Straight from the Heart (20 page)

I could hear him shift and let out a sigh.
“I promise, B. Sweet dreams.”

Cale was right. We had a couple of days for
ourselves to unwind and return to normal, but then Walker called us
during a band practice and wanted us to meet up at Pollock studio,
a recording studio about 2 hours from us. He seemed adamant that
after all of the publicity the band received with my joining and
this major tour with Ignite the Flames, it could catapult us into
something big.

We arrived at Polluck Studios before the
traffic in the city got too crazy. It was located in a town called
Hillside, which was known for its diversity in music and mainly for
the enormous studio, which sat at the end of downtown before you
entered the suburbs. I couldn’t believe my eyes as we got out of
Raptor’s moms van and went inside through the wooden door.

“Can’t believe we’re here.” Raptor threw his
arms over his head and shouted at the top of his lungs.

I looked over at Cale as he bent down to
whisper in my ear. “This studios a pretty big deal. A lot of bigger
Alternative bands have recorded songs here through the years.” He
showed me some of the copies of gold and platinum records that hung
on the walls of bands that have been in the same position we are
now. I was in awe. But then again, before June I never would’ve
imagined I’d be doing this right now…recording my first record with
Everlasting. I couldn’t wait to get started.

We met in one of the recording rooms, where
there was a younger guy sitting in a leather backed chair. “HEYYY
man good to see you again!” The guys shook hands with who I was
assuming the producer and he faced me.

“Gates Noble. Nice to meet you.” Gates
didn’t look a day over 30. His shaggy black hair was covered by a
green Michigan State hat, and wore ripped jeans and a plain white
t-shirt. “You must be Bryn…”

I firmly shook his hand in return. “That’s
me.” Flashing a friendly smile. “Bryn Schaefler, nice to meet you
too.”

“We worked with Gates on our last album.
He’s fucking killer,” Vince told me, and Gates laughed.

“I wouldn’t say I’m that great, but
hopefully we can make this album platinum and get you a bigger fan
base.” Gates explained. While he was showing us around the room and
the equipment we’d be using, he went into further detail when I
asked way too many questions. I immediately liked this guy. I felt
right at ease, grabbing a bottle of water from the miniature fridge
that was sitting over by the drum set.

“Now Walker thinks it’d be a good idea for
you to do a collaboration with Ace…”

“Ace fucking Patterson? Are you serious!??”
Cale asked, and I couldn’t figure out if he seemed thrilled by the
idea or pissed.

“Who’s Ace Patterson?” I asked, completely
oblivious. Everyone turned to look at me as if I was an alien. I
certainly felt like one.

“Only the lead singer of Take Me Home, and
has the best voice in the game right now.” Cale explained. “I’ll
play one of their songs for you later. He has a higher register and
can scream better than anyone I’ve ever heard. He’s actually
interested in collaborating with us, G?”

Gates nodded. “Appears so. We’ll set up a
day this week for him to come in and we can get an arrangement
going. He seemed pretty stoked so that’s a good sign.” Changing the
subject he said “Why don’t we get started on that one you were
telling me about a second ago?”

He was referring to ‘You Were Young,’ a song
Cale had written with Luke during one of our recent practices. Cale
grabbed the guitar and started playing the basic chords for the
song, which was heavier than the other songs they’d written. I
thought the lyrics were absolutely brilliant: a story about a girl
who fell in love with a guy, and breaking his heart. Total cliché,
but the words stuck in my brain the whole time I listened to them
play it through.

“Love the sound you’re going with.” Gates
tapped his fingers on the sound board in front of him. Then he
gestured me over by him. “Know what would make this song number 1
is if you had Bryn sing the girls point of view towards the
end.”

“That’s what I had in mind.” Cale told him.
“She’d be the perfect touch.”

“Alright. Well how about let’s starting
recording the guitars and the instruments then we can call it a
day.” Gates suggested and that’s what we spent the next few hours
doing, sorting out who played what instrument where and by the end
of the day we were finished, minus vocals. I was completely beat
when the guys dropped me off at the loft.

After protesting, I told Cale he could stay
with me ONLY for that night.

