Musician's Monsoon (6 page)

Sophie never got tired of the Arizona lightning. It was power and grace rolled into one. It really was as Zane had said―nature’s rock concert.

They had followed the storm sixty or so miles out of Phoenix to Roosevelt Lake. It was on the other side of the Superstition Mountains, roughly in the middle of nowhere. They had pulled off in a turnout by a bridge overlooking the lake, and for the longest time, neither one of them spoke. They just watched the lightning play across the sky while the thunder rolled from one end of the dark expanse to the other.

“Where are you from originally?” Sophie asked, finally breaking the silence. As a fan of the band, she should have known that, but she wasn’t the stalker variety.

“Los Angeles,” he replied. “But I hate it there. I live in Scottsdale when I’m not on tour.”

She blinked rapidly, not having expected that he lived so close to her. “Do you really?”

He nodded and glanced over at her. “I love how it’s warm here all year round, and I love the storms. I would have stayed at my condo while I was here, but we only had the one show. It’s easier if I stay with the band.”

“I live in Flagstaff.”

“Beautiful place,” he commented. “I ski there in the winter. Maybe I’ve seen you before and we passed right by one another.”

“I think I probably would have remembered seeing you,” she muttered.

He chuckled and reached for her hand. She continued to stare out at the light show while he toyed with her fingers. “Sophie, did you mean what you said earlier?” he asked. “That my music sounds how you feel inside?”

She looked over at him as he traced the lines in her palm. He didn’t look up, and seemed almost self-conscious and vulnerable at that moment. She shifted so she was facing him. “Of course I meant it. Your music is amazing.”

“What is it exactly? That you feel? What emotions does my music represent in you?”

Sophie smiled as she remembered the first time she’d ever heard a Shadows Rising song. It had been their first album, almost ten years ago. She’d been in college. “The first time I heard your band, I was studying for finals. I was burned out like never before. My roommate was into metal music. I wasn’t so much at the time. I was studying classical, you know? But while I sat there, wracking my brain, trying to remember the square root of who knows what, questioning why I was putting myself through the torture at all, I heard this song. It was melodious and symphonic, with all the elements of beautiful music that I was in love with, but with this power behind it. Pounding drums, screaming guitar. It sounded how I felt. Chaotic, like I was losing control of everything in my world. For whatever reason, it made me feel better. I felt like, whoever had written that song must have felt the same insane, frazzled thing I was feeling, and that made it not so bad.”

 “That’s the beauty of music. It’s a universal language. A way of communicating with people you never meet. It touches people and lets them know that, no matter what they’re feeling, they aren’t alone. Someone else feels or has felt the same way. Even if the musician is a complete stranger, at that moment, to that person, he or she is a friend and a confidant, a companion. So no one, no matter how lonely, is ever truly alone.”

She nodded in agreement and shifted to lean back against the car door, stretching her legs out across Zane’s lap. He smiled and rested his hands on her knees. “I realized something else, though. After I was finished with finals and feeling like I was losing my mind, I still had this all-consuming desire to lose myself in your music, or in metal music in general. It had awakened this part of me I had never been allowed to be, and sometimes I like to let that side of myself play when no one is looking.”

He glanced at her and frowned. “What do you mean, you weren’t allowed to be?”

She shrugged. “I’ve always been the practical one, the responsible one. I’ve never been prone to fanciful daydreams. That was always my little sister’s place. She was fanciful enough for a hundred of me. She’s a ballet dancer and was always very creative, almost to a fault. She was wild and carefree and never thought anything through before she did it. My poor parents. They spent so much time pulling her out of the clouds and putting her back on firm ground. I didn’t want them worrying about me, too. So I never did that rebellious thing most teenagers do. I was a good student. I studied hard. I had to show my sister a good example. Someone in the family needed to be level-headed.

“It was okay because I never had a desire to have crazy adventures like my sister did. I just wanted to teach. I wanted to inspire people, help people. And music has always been my passion, in any form.”

“But there was always a rebel locked inside of you, dying to come out?” he teased.

Sophie smirked. “I’m not sure if I’d put it that way necessarily, but after I let myself be carried away by your music, it seemed like a good escape plan. Sometimes, work is stressful, and after a day of being inundated in Brahms and Handel, I just want to come home, drink a couple beers, lose myself in thundering metal, trade in my upright bass for a bass guitar and jam away like I’m part of the band.” She felt color creep into her cheeks at her admission. She’d never told anyone that. It had always been her little secret getaway.

Zane arched an eyebrow. “You play bass?”

“I play an upright bass. At home, by myself, I mess around with a bass guitar.” She shrugged. “It’s how I de-stress.”

A slow, wicked grin curved his lips. “So it makes total sense that your smile made me hear a sexy bass line. That’s amazing. I feel like I had a premonition. Do you know how to play all our songs?”

“Of course.” She laughed, and he joined her.

He reached over and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Sophie, there’s nothing wrong with having a little bit of a wild side. You don’t need to hide it like it’s a bad secret.”

“But there’s no place for it in my life. There’s no point to it. I like my life. Maybe it seems boring to everyone else, but it’s stable. It’s safe.”

“You can’t always be afraid to take a risk every now and then, to taste and savor life instead of only doing what you need to survive. Life shouldn’t be about survival, Sophie. Life should be about living.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and fixed him with a pointed look. “Oh, yeah? Well, tell me, how come you, being someone who is constantly ‘tasting’ life, became so overwhelmed by it that you lost the line between musician and celebrity and suddenly couldn’t create anymore?” All traces of teasing left his face and he frowned, averting his eyes. “Because it was too much, right? Too much stimuli. Too much life. There was no stability. And how come you, someone who is surrounded by beauty and creative freedom, somehow found me―grounded, stable, boring me―fascinating from the stage? What was it about me that caught your attention?”

