In His Place: Sonic Idols Book #2 Read online

  Table of Contents

  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

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  In His Place

  Sonic Idols Book #2

  Lisa J Hobman

  Copyright © 2017 by Lisa J Hobman

  *

  All rights reserved.

  *

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For the man I fell in love with in 1992

  and still love with all my heart.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Lisa J Hobman

  Chapter 1

  Si

  *

  Drummers always get stick. Okay, there’s a pun in there somewhere. But it’s true. Whenever you hear musician jokes, it’s always about the skin hitter. The ‘how many drummers to change a light bulb’ jokes, and my personal favourite, ‘how do you get a drummer off your doorstep? Pay him ten quid for the pizza.’

  Drummers are allegedly the talentless, sofa surfing, women repelling, drooling idiots of the band. In Sonic Idols, that’s me. Si. Known by my mother for the past twenty-four and a half years as Simeon Delaney. I started drumming with the band when they first broke out into the ‘big time’. Although, it was a bittersweet pill to swallow.

  Aged nineteen, I was thrust into the limelight after the death of my big brother and best friend, Joe—the band’s original drummer. I don’t think I ever recovered from the situation. Some say I withdrew into myself. Some say I completely changed. My mother thought I used the drums to express the pent-up anger I felt deep inside at his loss.

  It would appear everyone is an amateur psychologist these days.

  I looked up to Joe. He was my hero. Almost four years my senior, he was the epitome of everything I wanted to be. He started to learn the drums aged ten, and I’m sure I used to drive him crazy when he was practising on his kit. I’d sit with a pair of my mum’s knitting needles, banging on whatever happened to be lying around in the garage where his gear was set up.

  But instead of telling me to piss off, he’d come over and sit beside me. “Here, like this, kiddo.â€� He’d put his hands over mine and tap out a beat on the upturned bucket with the makeshift sticks while I sat there with a huge grin on my face, gazing up adoringly at him. My fantastic big brother.

  “I want to be you when I grow up, Joey,â€� I’d tell him.

  I had no clue how ironic that sentence would become later in my life.

  ğŸ�µğŸ�µğŸ�µ

  Sonic Idols were doing a rock club tour down in London just after they’d signed with Blue Demon Records. I had just started uni in Sheffield and I missed Joe like mad. He hadn’t gone to university, choosing to follow his dream instead. Although Joe had taught me everything he knew and insisted I could be in a band, I never felt able to go for it. He was the talented one. I was the bookish one. And I didn’t mind being in his shadow. In fact, I willingly put myself there. That’s how much I idolised him.

  I’d been out with some of the guys from my course on the Friday night, and to say I was hungover was an understatement. I was feeling guilty for not being with Joe. He’d asked me to go on the tour with the band and I had chosen to stay at my digs instead. Worst decision of my life.

  I awoke on Saturday to a ringing sound that seemed to vibrate around my tender skull, and when I realised it was my phone, I grabbed for it, dropping it twice in my hurry. I’d decided I was going to travel down and join Sonic Idols for a week. Sod my coursework. That could wait. I was so excited to tell Joe the news.

  “Hello? How’s it going, mate?â€� I asked, without even checking it was Joe’s number.

  “Simeon? Simeon, it’s… it’s Dad.â€�

  I yawned and stretched. “Hi, Dad. I thought you were Joe.â€� A sob travelled over the airwaves causing a shiver to travel down my back. I sat bolt upright. “Dad? Are you okay?â€� I knew something terrible was wrong. And not just from the sobbing I could hear. A deep-seated fear gripped my insides and knotted them tight.

  My dad spoke again. “It’s… it’s Joe, son. He’s… he’s d-dead.â€�

  There was a loud swooshing in my head and I dropped the phone.

  ğŸ�µğŸ�µğŸ�µ

  Joe had never been into drugs. He’d never even smoked. He took good care of his body and ate healthily in between stints of training at the gym. What the hell had possessed him to try drugs on that fateful night is beyond comprehension.

