Page 35 of Wild Obsession

“What the hell was that tonight?” he says.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You nearly had us playing double time. That wasn’t nothing.”

I shrug his hand off me. “I had a bad night. It happens.”

“Yeah, it does. It happens to all of us, but the rest of us don’t make it everyone else’s problem.”

The rest of the band filters in. Stoner Levi looks away, wanting no part of the fight, but the other two, Dan and Shawn, glare at me as hard as Jacob.

“Emmett is going to be pissed,” Dan says.

“Emmett is a manager, not a musician,” I spit.

Dan frowns. “He was a musician first, you know. You could stand to treat him a little better.”

“He could stand to treat everyone a little better,” Jacob says. “Starting with his own bandmates.”

I don’t feel like dealing with this. First I have to manage Tim’s feelings, now my band’s. I’m not anyone’s therapist.

I shove past them, escaping the greenroom. I don’t know exactly where I’m going. Somewhere where I don’t know anyone and they’ll pour me a drink that’s cheap and strong.

“Hey,” Jacob calls after me as I storm down the hall. “Where are you going?”

I flip him off over my shoulder.

“I don’t know,” I hear Jacob murmur to one of the others. “It’s probably best to let him go.”

It is best. That’s what everyone has always done. My parents. Tim. They’ve all let me go, like I’m a bit of trash floating down a river, something ugly and dirty they wish they hadn’t seen. It’s better for everyone if I simply disappear.

Chapter Seventeen

Tim

THE TOUR STUMBLES NORTH. And I do mean stumbles. It isn’t just me who’s off after the debacle in Baltimore. The mood spreads through the whole tour like a poisonous cloud, infecting everyone’s performances, even throwing the crew off-balance. When Kevin drops an amp on his foot one night and has to go to the hospital, it nearly ends the entire tour. Everyone is shaken and quiet, not because injuries never happen — tours are long and everyone tends to get run-down eventually — but rather because that particular injury is the most tangible, physical proof any of us could receive that the vibes are all wrong.

I’m certainly not helping matters myself. Ever since the night Keannen overheard that phone call with my parents, I’ve been caught up in my own head. Even Cameron, ourtoken broody boy, notices how quiet I’m being, but when he attempts to ask me about it, I brush him off. I don’t relish the idea of talking about being a dumb virgin with a bruised heart, especially not with a guy who’s basically married to the man of his dreams.

I sulk in silence, and I play like shit, but so does everyone else so it doesn’t matter as much as it should. We get through our shows, at least. Erin’s voice is so powerful it allows me to hope that maybe no one but us notices.

Until, of course, Emmett calls us and asks what the hell is going on.

“We’re just tired,” Erin says on the bus one day.

“You don’t have time to be tired,” Emmett says.

Kelsey rolls her eyes, but Erin shoots her a look that dares her to speak her sentiments aloud.

“I get it,” Erin says, “but everyone is run down. We’re in the back half of this thing. It happens.”

“You can’t afford for it to happen,” Emmett says. “The reviews aren’t bad, but they aren’t what they should be. This is a sold out tour, a chance to get yourselves to the next level — and Baptism Emperor too.”

I cringe at the mention of Keannen’s band. I’ve been doing my best not to think about them, and him especially. We’ve managed to mostly avoid each other, or at least avert our eyes when we end up in the same room. Unlike during the beginning of the tour, it really is like we’re strangers now. Certainly, two people who were so close in high schoolwouldn’t be sneaking around pretending they don’t know each other as adults.

Yeah, if only.

I can’t shake our conversation from that night in front of the hotel. It was so stupid of me to say those things I said. Sure, I’d been thinking them, but I knew he didn’t feel that way about me. I knew he never will. Yet I opened my big, stupid mouth anyway.

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