Chapter 10 #2
The three of them talked strategy and ideas for a while until Ray looked over. “Your contract’s different, isn’t it?”
Zavier nodded. “I’m here for the tour, as a session musician. I’m not actually a part of Twisted Wishes.”
“Like hell you aren’t,” Dom muttered.
“Not contractually.” Zavier was improving the drumming, but he hadn’t contributed artistically to the group. But he wasn’t going to argue with Dom.
“You’re part of the band,” Ray said. “End of story.”
Heat and joy danced along Zavier’s nerves. He certainly wasn’t going to argue with Ray, either. “Thank you.”
Ray clapped him on the leg, and that touch was far too enjoyable.
Zavier had been missing that sharp, lovely contact that came with having sex.
He didn’t particularly understand holding hands or staring dreamily into someone’s eyes or whatever people in love were supposed to do.
But he liked touching. Holding another. Being held.
Curling up on a couch. Watching someone sleep.
Living as close as he had with these three for the weeks of practice and now crammed into a bus—it made him itch for those things again. He craved skin-to-skin contact.
In the end, he even got some. After their meeting, Ray put his journal away and pulled an ereader out of his bag.
He shifted again and again on the couch while Zavier had his legs stretched out, his toes occasionally brushing Ray’s thighs.
Eventually, Ray sighed. “Do you mind if I stretch out?” He waved at the section of couch Zavier’s legs occupied.
He shifted his over a bit. “No, of course not.”
When Ray was done maneuvering, their legs were practically entwined on the couch.
Delightful. Perfect. Zavier didn’t stroke his foot along Ray’s calf, though the desire to do so was so very high. He glanced at the ereader. “Anything interesting?”
A little color on Ray’s cheeks. “It’s a biography of John Adams. I’ve been meaning to read it for years and years.”
“You’re into American history?” Not a subject Zavier would have pinned on him.
The color darkened, and Ray tensed. “I do actually have a brain, despite my vapid looks.”
Hardly vapid. Sexy as hell, more like it. But he didn’t comment on Ray’s looks, not with Dom and Mish watching from the other couch. “I’ve never doubted your intelligence. History is so—dry.”
Ray stared at him. “Then you’ve obviously been reading the wrong history books.” A grin there and a shrug, then he focused back on his book.
Zavier grunted and shifted, and maybe his toes did graze Ray’s leg purely by accident, and maybe he did relish in his slight hiss of breath.
Perhaps Ray was right—Zavier had been reading the wrong books. For now, he clicked out of his game, closed his tablet, and enjoyed the tiny bit of contact he had with Ray. Soothing and comforting. He could get used to this.
It wasn’t until the tour bus lurched to a stop that Zavier realized he’d fallen asleep. The change in motion startled and had him blinking against the light streaming through the window. “What the fuck?”
“Easy there.” Ray patted his shin. “We’re just coming into a rest stop. Probably changing drivers. Getting gas. That kind of thing.”
Of course. Zavier blew out a breath and then another as he sought to center himself. Didn’t help that Ray hadn’t moved his hand off his shin. He met Ray’s watchful gaze. “How long was I out?”
“An hour, maybe? Not that long.” Ray gave him another squeeze. “I’d have woken you up sooner or later.”
“Really?”
Dom chuckled. “He knows how awful screwing up your sleep schedule can be on tour.”
That seemed a bit much for a bandleader. On the other hand, it was good to see Ray relaxed. And honestly, he didn’t mind the physical contact at all. “Hard lesson learned?”
A shrug from Ray. “Mish gets it, but Dom used to sleep every time the bus started moving.”
“It’s true.” Dom stretched out his legs into the aisle. “I’d conk out for hours on end, then be so groggy by showtime. I’d hop myself up on caffeine and be so damn wired after the show, I’d drive everyone nuts.” He paused. “Especially Mish.”
“That’s because I can’t nap to save my life,” Mish said. “Not like you gentlemen.” She winked at Zavier, and a strange sense of warmth radiated from where Ray still held his leg.
Gentlemen? Maybe. He wore a tux well enough. The image that flitted through his head was not one he needed: him adjusting his cufflinks while Ray knelt before him, naked, eyes upturned in want.
He shook it off. “I can nap, but I wasn’t intending to.”
