Screw Up (Hard Rock Roots Book 10) Read online

  Could things get any worse?

  I just hope my sister remembers to feed my cat.

  Remembering my manners just in time, I rise to my feet and hold out my hand for the girl to shake.

  “Netty Forester,” I say with a slight smile. Sunglasses Girl cocks a shapely brow at me and then extends a hand. Her fingernails are painted black with tiny skulls on them. Immediately, I'm intimidated. Not only does she look like she could kick my ass, but also that she'd have no trouble doing it in leather shorts and high heels.

  “Naomi Knox,” she says, and then pauses, like she expects someone to insert something snide after that comment.

  “I'm sorry,” I say after we shake hands—she has a seriously firm grip by the way. “I know this is going to sound extremely forward of me, but are you … the, um, guitarist's girlfriend?”

  A second shapely brow is promptly cocked.

  “The fuck?” the girl asks and then laughs. “Treyjan? Hell no.” Her mouth purses a little. “Unfortunately, I'm married to an even bigger asshole.”

  Treyjan, Treyjan, his name is Treyjan!

  I put a lock on that excitement and throw away the key. Why should I care what his name is? Or if I'm married to him? Or if we had sex last night?

  Um. Duh. Because those are only some of the biggest things that have ever happened to me in the history of ever. I mean, since … well all of that awful darkness in my past. But I won't think about that right now, standing in the beautiful sunshine and feeling the warmth heat my cheeks, bathe my lips in golden light.

  “Now that I find hard to believe,” I say and she cocks her head at me, making me flush. “I mean, not the married part but the bigger asshole part.” I laugh and the sound is just forced and sort of weird, so I smooth my skirt out and make myself smile instead. “Do you mind if I make a bit of an inquiry?”

  “An in-fucking-quiry?” the girl asks, and I realize I'm coming dangerously close to clumsawkwardyterritory. She gestures at me with a forearm covered in musical notes and sighs. “I know what that means. Go ahead and ask your question. Good for you for being all formal and shit.”

  “Is Treyjan married?” I ask, going for casual. I fall far from it—somewhere in desperate, needy, nosy territory but I can't seem to make myself stop—and just will my body not to move so I don't trip, fall, or otherwise make a bad situation already worse.

  “That piece of shit?” she asks me, pulling her shades down just enough that I get a glimpse of orange-brown eyes a sparkle of mischief. “Definitely no. Why? Are you looking to fill the part?”

  “I think I already did,” I blurt and she pulls her shades off completely, giving me a look like she's almost positive that I'm some crazy, semi-rabid groupie come to pull a Yoko Ono over on Indecency. I laugh again—another pretty unfortunate sound. I'm not an idiot or anything. I'm not completely lacking in social graces, but this? There's no way to prepare for anything as crazy as marrying a rock star at your cousin/best friend's bachelorette party while you're dressed in a tank top covered in black Labrador fur and drunk off Pabst blue ribbon. There's just no fucking way. “I guess I'm one of those idiots that has a wedding in a fly-by-night chapel on the side of the road,” I say as I hold up my hand so Naomi can see the rings.

  Her face takes on this half-amused, half-annoyed sort of expression.

  “I'm one of those idiots, too,” she says, holding up her own hand so I can see a tattooed ring on her hand. It's made up of musical notes, dancing in a circle around her ring finger. “Triple wedding in a Vegas chapel with Indecency's drummer, my band's drummer … and me.”

  She says this last part with narrowed eyes, like maybe she regrets her own presence there.

  “Oh come on, babe, that was the best mistake you ever made,” a voice says, and I turn, catching sight of the other arrogant a-hole that was onstage last night, the lead singer of Indecency. I'm good with names and faces which is fortunate since grace and agility aren't high on my list of personal attributes.

  Apparently they're not on Turner Campbell's list either.

  I wrinkle my nose as he cups his … family jewelsthrough his pants and flashes this wickedly sexy smirk in Naomi's direction.

  “That's vulgar,” I say before I can stop myself. Awkward as it is, I won't take it back though. The guy is being pretty fucking rude.

