The Power to Break Page 3

  It was about midway through my first year at UIC when we were approached by a Sony executive after one of our shows. Mark’s dad looked over the offer, brought it to a lawyer, and paid all the fees to ensure it was legit. It was, and we signed our lives away to the company that would make us our first million dollars.

  And our second.

  And countless more.

  We were offered an opening gig on a major tour that would cut into the first half of our last year of school. We made an arrangement with the school to turn in our work from the road, and somehow it worked. I was twenty-one-years-old when I stepped foot onto my first tour bus, the place on the road where I’d live for three months, where I’d play poker and where I’d fuck and where I’d study and where I’d write some of the most inspired lyrics of my life.

  I didn’t allow myself to become attached to women. This was intentional, and it wasn’t just because I typically only had a night or two in each city.

  I’d almost let it happen once when I was a teenager, and I wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

  I had way too much going for me now to let some woman fuck it all up.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MACI

  I glanced lazily over at Dustin. We were naked on my bed in my college dorm room as I waited for my mom to come visit me. My roommate was over at her boyfriend’s, and I’d called Dustin over to “relieve some stress” in the best way he knew how.

  We did that for each other. We weren’t dating, weren’t together. He wasn’t my boyfriend and I wasn’t his girlfriend. But we screwed each other because we gave the other one exactly what we each needed—that calming bliss that washes over you after an orgasm. I was nervous about my upcoming solo the next day, and he calmed me.

  “You should go,” I said.

  “Screw and shoo?” he asked, shooting me a grin.

  “Tonight, yeah. My mom’s on her way here and she’d be shocked to find you and that nine-inch anaconda in her sweet baby girl’s bed.”

  He laughed. “Anaconda?”

  I raised a brow. “Accurate.”

  “Stop, I’m blushing.” He got out of my tiny twin dorm room bed and I watched his ass as he stepped away. The muscles in it flexed as he bent down to retrieve his boxers from my floor. He pulled on his jeans but not his shirt. His abs were beautiful, but abs were one of my weaknesses, especially when it came to him.

  We met in our English comp class. He was majoring in athletic training, a sophomore who put off his lower level writing class because it was his least favorite subject. I was a lonely freshman who caught his eye on the first day of class, and we became, for lack of a nicer term, fuck buddies ever since.

  He had dirty blonde hair and navy blue eyes and all these features that reminded me of the boy who broke my heart. That was why we couldn’t ever be more than just screwmates. He told me I reminded him of someone he once loved, too. We were a perfect match for having some fun.

  After he left, I wondered for the ten millionth time if I should’ve chosen a school closer to home. I glanced out my window. Snowing again. It was freezing and this wet snow was going to turn into a dangerous sheet of ice, but my mom was probably getting close—much too close to turn back toward home now.

  My top choices of the best music schools in the Midwest had been Oberlin College in Ohio, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Northwestern in Illinois. Of course Julliard was always a dream school, but I didn’t get in.

  I wanted to separate myself from home, so Northwestern was out. My goal was to learn everything I could about musical technique. I gained a great base once I switched schools, and my favorite voice teacher spoke highly of her alma mater. And so that’s why I chose Michigan. It was far enough away from home and the chance of ever running into the boy I still thought about every day, but it was close enough that my parents could drive up for a visit. Plus Joss’s family had moved to Michigan, not that I ever got to see her. We kept in touch, sort of. She was the only person aside from my family who knew the name Dani Mayne. Everyone in my life now called me Maci.

  It was hard to think about how much had changed since I’d left North Chicago High School. I’d had my name legally changed from Daniella Mayne to Maci Dane when I turned eighteen. Even my parents called me Maci now.

  They supported me when I said I wanted to join a gym, and my dad even went with me a few times a week. They let me try out colored contact lenses—blue, just like I always wanted instead of the boring old browns I’d been born with. My mom cried when I cut my long, mousey brown locks, wiping away the tears as she paid the receptionist at the salon.

