Page 45 of Strike A Chord

“Holy crap. That’s cool. I know the other guys’ partners go. They work for Masterson, though, but Stoli and Joey asked me the same thing.” His mood brightened and I hated that I was about to bring it back down.

“Babe, I wish I could but between the bar and the renovations, I won’t be able to.” Maybe someday. “But I told him I’d like to go to the Seattle shows and he said he’d make it happen.”

“Okay. Cool. It’ll suck to be without you. I’ve kind of gotten used to sleeping beside you and you know how to handle my, um, issues.” Nightmares he left unsaid, as though saying the word aloud would trigger them. And who knew, maybe it did.

“You said it happened on the bus at Rocktoberfest?” Josh was really upset about that, and I understood why, but for the most part it was out of his control. “Have any of the exercises the doctor gave you helped?”

“I haven’t really tried. These last couple of weeks I’ve been so mentally exhausted that my brain completely shut down when I crashed. Kinda wished it would stay that way.” I wanted the same for him. Maybe playing for long hours would help while they toured the southwest.

“Well, maybe now that this show is behind you, you’ll be able to do them.” Josh’s mental and physical health was not something I’d bend on. He called himself a work in progress but what he didn’t realize was that we all were. Just some challenges ran deeper than others.

“I have an appointment with her tomorrow afternoon.”

That was news to me. “Good to know. If she requests a session with both of us or just with me, let me know and I’ll be there.”

“Thank you.”

“Come on, let’s shower.”

“Ohh,” Josh popped up off the bed, “can I add to the request list a shower built for two?”

“Already on it, my love.”

Chapter Nineteen

Josh

“Ready to roll?” Deuce asked as he hopped on the bus after us. The hardest damn thing I’d done was say goodbye to a sleeping Reagan this morning. He woke up long enough to give me a sweet ass send off, but damn, it took all I had not to crawl back into bed with him.

“Someone smells freshly fucked.” Marley sniffed hard and loud as he walked past me to the fridge. “Mmm, all my favorites.”

“What don’t you eat?” Jason rolled his eyes. “The guy is a bottomless pit.”

“Nah, man,” Marley shoved an entire snack cake of some sort into his pie hole. “Are you guys as fucking stoked as I am? We finally made it!” Thankfully my past didn’t ruin it for them.

“Scoot over,” Nigel came over to join us at the table. “I’m pretty damn excited. Not thrilled being away from my kid that long but looking forward to not being so financially strapped.” That I more than understood, though I didn’t say so since I was the only one of us without a regular day job and no real bills to spend my advance on. Did they view me as privileged? I sure as hell hoped not. Maybe I could get the rest of my guitars out of hock. Or should I just start over since I kept the most important ones?

Joey and Stoli were in their bus behind us, same with Mickey, River, and Benny. Jeremiah and Seltzer had left for Vegas last week, they’d meet us there. Easton said he and Diamond would hit the shows when time allowed, but this was really Jeremiah’s team to manage, and I respected that.

“Just got an email from Jeremiah,” Jason held his hand up like he was in school, waiting for the teacher to call on him. “We’re playing the Vegas shows first then down to AZ and over to LA before heading back to Seattle.” They’d toyed with going to LA before AZ but I’m glad they’d stuck with AZ first. Shorter travel time made more sense to me.

We were still a couple days out before we hit Vegas, but it gave me time to practice the new songs along with the exercises the doctor gave me to help combat the nightmares. Image Rehearsal Therapy she’d called it. I kept a separate notebook for that, one privately tucked away in my bunk. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to completely rewrite a single one of my nightmares yet, though many had been started. Each time I got to the beatings, rage consumed me and I couldn’t get past the need to run. “Do you guys get nervous before each show or is it just me?”

“Yeah, I do,” Jason admitted. Marley was a freaking sugar child. He bounced off the walls so for him playing was probably a way to run off his excess energy. Marley reminded me of a husky I once saw at a dog park. He had enough energy to fuel Japan.

“Same,” Nigel agreed. “Don’t get me wrong, I freaking love it but until we dive into the first song I’m a bundle of nerves.”

“For me, getting the crowd riled up draws me in and shakes it off.” Jason had that magical touch, the Midas of our band. As soon as he addressed the crowd, he had them eating from his palm.

“We’ll be in Vegas for a week, back-to-back shows.” Jason’s face was buried in his phone as he read through Jeremiah’s email. “Whoa.”

“Whoa what?”

“Well, we play a couple places like Counts and House of Blues, but we also have a show at the MGM Grand.” Jason’s wide eyes met ours.

“Holy shit.”

“Holy shit indeed. Gentlemen, thank you for taking a chance on us and riding out the last ten years. Josh, you’re new but in my opinion, you were the missing link to make this band whole. Thanks for showing up to the audition.” The sincerity in Jason’s words was real.

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