Page 60 of Final Serenade

My anxiety was coming back. I didn’t know what time it was, but it felt a lot like noon. I had things to do and I had an event to cover in less than eight hours.

“My mother’s dying,” Frank said. It was random. Like everything else with him.

Heaviness filled my chest. I waited, but he stayed quiet.

“Janet?” I clarified. I didn’t remember seeing her at The Regency.

“No, my real mother.”

My mind went blank for a second. “I thought you didn’t know your real mother.”

“I have vague memories of her. Social services took me away when I was three. It’s all mostly a blur.” A pause. “But after the crash, I decided to look her up.”

“Why?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure.” He shrugged, and his eyes looked tired. So did his face. “I guess maybe I wanted to find out why she had me if she’d never wanted me in the first place. Or maybe I wanted to rub my success in her face.”

My chest was tight, my throat closed up. The words in my head were all wrong. There was nothing I could do or say to change the way he felt at that moment. I understood him. I knew first-hand what being unwanted by one, or both, of your parents meant.

Frank and I were equally different yet the same.

“Either way, she’s past the point where my Grammys can impress her.”

I sighed. “How come?”

“She had a stroke a couple of years ago. Drugs. She’s in a convalescent home back in Arizona, but I don’t think she has much time left.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s but hers. She wasn’t exactly a paragon of healthy living. She had traces of twelve different drugs in her system when she was brought into the ER. I’m glad Billy and Janet were the ones who raised me. I wouldn’t have known music if not for them.”

I didn’t know what to do except hug him. Then we sat there quietly for a little while longer.

“I have a few things I need to take care of,” he said. “Roman will take you home.”

“I can Uber.”

He shook his head, and his tone was firm. “This is non-negotiable. It’s safer that way. Trust me.”

“Okay.” I waited for him to say more.

“The next few days will be very busy for me and the guys,” Frank went on, his hand tangled in my hair. “We need to finalize some stuff. We’re playing three shows at the Forum at the end of November.”

“And you haven’t announced anything yet?”

“Press release will go out on Monday morning.”

That, right there, made me feel special.

“See, that’s what you get when you sleep with the front man.” Frank smirked as if he had just read my mind. “All the inside info before the rest of the world.”

I laughed. He pulled me into a kiss. This, the insanity of us, was startling and breathtaking and I dreaded the day it would end.

Roman drove me home in the Range Rover. He was polite but quiet. Pleasantly exhausted after spending all morning with Frank, I sat in the back and skimmed through my emails and angry messages from Levi, who apparently had been waiting for my write-up from yesterday’s show since nine this morning. Isabella’s set was muddled, like a foggy haze, and I blamed Frank for it. Obviously, the dining room table sex had impressed me that much. And then some.

There was a missed call from Mom and two texts from Ashton. Little brother wanted to know if he could borrow twenty bucks.

The first thing I did was message one of our guys, Stewie, to ask him if he wanted to cover tonight’s show instead of me. He did.

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