Page 39 of Echoes of a Muted Song

“Can’t shower yet,” I reminded him as we slowly drew apart.

He looked like he wanted to protest, until it dawned on him why I said what I said.

“Need to find a mirror and make sure I look presentable after you fuckers jumped all over me like you’ve got on home training.”

“You’ve been around us long enough to know that the only ones with home training are Beast and Beethoven,” he grumbled, voice already growing difficult to hear.

I nudged him and pointed at his pocket, a reminder that if he wanted to continue this conversation he’d have to use that.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, only instead of pulling it out, he just slung an arm around me and guided me back in so I could unruffle myself before I had to get back up on stage again.

Inside, Jagger and his boys were nowhere to be seen, which meant they were at the base of the steps, ready for their set to be announced. Good,that gave me time to find a mirror and straighten out my twisted, sweat-soaked t-shirt.

“Here,” Whiskey said, passing me one from a box of merch on his way past.

He headed up our crew of roadies the way Sully ran security, and things had never run smoother. Draven passed me a bottle of water and I chugged half of it before passing it back, mindful of how shitty it felt to try and sing with stomach cramps. Oh my goddess, I thought I was gonna die the last time that happened.

I finger-combed my hair back into place, mostly. One stubborn lock kept refusing to stay put. Too short to tuck behind my ear, I was just going to have to deal with it or put my hoodie back on, which wasn’t happening. Outside might have been chilly, but beneath the lights I’d felt like I was roasting. I wasn’t about to subject myself to that again, even if it was only for one song.

“You look amazing,” Draven murmured against my ear.

I turned to narrow my eyes at him and give him shit for not using his device, but he shut me up with a kiss on the nose, right before he ruffled the hair I’d just styled. “There, perfect.”

“Seriously?!”

He caught my hands when I went to fix it again and tugged me flush against him. Behind us, I could hear Ozzy ask if there was any honey mustard laying around, while Dash suggested Ilengthen the intro to “Ballads and Backstabbers, one of the song’s we’d been working on, to bring it more in line with “Bullets and Backstabbers,” it’s sister song and one we’d performed early in the set.

This was what relief felt like.

My world returned to whatever semblance of normal was actuallynormalfor guys like us. Our lives were a series of stops along the highway, new people to meet every day, and the mystery and mayhem we had the chance to experience as we filled in the gaps between shows. Every word we wrote, every song we crafted, was built upon those moments. It was how we kept the music fresh. We spent more time in hotel beds than we did in the ones back at our apartments but that was our choice to do.

That’s what freedom was.

Waking up each day with the choice of how you spent it. Yes, there were consequences that came with the choices, and yes, there were times when we weighed those consequences and still made poor choices, or decided to gamble, tempt the fates, and hope we didn’t get caught. But there were also times when the choices were simple, but precious none the less. Because it was the choice to spend time with the people I loved, doing the thing that had saved my life more than once. It was the choice to love the man who held me in his arms, and man, did I fucking love him. And it was the choice to not dwell on the bullshitI’d just been through. I’d wasted enough time on all that. The music and the man were what mattered now and the way I saw it, he and our merry band of misfits had one wild and winding road ahead.

Chapter 20

(Draven)

Fuming.

Pissed.

Neither seemed strong enough for what I felt as I listened to a simpering weasel of a manager explain why there was almost twice the line that there should have been at this point in the signing. We’d committed to three hours, from ten in the morning until one in the afternoon, to give the band a nice chunk of time off before the show tonight. It was 11:28 and things were rapidly morphing into a raging shit show.

“We never expected for this to happen, either,” Dave, the manager, explained. “It’s rare that signings sell out, I mean, we come close all the time, but selling out completely, that only happens a couple times a year.”

“Only this one sold out,” I conveyed through my device.

“Yes and so didthe one last weekend.”

“I still don’t understand why you keep bringing last weekend up. That has nothing to do with us.”

“Well, you see, it, um, sort of does,” Dave hedged.

“I think you’d better explain what the hell is going on here.”

“Yes, I, um, guess I’d better,” Dave muttered, eyes downcast as he shuffled a few things around on his desk.

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