Beats of Life (Perception Book 5) Read online

  Beats

  of

  Life

  © Shandi Boyes 2016

  Written by

  Shandi Boyes

  © Shandi Boyes 2016

  No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Editing: Carolyn Wallace

  Cover: Shandi Boyes

  Photograph:

  Some photo edits were made to the photograph.

  Contents

  Dedicated to:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Dedicated to:

  Kym, my number one fan.

  Thanks for all your words of inspiration.

  Your words mean the world to me.

  From your writer girl.

  Chapter 1

  Slater

  Pure adrenaline. That is what surges through my blood the instant I sit behind my Tama Starphonic drum kit. Then not long later, exhaustion kicks in. If you have ever heard someone say being a drummer is easy, you can be certain it means they have never once played the fucking drums in their life. Being a drummer is hard work, it sucks the life right out of you and after some concerts it can take me days to recover. Every concert makes it feel like I’ve run a marathon. My hands burn like I’m holding them directly against the sun, my clothes are soaked with sweat and don’t even get me started on the sticks, those slippery little bastards like to escape my grip at the most inappropriate times. It’s lucky I’m prepared and can maintain the tempo of the song while I scamper for another set. I normally go through around four to five sets a show. But, nothing in the world can compete with this, not one single fucking thing. Tonight, we have just finished a two-hour concert in Seattle. We are playing at Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners to a crowd of over forty thousand. The roar from the crowd requesting an encore is nearly deafening.

  “Every night,” says Nick, chuckling softly, moving towards me and grabbing a bottle of water he stores behind my drum kit.

  I laugh at his comment before running a small white towel over my sweat drenched head and hands. The band does the same routine at every concert. We wait, patiently, on the pitch black stage until the crowd’s request for an encore reaches an eardrum damaging scream. Once Noah believes the crowd has waited long enough, he smiles his white beaming smile, indicating to us that it is time to give them one last song. The final hurrah of the show.

  “Here we go,” Nick says excitedly when he notices Noah’s smile, before taking his rightful place on the right hand side of the stage.

  I tap my drumsticks over my head to count in the rest of the band. The instant they hit my snare drum, the lights on the stage become illuminated and the crowd’s screams intensify even more. This is what I love, right here and right now. Pure addiction. There is no drug stronger than this. It doesn’t matter how many songs we play during an encore the crowd will continue to request another. At the start, the band use to get so excited that the crowd loved our shows so much that we would rush back on stage to do encore after encore, but we soon caught on that their requests were never going to fucking end. Now, they just get the one last song and then Maddie and Jasper are brought onto the stage, signalling that it is the end of our show.

  Once Maddie has finished wooing the crowd with her chubby little cheeks and toothless grin, she bolts towards Jasper and I stand from my drum kit and throw my drumsticks into the crowd. Whoever catches the sticks will be given an all-inclusive backstage pass and their stick will be personally signed by me. We have had a few people try and sneak backstage with some sticks they had brought from home, but my sticks are costume made and they even have my signature engraved on the edge of them, making them impossible to replicate.

  Emily thought it was a good way to drum up some publicity for the band, no pun intended. She always ensures the entire band is included in gaining positive publicity, even Nick and Marcus give away their guitar straps at the end of every concert. When our first album started rocketing up the charts we noticed a lot of interview requests were only addressed to Noah. Once it became apparent that they were purposely excluding the rest of the band members, Noah refused to attend any interviews that only requested him. People may just see us as a bunch of guys that play music, were I see us as a band of brothers. And as much as it kills me to admit it, that statement also includes Nick.

  ‘Rise Up’s’ first album ‘Beginning’ became one of the highest selling albums of all time. It rocketed us to super stardom and lined all our pockets with more money than we could have ever imagined, but the entire band has remained humble. I guess travelling with two babies will do that to even the hardest rock group. It is lucky that Jasper and Maddie are cute. It is also lucky that I travel on my motorbike between each town. The band has a tour bus that takes us to each location. Once we arrive in town, we are put up in some of the fanciest five star hotels you could possibly imagine, all compliments of the record label. I use to travel in the tour bus with the band, but there is no such thing as peace and quiet with two toddlers running around. I ended up having my bike, a custom Harley Davidson Fatboy with twelve inch ape hangers, shipped to Los Angeles and now I travel behind the bus. Cormack shit bricks the first time I arrived on my bike in San Francisco. He tried to say it was unsafe for me to be travelling alone without some sort of protection. I told him he didn’t need to worry, I had my trusty baseball bat in my saddle bag, what more protection do I need than that?

