Flesh & Bone - a contemporary romance: The Minstrel Series #2 (25 page)

Sebastian finished the tour before turning himself into the Dresden Police. He owed the band that much and had waited until the bus ride home from their final date in Stuttgart on the last day of August to break the news.

He’d never forget the stunned looks on their faces, especially Karl’s and Yvonne’s. Everyone had expected drama, but not
that
. Immorality, diva-like demands, a lame explanation (finally) as to why Eva left so abruptly a day into the tour, but not a confession to a crime.

They tried to talk him out of it.

“You’ll go to jail,” Karl said, “throw our band off the rails.”

Sebastian shook his head. “The band? That’s what you’re concerned about?”

Karl shrugged. “Well, sure. I mean, that was then, this is now. Let it go.”

“He’s got a point,” Dirk added. “What’s to gain by turning yourself in? Your career is on an upsweep. A confession like this would kill momentum. And for what?”

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“Did Eva ask you to do it?” Markus asked. “I mean, I can see why she’d be pissed, but can’t you just pay her off?”

“Yeah,” Karl said. “It’s not like you can fix her leg by doing time.”

They didn’t understand and quite honestly, Sebastian would’ve been surprised if they had.

“She didn’t ask me,” he said. “I need to do this for myself. Look, I laid down my voice and guitar tracks for the new songs at my home studio. Use those to record while I’m… otherwise engaged.”

“You could be
engaged
for two or three years.”

“Maybe, but I’m hoping they’ll take my youth and inexperience at the time into consideration, and the fact that I’m freely surrendering myself.”

“That’s a big assumption.”

“I know.”

Eva had been “imprisoned” by her injuries for five years already with no chance of parole. He’d man up and do a few years if he had to.

That was fifty-eight days ago. The judge gave him twenty-two months in a minimum security prison, a three-thousand-euro fine, and ordered him to pay “damages to the victim for pain caused.” He was more than happy to comply with the latter, and he was glad that his recent success gave him the financial ability to do so.

His celebrity status meant nothing to the men he bunked with now. He worked during the day and read at night. They were allowed to watch TV in the dining hall, and he spent the first two weeks glued to the reports of his arrest—not because he cared about what the media said about him, but about how they hounded Eva. He curled his fists and scowled at the images of photographers camping outside the Baumann’s building, intruding on the soup kitchen, nearly tripping Eva as she pushed passed them down the sidewalk. The camera zoomed in and froze on Eva’s face, always twisted with anxiety.

“That your girlfriend?” one inmate asked.

“It’s the girl he hit, moron,” another offered.

“She’s cute.”

Sebastian pushed away from the table and waited by the door for a guard to take him to his room.

The days were long and boring and ran like molasses into each other. The only highlight was visiting day. Despite his crime, his popularity hadn’t slipped, and it was brought to his attention that he had fans creating a scene at the entrance of the prison.

Sebastian smirked a little at that. The only visitors he got were the ones he okayed. To date the list consisted of Dirk and Markus, and his sister who’d dragged their mother along once. He wished Eva would come, but he knew hell would likely freeze over before that happened. He was surprised by the visitor listed on the roster today. His father. Sebastian’s first inclination was to deny him, but then he wondered why. In light of everything that had been going on, he now saw how silly and childish it would be to continue their feud.

He was sitting in the chair behind an empty table when Sebastian arrived with the guard. His father sat straight and tall, his usual stance, but Sebastian noticed his shoulders were thinner and his face, though expressionless, had looser skin around his mouth and chin. His father had aged. Time didn’t stop for anyone, but despite the change in appearance, Sebastian immediately felt like he was fifteen years old again under the man’s scrutiny.

“Hi, Papa,” he said.

“Sebastian.”

The silence that descended between them was fat and awkward.

“I tried calling,” Herr Weiss began. “Before.”

“Yeah. I should’ve returned your calls.”

Herr Weiss shifted uneasily. “I wish you would’ve told me. About this. When it happened. I would’ve helped you. I’m a lawyer. I know lawyers. It was an accident. You would’ve got off without jail time.”

Sebastian nodded. He could see the wisdom in it now, but back then, at eighteen, he hated his father and he was afraid of him.

“Thanks for coming,” Sebastian muttered. It felt lame to say it, but he didn’t know what else to say. And his coming was a nice gesture, just a little too late. Sebastian was ready for them to say their good-byes already.

Herr Weiss stared at him with brown, watery eyes. “I’m sick.”

A patch of cold spread through Sebastian’s chest. “What kind of sick?”

“A bad kind.”

“How bad?”

“Cancer bad. Pancreas.”

Sebastian didn’t like his dad, but he didn’t want him dead, either. He forced a dry swallow. “How long?”

“Weeks, months. They aren’t promising anything. I just thought you should know.” He stood to leave and nodded good-bye.

“Papa?”

The man stopped and twisted to look back.

Sebastian licked dry lips. “I’m sorry.”

His father lifted his chin. “I’m sorry, too.”

Eva had returned from her short stint on tour a drastically changed person. The first thing she did when she got home besides ignore the probing questions from her parents and the intrusive text messages from her honeymooning sister was rip the poster of Sebastian Weiss off her wall. This was followed by removal of any trace of his presence on her laptop. Swift and efficient swipes and clicks on her mouse deleted all Hollow Fellows albums, cleared their website from her bookmarks and unsubscribed her from their newsletter and all their social media updates.

