DRASTIC (Book 4 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 75: Drummer Boys Give Their World Away

Bodie Atlanta (Midtown)

I walk back into the sleekly furnished "Grooms Suite" at the Four Seasons to find Varrick, Matt, Leed, Trace, and Adam knocking back glasses of expensive whiskey. A good looking bunch, all suited and booted in black, backlit by the Atlanta skyline as seen through glass behind them.

"There you go again, Varrick. Breaking your own rule about only drinking alone," I joke.

He gives me a giant grin as he sits his leaded glass on. "Your mother broke me of that rule."

Adam scratches his dirty blond stumble and gives Varrick a faux-cringe-face. "Oh, she'll break you of a lot of things, now. Her stepwise destruction of your manhood starts tomorrow. It's not too late to back out, you know..."

"It's definitely too late," I pretend to growl.

Varrick grins at me, looking for all the world like Sean Connery back in his Bond days. That is to say, suave, rugged, old-school Hollywood. Not at all like an actual former assassin-slash-spy, who typically looks much more like regular a Joe.

Once, while we were sharing a recent private flight and shooting the shit after another debriefing—which I've gotten way better at—Varrick abashedly told me that his looks were a detriment to his CIA career. There were certain assignments they wouldn't give me—for example if the mark had a woman who was known to have a roving eye. "They thought I might be too memorable, you see..."

There is nothing of his other life—our other life of bad guys and secrets—in his eyes today. I don't know how the man compartmentalizes like he does, but I am glad he does it better than I do. For my mother's sake, I am fucking glad.

She loves him. She loves him like I've never seen. My whole life, my mother seemed little more than ambivalent to the men she occasionally dated. I think it was because she could never let herself trust one. She'd been hurt too badly, too young.

Ironic, that the man who won her trust, is the most dangerous man I know.

"You're right, it's definitely too late for me," Varrick agrees with me with a wink. "I'm a goner, I'm afraid."

We all laugh. Leed shoves Adam lightly. "Don't be acting like my sister cut your dick off. You were right on the front row of the Lunar Lounge stage with all the unmarried rock stars, if I recall..."

He's referring to Varrick's bachelor party two nights ago. Varrick didn't really want the bachelor party, but us rock stars insisted. The man is past forty and never been married. He may never party again, Leed argued. He had to have a bachelor party.

It sort of surprised us all Doc Gorgeous offered to plan it, at her old stomping grounds the Lunar Lounge. But Doc Gorgeous also being Jasmine, I should have figured it was a set-up.

One by one, our women came out dressed like strippers and danced for the twenty guys at the party.

I was expecting Trace to get growly when Kat strutted out first dressed like a hot cop and chained him to the table. So he couldn't get up and carry her off the stage when her clothes started coming off, she told him.

But instead, he laughed at her easily and then tipped his beer at Matt.

"You aren't really gonna strip in front of my dad, are you baby?"

Matt pretended to cover his eyes. "Carry on, Kat. Do what you gotta do."

She winked at Trace and said, "I guess you'll find out." Then she shook her ass in his face. He put his free hand on her butt as all the men whooped and yelled and whistled and Leed and Adam waved cash at Kat, pretending to beg for her attention. She ignored them of course.