DRASTIC (Book 4 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 9: (Nights When) Drummer Boys Are Thugs, Not Rock Stars

This is an intense chapter. If you have triggers, please be aware there is blood and violence and  discussion of sexual abuse.

Song for this chapter: Numb/Encore mash-up. I love this one for this chapter, because it bridges Bodie's worlds, and he will be caught in the undertow of this chapter's events for a long, long time. This is the beginning of his numbness.  "All I want to do is be more like me and less like you."...and yet he's going to have such a hard time making that happen from here on out.

Bodie, present day

I'm barely off stage before Leed is pressing a celebratory shot in my hand.

"Three more shows, brother. Three more shows and this tour is done. Then we can take a fucking beat and chill," he grins, raking through his sweat-soaked hair.

"Yeah, I'm with ya—down to have this bitch in the bag."

We clink and drink.

Touring is always hard work, but this time it's been grueling.

Like Leed says, alot of unfun.

All Trace's drama with Kat and Ash early on, then Mac's pregnancy and her leaving the tour, and Arabella and Mac's personal issues. Not to mention the trouble we had with our opening act, and now the constant hell-raising of the Strut girls, who are definitely embracing the YOLO concept every night and every day.

Of course, none of that comes close to the personal disaster I'm in with Bells. Except nobody really knows that. Yeah, I know the drugs aren't helping, but I feel so fucking crazy, worrying about her mood swings and her sleep-talking and her secrets she won't tell me about. I feel like I'm gonna lose my mind.

Like right now, I watch her flirting with Andy our sound tech and shooting me daggers from across the green room. She wraps her arms around him and he gives me uncomfortable shrugs and facial pleas.

She's only doing this to start another fight with me. So she has an excuse to be angry. A reason to lash out. I know the real reason she's angry—her dreams last night.

She's livin' that nightmare even when she wakes.

I feel trapped in it, too.

Every damn day.

Trapped by a nineteen year old girl that needs way the fuck more help than I'm qualified to give her.

But maybe the one thing I can give Arabella is what Marley said—distance from her father.

Except I guess the guy that keeps calling her is not her actual father.

I've done some digging today—in her phone and on the Internet. I've made some casual inquiries to Adam about what he knows of her family through her uncle Randall. I've pieced together that Arabella's actual father—Mitchell Burns— died in car accident when she was real little, and the man she calls Daddy is the man her mother Deanna took up with shortly after the tragedy.

His name is Cain Priestly. Some no-count that her momma met when she was drowning her grief over her dead husband at a dive-bar in Nashville.

From what I can gather, it sounds like they were together from the time Arabella was six or seven until about five years ago, when Arabella's star started to rise. From what Arabella has told me, she spent alot of that time, living with her uncle Randall's family—her actual father's brother.

Cain was apparently some kind of low-rent country musician/DJ/karaoke guy and Deanna spent most of her time traveling around with him to bar shows, pushing away her grief and her daughter. But when Randall helped Arabella get her ticket punched to the Disney Channel money train, Deanna's priorities changed. She moved out to LA with Arabella to tape her show, and she and Cain split and eventually divorced.