Loud Rowdy Hearts by Vivian Lux

Author:Vivian Lux [Lux, Vivian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Gabe

The knocking sound hit my ears a few seconds after I saw Bennett in the doorway and grinned thinking about lightning storms and counting the seconds until the thunderclap.

"What are you smiling at?" our manager wanted to know. Jovially. Like my best friend. I knew he wasn't my friend, I'm not that naive, but it was still nice to feel like I had someone in my corner.

"Light travels faster than sound," I told him. My voice was slurring a lot more than it should have. I hadn't even had much to drink.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, though he clearly already knew the answer.

The answer was that I was drunk. I'd snuck off to calm myself down and somehow slipped right past happy and into falling down drunk. This was happening more and more lately, but I didn't really mind. "Nothing," I told him, because if I pretended that there wasn't a problem, then he could go on pretending he wasn't responsible for giving me my first sip of bourbon at the age of fourteen.

His eyes slid over me. I was slumping. I tried to straighten up. "Why'd you drink so much?" he asked. "Are you nervous or something?"

I laughed. At least it was an attempt at laughter, though I sort of lost interest in amusement halfway through the sound. "Why would I be nervous?" I demanded, sliding back down into a slump. "I've been doing this my whole life. Nothing to be nervous about."

We were the most valuable stars in Bennett's stable of pop idols. He needed the King Brothers way more than we needed him and he knew it too.

Which is why he didn't say anything more about how drunk I was right now. He just reached into his pocket. "Here," he said, walking over and slapping the pills down on the makeup table. "Something to help."

I nodded and scooped them up, washing them down with another shot of whiskey.

That was ten minutes ago. Now I was propped up on an interview couch. Quite literally propped up, with Jonah's shoulder on one side and Beau's on the other, like a pair of bookends to keep me from falling over.

"And how do you feel about Jonah?" the interviewer was asking me right at that moment.

I pasted an 'aw shucks' grin on my face. I'd answered this question seventy billion different ways over the past ten years, but one more wasn't going to kill me. "Huh!" I said, glancing very obviously over at my brother who, true to form, was pretending to be frightened of my answer. "No, Jonah's great," I said, looking back at the interviewer so I didn't have to see Jonah puff up with the compliment. "He's the heart and soul of this band, I think."

Right on cue, Finn called, "hey!" I lifted my hand to deflect his half-hearted punch, while the interviewer, Kitty? Katie? Whatever her name was, giggled appreciatively as Beau tried to play peacemaker.

What's her face, the interviewer, was talking to Beau about something that was making him blush and look down.

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