  If I’d been there. If I’d gone on tour like he asked me to, he wouldn’t have done it. He was always determined to be the good example a kid brother needed. Someone I could look up to—and I did. If I had been there, he would’ve been too busy looking out for me to even contemplate something so stupid.

  As soon as I’d heard the news, I came home from university on the next train I could get. The familiar scenery outside the window was dull and grey; mirroring the i
ntense sadness that had taken up residence inside of me. Buildings blurred past me and I’m not sure if it was because of the speed of the train or the tears that continually threatened but I refused to allow free. Usually, going home was an exciting time—regardless of where I returning from. My family meant the world to me and I was always eager to hug them. But on that particular day I was gripped with dread. How do you face your parents knowing that you are now their only remaining child? How do you comfort them after such a catastrophic loss? I had no clue.

  I took a cab from the train station and tried to rehearse what I could say to Mum and Dad once I arrived home. But nothing seemed sufficient. Nothing seemed to express the immense loss I was feeling let alone what they must’ve been experiencing. He was their first born. A model son. A credit to his upbringing. Even though Joe had moved out months before, walking into the house we grew up in felt strange. None of the preparation I had tried to make had prepared me for the pain I would feel at seeing both my parents so bereft. When you’re growing up your parents are the strong ones. They’re the ones to kiss your poorlies and chase away the monsters under the bed. I think you forget that they’re only human until you see them break. They hugged me tight and we sobbed. We stood in the middle of the living room, just holding each other up, holding on tight as if we were scared to let go in case one of us collapsed under the weight of the grief.

  After I’d been there around half an hour, Joe’s poor fiancée, Allie, arrived. God, she was devastated. Her auburn hair was scraped back from her make-up free face and her skin was pale. I couldn’t speak to her. My folks held her as she cried, and the pain she was going through made my own heart break all over again. But I couldn’t face her after what had happened. I knew she’d be angry with me and I couldn’t bear to look her in the eye. If I had been there, she wouldn’t have lost the man she was going to marry.

  Joe adored Allie from the minute he laid eyes on her. They had been together since they met aged seventeen on our family holiday to Northumberland. She had travelled down from the Scottish Borders and we had travelled up from Leeds, and we were all camping on the same site near Bamburgh Castle. They met at the campsite playpark when Joe was watching over me as I drove my remote-control car around the sandpit whilst my folks prepared a barbecue. It had been love at first sight for both of them. She had long auburn hair with natural waves, and there were freckles dotted over her nose. She was incredibly pretty and had this really sweet Scottish accent. I’d never seen Joe look that way at a girl before. As much as I wanted to poke fun at him for being all doe-eyed, I just couldn’t. It was clear from the start they were meant to be. Allie spent most of her family holiday with us, and her parents even joined us for dinner a couple of times. There were lots of jokes about future wedding bells, but I guess none of them thought that’s where the two teens were actually headed. Things change over time, after all. People move on. Not Joe and Allie though. The day we were all leaving for home and travelling in opposite directions was hard for everyone, I think. It had been the best holiday ever. There had been a teary goodbye with lots of hugs and hand holding. They were so reluctant to part. Even I cried a little bit, but then again, I was a kid. Almost as soon as we got home, Joe was on the phone with Allie, telling her how much he missed her. After that, they kept in touch by letters and more phone calls. They were just so right together.

  Allie had eventually moved to London to be with him when the band relocated there, and she went to every single gig that followed. Except his last. She had been ill with the flu on the night he died and hadn’t been able to go. Other than one gig before the band was signed, it was the only occasion she didn’t go see him play.

  And I wasn’t there to save him.

  She must have hated me so fucking much.

  I left her downstairs with my mum and dad and went to take my bag up to the room me and Joe had shared. I opened the door and walked inside but the immediate onslaught of memories hurt so much physically that I crumpled to the floor and broke down.

  He would never be here with me again. We’d never again stay up until the early hours sneakily watching films.

