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  DISSONANCE

  By Tracey Ward

  DISSONANCE

  By Tracey Ward

  Text Copyright © 2017 Tracey Ward

  All Rights Reserved

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, events or incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to places or incidents is purely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  Chapter One

  About the Author

  raze verb ˈrāz: to destroy completely: to destroy to the ground: demolish

  CHAPTER ONE

  JACE

  “Yo, Jace, man, have another beer”

  I salute Kirk with the dark brown bottle already in my hand. “I’ve got one.”

  He digs through the stout fridge by my knees, his blond head bobbing up and down to the beat of the music. The room swells around us, people pushing and laughing. Drinks spilling. The greenroom was meant to hold me and the band, maybe a manager or an agent. Not twenty or more people getting shitfaced to the soundtrack of my last album.

  “How many have you had?” Kirk demands.

  “Enough.”

  “So, two? You fucking pussy.”

  “Four.” I frown at the bottle in my hand. “Maybe five.”

  “You’re losing count. That’s good. I’ll get you another.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Too late,” he grunts, standing upright. He’s found what he was looking for – a dark Guinness can taller than his hand. In his other is a brown bottle with a yellow label.

  I take it just to shut him up. Telling him ‘no’ won’t do any good. Handing the beer off to someone else or hiding it behind the couch cushions is my only out.

  It’s not that I don’t want to party. I would love to get faded, get laid, and wake up sometime around noon tomorrow with little to no memory of today. I’ve had that song on repeat for the better part of a year and it never fails to make the bullshit of my life just a little more bearable. But I hate hitting PLAY on it before a show. I’ve been doing that more and more lately, and it’s getting tricky. Taking the stage with a belly full of beer and a head full of fuck-no makes playing the part harder than usual. If I’m not careful, the fans are gonna start to notice. And if the fans start to notice, they stop buying tickets. And if they stop buying tickets, I start performing for empty arenas. Or I stop performing all together.

  Kirk pops the top on his Guinness. The heavy scent of yeast bubbles up out of the top on a wave of golden foam. He leans over to slurp it loudly. “You’re getting soft on me.”

  “Is that what your girl told you last night?”

  He smirks. “Which one?”

  “The one with the dick.”

  “I’m gay,” he replies dryly. “Good one.”

  “I’m a singer, not a stand-up.”

  “Yeah, no shit. So, what’s the problem? You on your period? Are you feeling fat?”

  “I’m a girl,” I reply dryly. “Good one.”

  Kirk laughs. “I work with what I got, D Baby.”

  I frown at him. “Don’t call me that.”

  “What?” he asks, feigning innocence. “You don’t like talking about your Disney days?”

  “I haven’t been with Disney for four years,” I mutter, taking a hit off my beer. Condensation rolls down the side of my hand onto my wrist, trailing inside the sleeve of my shirt. “Drop that shit.”

  “Never.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You do know four years ago you were like, twelve, right?”

  “Seventeen, and I repeat: fuck you.”

  “Hey, are you still tight with that one guy? The one with the hair?”

  “Who? Bieber? No. I barely know him.”

  “Seriously? I thought you did Disney together.”

  I shake my head, scanning the room. Looking for a way out of this conversation. “He was never Disney.”

  “Who am I thinking of then?”

  “Miley Cyrus?”

  “Nah, a dude.”

  “Miley Cyrus?” I chuckle.

  “No, come on. The other one. The guy who was in all those movies where he played basketball and sang show tunes.”

  I burp quietly into the back of my hand. “Efron.”

  Kirk’s eyes go wide, his beer rising to point at me in approval. “Yeah, that’s the one. You friends with him?”

  “Why? You want me to hook you up?”

  “Shit, if I was gonna ask for a hook up with a Disney discard, it’d be Olivia Holt.”

  I frown, straining to remember. “Olivia Holt. She’s blond, yeah?”

  “Yeah. And tiny. And hot.”

  “You’re old enough to be her dad, man.”

  Kirk scratches his chin, running his fingers through his blond beard that’s graying at the center. “Who knows. Maybe I am her dad.”

  “You should check that out before you beat it to her music videos.”

  “Too late.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I chuckle in disgust.

  The door to the greenroom pops open. A wave of cool, fresh air rushes in, reminding me just how stifling this room is. In the doorway is a guy in a headset and a black T-shirt with my name scrawled across the front. He quickly scans the room before finding me, his eyes wide but his thoughts kept carefully in check. His mouth quirks into an embarrassed grin when he finds me watching him.

  “They’re calling for you, Mr. Ryker. Five minutes.”

