every now and then I felt a little resentment growing.
I felt as if I barely got to see him and a part of me wondered if Jemmy was intentionally monopolizing his time.
Especially since she still refused to see Dr. Wong so he could give her the tools to process what had happened to her.
Drake said after the first time she woke up from the recovery room she had seemed out of it.
She was barely coherent and asked odd questions.
He had seemed dejected and hopeless the first night.
We had all worried the chip had caused lasting damage to her.
Then the next morning she seemed to have mostly regained her sensibilities.
The only issue with that was she didn’t want to be alone.
The only person she seemed to need was Drake.
I was all for him being there to support her, but at this point she seemed unwilling to “help” herself.
Any suggestions to take steps for her healing was met with resistance.
It may be my hormones, but four days without any quality time with Drake seemed to be too much right now.
“That definitely needs to be something we need to record!” Ben enthusiastically insisted.
Lincoln looked up from his phone. “They have an opening next Saturday. We can get you into the recording studio since you seem to have quite a few songs ready. Should I book it?”
Rick strummed a few chords on his guitar before looking up. “I feel like every time we plan anything; work gets in the way.”
Tyler blew a deep breath out making a loud raspberry sound. “Too true. I knew it was quiet at Knightstown for a little while and I was praying for action, but this is a little too crazy lately.”
“Can you book it and how much would the cancellation fee be if another mission keeps us away?” I asked before taking a drink from my water bottle.
Lincoln raised a single dark brow at me as if it was comical that I was asking about the fee. He said as much. “What makes you think I will make any of you pay for the studio space if I’m booking it? Do you think a few hundred dollars will break me if you have to cancel again?”
“Blah. Blah. Blah.” I mocked before making my way over to him.
He was perched on the arm of the couch, and I took advantage of his position.
I placed my hands on his upper thighs before leaning in and kissing him.
I had to show him my appreciation for him more than verbally.
The simple kiss I had planned to do quickly morphed into more when Lincoln grasped my hips, pulled me in closer, and deepened the kiss.
I was helpless to stop the whimper from escaping my lips. The guys weren’t shy displaying their physical affections toward me, but sometimes it hit me harder than other times. Right now, I craved more and my libido rose by his skillful handling of me.
“Okay, lovebirds!” Rick said with mock disgust. “Can we get to practice?”
“Fine,” I jokingly pouted before going back to the stool the guys had gotten for me. “What song do we want to practice next?”
“I think we need to iron out the kinks in ‘Rearview,’” Tyler stated.
Ben took a drink from his water bottle, then nodded. “Let’s do this. We have about fifteen minutes of practice left then Tori and Micah are coming down here for a lesson.”
“Have you heard back from the Senator? Has Vicky told him about ya’ll?” Rick asked lightly tapping on his drum.
Unlike Mike, Rick and Tyler didn’t judge Ben.
They knew their friend well and knew he would never mess with an underage girl.
They also understood why he was attempting to build a friendship with her.
He was looking at in much like some Asian cultured viewed arranged marriages.
He realized they may never make their connection, but he still wanted to get to know her and vice versa.
I knew we should be practicing our song, but in all honesty, I was nosey enough to want to know myself. Victoria rarely liked to talk about herself, even though I knew she was going through it. The girl needed a break!
In my absence, I discovered that the Senator’s visits had become less frequent and then his phone calls began to taper off.
Vicky had been upset about it and decided to call some of her friends that traveled in their old social circles.
She discovered the good ol’ Senator was dating again.
When she called to confront him about it, he tried to deny it at first. Then when she informed him that her friends had seen him with her, he finally relented.
Vicky had been hurt—rightfully so—especially since it hadn’t been a full year since they had lost her mother.
He claimed that she was selfish for wanting him to remain single.
She argued back that she never said that, but she felt like he was moving on way too fast after becoming a widower.
He tried to say it wasn’t fair to put a time limit on his grief, and he was only casually seeing another woman.
That had turned out to be a lie too, because he showed up in the papers a couple of weeks ago.
He was pictured with his new—quite a bit younger—girlfriend and her two young kids at an outdoor kid-friendly charity benefit.
When he was questioned about Victoria’s whereabouts he had said she was happily attending a boarding school.
Victoria wasn’t so miffed about that lie it was the fact that he lied about the importance of the new woman in his life.
In addition to discovering her and her children were the reasons why he had missed several of their phone calls and his planned visits to see her.
Ben hesitated for a minute. “I don’t know how I feel about talking about her personal stuff. I’ll have to ask her if she minds if I tell you all.”
“You can tell them,” Victoria’s piped up, seconds before her and Micah appeared.
I started. My heart lodged into my throat, and I grasped my heart. “Holy crap you two! Can you stop doing that?”
Since Victoria’s gift had developed she had been pushing herself more and more. Even knowing she could now transfer people while vanishing, I still didn’t expect her to just pop up at any given moment. It didn’t help that Jaxson had been giving her ideas on how to “scare” people.
Almost everyone laughed at my expense, while Troy threw his water bottle at Micah. “Let’s not scare your sister to death! She’s carrying precious cargo, ya know”
Micah attempted to look abashed but failed horribly when Tyler pretended to stumble off his stool. I glared at Tyler when I realized he was imitating my reaction. I honestly wasn’t too miffed that they were laughing at my expense. If the roles were reversed I would have laughed at them.
Rick quelled his laughter and clearly wanted the gossip. “Tell us what’s happening with Daddy Dearest.”
Victoria pretended to act unbothered as she shrugged and walked over to retrieve her guitar.
I didn’t have to reach out with my empath gift to feel her deep sadness and hurt.
She could act as if she was unaffected by her dad’s indifference and neglect but she wasn’t.
No matter how little she saw him before she was placed here, he was still her father.
“Eww, let’s not call him Daddy. And there’s not much to tell.
He’s a douchebag that’s more worried about his redo.
He gets a hot new young girlfriend that’s only twelve years older than me.
And she has two young kids that doesn’t have a father in their lives, so he can raise them as his own.
Bonus! She has no gifted gene, so her kids won’t be freaks like me. ”
“You’re not a freak.” Ben instantly rebutted. “It’s his lost for not realizing that he has an amazing, smart, and talented daughter.”
I saw her soften a little and she gave him a small smile, but I knew that they were just words for her.
She still saw her gift as a curse sometimes.
She may have gained a lot by receiving her gift, but she still went to therapy because she believed her gift had killed her mother.
Now, with her father abandoning her she was chalking it up as another loss brought to her by her gift.