TANTRIC (Book 3 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 69: Front Men Remember Why They Were Afraid Of Love

Wha?!?!?! Can you believe another chapter? Y'all I'm ready to get this drama done and feel the love again...toward that end let's find out Slade's fate....

I love this cover of Lukas Graham's Love Someone by Levi McGrath. I think his voice approximates Leed's voice more than the original. Plus I think he has rugged looks like Leed...This song is pretty much what Leed is feeling in this chapter. Leed and Ash's six week estrangment and Ashlynn's near miss with Slade has brought back Leed's fears of commitment with a vengeance. He knows he loves her, but now it's almost too real. He knows what he has to lose...and that will be our last real hurdle in this book. Ash has come so far because Leed believed in her, but Leed is nearly right back where he started...

Leed

As I sit in a chair in my bedroom watching Ashlynn sleep, I reflect on the fact that a lot can happen in seventy-two hours.

Dev has been in emergency surgery—twice, because they missed a tiny bleeder the first time—but the dude just refuses to die. Mac thinks he's mostly motivated to live for that new shine on his rep—a legit thug really does need a gunshot scar, so now he's made it. Trace says he wants to live just to give Matt shit about taking a bullet for him—for the rest of Matt's life.

I know what's really keeping his sorry ass alive—it's Bridge del Marco. She has a sweet soul like my Sunshine. He'd be a fool not to fight like hell to stay with that angel here on earth.

I stare at Ashlynn's slumbering form, thinking of the first time I met her. She was Bridge's age back then—not quite twenty. None of the bad shit had happened to her then. None of the shit that striped her soul and makes her so reckless with what she doesn't value—herself.

I'm still so fucking mad at her. We've had too much going on to get into it yet, but she has no idea what she's done to me. Knowing that she would risk herself like that—putting herself into the hands of a killer, playing mind games with him—it's opened up a chasm in me...a pit of fear I thought I had filled in. But it's still there.

I remember now, why I was afraid to fall in love.

Now I have something to lose—and it seems like Ashlynn will always be standing on the edge, willing to risk what I love most in this world. So all I've done in the last seventy-two hours is try not to think about how fucking scary and confusing it is to love someone who doesn't love herself as much as you do.

It hasn't been hard to find other things to distract me from thinking too much about Ashlynn, though. My world is a shitstorm. Rumors, gossip and lies rage like a hurricane around my band. There's even one story running that I was trying to gun down Slade because Ashlynn cheated on me with him, and Dev got caught in the cross-fire.

It's funny how for once, the gossip is actually less outrageous than the truth.

Jesus, the shit we are in is so fucked up.

Slade is still in custody. The Devil's Breath that Ashlynn gave him was still working its way out of his system when he was first interviewed by the police. He ranted enough about Megan Davis' ghost that the police are giving credence to Varrick and Ashlynn's statements. Both indicated their suspicions that he murdered Megan Davis twenty years ago. He's also being held on the assault charges that Ashlynn filed.

But now he's back to himself and lawyered up. He doesn't have any memory of what happened after the Grammy's, but he didn't get to where he is by being a fool. He's putting the pieces together well enough.

His lawyers are claiming he was drugged and victimized in his own home, and it's likely that he won't be charged for shooting Dev, whom he's claiming he perceived as an intruder in his victimized state.