Yeah, sure.Best terms.Whatever that means.
Dad and Connor were in the same band—The Copper Saints.Caleb was the frontman, Connor was the drummer, and the rest of the guys ...I don’t remember them well.They were famous until they imploded in a blaze of silence and lawsuits.
My father is the only one who managed to save his career.Caleb fucking Wilder.His name lives in the same breath as Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, and Peter Frampton.
Connor?
Connor Dempsey tried to fly solo too—only he nosedived so fast, the crater’s still warm after all these years.He ended up an agent.Signed my band because he’s a friend.I dumped him after the sophomore album because he was coasting on the fumes of Dad’s name.Treating me like I was his golden goose.
Do I really want to hire him again?I won’t; I have an agent.We just need to polish a few things.But I’m giving him a chance to discuss this.I owe it to him.Not sure if that’s true, but I didn’t have anything else to do today.
“I appreciate you wanting to work with me,” I say carefully, watching how his gaze intensifies behind his glasses, “but I don’t know if this is a good move for me.”
“It’ll be an excellent move,” he counters.
“I already have a sound,” I argue, fingers curled into fists beneath the table.
A sound born from guttural screams, smoke-stained lungs, and sex with strangers in backstage greenrooms.It’s mine.I didn’t give it up before, I won’t give it up now.It doesn’t matter if grunge is not a thing anymore.My music is me.
“You have to transcend or fade into obscurity.”His voice dips, serious now.A little too calm for my liking.“That’s why The Copper Saints didn’t survive.Your dad wanted to hold on to the same chord progressions, the same tempo.It got old.You know what’s ironic?He evolved after the split.”
The fact that he says it without a trace of resentment impresses me.He’s not mad at my father for saying, “Fuck you, Connor, and everyone else.I’m going solo.”
Maybe my bandmates will forgive me someday for telling them to go fuck themselves.I refused to change.
“Dreadful Souls is another example,” Connor continues, riding the momentum of his argument.“Chris Decker quit and built a label—or maybe it’s a studio ...it doesn’t matter.He helped birth the grunge era.When it died, he didn’t.He moved on and keeps making music with new artists.”
Smart ones.Survivors.
He’s almost saying, “Not the ones who got drunk on their myths and drowned, like you.”
I stare into my untouched cup, the dark surface reflecting a version of myself I don’t recognize anymore.
This moment?It’s not just about the music.It’s about what comes next.About who I’ll be when the applause dies.
I feel it rising in my chest, but it’s not hope.The room feels tight.His words itch beneath my skin.And all I want is to fuck away the doubt, scream into someone else’s mouth, and grab this stale life by the throat and make it beg.
Instead, I lean back in my chair and say, “I’m still not convinced.”
The words come out flat, almost indifferent, but I can hear it—that thread beneath the surface pulling taut, the breath that stutters before it lands, the syllables wrapped in quiet desperation.
It’s the tone of a man teetering on the edge of something bigger than himself, that haunted note that saysmaybe,even when my mouth insists otherwise.Maybe I don’t want to be numb anymore.Maybe I want to feel something rip through me—lust, pain, sound, anything that sears.Maybe I want to fucking burn.
Fuck, I miss it.The sweat on my skin, the ache in my thighs after a show, the way sex used to feel like violence and salvation when it was backstage and breathless, with someone whose name I wouldn’t remember but whose teeth I’d still feel the next morning.
I miss the screaming guitars, the breathless rush of the crowd, that moment on stage when everything—the noise, the hunger, the rage—melded into something bigger than me.Something holy.I was someone once.Now, I’m a half-empty cup of coffee, pretending I still matter.
I probably need to take this to my therapist, sponsor, or whoever the fuck I’m supposed to call when the spiral starts.I should be working through shit with someone paid to listen and nod, to tell me that relapse isn’t a moral failure, that not trusting people is a symptom, not a sin.But that assumes I still have someone in my life I trust.
The truth is, I don’t know who I have anymore.My contact list is a graveyard—burned bridges and silenced numbers.My bandmates hate me.
Caleb Wilder is my father in the legal and DNA senses, but he’s more myth than man—frontman of The Copper Saints, rock god turned solo deity, with a heart sculpted in marble.If he ever gave a shit, he stopped showing it sometime after my second overdose.
My mother ...I’m not good for her image.It’s a shame that a D-list actress has a son who can’t stay sober to save his life.My friends—I use that term loosely—were mostly people who liked the spotlight, or the sex, or the drugs.
People who told me I was a genius when I was fucked up, who disappeared when I started saying no.And when you spend a decade self-medicating every whisper in your head, when you fuck to forget, drink to disappear, and scream instead of speaking, you stop knowing who you can trust.You stop caring.
So now, it’s Connor Dempsey.
