13. Ezra
Ezra
13
My hands drag down my face as I pace through my home studio. I expected a lot of things to come from today, but having Raleigh Stone walk through the door right as I snorted a line of coke sure as fuck wasn’t one of them. When I bought this house, I always dreamed she’d share it with me one day, but this wasn’t the homecoming I imagined.
“WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING brINGING HER HERE?” I demand as Dylan and Lenny stride back into the studio.
“You need her,” Dylan says. “Deny it all you fucking want, but you need her.”
“He’s right,” Lenny says. “It’s already been two months of rehearsals, and you’re not even close to pulling your shit together. She’s your fucking ace, Ezra, and you’d be a fool to send her packing.”
I shake my head, the anger welling up in me like a fucking tornado. “She shouldn’t be here. I never wanted her to see me like this.”
“Well, now she has, and it’s too fucking late to do anything about it,” Lenny says. “The ball’s in your court, Ezra, and your back is against the wall. From where I’m sitting, you have two options.”
“Oh please,” I scoff. “Share with the fucking class.”
“You can either continue going the way you’re going and pre-purchase the gravesite beside Axel’s, or you can step the fuck up, admit that you need her, and hope like hell that she’s willing to come on this tour with you. If she’s capable of settling at least one of those demons inside your head, then she might just be the reason you live through this tour.”
His words are like a shot straight through the chest, and as I glance across the studio to Rock, all he can do is nod in agreement. “You two really think this is a good idea?”
“We know it is,” Dylan says. “Remember back in the day when we were doing bullshit gigs in bars and clubs? Rae was always right there, and when you sang to her, the whole fucking room could feel the chemistry. You’re killing yourself by forcing this distance between the two of you. You need her to breathe, man, and it seems everyone but you can see it.”
I clench my jaw, my control quickly slipping. “She didn’t sign up for this.”
“But she did,” Rock says. “She always wanted this. She begged us to take her with us, and you said she needed to finish school first. She did it, Ezra. She went to college and did the work, and every step of it led her right back here. Making it in Demon’s Curse was always our dream, but it was hers too, and now we have this shot to bring her home. Besides, you know how good she is. We’ve worked with the very best this industry has to offer, and they’ve never compared to how it was with Rae. She’s our family, Ezra. No matter how hard that is for you, she belongs with us, just as Axel always wanted.”
I crash down against the stage, bracing my elbows on my knees as my face falls into my hands. “I don’t know how to be around her,” I admit. “She blames me for Axel’s death, and she’s fucking right. How the hell am I supposed to face her every day?”
“Axel’s death is not on you.”
“Isn’t it?” I challenge. “No matter how you look at it, it always comes back to the fact that she asked me to look out for him and I failed.”
“If that’s the case, then we all fucking failed,” Dylan throws back at me. “Have you even talked to her about it? Does she even know how it happened?”
I shake my head. “She doesn’t need to know,” I tell them. “It’ll only eat her up inside. She’s better off believing the media about a drug overdose. Knowing the truth . . . It’ll fucking kill her.”
The boys nod, and without needing to press them on it, I know they’ll keep their mouths shut. They might be assholes who constantly overstep my boundaries, but when it comes to Rae, they’ve always had her best interests at heart.
“What’s it going to be?” Lenny asks a moment later, reminding me he’s still here.
“What does she want?”
“She doesn’t know,” Dylan says. “We gave her the night to think about it. She thought she was coming here to meet a new band and to work on their tour marketing, so she’s a little . . . thrown. Plus, I can’t imagine walking in to see you snorting a line with Jessica and Stacey was really on her bingo card for the day.”
The day.
Fuck.
I let out a breath and bury my face in my hands again. “It’s her birthday.”
“Shit,” Rock says as both he and Dylan automatically reach for their things, more than ready to go after her and somehow turn her day around. Though after seeing me in that room with the dancers, I’m not sure anything could fix that. But neither Rock nor Dylan has ever shied away from a challenge, and if anyone could put a smile on her face, it’s them.
The boys walk out of the studio, and a piece of my soul goes with them. I’d give anything to spend the night celebrating her twenty-fourth birthday. Fuck, I’d spend the rest of my life celebrating her if I could, every fucking night, over and over again, but that’s a warped reality that’s never going to happen. It’s something that used to be in reach, something we could have held onto and created a life together with, but I let go, and the reality of that dream slowly drowned until there was nothing left to grab hold of.
Cutting across the studio, I grab a Demon’s Curse muscle tee and pull it over my head before clutching the three pendants hanging around my neck—the guitar chain my mother gave to me as a kid, Axel’s ring, and a simple R that’s been with me since the day I left. They’re my lifelines, a reminder of where I came from and the things I’ve had to leave behind.
Jett, the newest member of Demon’s Curse, walks out of the bathroom after missing the whole fucking showdown since he took his damn time backing one out. He stares after Dylan and Rock as they disappear around the corner. “Yo, where the fuck are they going?” he questions, oblivious to the tension in the room.
All I can do is stare at him.
I can’t stand the fucker, and every time he steps up onto my studio stage and stands in the same place Axel used to stand, I want to rip his teeth out with my bare hands. I know I’m not being fair to him. He’s an alright guy and an incredible musician, and if I’d met him under different circumstances, we might have even been friends, and yet I can’t help but hate him. Dylan and Rock think he’s our best option, and while he vibes well with all of us on the stage, I can’t seem to allow him in.
No one answers him, but it doesn’t faze him as he wanders back across the studio and picks up his guitar. Jett is a whiz on that guitar and has easily picked up all of our music. In fact, he plays it flawlessly, but we’ve been playing these songs for years. I could play them in my sleep, and until Jett is as natural as we are, he’ll be spending every waking hour perfecting the sets.
“So,” Jett says as he strums his fingers across the strings for the opening chords of “Hypothetically Yours.” “Has that new marketing chick been by yet? I wanted to see if she’d be an easy screw since the dancers have been all over you.”
Irritation burns through me, but I manage to keep a lid on it. It’s not the first time I’ve had to deal with people talking about Raleigh. She’s fucking gorgeous, and given I was only a teenager then, I had to learn quickly that not only could she handle herself, but I couldn’t go around beating the shit out of every guy who appreciated her beauty. Though, there were a handful of those who all but begged me to, and I was more than happy to rise to the occasion.
Jett has no clue the depth of what he just said, but assuming Rae is coming on tour with us, I’ll let her teach him that lesson the hard way.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you haven’t given me a firm answer yet,” Lenny goes on as though Jett isn’t busily practicing behind me. “What’s it going to be? Are you continuing down this destructive path, or are you going to give this a real shot and hope like fuck that Rae is able to spark some kind of fire under your ass and bring you back?”
The question isn’t if she’s capable of bringing me back, I know she can. The question is if I deserve it or not.
“Yeah, all right. I’m on board,” I finally tell him. “But at the end of the day, the call is hers. If she’s willing to head on tour with us, then so be it. But if she’s not . . . I’m not going to beg for her to change her mind.”
“Okay, then we’ll wait for her answer,” he tells me with a curt nod.
He turns on his heel to stalk out of the studio when I call after him. “Lenny?” He turns back, his brow arched in question. “If you ever go behind my back again, lie to my fucking girl, or use Axel’s name as a bargaining chip, I’ll gut you where you stand. Do you understand me?”
Lenny holds my stare, and I know he’s seeing the conviction in my eyes. I mean every fucking word, and he knows it.
“Okay, Ezra. I hear you,” he finally says. “It won’t happen again.” And with that, he walks out of the studio, and for the first time in over two long years, I pick up my notepad and start scrawling the words that have haunted me for far too long.