Three Beating Hearts, page 11
“You do realize there is only one option here, right?” Ames paced the room then stopped in front of me. “You heard the man. If they just take it out, it’s only a few days of recovery. If they place a new device, it’s weeks. You don’t have weeks, Dom. This tour is once in a lifetime.”
“I know,” I had said, looking down at the AMA sheet in my hands—the sheet designed to refuse a new device against medical advice if I chose to sign it. “What do I tell my parents?”
And Ames? He was the devil on my shoulder.
“You tell them nothing. You don’t tell anybody anything. You’re eighteen years old. You’re not living with them. You sign the damn AMA, get the old device taken out and stay with me for a few days. Lord knows my parents are never in town—and go. On. Tour.”
He looked me over as he lectured me, grabbed the sheet of paper out of my hand and forged my signature at the bottom. I allowed it.
I had one device removed and several new medications started in its place. The day Ames signed a very convincing signature to an AMA form was the day all my lies and secrets, every fraction of my double life, started.
That summer tour was canceled. I had risked my life for a tour that had never happened. We almost quit music. I nearly took a spot at a university. And just when I thought I could walk away with a clean slate—separate myself from the band member’s I had told so many lies to, Kelly got us on stage with a major artist. Of course, Ames had landed a tour of his own just a handful of years later. I’d helped get him there. Our bands had never truly crossed paths. We’d toured at different times and appealed to different audiences. Both of our names were frequently spoken, but they’d only ever had one album truly take off, and while we’d continued to soar, they had faded out until they were gone altogether.
Our fame grew more and more each day. People wanted to know everything about us. The further we got into this, the more I knew I couldn’t turn back. I couldn’t unravel the web I had already weaved. And so, I kept my bandmates in the dark. The longer it went on, the more I cultivated the lie into a lifestyle, the harder it was to turn back. How would I come to them after all the years and tell them I hadn’t been honest with them? That I had never been honest with them. They’d never look at me the same way again. The bond we’d forged would be damaged in an irreparable way.
“So, anyway,” Cooper continues, bringing me out of my head and back to the table with no idea what I missed, “I’ll see you all later this week at the recording studio. Might as well work on the material we do have.”
Chapter Sixteen
Stasia
As usual, I’m the first one at the recording studio. The typical order is my too-punctual arrival, followed by Dom’s early appearance, then Cooper and Theo at scheduled time, Blake a few minutes late and Xander? Well, better late than never, I guess.
Today I tried to busy myself, to give myself a reason to not be there early. Truthfully, I didn’t want to be alone with Dom, not in the current state of things. The intensity between us, the passion, the draw—it’s all there, all day, every day, incessantly. And we can’t do a damn thing about it. I can’t talk to him. If we are within three feet of each other, it’s not talking our mouths want to be doing.
And we can’t. We can’t participate in the thing we crave most. It’s for the good of the band. I want the music more than I want him. At least, that’s what I tell myself every time I step into this studio.
“Stasia,” he whispers from behind me. I was so lost in thoughts of him, of us, that I hadn’t heard him enter.
“Dom,” I whisper back to him. That’s it. That’s as far as we ever get these days. It’s been like this for weeks. Around the band, we handle ourselves well. We interact, joke, make everyone think there’s nothing between us at all. We are performers, after all. We put on a show. The others don’t even know they are a buffer between us. But when we’re alone, it’s harder to pretend we aren’t wishing we were more than bandmates.
Today, though, was different. He steps behind me, his chest brushing against my back. He places both hands at my shoulders, gripping and releasing, using his thumbs to rub small circles into the muscles that surround my neck.
“You’re tense.” His voice is filled with heat.
I’m not. Not usually. I’m typically relaxed and loose—but not around him. I’m tense because of him. He simultaneously relaxes me and makes it harder to breathe.
