RANE: A Rockstar Stepbrother Romance (21 page)

Chapter

Rane

I was so fucking rusty. I felt like I was thirteen years old all over again. The beat up old guitar was the first one I'd learned to play on. It seemed fitting back when I had this brilliant idea, but now it seemed simultaneously too small and too big for my body. I held it, hating her, hating music, hating the fall that took the easy out of my life.

And I started playing anyway.

From the minute I met Maddie, nothing had been easy. But I had kept at her because, well, because I fucking loved her. And I loved music, and I loved my brother, and I loved my band and my father and all of this shit. I wasn't going to just let it go.

She taught me that.

It was a simple acoustic piece, one of the first songs I taught myself. Dad would recognize it and know why I played it. Everyone else would just see that I was playing again.

Maddie would see that I was playing again.

I hoped she knew that I was playing for her.

I finished and saw tears in her eyes. She blinked rapidly, a shiver of barely contained emotion rippling through her. It was right there, at the surface, and she made no effort to hide it from me.

Standing up from the chair was harder than it should have been. But the loss of strength in my legs had nothing to do with my accident and everything to do with the person I was walking towards.

The sounds of conversation rose around us and I knew people were watching. I could feel their eyes, but the only eyes that mattered to me were the color of a bright autumn sky.

"I did it," I told her. Just in case she didn't understand why. "I did it. For you."

She swallowed, nodding, ducking her head.

"Thank you," I said. "For making me realize."

The soft sound she made was nearly my undoing. If I held back any longer from kissing her, I was afraid I would combust. "Music and you, Maddie," I told her, brushing my finger under her chin and tilting her lips up to mine. "These are the things I'm willing to work for."

Her lips parted when they met mine and I kissed her with all the frustration, all the anger and all the longing of the two months I went without her. I kissed her with the promise, to myself and her, that I would never stop working to be worthy of her. It would be hard, it would be complicated. I knew this. I didn't care.

It wasn't fucking easy, loving a crazy girl like Mad Maddie.

But that was the whole fucking point.

Epilogue

Rane

We heard that tickets were being scalped for upwards of five thousand dollars.

"That's more than you pay me," Twitch mused.

"That's more than you're worth," Pepper piped up.

"Hey, did you see this already?" Keir asked, worry lines creasing his forehead.

I glanced at his tablet screen. "Mad Maddie's Mad Love," read the title.

I looked over my shoulder to where she sat, poised as ever, her legs crossed at the knee, her fingers laced around her kneecap. "Mad Love, huh?" I grinned, blowing her a kiss.

She stuck her tongue out at me. "They got it right, for once. I'm clearly crazy, putting up with the likes of you."

I went to her. I still limped. There was still pain radiating down my arm. But none of that fucking mattered when I saw Madeline Cole smiling up at me. "You're bat-shit insane," I whispered, nuzzling her ear. "In fact, I think I'll have you committed. Locked away for all eternity, in my bedroom."

She laughed and swatted me. "Are you trying to get out of playing tonight?"

"Maybe."

"Well, it won't work. You're playing tonight if I have to push you onstage myself."

"You would, too."

"I absolutely would." Her expression softened. "You worked so hard for this night to happen. Go on. I'll be waiting for you."

"Is that a promise?"

"It is."

"You'll be waiting, right here?"

"Well, I want to see the show...so...in the wings."

I nodded. "It's a deal. As long as I know you're there."

"I'm here."

"I need to know for sure." I pulled the little box out of my pocket. "I'm not leaving this up to chance anymore. I'm not going to fuck myself over like that. If at first I don't succeed in being the man you want, Maddie, this is my promise that I won't say fuck it. I will keep trying, keep working, until I am the man you need."

She looked down at the ring in my hand. I went stiffly to one knee. "You are the man I need. Already."

"Good. Then that was easy." She hit me, then tears glittered in her eyes as I slipped the ring onto her finger. "That looks good there," I smiled.

"Yes. You didn't ask me, but I'll say yes anyway."

"You're crazy."

"I know. Crazy about you."

She lowered her eyelids slowly and snaked her arms around my neck. I bent to kiss her, aiming to make it the best, most memorable kiss of her life.

Whack!
Something slammed into my back. I whirled around to see Jaxson Blue cavorting behind me, bobbing and weaving like a boxer. "Yo! Ready to blow their minds?"

"You just fucked up a huge romantic type moment over here," I informed him.

"So what? You'll have other ones. Let's do this shit."

I looked back at Maddie, who was practically doubled over in silent laughter. "We'll have other ones," she gasped, wiping tears from her eyes.

"Promise me that?"

She held up her finger. Even in the low, sallow light of the green room, the diamond still winked. "Here's that promise."

Her words buoyed me through the jitters of stepping on stage for the first time in months. The crowd roared, their applause drowning out almost every song, and the sound became near deafening when Jax stepped out on stage to guest vocal on "Raining Fire."

The song I wrote for Maddie.

As I played it, throwing every ounce of heart and energy I had into the song, I realized something fundamental had shifted. I was no longer playing just for fun. This wasn't some bullshit lark that I could quit and walk away from. No more than I could quit and walk away from the promise I had just made Maddie.

No, this was something I needed to do. It mattered. Music was what I loved.

And love was what mattered most.

THE END