2. Ky
Chapter Two
Ky
Setting my guitar on its stand, I took my time walking off the stage to where Harris Cutter stood. Hands thrust deep in his pockets, dark hair sprinkled slightly with gray, a muscle ticking in his jaw, he considered my bandmates and me.
Getting this audition had taken a miracle. Somehow, the recording I’d slapped together in my makeshift studio had gotten the club owner’s attention enough to offer us a live audition. Sparks, Jamie, and Hamel had been just as nervous as I was when we got there, but once we started playing, nothing else had mattered.
But even as lost in the music as I’d been, I didn’t miss the way Hamel kept fucking up. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was his nerves because this was a huge opportunity for Autumn’s Slumber, but I couldn’t fully convince myself of that.
Harris pointed at Sparks, then Jamie, and finally me. “You three have talent. You don’t just make music up there—you create magic. I want to offer you the contract.”
My heart started pounding against my ribs, excitement zinging through my blood. But Harris’s lips twisted in a half snarl when he looked at Hamel, who crossed his arms over his chest defensively, causing my heart to drop into my stomach. Along with a ball of white-hot rage that I needed to tamp down before I ripped the little fucker apart. Hamel was seconds away from meeting my dark side, and he didn’t have a clue. “But you are a deal-breaker for me. If Hayat hadn’t saved that last song, I would have already been showing you all to the door.”
Sparks and Jamie glanced at me, both of them mouthing, “Hayat?” I shrugged.
“I was doing fine until that crazy bitch shoved me to the floor and took over,” Hamel sneered toward the bar area, but my focus was solely on the six-and-a-half-foot man in front of us.
I didn’t miss the threat of pain that crossed Harris’s face when my drummer called Hayat a crazy bitch. If we lost this contract because of him, I was going to kill Hamel with my bare hands. That was going to be a mess I wasn’t looking forward to cleaning up, but if he didn’t shut his idiotic mouth, I’d make a call and have every last drop of DNA wiped away after I drained him in the spa tub back in my private bathroom.
“Fucking chick thinking she can pound a pair of sticks on a drum set and pretend to be a star for two minutes. Pathetic.”
I heard a growl behind Harris, but what caught my attention was the sweet sound of a giggle. I almost looked around the huge man in front of me to get a glimpse of the source of that melodic sound. Jesus fuck, I’d never gotten hard over a giggle before. But there I stood, my cock like a steel beam in my pants.
Harris turned slightly, just enough to let us know he was no longer including Hamel in the conversation. “Find yourself a new drummer, and the year-long contract is yours. Every band who has ever been given this contract has ended up with a record deal, almost every single one of them managed by Emmie Armstrong’s team.”
“They won’t replace me,” Hamel said confidently, a cocky smirk on his face. “We come as a package deal or not at all.”
“He doesn’t speak for us,” my guitarist assured Harris. Sparks’s jaw was clenched in a way that told me he was considering ending Hamel’s pathetic life in more imaginative ways than I was. “We’ve been considering replacing him for a while now.”
“Yeah.” Jamie nodded in agreement. “We’ve lost out on a few gigs because of him. But we haven’t had a chance to find a replacement.”
“Fuck you guys! You need me,” Hamel snarled. “You’re not shit without me.”
Jamie and Sparks both huffed out a laugh, rolling their eyes at me. I grimaced in an attempt to fight my own amusement. This was an important meeting. Laughter was appropriate at certain times and places, and this wasn’t one of them.
Harris shifted his gaze to me, one brow raised. “Your choice, boys. The contract is on the table for Autumn’s Slumber to snatch up. But with the stipulation of finding a decent drummer. I will even go one step further and offer to host auditions here next week.”
Every muscle in my body tensed. This was what I’d been hoping for. And Sparks and Jamie weren’t wrong. We’d been discussing replacing Hamel for a while now, especially after he lost us a gig opening for an up-and-coming band three weeks ago.
Finding another drummer, one who meshed with the rest of us, who wasn’t put off by our obsessive need for anonymity—hence our masks and body paint—would be difficult. But it wasn’t a challenge I was going to turn down if it meant playing weekly at First Bass. Exclusive gigs like that were rare, but the real prize was what came with it.
Potentially getting signed with Emmie Armstrong, not just to have her as our manager, but to get a record deal with her and Shane Stevenson at ASM—Armstrong Stevenson Music. Their record label had the top musical talent in the world. Getting a deal with them was like winning the golden ticket into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Minus the sinister plot of potentially never leaving the factory again.
But I’d risk being sucked into the chocolate milk pipe or dropped into the garbage chute and burned alive. Fuck it, I’d even risk being turned into a blueberry if it meant a single chance of working with the powerhouse who ruled the music world, Emmie Armstrong.
My mom, Autumn, had loved the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie. When she was bedridden with the cancer that had stolen her from me at the age of ten, we would curl up in her bed together and watch the movie on repeat until she finally fell asleep. It was because of her that I’d fallen in love with music. Naming my band in honor of her was all I had left to pay tribute to the love and sacrifices she’d made for me.
Nothing was going to make me let her down. Not my prick of a father and his vapid bitch wife, Hadley. And sure as fuck not Hamel.
I offered Harris my hand, while Sparks and Jamie slapped me on the back. “You have a deal.”
At my response, Hamel went ballistic. “Stupid bitch ruined—”
That was as far as his snarling got before Harris Cutter drove his fist into my ex-drummer’s gut. I could picture Hulk destroying Loki with the noise that Hamel made. It was a sickening, gasping sound that would have been a perfect effect for some supernatural slasher-horror flick. But it only lasted a few seconds before he caught his breath.
