Page 7 of On The Rocks

“I do. It took me a while to place you, though.”

“When did you figure it out?”

“Reversal of Fortune wasn’t exactly my music. Marc Justice is too cocky for my taste. But I passed your poster every night onthe way to the bar I worked at during your residency. It didn’t click until I was in Vegas this past December.”

The residency was what finally broke us.

It had been our ten-year anniversary as a band, and we’d been on the verge of imploding for four of them. Marc, our lead vocals, and Baron Ramos, our bass player, had made the clichéd mistake of sleeping with the same girl—our drummer.

Fuck, it had been a mess.

Irene Carr was sinfully sexy and dead inside, I was pretty sure. She’d gotten off on playing Baron and Marc against one another since the day we’d formed the band. The tension between the three of them had created some of the best lyrics and music we’d ever written.

Until the tension had turned into a powder keg.

I shook off the memory.

“That was two years ago,” I said gruffly.

“I’m a bartender. I have a damn good memory. There a reason you’re keeping it on the downlow?”

I sighed. “People treat me differently when they figure it out.”

“Not sure how a famous rockstar guitarist can fly under the radar at a place like Brothers Three. You know who Laverne’s son-in-law is, right?”

I frowned. “No, why?”

She laughed. The melody of it hit me low, tightening my jeans.

Dammit, this attraction to her was damn inconvenient.

“Her daughter is Lila Crandall.”

The name was vaguely familiar. I tried to flip through my own memory banks. Being a musician was damn incestuous between writing, producing, and the session artists who were used in studio.

When I didn’t reply right away, she sighed. “Nick Crandall.”

“Well, fuck.” We’d never toured with Oblivion, but we’d done plenty of festivals over the years where we’d overlapped.

She twisted in the swing. “Yeah.”

“And that would be why there is a very well-built concert stage just down that path.”

“Look at that, you are a quick one.”

I came out from behind the swing to sit on the other side of it. “Not quick enough.”

More like I hadn’t wanted to know any details. Living in the moment had been one of my greatest superpowers since I’d turned seventeen and signed up for the Navy. It had seemed the easiest way off the big island. There’d been nothing in Hawaii for me. I sure as shit hadn’t wanted to work in hospitality like my mother.

I had learned to keep my head down and do anything to survive.

“Does anyone else know?” She set her empty bottle on the ground and turned to me.

“Justin figured it out when he heard me playing at the Lodge.” I kicked out my foot to set the swing back to swaying. “I couldn’t sleep and was wandering around the common area. I wondered why there were guitars hanging on the wall. Now it makes sense.” It had also been the first time I’d picked up a guitar in two years.

“Lots of music happens at this orchard. You didn’t run into the Oblivion guys during the holiday?”

I shook my head. “I went to Hawaii to see Leilani.”

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