Razing Ryker (Dissonance Book 1) (2 page)

“It wasn’t a flask in my back pocket, it was my cell phone,” Ryker insisted for the millionth time, tossing the magazine article across the coffee table. “And even if it was a flask, who cares? I’m over twenty-one, I wasn’t driving, and I wasn’t drinking it in public.”

Grant, his assistant, raised a manicured eyebrow. “Was it a flask?”

“I just said it wasn’t.”

“Yeah, but you also have a lot of excuses locked and loaded for if it was.”

Ryker shook his head irritably, falling back against the sofa. “It’s not like it was a crack pipe or something.”

“God, please don’t say that in front of the press.”

“I’m not stupid.”

“No, you’re not, but you are in a bind right now.”

“Fucking Lexy,” he growled. Ryker rubbed his hands over his face and into his hair, pulling on the strands until it hurt. That girl was more trouble than she’d ever been worth. “I can’t believe she did that to me on stage!”

“Bitch is crazy,” Grant mumbled, scanning through his phone. His dark eyes went suddenly wide.

Ryker flinched. “What is it? More photos?”

“No.”

“You’re a terrible liar. How are they different?”

“They aren’t,” Grant insisted, stowing his phone quickly. “Same shit, different day.”

“You mean different angle?”

“Maybe.”

“Where was this one shot from?”

“Looks like it was shot from Lexy’s right earring. It has that kind of zoom.”

Ryker threw his hands up in the air. “Fuck!”

“On the bright side—“

“Don’t say it,” he snapped. “It’s the same thing everyone is saying and it doesn’t help.”

“Alright, alright.” Grant stood silently watching Ryker scowl and stew in his anger until he couldn’t take it anymore. “All I’m saying is, are you sure your dad is your dad? Are you sure he wasn’t a brother because—“

“You suck.”

Grant laughed. “You got nothing to be ashamed of, man.”

“Camera adds ten pounds, remember. And about two inches, it looks like.”

“Eh, either way – mazel tov.”

“What? You’re Jewish now?” Ryker asked sarcastically.

“Keeping my options open.”

“You wanna be a black gay Jew? Do you just love swimming upstream?”

Grant grinned. “Adversity only makes me stronger.”

“What about dick pics? What’s your plan for those? How do we overcome that?”

“Same way we overcome all of the drug and alcohol rumors.”

“Rehab?” he asked almost hopefully. He could handle a week in Palm Springs at a resort rehab center, painting watercolors and hiding from the paparazzi. Anything to get out of the holding pattern he was stuck in.

“Nope. A return to your roots.”

“As in Disney?” Ryker laughed. “I really doubt they want anything to do with me right now.”

“Nah, before Disney. Before the fame found you.”

“Before Disney I was five years old living in a tiny town in Washington.”

Grant pointed at him triumphantly. “And there it is.”

“What? Washington?”

“You’re going home.”

Ryker stood, shaking his head and turning to the window that overlooked the sweltering L.A. skyline. “No way, man. I don’t even remember living there. We pulled up stakes the second I signed on with Disney and we’ve never been back.”

“What about Christmas?”

He turned to look at Grant incredulously. “You mean the concert nine years ago? That was nothing. It was stupid. We were there for less than twenty-four hours.”

“And your popularity spiked immediately afterward,” Grant reminded him. “You were growing up. People started seeing you as a young man instead of a little boy and it was hurting you. Girls had crushes on you but parents weren’t in love with you the way they were when you were a kid. You won them back with that wholesome act in your hometown. You made them comfortable with you again. People aren’t comfortable with you right now, Ryker.”

“You mean they aren’t comfortable with my penis.”

“And they shouldn’t be. Even girls your age are put off by it. Men go nuts for sex tapes of celebrities they want to sleep with. Most women don’t. They use their imaginations more. A picture of another woman all up on you – that ruins the fantasy for them. Suddenly they’re out of the picture and you’re less appealing to them. Even your music loses its luster because you’re not singing to them. You’re singing to Lexy now.”

“I’m not even speaking to Lexy.”

“Doesn’t matter. They have pictures in their face showing them how unavailable and unattainable you are. You gotta fix that if you want to keep going at the pace you were going. You’ve gotta be unattached and accessible again. Heading home and doing photo ops with locals – that will make you real to people. They’ll love you.” Grant paused, looking at Ryker pointedly. “Especially if you write some new material that we can unveil.”