He sighed. “Everywhere I looked, people were rocking out, head banging, moshing, crowd-surfing, the way they always do. Women were dressed sexy or Gothic, doing their best to get the attention of anything male that was onstage or off. It was the same thing I see every night. And then there was you. You were in jeans and a T-shirt. You weren’t waving your arms or screaming at the top of your lungs. Not that I don’t appreciate my fans’ enthusiasm. I do. But, it all starts to blur together after awhile. With you, there was this subtle, gentle light, like I said before. You were stripped down. Like an acoustic version of a metal song. And I felt like, in that ocean of people, you were really
appreciating
my music. Not just enjoying the sound and the beat, but you somehow heard all aspects of it. And when I looked at you, all the chaos, the stuff that was bombarding my mind, fell away and I could hear my music again.” He absently trailed one hand up and down the length of her shin.

The corner of Sophie’s lips lifted in a wry smile. “So, the simple woman escapes into metal music so she can feel wild and free in the confines of her own home, and the metal musician seeks the company of a simple woman so all of the noise surrounding him disappears for awhile. That’s what I call an interesting conundrum.”

He met her gaze, his eyes soft and warm. “I don’t call that a conundrum, Sophie.”

“What do you call it then?”

He reached over and cupped her cheek in his hand, feathering his thumb back and forth over her skin. “I call that perfect balance.” He leaned closer, invading her space in the most intoxicating way.

Sophie let out a soft sigh, and her eyelids fluttered closed as his lips descended to hers. She found absolutely no reason why she should try and push him away, or stop him from kissing her. Maybe it was foolish considering their worlds would never again collide after tonight, but what he said about them balancing one another seemed strangely true―at least it did at that moment. That squelched wild side that only came out in her living room during the evening hours was closer to the surface around him. She found herself wanting to let go a little, wanting to sample his rootless abandon. How many other opportunities would she get to run off into the night and kiss a rock star?

Maybe he was right about one thing. Safe wasn’t always the only option. She was entitled to at least one adventure. So this would be hers. She couldn’t let that side of herself out around anyone else. Everyone else in her life would think she’d lost her mind. But Zane was different. Everything about him and his life was the complete opposite of hers. But in this little window of time that they were together, he craved her stability and she craved his spontaneity. And she craved his touch and his kisses. For now, that was fine with her.

* * * *

Zane and Sophie had migrated to the backseat. It was spacious, and there was a lot more leg room. The front seat was cramped, and―well, making out was awkward.

Zane felt like he was seventeen all over again, sitting in the backseat of a car, kissing a girl. It reminded him of a much more innocent and promising time in his life, when music was all he’d known and all he’d wanted. When celebrity status and red tape and the business end of it had never entered into his mind. He’d been full of optimism and dreams. And he’d somehow gotten lucky enough to receive everything he’d ever hoped for. He’d never imagined it would leave him feeling wanting. What did a person do when he became disillusioned with life?

Sophie sighed softly and snuggled against his shoulder. He glanced down at where she was resting. He had his legs stretched out across the seat, watching the lightning flicker farther and farther away, and she had curled up on his lap, against his chest. At some point, she’d dozed off. He didn’t have the heart to wake her, and truth be told, he was reluctant to make the drive back to Phoenix.

The band had to leave tomorrow night. They had two shows in Southern California. One in San Diego and the other in Anaheim.  He dreaded them, and that troubled him. He had never actually dreaded doing what he loved before. The fact that he was feeling that way now was disheartening and upsetting.

Was it as Sophie had said? Everything around him that made up the rock-star lifestyle had become too much? Did he crave the simplicity of a time when it had just been music and nothing else? Or was it something much more than that?

His heart told him the answer to that question as Sophie shifted slightly against him, nestling closer. His arms tightened around her, and he closed his eyes with a sigh. Maybe he was partly craving the simplicity of the past, but he also craved this. Companionship. Closeness. He was surrounded every day of his life by people, but he still felt empty. His music had sustained him thus far, had filled that hole inside of him, but now it seemed that it was no longer cutting it. He wanted something more than days full of travel and nights full of partying.

He wanted something real. Something solid and substantial in a world full of glitter and sparkle.

No wonder Sophie had intrigued him so much. She’d stood out in the crowd because she’d been different. She’d been subdued. It had been like a breath of fresh air. She loved his music, appreciated his talent, but was well grounded in the real world.

Her cousin had attacked him.
She
had attacked him―twice. But seeing her, talking with her, being with her, made him feel like he’d been on a whirling merry-go-round full of colors and sounds, and he was finally able to slow to a stop. He could take a full breath. He could think. He could hear his music. He hadn’t felt anything even close to that since Shadows Rising had released their last album, and that had been three years ago.

His heart ached at the knowledge that he would have to say goodbye to her tomorrow. In a perfect world, he would ask her to go with him. She was so down to earth, so reality based, and he needed that so much in his world of fantasy and glamour.

He allowed himself to imagine what it might be like to have a normal relationship, a normal life. He had always wanted to be a musician. He had no desire to do anything else. It was his passion and his driving force. But instead of going home to an empty condo at the end of a tour, what might it be like to get off the plane, leave Zane Blake, keyboardist and composer of Shadows Rising, behind―hang him in the coat closet, so to speak―and just be Zane? Have someone come around the corner and greet him with a warm embrace and a passionate kiss?