Taut Strings: A Rock Star Romance (River Valley Rebels) Read online

  Taut Strings

  Gabrielle Sands

  Contents

  River Valley Rebels Series

  Playlist

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  A Note from the Author

  Bonus Scene

  Pre-Order Pretty Words

  Acknowledgments

  River Valley Rebels Series

  Welcome to the first book in the River Valley Rebels series!

  Taut Strings is the story of Adeline, Silas, Abel, Cole, and Ezra. At its heart, it’s a story about overcoming failure and fear, and finding love in the process.

  All of the books in the River Valley Rebels series will be interconnected standalones that take place in the same world.

  Want to stay up-to-date on my future releases and get a Taut Strings bonus scene? See the back of the book for details.

  PLAYLIST

  Clutch - “Cypress Grove”

  Them Crooked Vultures - “New Fang”

  Slipknot - “The Nameless”

  Jimi Hendrix - “Crosstown Traffic”

  Darkthrone - “I Am The Grave Of The 80s”

  Pink Floyd - “The Great Gig In The Sky”

  Led Zeppelin - “Since I’ve Been Loving You”

  Childish Gambino - “Me and Your Mama”

  In Flames - “Bullet Ride”

  1

  ADELINE

  It was half past six, and the bar was filling up with patrons I didn’t want to serve. Where the hell is Frankie? This was the second time this week she was late for her evening shift.

  “Can I get a Coors Light, darlin’?”

  I lifted my eyes to the burly man across the bar and gave him a tight smile.

  “Coming right up.”

  He winked and waved a five-dollar bill before slamming it on the polished wood counter. I hoped that meant he didn’t want his change.

  At this hour, the bar was in a state of transition. The daytime regulars were being replaced by the evening ones, as well as a crowd of visitors and college students home for the summer. River Valley wasn’t a big tourist draw, but we got a few folks coming in July and August for the garden tours of the Tulson Estate. It was a big old mansion built about a hundred years ago, with manicured grounds and impeccable landscaping. At night, the trees were lit with colorful lights, and even I enjoyed going there from time to time. Molly and I had gone to see the lights last week.

  The door of the bar swung open, revealing a frazzled Frankie, who gave me an apologetic look. “I’m so sorry,” she mouthed.

  I shrugged and waved in response. Sure, I was irritated, but I wasn’t going to be an asshole to a single mom who was constantly trying to balance a dozen things at once.

  A few minutes later, she emerged from the side door behind the bar.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered again, grabbing my wrist to give it a friendly squeeze. “The girls threw a tantrum when the babysitter came. I literally had to pry their little fingers off to leave. You’re so lucky that Molly is a functioning adult who can take care of herself.”

  I froze. It wasn’t intentional. Just an instinctual reaction to someone implicitly telling me I was lucky to have been left with a teenage sister when our parents died.

  Frankie felt the change in me and paled. “Shit.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “No, it’s not. I don’t know what I’m saying. Of course, you’re not lucky to be left to take care of her. My mind is all over the place, and I’m just being an idiot. I’m sorry.”

  I swiped my palm across my face. “Look, don’t worry about it. It’s really okay. I do need to go though, so I’ll see you Monday?”

  Frankie bit her lip, looking at me with pity in her eyes. I didn’t need to see that.

  “Of course. Have fun at the show tomorrow. You’re going to kill it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, this time making an effort to give her a warmer smile. I knew she hadn’t meant anything malicious with her earlier comment, but it had stung, nonetheless. Losing my parents two years ago, being left with a younger sister to take care of, and trying to figure out how to pay for her to go to college next year? Yeah, I sure as hell didn’t feel very lucky.

  The sun wouldn’t set for another hour, and I decided to take the scenic route home. Molly was waiting for me, so I sent her a text to let her know I’d be late. I needed some time to think, and I didn’t want to do it at home where my sister always managed to read my worries like they were written with a Sharpie across my face.

  My mind went to the letter we had gotten in the mail this morning. Molly’s application for a student loan had been denied after I’d been deemed not a creditworthy guarantor. It shouldn’t have caught me by surprise. I’d missed deadlines on payments for months after Mom and Dad died, too consumed with grief to worry about my falling credit score.

  Now I was paying for that careless mistake. My life was a mess. I was twenty-one, with a high school diploma, and a rapidly depleting savings account. Our parents’ life insurance policy had covered us for a few years, but I’d checked the balance a week ago and knew it would barely cover Molly’s first year of tuition, even with the scholarship she’d gotten. In a few weeks, she’d leave for college, and then I’d have a year to figure out how to pay for the rest.