  I nod my head in understanding, but it feels heavy. I feel sedated, more than a few beers can explain. I’m tired in my bones, a feeling I usually have at the end of the night after a long performance, but I haven’t taken the stage yet. I have to go out there, sing my fucking heart out for four hours, and then I’m out the door on the bus heading for the next city. We’re leaving immediately for Portland tonight, but whether it’s Maine or Oregon, I have no idea. Right now I can’t even remember what state I’m in. It doesn’t matter. I’ll keep touring until they tell me to stop. Until they park me in a studio, put a guitar in my hands, and demand my next album.

  The crowd in front of me parts. Emerging like a mermaid rising from the sea is Lexy; ethereal and impossible. Long black hair and big blue eyes. Small, perky breasts and a whisper of a waist under perfectly tanned skin. She’s beautiful in a dangerous kind of way. The kind that can launch a thousand ships and dash them against the rocks. No survivors.

  “Baby,” she purrs, sidling up to me. Her arms go around my waist, her crotch pressing hard against mine. “There’s a guy with some great blow in the bathroom. You should get some.”

  “I don’t use, Lex,” I remind her impatiently.

  Sh
e scowls at me. “Why are you being so beat?”

  “I’m not beat because I don’t get high.”

  “You smoke weed all the time.”

  “Weed isn’t coke, and I don’t smoke it ‘all the time’.”

  “Did you smoke it tonight?”

  I lean back against the table behind me, distancing myself from her. “What the fuck does it matter to you?”

  She giggles like I’m hilarious instead of annoyed. She falls back against the arm of the couch, stretching her legs out to tangle her ankles with mine. She looks amazing; like sex on tap. Perfect hair, perfect makeup, perfect tits staring up at me from inside the nothing of a shirt she’s wearing. I know what’s underneath, I’ve seen it a hundred times. I’ve touched it. Tasted it. Every inch of it. Still, looking at her like this, like a thinly veiled secret, gets me hard every time. It’s not until she opens her mouth that I remember what’s behind the veil. What her big secret is.

  Nothing.

  But by then I’m usually balls deep inside her and ‘nothing’ feels pretty fucking incredible.

  “Loosen up, Jace,” she insists, her eyes big and imploringly. Her pupils are too dark and dilated. She’s been to the bathroom more than once tonight. “It’s a party.”

  “No, it’s my job, Lex. And I’m hammered already.”

  “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “The bathroom.”

  I sigh. “You’re too high to talk to right now.”

  “I don’t mean for the blow.” She giggles again. “Not the powder kind, anyway.”

  I’m tempted. I’m drunk and tired, but I’m not dead. I’m looking at her, at her lips, and I’m thinking about how good they’d feel wrapped around me right now. But I’m pretty sure if I get off, I’ll fall asleep and I’ll never make it onto that stage.

  I put down my beer behind me, carefully sidestepping her feet. “No thanks. I’m on soon.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Boo. You’re boring.”

  “And you’re high.”

  “Yes, I am!” she announces proudly. She turns to the room, throwing her hands over her head. “I’m fucking high, bitches!”

  They cheer for her. She drinks up the attention, gravitating toward it. I watch her disappear into the room, swallowed up by the crowd. Part of me regrets telling her no. Part of me is relieved to see her go.

  That’s me in a nutshell lately; nowhere. Stuck halfway between everything. Between love and hate, happy and sad. I can’t get to either extreme, no matter how hard I try. It’s why I drank tonight. Because I need something. Anything.

  When you’re numb for no discernable reason, you feel compelled to find one. Even if you find it at the bottom of a bottle.

  “Mr. Ryker?”

  I nod without looking. The nervous voice from the door pulls me out of myself. Out of the room. It gets my feet moving one in front of the other. The room moves with me, a well-choreographed dance that I don’t remember learning. The music cuts off. My bandmates push their women and whiskey aside, falling in line behind me. Somewhere at my back Lexy and the other dancers will follow too. I’m the Pied Piper leading them to the cliff’s edge and they obey without question. Without complaint. It’s a strange power to have over people, one I’m about to exercise on a stadium full of screaming fans. It used to give me a rush. It used to get me off like nothing else on Earth could.

  Now it just gives me a headache.

  CHAPTER TWO

  GREER

  When I was thirteen, my mom ran off with some guy she met at Arby’s. It wasn’t the shock it should have been. She was rarely there to start with, more a memory than a mom from the moment I was born. My dad was nothing; not a random picture or a stray thought. Not even a name. She never caught it. He was a guy at a party or a concert, sometimes the grocery store. The story of how they met changed so many times, I stopped asking. There was no way of finding him, that’s what it boiled down to.

  When she bailed, she left me alone with a stepdad I hated. One who loved me deeply. A little too deeply. Without her or her sporadic paychecks, it only took a month for the power to get shut off. No light or heat in the dead of winter in the slums of New York City. It was an ugly situation, and it quickly turned uglier when my stepdad suggested we sleep in the same bed to stay warm. That was the end for me. I noped right the fuck out of there that night.

