Page 6 of Fractured Rhythm

“You say the nicest things, Griff.”

“Just the truth,” he said with a smile.

“Do you feel lucky with your job?” I asked.

“Hardly. Dad owns the firm, and as much as I love being a lawyer, he tends to drive me up a wall. But it’s family. What are you going to do?” He shrugged.

“Yeah, family,” I said softly.

“Sorry. I know you don’t like to talk about yours,” he said, and I left it at that.

He never pushed me to talk about my family or the band. He knew the basics, as did anyone else who googled my brother: broken home, famous band, rock star hooked on drugs who overdosed on tour. A total cliché for the industry and I hated that I’d lived through it. Jamie was supposed to be better than that.

He’d promised.

Of course, so had Bash.

And I was back to that again. A broken record that I wanted to shatter.

BASH

A balled-up pieceof paper sailed across the room, missing the rest of the pile. I wished it was a glass so I could find satisfaction in it shattering into a million pieces as it hit the floor. Another failed attempt. I couldn’t write for shit. I’d been trying for months. Hell, even longer than that, though I didn’t count the first year after Jamie died. That year, I’d been locked in myself and no use to anyone.

I’d written the majority of the band’s songs and we had a contract to meet. Fuck—we also needed to find a new drummer.

I couldn’t even think about replacing Jamie. Jamie Steel was the other half of Steelwolf, a name the two of us had come up with when we were freshmen in high school. Two stupid fourteen-year-olds who’d thought they could take the rock world by storm. We’d combined our names, Steel for Jamie and Wolf from my middle name, Wolfgang. No one wanted Clark in a band name. How lame would that have been?

We’d screwed around in my parents’ garage, me on guitar and Jamie on drums, and then Jax and Tristan had joined us during our junior year. My mom had never discouraged the noise and, instead, filled me and my bandmates with homemade chocolate chip cookies and sports drinks. My parents had always wanted more kids, but it wasn’t in the cards, so they’d treated Jamie, Jax, and Tristan like the sons they never had. We were a family.

I missed that more than anything. But as much as I wanted that back, it would never be the same without Jamie. It couldn’t be.

The band had hit it big by the time we were twenty, and it had all imploded by the time we were twenty-five. That sounded about right.

But as much as losing Jamie had destroyed us, it’d hit me the most. We’d been best friends since I’d slugged some punk-ass kid on the playground for making fun of Jamie’s shoes when we were seven. We’d been inseparable after that.

Cassie had been five then, following us around and acting like a general pain in the ass. But even back then, I hadn’t totally minded.

Not that I would’ve told Jamie that.

Jamie had two requests for our friendship: never hook up with his sister and always have each other’s backs.

I failed on both counts.

I stared at another blank sheet of paper. I had to get back to writing. The guys needed this. And honestly, so did I.

It was just so fucking hard to write without Jamie there to tell me that my lyrics were lame, when we both knew they weren’t. Jamie had always been there to critique the songs. I guess I needed that more than I realized.

But the label would only give us so much time, as our manager kept reminding me. Damn Josh. The man had been blowing up my phone for months, and now the calls had become a daily headache. Josh needed to back the hell off, but after two years, I needed to figure my shit out or the label would sue me and the rest of the band.

The guys didn’t deserve that. The fans didn’t deserve that.

And Jamie sure as hell didn’t deserve that as part of his legacy.

If my best friend were here, he’d tell me to quit my bitching and write from the heart.

It was too bad that I didn’t know where my heart was these days.

We’d been at the end of our international tour when it happened. We had a few days off in LA before our final West Coast shows. We’d promised our fans we’d make it up to them for the canceled shows, but two years later, we’d done nothing. No shows. No new music. Hell, I couldn’t remember the last time we’d played together. The drummer from Screaming Vikings, who we’d toured with as co-headliners a few years before, offered to finish out the shows, but I’d said no fucking way, after I put my fist through the guy’s face.

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