“You mean leak?”

“You know who did that,” Grant reminded him darkly. “We all do.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I was surprised by that song.”

“So was I. It was never supposed to get out.”

“No, I mean I was surprised you wrote it,” he replied seriously. “It didn’t sound like you.”

Ryker feigned shock, gesturing to his body. “You mean you can’t believe I can do sexy?”

“No, I know you’re sexy. The whole world knows it. I just didn’t think you liked singing about it.”

“I don’t,” Ryker mumbled, dropping the act. “I did it because it’s what they wanted.”

“They who?”

“Everyone apparently. I thought the fans would hate it but they’re eating it up. They love the new me.”

“Do
you
love the new you?”

Ryker let his forehead fall against the cold window chilled by the endless AC in the apartment. He stared out at the city sweating and glistening under him and rolled Grant’s question around in his head. Did he love the new image emerging of him? Did he love the work he was doing? Did he love anything anymore?

The answer was simple. No, he didn’t. Not since his mom had died last year.

Grant cleared his throat softly. “Ryker, about the concert in Washington. We have to make—“

“Do it,” he blurted out, not turning. “Set it up and I’ll do it, but not with any of the team we’re working with now. Roadies, dancers, musicians – everyone is fired or at least on vacation during this one.”

“Including Lexy, I assume.”

“Especially Lexy.”

“A road team I can put together no problem, musicians I can find, but do you have anyone in mind for your dancers? Where do you want to start looking?”

“New York,” he answered without hesitation. “I want to look on Broadway.”

“Why Broadway?”

“Because I want professionals, not partiers. I want a completely different style of choreography than what we’ve been doing. And I want to background check everyone extensively. Drug tests too. Everyone thinks I’m a coked up alcoholic man-whore and I’ll never get away from that stigma if I’m surrounded by users.”

“Or carrying flasks in your back pocket.”

Ryker groaned, turning away from Grant and the window – heading for the music room and his piano. “It was my fucking cell phone,” he growled.

Greer had run away from home when she was thirteen after her mother ran off with another man and left her alone with a stepfather who liked to visit her in her bedroom at night. Her mother had known this and still she’d left.

People, Greer was quick to learn, were bastards.

She ran away after only one month. She got her period, said a quick thank you to Jesus, and ran for the door. She was alone for most of that first year but she did alright. She got in with some tunnel kids and lived underground for a while, but then their camp was raided, the majority of them ended up beaten, bloodied, and robbed, and she went solo. Less conspicuous that way. She spent her time gathering cans, working odd jobs for anyone who would let her, and hiding. She was always hiding. Even now, even years later when she was in an apartment she was paying for and had locks on her doors, she was hiding. But never from Cameron.

He was the only one who knew about her past because he’d lived it with her. They met when she was fourteen, he was seventeen, and he’d immediately taken her under his wing. He saw her huddled in the back of an ally waiting for the restaurant to bring out the trash and his usually tough exterior had broken. She had that kind of face. Big eyes like a puppy dog and long hair that was soft and shining despite the fact that she hadn’t been able to shower in two weeks. She looked like she was waiting to be saved and Cameron felt like he’d been looking for something beautiful. Something worth saving. He’d seen a lot of ugly in his life having spent almost all of it on the streets, and in that moment in time he’d been solidly certain that there was nothing worth anything in the world. Nothing but hate and pain. Then he’d met Greer and she gave him hope again. She gave him something to salvage and in the end it’d been that that had saved Cameron himself. That’d pulled the knife off his wrist.

Sharing a love of music, they both took up with a dance crew four years ago performing for money in parks and in front of busy intersections. They made good money and they learned a lot from the other dancers, most of whom were properly trained but down on their luck. They learned about the system, about auditions, where to look for openings. After years of scrounging and saving they’d managed to buy the right clothes and shoes and both of them started looking for parts in off Broadway productions. After months of rejection, they’d finally found gold with
Rendezvous.

Now they both lived in apartments with other people, people from the cast that shared the same schedule and understood why they rehearsed relentlessly. They’d never know that part of the reason Greer and Cameron tried so hard was because they were faking it. They had lied on resumes and in auditions about where they’d learned to dance. They were just as good as the others, just as talented – if not more so – but they’d always felt like they were second best. Like no matter how good they were, they were never quite good enough.

