Loud Rowdy Hearts_A Kings of Crown Creek prequel Read online

  I like to think I hid my laugh well.

  “You boys - ” they always called us boys, “- ever make it to a Sharks game? Minor league I know but - “

  “Oh yeah,” Jonah said as we all nodded. “We love sports. Watching them. Playing them.”

  Bullshit, but continue.

  “What do you play?”

  I saw my moment. “Our wonderful tour sponsor, Greeling Automotive, organizes baseball games for us.” I grinned at Darla who looked relieved I’d squeezed in the tour sponsor’s name.

  “We put Finn in far right field,” Beau deadpanned.

  The interviewer took in this playful, brotherly banter with a studied grin. “You know, I hear a lot of people say this about you, and I wonder if it’s true. That the great thing about the King Brothers is that they don’t know they’re the King Brothers.”

  I blinked. That was a new one. Of course I knew we knew we were the King Brothers. It was in our face every day. There was no escaping it. The only time I could be my own person was with Noelle, and those moments with her were snatched out of the chaos of….being a fucking King Brother.

  But Jonah had an answer all ready. He probably fucking studied a list of canned responses, all focus group tested for maximum fan satisfaction and ranked in order of effectiveness. He smiled winningly at the interviewer. “We’re a family first,” he intoned. And I had to give it to him. He sounded like he meant it. “We know how lucky we are to get to live the dream together.”

  The interviewer seemed touched. “You’ve said that before,” he said with a nod. “You’ve said it often.”

  “You don’t believe him?” I jumped in, suddenly protective of my older brother’s sincerity. At least Jonah was still able to feel things on his own, without the help of pharmaceuticals. “He’s telling the truth.”

  Darla gave me a look.

  But the interviewer pressed on. “Is there a downside to all this?”

  I opened my mouth, ready to tell him all about the downsides to being us. But as usual Jonah had a slicker, faster response. “We’ve learned to live without expectations,” he said, smiling at the camera winningly. “We enjoy the moments we have.”

  “Is there even time to enjoy things?”

  “I really enjoy this green room,” Finn deadpanned.

  The interviewer took that in stride. Clearly he’d been briefed to just ignore Finn’s outbursts entirely. “Last question. What’s it like out there on stage?”

  We glanced at each other. This was the part I had an actual answer for, because it was the part I actually enjoyed. All four of us loved to play music. It was just the rest of the shit that accompanied it.

  “The roar of the crowd is the best,” Jonah began.

  “It gets me hyped,” I added. “I don’t even need caffeine to get excited because hearing that is the biggest rush around.”

  “I like that this tour, it’s the same show every night,” Beau added. “We’re practiced and ready.”

  “But little things can still crop up,” Finn reminded him.

  “Right, but there’s always that point in the show where you look at each other and have that connection, like, ‘this is going really well,’” Jonah finished. Then his eyes widened a little before he added. “And we have the best fans in the world too, so that makes it even better.”

  “Definitely,” I added, looking directly at the camera. Darla was nodding as she ran her finger down her checklist and I took that to mean we did well. “The fans are great.”

  “Okay, that wraps it up,” the interviewer said. “Anything you want to add?”

  Jonah grabbed the mic. “Thank you Springfield! Tonight is going to be awesome.”

  The camera man nodded. “Aaaand… we’re clear.”

  “Thanks for that,” the interviewer said. I never did catch his name and I didn’t care enough to ask it now, not when we had yet another one of these things to do in - .

  Darla slid from her chair. “Nice work boys. Ready to do it all over again in fifteen minutes?” She disappeared to make some pressing phone call and I took the moment to sit back down again and let my mind wander back to the fantasy I’d spun out on the tour bus.

  Noelle in a wedding gown, walking across the lawn. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed less like a fantasy and more like a vision of the future. With a flower crown on her head, bare feet in the grass, she’d walk to me as I stood at the edge of the “cliff” on our property and smile as she took my hand - .

  “What are you grinning about?” Finn wanted to know. I hadn’t realized he was watching me, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered with these pills singing through my bloodstream.

  “Remember the cliff?” I asked my brother out of the blue.

  Finn rolled his head around on his neck and sat down next to me. “Course,” he grumbled, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. Finn was always grumbling. “You threw me off there once.”

  I shook my head. “No way. That wasn’t me.”

  “Was too.”

