“I figured we could wait to leave until she was in bed and then we can just ask Lex and Dylan to keep an ear out for her.”
“Okay. Sure.” You know maybe this would be good for us, for me. Watching him flirt and paw all over other girls would most likely irritate the hell out of me. Which would make these tingly feelings he kept giving me go away. It would be like a therapeutic night out with a friend.
Chapter Thirteen
Jacks
I woke up with a smile on my face, wrapped around Bryan. I’d lain awake holding her and playing on my PS3. I brushed a soft kiss across B’s forehead and then got out of bed, careful not to wake her. I pulled on a t-shirt and then padded across the hall to check on Landry. She was still asleep, her face resting on Ello, just like in the car yesterday. I had both my girls here with me, and neither one of them was going anywhere. My heart felt…full. Full in a way I’d never thought I wanted.
I was the first one up in the house; I couldn’t tell you the last time that happened. I was sitting in the kitchen, reading some song lyrics the label had overnighted to us. We usually wrote our own stuff, but they weren’t liking what we were turning in right now. So they sent some “suggestions.” They weren’t bad songs; they were good. But that just wasn’t the direction we were going with this new album. We’d never really been into mellow songs or ballads. But things in our lives were changing. Dash’s world had changed in one night. Smith’s world had changed with one girl. And mine? Mine had taken two. Two beautiful girls and two crazy days. It wasn’t a constant rock star free-for-all anymore. We were growing up, and it was only fitting that our music did too. Dash was going to flip shit when he saw these.
I looked up when I heard the front door open, and then quietly click close. Luke was wearing the clothes he had on last night and his sunglasses. He stumbled into the kitchen and laid his head on the granite island. “Tough night, Lukey?”
He let out an unintelligible groan.
“Yeah. I’ve been there.” And I had. I spent ninety-nine percent of my time on tour drinking, banging, and partying. I was wasted every night and hung over every morning. This past month was the longest I’d ever gone sober. Or celibate. I walked to the fridge and got him a bottle of water, handing it to him. “Go to bed, dude. You look like roadkill and if Lexi sees you coming home like this again? She’s going to go pregnancy postal.”
He stood then grabbed the island to steady himself. “You have any bars?”
I shrugged. “I might. Go look in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom.” He turned toward the stairs. “But be quiet. Landry and Bryan are still sleeping.” He waved his hand over his head, dismissing me. Letting Luke take my Xanax was probably not the best decision I’d made today. But he needed to come down from whatever high he was experiencing and sleep it off. I didn’t want Landry seeing him walk around like a wasted zombie.
Dash came into the kitchen just as Luke cleared the turn at the top of the stairs. “Hey, man, what are you doing up so early?”
“Honestly? I have no idea.”
He chuckled and gestured to the stack of papers resting in front of me. “What are those?”
“Songs.” I took a sip of my coffee. “The label overnighted them.”
Dash picked up the stack and leafed through it. “They are really starting to piss me off.” He shook his head. “We write our own stuff. Or we do collaborations. That’s the way it’s always been. Why are they trying to change it now?”
“We both know why, man.” I watched as Dash took the creamer out of the fridge and doctored up his java before adding, “The label wants the hard-core bad boys of rock and roll. They want smashed guitars and lyrics about hollow sex and cocaine. It’s insane. You’d think they’d be happy that we are on the straight and narrow.”
“Nah. Straight and narrow doesn’t sell out stadiums or incite riots.”
Dash stirred his coffee and then sat his spoon in the sink. “I’m getting tired of selling out stadiums, bro.”
If we were being honest? I was too. “I’ve been thinking about that, since Landry showed up.” On tour with a rock band wasn’t the place for a little girl. And she’d been left alone enough in her short life. Dash had a daughter on the way, Smith’s sobriety wouldn’t survive being away from Dylan, and Luke was on the highway to hell. “Maybe it’s time we made some changes.”
“Slow down a little? Don’t pack the dates in so tight? Play smaller venues?”
I nodded.
He let his head hang a little, clearly tired. “We’re on the same page, man.”
“So what do we do?”
Dash eyed the pages of lyrics and notes. “We send them a demo of one of our songs, maybe the one we worked on yesterday. And if they don’t like it? They can fuck off.”
“And what about these?” I gestured to the stack of papers with my cup.
Dash picked up the stack and tossed them in the trash.