Chapter Five
Max
Iloved being home. That was kind of a mind blowing thought to have, still. Not only that home was a place, but that it was this house. It got to me sometimes, and Ben sensed it, moving his foot where he sat on the couch to push his toes under my thigh.
Luca lifted his head from his book. “You okay?”
I nodded and smiled, then went back to petting Holden’s cat, Cindy. She liked to be petted but only when she wanted it.
The house was quiet. Brodie and Kye had taken Carys and Lina to Erie for the day, and Rian and Holden had gone to his house for some private time. We all knew what that was code for. I felt myself blushing a little at the thought.
There was a cult documentary Ben was watching on the TV, and I’d been kind of following along. Mostly I just enjoyed having him and Luca with me on the same side of the U-shaped sectional.
Suddenly Ben twitched his toes in a purposeful way that made me glance at him. He flicked his gaze to Luca and back to me. I frowned, then realized that Luca was humming.
My eyes widened, and the corner of Ben’s mouth lifted minutely.
We went back to cat-petting and documentary-watching and said nothing.
It was the first time we’d heard Luca hum anything since he’d arrived months ago.
In the next week or so, one by one, everyone heard the humming.
We just made eye contact with each other and stayed quiet.
The one thing that had worried us all was the fact that ever since he came to stay with us, Luca hadn’t shown any interest in music.
Whenever Carys burst into song to sing along to something that was playing on the playlist, Luca smiled slightly but didn’t comment.
I’d scrubbed the few playlists we had regularly on in the house to make sure none of Luca’s music was on them. The last thing we needed was for him to have to hear himself during his better days when he’d had everything.
“Marissa wants you to call her,” Rian told Luca one morning while the vampires hung out in the kitchen with the rest of us while we had breakfast.
Luca groaned but went upstairs to his room where he’d left his phone. Battling the avoidance, much?
I finished my bacon and scrambled eggs, grabbed my two slices of toast, and gulped down my coffee. Then I got out of my chair and squeezed Ben’s shoulder.
I followed Luca just in case he needed support.
As I jogged up the stairs, I could hear him moving at the end of the hall. As I got there, he was coming out of his room and looked surprised, then relieved, to see me there.
“I was going to go to your room,” he said, surprisingly sheepishly.
“I came to see if you needed company.” I bit into a piece of toast and shrugged.
“Please,” he breathed out the word, then led the way to the room where he’d been sleeping with Ben and me every night ever since he was turned.
He went to sit on the armchair by the window, and I shrugged again, then sat by his feet.
His breathing hitched, then he said, “Actually, can we… can we do this the other way around?”
Sensing that something about the request was making him feel vulnerable, I rolled back to my feet and stepped aside so he could slide to the floor. I didn’t make eye contact with him, giving him the emotional space in case he needed it.
I carefully sat in the chair and continued to slowly munch on my toast while he scooted back to lean on my legs.
He was staring at his phone, not doing anything with it.
By the time I’d finished my breakfast and wiped my hands on my jeans, he hadn’t moved an inch. His breathing was even, but I could sense the tension in him through every point of contact between us.
The front door opened and closed, and we could hear Ben and Holden talking in the front yard. Then the familiar sound of two engines, the truck and the cruiser, that started and then slowly, one by one, moved down the driveway as they headed to work.
I leaned forward and pressed my lips on top of Luca’s head, the shorn hair prickly against my skin. He took a shuddering breath and released it slowly.
“Okay, okay,” he mumbled and found Marissa’s number on his phone.
“You can do this.” I squeezed him with my legs.
As soon as he hit call, he reached up and when I gave him my hand, he brought it down to his chest.
“Luca, hey. Good morning,” a voice I hadn’t heard before answered the call.
“Mari.” That one word was so filled with pain that it made my heart constrict.
I turned my head so that my cheek rested on top of his hair and just breathed evenly for him.
She let out a choked little chuckle, and for a moment, they cried together. It made sense. They’d been close and now everything was different. There’d been no contact between them for months.
I grabbed a box of tissues off the windowsill and handed it to Luca.