“They say that love is forever…” I heard him
sing to himself as I got out of the shower. He must’ve heard me
open the bathroom door because his mouth clamped shut and his eyes
were raking over my naked body under the brown towel.

“Keep singing.” I encouraged him, digging
through my dresser to find a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top
to slip on. “What song is it, by the way?”

He stopped what he was doing to jump onto
the couch, patting a spot down next to him, meaning he wanted me to
sit with him. “‘If I’m James Dean Then You’re Audrey Hepburn.’” He
replied with a smile. “Total love song if you ask me. Come here and
I’ll play it on my iPod.” I quickly changed out of my towel into my
clothes and plopped down next to my boyfriend, wrapping my arms
around him.

Cale put on the song for me and I plugged
the headphones into my ears, laying my head on his chest. Once the
song was over with, I lifted my head and kissed him on his chin. “I
think it fits us pretty well. Really though, ‘how the hell did you
ever pick me?’” I quoted the words from the song and Cale
chuckled.

“It was easy, as a matter of fact,” Cale
joked, “When you auditioned I knew I wanted you in the band even if
you couldn’t play any decent notes.”

I slapped him on the arm. “Jerk.” I said to
his face. “I should’ve known you’d do that.”

Cale grinned like a Cheshire cat. “Well now
you do and you’re all mine Bryn.”

Snuggling up to him as close as I could get,
he kissed me on the top of my head. “Mmmmm…” I groaned, getting
comfortable and laying my hand on his firm chest. This was
perfection. I never would’ve seen it coming but I couldn’t imagine
being anywhere else but in Cale Pelton’s arms. “I love you.” I
whispered to him as I drifted off to sleep.

Squeezing my arm, Cale sighed. “I love you
too, Bryn Michelle. So much more than you know.”

A few hours later, I was awoken by a
pounding on my door. Realizing I was still cradled in Cale’s arms,
I glanced to see it was only 1 in the morning.
I slept this
long?
I thought to myself, sliding out of the bed carefully and
quietly without waking him up. I was scared to open the door, so
when I inched nearer I tried to see if I could hear a voice or
something close enough.

“They’ve got to be in there,” One of the
voices loudly whispered from the other side. “He stayed here last
night.”

“Well knock again idiot.” Another voice
chimed in, a little bit louder. It sounded a lot like Vince and
Luke. What the hell would they be doing knocking on my door this
late at night?

“Who’s there?” I demanded, not trying to
yell to loud.

“It’s Luke and Vince.” Luke spoke up. “Let
us in. Something bad happened, Bryn.”

My heart stopped. Something bad obviously
never meant anything good. I unlocked the door and opened it,
hurrying them in. “Cale’s sleeping, but we can talk in the other
room where he won’t hear…” Once they were inside, I took a good
look at them. There was blood on the sleeves and chest area of
their shirts. Fuck. My mouth dropped a couple of feet, wanting to
know what the hell happened and where was Raptor?

“What the fuck?” Cale shot straight up from
where he was laying. “What the hell is going on guys?” Running a
hand through his bed hair, he pulled up his baggy gym shorts he
wore to bed and looked like he was ready to kill.

I could see fear in Vince and Luke’s eyes.
It was scary. I’ve never seen them look like they did now. “You
wanna tell them, Luke…”

Gesturing towards the blood on their shirts,
Cale’s face turned beat red. “Blood? How the fucking hell did you
get blood on your shirts? Was it Rap?” No one said anything. The
two guys looked from one to the other, waiting for someone to spit
it out. “What happened, dammit? We’re all here except for Raptor,
now where is he!?”

“He’s being transferred down to U of M
hospital right now. It was bad, you guys. We were at the bar just
having a couple of drinks before going back home and he told us he
was going to run to the bathroom because he had to piss. Five
minutes later we still didn’t see him and the bar was crazy, so we
looked outside…” Vince paused, sucking in a breath. “I couldn’t
hear him screaming. There were these guys kicking him from every
which way, he was completely limp and he got shot in his arm right
by his elbow from what the ambulance medics told us along with the
bones in his hands getting nearly all broken from being stepped
on.”

