Free Rock Courtship Rock Courtship (Rock Kiss #1.5) by Nalini Singh

horrified at the idea of being in a choir. “Remember how Noah kept insisting he was a born singer before butchering the entire piece he was assigned?”
    Abe scowled. “Fucker was smarter than I was.”
    “Yeah.” David laughed; Noah’s apparent arrogance had so annoyed the choir teacher that she hadn’t even let him finish the assigned piece before declaring him “an insult to music.” “You almost got yourself busted.”
    “Give me a little credit—I’d never tried to sing off-key before. At least I didn’t pull the ‘I come from a deprived neighborhood and don’t know what a choir is’ routine.”
    “I’d have felt bad about that,” David said, “if the teacher hadn’t tried to speak very slowly to me in Spanish.” He’d been one of only two Hispanic kids in the entire school, a fact that could’ve been isolating as hell if he hadn’t had Abe, Fox, and Noah as his family away from family.
    “You got your own back.”
    David grinned at Abe’s reminder. Making an appearance of wide-eyed innocence, he’d asked to sing a Spanish song for his tryout—then dug out the rudest of the many ditties he’d heard on construction sites when he’d tagged along with his father. “Best part was the way she actually clutched at her pearls when she realized what I was singing.”
    “No, man—best part was Fox having that coughing fit because he couldn’t stop laughing, and Noah ‘helpfully’ translating for the other kids. That’s when I knew we’d all be friends.”
    “Me, too.” Afterward, they’d learned that Noah had picked up Spanish from his nanny as a child and taught Fox. Unlike David and Abe, the two other boys had been at boarding school since they were seven and were already best friends—but from that day on, two had become four, their friendship rock solid.
    No matter what happened, they had one another’s backs.
    It was Noah who’d ended up in detention with David the next time around—after the guitarist jumped in with fists flying against a group of assholes from one of the senior classes who’d thought to pick on the scholarship kid. Turned out the scholarship kid could fight better than the trust-fund babies—and the trust-fund baby David had on his side was a berserker when one of his friends was threatened.
    Three weeks later, it was Abe in the principal’s office with Fox, the two of them being grilled about a stunt involving a dead fish hidden in the staffroom. That stroke of genius had landed them the punishment of having to clean out the entire room inch by inch.
    “Winning the scholarship was the best thing that ever happened to me,” David said. It had brought him not only to his friends, but to Thea. “Worth all the extra homework I did to take the tests for it.” A teacher had told him he had the brains to ace the tests, and his parents had made sure he had the peace and quiet to study.
    “You still funding stuff for your old school?”
    “Yeah.” So smart, poor kids wouldn’t have to leave their neighborhood, leave their families, to get an education equal to that of the wealthy.
    Funny thing was, it was only when he’d landed in a school with those rich kids that he’d realized how many of them would trade their wealth for a family like his. For a dad who’d once driven for days just so his eldest son wouldn’t have to spend his first birthday away from home, alone. For a mom who religiously sent care packages filled with homemade treats.
    Abe went to say something else, but one of their hosts came over right then. David liked Gerald, but he wasn’t in the mood for the other man’s meandering brand of conversation tonight. Catching David’s twitchiness and proving he was a true friend, Abe drew Gerald away with some bullshit story about wanting Gerald’s advice on a possible investment.
    David used the opportunity to sneak out without attracting any further attention.
    No way in hell was he going to be late to pick up Thea.
    Finally , they were