Cadell set his acoustic guitar between his knees and began his warm-up, practicing scales and arpeggios. The other musicians were busy with their own warm-ups, everyone tweaking their instruments or squinting at the sheet music.
Black egg-carton foam covered the walls of the recording studio to deaden any stray sound and the normal shuffles and grunts of the work of playing music.
The band was working on demos, rough cuts of songs before they recorded them for their next album. The lead singer, Xan Valentine, insisted on working in a recording studio. The cost was ridiculous. Most bands had practice spaces, converted warehouses or commercial spaces, and they worked there for weeks or months before they went into the studio. Killer Valentine had tried that once a couple of years ago, and they had played for exactly sixteen minutes before Xan had walked out, his hands clamped over his ears, saying that the acoustics were shit and he wouldn’t listen to it.
So, the band rented recording studio space for months at a time.
Cadell didn’t need to look at his fingers while he walked them down the frets of his guitar to play the scales, so he watched the other band members. He was playing his way through the minor scales this morning. He had done the major scales and sevenths in Emily’s room before he had left her.
Most rock musicians didn’t play scales, he knew, or at least they didn’t practice their scales as diligently as he did. His childhood was a blur of scales. When he had run away to New York City, he had stopped for a few months, but then he had noticed at Juilliard that everyone who played other instruments played scales, all of them, for hours. The best musicians at the top of his class played the most scales.
So Cadell went back to playing scales.
Xan stood in the middle of the recording studio, softly humming scales because he knew their value as well as Cadell did.
Cadell pressed his lips together, still angry. Goddammit, you think you know a guy. You pour out your soul to him, and you think that there are no walls between you, but Cadell had been wrong.
A white bandage wrapped Xan’s left hand, a sight so painful that Cadell could only look at Xan’s hand out of the corner of his eye.
Tryp, the drummer, was in an isolation room at the back of the studio. Through the windows, Cadell watched Tryp silently pound the shit out of a large kit. The stacked cymbals twitched, and the big bass drum in the center vibrated, but no sound made it out of the booth. Pretty good set-up.
Georgie, their sole female band member at the moment, was playing scales on the keyboard because she was classically trained, too. No sound emerged from her keyboard because she was wearing big headphones plugged directly into her instrument. Her long, brown braid swung as she muscled up and down the keys, her slim fingers double-stepping over the keys.
Cadell’s fingers fluttered on the neck of his guitar, tapping the strings and fretboard like raindrops drizzling on a puddle, while the fingers of his right hand plucked the strings over the soundhole. He played so quickly that the notes almost sounded like a glide, or portamento in Italian, the notes sliding from one to the next. They weren’t, though. If he had recorded it and slowed it down, each note would have been a separate ping.
Peyton was practicing the new song on his bass guitar, leaning down to examine the music on the stand in front of him. The overhead fluorescent lights glinted on his short, blond hair. He had run a few scales to warm up on the bass, but the bass wasn’t his primary instrument. He had been a classical pianist, even had a soloist gig with a symphony orchestra right out of Juilliard, but he had signed on with Killer Valentine to be the keyboard player instead.
But Georgie had kept the spot, even though she was supposed to be temporary. She had filled in for their previous keyboard player after a huge shake-up one terrible night at a Madison Square Garden show. Peyton had been hired to replace her, but she had stayed on. Now, he played the bass.
Cadell sensed a restlessness about him, though. Peyton wanted his own gig, to be the star and the soloist like he had trained to be his whole life. He bet that Peyton wouldn’t last out his year-long contract, and then Killer Valentine would be shopping for a bassist again.
Cadell finished his scales, but everyone else was still working. The clock hanging above the sound booth said that they had ten more minutes before they needed to start recording the first demo.
Ten minutes.
Ten minutes was more than enough time to shoot up some heroin and ride out that first wave of bliss, if Cadell had had some.
He didn’t have any, of course.
He knew where he could get some in less than ten minutes, though. His New York friends had contacts in Jersey.
He picked up his tablet and logged into an online poker room.
Xan was singing softly, holding the sheet music and pacing. His hair had gotten even blonder, Cadell noticed. The roots were barely golden brown, but it shaded to dark blond above his ears. The tips that touched his shoulders were bright platinum.
Maybe Cadell should have Boris do something like that to him. The black hair with blue tips was getting old. Maybe he should just tell Boris to do something because Cadell had no idea what looked good.
His phone vibrated, jittering his guitar case beside his foot. He picked up the phone and checked the texts.
Andy had written, Emily is sick. I’m with her. Will let you know if things get worse.
His nerves caught fire.
Cadell bit his lip for about two seconds before he flipped open his guitar case and belted his guitar inside with the Velcro straps. He zipped it shut, slipped his tablet into the side pocket, and hoisted it on his back with the backpack straps.
Xan’s head whipped around. “Hey! Where’re you going?”
Cadell walked toward the door. “There’s a thing. I have a thing.”
Xan grabbed his arm. “Wait.”
Cadell stared straight into Xan’s brown eyes. “I have to go.”
Xan did the same thing as Andy had done, rolling Cadell’s arm to check the inside of his elbow.
Jesus, if Cadell were going to use, he would shoot up between his toes or the vein in his leg or something. Leaving fresh tracks on his arm would be just plain stupid with everyone watching him all the time.
He yanked his arm away. “I’m not using.”
“What is going on with you?” Xan whispered, leaning in. “You’ve been jumpy as shit since we got back from Europe.”
“Family emergency.” He jostled his guitar case on his back, loosening the backpack straps over his left shoulder.
Xan was still standing close to him. His dark eyes looked serious. “I know that’s not true.”
“You don’t know everything about me, either, Alexandre.”
