Chapter 4
brODIE
“Iwant to record this song.”
My demand was met with total silence.
“Van, are you listening to me?” I grumbled and glanced over at him.
He was ignoring me again. On his phone, typing away.
Story of my fucking life.
The bus was dark, save for the glow of Van’s phone. My fellow band members were asleep in their bunks at the back of the bus.
Not me. I could never get to sleep until at least two or three a.m.
That’s music life; you get used to late nights and later mornings. And tour schedules that drained your soul if you weren’t careful.
I thrived on the chaos of the road. New cities, new people. Not to mention, those people were all vying for my attention, my body, my time. It was a rush.
Or at least, it used to be.
The one person I wanted, well, he was always looking elsewhere.
Or rather, he was always focused on business. The next tour, new songs that needed recording, press junkets, photo shoots… Blah, blah, blah.
Not that those things weren’t important, but my dick should be somewhere at the top of that list, right?
Yeah, I was a needy SOB, and I made no apologies for it.
And for a long time now, there was only one dick that my dick was interested in.
Van.
Our intense chemistry was a real thing. To me, at least.
We bickered over a lot of things. And it was never just a one-off. Our arguments were well-known in the band and with our record label. I was confrontational by nature, and I just loved riling Van up.
Most of all, I wanted his attention. And for him to recognize the fire that he’d lit within me.
I didn’t know exactly when it happened or why, but over the past twelve months, Van was the only man I wanted.
I know, I know, mixing business with pleasure would be stupid.
I knew it, and Van sure as hell knew it. He probably had something in his contract to that effect—you know, thou shalt not fuck band members.
Having sex with my manager would be like handing me a match and a full gallon of gasoline. I’d enjoy the heat, but there would be hell to pay when the smoke cleared.
Still, the dick wants what the dick wants.
“Van,” I repeated again.
Finally, reluctantly, he looked up at me.
Deep-set denim blues stared back at me, and I forced myself not to react. Not to say something hot and flirty or downright filthy. It wasn’t easy.
Those were the eyes I dreamt about.
The ones I used as inspiration when I was on stage, fucking the mic.
The ones that haunted my every waking hour.
He’d come into my life, the band’s life, and I had never been the same.
He was a great manager, a good friend, and a decent guitar player in his own right. But his real talent came in the form of songwriting. He wrote under the pen name Corley Hewitt.
I was the only one in the band who knew about his secret side gig. But I never said anything to Van, though. I pretended not to know. Some people preferred to work in the background, not on center stage, and I could respect that.
Van understood the music business, including temperamental musicians like me and our insane life. He was the kind of guy who took charge of a chaotic situation and turned it into a beautiful symphony.
I’d had a hard-on for him for what felt like forever, and things were only getting worse.
This past year, he’d taken to ignoring me more and more. Barely looked at me when he had to. And always with that professional distance in place.
It made my temper run as hot as my desire.
And can you blame me? Van was not only smart and talented but gorgeous, with a sleek undercut, a sexy dimple in his left cheek, and a chiseled jawline covered in the perfect amount of dark scruff.
I loved a natural man.
Too many times, I imagined how his beard would feel against my thighs, my taint, my hole.
Fuck, that line of thinking was getting me hard again.
He was always the man in charge, and I wanted him to fucking own me.
Van was taller than my five eleven and bigger, broader. I liked that a whole lot too. I had many fantasies about him manhandling me, ordering me around in that gravelly voice of his.
Fuck, I wanted to submit to him, and I didn’t submit to anyone.
And Christ, now my dick was painfully hard. But then my brain remembered the problem.
Our work relationship was the first roadblock. I didn’t see a way around that one.
I’m pretty sure our age gap—fifteen years—was the next one.
I didn’t give a crap about him being older. So I was twenty-nine and he was forty-four. Who the fuck gave a shit? What drew me to someone was their energy, their aura, and his was hot as fuck, forty-four or not.
The third one, the one I didn’t like to consider, was that I wasn’t sure if he was into men.
Okay, maybe that was the first roadblock—a permanent one.
Or maybe he wasn’t out? I didn’t know. His personal life was the one topic he never discussed.
At one point, he had a girlfriend. I think. Or was it a boyfriend? Shit, I don’t remember. All I knew was it ticked me off that someone was taking his time away from me.
Surprise, I’m an attention whore and a possessive motherfucker.
Could it be that Van wasn’t gay, and all the heated looks that passed between us were all in my imagination?
Never, in the four years I’d known him, had he talked about anyone special in his life. And I never witnessed him hooking up on the road either.
Maybe he was he was bi? Pan? Demi?
I hope to fuck this wasn’t all me. Falling for a straight guy was goddamn torture. Or so I’ve heard.
My one-time hookups with strangers were now a thing of the past. And with good reason. Most guys wanted to get fucked by “Brodie James” the musician, not Brodie, me, the person. And I got tired of pumping and dumping. Finding a quick fuck to take the edge off but always leaving dissatisfied.
No tangible connection.
With men I didn’t know, I topped. No deviation.
