EPIC (Book 1 of the Soundcrush series)

Chapter 1: Rock Stars Write Songs About You

Present Day 

Kat

My friend Laurel has skills. Lots. Car karaoke is not one of them.

I worry my lip and look out the car window as she shakes her blonde curls in the backseat and wails along with the chorus of Soundcrush's multi-platinum, alt-rock ballad, Little Sister:

Don't try to smile a little Sister

Cause you think it helps me leave.

Rather you cry a little Sister

It's your tears that let me breathe.

Can't even hide a little Sister

You took my soul when I spilled your blood.

We'll let it ride a little Sister,

No more touching in this flood.

But I swear to you my heart is yours for good.

Unable to take anymore of the song, I switch off the car stereo, and my other friend Maddie shrieks, "Turn that back on, bitch! It's our pre-show jam!"

"Fine, just play a different Soundcrush song, that one is played out," I suggest, as I tap the screen to advance past the song, which is what I always do, when Little Sister comes up on a playlist.

It's not really Laurel's singing that is making me twitch. It's the song itself. Or actually the singer himself. Leed Lawson is the front man for Soundcrush and even though, to the rest of the world, he's obviously the singer of this song, to me, he's not. It's just all kinds of wrong, to hear those lyrics coming from Leed's sex-soaked voice, when in my mind, every time the song starts, I expect to hear Trace's edgier, tighter timbre reluctantly confessing the lyrics.

See, Trace is the main song-writer for Soundcrush, not Leed. And I know that Trace wrote the song about me.

I'm not being vain. I'm just being honest. I'm the Little Sister, and the song is all about that New Year's Eve two and half years ago, the night that got so messed up.  The night he kissed me, the night my whole body sang beneath the touch of his lips...

The night everything went wrong, and my outlook on who I was took a huge detour. The night I was  more out of control, more humiliated, and then more scared than I have been...before or since.

 Shit. I snap the elastic I always wear against my wrist. Hard. I don't want to think about that night, and I don't want to think about Trace Gallant. Not his mouth on mine, not the regretful groan he made when we kissed. Not his hands firmly manipulating my body in the dark, because I was far too drunk to do it myself. Not the things he said then, or the things he said after...

Shit, shit. shit. I snap the rubber band three more times.

From the driver's seat, my boyfriend Colin looks at me curiously.

"You okay?" he asks mildly. He took psychology with me junior year; he knows the elastic is for a "bad habit" of mine, but he doesn't know that bad habit was previously unleashing a torturous guitar solo on his radio. Colin has no idea a rock star wrote a song about me. All of my friends have recently become aware that Trace used to be my next-door neighbor, but that's all they know. I switched schools after sophomore year, determined to leave all the people that Trace and I had once had in common behind.

"Yeah," I nod at my sandy haired, adorable boyfriend. Quarterback, National Merit Scholar, Habitat for Humanity volunteer, handsome, surprisingly humble. Classic southern boy, says yes ma'am, looks equally good in a sweaty jersey and in a pink checkered button down with khakis. Desired by every girl in school, and yet for some reason he spent our entire junior year chasing me. Probably because I was the mysterious new girl. At first I turned him down. Not because he wasn't amazing, but because he wasn't Trace. But that only made him chase me harder.