Not with the Band (Golden Fire Records)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

Tatum

That…is definitely a pussy.

In the early morning silence, my breath swept in and out. An audible roll, loud as the waves washing onto the beach in Hawaii, where I would have been lying if Adam hadn’t had to cancel for work. Or ‘work’, as the case seemed to be.

The cell was cool in my hand, its screen long since gone black. The darkness didn’t matter. The text that had woken me was burned into my brain.

Adam was cheating on me.

I’d spent twenty minutes conjuring and rejecting scenarios that could explain what I had read, but none of the excuses held water. I certainly couldn’t ask the cold sheets beside me for an answer.

Raking my fingers through a serious case of bed hair, I weighed my options: continue to drive myself insane or find Adam and demand the truth.

“Option B for the win,” I muttered, throwing back the covers and padding out into the living room of our one-bedroom apartment.

I had fastidiously picked out every piece of furniture when we first moved in together, making sure each piece represented both of us—nothing too feminine, so Adam would feel comfortable in the space.

Modern industrial was the theme, highlighted by bare brick walls, black fixtures, and a bias toward minimalism.

There were times when I felt cold in my own home, but I had thought we were happy enough to make up for it. Apparently, I’d been wrong.

Seated on our distressed gray leather sofa, face lit by the soft glow from my laptop, Adam hunched over our glass-and-steel custom-built coffee table.

“Adam?”

He jolted as though struck with a cattle prod and slammed the computer closed, plunging us into darkness.

A moment later, a click preceded a small light blooming from one of the many standing lamps that littered the room. I hated those lamps. Stupid, weak little things that couldn’t light the entire space. Adam had always said they lent ambiance to the space. I thought they were just a waste of energy.

“What are you doing up, baby?” he asked, crossing the room and cupping my face in his hands. His brown eyes sparkled in the low light, like an anglerfish trying to draw in its prey.

Adam had never been a morning person. Our routine had always been me tiptoeing around getting ready for work and leaving a steaming mug of coffee on the bedside table to entice him out from under the covers.

It was only recently that this had changed.

What else hadn’t I noticed?

“Why were you on my computer?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “I was just looking something up. Didn’t want to wake you.”

The memory of what had woken me flashed through my mind, and I took a step back, escaping his grip so I could think clearly.

“Who is Ellie?”

His eyes flicked to the bedroom door. It was fleeting, but obvious. Tension rippled through his shoulders.

“I don’t know an Ellie,” he said, brow creasing. The look of confusion, tinged with just the right amount of hurt, appeared so genuine that if I hadn’t seen the text myself, I’d have believed him in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, the time for ignorance was over.

“Well, she sure knows you. She wanted you to know she had an amazing night last week, but her pussy is still sore. She asked if you’d come kiss it better. Sent a picture to prove it and everything.”

Adam’s face darkened. The open, vulnerable facade I thought I knew morphed into something nasty. A demon ready for battle.

“I can’t believe you went through my phone. How fucking dare you? What is wrong with you? You can’t be happy, just have to find drama. I can’t believe you did that!” His voice grew progressively louder until his words echoed through the small space.

“You’ve been cheating on me!” I yelled, breaking in on his self-righteous rant.

“There’s no trust in this relationship. I can’t believe you’d violate my privacy like that. I hope you’re happy with yourself, Tatum. You’ve destroyed us. You’ve ruined the best thing you ever had.”

While Adam continued to bluster and rage, an icy calm descended over me. The tremor left my hands, and the emotion drained out of me like someone had pulled my plug.

“I want you out. Before I get home from work today, I want you gone. Do you understand?” My voice was a low growl, entirely foreign to my ears, but I rejoiced in my newfound numbness. He couldn’t hurt me while I was in this state.

“Fuck you!” Adam raged, pacing the room like a caged animal.

“Not my job anymore,” I said, wandering back into the bedroom to shower and get ready for work. The clock read a quarter to five, but I knew a little cafe I could waste some time in so I wouldn’t get into the office stupidly early.

It occurred to me, as I stood under the soothing flow of near-molten hot water, that sex with Adam had tapered off significantly since moving in together.

He had stopped hassling me for it somewhere along the line, and I’d found life far easier handling my own orgasms. Maybe it wasn’t such a surprise that he’d cheated.

Maybe what was more of a surprise was how little I cared.

I wondered idly if I’d gone into shock. Perhaps. It wasn’t every day that one discovered the man they expected to marry had been screwing around behind their back.

I took the time to blow-dry my hair and apply a perfect face of makeup, then I dressed and left the bedroom. Adam was nowhere to be seen, but the idea of being cooped up in that space for a second longer made my heart race, threatening to break me out of the numb state I’d achieved.

Locking up behind me, I took one look at the elevator and shuddered.

Not today, Satan. Instead, I ignored the fire door warnings and pushed into the emergency stairwell.

Three flights of stairs later, I stepped out into the dewy predawn air.

The slightest blush of sunrise peeked between the nearby buildings, promising a new day would come regardless of my already shitty morning.