Staggering forward a step, malice flashing over his face, he went to push past Harris again, but someone else stepped up beside the club owner. A sharp uppercut had Hamel going limp. He fell flat on his face, the thud of his body causing the bartender, who was setting up for the opening in a few hours, to groan sympathetically.
Sparks, Jamie, and I stood there blinking at the newcomer. Jace St. Charles, lead singer of Tainted Knights, the very first band to be given the year-long weekly gig at First Bass. A man whose career I’d followed most of my life.
Shaking out his hand, Jace turned so his back was to the knocked-out man on the floor. “Great show you three put on. Glad Hayat was around to save you on the drums. Damn, if I were any good at the instrument, I would have jumped up there and helped too. Would have hated it if Harris had to tell you no because of this piece of shit.”
“What’s all the groaning about out here?” a man in a First Bass T-shirt and faded jeans asked as he came out from a door behind the bar.
He stopped when he saw Hamel on the floor, Jace still shaking out his hand, the knuckles busted open. “Well, fuck. We haven’t had this kind of fun since the Blondes beat the hell out of whatever his name was twenty years ago.” He snickered when he saw Hamel slowly coming around, looking around in a daze. “I sure miss the chaos those girls caused every other day. Not so much when they take Riley out partying, though. Sin, Cash, Derrick, and I had to bail them all out of jail two weeks ago.”
“I don’t miss it at all,” Harris grumbled. “Those four still give me a headache, and they don’t even work here.”
“Ah, come on, Nate. You know you love Ro.” Jace snapped the fingers of his uninjured hand. “Hey, Aubree isn’t doing anything right now. Maybe she can fill in for these guys if they don’t find a drummer right away.”
Sparks and Jamie kept looking at me like they were struggling not to froth at the mouth. Aubree? Blondes? It didn’t take a genius to put together that they were talking about the Blonde Bombshells’ drummer. From every piece of tabloid news I’d ever read, she was a hell-raiser. Whichever way the dice rolled determined whether that was the fun kind of hell or the spicy.
Some would consider the spicy fun.
“Aubree is going to Australia with you in a few weeks,” Harris reminded him, glancing over his shoulder. “Hayat, do you want to help these guys out?”
With Jace and now Nate crowding around us, I couldn’t see who he was talking to, but everyone who knew anything about Harris knew he had a daughter named Hayat. She was in the public eye enough for me to picture her without having to see her standing closer to the bar.
She would be wearing some kind of sweats outfit she’d taken a pair of scissors to, athletic shoes, a sexy-as-fuck sports bra or bralette beneath a hoodie, and hair that even in photos appeared to have a life of its own with all those curls that fell past her hips. When she smiled for the camera, it looked like her dimples were endlessly deep, her eyes glittering with some secret mischief that only she knew.
Where she went, drama followed, and that wasn’t something I needed at the moment.
Or ever.
I had my goals—take Autumn’s Slumber to the top—and if I got to rub that success in my deadbeat father’s face along the way, all the better.
But there was no denying how beautiful Hayat Cutter was. What a goddess she was without even trying to attract attention. I’d be lying if I denied I wanted a taste of her. Jamie and Sparks got a hard-on for the occasional tabloid picture of her too, so I knew they were just as affected as I was.
“Dude,” Jamie hissed, pulling Sparks and me away from the others so they couldn’t hear us. “She has sick talent. We should grab her now.”
Sparks glared at the bassist. “Are you crazy? Yeah, sure, having Hayat Cutter’s name associated with the band would get us out there, but we don’t want success that way. Ky has always been adamant about doing this without any outside help. That’s why none of us have revealed who we really are. If we can’t make it on our talents alone, then fuck it. Right, Ky?”
“Maybe she’d be okay with keeping her identity low-key, like the rest of us,” Jamie argued, unable to hide his pout.
“Yeah, right,” Sparks snorted. “Pick up any tabloid with her name in it, and you’ll see she feeds off the drama that comes with being a celebrity princess. Skills or not, she isn’t what we want.”
I could hear the lie in his voice just as easily as Jamie could. But it wasn’t her skills as a drummer he was pretending not to be interested in. It was her, the full package. What I wouldn’t give to have a night of getting lost in her tight body. With or without my two best friends.
“You’re brain dead, you know that?” Jamie grumbled. “Skills are the only thing we are looking for. And she has them. How could she not, with who her grandfathers are?”
“Her dad has never shown any talent for the drums. Just because she has the last name Cutter does not make her the badass Devlin Cutter is.” Sparks crossed his arms over his chest, his signal that he was done arguing the point and was leaving the rest up to me.
Frustrating asshole.
“Ky, come on.” Jamie’s eyes pleaded with me. “Just give it a chance.”
Squeezing the bridge of my nose, I stepped away from my two bandmates, pulling Harris’s attention back to me. “We don’t want to put anyone out. But we will accept the chance to hold open auditions here.”
“Fair,” Harris agreed with a wicked grin. “Besides, I think you pissed Hayat off with your little whispering battle over there. Today must be your lucky day. Or maybe it’s mine. My kid leaving rather than choosing violence makes my life a little bit easier for a few more hours.”
He lowered his head slightly. I was six foot three, and while the man was only three inches taller than me, I suddenly felt much shorter standing in front of him. “You three have a talent I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s fresh, and I think we’re going to be able to get you the deals you deserve with this contract. But only if you find a drummer with skills equal to the three of you. Hayat would have been the perfect fit. Too bad for you that you didn’t grab the chance while it was right in front of you.”