Page 8 of First Verse

CHAPTERTHREE

wilder

From behind dark sunglasses, I watch Evangeline and Rye chatting on the other side of my parents’ backyard. They’re standing not ten feet from the sycamore tree.

Ourtree.

My fingers squeeze the neck of the bottle in my hand, my knuckles cracking from the force. If it weren’t for the bruises beneath Evangeline’s eyes and the furtive glances she’s been sending me since she got here, I’d think she was unaffected by blowing up our lives last night.

“Whatever we were is done. We broke it. It’s time to move on.”

She didn’t break it, though. I did. And like an absolute asshole, last night I took what was broken, lit it on fire, and kicked the ashes into our eyes.

But it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been a saint. From the second Rye told me she was leaving the band, I knew there was nothing I could do to stop her. Once Evangeline makes up her mind about something—from a lyric to what she wants for dinner—there’s no arguing with her. No changing her mind.

And she’s done with me.

Distracted by the heaviness in my chest and the way the sunlight glints off her pale hair, I startle when someone sits in the Adirondack chair beside mine. My dad stretches his tattooed legs over the grass, crossing his ankles. I don’t look at him, instead letting my gaze wander over the backyard and the dozen or so people I’ve known most or all my life.

My dad’s bandmates—Nick Henderson, Matt Sullivan, and Jackson Everett—are playing some weirdly complicated frisbee game. For dudes in their fifties, they’re pretty fit. I hope I’m half as active as they are when I’m their age. Their wives, including my mom, are sprawled on lounge chairs near the giant pool where six kids between the ages of eleven and seventeen are currently competing for the biggest cannonball.

The younger kids periodically call for Eva and Rye to join them in the water. They won’t ask me, though. Even if I wasn’t basically hiding on the far side of the yard, everyone knows I’m not much for group activities. Sometimes—today, as a prime example—I wonder why I still come to these things.

“You’ve been avoiding me all day.”

My dad’s voice is mellow, but I feel the pressure of his stare on the side of my face. I take a sip of lukewarm root beer, wishing it were alcohol, then look at him—at the famous, handsome face that still gets photographed and drooled over, the dark hair without a single gray, and the bronze eyes that are currently filled with concern.

“Don’t take it personally. I avoid most people.” I tip the bottle his way. “I am, after all, the son of Julian Ashburn.”

I hate the worry creasing his brow. Right now, I hate pretty much everything, including the fact I look so much like him. My hair is curlier and my eyes are my mom’s, but the tabloids aren’t wrong—I’m basically my father’s clone.

He opens his mouth, but I speak first.

“Please don’t spout some AA slogan about how we’re only as sick as our secrets. I told Mom what happened when she cornered me right as I walked in the door, and I know she told you.”

“Fair enough.” His gaze veers away as he settles deeper in the chair. Thinking he’s done grilling me, I relax a little. Then he says, “There are times I wish you weren’t, you know.”

I frown. “Weren’t what?”

“So much like me.”

Yeah, same.

Only my reasons are different than his. I detest the constant comparisons between my music and his, but he’s talking about the similarities in our temperaments. My moodiness and isolation, especially when I’m working on songs. My tendency to horde my private thoughts and mask myself with a false persona in public. All of which makes him and my mom worry that in addition to following in his musical footsteps, I’ll walk his darker roads, too.

I’m not stupid; the concern is valid. Addiction and music are intertwined in our family tree. Mom was spared the genetic bullet that took her own mother when she was a kid, but Dad was a crazy alcoholic during his teens. Thankfully, he straightened his life out when he was twenty and has been sober longer than I’ve been alive. He’s told me enough stories over the years to make me both appreciate the fact I’ve never seen him drink and have a healthy wariness of my own habits.

But he’s wrong—they’re wrong. I’m not him. I can handle my shit.

Memories of that night in Vegas arise, but I shove them down. I know I made mistakes on tour. I overindulged. We all did, even Evangeline. I’d never seen her as drunk as she was the night I found her and Eddie in a hotel hallway dry humping each other.

The thought of them sneaking away on a different night, of him taking her virginity, makes me want to kill someone.

Preferably Eddie.

My eyes find Evangeline again, but I look away before she can feel me watching her.

“I know you’re angry at her, Wild,” murmurs my dad, “but I’m sure she has good reasons for stepping away. Give it a little time. Don’t let this end your friendship.”

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