Say it Louder (19 page)

I think Dave senses he’s said something wrong, because he clears his throat and tries again. “I mean, how do you live like there’s always an upside? Like you’re sure life’s gonna get better?”

“It is.” I don’t say it with Pollyanna-like shiny optimism, but with a conviction that’s hard-earned. “We’re not scraping bottom. Not even close.”

Dave threads his fingers in my hair, his dark eyes finally locking with mine. “When you say it like that, I want to believe it. I want to believe everything that comes out of your mouth.”

And just like that, as his fingers trace my cheeks, my lips, and then blaze a trail down my throat, I’m a hopeless puddle of
whoa.
Like something clicks and we’re two sides of a coin, completely opposite but fully connected.
 

A story comes tumbling out, maybe to help him work up the courage to share his. “You want to know why I do street art?”

Dave nods, his dark lashes heavy. “Tell me.”

“It’s about wanting to be
seen
. Like, when I was in foster care, I was invisible unless my foster father was drunk. And living on the street, the only time I felt
seen
was when I stopped being a person and started being a statistic.”

I pick at a hangnail and grimace, unable to tip my face up to look at him while it’s so naked with feeling. “Politicians talk about ‘the homeless’ like they’re a problem that needs a policy. A homeless person is homeless first, and a person second. It gnaws at you, like you’re a bone. When you’re picked clean, you’ll be thrown away.”

Dave wraps his hands over mine, and it gives me fuel to keep going.

“When you sleep between Dumpsters, it’s not too far to imagine being inside one. After a while, it was like I didn’t even need a name, because who would care if I actually disappeared?”

Dave makes a sad sound deep in his throat and pulls me closer, cradling my head just beneath his chin.

“So I made sure I didn’t. Disappear, I mean. I’d make my mark on the world, either with paint or with ink, so even if I went away, the world couldn’t pretend I never existed.”

“You wanted to do something permanent.”

I smile a little, and correct him. “I wanted to
be
something permanent. And with this show, and the article, it’s like I made it. You helped me see that even if nothing sells, the show proves I made stuff that matters, even if it’s just for fifteen minutes.”

“You matter to me.” Dave’s voice is husky and raw. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The chance to see you make your mark. You’re going to set the art world on fire.”

I pull back from under his chin and run my fingertips over his stubble. “Ditto. That’s why I’m telling you it’s not so bad. You’ve already made your mark on the world—on the freaking
Billboard
charts. No one can change that.”

Dave opens his mouth and then closes it, hesitant. “They see through that.”

“Who?”

“The band. The music critics. You’re a true talent, Willa, but they know better about me. I’m not some virtuoso like Jayce, and I don’t have Gavin’s magnetism. One critic said I was just ‘a garage-band extra.’ I’m not the kind of drummer who
deserves
to play in a top band.”

Now it’s my turn to be speechless. Dave’s a walking contradiction—a lost boy with a pitiful poker face, and a man who channels command and control when his manager’s hat is on.

And I’m stunned because he’s afraid his
art’s
not good enough. “Fuck that.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Fuck the haters. Haters hate, but creators create. Even if you’re not the world’s greatest drummer, it doesn’t matter. The Beatles weren’t the world’s greatest musicians either, but together they were the world’s greatest band.”

Dave shakes his head like I’m just not getting it. “But they see through me and
know
that I’m the one dragging them down.”

“The point is, they see you.” I stand, my knees aching from the floor. Maybe I’m revealing too much, but the more I trust him with my story, the more Dave lets me see his own vulnerable places. “That’s enough for now. Tomorrow we’ll talk about you.”

He looks up at me, so much need naked on his face. The need to be validated. To be enough. To be connected.

“You got a bed somewhere?”

I follow Dave up the stairs to a soft blue room with another set of rectangular dust patches and a mattress in the middle of the floor. He shrugs a little. “Don’t judge.”