  Life has become pretty crazy though, we can’t even shit without the public being informed. Every single thing we do in our life makes it onto the gossip pages, even the most boring task is front page news. It’s a pretty fucked up world we live in when it is more important to know what Noah Taylor had for dinner last night, than worrying about the millions of children in the world that starve every day. But this is the industry I chose to work in and we all make sacrifices so we can do what we love.

  I can’t help but laugh at watching Nick trying to walk off stage with Jasper wrapped firmly around his legs. That kid’s personality is as far from his dads as possible. Jasper has been running onto the stage at every concert since he had the ability to walk, but he is still shit scared. I go and scoop him up off Nick’s leg and blow a large raspberry on his t-shirt covered belly, making him squeal and giggle loudly.

  “Again uncle,” he requests, squirming in my arms. Well
I’m assuming that is what he said since I don’t understand one fucking word of baby talk. When I blow on his belly again and he giggles even louder than before, it is safe to say that it is what he was requesting.

  Once I walk into the wings on the side of the stage, I hand a giggling and red faced Jasper to Jenni. She smiles brightly at our playful banter before her cheeks get a pink hue. I don’t even need to turn around to know that Nick is standing behind me, Jenni’s flustered look is all the indication I need. I leave Noah and Nick to make out with their flustered baby mommies to join Marcus for a beer in our shared dressing room. Before we were famous, Noah and Nick were all about the groupies, now they’re all about their horny housewives. I swear Emily practically humps Noah’s leg the instant he exits the stage.

  We are doing four shows in Seattle over the next seven days. Our first show was tonight and now we have a four-day break, before kicking it off again on Friday night. When we first arrived, Marcus and I dibbed the biggest dressing room. It is only fair that we get the biggest one considering we have to share. There are only four dressing rooms in the entire stadium. The biggest one is ours, Noah and Nick have one each and the last remaining one goes to our supporting act ‘Big Halo’. They are a new age pop group that has just released their first album with the same record label we are signed with. Cormack thought they would suit our type of fan base. They have a similar sound to ‘Rise Up’ but half of their band members are girls. Hot girls too. Smoking hot girls. The bassist Miranda has all the guys in the crowd drooling over her. Thick luscious brown hair that hangs half way down her back, big green eyes and the plumpest lips you have ever seen. It’s just a pity that she likes girls just as much as I do.

  The instant I walk into the dressing room Marcus hands me a bottle of beer. We thought the perks at Mavericks was good. Half our pay there was being supplied with unlimited cold beers. Now we get anything we request. We could even ask for the M&M’s to be color coordinated if we wanted too. Lucky for our roadies and assistants, we aren’t assholes and we keep our requests to a minimum.

  “Cheers fucker,” I say, clinking my bottle of beer against Marcus’s. He smiles against the rim of his beer before he swallows a large mouth filling gulp.

  Marcus has always been the quiet one of our group. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a swear word escape his lips. He drinks beers, he plays the bass guitar like he was born to fucking do it and he is a kick ass friend. But I know there is something hidden underneath the layers of Marcus just waiting to be exposed. My dad has always said ‘It’s the quiet ones that you need to watch out for.’ Marcus and I bring that whole notion ‘opposites attract’ to the forefront with our friendship. We couldn’t be any more different if we tried. My arms are covered in full sleeves of tattoo’s. Where he doesn’t have a single tattoo. I wear jeans, motorcycle boots and t-shirts. He wears trousers, button up shirts and polished dress shoes. I have long blonde dreadlocks, a small bit of stubble on my chin and Marcus is clean shaven all over, including his hair. But we are the best of friends, he is my brother from another mother. And do you know what brought us together? Music.

  Marcus’s grandma lived next door to my parents and he use to visit her every weekend. I had heard him a few times playing around with instruments in her garage. Most of the time the music he played sounded like he was preparing for a church solo. Until one Sunday afternoon I heard the distinctive sound of Breaking Benjamin’s song ‘Diary of Jane’ blaring out of his garage. I practically bolted towards his house expecting to see Benjamin Burley standing in his garage as the person that was singing perfectly matched his voice. I was surprised when I walked in and saw a scrawny looking teenage boy belting out the lyrics instead. He would have been around thirteen at the time, but his voice sounded a lot more mature. Marcus was fiddling around with some computer equipment at the side of the room. When he would hit a button on his laptop the sounds of drums, guitar or a keyboard would be played out of the speakers. Neither of them noticed that I had walked into the garage so I moved over to the side and watched in awe, knowing without a doubt that the boy singing was going to end up being one of the world’s greatest performers. Once the song ended, he threw the microphone stand like a true rock star and raised his arms into the air. His head flopped back and he looked towards the ceiling. I couldn’t help but clap, the kid was a fucking musical prodigy. My loud clap startled both Marcus and the singer when it echoed around the small dingy garage.