  “Oh shit,” I remembered. “It was.”

  A faint grin played around Finn’s lips. “Claire got you back though.”

  Our little sister was a hellcat. I nodded at the memory. “She launched herself at me from the tree. Nearly broke my fucking back.”

  “Served you right though.”

  “I suppose it did.”

  “You okay over here?” Beau came over, wanting to know.

  My body was still humming with the thought of asking Noelle to marry me. Little thrills shivering down my spine clinched it.

  I was going to do it.

  “Just fine,” I told my brother as he shoved Finn over. “Why?” Beau leaned in and sniffed. Instinctually I moved away from his scrutiny. “Come on now.”

  “Just checking.”

  “Well cut it out.”

  “You almost missed the last appearance.” Jonah was suddenly there, looking like an old man in that fussy new haircut of his. Like he’d left rock and roll and joined up in the army.

  “I didn’t though,” I reminded him.

  He rolled his eyes. “Because we came and found you.”

  I clenched my fists. Any warm feelings I’d been having about my brothers dissipated into thin air. How many years can you spend with the same people, day in and day out? I was born into this family and I worked with this family too. There was no escaping it. I was Gabe-the-screw-up. At home and at work. There was no place, no room for me to just be me.

  Except with her.

  Noelle knew me. I closed my eyes and pictured her in that white gown, how beautiful she looked. I could see it now. The honeymoon, the private beach. Then after, the little house on a big plot of land, far from everyone. Just the two of us. A private escape.

  I needed that.

  I needed that…

  Now.

  But there was no way I could get that now, because I was stuck here in a room with my three brothers, waiting to be called out into the studio. I slid off the couch, feeling like my bones were made of jelly. “I gotta go do something,” I mumbled.

  “We have an interview,” Jonah reminded me. “Ten minutes.”

  The shakes were starting to come over me. I needed a drink…badly. “I know,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  But in that moment, I wasn’t honestly sure that was the truth.

  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 kn
ew 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. We all played the part of bashful lover from time to time, but for Beau it seemed real as anything. I twisted on my stool to catch him shaking his head. “It’s hard,” he was saying. “But I try to put my family first, you know?

  “Would you be adverse to dating a fan?” the interviewer pressed.

  Beau’s eyes went wide for a second, his usual panicked tell. Finn, with that twin connection that moved on a faster level than all of us, jumped in. “Course not,” he said, moving into Beau’s light to give him time to compose himself. “We love our fans the most.”

  “Now I just love the story of how you all got started in the business,” KittyKatie cooed. “Tell me about that?”

  Jonah nodded, taking the lead. “Well we started singing together at festivals around our town. Summer time in Upstate New York there’s a festival like every weekend.”

  “Because summer is so short,” Finn deadpanned, to laughter.

  “And our parents were there,” Beau added. “Contrary to popular belief, they were there and supervising - .”

  “From far away,” I finished. My voice sounded slurred to me and I saw Jonah’s head twitch. I resolved to keep quiet the rest of the interview.

  “It was fun.” Jonah finished. “We made money to get comics and buy candy, and it was a blast. Our parents were there, watching the whole time, but like at a safe distance, you know? They knew not to interfere.” He grinned. “We wouldn’t have let them.

  KittyKate was nodding along like she knew this all by heart. She wasn’t any older than Jonah. I wondered if she grew up with our posters on her wall. If she’d been part of the Princess Sisters, the official King Brothers fan club. “Your sister played with you back then, right?”

  Finn leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “Yeah. Claire is a great singer.” He paused. “Better than Jonah.”

  Jonah cleared his throat as KittyKate laughed. “We started playing in the basement, but it wasn’t long before our father kicked us out to the garage.”

  “Which wasn’t a garage so much as an extra house on the property,” Beau added.

  Jonah nodded. “Our family’s lived there for a while, and we’re a pretty big family so we have to keep building houses.”

  “Our Uncle Gid actually lives in that space now,” Finn said. He grinned. “He made it actually livable. Somehow.”

  “It’s not close, like it’s down the way back in the property,” I piped up. My voice sounded better now, at least to my ears. “So we could be loud as we wanted. No one to bother except the squirrels.”

  We were all talking faster now, getting caught up in the story. “If mom wanted us to come home for dinner she’d call the phone,” Jonah said.

  “But if we don’t come right away - ” Beau started.

  “She’d cut the power,” Finn finished.