I’m awkward as I step closer to him, feeling the heat of our bodies chest to chest. His arms circle my waist, skim up my back, and he buries his fingers in my hair. His fingers tighten, tugging back my head and exposing my neck.

When his lips touch my throat, it’s the difference between the cool haze of dusk and the stark pulse of night illuminated by a thousand neon signs. My skin’s on fire where he tastes me, lit up by his tongue tracing a path to the ridge of my collarbone, electrified as the stubble on his chin grazes the top of my breasts.

I make noises that I’m pretty sure I’ve never made, little moans and pants and
ohgodpleasedontstop.
I yield to another side of him that is revealed as he learns every inch of my exposed skin with his mouth.

Until there is no uncharted territory.

We shed our clothes in a fumble of groping hands and tumble on the mattress and he finds new places to explore. When he traps my nipple between his teeth and tongue, my toes
actually fucking curl
and I arch off the mattress just to get closer. To feel him more.

I feel my control slipping away as he strips me of that and the rest of my clothes. My breasts tighten with each lash of his tongue, doubly sensitive from the stubble that rakes across my skin, leaving it tender and undeniably alive.

It’s like walking a building edge as I creep toward where I want to paint. The fear of falling, the fear of the unknown, only heightens the ecstasy I feel when I get to exactly the right spot.
 

And I fear I’m falling for him.

This unknowable, conflicted, walking contradiction.

This man with more baggage in his past than I have in my whole apartment.

And even though my brain’s a soup of lust and desire, I’ll be damned if I let him take all of the control.

I scissor my legs from around his waist and use their leverage to flip us. Now I’m on top and his eyes go wide, startled by my aggressive move.

“Willa—”

“No talking. Just moaning.” I grin at him and lick my lips, soaking up every clench of his jaw and furrow of his brow. Rolling my hips against his hardness is utterly melting his brain.

I can’t suppress a devilish smile as I work my way down his chest, tracing the primary lines on his tattoos. I bite his sharply pointed nipple just enough to draw a gasp, then kiss my way down his stomach, relishing each ridge and valley.

The hair below his navel beckons me lower, to curling coarse hair and a cock that glistens with moisture on its tip. I ignore the smooth shaft, instead teasing the insides of his thighs with nips that finally get me what I want.

A moan.

On Dave’s lips, it’s more than just a noise. It’s primal, a sound pulled from the depths of his gut and maybe even his heart. He groans when I trace the seam of his sac and his balls draw up tight. I lick each one and press my tongue between them, feeling his whole body bow up from the mattress in a quest for more, more, more.

And I give him more. I’m not a rock star or a groupie worth photographing, but I can give him the core of who I am. When I take him into my mouth finally, I swallow him like I’m bringing him inside me, inviting him to understand the inner workings of my heart.

Dave’s groans muddle his words and I run my tongue up the ridge of his cock, swirling around the head in a greedy quest to make him lose control.

When I tug at him with suction, his
ohjesusfuckyesyes
is beautiful nonsense. His eyes are open but I’m pretty sure he’s blind to the whole world and this room and its few bits of leftover furniture.

He’s blind, but he sees me.

I am not invisible.

I’m powerful.

The rush of knowing
that
makes me forget all the details of where we are and what we’re doing and what’s about to happen. I just suck him deeper and when he shouts and writhes and pumps heat inside me I swallow and swallow and … I’m sated.

I release him, feeling his aftershocks, wrapping myself in the warmth and power of his skin and strong muscles, letting him come back down from wherever high-up place I took him.

I went there too. And now we’re in this together.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Try it again. This time, follow Tyler more closely.” Ravi pops his headphones back on and the rest of my band grumbles from the latest start-stop, change-it-up, do-it-over interruption.

I don’t grumble because he’s right. Ravi’s latest jab was aimed squarely at me.

