Screw Up (Hard Rock Roots Book 10) Read online

  He snarls this last part out like—continuing the metaphor here—a rabid wolf and then lets out this cocky little laugh before the lights flash on and reveal a man with dark hair, tattoos, and pants that are a hell of a lot tighter than anything I would ever wear.

  “I heard some assholes shout my name the other night. Turned around and saw there was no skin across their face. The chill of death just fucking penetrates. The more I run, the more they just give chase.”

  The lead singer crouches down near the edge of the stage and gestures at the crowd with one inked hand, letting the words bleed from his mouth in a cocky sort of fury that makes me wonder if maybe they really are famous because of their music.

  As soon as he finishes the word chase, he's standing up again and the spotlight over his head dims, lighting up two guitarists in the back. One of them has short dark hair and a black tank with a rainbow flag on the front, while the other …

  Oh.

  Oh.

  Oh.

  I find it suddenly hard to swallow, my throat going dry, my tongue getting thick.

  I've just seen the cockiest douchebag on the planet (and I'd thought the lead singer was bad) and simultaneously fallen in love with him at the same time.

  His fingers are dripping with ink, tearing the strings of his guitar apart as he rocks with the rhythm of the song, playing the music of a dark god with every strum of his pick. Wild brown hair is spiked up on his head and he's biting his thick, full curve of a lower lip. He thrashes around the stage, swinging his slick black guitar around on its strap and bouncing his knee while the drummer behind him pummels his drums and makes the beat sound like rain on a roof.

  “My feet are flying as I pound across the ground. Demons coming after me, so sure that I'll be found. Secrets kill and poison, birth these monsters that I made. I know it's all inside my head so why the hell can't I be saved?”

  The lead singer—this Turner guy—belts the words out with this cocky swagger, grabbing his junk as he stands up and climbs onto one of four, low black benches lining the front of the stage. But it's not him I'm looking at. Sure, he has a ton of charisma, but so did Hitler. Sorry, I'm not impressed.

  The guitarist on the other hand …

  My skin tightens, making me feel twice as hot, twice as sweaty as I did before. Down below—yes, in the vaginal area because I'm sorry, but I'm not afraid to say it—I feel a pulsing ache, like if this guy invited me out to dinner, took me to a movie, and walked with me on the beach I'd probably sleep with him by the fifth or sixth date.

  I'm so uncool.

  A few warm, sweaty, rocking bodies away from me, a girl gets lifted into the air by the crowd and surfs her way back towards the bar. Two other guys nearby join her, rising up like winged demons and taking flight across a dark sky.

  I barely look at any of them.

  I can't stop staring at the man in the tight black t-shirt, two red plugs in his earlobes, black dahlia tattoos on the backs of his hands. His eyes are this liquid shade between brown and gold, sparkling with this awful sense of mischief that makes me both giddy and terrified at the same time. He looks like the trickster god, Loki, like he might bring about the end of the world and laugh about it.

  It's in that moment that I realize I need to get as far away from him as I can get.

  Of course, that's easier said than done. The speakers are booming, the music so loud that I feel like I can't hear my own thoughts anymore. It's just this wicked band and their words, their beat, their … rhythm.

  “I feel the wicked spirits as they haunt inside my pain, the sort of spooks an exorcism can't or won't contain. No god or devil put them here, just a construct of my own shame. There's no one else in hell or heaven left to … BLAAAAAME! AHHHHH!”

  As the words come screaming out at me, shrieks that are mimicked by everyone in the crowd but me, I fight to turn away and head for the door, booze sloshing around inside my skull. I think there was a bit of a delayed effect with those drinks, like I'm getting drunker by the second.

  When the people around me reach out and start to hoist me over their heads, it takes me a full thirty seconds to figure out that I really am rising toward the ceiling and that it's not just some drunken delusion.

  Before I realize it, I'm laughing, soaring on my back bolstered by sweaty palms.

  Not bad for a veterinary assistant from Nor Cal, huh?