  “Yeah. Mom always insisted we eat together,” Jonah added.

  “We kind of still do?” I pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Jonah shot me a grateful look and I could tell he appreciated that I was making this easy. “Family dinners were a thing on the Kings of the World tour.”

  “Because when you’re touring together you’re all a family,” I finished. Hot guilt was there in my stomach again, and I wished I had a drink to cool it.

  “What would you do if you weren’t in music?” KittyKate asked.

  “Hmm. I don’t know,” Jonah said, looking at us. “Something in radio maybe?”

  “Yeah,” said Finn. “Where you could talk a lot.”

  KittyKate laughed like this was the funniest thing she’d ever heard and now I was wondering if those posters on her wall were all of Finn. “Will you ever break up, you think?”

  The hot guilt in my belly sloshed around, making me feel nauseous, but Jonah was quick to laugh. “Well we’re brothers. So, it’s kind of hard.”

  “But when it feels like we’re not doing well any more, maybe?” Beau added.

  KittyKate nodded. “Like when the thrill is gone?”

  I blinked. Outside I kept my face perfectly neutral, but her words clanged in my head like a bell “Yeah,” was all I managed to say.

  KittyKate didn’t notice the effect her words had on me, because she was still prattling on. “You’re the most successful boy band in history - .”

  “See,” I interrupted, trying to sit up straighter. “That’s not right.”

  “What’s that?

  “Everyone calls us a boy band, you know? But we’re a band.” I could see her face falling and struggled to keep things light. “Just, I mean we’re all boys. I mean, sometimes we’re not sure about Jonah.” He smiled instead of punching me, though I could tell it was a struggle. “So in that sense I guess yeah, we’re a boy band. But we play our own instruments.”

  KittyKate picked up on that. “Gabe, I hear you have been working on your solos?”

  I nodded enthusiastically. “Right. Next album we’re going to rock the fuck out.”

  KittyKate’s eyes went wide. Everyone sort of stiffened and she looked at the camera person and sliced across her neck, and Jonah growled and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

  I looked around at the sudden panic, confused. “What?”

  “Dude,” Beau murmured. “You swore.”

  “We have to dump out of delay,” Katie - yeah her name was definitely Katie, I was paying attention now but it was too late - was all icy business. “In five, four, three.” She pasted her smile back on again. “Sorry for the issue there,” she said into the camera with a laugh. “Live TV and all. We’re back with the King Brothers…”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t swear.”

  “Shut up,” Jonah hissed. “Just… don�
�t talk.”

  “You want me here, but you don’t want me to talk, huh?” I seethed. I looked around for Noelle even though I knew she wasn’t anywhere on set. Then I started looking for an escape even though I was trapped here.

  No I wasn’t. I already knew my escape. I just had to make it.

  “I’m done,” I announced, standing up. I smiled to the camera. “Have to get to a store before it closes.”

  “It’s ten in the morning!” Katie cried.

  But I was already ripping my mic off my chest and shoving it at Jonah. “You handle it,” I told my brother. “You’re much better at it than I am.”

  Chapter Seven

  Beau

  After that, everything had ground to a halt.

  Kate Winston, the host of Springfield Today, had sat there for only a moment before cutting the interview off with a smile. She threw to commercial and we were hustled out of there double time with Jonah cursing all the while.

  I figured Gabe was waiting for us in the green room. But when a search of the building revealed he’d slipped our security and was out on the street alone, Jonah swore again. Bennett instructed us to head back to the hotel, and not go after him.

  “He’s our fucking brother,” Finn had growled, but a look from Jonah sent him off muttering to the limo.

  “Shit,” I whispered as I looked out the window of the hired car. We were supposed to be playing right now. Force of habit had me tapping out the keyboard parts of ‘Girl Crazy’ on my knee as we slid though traffic back to our hotel.

  We’d barely settled back in the penthouse suite when the head of security knocked briskly on the door. “We got him,” he intoned. “He was at…” He paused and then spoke into his headset. “Confirm he was found at a jewelry store?”

  “The fuck?” Finn mumbled, sitting up straighter as the security guy nodded.

  “A jewelry store?” Jonah repeated. “What was he doing at a jewelry store?”

  “Unknown, Mr. King. But we sent a car. He’s on his way back here now.”

  “I’m going to kill him.” Jonah was pacing. “What the fuck is going on with him?”