  Molly had seen the letter before I could try to hide it from her. She’d said she could defer college for a year, find a part-time job, and take online courses until she could pay her own way. That had earned a strong “Hell, no” from me. I wasn’t going to let her make the same mistakes I had, and that was the end of it. Although, Molly was already in a much better place than I’d been at her age. She had applied to multiple schools, been accepted to a few, and picked an option that suited her. And me? I had put all my hopes and dreams into a single institution, only to discover that sometimes things didn’t work out as planned, no matter how badly you wanted them to.

  I was so sure I’d get in to Julliard. I wanted to study music—to play my guitar and to meet people who loved the instrument as much as I did. My confidence had been enough to convince my parents that it would all work out just fine. But I hadn’t anticipated how putting so much significance on one audition would sabotage me.

  The rejection letter had hurt my parents almost as much as it had hurt me. It had been an icy knife plunged into my heart. I often wondered how a letter worded so impersonally had decimated me like it did.

  I’d stopped playing for six months after that. Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t touch my guitar. It had sat in the corner of my room, patiently waiting for me to befriend it again. Eventually, I did. It had just never felt the same.

  My phone buzzed in the cup holder, saving me from further reliving painful memories. It was a message from Mason.

  “Get-together at the pit tonight. Come hang out :).”

  I didn’t want to text and drive, so I tapped on the call icon to dial.

  “Yo, what’s up, Ade? You saw my message?”

  “Yea
h. I’m driving home right now. I just got off work, so I think I’m going to hang with Molly for a bit and then crash. We’re still rehearsing tomorrow before the show, right?”

  “Sure, that’s cool,” Mason responded in his easy way.

  Mason was our drummer. Four years ago, after college hadn’t worked out for me, a few friends had asked me to join their band, and we’d been playing together ever since. Mason was the baby of the group, only fifteen when we first got together, but he was the best drummer in town. He was also getting shipped off to college this year. His parents had threatened to cut him off if he didn’t get out of this town and do something with his life. We hadn’t talked about what that meant for the band yet, and I didn’t want to be the one to start that conversation.

  “Hey, how do you feel about playing a few of our originals tomorrow?” I asked.

  “I dunno,” he said, and I visualized him shrugging on his end of the line. “I feel like people always like the covers more. You know, songs they recognize.”

  “I think they’ll like ‘Green Roses’ though.” I fingered the collar of my white T-shirt. “It’s upbeat and fits the rest of our set. What if we play it second to last?”

  “Hmm,” he hummed as I waited for his response. I don’t know why this shit made me anxious, but it did. I felt like I was always the one pushing the guys to play our songs.

  “Yeah, it’s a good one. I’m down.”

  “Cool.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ll chat to Liam and Elly to make sure they’re fine with it.”

  “All right. I’ll see ya tomorrow? Come by my place at four, and we can run through the set a few times before we go.”

  Guilt flooded my mind for a moment. I’d asked Frankie to cover my shift tomorrow so I could focus on the performance. Every time I did stuff like that, I felt a pang of self-loathing. The band was just for fun, a distraction that kept me sane, but with each passing month, I felt more and more like it was a distraction I could no longer afford.

  “I’ll be there. See ya.”

  I hung up and gripped the wheel with both hands. We were playing the Barnyard tomorrow night, and in our four-year career as a cover band, this was the biggest venue we’d done. Before we’d gotten the invite to play a few weeks back, I’d thought Liam was finally going to tell us he wanted to quit the band. He had a fiancée and a baby on the way, and he’d been cancelling practices more frequently to pick up more shifts at work. When I told him about the email from the Barnyard, his eyes had lit up.

  “The Barnyard, huh? I feel like I grew up in that damn place. Yeah, that’ll be cool.”

  And that had kept the band safe for at least another few weeks. We wouldn’t make a lot from the performance, but we weren’t playing for the money. We had no grand ambitions for where this was going to go. We just enjoyed playing music, and we were going to do it until life got in our way.

  Seems like it’s getting in your way now, doesn’t it? a little voice nudged inside my head. Liam was starting a family. Mason was leaving for college. Elly was applying for office jobs. And I needed to start figuring out how the hell I was going to pay for Molly’s tuition.

  When I pulled into the driveway, the living room lights were already on. It was late dusk, and the mosquitos were out in full force. I ducked inside the house and quickly shut the door behind me, trying to keep the bloodsuckers out. I could never sleep with one of them buzzing near my ear.

  “Ade?”

  “Hey.” I popped my head into the kitchen, following the sound of Molly’s voice. She sat at the dining table, a half-eaten sandwich on the plate in front of her. Her long hair was pinned up in a messy bun on top of her head. We couldn’t look more different, her with silky straight blond locks, green eyes, and pale skin, and me with a mass of messy black curls and a light tan. Dad was Italian, so I got his genes. Molly was all Mom, the delicate English flower.