I tilt my head back into his touch, and he applies more pressure. Turning toward him, I reach up and place one hand at the back of his neck. He leans his forehead into mine. The beginnings of facial scruff lines his cheeks and jaw. His hair sticks out of place from the bandana he wears, and his eyes aren’t covered by their dark-rimmed glasses. He’s in music mode full time these days, the Dom the fans and the magazines know, but I know who he is when they’re not looking. He leans in and his lips just brush mine—so quick, so light that it barely counts as a kiss. He stops there and waits, our eyes locked in to each other.
“We shouldn’t.” It’s a whisper. He closes his eyes as he says the words.
“I know.”
He grasps the fabric at the back of my shirt—part passion, part frustration. I step away first. “It’s for the good of the band.”
I have repeated the mantra, said the words to myself on repeat for weeks. I know it’s what he’s thinking.
He sits on the couch—more falling into it than gracefully taking a seat. He shakes his head and stares at the floor. “It’s more than that.”
I’m surprised by his words. I thought we were in agreement.
“It’s exactly that.” I cross my arms. “We can’t be together because we are in the same band. We are recording together. If I’m lucky, I’ll tour with you. If this ends badly, that all will likely also go badly. We can’t be together because of the band.”
“We can’t be together, Stasia, because you’re—”
The door opens and footsteps stomp down the hallway.
“Because I’m what?” I rush the question before someone else joins us. He returns his gaze to the floor.
“Good morning, Stasia, Dom.” To my surprise, it’s Blake who joins us first. He hands out coffees and puts one arm around me, giving me a tight squeeze. “Dom, I have some stuff outside we need to bring in. Give me a hand?”
Blake retreats down the hall, and as Dom follows his lead I grab his arm, stopping him in his tracks.
“I’m what?” I ask again, my grip remaining tight.
“Because you’re his sister. It just…changes things.”
My fingers fall loose at his wrist, and he continues down the hall, leaving me alone and frustrated in more ways than one.
During a break between songs, I step outside. Blake leans against the wall of the recording studio with a lit cigarette. I hold one hand out and he gives me a dirty look.
“Just one pull,” I promise, and he hands it over begrudgingly. Leave it to Blake to judge my every-once-in-a-while habit while he’s a pack per day at least kind of guy. He never missed a beat stepping into the brother role. I’m an adult—full grown and doing just fine—but he started treating me like his little sister the moment we found out about our shared lineage.
It never bothered me. Never once. In fact, I found it endearing.
Until today.
“These things will kill ya, ya know,” Blake says, taking the cigarette back and filling his own lungs with toxins.
“Don’t lecture me,” I snap, narrowing my eyes at him. “You don’t have to protect me from everything. I survived twenty-six years without you.”
Blake flicks the cigarette to the cement and puts his hands out, flat palmed, patting the air. “Whoa, what’s going on?”
“Nothing.” The word comes out more in a yell than I meant it to, the kind of growl in the word that indicated everything, though that’s not what I said. “Ever since Dad left, you’ve taken it upon yourself to be him. I don’t need another—”
“You did not just compare me to Victor, of all people.”
His voice gains volume, the same way mine did. “You know what? This kind of drama and outbursts is exactly the reason we didn’t want a female around to begin with. Dom had the right idea when he voted no.”
My heart falls into my stomach.
“What is going on out here?” Coopers appears in the doorway.
“Nothing.” We both snap at the same time.
“Can you two get your sibling rivalry crap under control for a minute?” His voice stays calm, sucking the anger out of the area and keeping our attention on him. It’s the most Cooperish thing he does, this ability to be calm and inflict tranquility on everyone else. It’s his superpower. “We have to go to Xander’s.”
Cooper turns on his heel and retreats back down the hall, giving us no further information. Blake leans against the wall, or rather, the wall holds Blake upright. His eyes close, he takes a deep breath and lets it out with sound before reaching into his pocket for another cigarette.