Needing a distraction, I pulled out my cell as I jaywalked across a quiet intersection and called the number of the only person I knew who would be awake at this time of the morning.

“Good morning, Tater-tots, what’s wrong?”

Dorothy King—Dottie to many, but always Ma to me—had often claimed she had the second sight.

Family lore held that the Kings had descended from survivors of the witch trials who had held true power.

I firmly believed that if our family held any kind of power, we would be able to avoid the kind of messes we often found ourselves in.

I also had a sneaking suspicion she was getting witches and fortune tellers confused.

“Nothing, Ma. Can’t your daughter reach out at stupid o’clock in the morning to see how you’re doing?”

“Tatum.”

“Don’t Tatum me, Ma. I promise, I’m fine. How are you and Dad?”

The pregnant pause that came down the line didn’t bode well.

“He took a walk this morning.”

Shit.

“He was looking for Danny again, wasn’t he?”

I didn’t need to hear Ma’s grunt to confirm it.

“Have you told his nurse yet?”

An empty bus trundled past, and I glanced left and right before crossing the road to the beachfront boardwalk that housed several boutique cafes. I inhaled a deep lungful of sea air, then took note of the silence that stretched down the phone line.

“Ma, what aren’t you telling me?”

“I’m more than capable of nursing my husband by myself.

That woman the agency sent over didn’t know how to make his soup the way he likes it.

Who can’t make soup? For goodness’ sake.

” Ma’s tone was all bluster. For a woman in her late sixties, she was prideful to a fault, but I had a feeling this wasn’t just about her capability as a nurse.

I settled onto a nearby bench and started in on an old argument.

“What if he has a fall, Ma? You can’t lift him with your back, and it’s dangerous for both of you, especially if he’s getting out of the house again. I can’t just fly out there and play you to make him listen.”

When I was fourteen, my dad was my favorite person in the world.

He taught me to play baseball, fix a car, and how to time my funnel cake consumption to avoid puking on the more extreme rides at the county fair.

I knew I was the replacement child, but I was happy with my lot in life.

But as I made my way through high school, he began to change.

At first, he’d miss my baseball games or forget to pick me up from school, but his memory progressively deteriorated.

He asked about Danny’s schedule or mistook me for Ma.

He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s on my seventeenth birthday.

Piece by piece, I saw the man I respected most in the world lose himself, first by days, then by decades. Ma was a trooper through all of it, the driving force who kept me in school until graduation while dealing with an increasingly difficult-to-handle husband.

She had never asked for help before, and I knew she wouldn’t now.

“Get the nurse to invoice me. I’ll pay out the next month, and we can reassess if she’s a good fit after that, okay?” I reasoned, hoping Ma wouldn’t be difficult for once in her life.

Across the expanse of ocean in front of me, the sun breached the horizon with a warming glare. I closed my eyes for a moment, absorbing the new day and trying to breathe out the stress of the pre-dawn hours.

Everything would be all right. Adam was a dick I was better off without. Ma would accept the nurse, and she would have help to look after Dad. I would get the largest serving of coffee I could find on offer along the boardwalk and bounce into work over-caffeinated and ready to rock.

“That sounds like a good plan, Tatum. Thank you,” Ma murmured eventually, her voice steeped in exhaustion.

The counterargument I had perched on the tip of my tongue fizzled out. I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved or alarmed at her easy acquiescence.

“Good. Uh…that’s good. Send it through, and I’ll get it sorted,” I said, stumbling over an appropriate response.

“Thank you, my darling girl. I think I’m going to go and have a lie-down while your father is still asleep. You have a good day at work.”

I ended the call soon after and stared out at the calm sea. At least one problem had been solved for the morning.

With a final centering breath, I pushed upright and wandered down the boardwalk toward a man setting out chairs and opening umbrellas, preparing the outdoor dining space for a morning rush of diners keen to breakfast with the waves as a calming backdrop.

“Are you taking coffee orders yet?” I asked as we made eye contact.

He nodded toward a service window cut into the wall. With a wave of thanks, I placed my order with the already bored-looking girl behind the register.

It was good that Ma was accepting help, I reminded myself as I absently scanned my card. Maybe she’d finally learned she couldn’t do it all.

“It’s declined.”

I looked blankly at the girl in front of me for a moment too long, translating what she just said.

Card. Right.

“Run it again. Actually, never mind, I have cash.”

The twenty-dollar note had seen better days: the White House cracked and faded on one side, and Andrew Jackson’s face softer and more lined than it would have been in life on the other.

Smoothing the thing on my leg, I handed it over with a flourish, ignoring the sneer on the girl’s face.

How someone worked in service without being able to run a card properly was beyond me, but it didn’t help her case if she planned to look down on cash. Money was money, after all.

Fifteen minutes later, jumbo coffee in hand, I walked through the doors of Gilbert and Sons financiers.

“Morning, Dave,” I said, saluting the security guard with my cup as I scanned my ID.

“Morning, Tatum. Can you hold here for a minute? Mr. Gilbert wants to see you.”