The bus pulled into a truck stop. Zavier had no idea where they were. He could check his phone’s GPS, but that meant moving and breaking contact with Ray.
“Kevin was the worst.” Ray’s voice was soft. “He was always sleeping.” He looked out the window. “I guess I should have noticed how hard he was struggling a lot sooner.”
“Sweetheart,” Mish murmured. “You aren’t responsible for his drinking.”
Ray shrugged again, but it belied his pain. “Maybe not. But I could have helped more.”
Zavier was the better drummer. Wasn’t hubris, either, to think it.
Ray knew it, too. It dawned on Zavier that Ray’s remorse had nothing to do with replacing Kevin, but was entirely due to the fact that they had made it to that point.
That he hadn’t fixed Kevin or changed his personality. “Sometimes all you can do is let go.”
Ray swallowed. “I didn’t want to. He was my friend.”
Finally the bus stopped and the engine cut out. They all shifted, and Ray finally let go of Zavier’s leg. He missed the touch almost immediately.
I like this man. He’d known that, of course, but there was something more visceral there, deeper than the surface lust he felt for beautiful Ray. Maybe the start of a good friendship, if Ray ever let him in.
Ray was a mess and pulled so many ways, and so not the type of person Zavier normally took into his life. But then, Ray had been lurking there on the edges since high school, so why not? Other than the pesky part where they worked together.
So no. Zavier rose off the couch and filed out of the bus with the others. Time to go see what the shop attached to the truck stop had in the way of munchies. As he wandered past the walls of coolers, he checked his email and found a note from Nadia. Finally.
He read the message over, then read it again and grunted.
Your rock band manager isn’t entirely uninteresting. He used to be a musician. You know what to do, darling!
She wanted a phone call. There was the pull and the push and the resistance. But the carrot had been dangled, as it always had been before.
That night, years ago, she’d held out a length of rope. “Darling boy, everything comes with a price. I’ll teach you what you want to know, but you have to decide if you’re willing to pay.” After pacing in front of her for a good fifteen minutes, he’d held out his hands.
Same resentment now. Same resigned sigh. He tapped her number and headed out of the store.
After a few rings, she picked up. “You’re never a disappointment, Zavier.”
He fought against both the flare of anger and the one of pride and let both go. “So how is Carl interesting?”
“He was, at one time, the lead singer for a band very much like your own.”
Curious, indeed. Zavier paced the length of the hot truck stop lot. “Twisted Wishes is hardly my band, Nadia.”
“Mmm, but you’re already putting your stamp on it with your bare chest and your leather pants and the way that lovely boy looks at you.”
He didn’t even have to ask which lovely boy, and if that was what Nadia was seeing, then he really did need to start searching for those stories on the internet.
“I didn’t call to hear you sing the praises of my ass.
” He let annoyance seep in, with purpose.
Even if he had worn the pants exactly to get a rise out of Ray.
“Your drumming, then. You should read some of these articles, Zavier. ‘Demos isn’t just another pretty face, though. With his classical training and unlimited energy, his drumming elevates Twisted Wishes to a new level.’”
She was doing this to needle him. “Nadia, I’m standing in the middle of a truck stop somewhere between Chicago and St. Louis.
I’m going to have to climb back onto the bus soon.
You can email me all the articles you want and I promise to read them and be embarrassed and grumpy. Please tell me about Carl Roberts.”
Silence on the other end. “Ah, so this is serious.” A change in her voice from the teasing drawl to the other tone he remembered so well: Nadia the instructor.
Thank god.
“Your manager is the failed lead singer of a group called Tenacious Dreams. They had one single that did moderately well, pushing into the Top 100, but after that, they vanished into obscurity. Unlike your Ray, Carl was not a singer/songwriter. Their guitarist wrote most of their material, though the song that went somewhere was penned by Cynthia and Douglas Harndt.”
Zavier’s fingertips tingled. “They compose blockbuster movie soundtracks now.”
“Indeed. Their skill is tremendous. Carl’s voice, however, left something to be desired.
Even with voice lessons, it never improved enough for the big time.
Nor did the lyrical skills of their guitarist. The band dissolved and the members went on to other things.
Carl ended up working for the various record labels until he landed where he is now. ”
Jealousy? But that was such a petty motivation. He glanced back at the bus and saw Ray waving at him. Likely it was time to go. “Did Carl manage any bands before Twisted Wishes?”