  Naomi stares at me for a moment like I've grown antlers and then throws her head back and roars with laughter.

  “Oh, I like you,” she says, dropping her chin and then pointing at me with the arm of her sunglasses. “I like you a lot.Welcome to Hard Rock Roots.” She pauses and points up at the house next. “That's the name of the mansion. Sorry in advance for having to look at my husband's dick; he walks around naked most of the time. I'm in the process of training him, but you know, there's not much up here.”

  Naomi taps at her head with her glasses, throws me a wink and saunters off with rolling hips that, were I to imitate them, would make me look like less of a seductress and more of a, well, a duck.

  “What the hell?” Turner asks, but he's not talking to me. Instead, he trails off after Naomi and leaves me standing alone on the porch again. A distant ocean breeze sneaks over the wall surrounding the property, rustling leaves and teasing my skin with warmth. “Who the fuck is that?” I hear him ask just before the couple moves out of earshot.

  “Treyjan's wife,” Naomi says.

  I don't stick around long enough to see Turner's reaction.

  I grab my phone, head for the front gates, and start looking up the closest Greyhound station on my phone. I am so out of here. People in Los Angeles are crazy. I am sane. I don't belong here.

  And I especially don't belong in the bed of an über famous rockstar.

  No. Fucking. Way.

  He knows.

  That's my first thought when I head downstairs and find Turner leaning against the wall in the foyer. The look he throws me says that for sure he's going to start shit. And that smirk … I want to wipe the floor with that look. Son of a bitch.

  “What?” I snap, getting up in his face before he can get in mine.

  “You so desperate to be like me that you went out and married the first decent girl you could get your hands on? And a Vegas-style chapel? Really?”

  “For one second could you try to pretend like you don't think the world revolves around you?” I growl at him, rubbing at my chest and trying really, really fucking hard not to think about the fact that I was shot last year. By a sniper. A sniper.Yeah, I don't really want to talk about that. That, or this. “Forget the girl. We're not really married.”

  “According to the internet you are, bro,” Turner says, tossing me his phone. I purposely let it fall on the floor and he flips me off. “Hey! Don't walk away from me. Dude, have you seen these headlines?”

  I ignore him and head toward the French doors that lead to what's just one of three pools in this joint, sliding a joint from my pocket as I go and lighting up. A nice long toke is what I need, just a little THC to keep the world soft and easy. Mm. A relaxing smoke, an afternoon alone, and then … I'll get on my phone and see what I've been avoiding all damn morning.

  Me.

  Married.

  Hah.

  And to that shithead of a girl? What a weirdo? And was that fucking dog hair all over her clothes? Thanks, but no thanks.

  Of course, when I get outside, that girl's sitting on the edge of my swimming pool with her bare legs draped over the edge.

  A surge of anger overtakes me, some irrational wild rage that tastes like fear on the back of my tongue. The hell is wrong with me? Am I so scared of some random hook-up that I'm going to blow up on her and throw a fit? I pick chicks up all the goddamn time. This is in no way something new to me—I just don't, you know, usually marry them before I sleep with them.

  “What are you still doing here?” I ask, realizing that I sound like a complete prick. Like Turner. I've always wanted to be like him, but I'm sort of sick of everyone thinking I'm his clone. I'm
not. Not even close.

  When Screaming Girl glances over her shoulder and looks up at me, I sigh and try to soften my expression.

  After a moment, I sit down beside her and smoke my joint.

  “Is that marijuana?” she asks me in a hushed voice. I give her a look and she bites her lower lip. “Let me try some.”

  I pass over the joint and try not to smile when she chokes on her first inhale.

  “I tried to leave through the front gates,” she starts, and then I realize that fucking, duh, it's almost impossible to get out of this place sometimes. If we stay quiet for a few months, the paparazzi back off a little. But with each new event—our drummer's new baby, a new music video, a new single dropping—they come back, like vultures to a corpse in the rotting sun. Not quite as pleasant though. Fuck, I hate paps. “Your manager caught up to me and said he'd arrange a transport.”

