Fade Into You (Shaken Dirty #3)(58)

He grinned at Jace, tried to invite him to share the joke. But the guy just stood there, blushing wildly and looking at everything and everyone but him. Poor kid.

“Who else do you cover?” he asked, hoping to give him something easy to talk about.

No such luck. Jace just kept staring through him like he was a ghost or something.

“We don’t. Other than your stuff, we pretty much write all our own songs,” Dylan told him. “Or Jace does. He’s the big songwriter of the group.”

“Oh, yeah? That’s really cool. What are you working on now, Jace?”

Jace squeaked in response, but still didn’t look at him.

Dylan rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Sorry, man. I think he’s in shock. Seriously, like you don’t understand how important you are to him. He knows every Shaken Dirty song, every drum fill, every riff. He spends hours every day just wailing on the drums, trying to be as fast and as steady as you are.”

“Yeah, but that’s never going to happen.” Jace spoke up for the first time. “I pretty much suck.”

“You do not, man!” Billy sounded totally indignant. “You’re really good. Not Wyatt Jennings good yet, but who the f*ck is?” He turned to Wyatt. “I’m serious, man. It’s like he’s a different person when he’s behind his kit. He’s really f*cking amazing.”

“I bet.” Wyatt studied the kid. There was something about Jace that reminded him of himself at that age—which scared him a little, considering how he’d ended up. Then again, maybe if he’d had something to hang on to until he’d found Shaken Dirty, things would have turned out differently. “You know, I’d like to see that. Do you guys have any gigs coming up?”

For a second it looked like all three of them had swallowed their tongues. Then Dylan blurted out, “Actually, we have one at the end of next week. It’s at this bar called The Spotlight. It’s pretty sketchy, but—”

“I know the place. In fact, we played it a long time ago, back when we were just starting out.”

“No way!” Billy crowed. “No f*cking way!”

Wyatt shrugged. “We all started somewhere, dude.”

“Yeah, but I’m going to be singing on the same stage that Ryder Montgomery sang on!” Dylan whooped. “I can’t f*cking believe it.”

“Believe it. Though, it’s been years. I can’t guarantee they haven’t switched the stage out—”

“If you’d been to the place recently, you’d know they haven’t switched anything out in a long, long time.”

“Same old Spotlight, then,” Wyatt said with a laugh. “That place was decrepit when we played it.”

“Still is,” Billy told him. “Only worse, I bet. If you actually come see us, you can check the place out for yourself.”

“You’re right.” He pulled his phone out of his back pocket, pulled up the calendar app Jared was constantly jawing at him about using. “What day next week?”

“Friday,” Dylan answered. “We start playing around nine.”

He entered the information, only f*cking up the time twice. “Cool. I’ll drop by.”

“I can’t believe this!” Billy shouted, his voice echoing off the cement walls of the garage. “I can’t f*cking believe this!”

“You’re the best, man,” Dylan gushed. “Seriously. The best, ever.”

“I’m really not,” he told them. “You’ve seen me play. I figure it’s only fair that I see you.”

“You’re not really coming.” For the first time, Jace was looking him square in the face.

“What the f*ck, man?” Dylan asked, elbowing him. “He said he’d come.”

“You’re just trying to get rid of us, right?” Jace asked. “You don’t really mean it. You’re not actually coming.”

Wyatt might have taken offense at the kid’s words if he hadn’t sounded so desperate. So lost. So much like he was trying to convince himself not to get his hopes up because he couldn’t stand the disappointment if it didn’t pan out. It was just one more way Wyatt saw himself in the skinny teenager standing in front of him.

“Jace!” Billy hissed. “What are you doing? He—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Wyatt interrupted as he stepped closer to Jace, getting in his face until the kid had no choice but to look at him. “You don’t know me, so I get it. Why should you trust me, especially considering when I first realized you’d spotted me, I thought seriously about sprinting for my car to get away from you?” Dylan squawked a little, and he shrugged. “What can I say? It’s been a rough morning.”

He turned back to Jace. “But I don’t say things unless I mean them. That’s not the kind of guy I am. And I don’t promise to do something if I’m not going to do it.” He’d broken enough promises when he was using. It was a matter of honor to him that he wasn’t going to do that anymore. “I’m going to be at your show next Friday, and I’m going to listen to you drum. So you better be prepared to rip my f*cking head off with your fills. You got that?”

Jace turned white—pure, blank-sheet-of-paper white—and for a second Wyatt thought the kid was actually going to pass out. But then he nodded said, “Yeah. I can do that.”