81. Hawk
“Holy fuck, am I tired.” Alex’s moan was quiet, the lack of energy in his voice a testament to just how true his statement was.
Sitting in the makeup chair, a woman currently fussing with my hair while a young man dabbed some sort of concealer under my eyes, I couldn’t move my head enough to look at him, but I grunted my agreement anyway.
We were all fuckin’ tired.
It had been three days of insanity, with all sorts of things happening at the kind of lightning speed that only Mick could manage. First, there were meetings with lawyers, finalizing all the necessary paperwork needed to set up our own label. I’d had no idea all the shit that would be needed, but that was why we’d put Mick in charge. He’d arranged everything, even finding some other investors so that we didn’t have to put up all our own capital up front. At first, I’d been hesitant, not really liking the idea of bringing in outsiders, because trusting other people wasn’t something the guys and I excelled at these days. But as Mick started throwing around words like Venture Capitalists, and high-growth potential and equity stake, we decided that if nothing else, we trusted Mick, and told him to do whatever he felt was best.
Since then, he’d been like a dog with a bone, and today was the latest item on his to-do list for Black Kite Records: promo.
Or, according to Mick, trying to get some photos of us sober and with our clothes on for a change. He insisted that we needed to show the world that while the Black Kite they knew—and loved, I was quick to remind him—was still alive and kicking, there was also this new version of Black Kite. The version that included serious businessmen, ready to produce quality music for the masses while also respecting their artists the way that a label should.
So here we were, getting dolled up to go in front of the camera and convince the music world to take us seriously.
Looking at us, I doubted that was even a possibility.
We looked like a bunch of jackasses.
Gone were the ripped t-shirts and holey jeans of our youth. In their place were three guys in business casual, button-down shirts and combed hair, making us look like we were playing dress up.
But Mick insisted that it was what we needed, so that’s what we were gonna do.
“You wouldn’t be so tired if you’d stop staying out all night,” Gavin reprimanded Alex, eyes closed as his own makeup person worked their magic on him.
Not that he needed it, pretty bastard. Somehow, Gavin always looked like he’d gotten a full eight hours’ sleep no matter what we’d been doing the night before.
“What are you even up to these days, man?” I asked, arching an eyebrow and looking at Alex suspiciously. “The only time we ever see you anymore is if Mick has us booked for something.”
Pressing his lips together, Alex made a face that looked like he had just bitten into a lemon, but didn’t reply.
“You’re seriously not going to tell us where you’ve been going at night?”
“Nope,” Alex said breezily, but I could tell it was difficult for him. As much as we teased him, Alex really was a share everything kind of guy. He wasn’t a gossip or whatever, just excitable. He loved life and he loved to talk about what he loved.
So for him to be holding back now was more than suspicious, but after the hard time we’d given him about not being able to keep a secret, he wasn’t letting it go.
“Alright, fine. But you better be careful.” Gavin’s gaze darted to me quickly before he went on. “Things have been heating up, and the paps are out in full force for all things Black Kite. Watch your back.”
Gavin wasn’t wrong; since that photo of Wren and me had broken the internet, it was like the guys and I were chum in the water for the press in L.A., and it was seriously getting old. There was a group of photographers outside my house at all hours, and they followed us wherever we went. The only reason we had managed to get to this photo shoot without anyone seeing us is because Mick had arranged a decoy car to leave the house first, and the leaches had followed it like the idiots they were.
Thinking of Wren and Cooper brought a familiar feeling of discomfort to my chest. Wren had texted me yesterday. One simple word in response to my line of desperate messages, but when I’d tried to respond to her, she’d ghosted me again. I wasn’t sure what to fuckin’ make of it.
I was even more worried about Cooper. She’d already been in bed the night I’d left, exhausted from her ordeal with the creeps at the door, and I hadn’t gotten a chance to properly say goodbye. I had asked Wren about her, several times, in fact, but without Cooper’s number, I was unable to reach out to her on my own to check in.
The whole thing was just shitty, and I hated myself for leaving more and more every day.
I thought about Wren through the entire photo shoot—which included three outfit changes for some goddamn reason—and by the time it was done, I was more than ready to get the fuck home. The guys and I were all crammed into the back of the SUV, once again hiding behind tinted windows, as Charlie drove us back to my place in the hills, and I was doing what I did most of the time these days—watching Wren’s Instagram videos. I didn’t even need the sound anymore; her words and notes were embedded in my brain from the number of times I’d spent watching them on repeat in the lonely hours between sunset and sunrise.
Alex wasn’t the only one not sleeping these days, I guessed.
