Page 45 of Perfect Storm

Archer and Brooke are bickering about something I don’t care to eavesdrop on. Jenna looks like she’s sleeping on Adam’s shoulder.

Ocean is kneeling on her chair, talking with Adrestia. Fuck knows why the women don’t just sit together. Dylan and Nash are possessive assholes. Something as simple as letting their woman sit away from them is too difficult for them to comprehend.

“Where’d you disappear to last night?” I ask Ciro.

He looks over at me, his head moving slowly, reminding me of the Terminator. I half expect red laser eyes to stare back at me.

“My room.”

“I got that, dipshit. What were you up to? You didn’t want to hang around and party with the rest of us.”

“I think the answer to that is obvious, don’t you?”

Yeah, it is. We pull away from the ranch. Jenna’s mom is busy telling everyone everything about what we are doing, but I zone her out.

“What you said on the plane about us not needing the keyboards? You think that’ll work?”

Ciro takes his phone from his pocket and fiddles with it. At first I think he is ignoring me, but he hands it to me along with his headphones. I take them and slip them on, then hit play on the track he lined up. I recognize the beat of my own drums, then Dylan’s guitar and Alessa’s base. Ciro and Nash will come in after Riley’s keyboards.

But that doesn’t happen. Ciro picks up his part and then Nash sings. I look up at him in surprise as the song goes on. It is our latest single and our biggest hit to date. And it sounds amazing.

It’s the same, but different. It’s not bad without the keyboards. In fact, it’s good. Very good. I listen all the way through and Ciro watches me.

“Got any more?”

He takes the phone and queues up another of our hits. Turns out he’s had the entire album redone without Riley in it. Now I know what he means.

Getting a new band member could be a massive disaster. Lots of bands have done it successfully but some have never got over losing a member.

Alessa and Ciro are an acquired taste. Nash and Dylan are brothers, so breaking into their relationship is hard. Getting someone else settled in with us won’t be easy. We've worked with Ashton, the session keyboardist a few times, so he fits in okay, but he's not interested in joining the band.

I take off the headphones and pass them back to Ciro along with his phone. He isn’t even looking as though he wants my opinion. He already knows from how I listened intently.

“You got my vote,” I say, thinking back on my conversation with Riley. How she’d walked away from me swearing she will ruin the band. “Pretty sure you’ll have Dylan’s. It’s Alessa and Nash you need to sway.”

“Alessa is on board,” he says, making me shift to look at him. “We talked last night.”

Okay then. It’s just Nash. Adrestia convinced him yesterday that Riley is better left in the past. Red Alert is about to change for the better.

More fool Riley if she goes ahead with this interview. We’ve moved on, and if this new sound is anything to go by, we’ll be fine without her.

We soon pull up to a stop at the entrance to the Rocky Mountain National Park. It is a fucking gorgeous day and I grab my sunglasses as we all spill out of the bus.

There is a tour guide waiting for us. He introduces himself as a park ranger which amuses the hell out of me and I laugh to myself, drawing Jenna’s eye. I wink and she smiles.

He goes through some safety details. We are all given little packs that contain survival kits, drinks and food. I stash mine in my pockets, noting some of the guys have brought along backpacks.

Elsa has a huge camera around her neck, the kind with a paparazzi sized zoom lens. She is a total nature lover, and in her element here.

Jordan plops his Stetson on his head and holds out his hands to get everyone’s attention. When he doesn’t achieve it, Alessa sticks her fingers in her mouth and lets out a whistle. It’s so piercing, I am sure dogs in New York heard it.

“Whoa, babe,” Jordan looks at her, covering his ear.

“You were not getting job done.”

“That’s not what you said last night.”

She elbows him, and there are a few chuckles around us. Ciro shakes his head.

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