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I’m silent for a few moments, until, “I won’t fault you that statement, Jesse. I do come from incredible privilege, and I know that. And yes, money is never a worry I’ve had. But I love you, and your worries are now my worries. Let me help you.”
“See?” He exhales sharply. “This is why I fought these feelings, Brianna. As much as I want you, want to be with you, now is just not the optimal time. The band is taking off. This is my dream. Just like your dream is to work on the ranch alongside your father. My dream is only beginning. It’s to make a living as a rock and roll singer. It’s to be one of the great ones like Jett Draconis. It’s to make my own living, take care of my family doing what I love to do and doing it well. My dream has never been to take money from someone else—even someone I love as much as I love you.”
He still feels I’m immature. And in some ways, he’s very right. So I will be mature. I will try to understand his feelings and know that they’re valid. As valid as my own. Perhaps even more so. Even though a huge part of me wants to give him my fortune and take away all his troubles forever.
“I understand. I should not have offered to help you. I only wanted?—”
He covers my lips with his fingers. “Don’t say it. I know what you’re going to say. You only want to help. Use what you have to help the people you love. Don’t you think I’ve heard Brock and Donny say the same things to Rory and Callie?”
I simply nod. My family may be rich, but we’re also generous, and we gladly give to those we love.
“You see,” he says, “I understand you think you love me, and God knows what I feel for you goes beyond even that?—”
I open my mouth to respond, but again he quiets me.
“Yes, I know exactly what you’re going to say. You’re going to say you love me as much as I love you. And I want to believe that, Brianna. I do. And someday maybe I will. But my point is that my career and the band may finally be taking off. And you…” He shakes his head. “You… Well, you don’t really fit into the plan.”
My heart drops to my stomach, and a chill skitters down my spine.
It’s not just sadness.
It’s fear. Fear that Jesse may pull the plug on this whole thing.
“Yet I can’t give you up,” he goes on. “You’re as essential to me as oxygen now. As the blood that runs through my veins. Without you, I’m a shadow of a man. At the risk of sounding very cliché, you complete me, Brianna.”
I feel like I’m on a roller coaster, and each time I think I’m headed in one direction, the car twists and jolts me in another. “For God’s sake, Jesse, you’ve got to throw me some kind of bone here. I don’t know which end is up. You tell me I don’t fit into your plans, but then you tell me I’m an essential part of you. You’re pulling me in two directions. I don’t know whether to be scared and sad or happy and elated.”
He chuckles then, and I sit up, staring down at him.
“I don’t see anything funny about that.”
“Baby, I can laugh, or I can cry. It’s not funny. It’s just what it is. You talk about being pulled in two different directions. Don’t you think I’m feeling the same thing? With my whole soul, I want to be a rock star. I want to take the band to true fame and fortune. And with my whole soul, I want to be with you and watch you fulfill your dreams as a rancher. How can I want both things so much when they’re at odds with each other?”
Chapter Nineteen
Jesse
My father taught me to play the guitar when I was only four years old. I took to it like a magnet to steel. I still have my first guitar—a small one to fit my childlike fingers. By the time I was eight, I had graduated to a full-size guitar. It was huge, and as my fingers grew, I made adjustments.
I got my first electric guitar when I was eleven. I loved that instrument. It was some knockoff brand, of course, but it was black with a white dragon on it. This was years before I met Dragon Locke. But even then, I was drawn to dragons.
I formed my first band in middle school. That’s when Cage and I got together. Cage is a musical genius. He began playing the piano when he was only six, and when I approached him about forming a band, he took it upon himself to learn the bass guitar as well.
Someday maybe we’ll have an actual bassist, but for now, Cage is able to handle the keyboard and the bass parts, using the keyboard of course.
We found Jake in high school. He was part of the jazz band that played at our football games. Our school wasn’t large enough to have an actual marching band, so Jake’s band played during the games. I, of course, was always on the field as the quarterback. Even from my freshman year, I was good enough to play varsity. Donny Steel and I were the only two freshmen on the varsity roster that year.
Cage didn’t play football, so he joined the jazz band, and that’s where he befriended Jake. Jake has a decent voice, but he’s not lead vocal material. So we put him on lead guitar, and I was backup guitar. Our drummer at the time was Tomas Guzman. But Tomas moved away after graduation, so we needed a new drummer.
I went off to college in Wyoming on a football scholarship, and the band went on hiatus. We played when I was home on breaks, but without a drummer, we couldn’t do much. After I graduated and came home for good to help on the ranch, I found Dragon at a local bar drumming for a house band.
And our band—known only as the band before then—finally had its name.
Dragon was quiet at first, but damn, he could play those drums like no one I knew. Tomas was talented, but Dragon made an art out of percussion. He was with the band for about a year before he opened up to me, and the only reason he did that was because we ended up on a gig on the eastern plains of Colorado, and he and I shared a room.
He swore me to secrecy, and I’ve never told a soul what he told me that night.
Why this is all swirling through my mind as I wait for Brianna to respond to my last statement boggles my mind. Then again, maybe the answer is clear as day. Remembering how our band came to be, how we’ve struggled for so many years, and how now we finally have the chance to take our career to the next level.
