Page 10 of Claimed By the Rockstars: Part One
I wince as Rex whirls on him, and for a second I think he might actually lunge. "Have I? Have I beenwound tight? My brother's music is being whored out by some pretty boy in leather pants and I'm supposed to be, what, calm?"
"We don't know the full story—" Rafael starts.
"I know enough,” Rex grits out. "I know Stephen Hughes took Nash's notebooks. I know those songs on that stage last night were Nash's. And I know Stephen’s new pet is involved, and they’re both going to pay for it."
The temperature in the bus seems to drop. Rafael's jaw clenches, a muscle jumping in his cheek. "So what's your plan?" He crosses his arms. "Beat the truth out of him? That'll go over well."
Rex's laugh is bitter and sharp. "No." He takes a long drink of water, and I can see his hand trembling slightly with suppressed rage even as he heads for his bunk. "We're playing with them again in two weeks. I'll be watching. I'll find his weakness, his pressure points. By the time I'm done, I'll know exactly how to destroy this shitty rip-off band from the inside out."
The door slams hard enough to rattle the dishes.
Rafael and I sit in heavy silence.
"He's getting worse," Rafael says quietly, running a hand through his dark hair.
"Yeah." I push a piece of salmon around with my chopstick, my appetite gone.
Rafael nods, accepting the non-answer. "Rex is going to do something stupid."
"The question is whether we try to stop him or just minimize the collateral damage."
"Canwe even stop him?"
"No," I admit, standing to clean up. "We can't stop him. But maybe we can redirect him. Find out the truth about Bells before Rex decides to go nuclear."
Nash wouldn't want his music to be a weapon. And I have to find out if Bells is a thief or another victim before Rex burns everything to the ground in Nash's name.
Nash used to say his brother could dismantle someone psychologically before they even realized they were under attack.
That Rex hadn't been the same since the accident.
Nash let it slip one night. That the real reason Rex won't eat with anyone around is because the damage to the right side of his face makes it difficult, that the side of his mouth is fucked up—fucked up enough that Nash didn’t even want to talk about it. And Rex is humiliated by the thought of anyone seeing him struggle to do something simple and normal like eat.
But all Nash could gather the strength to tell me about the accident was that he was driving too fast and wrapped his car around a tree.
That Rex was in the passenger's side and he was burned by flames and fuel coming in through the window.
That Rex almost died, and wishes he had.
Nash was drunk off his ass that night and distraught, so I didn't press him for more details. I figured there would be another chance to talk about it when he wasn't so fucked up. Figured there would be time to reassure him that he didn't need to let the guilt eat him alive anymore.
We didn't have time for shit.
Chapter
Five
BELLS
"You good?" Jake asks for the third time in ten minutes, hovering like a mother hen with too much product in his hair. "You look pale."
"I'm always pale, dipshit. It's part of my aesthetic." I adjust the leather collar that hides my scar, checking for the hundredth time that it's secure. The backstage area reeks of stale beer, the walls sweating with decades of accumulated rock-and-roll sins and stains.
I’m not actuallygood.I’m taking enough suppressants to knock out a horse and pretending everything's fine while my body slowly rebels against the chemical straightjacket I've forced it into.
Mike's warming up on his practice pad, the rapid-fire paradiddles echoing off the concrete walls. Ethan's in the corner doing his pre-show meditation bullshit, which mostly consists of him vaping and scrolling through Instagram. Business as usual for The Reverie, except for the part where we're about to share a stage with the band whose dead member's music we might be stealing.
"Five minutes to sound check!" some harried stage manager calls out, and my stomach does this weird flip that has nothing to do with stage fright.