  “Quite clearly I'm insane, but I know just what to do. I run and hide and fight and scream, deny the truth and let myself get drunk on pain. Desperate to resume, my wild lies it's true. Darkened coffin, sleeping soon. I'm too broken, too decayed, so don't exhume. Don't. EX-HUME!”

  Floating over the violent mess of the crowd, I start to feel something a little less than that comforting togetherness I first noticed when I entered the room. I start to feel fucking violated. Hands and fingers graze across my legs, my ass, push my skirt up. I'm so shocked that it takes me a moment to realize what's happening. Are these guys … are they groping me?

  Fingertips sneak up the inside of my thighs, and that's when I really start to go nuts, thrashing and clawing and kicking. I just want down in that moment. And then I want to punch somebody. And then call the cops and report sexual harassment or assault or whatever this is.

  The song comes to a close, the guitars screaming out at me, begging me to come back for one more taste, just one last lick on that dirty popsicle. But instead, here I am fighting with some assholes who won't let me go, who aren't propelling me across the crowd but are actually trying to … finger me? Rape me right here in the middle of this sweaty, awful, hazy room.

  “Hey fuckers! Get your goddamn hands off that girl or I'm gonna kick all your collective asses!”

  The voice that explodes from the speakers … it stops my heart. And then, like a shot of adrenaline to the chest, it shocks it awake again, sends it thundering and galloping and racing beneath my ribs.

  It's Guitar Douche, I know it is.

  My feet come soaring toward the ground, and I stumble, lost in the crowd, hitting the cement with my knees. Scrambling to stand, I feel another hand grope my ass followed by drunk, raucous laughter. Spinning around, I wish suddenly that I hadn't taken off my pink cardigan so I could wrap the sleeves around these assholes' necks and strangle them to death.

  When the crowd around me gasps, I glance over my shoulder just in time to see the guitarist guy jerking the strap over his head and tossing his instrument aside. Without a second's hesitation, he races to the edge of the stage and launches himself off of it. The crowd catches him, surfs him right over to us and drops him down beside me.

  There's a moment there where—sorry, I'm getting cliched here but there's no other way to describe it—time stops and those brown eyes of Guitar Douche meet mine.

  Taint me, break me, make me ruined, I think just before he snaps his gaze over to the wannabe rapists/molesters and punches one of them as hard as he can in the face.

  That's the last thing I remember before I wake up in the guitarist's bed.

  I literally fucking wake to the sound of a girl screaming next to me.

  My first thought is that there's maybe, like, an earthquake or something, like the San Andreas has finally gone boom and we're all gonna die. That gets me up and quick because shit, if this house comes tumbling down around us I want to at least die wearing boxers. Turner always says he wants to leave a beautiful naked curse, but I'm good with a little dignity.

  When I scramble out of bed and hit the floor with bare feet, I realize there's no sign of shaking, no broken windows or debris strewn across the floor. Instead, there's just sunlight, open curtains, and a rank ass hangover that makes me wish I'd gone straight-edge like my douche-y friends.

  “Where the hell am I?” the girl yells at me, throwing something my direction. When it hits me square in the face I realize it's an ugly old lady shoe. Fuck, please tell me I didn't bring some AARP broad home with me last night! I get so horny when I'm drunk I could've brought home a dude without r
ealizing it (although Jesse would probably get pretty jealous).

  “Are you like, totally insane?” I ask, flicking my fingers at my temple. I wish I could see who I was talking to—who I probably fucked last night—but the girl's holding a sheet over her head and scrambling around on the ground near the bed like she's looking for clothes. When she finds the other hideous shoe, she stands up and chucks that in my direction, too.

  “Why can't I find my panties?” she moans as I crouch down and glance under the bed.

  Our eyes meet across the narrow space, the girl's face just barely visible as she peeks out from beneath the sheet.

  Well, shit.

  The girl that's staring back at me definitely doesn't qualify for a senior citizen discount.

  She is fly as fuck.

  My lips curl into a smile as I meet her blue eyes dead-on.

  “Are you sure you were wearing any?” I ask and she scoffs at me. Scoffs.

