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I need you to come through, Dad . . .
EIGHTEEN
PAXTYN
Landon comes up behind me and pulls me close, automatically dancing against me with a beer in his hand. They finished playing their full set thirty minutes ago. The club switched to a DJ—the same guy that was on stage prior to them playing—but I gave up trying to find Landon when the band kept getting stopped by bar patrons to praise them for their performance. I didn’t need to be up his ass while they mingled with the audience anyway.
I roll my hips, rubbing my ass against his crotch. I have just enough of a buzz to have more fun; nothing noticeable. “I want to fuck you so hard right now,” he says against my ear, his hand roaming all over my torso and hip as we dance. “You look hot.”
I laugh. I don’t know what’s hot about it. I’m just wearing cut-off shorts and one of the band tee shirts I had designed, only I destroyed it with scissors, mostly altering the neckline and sleeves to make it sexier but at also gritty. They are a rock band, after all. I had to look the part of a rocker’s girl. I even did my eye makeup smoky to go with the black shirt. “I could say the same about you. Never thought I’d be attracted to a musician. I like watching you play.”
“I like knowing you’re watching.”
I’m about to turn around to kiss him when my phone starts vibrating in my pocket. I pull it out, seeingDadlit up on the Lock Screen. I look up, seeing how far of a walk I have to the exit door, which is across the room and is going to be a maze to get to. It’s too loud in here for a phone conversation.
I glance at Landon, already stepping in the direction I need to be. “I have to take this.”
Then I hurriedly leave him in the middle of the space, despite him trying to grab my hand. My stomach is a ball of nerves, and I have no idea what my dad is going to say when I get him on the line. It could be good, or it could equally be bad, at least in my case; in his, just indifferent. My dad is never predictable, and my heart is in this. I’m committed to seeing this through now.
Landon
I shove my hands against the lever of the exit doors, barreling through, pissed she’d just leave like that with no explanation right after glancing at her phone, being all shady and shit. I can’t stand it. My mind always reverts to a bad time in my life, and with her dating that motherfucker twice since we started hooking up, both after leaving suddenly, it’s not a good place to be.
I haven’t touched another girl since before I met her; sure as fuck didn’t date any. My mind has been on her ass since I opened that door in November. In moments like these, I wish I could go back to not giving a flying fuck, but I do when it comes to her. I have since she sat on my dick. It’s done. There is nothing I can do about it. I don’t want anyone else. Fighting it in Tahoe didn’t even work. Now I love the bitch and I’m keeping her forever, whether she pisses me off or not.
But I’m ready to go. The second I saw her walk outside without looking back my night was done. She won’t get back in with a line wrapped around the building, especially underage. They don’t make money off underaged customers, and she can’t use her fake ID to get her out of this one with the huge lines of marker on her hands to single her age out. As big of a club as this is, she knew not to even try to use it. I’m still shocked she somehow got us a slot to play. We’ve been out of playing at bars for so long that I feel like we’re starting over with a fan base, even though I know that’s not true. We still have to prove ourselves, which means you fight for places to play, but that’s Paxtyn, always achieving the unachievable.
The guys weren’t disappointed that I was cutting the club night short. They all have kids now, and even if they didn’t, most of us are a bunch of backwoods country boys used to hanging low with friends to party. You’d find us at a bar like Abby’s Spot—a classy but low-key country bar that Abby’s parents opened and dedicated to her—before a place like this.
Nightclubs were rare, and only for pussy hunting, which is long gone for every fucking one of us. Gabby can’t drink, and with it obvious she’s pregnant, she looks slightly uncomfortable being in this setting.
Everyone was mostly staying after we played for the couple that doesn’t have family obligations, and maybe Sayler in ways since her parents are keeping Chloe tonight. Knowing her, though, she’d likely rather drink at home where there is no driving or calling a ride, because she likes Riggan to relax and have fun. Riggan won’t consume a drop of alcohol with her present and one of us having to drive after what happened to Abby. When he was reckless, he was only destructive with himself, no one else.
“Paxtyn,” I call out with a bite to it as she paces in the parking lot with her phone to her ear. The door shuts behind me, locking me out of the club. The bitch holds up her index finger at me, telling me to shut up.
Anger flushes through my veins, making every muscle coil and tense. I keep walking toward her anyway, my feet automatically slowing down when she smiles at whatever was said on the other line, because her smiles are earned. I know this. It’s a crippling feeling, wondering who she’s talking to and what they said to gauge that reaction, just like the night I saw her and Riggan hugging, and I trust him with my life.
“Thank you for this,” she says into the phone, just before pulling her phone off her ear and shoving it into her back pocket where it was earlier. When her eyes meet mine, so much space between us from where I stopped without thought, she says, “What’s wrong?”
“Who were you talking to?”
Her lips curl almost instantly, but instead of answering, her eyes veer to something behind me. “Good, you’re all here. I have something to tell you.”
My heart pounds with each new beat, doubling on the one before. “Tell me what?”
A large hand squeezes the back of my neck, and it’s then I notice the added bodies around me, Maddox beside me. “Most likely not anything going on in your head,” he says in a low tone, no laughter present this time.
As if she heard him anyway, she locks those unforgettable blue eyes on my gray ones, and then hers roll. “Don’t be ridiculous. Not you in a singular form. My god. You as in the whole band, but I do need to know if taking off your next hitch is a possibility.”
“Not unless it’s something that can’t be done when I’m off.” My anger cools as if she drenched me with ice water, and then turns to curiosity. I haven’t asked off since that hitch at Christmas to go to Lake Tahoe with my friends. Fucking glad I did now, because it takes a lot for me to ask off. It’s almost unheard of for me to use my personal time off. I have more PTO than I know what to do with since my company lets ours roll from year to year. My boss looked at me like I had three heads when I requested the time back then. He likely expected me to ask something about a job. “Why?”
Her serious expression disappears with my question. She’s wearing a villainous smile for such a hot girl. “Because the four of you have an interview with a record label. You must be in LA a week from Monday. We were not given options. If they like you, they will sign you. Don’t disappoint me.”
I stare at her, blinking and thinking, trying to figure out if I’m going nuts and just hearing shit. “Do what?”
Maddox starts laughing, and then he shoves at me playfully. “I don’t know how, but your girl came through. This is epic!”
An arm comes around my neck, and then I’m pulled back into a chest. Based on the height and the amount of arm tattoos, I know it’s Riggan. “This is the part where you act happy and go give her ass a hug like Konnor is doing, and maybe some dick. We all know you love her, Landon. Don’t play it cool when it’s something to celebrate. I don’t know how she fucking did it, but no one else has worked so hard in such a short amount of time for us. Most people outside of the banddon’tgive a shit if we make it. She obviously does, just like Abby did. I wish she could see this.”
