Promised Intent Read online

  Promised Intent

  Rapturous Intent

  Book 4

  Cadence Keys

  Copyright © 2022 by Cadence Keys

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblances to actual people, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales are entirely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference.

  Editors: Happily Editing Anns

  Cover Design: Kate Farlow, Y’all. That Graphic

  Special Edition Cover Design: Lily Bear Design Co.

  Created with Vellum

  To those who survive every day fighting their demons.

  Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Letters

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Letters

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Letters

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Letters

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Signed Paperbacks Now Available!

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Also by Cadence Keys

  Preface

  PLEASE NOTE:

  This book addresses death substance abuse recovery, childhood emotional abuse, mental health, drug overdoses, and suicide. Some scenes may be difficult for readers.

  1

  Nobody starts life thinking they’re going to ruin everything they touch. That they’ll get addicted to drugs. Sacrifice the success of the band they’ve worked their ass off for. Kill one of the few people who was trying to help them.

  But that’s what my life has turned into. I may not have directly killed Robbie, our band manager, friend, and all-around good guy, but no one can deny I’m partially to blame.

  If I hadn’t fucked up, Robbie might not have been so stressed out and maybe he wouldn’t have had the heart attack that took him from us way too soon.

  But I did, and he did, and now I have to live with my sins, my regret, and worst of all, my fucking conscience.

  Life was never supposed to turn out like this.

  There are parts of life that were easier when I was high—I never had to feel any pain, I was the life of the party with more friends than I could count, and I could ignore the emptiness that sometimes weighed me down so much I thought I was going to drown. But none of those things were worth what I nearly lost—my band, my found family, my life.

  I’ve been clean and sober for 625 days. Some days have been easy, while others have been fucking hard. But none have been as scary as the days coming up. We’re leaving for tour in two weeks, and I’m fucking terrified.

  Unfortunately, I’m not the only one. Trent, Miles, and Tristan aren’t being as subtle as they think they are with their constant attempts to hang out with me the closer we get to tour. They’ve turned into goddamn helicopter parents and I both love and hate them for it.

  They’re acting like I’m going to break, and I hate that I can’t guarantee I won’t. But I miss the way they used to look at me, and I’m getting desperate to find a way to prove to them I’m doing fine. I’ve come up with a plan to get someone to help me convince them of just that and help be my sober buddy on tour. Two birds, one stone.

  But my plan relies on calling on an old friend to do what she promised all those years ago.

  I knock on Mel’s door—I got her address from Decker Cross, our old producer, who recommended we work with her on this tour after Robbie died—and wait for her to answer. When she does, it’s a gut punch. Mel is no longer the tough brunette I grew up with. Now she’s got this pure spitfire energy that dares any man to take her on if he’s ready to have his balls eviscerated. Her bright dyed-red hair matches Ariel in The Little Mermaid, but that’s where the comparison stops. Colorful tattoos traverse both her arms and across her chest, and she has piercings through her bottom lip, her nose, one of her eyebrows, and several in both ears. Where Ariel was naïve and innocent, Mel is commanding and hardened. Despite her small stature—I doubt she’s taller than five feet three—she’s a powerhouse and demands excellence from everyone she works with. I’ve seen Melrose Fletcher a handful of times over the last few months while we’ve prepared for the tour since she’s our new tour manager, and each time it’s the same reaction. Seeing her feels like coming home but getting the shit kicked out of me at the same time. It’s bittersweet.

  Melly used to be my best friend once upon a time. She was the one person I confided all my hopes, dreams, and fears to. At one point, I even convinced myself she was my soulmate. But life fucked her over and she moved away, which caused the first tear in our friendship. It’s not easy to be long-distance friends when you’re thirteen. For months, we wrote letters to each other like old-school pen pals. Every day, I checked the mail like it would offer me salvation, and every time there was a letter from her, my spirits were high for days.

  But then the letters stopped. I continued to send mine until they started getting sent back and “Return to Sender” became my least favorite phrase. After the fourth returned letter, I took the hint that she was done with me and stopped sending them. It took three more years before I stopped writing them altogether and stuffing them in a shoebox in my closet. Getting our band off the ground is what finally made me quit.

  If she didn’t want to follow her promise, then I wasn’t going to abide by mine.

  So it feels a little ironic that the woman who drove me to dive headfirst into my band is now the one I need to help me convince them—and myself—that I can handle this tour.

  “Kasen? What are you doing here?”

