“Yeah. He, um, took it upon himself to try to give Dash some pointers for improving his bass playing,” Rebel said, shaking his head. “That’s what kicked off the argument, anyway. It kind of spiraled from there.”
“I thought he played guitar, not bass?” Kit muttered.
“He plays both,” Rebel said. “Maybe I’m biased, but Dash is the much better bass player.”
“And yet Knightly thought he could tell him how to play,” I mused.
“Honestly, I think it was more about shifting the conversation back on himself,” Rebel said. “He hates not being in the limelight. The project he pitched me isn’t the first time he’s tried to rope me into doing something with him after his band broke up. It’s just the first time he’s thrown a tantrum about me sayingno.”
“Something must have drastically changed, then,” I said. “Because the ranting I heard when he was being dragged awaysounded way more intense than just a tantrum.”
“I wanted to kick his ass,” Rebel admitted. “If we’d been anywhere else, I wouldn’t have left so willingly.”
“I’m glad you let Sully get you out of there,” Kit said.
“I just didn’t want that shit splashed all over social media,” Rebel said as he turned to face Kit again. “He might have been last in line, but there were still fans and photographers lingering. Knowing Knightly, he’d have been happy to have some reporter ask him a bunch of questions so he could try and twist things to play out in his favor.”
Sighing, I rubbed his shoulders and tugged him back to lean against my chest, hugging him from behind.
“I get that it isn’t easy to cut someone out of your life, but that asshole never should have been in it in the first place,” I said. “He’s a pariah. You might not want to hear this right now, but I doubt that anything he’s ever done for you has truly been about helping you. I think he saw someone young, naive, and struggling to find his footing and sunk his hooks in you in the hopes that you’d be grateful enough to do whatever he needed you to.”
“You’re not wrong,” Rebel said, ducking his head. “I wrote a chunk of the guitar parts for him for the last two albums Hateful Dolls recorded.”
“And let me guess, you did it without getting credit for it,” Kit said.
Rebel nodded, head down, refusing to even look at Kit, who cupped his cheek and caressed it until Rebel finally met his gaze.
“He kept me from quitting,” Rebel admitted, his voice soft and choked up. “We’d had a bad run of luck, including getting stiffed after playing this disaster of a festival in Roxbury. Van kept breaking down, and we were living off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because every spare dollar we had we were sinking into it for repairs. Everything just felt hopeless, like we weren’t meant to get anywhere in the business and were just deluding ourselves. One night we were getting trashed on cheap-ass fucking vodka that tasted like rocket fuel, and I told him I’d reached out to a friend back home to see if he could get me ajob at the garage he was working at. Knightly lost his shit, and a couple nights later, dragged me out to seeShriveled Roseand got the guys to invite us up onstage with them. Their bands were close back then. Having Adrian Lee tell me that he saw some serious potential in me changed my mind about quitting and pushed me to elevate my playing to another level.”
Silence, aside from the trickle of water rolling over ice-covered rocks, followed his admission as I let his words sink in, only to find something nagging at me about his statement.
“It sounds to me like it was Adrian Lee that kept you from quitting, not Knightly,” Kit said, beating me to it.
“Yeah,” Rebel admitted. “I was thinking about that the other day, too, and how Knightly got up there and showed off like a jackass and nearly threw the vibe of the set off. Thought we were going to be tossed off stage, to be honest, then Adrian Lee dialed in on me and told me tobring it.”
“Then you don’t owe him shit,” I snarled.
“If he hadn’t gotten me up there…" Rebel began.
“Sounds to me like you paid him back for that a long time ago,” Kit said. “I’ll bet that not even his bandmates know that you wrote his music for him.”
“Probably not,” Rebel said. “I never needed them to. He was struggling, and I was on a toll at the time. Like seriously, every damn thing was sparking inspiration. Listening to the rough tracks he played, it was easy to work out how to fix the songs for him.”
“Just because it was easy doesn't mean he should have taken credit for something he didn’t do,” I said.
“At the very least, he should have listed you as a collaborator,” Kit said. “I mean, fuck, he was out there performing your music; he should have at least had the decency to acknowledge that.”
“Something tells me that Knightly and decency aren’t exactly on speaking terms,” I muttered.
“Much like him and everyone else in his life right now,” Rebel said. “There was a text waiting for me from Davy when I woke upthis morning. He heard what Knightly tried to pull last night and officially withdrew from the project. It’s completely dead in the water now unless he finds three other guys willing to work with him.”
“Doubt that’ll happen,” Kit said.
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s why he was so desperate to get me to sign on,” Rebel admitted.
“Which should tell you something,” I said as I kissed the top of his head. “Now that he’s out of your life, I hope you’ll keep it that way. I’ve got a bad feeling about him.”
“You’re not the only one,” Kit said.