“Of course you will. I’m just saying be smart about it, Caleb.” Dropping his hand from my shoulder, he walked to the door, gave me a salute, and shut it behind him, leaving me alone in this glass monstrosity of a conference room with only the angry ocean beyond the windows as company.
I walked to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows and stared down at the beach, at the waves crashing into the rocks sending spray every which way before rolling to shore. My mind felt as jumbled and in turmoil as the waters below.
Playing up a brotherly rivalry for the press was one thing: smoke and mirrors, as Jared put it. But there were a lot of ways that this thing could run away from us. As much as I hated to admit it, Jared was right when he said not to take it too far because it could easily blow up in our faces.
On the other hand, while I didn’t know Kelly well, I had read her blog after finding out that Alicia’s sister was part of the dreaded press, and she was good at her job. If she thought this idea would be good for the band, maybe it was my turn to take one for the team.
I would’ve been happy playing clubs and pubs for the rest of my life, but the others? They wouldn’t have. And they’d done a lot for us. Jared might’ve been my only biological brother, but the others were our brothers in every way that counted. I owed it to them all to do this if it would help.
Besides, Kelly was kind of hot. She was curvier than Alicia, but I liked that. Spending some extra time with her wouldn’t be all bad. Fucking her would probably also annoy Jared, and while I wouldn’t take things with the rivalry too far, I was kinda in the mood to annoy him just a little.
Chapter 6
Kelly
“So, Caleb. The tour kicks off here in L.A. in early December. That gives the fans just a little under a month to get tickets for the first shows, which are almost sold out already. The fans are chomping at the bit to get into those arenas you’ll be playing. How is the band feeling?”
It was way beyond weird to know that the stone-faced rocker I was in my first one-on-one interview for GNM with was going to be my brother-in-law in just a few short months’ time. But Caleb, aside from calling me by my first name when he said hi earlier, gave no indication that we knew each other outside of this professional context.
He sat cool as a cucumber in an ice bucket, in the seat across from me at one of the conference tables in Alicia’s office building. He leaned back in his seat like he owned the place, with his arms crossed and his one ankle resting on his knee.
Dark sunglasses hung in the “V” of his long-sleeved white shirt, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows to reveal muscled, tatted forearms. Navy jeans hung from his narrow hips. A few tears sat on the knees that didn’t look like they’d been artfully placed there by a designer. They looked like they were there from wear and tear.
Stubble dotted his square jaw, and my mind briefly flashed to what that stubble might feel like rubbing against the soft, sensitive skin of my thighs. But that was hardly the kind of thoughts that I should’ve been having during an interview, so I banished them as soon as they popped into my head.
His dark chocolate-colored hair looked almost black in the dim light with the rain clouds gathered outside, sticking up like he’d just rolled out of bed. Or maybe it had been styled that way. I couldn’t tell.
My eyes traveled to his, and I found his gaze fixed on mine, an amused look in his eye that told me I’d just been busted checking him out. Mercifully, he didn’t say anything about it. Instead, now satisfied that my attention was on his answer and not his body, he began speaking.
“The band is just as excited to start the tour as the fans are for us to do it, I think. It’s been a while since we’ve been on the road, and since the stage is our favorite place to be, we’re amped to get back out there.”
Caleb was speaking the words, but I heard Alicia in them. I knew she’d have prepped Caleb for this interview. I was just surprised that he was sticking to her lines.
For now, that was. Some of the questions I had coming up would be sure to rattle his cage a little.
“This tour will be your longest yet, if I understand correctly. How do you feel about leaving your home behind for so many months?”
“Honestly? I’m excited. We’re going to get to see a lot of places I never even would’ve dreamed of seeing, and we’ll be meeting fans from all over the world. It’s a dream come true.” The last sentence had sarcasm dripping off it in spades, and I made a note to return to that at a later stage.
“I would imagine so,” I said. “Thousands of bands across the country dream of reaching the level of success that Destitute has. And you get to do it alongside your brother and some of your best friends. How does that feel?”
“How does that feel?” He arched a pierced brow at me, the silver bar catching in the light and throwing prisms onto the wall beside us. “You seriously asking me that?”
“I am. How does it feel to be doing all of this with your brother and your friends?” This was the start of my edgier questions, and I could tell that Caleb sensed there was something coming his way. His eyes narrowed, his hands fisting where he’d tucked them into his elbows, and the angle that he held his head at shifted.
“It feels great. Better than doing it with a bunch of strangers, I guess.” He was definitely being cautious now. It was time to start springing the real questions on him, the ones this interview was about.
Caleb had agreed to playing up this angle, of course. So he must’ve been prepared for it. Or so I would’ve thought.
“If you’d been doing it with a bunch of strangers though, you wouldn’t always be in your brother’s shadow.” He clearly hadn’t been prepared for that.
Caleb paled, and his jaw clenched tight. Something sparked in his eyes, and his demeanor turned to stone. “I’m not in anybody’s shadow. Jared and I do different things in the band. It doesn’t work that way.”
His words were spoken in a low, scathing voice, and his tone was clipped. I was a little taken aback by his reaction because it didn’t look like he was playing an angle. His open hostility made it look like this was the way he really felt about Jared and his position in the band.
If this was him acting up an angle, he should’ve pursued a career in acting, not in music—and he was fucking great at music. Deciding it was time to ease up some on the throttle, I backed off a bit and tried to dig deeper into who he was as a person, instead of risking getting shut down straight off the bat with that line of questioning.
“That’s true. You two are both masters at your own game. Moving away from the band for a sec, let’s talk about you. Caleb Larsen. You’re young—”
“Not that young anymore,” he interjected. The corners of his mouth lifted into a ghost of a smile. It was a rare moment of levity that I had not experienced with Caleb as of yet. Strangely, it suited him.
I smiled what I hoped was a winning smile and continued. “You’re only twenty-seven. I think most of our readers would agree that’s relatively young. So okay, you’re young, successful, not bad looking. You must have scores of women chasing after you, yet you’re notoriously quiet when it comes to your romantic history. Tell me something about it, your past romances.”