  I hate the distrust in her whiskey-brown eyes and the way she keeps her guard up around me. It was never like that with us before. We hid from everyone else, but never each other. It’s just another reminder we aren’t the kids we used to be.

  “I’m calling it in.” I don’t bother pussyfooting around why I’m here.

  She doesn’t question what I’m talking about—she knows—but her eyes show a caution that never used to be there when we were younger. My heart starts to race the longer she stares at me silently.

  “You promised me, Melly,” I remind her.

  She takes an exasperated breath and then steps aside, signaling for me to come in. I walk through the door and take a quick perusal of her house. A small smile tugs at my lips, and there’s a comforting warmth spreading in my chest at the chaotic mess that is her living room. I remember her room was always a disaster, but she was emphatic that it was organized chaos. It’s nice to see not everything has changed about her.

  “So what exactly do you need?” she asks.

  I spin around and take in her crossed arms, the slight pucker of her lips, and the narrowing of her eyes. She looks slightly pissed, more than a little annoyed, and more beautiful than I even remembered.

  “I need you to fake date me.”

  2

  This is all Dean’s fault. I’m convinced my life has been nothing but one complication after another from the moment I met that man. The latest complication is standing right in front of me, looking hotter than he has a right to be with his tattoos and stormy gray eyes, and calling in a promise I made when I was twelve.

  Who the hell holds someone to a promise they made when they were a prepubescent tween?

  Kasen Stone, that’s fucking who.

  “You want me to fake date you?”

  I legit cannot fathom why this man would ever need a fake anything. He’s at least six feet, has dark brown hair that’s shaved on the sides and hangs long on top—the perfect amount to grab on to and pull when you need to—and has nearly as many tattoos up and down his arms as I do. He’s got small gauges in both ears and a piercing in one of his eyebrows, but it’s the glint of metal in his mouth that intrigues me most, and I’m sure it has most women willing to drop their panties without hesitation. A freaking tongue piercing.

  It’s like Kasen Stone grew up to be my own brand of catnip.

  I almost turned down working with his band, Rapturous Intent, when I saw his name on the list of band members, but I’ve worked too damn hard in this industry to let another man derail me.

  Dean Carpenter, my douchey ex, already tried. And fuck him very much for that parting gift.

  Asshole.

  “I’m
gonna need you to explain yourself,” I say. I’m not agreeing to this blindly. Especially since Kasen and I haven’t had a real conversation in nearly fifteen years.

  He takes a heavy breath, but determination glints in those steely eyes of his, and I fight against the way my lips want to curve in a smile. I’m familiar with this look. He used to get it all the time when he was about to battle it out over who got the last Oreo.

  “I’m assuming you’re aware of my overdose over a year and a half ago?”

  I nod and swallow down the sudden lump in my throat at the thought of him dying. His eyes get a faraway look that he quickly shakes off.

  “I…it was a long time coming. I’d been spiraling for a while. But now the guys are hovering over my every move and they’re already stressed enough about this tour given it’s the first one without—” He stops speaking like the name got trapped in his throat and drops his gaze to the floor. “I don’t want to be the reason they can’t let their guard down on this tour, and I don’t want to be another burden to them.” He hesitates, and I narrow my eyes while he starts fidgeting.

  Kasen’s always fidgeted—playing with his guitar pick, twirling his pencil, flicking his fingers, popping his knuckles—but this is different. It’s almost like his body is fighting him—or outwardly showing the frustration he’s trying to hide. His hands twitch at his sides. His shoulder rises and then drops, his feet subtly shift beneath him, his jaw clenches tight before releasing. Then his metallic gaze locks on mine and it all stops. His body becomes still as a statue, and I know before he speaks that the next words out of his mouth will convince me to hold up my promise.

  “I’m scared I won’t stay sober.”

  There’s a haunted look in his eyes that makes my heart beat faster, and that urge to protect him rushes to the forefront.

  “The guys are freaking out right now and they don’t even know I’ve never been sober on a tour. Never. Not once. They think the drugs started when we were getting big, but that wasn’t when I got hooked. I’ve used coke—at the bare minimum—on every tour. And I’m scared, Melly. Alright? Is that what you want to hear? That I kinda feel like a pansy-ass bitch who can’t keep his shit together. All I know is I can’t let them down again. I can’t. Not after—”

  He stops speaking again and I sense that Robbie’s death has hit him hard. Maybe harder than it hit the others. In all my conversations with Trent, he would get choked up talking about their old band manager, Robbie Nolan, who died from an unexpected heart attack at the young age of twenty-five—but never like this.