Xan rocked back. “I told you that I understood what it was like to be a prodigy, to live with that.”
“You didn’t tell me why.”
“That’s right.”
“I have to go. I have a family emergency,” Cadell said.
“We have studio time booked for this demo.”
“I have a problem that I have to take care of.”
Xan raised his hands and backed off. “When are you going to lay down your track, then?”
“I’m going to check on things, and then I’ll either be back tonight or before everyone gets here tomorrow.”
Xan bent close again. “I can’t lose you. I can’t lose another band member to drugs. Grayson isn’t coming back. He shouldn’t come back. He wouldn’t stay sober for ten minutes. I can’t lose you, Cadell.” Xan grabbed his shoulder, a desperate move this time. “You’re the virtuoso. You always have been. Without you, it’s just pop shit.”
Cadell sighed. “It’s not pop shit, Xan. It’s always been rock and roll.”
“I can’t lose you, all right?”
“You won’t lose me. I’ve been clean for eight months—”
“Eight months!” Xan’s dark eyes blazed with anger, and his jaw clenched. “You told me you were clean five years ago. I stayed with you for weeks.”
“Yeah, addicts lie.”
“Are you lying now?”
It was a fair question. “I’ll bring you a blood test that I had done a few days ago that shows I haven’t been.”
Xan was still grinding his teeth. “I want to see it. I mean it.”
“Fine.”
Cadell shook off Xan’s hand and walked out of the studio. The sullen sound tech watched him walk past her booth.
In the parking lot, he found his car that he had retrieved from his house after he had gotten home that first night. He had thought that his BMW was electric blue, but it looked darker in the sunlight.
Showed how much he was in town, that he couldn’t even remember what his own damn car looked like.
He tried to call Andy, long rings jingling through the speakers of his car as he drove, but she didn’t pick up.
Drive carefully, he reminded himself. We don’t need more people in the hospital. Drive sanely.
He parked in the hospital’s parking structure and rode the elevator, his guitar case pulling on his shoulders, all the way up to Emily’s room. Sweat trickled down his back.
In the corridor, Cadell broke into a run.
He slammed her door open.
Empty bed. Empty room. Window open and sunlight shining in. Emily wasn’t in there, and Andy wasn’t either.
His heart sped, pounding in his chest. “Emily!” he called. “Andy! Dr. Kumar!”
Andy stepped out of the bathroom, carrying Emily against her shoulder. Emily was holding onto Andy’s neck with one arm. Her other little hand extended over Andy’s shoulder, dragging her IV stand behind them while she lay limply on Andy.
Gratitude overwhelmed him. Again, Andy was there because she was kind and gentle and the depths of her heart were limitless. He admired her mind and dedication, but he loved her for so much more.
Loved her?
Every muscle in his body wanted to wrap around the two of them and shelter them. It wasn’t just his daughter. The woman standing there was every bit as magnetic for him. It had started long before he had kissed her. From the very first day that she had taken Emily’s tiny hand, smiled, and told her that they would do everything they could to help her, Cadell had been drawn to Andy.
His dedication to her had deepened every time he saw her, every time she smiled at him and Emily, and every time he found them together.
He was staggered by the force of it.
Loved her.
And she was engaged to marry someone else.
Soon.
He couldn’t breathe.
Andy told Cadell, “I think she’s all right now. Some of the medicines can irritate the stomach, and she was vomiting. We had problems controlling it. I think she’s stopped now. We were just getting cleaned up in the bathroom.”
Andy laid Emily down on the bed. New sheets, Cadell noted, still creased from folding.
He smoothed Emily’s sweaty hair back from her head. “Are you all right, baby?”
She nodded. “I’m sick.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m doing everything I can to make you well. I promise.”
Her little voice whispered, “The bed is moving under me.”
Cadell wanted to scoop her up in his arms and hold her, bury his face in her spider-silk hair and feel her real little body against his chest, her heart fluttering like a mouse’s inside, but that might make her sick again.
He didn’t want to make her worse.
His legs stopped working. They just stopped holding him up, and he dropped to his knees beside the bed. He was trembling so hard that his arms hurt.
Something rubbed his back, and when he looked up, Andy was stroking her hand down his spine. “It’s all right. I was here.”
“I wasn’t,” Cadell said. “I should have been, and I wasn’t.”
He laid his forehead against the cool sheet.
Above him, Andy said, “You can’t be everywhere. You’re doing the best thing for her: getting her the best care possible.”
“But I should have been here. I should have been here last month, too.”
“I stay with her as much as I can,” Andy said, “and I will stay with her. I think you’ve done admirably.” Her hand smoothed over his shoulder. “You’re doing well. You’re doing everything you can.”
He reached up and held Emily’s little hand. “I’m sorry. I should have been here.”
Andy was standing beside him, so close that her white doctor’s coat brushed his cheek.
Cadell leaned, touching the side of his head to her hip.
That move was practically begging for a hug, but the desolation was overwhelming him again. His whole, barren life was gaping around him, and if they could share a pretend date and a pretend kiss, maybe she would pretend to not push him away for a moment, just a moment.
That tenuous thing that he called love drifted around him, almost a vapor in his mind.
Andy’s hand stroked from his shoulder up to the side of his head, holding him against her soft body.
Cadell sucked in a breath. He hadn’t even realized that he had stopped breathing.
After a moment, Andy bent and slid one arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer to her body.
Cadell still held Emily’s hand, and he tried not to jostle her. Andy’s shoulder was beside his cheek now, and he wrapped his other arm around her waist. Gentle warmth from her body drifted over him. Her hair smelled like jasmine.
His throat cramped. He pushed the words out, “I can’t lose her.”
She whispered, “We will do everything we can. I will do everything that I can. I promise you. I will do everything I can.”