Thea’s face was shadowed in the dim light inside the garage when he looked at her, but he could feel the intent concentration of her gaze. “Was the money for your folks?”
“My dad broke his arm,” he told her, undoing his seat belt so he could face her. “My brothers were still only young, and even with my mom taking extra shifts, it would’ve been impossible for them to make ends meet.” David had known what he had to do. “I was going to come back to New York, find work here so I could help out, but Noah went out one day, all clean and shiny and polished, and came back having secured us the first wedding.”
Thea had never guessed at any of this; neither had the world. “Noah?” She liked the guitarist, but he didn’t give off the vibe that he could be counted on in a crunch.
“Don’t let his I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude fool you, Thea. Noah would kill for the people he loves.” That was what made it so damn frustrating that none of them could seem to do anything to help the other man in turn.
“The thing was, he and Abe, they both had trust funds, but they knew I’d never take their money.” It was a pledge the four of them had made as teenagers—that money would never come between them, that they’d always be equal, no matter if Fox and David didn’t have a nickel to their own names. “But if we earned it together, then I could accept it as a loan from the group.”
It had been a fine distinction, but one that mattered—a man could accept a favor from a friend when they were both on the same playing field. Three months later, when David paid the money back after an extended club run that had seen Schoolboy Choir earning a livable income for the first time, most of it had gone to replace Abe’s damaged keyboard. It had been their money, earned as a group and shared as needed.
“Noah’s the prettiest,” Thea said slowly. “Put him in clean, pressed clothing, comb his hair, block his tendency to swear a blue streak and that sharp, biting wit of his, and you’d think he’d stepped right out of a film catalog for ‘handsome, charming, elegant male.’”
“Perfect wedding singer, right?” David’s shoulders shook. “He told us he sang a ballad for his audition with the wedding firm and they signed him and the band up on the spot. It probably helped that the manager of the company was female.” Noah could charm women from age zero to a hundred.
“Wait.” Thea’s eyes grew bright. “It was Noah who was the lead singer?”
“Can you imagine Fox’s voice at a wedding?”
“I see your point.” Schoolboy Choir’s lead singer had a growl of a tone that was perfect for rock but that would’ve likely seduced the bride right out of her panties, it was so roughly sexual.
“Noah can mimic other singers—he used to make us piss ourselves with laughter in school when he pulled out that trick,” David told her. “I don’t know who he was channeling the wedding weekends, but let’s just say we were suddenly hot property on the wedding circuit.”
Eyes warm, David played his fingers through her hair. “I already knew they were my best friends, but that’s when I knew I couldn’t abandon them and our dream, that whatever happened, we’d figure out a way through it.”
So much history tied the four men together, she thought, so much loyalty. “And you have. You’ve stuck together through everything.” Fame, booze, drugs, women, none of it had torn them apart.
David reached out to cradle her jaw. “I can stick with you, too, Thea,” he said, his voice compelling and strong and potent with emotion. “Just give me a shot.”
That night, Thea watched David sleep and accepted that he could hurt her more than Eric ever had. She’d cared for Eric, but though they’d suited each other in many ways, there had been no visceral tug, no emotion so deep that it terrified. But it hadn’t been a cynical choice on her part to be with him. On the contrary, it had been one driven by her heart—Thea had believed the fireworks would come.
Her parents, the most in-love couple she knew, had only met once before deciding to marry. At the time, Lily had been an unmarried single mother living in a conservative, traditional village. She couldn’t financially afford to go to a bigger city, and she’d needed the emotional support of Thea’s grandparents, with whom Lily and Thea had lived. The circumstances had meant her marriage prospects were dim at best.
So when Lily was introduced to a young man from another village, a man who wanted a family but who had similarly dim prospects because of a partially paralyzed left arm—the result of a childhood accident—she hadn’t hesitated to say yes to a proposal.