Page 45 of Claimed By the Rockstars: Part One
The pack house is a condo at the top of one of those modern high-rise buildings that looks like someone stacked a bunch of glass boxes and called it architecture. Obscenely expensive, paid for when Vespyr was at its peak before Nash died and everything went to shit.
We all live here when we're in Seattle, though Rex keeps to his suite like it's a fucking fortress. It's technically in Nash's name still, because none of us have been able to face the legal bullshit of transferring ownership.
I punch in the code and usher Bells inside.
The condo is exactly as we left it this morning—which is to say, a disaster area. Phoenix's drum magazines scattered across the coffee table, my bass propped against the couch, takeout containers that may or may not have achieved sentience piled in the kitchen trash.
"Sorry about the mess," I mutter, kicking a path through the debris. "We're not exactly domestic goddesses around here."
Bells doesn't respond. He's stopped in the entryway, staring at the space like he's charting exits in case he has to escape in a flash.
"There's four bedrooms," I tell him, doing the tour guide thing because it's better than acknowledging the elephant in the room. "Phoenix has the one on the left. I'm in the one next to it. Rex has the suite at the far end, but he keeps it locked and I'm pretty sure it's booby-trapped. He basically lives like a hermit in there."
I pause at the closed door at the end of the hall. My hand hovers over the knob.
"We don't have a guest room, so..." I take a breath. "You'll have to use Nash's room."
Bells's eyes widen slightly. "Nash's room?"
"Yeah. We haven't... nobody's been in there since." I turn the knob, pushing the door open for the first time in months.
The air that escapes feels wrong. Not stale exactly, butemptyin a way that makes my chest tight. Like the room itself knows its occupant isn't coming back.
Everything is exactly as Nash left it. The bed neatly made with dark blue sheets. An acoustic guitar propped in the corner. A half-empty water glass on the nightstand that nobody's had the heart to move.
But it's the absence that hits hardest. The room feels hollowed out, like someone scooped out all the life and left just the shell. No clothes thrown over the chair. No smell of cologneanymore, or that weird herbal tea with an unpronounceable name Nash was always drinking. No music playing softly from the speakers to either side of the massive sleeping Buddha statue on his dresser.
Just... nothing.
"Fuck," I breathe, because I wasn't ready for how hard this would hit.
Bells steps past me into the room, moving carefully like he's in a museum. "This feels… weird."
"Yeah." I lean against the doorframe, unable to fully enter. "Phoenix and I keep saying we should pack it up, donate shit, whatever. But then we get to the door and..." I shrug. "Can't do it."
"Rex doesn't come in here?"
"Rex doesn't even come down this hall." I watch as Bells sets his bag down gently on the floor beside the bed. "He'd lose his shit if he knew you were staying in here."
"Then why?—"
"Because maybe..." I run a hand through my hair. "Maybe it's time someone used this room. Nash would hate that we've turned it into a shrine."
Bells sits on the edge of the bed, testing it like it might collapse. The mattress barely dips under his weight. "Tell me about him. The real him, not the version Rex talks about."
I move to lean against the desk, careful not to disturb the notebooks. "Nash was complicated. Brilliant and broken in equal measure. He could write a song that would make you weep, then drink himself unconscious because he couldn't handle the feelings it brought up."
"Sounds familiar," Bells murmurs.
"He carried a lot of guilt," I continue, choosing my words carefully. "Like, crushing amounts of it. I never really understood why—he'd just get these looks sometimes, especiallywhen he was watching Rex. Like he was personally responsible for every bad thing that ever happened to him."
I'm wondering now if it's related to Rex's face, but I keep it to myself. Even though Bells must know, too, it feels like a completely off-limits conversation, as if Rex will somehow overhear us and materialize through the wall like a fucking ghost to punch my lights out.
I pick up one of Nash's dusty notebooks and flip through pages of lyrics and chord progressions. "But he was also funny. Wicked sense of humor when he wasn't drowning in his own head. He'd do these impressions of record executives that would have Phoenix crying with laughter."
"Phoenix and Nash were close," Bells observes.
"Yeah," I say carefully. "They had... a special connection. Sometimes I wondered if there was more to it, you know? The way they'd look at each other, how Phoenix could calm Nash down when no one else could. But..." I shrug. "Not my business to speculate."
