Page 37 of Reverse

Exhaling harshly, I train my smile out of the window until his chuckle finally slows.

“All right, Crowne, I’ve given you eight songs to start speaking,” I summon, turning the music down and staring over at him.

He sighs heavily and nods in resignation but speaks up. “What you want to know is trivial and doesn’t matter.”

“Says you.”

“If it’s about me,personally, then it has nothing to do with the bigger picture. You haven’t even heard my music, so there’s nothing to discuss.”

“And what’s the big picture?”

“The body of work I’ve created. For the most part, I have it all mapped out.”

“How mapped out?”

“Sixty-three songs,” he says simply as my jaw drops.

“There are sixty-three songs on one album?”

“No, I’ve recorded sixty-three so far.”

“You’re fucking joking, right? That’s like the equivalent of what . . . five albums?”

“Yeah,” he says, glancing over at me for a few lingering seconds.

“How long have you been recording music?”

“Since I was fifteen.”

“So, your band—”

“I don’t have a band,” he mumbles as if he’s embarrassed by it.

“Wait . . . you play all the instruments yourself?”

He drops his eyes, his voice low. “I grew up playing with professional musicians, so it’s not that big of a deal.”

I give him a hard stare. “Oh, bullshit. Don’t try to humble your way out of this, Easton. You lied to me when you said you weren’t a prodigy.”

“You haven’t even heard it,” he defends.

“I’m suspecting you know exactly how good it is. You do realize that amount of music is considered a lifetime’s worth of work for some musicians,right?”

He scoffs. “Because, if this does well, I can kick back and take it easy,right?” Anxious energy rolls off him as his posture tightens.

“So, when you say you have no choice—”

“I mean it,” he says, glancing over at me. “I can’t sit still for long without playing, listening, writing, being a part of it. I’d be empty without it. I’ve felt that since I was very young. But instead of expecting open doors, I worked my ass off, doing everything I could to pave my own way.”

“How so?”

He remains silent for a stretch before finally speaking.

“When I was nine, we were on vacation in Lake Tahoe at one of my parents’ very wealthy, very affluent friends, and Dad found me washing one of said friend’s boats for cash.”

“Why?”

“Mom had just taken me on a trip to Mexico to visit family, and it was there I recognized the different types of social barriers between people and the mindset it must take to get from one place to the next. It wasn’t the first time I was exposed to the way other people live, but it was there it resonated with me most. That’s when I realized the bars behind the gated community I grew up in were exactly that,bars, no matter how shiny they were. That’s also when I started to resent the separation from the rest of the world. Even feeling that, I also recognized how hard my parents broke their backs to get us behind them, to keep all they had worked for and built together,safe.”

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