She’d lain on her bed and rubbed the throbbing in her leg. A glance at her empty chair and her guitar next to it brought Sebastian to her mind’s eye, sitting there that first day when she let him in to play her Duncan Africa. She rubbed her temples. She had to forget him. That was her priority. She needed to be distracted. It was then that she signed in online and registered for university. She needed a new environment, new friends, a new focus.
New, new, new.

She chuckled humorlessly. She didn’t know why she had been afraid to go back to school before. Not going was the thing that suddenly frightened her.

Sebastian had given her something—popularity. She didn’t know he was going to turn himself in. She hadn’t asked him to, so it was a shock to wake up one morning to find a pack of media people outside their building looking for her.

At first she was furious at Sebastian. Everything he did ruined her life. She was his girlfriend for a minute, and now it was all the nation wanted to gossip about. She’d become a subject of intrigue. The story about Sebastian Weiss was scandalous and sensational. The rock idol had tried to soothe his guilt by seducing his victim.
Can you believe it?
Front page tabloid material.

Her family was mortified and so was she. Eva even agreed to an interview, hoping to clear up the falsehoods, but it’d just made things more twisted. She remained the Victim of the Celebrity.

She was practically famous when she arrived for her first day of school. Her papa had to drive her because public transit was no longer safe. She acknowledged that it was a nice change of pace from invisible, though she questioned the sincerity of her new friendships. But she didn’t care. In a way, they were using each other. At least she had one real friend in Annette.

Unfortunately, even six months later, Sebastian’s popularity hadn’t fallen with Eva’s climb. Hollow Fellows songs continued to dominate the charts, and Eva almost had a heart attack when “Flesh & Bone” was released recently as a single. She hadn’t realized Sebastian had recorded it. Turned out he could rock up any kind of song. Eva barely recognized her version, but it soared to number one in just a few days.

When word got out that Eva was listed as a co-writer of the popular hit, it was almost impossible for her to walk the halls. Her cane saved her from several falls.

Annette worked as her bodyguard. “Back, people! Let the girl through. Do you really want to be responsible for causing
Eva Baumann
to fall?”

Eva smirked. Her friend said her name like it meant something. Like she was
someone
.

They made it to study hall without incident. Other students would pause and stare when they spotted her. Others would shyly wave and say, “Hi, Eva.”

Annette scowled and muttered about how she was being ignored and threw her mane of red hair over one shoulder. “What am I? Chopped liver?”

They pulled out chairs at an empty table and sat. “It is a reversal of roles, isn’t it?” Eva commented. She patted her friend’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. It’ll pass. I’ll become a has-been and you’ll continue to be the beautiful one.”

Annette puffed. “You are the beautiful one, Eva.” She opened a book, but her eyes remained fixed on something across the room.

Eva looked for what had caught Annette’s attention. A table full of boys. “Which one?” she asked.

Annette’s eyelashes fluttered. “What?”

“Which one do you like?”

A flush of red crept up Annette’s neck. “Was I staring?”

Eva removed a textbook from her bag. “Uh, yeah.”

“Xavier.”

“Which one is that?” Eva asked, searching.

“Black hair, beautiful dark eyes.”

The guy in question happened to look over at them in that moment. Annette ducked her head. “Oh God. Did he see me staring?”

Eva smiled at the handsome, olive-skinned boy, and they locked eyes. “I don’t think so,” she said without turning away. He cocked a brow, and she raised her chin.

He looked away when Annette glanced up. “He’s so cute,” Annette whispered, “and I think he likes me.”

Eva tried not to sound surprised. “You do?”

“We share a class together. He’s borrowed my books. I think he did it just to have an excuse to talk to me. We’re going to go for coffee sometime.”

“Like a date?” Eva asked.

“I hope so.” Annette giggled. “I really like him.”

Sebastian didn’t know Dirk had released the song until after it had hit the charts.

Dirk visited him with unconstrained excitement. “It was a risk, I know,” he explained. “But when your arrest didn’t snuff out the band’s fan base like I thought it might, I figured we had nothing to lose. I mean, you’re not going to be in here forever, right?”

Sebastian forced a smile. “No one’s more surprised by the song’s success than I am,” he admitted. A small part of him actually hoped he’d see the end of fame, or in his case, infamy, but Dirk’s enthusiasm was contagious. Besides, “Flesh & Bone’s” climb up the charts benefited Eva. Their short-lived, emotionally tearing relationship would at least have a financial payoff for her. If the song gained long-range traction, she wouldn’t have to depend on her parents to support her forever.

Dirk rubbed his balding head and leaned forward. “Is there any chance you’d get out early? You know, for good behavior and all that?”

Sebastian chuckled. “You watch too much TV.” He’d served six months of a twenty-two-month sentence. He saw a lot of forest brush clearing in his future, not guitar playing. Guitar strings were considered a health risk. If a guy got it into his head that he’d had enough of this life, they could be used to self-inflict injury. Sebastian hated how the tips of his fingers had become soft. At least there was an old piano in the dining room and the guys didn’t seem to mind when he played it, even though it was slightly out of tune.