The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(25)

It’s not the first time I’ve said something like this to her. There’s a part of me that wishes she’d just call the time of death on our entire relationship. Block my number, cut me off, stop trying. It seems easier. Less painful.

“I cannot talk to you when you’re like this. But let me just explain this one thing to you: you’re in a downward spiral. It’s obvious to everyone but you. And when your career ends, we’re all you’ll have to fall back on so you might want to be very careful about who you push away.”

I hang up the phone, my heart aching, my head full of all the same vengeful thoughts I’ve had for years: I’ll show them. This album will be so big they’ll eat every word they’ve ever said and they’ll never open their fucking mouths again.

Except…except…there is no album. I hate every demo the label has sent, and even if I liked them, they still wouldn’t be mine. They wouldn’t be my words, my heart. They wouldn’t even be my taste in music.

My stepfather, Steven, texts not even a full minute after the call with my mother has ended.

I spoke to your mother. She said you claimed you “don’t give a shit” about the family. I’m not sure who told you it was okay to speak to a parent that way, but I’m here to tell you it’s not.

I type my reply: I don’t know who told you it’s okay to fuck someone else’s wife, but that’s not great either.

I laugh. Josh says I’m good at holding a grudge. He has no idea.

A chair scrapes the cement of the pool deck as it’s pulled up beside mine. I look over to find Six there. “I feel like getting drunk,” he says. “My family is on my last nerve.”

At last, we are in the same place and on the same page.





The cool and also tedious thing about Six is that he always knows people. Drop him in the middle of the Amazon, and he’ll have some friend there who knows about a party somewhere else, and even though it means wading through a mile of piranha-infested water and getting in a truck driven by a human trafficker, you’re going to that party.

So of course he knows of a party here, and of course it’s clear on the other side of the island where some huge surf competition is occurring.

After a very expensive Uber ride that goes on way longer than I expected, we arrive at an oceanfront house that looks out over the Banzai Pipeline.

“You better text your mom and let her know we might not make dinner,” I tell him. “They had reservations for seven but it’s going to take us an hour to get back.”

He swats my ass. “We are definitely not going to that lame fucking dinner. I’ll let her know.”

The house is full and the deck is too. It’s a music crowd here and I suppose if I ever wanted a shot at morphing into a real musician, the kind I wanted to be, it would make sense for me to talk to these people, but I suspect none of them would take me seriously.

I get a drink and fight my way out to the deck to watch the competition. It’s a single huge wave, curling and unfurling, and the surfers look like ants as they rise up inside it. My heart pounds in terror simply watching them, and that seems like a reasonable response. Until today, I’ve never been to a beach so dangerous that signs warn anyone who isn’t an experienced surfer not to even approach the shore.

I’m leaning on the deck railing watching the competition when a guy walks up beside me and introduces himself. He’s apparently the drummer for a band called The Sweat Monkeys, of whom I’ve never heard. “I’m pretty sure we’re getting a spot at Coachella next year,” he says with feigned ambivalence. He looks over to make sure I’m suitably impressed. I do my best.

“That’s awesome,” I reply. He has no idea who I am, clearly, but it’s fun to be anonymous again, to go back to being some random hot girl an unknown drummer is trying to impress.

“I can get you backstage, you know, if we get the spot,” he says.

I headlined there last year, but I simply bite down on my smile. “That would be really cool.”

I tell him I’m getting another drink, but instead I just wander down to the dunes where the hardcore competition viewers sit with binoculars.

And one of them is Juliet Cantrell.

It’s rare for me to be starstruck these days, but with her, I am. She has the career I wish I had—the one I should have held out for. She writes her own stuff, she chooses her own producer. No one makes her take cocaine before a show to perk her up. No one books her into rehab without asking her first.

She’s watching the competition, focused on it. I should probably leave her alone but I find myself creeping closer until suddenly, I’m right there and she’s blinking up at me, shielding the sun with her hand.

I give a small wave. “Hey, I’m Drew.”

She peers up at me and then her eyes go wide. “Holy shit. Drew Wilson? I didn’t even recognize you. I’m Juliet.”

I laugh. “I know—you have my dream career.”

She raises a brow at that. “Hold on to the career you have. I guarantee your bank statement’s a lot more interesting than mine.”

I glance at the spot in the sand beside her and she scoots over to make some room for me.

“You’re chilling in Hawaii on a Wednesday afternoon,” I reply, sitting cross-legged. “You can’t be doing all bad.”