Bedded Bliss (Found in Oblivion Book 1) (3 page)

M
alachi Shawcross
, his older brother. In the flesh.

Giant flesh, but good goddamn.

“Mal,” Michael managed before he was swept up into a massive bear hug. He didn’t have much choice but to return it, or risk losing lung function.

Sweet hell, Malachi was one big motherfucker. Shit, it was great to see him.

Long time no see
was an understatement. He hadn’t been this physically close to his brother in a year or two, though they lived in the same frigging state.

Born eleven months apart, they’d gone from being best friends to practically enemies after their parents had divorced. Malachi had sided with their mother, and Michael had been closer to his father. He also hadn’t had such a hard time accepting Lila in their lives. Malachi had blamed Lila for the breakup while Michael had taken it much more in stride. Somehow he’d known even at that young age that Lila wouldn’t have been able to come between two people who were truly in love. His parents had fought all the time, and once they were apart, things got better. Life calmed down, minus the fact that his older brother had started pulling away.

Lila had been a fun kind of stepmom, always taking him to cool places like the zoo and her parents’ orchard back in New York. Through his dad’s marriage to her, Michael had gained another parent, one who wasn’t out mainly for her only interests.

And he’d repaid her for all those awesome years by making her feel bad. Yeah, he was winning all kinds of awards today.

Now his estranged brother was standing in front of him, and he’d be damned if he screwed this up too.

Maybe this would be the one thing to actually go right in a so far completely shitty day.

“Everything okay?” Michael asked as Malachi stepped back. “You okay, man?”

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. Me, Ma. We’re both fine.” The smallest glimmer of a smile twisted his mouth and disappeared just as fast. “Well, she’s not fine, but she’s healthy.”

“Aw, Christ, now what?”

When Malachi clenched his jaw, Michael held up a hand and paced over the windows. The balcony extended the length of the apartment, and he opened one of the French doors to get some air. A lot of air.

“Okay, lay it on me.”

Malachi dipped his hands in the pockets of his jeans. They were so worn that patches of skin showed through. The slashes weren’t for fashion though. Mal didn’t believe in such things. He just happened to be a millionaire who wore his clothes until they were rags.

Mal pulled out a folded piece of paper and walked over to join him by the French doors. Wordlessly, he pushed it into Michael’s hand.

Michael opened the fancy card stock and read the first few lines. That was all he needed to shove the invitation back at his brother. “I’m not going.”

“I figured you’d say that.”

“Are you?”

Mal stared out the open door. “She’s our mother. What the fuck can I do?”

Michael’s gaze followed his brother’s to the shimmer of ocean in the distance, crystal blue with a scatter of pinprick diamonds on top. Light bounced off the high-rises across the street, reflected off dozens of panes of glass. But the million-dollar view didn’t occupy all of his attention. Nope, he was too fixated on how someone could take the institution of marriage so fucking lightly.

“Five times. Five goddamn times, Mal. How can we continue to support her? She’s clearly lost her damn mind.”

Mal crumpled the invitation in his giant fist. And said nothing.

He’d worked on cars before he could race them, then he’d turned to the illegal side of things. Michael’s mother had turned her back on what Mal was up to, both the crowd he was running with and the unlawful betting and racing he was doing, but Michael hadn’t been able to. That had been yet another bone of contention between them, and had driven one more wedge. Eventually, there had been too many of them to count them all.

They’d stopped talking to each other shortly after Mal’s high school graduation. He’d moved out practically the second he turned eighteen, and in the years since, they’d rarely spoken. They had conversations now and then at family events and on holidays, along with the even more occasional text. Michael had come to terms with the fact he’d lost the older brother he’d once idolized, just as he’d dealt with the fact his parents were both batshit crazy.

But now with him standing beside him, looking both so fucking familiar and so different than his teeth ached, Michael realized he hadn’t dealt with shit.

“Christ, you came over here for some reason. Say something, why don’t you?”

“What do you expect me to say? That you were right all along?” Mal flexed his fingers around the balled-up piece of paper. “Neither of them gives a crap about us.”