  “That was fucking brilliant,” I declared without any hesitation. I was in complete awe. The young dark haired teenage boy stared at me and smiled a mega-watt smile. You could see how he was in his element. At that stage in his life, nothing but music mattered.

  “Thanks,” he replied humbly.

  And that was how I met Noah Taylor and Marcus Everett. Now, two of the world’s greatest musicians. I found out that they had met at a music store in town as Marcus’s grandma was there trying to sell her vintage 1955 Esquire White Guard Fender.

  The two young boys got talking all things music and Marcus invited Noah over to see the studio his grandma had set up in her garage for his mom when she was in a band. I’m three years older than both Marcus and Noah, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to pursue a career in music with them when they advised they were planning on forming a band. I just needed to learn how to play an instrument first. Marcus said, if I was truly dedicated in learning an instrument he was more than willing to teach me. During our first rehearsal, I moved over towards an electric guitar that was leaning against an amp. My first strums down the strings sounded like someone was scratching their nails down a chalkboard. Noah laughed loudly but Marcus continued to encourage me by handing me all different types of instruments to test out.

  By the time I had tried nearly every instrument Marcus had, a few hours had ticked by on the clock. There was only one instrument I was gifted at. It was the little silver triangle they give the untalented kids in the school band. Noah was still laughing at my attempt to grow a musical bone when Marcus pulled a large bedsheet off a drum kit. As the dust filtered around the room my heart rate soared. That was it, staring right in front of me, love at first sight does exist, because I loved that drum kit from the moment I saw it.

  And as they say, the rest is history. Marcus continued to visit his grandmother’s house every weekend, and every weekend Noah and I would turn up bright and early Saturday morning and the three of us practiced until sundown Sunday. Then a year later, Marcus moved into his grandmother’s house and we started practising on the weekdays as well. Now, ten years later we are one of the world’s most successful bands. All of our concerts are sold out within a matter of hours of going up for sale and we do press junkets and meet and greets after every single show.

  “I’m gonna jump in a shower,” I advise Marcus. I normally shower and change before doing the fan meet and greet. I’m not joking when I say my clothes are drenched through with sweat after each performance. Well my jeans are, I don’t bother putting on a shirt to perform. What’s the use? Let alone imagine me trying to remove it half way through a set. I don’t get the opportunity of prancing around the front of the stage like Noah does. My body is constantly moving and there is no time between songs to whip off a shirt.

  Once I have showered and changed into another pair of jeans and a short sleeve black shirt, I make my way to the room that Emily sets up at every concert for our fan meet and greet. All the band members use to sit at one long desk, but we like interacting with our fans that Emily now sets up four individual tables. They’re kick ass tables too. Emily had them designed to match our musical instruments. Nick’s is a blue electric guitar, Marcus’s is a black bass guitar, mine is obviously a drum and Noah’s is…. actually I don’t know what the fuck Noah’s is. I think it’s supposed to be a mic stand? But it just looks like he is holding a press conference every time he sits down. I have seen him push the microphone out of the way on many occasions when Emily leaves the room. I have tried to tell him to grow some
balls and tell Emily that he hates his table, but he is adamant that he loves it. That ensures that I make whipping noises at him as often as possible.

  The crowd tonight is buzzing as they slowly enter the room. To ensure they get their money’s worth, Emily organises that only a handful of people can enter the room at one time, that way they get the opportunity to truly meet their idols. We sign autographs and pose for pictures with the select few that either paid top dollar to meet us or won the opportunity.

  “You know my friend,” informs the pretty blonde standing in front of me. My eyes flick up from signing the CD she just handed me and I give her a quick smirk.

  “Is that so,” I reply, my eyes roaming freely over her body. She is cute, actually she is pretty hot, my taste just leans more towards brunettes, were this girl has platinum blonde hair cut into a fierce bob. Her eyes are a dazzling blue and she is wearing a plaid button up shirt that she has tied in the middle of her stomach and she has paired it with a set of tiny denim shorts. When she notices my perusal of her body, she raises her eyebrows high into her hairline and cocks her hip out.

  “Sorry, I don’t do vanilla,” she informs sarcastically. “I only like chocolate ice-cream,” she continues seductively, her eyes roaming appreciatively over Marcus who is sitting next to me.

  When I chuckle loudly, Marcus’s gaze lifts from signing some photographs and he looks over at us. Once the blonde realizes he is watching, she stands a little straighter and strikes a pose, looking prepared to walk down the catwalk in a Victoria Secret fashion show. Marcus smiles at her briefly, before he recommences talking to the fan that is at his table.