  Never like he couldn’t even speak his name. Or didn’t deserve to.

  “So, you need me to pretend to be your girlfriend for the entire tour?” I ask, crossing my arms as if that gesture can protect me from the storm I already know is coming.

  He nods.

  “How can you be so sure this will accomplish what you want it to?” I fight against the urge to shift my weight back and forth, but I refuse to show him any weakness. The reality is I don’t really know Kasen anymore, not like I used to, and he doesn’t get a free pass to bypass the walls I’ve erected over the years simply because we’ve got history.

  “Because I’ll never be alone, and I’ll be in a committed relationship like the rest of them, but with someone they know and trust instead of someone they don’t.”

  “And I’m really the only person you could come up with?” I already know I’m going to say yes, but I still need to know more.

  Why me?

  The fidgeting returns, but this time it almost looks like his whole body is being pushed down by the weight of…something.

  “Believe it or not, I don’t have any friends outside the band…not anymore at least.”

  He doesn’t need to elaborate. I’ve been in this business long enough to have seen this happen before. The big-shot rock star who’s the life of the party until he sobers up and suddenly no one gives a shit anymore. Yeah, unfortunately I’ve seen that a few times too many.

  But none of those guys was Kasen Stone.

  The boy who pulled my hair and called me Melly even though he knew I hated it until I punched him in the face in the first grade. He stared at me in awe, said I had an arm like a superhero and that he wanted to be best friends. In a matter of days, we went from hating each other to being inseparable. Melly went from a torment to the best nickname I’d ever had—one only he was allowed to use.

  And when my entire life burned to the ground—both literally and figuratively—he was the one who pulled me from the metaphorical ashes and promised to always be there for me.

  It was a promise I reciprocated, because he’d never let me down.

  We even pinky promised—and I never go back on a pinky promise. Which is probably why that was the last one I ever made.

  “On one condition.”

  Hope glimmers in his eyes. “Name it.”

  “This only lasts for the tour. Once we’re back home, you need to find a sponsor or something to be your sober buddy.” He opens his mouth, but I hold up a finger signaling I’m not finished. “And you’ll attend weekly NA meetings—more if needed, but weekly at a bare minimum. I’ll go with you if you need me to. We can tell everyone they’re dates or whatever story you want to sling, but that’s my demand.”

  Kasen Stone will not break his sobriety on my watch.

  He nods with the eagerness of a small puppy. “Done. Mel…” He pauses, and it’s hard to watch the emotion that passes over his face because it’s so nostalgic of the Kasen I remember. “I can’t tell you what this means to me. Thank you.”

  Sincerity shines in his voice and his gaze as he offers me a nod and then turns around to walk back to his car.

  I watch his car until it rounds the corner and disappears from view and let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding in.

  This better not come back to bite me in the ass.

  3

  I spin the phone in my hands, nibbling my lip as my eyes stare unseeingly at the wall. I know what I have to do, but for some reason I’m hesitating.

  Why the fuck am I hesitating?

  It’s not like I’ve never talked to Kasen on the phone before. I have. Many, many times when we were kids.

  It’s no big deal.

  Forcing myself to believe the lie, I pull up the information that Trent gave me months ago with all the band members’ names and numbers—in case of emergency—and dial the unfamiliar number.

  I still have Kasen’s house phone number memorized from when we were kids and we would spend hours on the phone when we couldn’t hang out in person. But neither of us got cell phones until after our friendship had already deteriorated beyond repair.

  I always thought it was his fault that things fell apart. He’s the one who broke his promise to write to each other.

  Except, the first time we saw each other in person in close to fifteen years, he seemed to think I was the one who’d stopped writing. How could he think that? I wrote him a letter every day for a year, then every week for another year with no response. Sometimes those letters were the only thing that kept me from ending it all when everything was blowing up with my parents’ divorce.

  A house fire was the first crash of a domino that caused a rippling effect on my life and took away everything I’d ever held dear. My dad got full custody after authorities determined my mom caused the fire on purpose. Apparently endangering your child’s life is enough to take a daughter away from her mother. If only they knew the kind of mental, emotional, and verbal abuse I had to take from my control-freak father. My mother was the lesser of two evils. But no one wanted to listen to anything I had to say, so he got custody and hightailed it out of Texas, dragging me with him. We moved to Seattle where he could be a dirtbag and no one would bother to get in his business because big city people aren’t nosy like small town folks are. He could berate, belittle, and bully me day and night and no one would be the wiser.