  “Oh my god, what is wrong with you?” she spits out, standing up and tucking the sheet around her as I follow, rising to my feet and feeling my lips flatten out into a line. My cock though, he stays nice and stiff—and not just because it's morning. The girl staring back at me like I'm some sort of awful creep is curvy and fierce, but with this easy softness to her with all that honey colored hair tangling around her face. Her mouth is this bowtie of liquid pink gloss and her nipples are hard and pebbled beneath the thin fabric of her makeshift dress.

  She's fucking edible, this sweet little lollipop that I just want to lick.

  Too bad that piece of dirty candy just wants to kick my ass.

  “I want my phone. Where's my purse? Did you steal my purse?” she snaps, gasping like I've already admitted to filching her crap. Honestly, I probably remember less than she did about whatever happened last night. I bought some acid off this roadie dude and tripped all the way out.

  “Take a look around and tell me if you think I'd need to steal some chick's handbag.”

  I cross my arms over my bare chest and act like I don't give two fucks that I'm naked. Turner wouldn't, and he's been my idle for over a decade. But I do kind of wish there was some way for me to put on pants without looking like I was trying too hard. This girl's trying hard enough for the both of us. She looks like she's about to give herself a damn hernia.

  “You clearly have been misinformed about the practice of kleptomania. Many sufferers are actually very wealthy individuals. Sometimes, stealing has little to do with want or need and everything to do with the rush of the moment.”

  “Maybe I'm getting enough of a rush looking at you naked?” I drawl with a crooked smirk, grabbing a pack of smokes off the nightstand and lighting up. When I offer the pack across the bed towards the girl, she looks at me like I've grown lobster claws.

  “I want to know what happened last night,” she demands, but the ferocity in her voice is a little dimmed when she spots her pink and white striped panties hanging off the lamp on the other nightstand. It's only when she reaches out to snatch them that she starts screaming again.

  “Are you trying to make me deaf?” I mumble around the cigarette in my mouth, spotting my jeans half tucked under the bed. Thing is, they're way too tight to just casually pull on. There's some maneuvering I have to do downstairs if you know what I mean. It's like hide and seek with a cock and hairy balls.

  “What the fuck is this?” the girl asks, lifting her hand up and spreading her fingers.

  The light catches on a pair of rings—an expensive as shit pair of rings by the looks of it. Or hell, it could just be costume jewelry for all I know? I might be loaded now, but I grew up so poor that Pop-Tarts were five star cuisine in my book. When your mom's a dead police officer and your dad a crack addict, that sort of leaves you and your sister stuck between the cracks.

  “I'll tell you what this is,” she continues before I even get a chance to speak. I find myself narrowing my eyes, even if I like the look of her sapphire blue ones, like the tenting of the sheet around her nipples, the smell of her perfume clinging to my skin.

  But seriously? What. A. Bitch.

  Changed my mind.

  She might look fly as fuck, but this girl is a total bitch.

  “This is an engagement ring,” she says as I smoke my cigarette and glare at the woman standing across the room in my Beverly Hills mansion, the one I share with all my bandmates and their various spouses, soulmates, and groupies. Good thing this place is about a million square fucking feet. At least maybe I can get this girl out of here without having her do the walk of shame—my shame when they all found out what a psycho she is. “And this is a wedding band.”

  “Thanks for the quickie in the education department, but I'm not as stupid as I look,” I say, meandering casually over to the dresser and opening it to find about two dozen identical pairs of American Giant black sweatpants. Now that I'm rich as fuck, when I find something I like I just buy a ton of duplicates. Makes life so much easier. I have a mini-fridge in the corner stocked full of Java Monster energy drinks, so I make my way over there and snatch one as Screaming Chick sputters and gawks at me. “So you're married, so what? It happens. Don't worry—I won't be telling your husband or wife about this, okay?”

  “I am not married, you Guitar Douche,” she snarls at me, turning away and trying to get dressed inside the sheet like a kid in a cheap ghost costume. I should know—I wore the same old, torn, stained sheet for years on Halloween. Hey, it was better than nothing.

