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Oakley pointed to her ears. “You still have your earplugs in, baby. You’re talking loud.”
“What?”
She waved her hand. “Never mind.”
Reagan gav
e her a toothy grin and turned back toward the stage.
“She really loves this stuff. It’s like she’s on some music high,” Devon said from beside her. “You used to be like that. Remember when you had that complete breakdown after Mom found your Alanis Morissette CD and confiscated it? It was like you’d lost your religion.”
Oakley tucked her hands in her back pockets and smirked at her older brother. “And she made me go to church every day for two weeks to pray for forgiveness. I didn’t really know what most of those songs were talking about at the time, but I felt them in my bones. I knew I needed to write music like that.”
“You were an angst factory for sure. I think Mom still blames Alanis for your defection from the righteous path.”
“Yeah?” She bumped his shoulder. “And what does she blame your defection on?”
“Group showers at church camp? George Michael?”
She rolled her eyes. “Right.”
Devon shrugged, his blue eyes shifting toward the stage. “Nah, she only blames me. And maybe Jake Walton, the neighbor she caught me making out with behind the cow pasture when I was sixteen.”
“God, I had such a crush on him. He had these lips …”
Devon smiled broadly, adjusting his baseball cap over his dark hair. “Yes, he did.”
“It’s not nice to gloat. And good thing Hunter isn’t here. You look a little too wistful about young Jake Walton.”
“Nah, Hunter wins on every level. But you never forget that first one, that first time.”
Oakley went cold at the words and wrapped her arms around herself. Not everyone remembered their first relationship so fondly. “Yeah.”
Devon made a sound under his breath. “Damn, sis, I’m sorry. I didn’t think …”
She put her finger to her lips and shook her head, reminding him that Reagan was only a few feet away. “It’s fine.”
Devon was one of the few who knew the whole story. The ugly one. The one she hoped she’d never have to tell her daughter. Of all of her six brothers and sisters, he was the only one who she trusted to love her no matter what, to listen without judgment. Her other siblings were good people, but they hadn’t strayed from the very conservative lifestyle that her parents had raised them in. Home-schooling. Church. Unbendable rules about right and wrong.
Most of them still lived within a hundred miles of her parents’ farm in Oklahoma. Only she and Devon had bailed. Devon had gotten a scholarship to attend college in California and had moved out before her parents could realize that whole kissing-a-boy thing hadn’t been a drunken whim but a life plan. And Oakley had followed him out to California shortly after when she’d gotten discovered at fifteen by a music producer while singing in a local Christian group. She’d moved in with Dev until Pop Luck had gotten popular and started touring. He’d been her closest family since.
“So,” Devon said, obviously searching for a change in topic¸ “you know a guy in the next band?”
“The drummer. He’s the one helping out with that music project at Bluebonnet. He gave us tickets, thought Reagan might have fun.”
Dev’s eyebrow arched. “Right. Because he thought your kid might have fun.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Uh-huh.”
Guitar chords blasted through the speaker for a moment as the crew on stage did the sound check. Oakley turned her head as the big screens on the side of the stage lit up with a publicity photo for Darkfall—the wind making the screens ripple and the bodies in the picture come to life. The crowd cheered.
“Look, Mom!” Reagan shouted back at her. “It’s Mr. Pike!”
“I see, baby.” Boy, did she. The larger-than-life image had Pike staring down the camera with his bandmates. Badass. Tough. Beautiful.
“Which one is he?” Devon asked, following her gaze.