  After I graduated from high school, I decided I wanted to be blonde. I did it myself at home, and it was a complete disaster. My mom cried again as she paid the receptionist at the same salon to fix my hair, and now it was a gorgeous platinum. It made my blue eyes pop even brighter. I finally felt like the strong girl who’d always been too intimidated to come out was released from her cage.

  I straightened up my room while I waited for my mom. She’d called just before she left work around five, and it was about a four hour drive, a little longer in the snow. I glanced at my clock. It was a little after nine.

  I headed down to the lobby area and sat on one of the couches to wait for her. She got a hotel, but she’d planned to stop by to see me first.

  At nine-thirty, I started to worry a little. She’d made the drive lots of times, though, so I trusted she’d be fine. I tried calling her cell phone, but she never had it turned on. It went straight to voicemail, and I huffed as I thought for the millionth time how pointless it was to have a cell phone if it was always off.

  At ten, the little ball of worry turned into something more anxious.

  At ten-thirty, I called my dad.

  “Have you heard from Mom?” I asked. I paced in front of the window.

  My dad’s voice was familiar and comforting. “No. She should’ve been there over an hour ago. She’s not there yet?”

  “No. Dad, I’m worried.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m sure it’s fine, honey. The snow started before she left, so it’s probably just slow going.”

  “Okay.” I stopped and stared out the window with hope when a car passed by, but it wasn’t her.

  “Call me when she gets there, okay?”

  I nodded even though he couldn’t see me over the phone. “I will.”

  “Love you, honey.”

  “Love you, Dad.”

  We hung up and I resumed staring out the window.

  Minutes turned into an hour, and it was a little after midnight when my phone rang.

  It was my dad, and my heart leapt up into my chest.

  “Hello?” I asked, my voice smaller than it had ever been.

  He cleared his throat, and then he sounded far away—so very, very far away. “There’s been an accident...”

  PART TWO

  The Present

  The present can’t erase the past.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ETHAN

  She was hot and blonde, and I don’t discriminate.

  I should have used better judgment with that one, though. I’m glad we went back to her place and I didn’t take her back to mine. That’s a hard and fast rule—no Vail Tail in the Fuller-dome. When you’re the drummer and the only remaining single guy in a multi-platinum band, you learn quick that taking groupies back home, no matter how bangable they are, is straight-up dangerous.

  So I bang them where I find them, or we go back to her place. I found this one at a bar appearance my publicist forced on me.

  Thank God for Chuck, my personal security guard. He’s waiting outside this girl’s house in the car for me. He knew I’d only be a couple hours, and I swear I don’t pay him enough for the shit he has to deal with. I slide into the front passenger seat.

  “That was fast,” he says. He’s notoriously stoic, but even in my half-drunken state, I catch the slightest smirk as he indicates it was fast because I was a quick
shot. That wasn’t the case. Tonight it was because I ran the hell out of there as fast as I could.

  “Fuck you.” I pair my words with a glare as my knee bounces up and down and I tap my fingers on the armrest. My hands and legs are always moving, an extension of my job.

  He puts the car in drive and we start moving.

  “She went a little ape-shit at the end,” I confess.

  He doesn’t respond, simply keeps his eyes on the road knowing I’ll give him the full story he didn’t ask for and probably doesn’t want.

  “Started in with some shit about how we’ll go out to breakfast tomorrow, and when I said I couldn’t stay because I had shit I needed to do, she cried about how she doesn’t know how to do relationships and she’ll never find anybody to love her.” I make a face. “So I ran the fuck out of there.”

  “She thought you’d fill that role?” Chuck asks. He’s completely impassive.

  I lift a shoulder. “Told her it couldn’t be me.”

  He doesn’t say anything again, and I finally allow the silence to settle between us as I think about why it can’t be me. It has nothing to do with her—except for the fact that she got a little overly attached to me in one night—but it has everything to do with me.

