Page 28 of Wylder and the Almost Rockstar
“I’ve got time.”
Logan glanced at Killian’s door. “Hey, Killer, we’re going out, you can have the room back.”
“Thanks!” Killian called from his room.
“Where are we going?” Wylder stood.
“Coffee run.” He glanced down at her unicorn clad feet.
“I go everywhere in these.” Wylder shrugged. “Unless you’re embarrassed to be seen with the girl in the unicorn slippers.”
Logan chuckled. “I’m happy to be seen with you, Wylds.” He grabbed his jacket, and they headed out for the coffee shop at the center of campus.
Wylder shuffled down the sidewalk beside him, ignoring the stares. “So, long story?”
“Yeah.” Logan sighed. “Sometimes even I don’t know how it happened. But I guess it started when our mom died. She overdosed. We were twelve, and Bash was seventeen.”
“That must have been awful. How did he manage to keep you all together when he was so young?”
“Bash is smart. You know that. He’d already graduated high school when Mom died. We lived with our uncle at first, but he wasn’t exactly equipped for raising his junkie sister’s children. Uncle Bruce and Bash butted heads. Our uncle wanted to put me and Luke in boarding school, and he wanted Bash to go away to college so he didn’t have to deal with raising any of us.
“Our grandparents left enough money to pay for Bash’s school and a trust fund for me and Logan when we turn eighteen, but that was it. There wasn’t money for boarding school, so Uncle Bruce wanted to use Bash’s college fund for us and promised to help Bash with his expenses for going to a state school.”
“Didn’t he go to school online, mostly?” Wylder walked slowly beside Logan, not wanting to push him too much, but she needed to know how this all happened. That was the only way she would be able to help them out of it.
“He did later. But Our grandparents made huge sacrifices to send him to an Ivy League school. Bash was smart enough to really make something of himself, and they wanted that for him. But Uncle Bruce… he wasn’t the parenting type. He wanted to do right by us, but he wasn’t in it for the long haul, day to day with twins who were barely in middle school at the time. So we left.
“Bash got himself emancipated at seventeen, and he petitioned the court for full custody of us. It got kind of nasty there for a while, but he fought to keep us together.” Logan let out a big sigh. “Bash got a job, used his college fund to get us a decent place to live, and for a few years we scraped by while Bash took online classes and kept us clothed and fed.”
“Wow, that’s kind of amazing. Most brothers wouldn’t do that.” Wylder was lucky enough to have a brother who would have moved heaven and earth to keep them together had they lost their parents at a young age, but not everyone had that.
“We didn’t get along with Uncle Bruce back then.” Logan held the door to the coffee shop open for her. “Not that we get along with him much better these days.”
Wylder and Logan approached the counter and ordered vanilla lattes and cinnamon scones.
“We were dirt poor back then. Bash held us together, but I don’t think we ever knew just how bad it got. He was desperate to finish school and get a decent job. Between his crap jobs and school, we hardly saw him except when he was yelling at us to do better in school.”
“How did music enter into the equation?” Wylder took her drink from the barista, and they headed to a corner table.
“Luke and I used to spend a lot of time together at home, and we both loved music. We’d write songs together, and then we’d play them for Bash whenever he was home. We didn’t have a television or a stereo, so we entertained ourselves.
“The thing is, Luke can sing. He’s good.”
“But you’re better.” Wylder picked at her scone.
“That’s what the music people always said when we really started pursuing a career. Bash dragged us all over Memphis—that’s where we lived at the time. I think it was his desperation that drove us. We were fifteen, and he still had a year of college to finish, and we were broke. Dead broke and hungry. You can imagine three young guys eating nothing but Ramen and dry cereal.”
“What about your uncle? Didn’t he help?”
“Uncle Bruce wasn’t in the picture then.” Logan picked at the cardboard sleeve of his cup. “We were good enough to make it, Wylder. Everyone who heard us said so, but my stage fright was crippling. We had so much riding on it, but I couldn’t handle the pressure. We were the perfect performer… if you could take Luke’s stage presence and my voice.”
“And that’s what you did.”
“Not at first. Bash went to our uncle for help. Bruce is an entertainment lawyer. He’d moved to Nashville after he and Bash stopped speaking. Bash thought he might know some professionals we could work with to help us with our individual weaknesses. He moved us to Nashville and pestered Uncle Bruce until he finally agreed to hear us sing.
“All he saw were dollar signs when he looked at Luke. It was his idea, just to get our foot in the door. It was supposed to be a gimmick to get us in front of the right people so they could see our potential as a duo. We wrote our songs together. Luke played guitar, and I recorded our demos. But Luke went to the meetings and the auditions without me.”
“He was good with the schmoozing.” Wylder could understand it now. “And it snowballed from there.”
