Page 2 of Heart Break Her

My sister, or me?

“You’re cut off,” she says. “Any more booze and you’ll forget the lyrics. Or worse, piss yourself on stage.”

“I performed Burning Man stoned as fuck and drunk off my ass and didn’t forget the lyrics. Pretty sure I’ll be fine singing for this ABC special.”

The roadie does a shuffle forward, and Eloise shakes her head, forcing them to retreat. Guess that answers my question.

“Buzzkill.”

Being a twin blows sometimes. Eloise is always reading my mind and shit. Thinking that just because we shared a womb for nine months, it allows her some sort of authority over what I do with my body and career.

Screw her. I’m older by two minutes.

Not to mention that every time our mom went on another bender, I was the one who basically raised Eloise. Working more than I went to school. Stealing when my paychecks weren’t enough to get by. Putting together the band that finally got us out of our small town and set us free.

I didn’t have to let her join, even if she was the best bass player I knew. But she was my sister, and I wasn’t about to leave her behind. Except now we’re tied in every way, as siblings and as musicians. And as much as I love her, her opinion gets really fucking old sometimes.

Eloise can shove it and keep her twin, mind-reading voodoo tricks to herself. I don’t need anyone knowing the messed-up shit in my head.

Besides, she has no room to judge me before a show like this. Unplugged performances are her thing, not mine, and she knows it. This kind of stage is her realm, her domain. She loves when the music is stripped down to its barest form, giving off all the feelings.

She’s good with that crap—feeling.

It’s why the women who come to see Enemy Muse perform always gravitate toward Eloise. Even if they do ultimately end up in one of the guys’ beds by the end of the night, she’s the one they want to actually meet and have a conversation with. She’s the one they want to get to know.

Eloise isrelatable.

“You ready, man?” Rome comes up behind me and slaps me on the shoulder.

That’s all it takes. My dumbass head is swimming in whiskey and loses all sense of direction, sending me toppling over.

“Fuck, bro.” Noah grabs my arm before I hit the ground, while Rome moves in front of me to block the view.

Like the crew doesn’t already know I’m trashed.

“I didn’t know we were already partying,” Rome says with a shit-eating grin. “When did you start drinking?”

“Yesterday.”

Noah cocks an eyebrow at Eloise, but she just shakes her head behind a curtain of sandy brown hair, refusing to even look at me.

The band is no stranger to what’s become of my pre-show rituals. What started as a celebratory shot with the crew before the show turned into a lot more after Sacramento.

By the time my head started to process what happened on that tour, Adrian had us shooting around the globe from one show to the next as a distraction. Or for money. It didn’t really matter. I was jacked in the head through most of it.

The world tour was perfect, incredible, everything I ever wanted out of my career. But it was also really fucking blurry.

Rome, Noah, and I had partied like we deserved to be worshipped because that’s how it felt. The drugs, the music, the groupies. They loved us.

I didn’t hear any of them complaining as we rounded the globe, losing track of daytime, nighttime, what country we were in, what century it was. We were all enjoying the revolving door of beautiful women and topping it off with anything we could get our heads fucked up on.

The entire band was right there with me—apart from Eloise—and I embraced it.

Anything to take my mind off the Sacramento-sized hole bleeding out in my chest.

Anything to take my mind off of Myth.

The problem wasn’t the world tour, it was what happened when we got back to the States. Rome tamped it down, and Noah went to rehab, so they expected me to get my shit together as well.

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