  I have no desire for a committed, monogamous relationship. I’ve watched it happen to all three of the guys in my band, most recently to my best friend, our lead singer, Mark Ashton. They weren’t looking for it when it happened to them, yada yada yada, but I can’t see myself ever falling into the same trap. And I for sure don’t see myself falling in love and fighting to make it work with...

  Shit.

  I don’t even remember her name.

  Hannah? Anna? Emma? Emily? I don’t know. Something like that. I think it started with a vowel-sound.

  It doesn’t matter. It might be a memorable night for her since she slept with Vail’s drummer, something she’ll tell her friends or share on social media or whatever, but she was just one out of a hundred for me.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out and read my publicist’s name on my screen.

  Penny: Why, Ethan? Why why why?

  She seems unhappy. I rack my brain for what might’ve gotten her panties in a bunch tonight, but I come up short. I thought the appearance went well, and what I did afterward isn’t any of her business.

  Me: What did I do now?

  Penny: Where would you like me to start? The bad part or the REALLY bad part?

  I dial her number and the sound of her voice comes through the Bluetooth system in the car. Chuck can hear every detail of our conversation, but he’s privy to everything in my life anyway.

  “Why are you calling me?” she asks, alarm all over her voice.

  “I’m in the car on the way home.”

  “You left her?” she shrieks. “Oh, God, Ethan.”

  “You know I like it when you use my name like that,” I say. Chuck snorts beside me, and I pretend it’s a chuckle rather than a huff of derision.

  “Ethan, this isn’t a joke,” Penny says, all business. “That girl you just left? That was Rush Kendrick’s daughter.”

  Chuck snorts again, and I pin him with a glare he doesn’t see since his eyes are on the road.

  “So?”

  “Rush Kendrick,” she says with emphasis. “As in the guy Mark just hired as CEO of Ashmark. You know, the little record label your best friend owns that’s already made you a ton of money?”

  I roll my eyes at her condescending tone. “Who cares? It’s not like I slept with him.”

  “Tell it to Mark. Oh, and the girl, Erin, posted a picture of the two of you to her Snapchat story. In the middle of, um,” she lowers her voice to a whisper, “sex.”

  Erin! I knew it was a vowel name.

  “Did I look good in it?” I ask.

  “Oh my God, you’re impossible. Be serious for two seconds.” She sounds like a mother scolding her delinquent child.

  I know what’s coming next, and I refuse to bite. I can’t help it if this girl seduced me and I didn’t know who she was. It’s her fault, not mine. “I won’t apologize for what I did, Pen.”

  “I’m not asking you to. I’m just asking you to make things right with her so she doesn’t report back to her daddy that you’re as much of an asshole as you actually are.”

  “No thanks. She was a bit too crazy for my style. Thank you for all your hard work, though. Goodnight.”

  I end the call before she can protest. No fucking way am I seeing psycho-Erin again. Not willingly, anyway. If I run into her at Ashmark because her daddy’s the CEO, that’s one thing.

  I search for Erin Kendrick on Snapchat and find her story. Sure enough, it’s public.

  She’s still clothed, but my shirt’s off. I’m hovering over her just before we started the main event. Thank God my face is out of the shot, but it’s definitely me. Her caption? Scored a drummer.

  And the answer to my question is a rousing fuck yeah.

  I look damn good.

  * * *

  “Dammit, Ethan!” Mark roars at me. It’s hardly the first time I’ve been scolded by my best friend, though it does seem to happen a bit more often since he got married over a year ago. It’s like he lives by a new moral compass now that he has a permanent woman in his life, and it sucks. I miss the old days when we’d get high and play music and pick up women together.

  “What?” I ask as innocently as I can muster.

  “Did you really fuck my new CEO’s daughter?”

  “Someone had to.” I perch my feet on the other side of Mark’s desk and cross one ankle over the other as I lean back in my chair. “The poor girl was just looking for some love.”