Greer had auditioned for the female lead in
Rendezvous
but the chemistry hadn’t been there. Cameron had the voice, the looks, and the dance skills and when you put him next to Eve, you could feel the desire. It was in the air, heavy and hot. When you put him next to Greer there was love, not lust, and audiences wanted lust. They wanted sex, even if they didn’t get to see it. They wanted the promise of it. So Greer had gone to the ensemble but she’d made it. She was in the same show as Cameron, they were making real money, and she could afford to live for the first time in years. She still spent every dollar like it was her last, though. And it was a good thing because the way life was going on stage lately, it very well might be.

What everyone was thinking but no one was saying was this –
Rendezvous
was tanking.

The show stopped being great the day Eve left them. The day she left Cameron. You can’t just up and leave a runaway. Not without serious repercussions. They didn’t trust easily and when they did, they felt betrayal deeply. What Eve did – it cut Cameron to the core. He’d loved her. He’d put his heart in her hands – the first time he’d dared to love anyone but Greer – and his trust had been met with a slap in the face. Greer watched him crumble afterward and she swore it would never be her.

He went through the motions now, reciting his lines and moving across the stage, but the passion was gone. He didn’t have it with Anna and while she had the talent, she didn’t have the fire Eve had. The presence to carry a show as its star. They could get someone else but it probably wouldn’t help. They had had their stars and now they were gone. That kind of chemistry couldn’t be recreated and it was what people had come to expect from the show. The production couldn’t hold up to Broadway standards the way it was.

It was only a matter of time and they all knew it.

Then one rainy morning just a month into their run, someone had the guts to say it.

“Good morning,” Meredith called from the front of the room. She stood tall and too thin in her expensive pantsuit, dangling, glistening jewelry, and fake blond hair. She threw her massive purse down on the nearest table, scattering papers that fluttered over the edge and drifted quietly to the floor. No one returned her greeting. “I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll be brief.
Rendezvous’
time on Broadway has been cancelled.”

Gasps scattered across the crowd as anxious faces turned to one another, searching for understanding.

“The reviews have been good,” Cameron protested loudly, scowling.

Greer glanced at him sideways wondering if he was merely quoting her or had he broken down and started reading them.

“The ticket sales have not,” Meredith replied coldly. “If we can’t fill the seats, we can’t continue the run. A show losing money is not a show that can survive. We had a good run, but not quite good enough. Personally, I feel the production’s appearance on Broadway was premature. We should have waited. Held out for a headliner to take the lead, but your esteemed director assured me—“

“Cameron played the lead perfectly,” John interrupted, his voice dark and angry. He stood beside the piano, leaning against it and glaring at Meredith. “No one could have done it better. Lester and Burk may as well have written the role for him.”

“I’m not referring to Cameron.”

While no one turned to look at her, everyone’s focus fell momentarily on Anna’s small shoulders.

“We did the best we could with what we had,” John snarled.

“Regardless of the fine performances, they haven’t been enough. Had we a star with a name worth lighting the marquee for, we would have filled more seats and the run would continue.”

“You don’t know that. You might have brought in some extra from the
Vampire Diaries
or some other bullshit show and tanked us from the start. I don’t care what their name is, if they can’t sing, dance, and act, they can’t help the production.”

“All of the singing, dancing, and acting in the world can’t save the production anyway. It’s shutting down.” Meredith replied. Her face softened as she stared at John, somehow looking more angular with the change. “If you’d like to discuss it further, you’re welcome to join me in my office.”

Greer felt her stomach knot as she looked between John and Meredith. He stood perfectly still, his eyes tight at the edges and his fists clenched on top of the high back of the piano. No way would Meredith cave. She loved money more than anything and if
Rendezvous
wasn’t putting cash in her pocket she would drop it. Simple as that. If she wanted him to come to her office for a chat it was more than likely about a new project, meaning even John might be abandoning the show by the end of the day.

His handsome face fell in shadow as he stood back from the piano, raking his hand through his already messy black hair. Greer begged him silently to stay with them. To take the show back to the smaller theaters and keep it running, but she doubted he’d do it. He had a career to manage and your star didn’t rise in the gutters.

“I’ll be there after rehearsal,” he answered bitterly. “We still have a show to put on, even if only for a few more days.”

Meredith grinned faintly before grabbing her purse off the table, sending more papers flying to the floor, and breezing out of the room.