“Thanks,” he whispered.
“You have company? Is Rian there?” Marissa asked, and then the sound of her blowing her nose carried through.
Luca did the same and we all chuckled.
“No, it’s my…. It’s Max.”
“Oh, one of the wolf brothers. Hi Max!” Marissa called out brightly through the call. She knew I could hear her perfectly fine and it was clear Rian had talked to her about the pack.
“Hi, Marissa.”
“So, how’s Mila? And Q?” Luca asked very quietly.
Marissa sighed. “Mila’s been out of rehab for a month. She’s at—she calls it ‘rich people halfway house.’”
Luca snorted. “Sounds like her.” But he didn’t ask where the place was, and that, to me, was telling.
“Q went to stay with his sister in Wyoming for the time being.”
Luca nodded, as if that made perfect sense, and I guess he didn’t need to say it out loud for her to hear. Then he sighed. “How much has Rian told you?”
This time, when she replied, her tone held some bitterness. “Well I know you were having symptoms that you first ignored, then were misdiagnosed, then found out you had terminal cancer and yet, I only heard about it after you were turned, somehow.”
Luca curled up, his shoulders rolling inwards as his lanky body shrank into itself. “I’m sorry,” he breathed out.
She sighed.
I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed. My face was buried in his neck, and I felt his pulse beat a normal human rate, which, for a vampire, was very fast.
“I know,” Marissa finally whispered. “I’m sorry I got so wrapped up with Mila’s situation that I believed you when you said you were fine.”
Luca snorted without humor. “Yeah.”
“Are you doing okay?” she asked quietly.
It was clear in her tone that she was genuinely worried and loved Luca, even if it had once been a purely working relationship.
“I’m… I’m okay. I feel healthy. Different. But at the same time I’m… I don’t know. It’s like I’m where I’m supposed to be, you know?” He scratched my arm gently while cradling the phone between his shoulder and cheek.
I still hadn’t let go of him, and at that moment I knew that if I ever had to, it would devastate me.
“Okay, real talk. There’s something you need to consider whenever you’re ready. There’s no rush.” Then she grumbled, “Whatever the label might say, there’s no rush.”
Luca snorted again. “Yeah.”
“You need to decide what to do about your music career. Q is going to take a hiatus and figure out what his life is going to be from now on. He says he doesn’t want to be in Kaiju anymore.”
His shoulders slumped again. “Okay. That’s fair.”
“Mila… well, she says she wants to get back on her feet and maybe be a studio musician at best. She… she got really scared, Luca. The OD… it changed her.”
Luca inhaled slowly, then let the breath go. “Everything that’s happened….”
“Will’s parents… they wanted me to tell you they don’t blame you. That they knew what your stance on drugs was from the start.”
That made Luca cry in earnest. His shoulders shook as he wept.
I gently pried the phone from his hand. “Marissa? We’ll call you back in a bit.”
“Okay,” she said a bit wetly.
I ended the call, put the phone on the windowsill, and then scooped Luca up into my arms.
He curled into a ball and bawled as I held him tightly.
I didn’t try for calming words, because I didn’t have any.
So, I held him and hoped that I was helping just by being there for him.
I listened to the house as I waited him out.
Brodie and Kye went for a walk to do a perimeter check.
Lina had spent the night at her house, since she didn’t live here officially—at least yet—and I knew she’d be arriving soon.
Maybe fifteen minutes later, Rian peered into the room and raised a brow at me. I wrinkled my nose a little, hoping to convey that I didn’t know what to do other than be exactly where I was.
“Luca, honey? Do you need me?” he asked gently but didn’t approach.
Luca shook his head and burrowed even closer to me.
“Okay. If that changes, just call out, I’ll be in my room with Cindy.” He closed the door, and we heard him talking to the cat.
A few more minutes passed and Luca started to finally relax again.
“Do you think…,” I started, then thought for a second before deciding to be brave and continued, “that maybe you should consider therapy?”
He chuckled and lifted his head to press a kiss to my jaw. “Yes. I bet Rian already has a therapist he’s vetted on hold just waiting for my call or something.”
