I glare in his direction. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He chuckles good naturedly. “She just had your kid two weeks ago and she’s already skyping Keith to plan a tour. Only Kylie.”
I laugh, too. He has a point. As my wife and the mother of my child, Kylie’s obviously rooting for MFB. But as our band’s manager, she’s more than invested in our continued success.
“Speaking of Kylie, she had an idea about filling our open spot,” I say.
Rascal rolls his eyes. “Here we go again...”
I glare at him again before I glance at Adam and Brody, who both look interested. “I already ran it by Mark, and he thinks it’s an incredible idea, too.”
“What is it?” Brody asks.
“A competition, filmed for Rock on the Road. We’ve already given people two seasons of our reality show, so why not a third that shows the process of finding someone to fill an open spot in MFB?”
Brody’s eyes light up. His father—who he no longer speaks with—used to be involved in television entertainment, and I think it runs in his blood, too. But that’s about the only thing he shares with his dad. “What kind of competition?”
“We’re in charge, so it can be whatever we want it to be. But Kylie’s pitch to Mark was basically that we’d gather ten of the best bassists we can find, put them in a house together where they’ll be filmed twenty-four-seven, and choose one of them to fill Kane’s spot.”
“Who’s paying for that?” Adam asks.
“Ashmark will pay for the house and food, and MFB will kick in some money to pay the contestants. We need to get this off the ground ASAP to fill this spot, so it’ll be a quick turnaround as long as everyone is on board.” I look at each guy in my band, and they’re all nodding. A dart of relief runs through me.
Adam holds up his beer bottle in a toast. “Let’s do it.”
I hold mine up, too, but I don’t say anything since it’s my proposal.
“I’m in,” Brody says.
Rascal nods. “As long as it doesn’t interfere with my schedule playing with Ruby, I’m down for it.”
We touch our bottles together and chug.
“Good. So when we’re off hiatus in December, I need you ready to play and record new music with our new bassist. I need you writing now. I need you practicing your shit and creating new sounds. We have a shitload of banked songs we’ve cut from other albums, but there’s a reason they were cut. I want a fresh, new sound that matches the new dynamic we’ll have and I want it to fucking blow everything we’ve ever recorded before out of the water.”
I see the fire I’m lighting in these guys.
We all share the same ambition to keep MFB at the top, but there’s a new underlying, unspoken reason we all want our next album to catapult to success.
It’s our first one without Kane.
And we need to prove that the four of us are just as strong—maybe even stronger—without him.
None of us believe we could be stronger without any of the individuals making up My Favorite Band when we were jamming together for over a decade. But he fucking left us, and that hurts.
And so we’re coming back with something to prove.
Success, after all, is the best revenge.
CHAPTER 1: GAGE
I sing the back-up chords to “Don’t Go Away Mad” while I pluck the strings on my bass, thinking I sort of wish these women screaming in front of me would listen to the lyrics as Ray sings them.
They’re in their sixties.
I’m...not.
And I do sort of wish they’d just go away rather than pretend like I’m actually going to take one of them into the break room so they could have their way with me.
That pretty blonde in the back of the group with the tits coming out of her dress who, from a distance, looks a little closer to my age...maybe.
But I’m not much of a cougar hunter.
“Woohoo!” they yell and scream. “Vegas, baby!”
What happens in Vegas, dear seniors, will most definitely follow you home.
Just ask Janine, my aunt’s friend. She cougared up, somehow got a male dancer to join her back at her hotel room, then headed home with the herp.
More information than I wanted from my aunt, but she thought it was hilarious.
Besides, even though on stage I look like Nikki Sixx, I’m definitely not him, and in my normal, everyday life, I don’t really look all that much like him.