  I walked up to her and lifted the sandwich to my mouth, earning a half-hearted glare.

  “There’s some salad in the fridge. I thought you’d want your protein shake, so I picked up some milk from the store.”

  I grunted in thanks as I chewed on her sandwich. I started hitting the gym regularly in the months after the accident and haven’t looked back since. For a long time, I’d felt mentally fragile, but I’d known I couldn’t afford to be weak if I wanted to be a good guardian to Molly. Getting physically strong had seemed like a suitable alternative while I slowly processed my grief, especially when the gym owner, an old friend of my parents’, had signed me up for practically nothing. It was torture at first, but I’d grown to love it. There was something addictive about lifting progressively heavier weights.

  “How are you feeling about tomorrow?” Molly asked, a knowing look on her face.

  The thought of performing in front of a decent-sized crowd got my pulse racing. I still always got nervous the night before a performance, but now I knew how to channel that energy into something productive. Performing with Through Azure Skies excited me because I knew the crowd wasn’t there to judge us. All they wanted was for us to give them a good time, and I’ve gotten good at doing just that.

  “Fine. We might play an original,” I said, remembering that I had to check with the others about it.

  “Cool. Ugh, I wish I could come.”

  Molly was seventeen, and the venue was eighteen plus. When I was her age, I had a fake ID, but I wasn’t going to tell her about that.

  “I’m sure we’ll play somewhere more family friendly next time,” I said, pulling out a chair to sit by her.

  She wrinkled her nose skeptically. “Well, I’ll be eighteen soon enough anyway.” She dropped her gaze back to her phone and started scrolling through her Instagram feed.

  “What’s new in the world? Anything interesting?”

  Her fingers halted on a picture, and she turned the phone to me. “This picture of Carly blew up today. Three hundred likes! And she only has 500 followers.”

  Carly, Molly’s friend, stood between two beefy dudes much older than her. The picture was pretty grainy, so I zoomed in on the faces. The guy on her left was the tallest man I’d ever seen, towering two heads above her and wearing a serious expression. His arms were crossed, showing off his full sleeve tattoos. He had long brown hair and a generous beard that cascaded down his cut off T-shirt. He looked like a sexy Viking, all buff and manly and brooding.

  I moved my fingers on the screen to look at the shorter man, who was still a head taller than Carly. The hair on my arms stood as I took him in—the messy head of dark curls, the day-old scruff on his chin, and most importantly, that smile. He had this brilliant grin on his face that threatened to leave all women in its vicinity gasping for air. I suspected Carly’s dazed expression could be attributed to its effect. Something about these guys looked familiar.

  “Who’s that?”

  Molly looked at me incredulously. “You serious? I thought you’d recognize them right away. They’re members of Bleeding Moonlight.”

  I furrowed my brows and studied the image again. “Nah. Really?”

  “I thought you liked them,” Molly prodded.

  “I used to, but I haven’t looked them up in ages,” I admitted. “They were big when I was in high school. I haven’t listened to any of their recent stuff.”

  Molly sighed in exasperation. “You live under a rock. I don’t even like metal, and I know more than that about them. They were working on a new album after taking a break for a few years, and then one of their guitarists died from an overdose. The funeral was here a few weeks ago.”

  She pulled the phone away from me, typing something before flipping it back to me. This time there was an image of four men at a funeral on the screen. They were looking down at something in the ground—I presumed a casket. I pushed the phone away from me, not wanting to let my mind go to the memory of Molly and I standing in similar positions a few years ago.

  She continued telling me about the band, oblivious to my reaction. “Carly was at
the movie theater last night and bumped into two of them. The bassist and the guitarist. Our group chat is going wild about it. Apparently, they’re super hot in person.”

  To be honest, they looked pretty darn good in this blurry pic, too, but I wasn’t going to encourage this fangirl behavior. I stood up to get stuff out of the fridge for my protein shake.

  “I don’t get it. None of your friends even listen to metal. Why is this a big deal?”

  Molly snorted. “I mean, sure. But they’re famous. And they’re from here. You knew that, right? They’re the most famous thing to ever come out of River Valley. Pay respect where it’s due.”

  I chuckled. “Your entire generation is way too obsessed with fame. Don’t even get me started on the Ka—”

  “Please don’t.” Molly raised a warning palm in my direction. “You’re too old to ever understand.”

  For a minute, our conversation was interrupted by the furious sound of my shake blending. When it finally stopped, Molly asked, “Did you not overlap with them at all? They can’t be that much older than you.”

  I sipped on the creamy banana-spinach-flavored goodness, my eyes fluttering shut in pleasure.

  “Eww, only you. That stuff is like liquified sand,” Molly commented, scrunching her face in disgust at my reaction.