Page 90 of Broken Chorus

Penny for your thoughts?”

Hawk glanced over to see Micah leaning against the picnic table where Hawk had been lounging for hours, a blank notebook open in front of him as he stared out over the scrub brush and a strange cactus that looked to be trying to climb up the canyon wall.

“Doubt they’re worth that much,” Hawk muttered.

“I take it the lyrics aren’t going well.”

“More like they haven’t gotten started, yet” Hawk admitted. “So much for silence being inspiration.”

He was still trying to find his footing, but it felt good to be on the road with them and the kids, even if it was only temporary. It turned out that they loved camping and with so many other people around to help herd them and keep any of them from wandering off, Hawk found himself with actual downtime, something that had been almost non-existent over the past several months.

“Then it’s a good thing Declan’s had better luck, with a healthy dose of help from me and Aaron.”

Blinking, Hawk stared from the page, to Micah, struggling to grasp what he had just heard. The time up at the cabin had brought them all closer, but he hadn’t pictured them at the writing together stage yet. Somehow, Declan had managed to get not only Aaron, but Micah a counselor who didn’t mind doing telehealth sessions, so they had someone they could talk to who’d be able to offer them healthy coping methods for the turmoil each was experiencing. Hawk was giving some serious consideration to talking to her too. Dealing with the loss of his brother and the many changes in his life was something he was still struggling with on a daily basis and as much as it painted him to admit, he needed a sounding board and right now Aaron didn’t deserve to have that heaped on him when he was still processing his own traumas.

“So how much of it did you work out?” Hawk asked as he arched his back, stretching and feeling the vertebrae pop.

He rolled his neck too, the popping bringing relief along with a healthy reminder that he’d forgotten to snag some added padding for his bed the last time they’d rolled past a Supercenter. And yeah, Aaron and Kelly had given him shit about going soft and getting too used to sleeping in his comfy California king back home. They weren’t wrong, either. He’dbarely been able to walk without hobbling after the night they’d spent in tents, despite how much the kids had enjoyed it. He’d firmly put his foot down when they’d begged to do it again.

With less than a week until Rocktoberfest, the band had split their time between practicing and writing new material and holy shit, this would be the third song in that time that Micah and Aaron had written together. Cade had been awesome about helping Hawk with the kids while the rest of them were busy, and the suggestion that his guest cabin be expanded to include an additional music room in addition to another set of bedrooms had been met with enthusiasm.

While Hawk was delighted that they’d found cohesion, some of the lyrics were downright heartbreaking and it wrecked Hawk’s soul to get even a glimpse at some of the things those two had endured. He’d known Aaron had been carting around his trauma for years, but it was slowly leaking out, in positive, creative ways that were finally allowing him to cope with them. Like everything, it would take time. In fact, time was exactly what had been on his mind when Micah interrupted him.

After several long conversations, they’d agreed that keeping the name of the old band, despite the fact that Hawk would be contributing to the music, too, wouldn’t exactly give them the fresh start Kelly had been after, so he was off somewhere contemplating names seeing as how they were listed on the Rocktoberfest lineup as Blissfully Immune Redux. They weren’t Blissfully Immune anymore,orNear Exile, the band name they’d originally started with.

But the idea of naming themselves Last Chance seemed desperate, while Time Warp came off like a cheap 80’s hair band, so he’d left Hawk at the table and headed up the trail, hoping to come back with something useable.

Last night, Declan had suggested Continuum, as a bridge between the old band and the new, and Kelly was still mullingthat over and struggling to decide if they should add anything more to it, while Aaron and Micah had wanted to go in a completely different direction.

“Earth to Hawk…hello? Are you going to come listen to the new song or what?”

“Sorry, I think all this heat is getting to me.”

“Isn’t that why you suggested we come out early, to try and get acclimated to the weather?”

Hawk chuckled at that, because yeah, it had been his idea and a way of filling the weeklong break that Liam and Ella had from school. “About the only thing I’ve gotten acclimated to so far is the need to keep beverages close by so I can down one every ten minutes or as soon as I sweat out the last one, whichever comes first.”

“Yeah, we’ve been guzzling water too. We’re going to do a lot of that before we go onstage and then rush the nearest bathroom as soon as we’re through.”

“Somehow, I doubt you’ll need to piss much with as much as you’ll sweat during the performance. Last year most of us played shirtless, and while it helped a little with the heat, we sweated off all the sunscreen and wound up looking a bit crispy when we were through.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing we’re playing a night set,” Micah said. “How’d we get so lucky, being that we’re unknown, at least in this incarnation?”

“Because they went by who the band was last year, and that garnered us a spot after dark.”

“Which I am eternally grateful for,” Micha said. “Now come on before they send a search party.”

“You mean Cade,” Hawk said, chuckling some. “You seriously need to put that man on the payroll. He’s proving to be extremely versatile and resourceful as hell.”

“Thanks,” Cade remarked, his voice startling them both.

“Did I mention comes complete with this nasty habit of walking against the wind,” Hawk muttered beneath his breath.

“It’s not like I go out of my way to sneak up on people,” Cade protested.

“Naaa, it just seems to come natural to you,” Micah murmured. “Like the way you scared the piss outta me this morning.”

“Not my fault you were lost in a daydream when I wandered out with my coffee, which I wouldn’t have had to do if you hadn’t confiscated the sugar jar and brought it out to the table in the first place.”

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