Stripped Love (Guys Next Door #1) - Baylin Crow Page 0,72

better time."

"Hey, no! Sorry, I'm here. Drake's being an asshole. So… your agent submitted this little love song. The lyrics are sweet, not like cotton fuckin' candy—though it is fluffier than the pancakes my grandma makes on Sunday mornings. But I meant skilled. We—"

"My agent?" I interrupted with a confused frown. What the hell was he talking about?

"Phoenix Ryan, right?" He didn't give me time to reply. "Your agent, Archer West, knows one of my guys and sent me this sweet little ballad to take a look at." He sighed dramatically. "Fuckin' beautiful, really."

"Archer…" I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Okay, who is this again?"

He scoffed. "Do you and your agent not talk at all or something? You may need to look into new representation. Of course, then you might not be talking to me." A cocky edge slicked his tone, and I bit back the frustrated string of curses sitting on the tip of my tongue.

"Sit down, Gage, you're high." Another muffled voice joined in with a laugh.

How many of them were there? Two of them had been difficult enough. "I'll be sure to speak to my agent, Gage…"

He huffed as if I was the pain in the ass. "Gage Flex, drummer—"

My skin broke out in chill bumps and my mind raced. "Courting Echoes."

"Thank fuck. I was beginning to wonder if this shit was a prank Dylan pulled."

"Dylan…" I started as I tried to piece the chaotic conversion together. But Courting Echoes, one of my favorite bands, was on my damn phone and that's about as far as I could think.

"My ink artist, man. What does it matter?" He huffed. "And I'm not high, so don't go running to the press with that shit."

"See?" The guy in the background shouted. "How the fuck can I work with that?"

Was that Drake fucking Avery? What an asshole. And yet, it was the sweetest fucking sound. Next to Archer's greedy little moans of course. Headache forgotten, I paced the small kitchen as the argument between them picked back up.

"Christ, you're annoying. Go take a fucking Midol, D." The sound of a door slamming thudded down the line, and the background noise grew quiet.

"I know who Dylan is," I said as the conversation slowly began to make sense, though I still had several questions. "And I didn't plan on selling a stupid story about you to anyone."

"Good. I need a smoke to deal with them, I swear." The snick of a lighter was followed by a deep inhale. "Okay, so long story short. We seriously can't do shit with this song you wrote for your boyfriend or whatever. But you write with a similar style to Drake. I'll warn you now, he is fully against this. But me and the other guys want to see if you can produce material to fit our brand. I assume you're familiar with our music."

"Of course I am," I quickly replied, almost offended. I owned every one of their albums and had been to multiple concerts they'd headlined.

"Excellent." He inhaled again. "I'm glad we finally know what the fuck were talking about. I'll text you my manager's info. He's expecting the call and will tell you where to submit it when you're done. We're looking for a ballad. Something that will rip people's hearts to shreds and then have them begging us for more. Sound good?"

"Uh, yeah, bu—"

"Awesome, looking forward to it. Later, man." The phone went dead, and I pulled it away, staring at the screen. What just happened?

Once the initial shock wore off, my first instinct was to tell Archer. I pulled up our messages and my fingers hovered over the keyboard, but I paused as I read through all the messages I'd sent that were never responded to. My fingers closed tight around the black phone case as I backed out to the home screen.

Scrubbing my hand over my face, I let out a frustrated sigh and reached under the couch, pulling my notebook out. I turned to a clean page and just stared at it as a bubble of laughter rose in my throat. How did I possibly lose the one thing I didn't know I even needed until recently, and then gain the possibility of reaching the fucking stars for a songwriter all within a twenty-four hour period?

I was still staring at the blank sheet when the sound of an engine pulled in next door. Isaac's car sounded like a beast on steroids, so the soft purr had to be Archer.