moving in time to the music. And every god damn time our eyes met, something happened.
Fuck.
What the hell was this? I’d met up with, hooked up with, slept with, teased, friend-zoned, and had my share of trysts with the best of them, but this? This was next-level mind-fucking, and I had no idea what to do with it.
As a band, we were in the zone, and by the time we got off-stage, I’d almost forgotten about Ariel. Almost. She was no longer in the wings, and I scanned the area for her as I accepted a towel from my guitar tech.
“Guys, I want to apologize,” Lexi said as we went into the small backstage area. “I invited someone to watch from the wings without discussing it with you, but it was so last-minute, and—”
“Ariel Fox.” I turned to her curiously. “How do you know her?”
“She opened for us when I was on tour with Special Kay.” Lexi had been with a hugely popular pop group before joining us earlier this year. “We got to know each other to the extent her prick of a dad would allow it, and honestly, I feel so bad for her I just kind of blurted out the invitation without thinking.”
“It’s all good.” Bash waved a hand. “But I think Tyler’s in heat.”
She glanced at me. “Don’t get yourself worked up. Her dad doesn’t let anyone near her. I don’t even think she’s allowed to date.”
“She’s not allowed to date? What is she, fourteen?” I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of a grown woman not being allowed to date.
Lexi nodded. “Twenty-five, I think, but since her bipolar diagnosis, her father has a conservatorship that includes pretty much every aspect of her life.”
“I didn’t even notice her,” Stu said, shaking his head. “Didn’t she try to kill herself or something?”
Lexi shrugged. “I never got the whole story because her father wouldn’t leave us alone more than five minutes at a time. He’s a piece of work.”
“I want to meet her,” I said impulsively. “Can you make it happen?”
Lexi gave me a curious smile. “You sure?”
I made a face. “Absolutely. We’re professionals in the same industry, and now I’m so curious I need to meet her and her jerk of a dad, too.”
“Well, it’s your lucky day.” Lance came up to us with a wry grin. “Because Ariel Fox, her father, and Darren freakin’ Randall are all here.”
“Darren Randall is here?” Lexi’s eyes widened.
“As in the head of Urban Whiplash Records?” Ford blinked.
“Well, they’re the ones offering us millions to make a record,” I pointed out. “And as the head of the label, it makes sense he’d want to see us play live.”
“Bloody hell.” Stu took a pull from his bottle of Amstel.
Lexi turned to Lance. “Well, bring them in. We can’t keep the president of our future record label waiting.”
Lexi and Ford looked a little nervous, Stu didn’t seem to be impacted by much of anything, and Bash merely met my gaze. There was a quiet question lurking in his eyes, and I knew what he was thinking. Now that Pretty Harts was done, would our old record company support our new project without the star power of Casey Hart? We’d done the final album required by Pretty Harts’ contract over the summer with guest appearances by Stu, Ford, Lexi, as well as our former lead singer, Jayson Keller. It was a whole album of well-known cover songs like “November Rain” and “Paradise By the Dashboard Light,” and it was doing well. The record company had made noises about Nobody’s Fool having a lighter sound than Pretty Harts, though, probably because of Lexi, but they’d offered us a lot of money to do it.
Now the question was whether or not we could come to a compromise because none of us wanted to do pop. We were a hard rock band with touches of metal and blues and had no intention of changing. However, if Darren Randall and Urban Whiplash Records decided to pass, Bash and I were going to have to cover the band financially until we started making money.
I forgot all about any of that the second Ariel walked through the door. I hadn’t been sure what to expect, but those light eyes of hers were burned in my subconscious, and I needed to look at them up close. I was probably a dumbass, but what the hell? Nothing ventured, nothing gained was the saying, and I believed it wholeheartedly. Even if she