“What was your first clue?” Michael asked, regretting the sarcastic question as soon as it was out. He pushed a hand through his damp hair. “Look, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at them. Both of them put way too much on our shoulders when we should’ve been focused on our own stuff. Their love lives are some fucked up BS, man.”

“Dad having another baby, and another on the way. Jesus, the first is barely a year old.”

Michael blinked. “Say what?”

“Oh yeah.” Mal let out a dry laugh. “Didn’t hear that tidbit? Guy should be getting ready to plan his upcoming retirement and instead he’s having newborns.”

“I haven’t seen Dad since not long after the band signed with Ripper.” Michael gripped a handful of his own hair. “Guess that’s a good thing.”

“Ripper. Ah yeah, about that. Congratulations and all that.” Mal cleared his throat. “You guys have been doing good. Or it seems that way, from what I’ve seen.”

“Thanks.” Mal had texted him a few congrats along the way after different milestones, usually when Michael had clued him in to the latest. But hearing him say it in person unprompted was different—and nice. “You’ve seen stuff about us?”

“Here and there. Can’t say I really keep up with the magazines or TV, but I catch what I can.”

Classic Mal there. He cared about pop culture not at all. Celebrities? Fuck that shit. Even if the celebrity was his little brother.

Hell, at times that would’ve been an even bigger deterrent.

“What have you been up to?” Michael asked.

“Workin’ on cars. What else do I do? Not a flashy type like you or Dad. Or fuck, like Mom for that matter.” Mal rubbed a hand over his gleaming bald head and shoved the invitation into his back pocket with the other. “Some of us aren’t meant for the limelight.”

“Says who? You were the one who got me into playing.”

Mal raised a brow. “You call the messing around we used to do playing? We were worse than a garage band. More like a basement outfit.”

“Yeah, and what we were is what led to me hooking up with Ryan and West when you weren’t into it anymore.”

“You always wanted more. Music’s in your blood.” The corner of Mal’s mouth lifted. “Only thing Dad gave us worth having.”

“Not true. They both gave me a kickass older brother. Even if he tried to sell me for sixteen dollars online when I was nine.”

Mal shocked him by letting out a laugh. “Twenty-six dollars, bartered down from fifty. And I could only get that much because you came with your guitar. Besides, you counter-sold me for thirteen, and that included my fucking glorious Sonor drum set. Damn steal that guy would’ve gotten if our auctions hadn’t been shut down.”

“Your drums.” A buzz skipped along the back of Michael’s neck as he turned toward his brother. “Do you still play?”

Malachi rasped out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I work at a chop shop. It’d be kind of idiotic for me to whale around on those when I get home every night, wouldn’t it?”

“You still do. Holy shit.”

“How you got that from what I just said, I don’t know.” Mal shook his head. “I play now and then. Mostly keep going over the same songs we used to play.”

“What about ‘In The Air Tonight’?” Michael questioned. “You still play that?”

His brother jerked a beefy shoulder. “I guess.”

“You had a killer sense of rhythm. Have you ever considered joining a band? Like a real band?”
My band
, but he didn’t say it. Mainly because he didn’t think he could actually force the words past the rock in his throat.

“Me? Dude, are you crazy? I spend my days up to my elbows in grease and shit. I’m not meant for some pussy band. No offense,” he added quickly.

“Pussy is one of the main benefits,” Michael said, keeping his face sober until Mal drove his fist into Michael’s arm. Hard.

Damn, that asshole never pulled a punch. Ever.

“You might need that dick prop in front of you to get girls, but some of us do just fine on our own. Anyway, I gotta go. Just wanted to tell you about the wedding. Hoped I’d convince you to go with me.” That mercurial half smile flitted over his mouth. “Be my date or some shit.”

“I haven’t gone to the last two, so why would I go to this one?” Besides, their mother hadn’t invited Michael, unless maybe his invite had gotten lost in the mail.

Small favor, that one.

“She insists it’s the last time. Came to me crying last night, drunk off her ass, begging me to get you to come. Says all she wants in this world is for her boys to be with her as a family. Biff wants that too.” Mal rolled his eyes. “I called her driver and sent her home with a travel mug of coffee.”

“But you promised.”

He shrugged. “It made her stop crying.”