  I keep smoking my cigarette, popping the top on the Monster and noticing as I do that …

  “Aw, fuck,” I say and the girl makes this sound like duh.

  I'm wearing a ring, too—one that matches hers.

  “Los Angeles doesn't have insta-wedding chapels like Las Vegas, does it?” she asks cautiously, and when I turn around and see that she's already dressed in a hideously sensible skirt, a white tank, and those pathetic excuses for high heels that she threw at me. This girl right here, I wouldn't date her in a million years, let alone marry her.

  “Of course it does,” I say, feeling this sick, uneasy clenching in my stomach.

  Turner would laugh his ass off if he heard about this. God, fuck, oh fuck, but he'd never let me see the end of it.

  “I'm not doing this,” the screamer says, shaking her head and whipping her sexily tousled hair into some sort of ugly bun on the top of her head. “I'm sorry, but no. I don't do cliches, and I don't do Guitar Douches.”

  “You'd be so lucky,” I say as she turns to me, nostrils flaring, and narrows her eyes.

  “Goodbye, you, whoever you are,” she says, turning on her heel, shoulders back, spine straight. She marches from the door and I pull on a pair of sweats as quick as I can.

  Good.

  I'm glad she's leaving.

  Because I'm tossing this ring in the toilet and I'm never thinking about it—or her—again.

  “What do you mean you left?” I ask, standing on the front porch of the largest house I've ever seen in my life. I guess to even call the damn thing a house would be a stretch. It's a mansion, stretching up into the clear blue California sky with sturdy white walls, balconies, and plenty of palm trees for decoration.

  “We're about halfway home,” Gloria says, and I hear giggling in the background. “Your husband said he'd fly you both back for the wedding, so we didn't think you'd mind.”

  “Gloria,” I say as slowly and carefully as I can, trying not to throw up all over the fancy manicured bushes on my left. I kind of want to though, just to spite that guy up there. Who does he think he is? God's gift to women? More like a curse.

  And I slept with him?

  Or maybe I didn't, right?

  I take a deep breath before I start drowning on cliches. Adorkable girl meets sexy guy—check. Adorkable girl wakes up in said stranger's bed with no recollection of the night before—check. Adorkable girl finds that she's somehow managed to bleeping marry some guitar douche with really thick, really pretty hair—check, check, and more CHE
CK!

  “I don't have a husband,” I say carefully, glancing up at the sound of footsteps.

  A woman with blonde hair and black sunglasses is walking toward me, a tattoo of a broken heart across her chest and another on her belly that says Real Ugly. Huh.

  “You found your purse,” she says, nodding her chin at the handbag lying on the ground next to me. If I said it wasn't a fuzzy white Persian cat head purse, I'd be absolutely telling an untruth. “I set it near the door hoping you'd run into it.” Sunglasses Girl gives my bag a look that clearly speaks volumes about how amazingly cool she is, walking around a rockstar's Beverly Hills mansion in nothing but short-shorts and an open white tank over a red bra.. “I mean, not that you could really miss it.”

  “I was one of your witnesses last night, Netty! You totally did it. I mean, for once in your life you just fucking went for it. We're all proud of you.”

  You're proud of me for marrying a drunk stranger while I was also highly intoxicated?! is what I want to say. But then, Sunglasses Girl is standing right here and I have no idea who she is. Maybe she's Guitar Douche's real girlfriend and they have an arrangement or something? I hope not. Jealousy rears its stupidly irrational head and roars at me like a green-eyed dragon.

  “I'm … going to have to call you back,” I say, wishing for a split second there that I had a nineties flip phone that I could click closed with a dramatic motion. Instead, I squint at the screen in the glaring white sunshine and wish I'd turned the brightness up enough to actually see what's going on with my phone. I try to hang up four times before I actually hit the right spot on the stupid smartphone.

  Then I drop it all of ten inches to the ground and said screen cracks right in half.

  I close my eyes against a small surge of frustration.

  My friends left me in L.A.; I have a hangover; I got married to a douche-y guitarist last night.