“Blake?” I step closer to him. ““What is it?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing, you know?” A puff of smoke leaves his mouth and nose as he speaks. “It’s just that a few years ago he had this accident. A bad accident. And seeing him lying there… I don’t know. Never mind. It doesn’t matter now.”
“If it’s bothering you, it does matter now.”
“There was a long time, a lot of years, where he was the only family I had—him and his mom. That was it. I just never truly got over the way I felt the day I got the call about his motorcycle accident.”
I remember hearing about that. It was all over the news.
“Every time something happens with one of the guys or Cooper says something like he just did, my mind just goes there.”
Sparks fall to the ground as he flicks ash from the lit cigarette. His voice is sullen, shaken.
“You worry. That’s normal, I think. It’s nice that you worry about them like that.” I trace circles on the sidewalk with my shoe.
“I worry about you like that.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Somebody’s got to.”
I roll my eyes, but I smile. Sometimes the older brother protection routine is nice, I guess.
* * * *
Xander and Natalie’s apartment is so high up in the building that it seems their only neighbor is the sun. Cooper gently knocks on the door, but there’s no answer. Blake reaches into his pocket and pulls out his keys, selecting one and reaching toward the door. He has almost inserted the key into the lock when the knob turns and Xander pulls it slowly open. I can sense Blake’s muscles unwind once he finally lays eyes on a vertical, seemingly healthy Xander. Though, I’ll be honest, he looks terrible. I’ve seen drunk Xander, hungover Xander and even gone-too-long-without-a-shower Xander. This was a brutal combination of all three. Xander presses one finger to his mouth and a light shh-hh escapes from his lips. He motions with his hand for us to follow him inside the house, and we practically tiptoe in unison behind him.
We all follow Xander to a room down the hall where he carefully opens another door and nods for Blake to take a peek.
“What?” Blake asks, confusion smothering his words. “Who?”
“So long as all continues to go as planned…” Xander pushes the door open wide enough for the rest of us to see what is on the other side. A small white bassinet sits in the middle of the room, and a tiny, brand-new baby girl swaddled in a cloud of pink sleeps at its center. “That, Blake, will be your goddaughter. Her name is Cadence.”
Blake stares at Xander for a moment, then, it isn’t his mouth that responds, but his eyes. They fill with tears. Real, glistening happy tears puddle in Blake’s lids, and damn, they just might be contagious, because as Blake wraps his arms around Xander’s shoulders and they pat each other’s backs, whispering some of their weird brotherly love language that none of the rest of us ever understood. Water drips from my eyes to my cheeks, too. And Cooper? He’s a faucet. He did just practically become a grandpa, after all.
“How did this happen?” Blake asks, his eyes trained on the bassinet at the center of the room.
“It was very last-minute,” Xander explains, sharing the space in the doorway. “She was left at the doors of the hospital a few weeks ago. You know we have been trying to adopt. There is a lot that goes into the process when a baby is voluntarily… Umm…” He stalls.
“Abandoned.” A voice sounds from behind us. We turn to find that Jana has joined us in the hallway. “You can say it, Xander. Voluntarily abandoned.”
“It just sounds so harsh.” His voice is the softest I’ve ever heard it.
“They left her there.” Jana crosses her arms. “It is harsh.” She walks across the living room and opens the sliding door to step onto the balcony.
Xander continues. “We got a phone call. They asked where we were at with the adoption process and if we were still interested in a newborn—and here we are. For now, technically, we are fostering. With any luck, the temporary part will be…well…temporary. We hope to adopt her when we reach that part of the process.”
The band oohs, ahhs and marvels at Xander finding his softer side, while I sneak out of the group and followed Jana to the balcony.
“Everything okay?”
She doesn’t look back as she nods, but she does shift her position so she’s leaning into the wall, her arms wrapped tightly around herself in a way that seems protective, like she’s not okay at all.
“You can talk to me, you know.” I reach forward and place my hand at her shoulder, but she turns away.
