Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
Eric
? Back In Black - AC/DC ?
“Can you believe this is almost over?” Tyler asks as I hand her a coffee and slide into the booth across from her.
No. No, I can’t. Didn’t even want to think about it. About how much it was going to hurt, watching her walk away after our final show in Pittsburgh in two weeks. How empty my life was about to feel without her here with me every day.
I swallow the knot of emotion in my throat and shake my head.
She presses record in her app and flips to a new page in her notebook.
Her light blue eyes meet mine and I can’t help but notice the way my body reacts every time they do.
Even after spending every day together for almost six months, I still feel my breath catch in my lungs, my heart skip a beat in my chest, a smile pull at the corners of my lips.
“How long were you away from the band before you felt ready to return?” she asks.
“Too long,” I say, huffing a laugh and looking down at my hands, twisting one of my rings around my finger.
****
It had been a long road to get back to feeling like myself. Longer than I wanted to admit. Coming back to the band after everything that had happened was a little like stepping onto the stage for the first time. A mixture of relief and fear. A strange sense of homecoming and hesitation.
It had also been two years since we’d written anything new. Two years since my accident and rehab derailed everything. It felt both like a lifetime ago and like it was yesterday.
Velvet Shadows had been my life, so when I went down, it was like I lost my place in the world. I couldn’t touch the drums for months. I couldn’t even pick up a stick without feeling like I was drowning in guilt and pain. Every day was a struggle to just exist, to be me again.
But they never left me. My brothers were there through it all. They stayed patient while I rebuilt myself, piece by piece. While I learned how to move, how to play, how to breathe without feeling like I was suffocating in my own skin.
But the day we finally met up in the studio to write, it felt like no time had passed at all.
Truth was, we’d all been through a lot since we started this journey together, and if there was one thing I learned during the last two years of intense therapy, it’s that Josh was right—getting your feelings out is the best way to heal and move forward.
“So, what’s the plan?” Max asked.
“I was thinking about something heavy,” I said, idly tapping the edge of my snare.
Josh raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Heavy’s good. You talking about the stuff you’ve been through?” he asked.
“Not just me,” I said. “We’ve all been through hell and back. I think it’s time we pour that into something.”
“I like it,” Kevin agreed. “Real as hell. The whole journey—where we’ve been, where we are now. Love and loss. Chaos and calm. The good and the bad.”
I paused, feeling the weight of those words. The good and the bad. I didn’t know how much of the bad I could still carry, but he was right. It all belonged in the music—the struggles, the losses we’d all been through, the time we’d lost, and the time we were trying to make up for—all of it.
“Yeah,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else. “The whole fucking thing.”
Josh grabbed his notebook and pen, and got to work jotting down some lyrics, all of us adding our thoughts as we wrote and tweaked and re-wrote, pivoting briefly when some lyrics we jotted down sparked inspiration for another song.
After we had a rough idea of what we wanted to say, I grabbed my sticks, absently twirling them in my fingers.
I was still getting my body back into the rhythm of playing and my hands still didn’t move as quickly as they used to, but they were getting there.
I knew it was all muscle memory, and I was finally starting to trust it again.
I tapped the snare, then the toms, testing the feel of the kit. My movements didn’t feel perfect yet, but they were getting closer. I closed my eyes, feeling the thrum of a beat in my chest.
“Alright,” I said. “How about a riff to match this? Something that’s a little dirty. A little gritty.” I picked up my sticks and started laying down the beat in my head.
Max smiled like he’d been waiting for me to do that. He strummed a few notes before Kevin joined in, and instantly, there was something there. At first, it was slow. We were just following the progression and feeling it out. Then, slowly, I picked up the tempo and started layering in the fills.
Kevin stood up, his bass cradled in his hands, and I didn’t need to look at him to know that he was losing himself in it, too. He tapped his foot, and his fingers were already starting to work through the low end, bringing the foundation together.
Max leaned into a riff, his fingers flying up and down the neck of his guitar.
There was something hungry in his eyes. Something that I didn’t realize until that moment how much I’d missed.
I closed my eyes, feeling that old magic begin to resurface.
The connection we had that went beyond the music.
There was still a small part of me that was afraid to be this happy. That old voice in my head, the one that never quite shuts up, started asking the questions I’d been trying to avoid—What if this is just a moment? What if it doesn’t last?
Then I looked at the guys. Really looked at them.
Looked at their faces and I saw the determination in their eyes.
I saw the same hunger that I felt, the same drive to make something real.
We’d weathered some pretty heavy storms, but we were still here.
Still together. Still the same unbreakable unit we were when we started.
And for the first time in my life, I finally felt like I was home.