But with Van? Mmm. I wanted to offer up my ass and let him rail me until we were too fucked out to move.
Between my sexual frustration and his ignoring me, I was ready to throw a massive temper tantrum. I had the urge to tell our driver, Sam, to stop the fucking bus right now so me and Van could have it out.
In the middle of the bayou.
Wait, there were alligators and big-ass snakes in this region. Okay, so maybe stopping wasn’t a good idea.
But something had to give. And after reading Van’s latest song, I was ready to make my filthy intentions very clear.
“Sideline” wasn’t like his others. We were hard-edge rock, loud, and brash. And Van (Corley) could write a solid piece for that genre. We’d recorded several of them.
But his latest song was far from that. Rock n’ roll angst meets country heartache.
And I swear to whatever deity you wanted to believe in that the song Van had written was about me and him.
I felt it in every lyric.
“Sideline”
I watch you from the sideline
Playing out your heart time
Sideline
Sliding on stage
shameless adulation
Turning my page
Still, I keep on waitin’
Why you, why me?
Not like it was before
And then there are the fans
Reminders of the score
I watch you from the sideline
Playing out your heart time
Sideline
Is your heart for them?
Do you hear mine racing?
Can’t go on this way
I got no business chasin’
Every day gets longer
I tell myself more lies
Holding on to what I was
The want I still deny
I’m standing on the sideline
Playing out my heart time
Sideline
I wandered forever
And never felt this way
Until the day you sang to me
Washed my tears away
I’m waiting on the sideline
Wanting you to be mine
Sideline
I swear, I read it two weeks ago, and my mind has been fucked ever since.
That’s when I decided, let’s do an impromptu concert in New Orleans. We could try out the new song and see what kind of reception it got.
Last time we toured the city, in the spring, I’d been approached by a charity about a fundraising concert.
So, me being me, I called them up, locked it in, and handed the rest to Van.
We’d just wrapped up a long-ass tour in Europe, and everyone in the band was tired, but when I suggested NOLA, the guys were all in. The city was a music and party lovers’ dream, and I was looking forward to performing here again.
Or I was.
Until I looked over and saw the stubborn set of Van’s chin.
I just knew that getting what I wanted—the song and the man—would be an uphill battle.
“I don’t think it’s the right song for you or the band. It’s a ballad. There’s another one here from a new writer,” Van looked away again and searched his bag. “It’s grittier, raw. It has sex appeal. Letting you read ‘Sideline’ was a mistake.”
“It’s anything but!” I snapped back. “I want it. I feel the writer’s words, and I know just how it should sound.
Me sitting on stage, my favorite Martin acoustic in hand.
It’s different, but I love it. It’s soulful.
And if the guys hate it, too fucking bad!
I want it, and I’m recording it. The end. ”
Van stood up and placed his hands on his lean hips.
He wore his usual uniform of dark jeans and a denim button down—a Canadian tuxedo, he jokingly referred to it.
Van was born and raised in Montreal and headed to Nashville when he was eighteen. Apart from being the band champion and a talented writer, he also spoke French.
I told you, he’s a sexy motherfucker.
I overheard Van when we did a tour stop in Montreal in the summer, and I nearly came just listening to him say, “Merci bien, mes amies.” I had to google it to find out what it meant.
“Thanks very much, my friends” wasn’t sexy talk, but anything from Van’s mouth, especially in French, was the hottest thing ever.
I recently downloaded one of those language apps to learn French. Until Holls found out and teased me mercilessly for the past month.
“Brodie, I think I know by now what sells and what your fans are looking for. And this isn’t it,” Van replied, interrupting my musings.
“This is the song I want. It’s a hit. I know it, you know it.”
I got up off the sofa and got in his face. The gentle sway of the bus rocked our bodies back and forth like the magnetic push and pull that was always between us.
One more push and…
I was surrounded by his heady scent of leather and musk. I wanted to lean in and take a long lick of Van’s throat.
My eyes caught on the black-beaded necklace he always wore. It was linked with a silver coin that rested in the divot of his neck. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pictured him naked, except for that necklace.
My cock pulsed, aching, throbbing, inside my tight jeans.
“Maybe it is a hit. But not for you,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his jaw.
“Why?” I pushed him.
“I just can’t… I mean, I can’t let you make a mistake. And that’s what this song would be.”
“You’re wrong,” I bit out. “And I’m tired of you telling me no. I’m the creative drive behind the band; I know what works and when it’s time to try something new. I feel this song in my gut, in my chest, in my fucking balls. And when that happens, I know that it’s mine.”
Van finally made eye contact again. The pulse of electricity between us was tempered with worry.
“Why did you show it to me?” I asked, lowering my voice.
Van’s eyes closed, and he shook his head. “A moment of weakness.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
He opened his eyes again, and all I saw was pain.
Longing, heartache.
His gaze was so expressive. It was the only part of him that I could read clearly.
“You really want this?” he replied.
Were we talking about the song or about us?
I nodded. “Never been surer of anything in my life.”