I collapsed into Cale’s arms. Raptor, who
had become my brother, was fighting for his life because some
assholes at a bar wanted to pick a fight. Maybe there was more to
it. That’s what we had to find out.

“What did they look like?” Cale asked,
gently stroking my hair and resting his head against mine. “We have
to go find them and make them pay.” I could hear vengeance in his
voice.

“One was pretty damn big, like one of those
WWE wrestlers, but I couldn’t see his face, it was completely
covered with a mask.” Luke explained with a tone of fear. Then his
body went rigid. “The other guy looked really familiar though…I
can’t figure out from where.”

“It was probably a fuckin psycho fan. Guys
we need to go see him.” My voice turned frantic as I drifted from
Cale over to my dresser to find the first pair of jeans and t-shirt
I could find. “He might not…” I couldn’t find the words. I wanted
to spit out ‘he could die.’

“Relax, Bryn. You should get some sleep.”
Luke scolded me, and I scowled at him. “Cale, Vince and I will go
drive down and see what’s going on. Cops will probably want to
question us more down there since we did find him.”

My eyes flickered over to Cale. I silently
pleaded
‘Don’t leave me all alone now
,’ but seemed it didn’t
work since Cale was already putting his clothes back on and rushing
towards the door along with the others.

“You need to stay here,” Cale murmured into
my ear. “We won’t be gone long. I’ll call you once I know more
babe, I promise, okay?”

I knew I wasn’t going to win the battle, so
I just nodded and told the guys to let me know once they got to the
hospital and could give me more information. By the time the three
of them left there was no way in hell I was going back to sleep.
Just the mere thought of someone so close to me getting hurt like
that sent chills through me, and not in a good way. I felt a sudden
sense of fear. Maybe I was freaking out about nothing? What if
someone was trying to go after all of us? For all we knew it
could’ve been someone who had it out for Raptor, but for now I had
to play the waiting game.

My phone finally rang at about nine in the
morning, waking me up after the little sleep I was able to
get. 

“Hello?” I mumbled into the speaker,
adjusting myself so I lay on my side instead of my stomach.

“Hey,” Cale spoke softly and my heart
started beating a million times a minute. Just hearing one word out
of his mouth comforted me “Did you sleep at all?”

“Barely,” I whispered back. Pushing my bed
hair out of my face I asked him “How is he?”

Hearing him take a huge breath in he replied
“He’s alive. That’s the only good news right now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I
demanded.

“It means that whoever attacked him messed
his hand up pretty badly. The doctors are already saying that he
might have permanent damage, meaning he’ll barely be able to move
them again, or just with limited movement.” Cale paused. “He looks
like shit B. He’s all covered up in bandages and hasn’t woken up
yet and probably won’t for a few hours at least. God, I don’t even
know.”

“So he might not be able to use his hand,
meaning he can’t play in the band anymore?” My voice shook with
every word.

“Pretty much. I don’t even care about that.
All I care about is whether my buddy is going to make it out of
this hospital bed in one piece.” Cale replied, and soon I heard a
bunch of background noise. “Look, hun, I’m going to get back to the
guys and get breakfast. If I hear anything more I’ll let you know,
okay?”

“Alright. I’ll probably be down helping at
Lozano’s, so just call there,” I told him and we hung up.

I rested back against my pillows and
replayed everything from the previous night in my head. I
remembered when the guys said that one of the attackers looked
really familiar. I blew it off thinking it could’ve been someone
who came to the shows before then, but it was really bugging me
now. I had a weird feeling to call Braydon so I called him and a
voice immediately spoke, notifying me the number I was trying to
reach had been disconnected.
Really?
I wondered.
Why
would he disconnect his number out of nowhere?
When I saw him
at lunch in California he seemed happy to be in his element…I
thought things were going to finally change and I’d see more of
him.

This didn’t feel right to me.

Lozano’s was busy from the time I got down
to help at lunch time, and Louisa was thankful that I was still
around to help.

“You should still be resting, Miss Bryn,”
She scolded me when I walked in with my waitress apron and work
attire. “We can manage.”