I smiled and squeezed him tighter. “Well let’s get through this call with Marissa and then ask Rian, okay?”
“Okay.” He blew his nose and dried his face on another tissue, then took a deep breath and called her again.
They chatted about Luca’s new life and how he was feeling, but nothing about music was discussed. I felt like ever since he arrived, music hadn’t been on his radar at all.
“So, the label. They want some sort of a press thing to announce that the band is officially done. If that’s what you decide.”
Luca sighed. “Okay. Well I can firmly say that the band is done. We wouldn’t be the same without Will and… yeah. I don’t want Kaiju anymore.” He pondered for a second, then said, “I want something small. Like….”
We waited him out; this was clearly something he wanted to get right.
“Can you tell them I’ll do a small press conference? They can have some photos, but I’ll get the final say on them.” The way his voice filled with steel at the end gave me a glimpse of the rock star he’d been just months ago.
“You know you could skip the conference and do an interview with—”
“I know. I just don’t want to.”
“Okay! I’ll take this to the label and see what they say.” Marissa sighed. “There’s also the tiny problem with the rest of your contract.”
Luca frowned. “Get me into that boardroom. I’ll handle it.” There was a certain tone in his voice I hadn’t expected. “And tell our so-called manager that he’s fired.”
Marissa gasped. “W-What?”
“Who do you think told me that going to a doctor would be a waste of time while on tour? Who tried to talk me out of it every time? Who wasn’t even there?”
Ouch. I hadn’t known that.
“Jesus Christ,” Marissa breathed. “I knew he was a hands-off kind of manager but—”
“There’s a reason I don’t ever talk about him or communicate with him if I don’t have to. He started to lose interest in Kaiju when he found those girls to form Sakura Spirit with.”
Ah. Sakura Spirit was this weird kind of American music industry goes KPop with Japanese American singers. So American JPop? Either way, it wasn’t my genre. Kaiju’s oftentimes gritty rock had been it for me since I first heard them more than five years ago.
“Okay. I’ll… I’ll do that. But you might want to, I don’t know, change your number or something.”
Luca was still vibrating with anger on my lap, so I cleared my throat. “We can handle that, easy.”
“Good. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have something.”
“If I don’t answer, I don’t have my phone, so email me or if it’s urgent, call Rian. He’ll send you my new number too,” Luca said tiredly.
“Can you try to contact Q and Mila at some point?” she asked gently. “Just try. I know they’re both waiting for you on this.”
“Yeah. I’ll… I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask, Luca.” She sighed, then sounded a bit choked up again when she added, “I’m just so fucking glad you’re alive.”
Luca let out an equally emotional sounding chuckle. “Me, too.”
I piped up with, “Me three.”
After more chuckles, Marissa sighed again. “Talk to you later.”
“Bye.” Luca ended the call and put the phone on the windowsill. Then he snuggled closer to me again and let go of all the tension.
“Is it difficult being the front man of a band like Kaiju? In general and in this situation?” I asked quietly, gently massaging his scalp with my fingertips because there was no hair to run my fingers through.
He tipped his head back and closed his eyes, almost like a cat pushing its head into being scratched.
“It wasn’t hard really… just…. It bothered me when journalists and some fans saw Kaiju and Luca as one and the same, you know?
I was nothing without the others. We were friends who had a band and then hit it big.
” He sighed, and I watched as his insanely long lashes fanned on his pale skin.
“But right now? I don’t even want to think about it all.
I’m not ready. I’ll fuck those label assholes up if they try to give us trouble, though. ”
I chuckled, and he finally opened his eyes to look at me. “What?” I smiled.
“This caretaking mode looks good on you, Max,” he whispered, eyes filling with something new. Something… more.
My heart began to gallop, and then the moment was broken by Cindy who scratched the door to be let in.
Luca chuckled and smoothly got off my lap, leaving me conflicted and… and looking at his body as he practically floated to the door to open it for Her Highness.
I was in trouble. But I wasn’t sure where we stood and what… what could be.
I really needed to talk to my brother about this and hopefully soon.