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The hope on his face nearly tore me apart. Because it was all for me. This man, standing in front of me, was dreaming a dream for me, and it was humbling as fuck.
I cupped his face in my palms and dropped my forehead down to press against his. I could feel his breath, warm against my face, and his arms curled around my shoulders, like we were two football players, huddled up before our next play.
And somewhere, I felt like a window was cracked. Just the smallest amount, like you’d slide it open in winter, welcoming the fresh air but keeping out the chill. But it was an opening. That’s what came through. The ultimate fresh air of maybe I could. And at the moment, that maybe felt like everything.
Chapter 15
Theo
It was the strange sensation of hearing rumors about someone and then realizing you know who everyone is talking about. I was lurking on Caleb Blake Whitman message boards and fan pages, reading stories, looking at photos, and trying to see if people were still wondering when the next album would be out.
There were people swapping stories from when they’d seen him on tour, talking about their favorite songs, swooning over his dreaminess, and swapping MP3s from live shows. I could see why Caleb had thought his fans were invested in the drugged-up version of him. But what he was clearly missing—or not able to see—was the sincere admiration for his music. Yeah, people told stories about how he was high while performing, but it was only a pretext for commenting on how amazing a musician he was that he could play that well while intoxicated.
The other thing I found, when I worked my way back far enough, were pictures of Caleb and Rhys when they were together. I knew they’d been partners—seeing them together, it was clear that they knew each other intimately, and Caleb made no secret of it. But in the photos of them performing together, their love was clear.
There was one picture that I kept coming back to. Caleb stood onstage in a smoky bar, one hand on the mic, the other at the neck of his guitar, looking out at the audience. Rhys stood to his right, looking at him, squared shoulders appearing massive in the backlight, like some kind of guardian angel. When you looked at the picture closer, you could see that though Caleb was facing the audience, his hips were swiveled slightly toward Rhys, and Rhys’s toward him, like they were attuned to each other even in the chaos of performance.
Caleb looked so young, his hair long down his back, facial hair just stubble. Rhys looked about the same, though younger. At first I thought I kept coming back to it simply because I was jealous of what they’d had. After all, they’d been a team for years.
But the more I looked at it the more I realized that what I felt was protective. Of that younger version of Caleb; one who hadn’t yet been overcome by addiction, lost the things that mattered to him the most. I wanted to sink into the picture and wrap him up in batting. Put him away someplace safe before any of it could happen.
It was folly, of course. He was made for the music, and taking him away from it might have saved him in one way, but surely it’d have damned him in another. It was as ludicrous as his notion that he should give up music and hide away on the farm until the end of his days.
Which was why I was trying to fix it. Trying to find a way that he could have both his hard-won sobriety and the music.
I was starting to hatch a plan.
* * *
—
“Dude, this is kinda ridiculous.”
“It’s really not, Theo. Other bands do it all the time,” Ethan said.
“No, I know.”
I’d always gotten along with Ethan best. He wasn’t volatile like Ven or stubborn like Coco. And I loved to watch him work through a song because his brain just worked so differently from mine. But I’d always gotten a vibe off him like he was wary around me. Like maybe he was waiting for me to fuck up in some epic, irreparable way.
Still, when he texted to ask if I’d come shopping with him and then meet up with Ven and Coco, I said yes right away. It was rare that Ethan invited anyone to do anything, and it wasn’t often when we weren’t working on Riven stuff that I hung out with the band.
I hadn’t read his text that carefully, I guess, because when I showed up and he told me that we were meeting Coco and Ven and the band was being professionally “styled,” I was nonplussed.
“Er, what…does that mean exactly?” I asked.