“Softie.”

Another shrug. “It’s hard to say no to a crying woman. You gotta have some experience with that.”

“Nah, they usually make me want to cry lately.” Michael shook his head and shoved Tabitha to the back of his mind. “Or more accurately, get drunk.”

“Drunk for sure.”

Wheels spinning, Michael cocked his head and gave his brother an easy smile. “How about we make a deal? One where we both get what we want, and everyone goes home happy?”

Mal crossed his arms in front of his barrel chest. “I didn’t realize you wanted for anything. Big fancy rockstar, making good and making his own money now.”

The faint tinge of pride in his big brother’s voice could’ve bolstered him for months. Maybe years. “I’m getting there. We still haven’t figured everything out yet. The band lineup is still in flux.”

“You will.” Mal’s utter certainty just increased his certainty that it was no coincidence Mal had shown up when he did. Michael wasn’t one to believe in woo woo crap, but he also knew when the universe had dumped the perfect opportunity in his lap.

Whether or not Lila would agree was another question, but they’d get there when they got there. He needed to get Mal on board first.

If that meant offering a temp role until he got his brother to agree to more, then he would do just that. Whatever it took.

“We have to. We’re on the way up, but we won’t make it if we don’t have the right people in place.”

“Which people aren’t right? That singer of yours is smoking hot.”

“Molly? Yeah. She knows it too, but man, she fills the seats.”

“You’ve got a couple hot ones. Gorgeous brunette and another blond, but I haven’t paid much attention to her. She doesn’t have the same stage presence as the other two, though she certainly goes toe to toe with you.”

“Elle, yeah.” Formally Richelle Crandall, or Ricki as she’d once been known. She’d joined the band and started using the name Elle to try to distance herself from her troubled past. Some of them called her Ricki, some called her Elle, but no one could deny her talent. Especially Michael. “She makes me work for it every night.”

“And Ryan and West. I remember you introducing me to those guys back at Christmas one year. Ry, always with the plans. And West had his hair colored Kool-Aid blue.”

“It’s blond most of the time now. Not at the moment though. Usually it just looks like he hacked at it with pinking shears.”

“Sounds about right. So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is Ry’s stuck on drums when he’s always been more comfortable being a jack-of-all-trades. He knows a bunch of different instruments and loves changing up the arrangements of songs. Getting stuck behind the kit is like hell to him.”

Mal snorted. “Some hell, being part of a band with an incredible sound.”

The confidence his words instilled in Michael made him more sure with every passing second that this was right. It had to be right.

In his current world of fuckery, this one good thing needed to happen.

“He sprained his wrist and he can’t play tomorrow night. We have our biggest show yet at the House of Blues in Vegas. Three of us on the bill, though of course Warning Sign is opening.”

“For now.” Mal nodded. “You do your time, then you move on.”

“Yeah. But without a drummer, we can’t go anywhere. Lila’s gonna rip us a new one.”

“So she’ll nab a studio musician from somewhere. There’s gotta be tons of them.”

“This is our biggest gig yet. You really think now is the time to try to work with some studio type none of us have ever even met?”

“Doesn’t sound like you have much choice. Sorry to say.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Michael took a deep breath. “You wanted to know what the deal was? I’ll come to the wedding. You fill in on drums tomorrow night.”

Mal stared at Michael for a minute, then dropped his head back and roared with laughter. “Jesus fuck, you’ve lost your mind.”

“No, I think I’ve finally found it.” Michael clapped his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “So what do you say? You in or not?”

Mal said nothing, so Michael nodded, dropped his hand and moved back. “I get it. It’s scary to come out on a big stage like that without any experience, or even any real practice time in years. It’s fucking terrifying.”

“You think I’m scared? Do you know what I used to do?”

“Yeah, I know you used to get behind the wheel and race fuckers as stupid as you, risking all your lives. Believe me, I know. That doesn’t mean you’re not scared to touch the sticks again.”

Mal turned away. “Fuck that shit. And fuck you too.”

“We’ll be at the plane at nine am tomorrow.” Quickly, Michael rattled off the address of the airstrip where Donovan Lewis’s jet would be located to take them to Vegas in the morning.