  I’d never hear his voice again.

  Through a fog of tears, I glanced around our room. Posters of Joe’s favourite rock bands—his idols—adorned the walls, and above his old desk was a pin board covered in old photos—most of which were of me and him. Me on Joe’s shoulders. Joe with his arm proudly around me. Joe teaching me the drum solo from my favourite Bon Jovi song. Such happy memories that were now all I had left of my best friend in the whole world. He was gone and I didn’t know how to deal with that. How could I just carry on? I honestly had no clue.

  For the couple of days prior to the funeral, Allie stayed with her folks in a bed and breakfast up the road from our house, but she visited regularly. Every time she walked in, I walked out. We made eye contact a couple of times but the expression of sadness in her eyes was too much to bear. There were simply no words to justify my own actions and decisions, and trying to speak to her would have been too painful. The guilt weighing me down was draining the life from me.

  On the day of the funeral, I walked into the kitchen to see Allie staring out of the window over the huge garden where we had all spent many a happy hour eating barbecue and laughing. She glanced at me as my feet hit the tile floor and I stopped dead in my tracks.

  “Oh, hello, Si. How are you?â€� Her sweet Scottish accent lilted through the still air and tugged at my heart.

  I scrunched my face as I searched for what to say. “Erm… pretty shit really, all things considered.â€� I swallowed hard as I assessed her pain-filled gaze. I wanted to ask her the same question but I was so very afraid of the answer that I couldn’t form the words. “Sorry, erm… I seem to have forgotten my…â€� I turned and rushed from the room as quick as my legs would take me, and once in the privacy of my own room, I slid down the door and rested my head in my hands.

  Chapter 2

  Allie

  *

  I watched Si retreat from the room like he couldn’t bear to be near me and my lip quivered as more tears formed in my eyes. He hated me and I couldn’t blame him. Thanks to me, his brother was dead, and nothing I could say would help. Nothing I could say would take away the agony of knowing his brother was never coming home. Why hadn’t I just taken some medicine, put on my big girl panties, and gone to the gig? It was flu but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t have made the effort. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and how I wish time machines had been invented. But all I could do now was beat myself up over and over and hate myself. The love of my life was gone forever and I had no idea how to heal my own heart, never mind the heart of someone even closer. Someone related by blood who felt the same pain I did—if not more.

  From the day I met the handsome seventeen-year-old Joseph Delaney, my heart had been entirely his. As a sixteen-year-old girl falling in love for the very first time, it was one of those fireworks situations you see in romance movies. Our eyes met across the sandpit where his little brother was playing with a remote-control car.

  Joe was every teenage girl’s dream. Piercing blue eyes and light brown shaggy hair that reached his shoulders. He was tanned, despite the British weather, and his arms were very defined—thanks to the drums, I later discovered. That was another thing. He was a cool musician and he informed me he was going to be a famous rock star with his best friends and their band. I had no reason to disbelieve him; he was so sure of it. They had just settled on the name Sonic Idols and I remember thinking how professional it sounded. Looking at him back then, I could easily imagine him adorning the walls of girls’ rooms everywhere.

  When the band was signed by Blue Demon Records, Joe had celebrated by asking me to marry him. His words reverberated around my mind every single day f
rom then.

  “Allie, I can’t imagine anyone who I’d want beside me on this crazy ride more than the woman who fills my heart with so much love and happiness. You ground me. You remind me of who I am. You love me so completely and my feelings for you are deeper than any ocean. You and me, we’re destined to be connected. Two souls forever entwined. Say you’ll make it official. Say you’ll marry me?â€�

  The tears in his eyes and the hope in his voice were something that will stay with me eternally. The simple aquamarine ring he bought me remains on my hand. He swore he would replace it with something bigger, bolder, and diamond encrusted with his first big pay cheque, but I didn’t want that. I wanted the small, square cut stone that he had bought because he knew turquoise was my favourite colour. That meant more to me than any amount of diamonds ever could.