“Do you need space, or do you need me?” I say the question into the air, but I don’t look at her directly.
“What?” She turns her attention to me for the first time since I joined her on the balcony.
“When I was a kid, I used to have these—I don’t know—episodes. The whole world got loud but quiet. I was really overwhelmed but bored. I wanted to be alone, but I hated feeling lonely. Depression. Anxiety. It does things to you. It makes you feel like everything is wrong, when nothing is wrong at all.”
Jana’s shoulders and neck loosen as her arms fall at her sides, as if the words I’m saying are the very key to what’s keeping her locked up, like someone finally guessed the password to a club she thought she was in by herself.
“Anyway,” I continue, “my stepmother used to ask me that. ‘Do you want me or do you want space?’”
She swallows hard and closes her eyes. “What was the answer?”
“There wasn’t one.” I reach my hand out, palm up, resting on the banister, leaving the choice for contact up to her. She places hers on mine. “Sometimes the answer was both. Sometimes it was neither. Sometimes it just depended on the day. But I always knew I had the option.”
She smiles lightly but enough for me to notice. We stand there for a few minutes while she ponders her answer—me trying not to pry, her seemingly trying to keep the dam solid so waterworks didn’t break through and flood her eyes.
“I just don’t know how anyone can make a child, bring a human into this world and just…change their mind.” She breathes in deep, looks toward the sky and lets it out. “They were supposed to protect her. They were supposed to love her and keep her safe.”
Her voice cracks and her eyes dampen. I realize, in that moment, she’s not talking about Xander’s baby at all.
I’m not good at ‘the shoulder to lean on’ thing. I mask all my own insecurities behind bold lipsticks and solve all my problems with retail therapy and expensive items I usually can’t afford. So, I change the subject.
“Godfather, huh? Blake never struck me as the religious type.” I lean into the railing of the porch area, and she looks toward me, a laugh pressing into the corners of her lips.
“And Xander Varro does?”
We both laugh. She has a point. The idea was probably more engrained in sentiment than actual meaning. Lord knows, the whole church would burn if this band and its ring leader stepped inside.
Jana turns and looks at me, her eyes soften, her shoulders relax.
“Thank you.” Her lip turns up at the corner. “I have to work. I appreciate the chat.”
“Anytime.” I wink as she steps away from the balcony banister and pushes the sliding door open.
Chapter Seventeen
Dom
Stasia leans against the balcony banister and the sun beams down on her like even though it has to stay far away, it can’t help but reach for her.
I know a thing or two about that.
“You’ve been out here a while.” I stand next to her in a way that allows our shoulders to touch and even that, I know, is too much. She doesn’t pull away.
“I got lost in this view.” She rests her head in one hand with her elbow on the railing. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Theo and Cooper left a bit ago. The baby woke up, Blake held her and hasn’t let go, so Natalie and Xander took advantage of the extra hands and are getting some rest. I was getting ready to go and thought you might want some company on the walk home.”
Stasia runs her hand through her short hair and lets out a frustrated exhale.
“No.”
That’s all she says. Her hands grip the handrail, but her voice says nothing else.
“No?”
“No.” She shifts so we’re face to face, and though she’s inches from me, she’s miles away. “I can’t keep doing this back and forth with you.”
“I asked you if I could walk you home…”
“If I say yes, I’m not going to want you to walk me to the door then leave and you know it. I’ll ask you to stay and you will.” She steps away toward the sliding door. “Walking me home is just the first step to breaking the rules we created.”
“Let’s just bend them, then.”
I step forward and my body is against hers. She steps so her back is against the brick wall beside the door.
I reach forward, my fingertips brushing the longer portion of her hair away from her face. She rests her hand where my neck meets my shoulder. I lean toward her, put my hands on her hips and slide my thumbs into her belt loops. A smile crosses my lips, knowing they are about to be on hers, then they are. The smile? It doesn’t fade.