  Over the years, I went back now and then when I knew he was out. I stole food and money when I could find it. I looked for signs that my mom was back, but I never found any. Two years later the building was condemned and my stepdad was kicked out. Maybe he ended up homeless too. I don’t know. I don’t care.

  During those first two years, I lived underground with other runaways, other kids. The view was depressing but the company was decent. For once, people had my back. People were willing to share the wealth, even when ‘wealth’ was four oranges and a warm bottle of Sprite. It was the closest thing to a home I’d ever had, but after two years I had to ask myself what was more important; getting my ass beat out on the streets or seeing the sun?

  It wasn’t hard to decide. Even a starved stomach and a broken wrist couldn't keep me from the sky. That's what you find out first when you lose everything. You learn what's important to you. What you're willing to give up. What you're willing to go without.

  You realize what you're willing to fight yourself bloody for.

  “I’m gonna beat Bryce’s ass,” Cam tells me quietly. He pops a chip in his mouth, his eyes focused narrowly on the other side of the roof.

  Plastic tables and chairs are sprawled over the black tar, covered in discarded plates, silverware, and cups. At the far table are Anna and Bryce; the remnants of a party at its end. Earlier tonight, the entire cast of Rendezvous filled this roof with laughter, music, and dancing. We ate ourselves sick, drank ourselves dizzy, and celebrated the Broadway run of a truly great show.

  One that’s quickly coming to an end.

  I nudge Cam’s shoulder, jostling him out of his death stare. “He’s not so bad. He’s just blunt.”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  “Okay, yeah,” I admit as I pop a lid on the dip container. I lick a stray dollop of cool ranch off my thumb. “He’s a little bit of an asshole. But he’s not worth fighting with.”

  “It wouldn’t be a fight. I could drop him with one hit.”

  “Don’t.”

  “If he doesn’t shut the hell up, I will.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  He looks down at me, a wry smile on his lips. “What are you gonna do? Hold me back? You weigh less than my left shoe.”

  I snort. “Now who’s the asshole?”

  “You teeny, tiny, little terror, you.”

  “Shut up!” I laugh. “Lay off the height. I don’t make fun of you for being freakishly tall.”

  “Six-foot-two isn’t freakish. Five-foot-two, though... I mean, you’re part elf at that point.”

  “Eat shit.”

  “You’re only twenty. That growth spurt will come in any day now. I can feel it.”

  I pull the knife from the cheesecake, pointing the tip at his face. “I’ll cut you. Don’t think I won’t.”

  “Okay, now that is scary,” he nods to the knife in my small, steady hand, “because I know you know how to use it.”

  “Everyone knows how to use a knife.”

  “Not like you do.”

  I hesitate, glancing over my shoulder. Bryce and Anna are talking heatedly. They’re not listening to us.

  Still, my spine stiffens nervously.

  “Keep your voice down,” I mutter to Cam.

  “They can’t hear us.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I spin the knife deftly in my hand, stowing it quickly on the table. “You know I don’t like talking about it.”

  His face goes serious. He looks handsome, chiseled, and appropriately apologetic. “You’re right. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Cam takes a deep breath, his a
rms crossing over his chest. “So, when I kick Bryce’s ass—”

  “Give me your phone and I’ll record it for you.”

  “You’re a good friend.”

  “Nope,” I correct, grinning proudly up at him. “I’m the best friend.”

  He smiles as he wraps his arm around my shoulders. “Yeah, you are.”

  I lean into Cam. Into the solid, muscular mountain that towers over me, and I feel safe. It’s a surreal feeling for me, even now, two years after making it off the streets. I spent a lot of years alone. It’s been hard for me to find out how to be comfortable. There are still times where I wake up in a panic, not sure where I am or what’s happening. Looking around a small, dark room with four walls, a locked door, and a soft bed feels as foreign as if I’d woken up on Mars. My fingers tremble, my breath sits locked in my chest tight as a vault. It can take a long time to come down from that. Sometimes I sit curled up in the corner of my bed, watching the sun rise through my window until I find calm.

  Cam is just down the hall. I could go to him. I could crawl in his bed and hide, but I don’t because I’m ashamed. Ashamed of who I was. Ashamed of who I still am under the new clothes and clean hair.

  I’m a runaway. A nobody. And no matter how many paychecks I pull, I’ll never be able to erase that part of me. Cam knows about all of it, but if I run to him, he’ll want to talk about it. And the only thing worse than being me, is talking about it.

  “You know the one good thing about the show ending?” I ask conversationally.

  “There’s a good thing about it?”

  “There’s always a silver lining. You just have to look for it.”

  “We’ll be available for other shows?” He guesses. “Bigger, better shows?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, yeah, but no,” I amend. “That’s not what I’m thinking.”

  “Are you thinking we’ll be unemployed?”

  “No. That’s shitty. Stop guessing. It’s getting depressing.”

  “Alright, fine. Bright side me. What’s the one good thing about the show closing down?”