Page 38 of Sycopation
So did Zavier. But how to get Carl to ease up greatly depended on his motivation. However, he knew better than to keep this conversation going, so he let that part drop.
Still, he was curious about Carl’s former band. Didn’t take that much searching to pull up some videos of Tenacious Dreams in concert. Fuck if the younger version of Carl didn’t look slightly like Ray. Long-limbed and blond. Torn jeans with an edge of punk. Ray wore it so much better, though.
“Well, would you look at this?” He held up his tablet. A moment later, they were all crowded around, and he tapped Play.
The clip was almost embarrassing to watch. Yeah, there was a reason Carl’s band never made it past one song. The fire, the flare, wasn’t there.
When the video ended, Dom leaned back and scratched his head. “That was...okay. I guess.”
That pretty much summed it up. Band wasn’t horrible. Rhythms were serviceable and they hit most of the notes right. But even in the good videos, there was a tinny quality to Carl’ssinging, a strain that scraped against the melody he tried to belt out.
They played a few others, and they were the same. Their one song was catchy enough, but in concert it fell flat.
Ray kept staring at the tablet screen. “I’m not... I don’t look like that, do I?”
Mish’s bark of laughter rang out loud and joyful. “Oh, Ray, honey.” She ruffled his hair. “You look nothing like that. Night and day, kiddo.”
That seemed to appease Ray, given his chuckle and red cheeks.
After they passed the tablet around again to get their fill of the spectacle, they all settled back down into quiet pursuits, but nothing on his tablet interested Zavier until an email from Nadia appeared in his inbox.
Here you go, darling boy.
Links. Many links that took him to an article about Twisted Wishes and their recent concerts. How there’d been such a huge turnaround in sound. Many people speculated it was Ray sobering up, but many also pointed to the hot new drummer.
Zavier’s cheeks warmed. He was well aware of his looks and often used them to his advantage, including to bed people who caught his attention. But praise of those same attributes in the press made him squirm, as if he were walking naked in public.
There was, of course, various speculations about his sexuality, including a mention of his alleged “closeness” with Maestro Ferbran from Gabriel McGinness, the reporter they’d met at the festival. Dimitri, for what it was worth, had no comment about Zavier.
Then again, he had begged and pleaded, then screamed and yelled enough to last Zavier a lifetime.
When he got to the photos of the concerts, they were everything that Nadia had said they were. Tantalizing. Sexy. Almost erotic. The camera seemed to capture every line and passionate expression—and expose expressions he thought were subtle as anything but.
Oh yes, there was no mistaking how he looked at Ray Van Zeller. Nor anything hidden about how Ray watched him.
Damn. Lust trickled down his body and settled in his core, with predictable results. Luckily his clothes were loose and his underwear tight. He could hide his hard-on well enough.
It wasn’t just lust—and that made his arousal fade, because he could see it in the photos of himself when he bottled up his emotional reaction. What Nadia had read asmore than lustwas adoration. Ray’s talent. His voice and body and movements. He’d admired Ray’s career for a while. It was breathtaking to see it up close and personal.
Maybe he needed to admit he was more into Ray than he’d thought, which was highly problematic, given how much he’d like to press against more than Ray’s legs. So rather than remain where he felt comfortable and content, he slung his legs out and rose. “Anyone interested in coffee?”
Zavier didn’t wait for an answer before fixing a pot. He needed a little more distance from Ray Van Zeller—or they’d both be in a world of hurt.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Life was chaos,and Ray knew that for a fact. He’d always lived in the whirlwind. The only thing that changed was how fast things moved at any given time. Push one way and things flew off in another direction. He received a copy of their contract from the record label and in return, Carl shoved reporter after shitty reporter at the band in St. Louis. None of them wanted to talk about Twisted Wishes’s sound or the tour or any of that—they all wanted to know about Kevin and about Ray’s “drinking problem.”
By the third reporter, he snapped and slapped a hand down on his thigh. “I don’t have a fucking drinking problem!” He rose from his chair in the green room. “I have a fucking dirt-digging-rats-who-are-only-interested-in-controversy problem.”
“Ray.” Zavier’s voice, low and either soothing or condescending, Ray couldn’t tell anymore.
“Back off, Demos.” He hadn’t known what had happened between them, only that one moment Zavier had been sharing a couch with him all friendly like, and the next, he was giving Ray the cold shoulder and curling up in his berth to play fucking games on that goddamned tablet of his. “Here, a parting gift for each of you.” He flipped both Zavier and the reporter the fingerand marched out of the room, his heart in his throat and his stomach a mess.
He shouldn’t let any of it get to him. But everything was chip, chip, chipping away at him, and he was done. When he made it to the dressing room, he looked at himself in the mirror. The face of a fool.
He’d spent too many hours overnight reading and rereading their contract, then searching terms on the internet. Panic clawed its way into his soul. He didn’t understand everything he’d read, but he did suss out enough to know that the label had them over a barrel. Maybe not in the way Carl had said, but they were beholden to them.