I clack out the tempo with my sticks and Jayce leads us into the song, a driving, hard-edged beat for “Darkest Night.” With a few songs left to fix on
Wilderness
and a drop date fast approaching, we’re running out of room for any mistakes.

If there’s one bright spot, it’s the track we laid down first this morning, when we were tight and I was feeling it. “Say it Louder” will be the last song on the album, and for once I’m not just going along for the ride.

For once I’m the creator. Open up the jacket notes on
Feast
and
Beast
and you won’t see my name listed more than a few times on songwriting credits. That’s usually Gavin and Jayce’s thing, and sometimes Tyler.

But this time, I earned my place on the album. I cruise through “Darkest Night” feeling strong and sharp, but Ravi cuts us again and my good mood evaporates.

“Stop. Stop. This is where you’re falling down.” Ravi’s out of his chair and yanks the second set of headphones off his ears, leaving them hanging around his skinny neck with the other pair.

I have no idea why he needs two, but they seem to be part of his whole person, same as his thick glasses and endless energy drinks.

Ravi rubs his temples and walks out of the sound booth and into the recording room. It’s hot in here, getting rancid with sweat, and the two little plastic fans aren’t doing much more for me than blowing Jayce’s stink right in my direction.

Before he speaks, Ravi wrinkles his nose a little. Maybe he smells it too. “We’re losing focus. Jayce is going off-script, which would be fine with what Gavin’s doing, but Dave’s about a quarter-beat slow on the bridge and it’s killing your momentum.”
 

I cringe, and if I were the Hulk, the drumsticks would splinter in the strength of my grasp. “I’m keeping up!”

“You’re not,” Jayce snarls, but Ravi shuts him down with the most commanding glare I’ve seen from anyone, this scrawny five-foot-eight dude channeling a superhero.

“Not your place, Jayce.”

“Right. My place is at the guitar, and Dave’s place is back at high-school band camp.”

That slams me in the gut and I stand so fast my stool topples backward with a crash. “Asshole.”

“I’m an asshole who’s keeping up. You’re just an asshole,” Jayce counters.

“Enough!” Ravi says, and even though he’s only a few decibels louder, his command shuts us down before things get even uglier. “Bitching like that will ensure this album never gets finished. You don’t get your tour, you don’t get your next chart-topper, and you
do
get to be a music-history footnote for being the band that crapped out after its sophomore release.”

That shuts us all up. I gingerly right my stool.

“Dave, follow me. We’re going to try something new. The rest of you, take ten.” Ravi turns and sweeps out of the studio as if he’s certain I’ll follow.

I don’t meet anyone else’s eyes, least of all Jayce’s, as I slide out of the room. Ravi’s not back in his sound room, so I go down the hallway toward the office space up front—and run smack into a girl.

“Ooof,” she says as she collides with my chest. She takes a step back, reeling to regain her balance, and I get the immediate impression of a babysitter with a four-oh grade-point average.

She’s wearing a fucking gray cardigan.

In New York.

In August.

“Sorry. I didn’t see you.”

She adjusts slanted fifties glasses and hitches a leather bag back to its place on her shoulder. “My bad. I’m late.”

I step aside to let her pass as Ravi pokes his head out from an office down the hall. “Come down here for a minute.”

I sit across from him, a wide desk cluttered with tech—tablet, phone, speakers, more headphones, two monitors, trackpads and a pile of CDs. There’s not a single pen or scrap of paper anywhere.

“How do you think today’s going?” Ravi asks, and I feel like I’ve just landed in the principal’s office to answer for a crime I didn’t commit.

“Fair.”

Ravi’s brow does this weird twitch. “I’d call that a generous assessment. Look, it’s not getting better. Each take is coming apart worse than the last.”

“So use our first take,” I quip, but that only makes his brow twitch lower.

“I think we need to go a different direction, actually.” Ravi pauses, pushing his keyboard and mouse into alignment, perfectly parallel with the edge of his desk. “I’m going to have someone else sit in on drums for a while.”