Chapter Four
Xander
Imet my buddy, Trey, at his gym downtown around one o’clock. One of the perks of being a rock star—or in Trey’s case, a self-made multimillionaire? You did pretty much everything, including working out, whenever the fuck you wanted to.
The gym was on the seventeenth floor of the high-rise where Trey lived. He had the penthouse level on the eighteenth, and this was his private gym.
“Trey Fucking Jones,” I greeted him as I walked in the door, and we slapped hands. The brother hugged me and looked me over.
“Xander Rush. Where the hell have you been?”
“On tour, the fuck do you think?”
Honestly, it hadn’t been that long; I’d seen him three weeks ago. And he knew exactly where I’d been.
Was nice to be missed, though.
“Isn’t that done yet?”
I followed him into the gym; he was holding his cell phone like he was still on a call. He was usually on a call. “It is now.”
“About time.” Trey knew, as all my good friends knew, that I’d been itching to be done with that tour from pretty much the moment it started.
“Yup.”
He waved me over to the treadmills so he could finish up on his call. I dropped my gym bag and headed over, got on a treadmill and started jogging, and when he finished up, he came over to join me.
“Always in demand, you,” I ribbed him.
“Always,” he said, looking me over. “You’re getting soft, I see.”
I chuckled. If anything, I was in better shape now than when I’d left at the start of this tour. Nothing like exercising like a madman to work out the frustrations I’d had with my band members. None of whom ever hit the gym with me.
Just one of the many ways we didn’t gel.
Trey got on the treadmill beside me, setting his phone on a mount on the front of it. He turned on some music; April Wine’s “Roller” started rolling out the surround sound speakers, and we got running. The treadmills faced a giant wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked northwest, over the trees of Stanley Park.
“So tell me what’s new in Trey Town,” I said.
“I just bought the McCawley-Laughlin tower,” he said, super fucking casual. And damn, the man was smooth. He could’ve been telling me which socks he’d put on this morning.
“The whatnow?”
“Well, it’s the BHR Tower now.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I’d never heard of the McCawley-Laughlin tower, but I knew Trey had been looking to buy an office tower in downtown Vancouver, somewhere in the financial district, for the last few years.
“Deal went through on Monday,” he said. “Brick House Records is now the soon-to-be resident of the twenty-first and twenty-second floors. My office will be on the twenty-third. Top floor, baby.”
“You absolute fucker.”
He grinned and tapped his phone, and the song switched; the Commodores’ “Brick House” started playing, and he did this slow-motion strut/dance thing on his treadmill, as only Trey could.
“Thinking of getting some modeling agencies to move in down below…” he added, just fucking rubbing it in. “You know, see those honeys in the elevator.”
“Jesus Christ.”