“You’ve got messages,” Alex said casually, his head popping between the seats from the third row where he sat. “How can you stand unopened messages?”
“What messages?” I asked, frowning at my phone. “I just checked, and I have no texts.”
“Fuck, you are such an old dude, bro,” Alex laughed, and I lifted my hand, casually smacking him in the arm for his remark.
“Stop talking shit and tell me what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Your DMs, man.” When I continued to stare at him blankly, he physically grabbed my hand and held up my phone before our faces. “Right there in the top corner? The big flashing red number?”
Looking at where he indicated, I raised my eyebrows in surprise.
“Those are messages?” I asked, staring at the number in the box. “Since when?”
“Since forever,” Alex bemoaned. “You never keep up with technology. It’s amazing you even learned how to play on an electric guitar. Seriously. It’s like you’re afraid of progress.”
When Charlie snorted from the driver’s seat, I flipped him off, pressing my finger to open the messages.
“Callie Arizona,” I breathed, seeing the now very familiar lake in the small profile photo. “Cooper!” I said excitedly, looking up at Alex with a grin. “Cooper’s been messaging me!”
“A lot, by the looks of it,” Alex murmured in my ear, noting the long thread of unanswered messages. “She’s pretty mad, bro.”
“No shit,” I said, realizing that I had more than a little damage control to do when it came to my girls.
But just as I started scrolling to the top, ready to do my penance and read dozens upon dozens of scathing messages from an angry teenager, my phone began to ring, Mick’s name flashing across the screen.
“Yeah?” I groaned, putting him on speaker and dreading what event he had lined up for us this time.
“Did you see it?” he asked, the tension in his words palpable.
“See what?”
“The photo. I’d been sure you’d have seen it by now. Listen...” I could hear him panting into the phone, like he had been running or something, and my heart rate increased in response.
Whatever this was, it was serious.
“I’m taking care of it, okay? You don’t need to worry. I’ve arranged for someone to pick them up and—”
“Slow the fuck down for a second, Mick,” I cut in. “What the fuck is happening?”
But I didn’t need Mick to tell me because Alex was already there, holding his own phone between the seats this time as the three of us stared at the scathing headlines currently lighting up the internet.
The words were one thing, but the photo was worse.
Because there was my little girl, her sweet face splashed across the gossip sites for the world to see, and she looked heartbroken. The more Alex scrolled, the worse it got. Someone had started digging into their past, and there were pictures of both Wren and Cooper in their youths, stories about the young, destitute single mom, the desperate groupie who was determined to break up my marriage. They had been interviewing the people in town, getting dirt on Wren, her parents, her ex-boyfriend—the works.
It just got worse and worse, and I knew that this would only be the beginning.
“Charlie,” I said, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “To the airport. Now.”
Charlie only nodded, his speed increasing as he changed lanes, making for the next exit to get us on the freeway.
“Now, Hawk, hold on,” Mick’s voice was stern as it came out through the speaker of my phone. “You can’t go there now. Imagine how that would look?”
“It would look like a father going to his child when she needs him,” I barked. “It would look like me doing the thing I should have done years ago if it weren’t for all the fuckin’ people who insisted on getting in my way.” Taking a deep breath, I looked at Alex and Gavin, my best friends for over twenty years. Gavin nodded solemnly, but Alex was grinning like a loon, always ready to stir shit up. “Tell me you’re not gonna get in my way, Mick.”
“Hawk, there are so many things to think about right now. Don’t be rash. We are trying to build something here, and I need you to—”
“Mick, I love you. You’ve had our backs all this time, and I’m proud to call you my friend. I know I haven’t made it easy on you. But right now, for the first time in my life, I know what the right move is and I’m gonna fuckin’ make it. Now, I’m going to Minnesota, with or without your support.”
For a while he said nothing, and I could practically hear the gears churning in his mind.
“What if it was Brooke?” I asked, going for the low blow because the gloves were coming off. “What if it was your daughter, Mick?”
This time, his silence was much shorter.
“I’ll call the airline and arrange a charter for you and Charlie—”
“All of us,” Alex piped up. “This is a group project now, Micky boy.”
“Alex,” Mick started, but Gavin was too quick.
“I think it would show great band solidarity, Mick. Show that we’re a team and we are behind Hawk all the way.”
“You fuckers. Fine. I’ll get four seats on the first available private charter out of Van Nuys. But when I tell you to keep your heads down and your noses clean, I fucking mean it, you hear me? Our investors do not want a bunch of clowns ruining their opportunities here. You’re grown ups. Fucking act like it.”
“Mick, come on. It’s us.” Alex smiled, but Gavin just shook his head. “What could possibly go wrong?”