Series: Cobalt Empire Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 220
Estimated words: 215301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 861(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 861(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
The downside is that I feel like I’m on my knees, clawing at the ground just to stand back up again, but boots keep slamming on my spine. Rooting me to the dirt when all I want to do is be in the sky.
It would be so much easier if I just accepted gravity and quit.
Quit my passions. Quit my pursuit of making rock music millions listen to when they’re having a shit day, when they need to feel a connection…when they want to feel heard. I got close. I could say The Carraways had a good run before Warner left the band in dramatic fashion.
Warner.
We’d formed The Carraways together back in private school, aspiring to be like the punk-rock greats—My Chemical Romance and Green Day—all while we belted out our feelings after the Dalton Academy bell rang.
Being rich and privileged means I’ve had a head start, and I’m grateful for the boost but I don’t want to be a joke. I thought if I labored over my music, put in the time, perfected every chorus, every guitar riff, every beat, it’d show.
Instead, Warner snapped at me, “We aren’t Beethoven trying to write the next greatest symphony.”
“Maybe we could be,” I combatted. “Let’s just practice it again.”
“The second verse is fine.”
Fine never felt good enough. I couldn’t figure out how to settle with average when I knew if we pushed ourselves, we could be better than ordinary.
We never finished the album.
Now I’m the last remaining member of The Carraways, and the label already wasted funds promoting my band. Not to mention, they were constructing a national tour that’ll likely never happen.
So they gave me a timeline. I have until Monday morning to present a profitable solution. I need a viable band.
In two days.
Or else they’re dropping me for good.
Now I’m in Eliot’s bedroom with a pounding headache, trying to keep my dream alive. When really, I feel like I’m throwing chewing gum at the ceiling and seeing what’ll stick.
“It’s a band-aid,” I tell Eliot. “They don’t need to be the best musicians. They just need to hold a note long enough to show the label my band isn’t on life support.”
“Or…” Eliot outstretches his arms and walks backward toward his gothic, canopied bed. “We go with Plan A.”
Plan A was Eliot’s first idea, and it was already shot down. By me. In two seconds. “I can’t go with Plan A.” I skate a hand through my shaggy hair, pushing strands out of my eyes, then I point at him as he takes out his phone. “You call your theatre friends to come pose as musicians, I’ll be telling them to go home.”
He rests his shoulder on the wooden bedpost. Not dialing anyone yet. “They’re professional actors. This is what they do. Act.”
Eliot is also a professional stage actor in New York, but this isn’t a situation that will be solved with that type of performance.
“I can’t deceive the label. If I get caught in a lie, then I’m going to be known as the Liar Liar Pants on Fire kid to maybe the whole music industry. No one will take me seriously, and it’s already an uphill battle when everyone believes my last name got me through the door.”
And maybe it did.
Maybe being a Cobalt is why the label even gave me five minutes of their time, but I’d like to believe they’ve kept me around because I have actual talent and promise.
Eliot nods, accepting. He passes his phone from hand to hand. “Another idea: we create a reality show together. You play your music on-air. Everyone hears. They love you. You’re revered. A legend is born.”
I rub at my eyes. “I have no band. I can’t even think about signing on to a trashy reality show when I am at the first stage of this crisis.”
It’s not where I’m at right now.
I drop my hand with a sigh. “I’m fucked.”
“Cobalts don’t get fucked, brother. We do the fucking.”
I would love to inject our family’s pride in my veins as raw copium. Because I am not coping well with the fact that my label will likely axe me by Monday morning.
“Fuck Mondays,” I groan out. “They’re now the worst day of the week. Should be ripped off the calendar.”
“Mondays are over,” Eliot banters. “I only know of Tuesday through Sunday.”
I nod hard. I almost smile, but really, fuck Mondays. Fuck this timeline. But I will find a solution.
I will.
He squeezes my shoulder, then bends over to take a closer look at the laptop. Even when people quit on me, I know Eliot never would. He’d drown in my problems with me, and I’m afraid that I’d let him.
So as he silences a phone call for the third time, I force myself to say, “Okay, stop bailing on the girl.”
“She’s a girl.” He scrolls on the track pad. “The girl is still elusive.”