  He rolls his eyes at me. “That’s not what you gave her.”

  “Correct. I did give her one hell of an orgasm, though. You’d think it would’ve put her in a better mood.”

  “Tell me exactly what happened,” he says, pulling off the glasses he only wears when he’s working on paperwork. He rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms like he’s exhausted.

  “I had an appearance Pen made me do. The girl was hanging out by the bar. She grabbed my ass when I walked up, we got to talking, she took me back to her place.” I grin slyly. He asked for exactly what happened, so... “I smashed my face in her tits, she manhandled my cock, I played with her asshole a little—”

  “Stop!” He holds up a hand. “Stop. You know what I meant.”

  I shake my head. “Man, you’ve changed. You used to love when I’d give you all the details.”

  He grimaces. “Things are different now.” He pauses for a beat as we both ponder that truth. “Don’t you want that, too?”

  “Looks to me like you have a leash holding you back from doing whatever the fuck you want. Why would I want that?”

  Mark clears his throat and runs a hand along his jawline. “She’s pregnant.”

  My heart races just as it always does when I hear those words. Kids? Oh fuck no. The thought of a woman tying me down is bad enough, but the thought of a baby makes me fucking ill. “Who’s pregnant? Kendrick’s daughter? It’s not mine. We just fucked last night. She couldn’t know that fast, could she?”

  Mark laughs. “God, you’re dumber than a box of rocks, dude.”

  I glare at him, but I’m a man in my thirties who sleeps with a shit ton of ladies. I don’t know how a woman’s body works on the inside—well, apart from how to deliver a tremendous amount of pleasure.

  “Reese,” he clarifies. “I’m talking about my wife. We’re having a baby.” Even as he says the words, the color seems to drain from his face as if he’s terrified, as if he’s never spoken the words aloud to someone and it’s hitting him for the first time.

  “Oh,” I say. I realize there are social norms here, things I’m supposed to say and happiness I’m supposed to feel, but I can’t seem to muster any of that. I can only think about how this will affect me, how my life will change.

  Again.

  “Oh?” M
ark says.

  “Is it what you want?” I ask.

  Mark narrows his eyes. “I at least expected you to say congratulations.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, not really all that sorry. “Congratulations on jizzing unprotected into your wife. I’m just not used to hearing pregnancy reports from you and it being a cause for celebration.”

  He presses his lips together. “I know. But this is what we want.”

  “When’s she due?”

  “She’s only six weeks along. We’re not supposed to tell people for a little while longer.”

  “So why are you telling me?” Being in the know is not a responsibility I want to have. Besides, he knows I have a big mouth. Everyone will know in a few hours.

  He sighs with exasperation. “Because I’m excited and scared and you’re my best friend. Put it in the vault, Ethan. I’m serious. I don’t want anyone to know until we’re ready to talk about it.”

  I shrug. “Congrats, man. Seriously. If this is what you want, then I’m happy for you.”

  He nods resolutely. “It’s what I want.”

  “Then good.” At least he isn’t yelling at me anymore.

  “It’s the whole reason I hired a new CEO. I’ve gotten this place off the ground, but I need help running it. We’ve got a tour coming up, a new album dropping, shit to do in the studio. And now a baby on the way? As much as I like to think I’m Batman, I can’t do everything.”

  I roll my eyes. “If you’re Batman, what does that make me?”

  “The Joker?”

  I set my feet on the floor and stand. “Fuck you.”

  “Robin?” He laughs.

  I shoot him the finger on my way toward the door.

  “Not a word, Ethan,” he calls as I disappear through it.

  I head to my own office, a sprawling room in the corner with a nice view. When Mark opened Ashmark Records, he wanted my input on new artists. Even though it’s his business, we work closely on everything. Between my ear for talent and his shrewd business mind, we’ve already experienced a high level of success despite Ashmark only being opened for half a year. The first artist we signed went straight to the top of the charts, and we’ve already acquired a handful of established artists, too.