  “Arrange a transport?” I ask, and try not to laugh. “Where do you need to go? I'll drive you.”

  “No, thank you,” she says airily, passing the joint back and sniffling.

  “What do you mean no, thank you?” I snap, feeling that angry fear take over me again. Have no idea where that came from or what it means, but fuck it. I'm not about to sit here and psychoanalyze myself. I pay my therapist way too damn much to do that for me. “I have a nice car; I know how to dodge the paps. Let me drive your ass home.”

  “Drive my ass?” she asks with a sharp laugh, like she thinks I'm crazy. “You're so eloquent, Mr. Charell.”

  “Good. So you do know my name,” I say, leaning over so I can get a good look at her face. “Happy to hear it since it's now your name, too. Mrs. Charell.”

  “Netty Forester,” she says with a sharp bite, reaching down and pulling the rings off her finger. When she tries to hand them over to me, I don't take them. Something about her giving those things back to me is just fucking sad. Or maybe it's pathetic—on my part, that is. Who the hell is this girl?

  “Keep 'em,” I tell her, leaning back and tilting my head to stare up at the sky. A small wisp of white moves across the empty blue, like a lonely soul seeking a lover. Asshole cloud.I'm not lonely. Not at all. I can get girls by the dozen by walking into a club and smiling.Doesn't take much. I'm rich; our records are multi-platinum; Indecency is infamous. Everyone loves us.

  Except, apparently, Netty Forester.

  “No, thank you,” she says again, trying to hand the rings over. When I refuse to reach out and take them, she dips her fingers into my sweat pocket.

  The touch of her hand on my thigh, even through the fabric of my pants, is fucking killer.

  I notice her breath hitch at the same time she drops the rings in the pool.

  “Are you crazy?!” I ask, shattering the moment between us. I might be locked and loaded in the money department, but I grew up dirt poor. Taking a quick look at my online credit card statement this morning, I know those rings cost more than the trailer park I grew up—with all of the trailers in it.

  Slipping off the edge of the pool, I take a deep breath and use the wall to propel myself down. When I come back up for air, the pair of rings clutched tight in my palm, I see that once again, Netty's making a run for it.

  “Hey!”

  I chase after her, wet footprints slapping against the concrete as my soggy sweatpants hang low on my hips and my hair falls across my forehead. I shove it out of my way, get in front of her, and block the doorway off with a hand on either side.

  “We're not done here,” I say, noticing that her eyes are glued to the tight fabric clinging to my chest. Behind me, I can hear Turner chuckling stupidly. Fuck, I want to beat his face in.“When my manager was arranging for that transport, did he tell you that we really did get married last night? It's all over the news.”

  “The news?!” Netty asks, that strawberries-and-cream complexion turning ghost white. She swings her purse off her shoulder and accidentally—or maybe accidentally on purpose—hits me right in the balls with some weird taxidermy cat head. I grunt and stumble back, clutching my jewels for dear life and gritting my teeth. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she says, fumbling her phone out of the bag … and letting it land on the cement with the sound of shattering glass.

  A long moment of silence follows as I not-so-surreptitiously check the bullets and the gun for damage. Nope. Looks like my cock will live to fuck another day.

  “You're fucking weird, you know that?” I say, wondering how this girl and I even ended up in bed together—let alone hitched.I must be going stir-crazy in here, surrounded by all these necking couples and their bullshit. That's what it is—I'm slowly being poisoned by their lovey-dovey bullshit. “You didn't think to check the internet first thing after getting up? Our story is everywhere.”

  “I turn the data off on my phone; I refuse to be charged per megabyte of service. Don't you care at all about net neutrality?”

  “Net what?!” I ask, reaching out and taking the girl by the hand. All I mean to do is put the fucking jewelry back in her palm. Instead, I end up with that palm in my face. “Jesus fucking Christ!” I yell as the two pieces of jewelry fall to the pavement, one of them rolling under a nearby patio chair. Blood streams down my face in two sharp red rivulets, spattering on my bare feet.

  “You can't just touch somebody without her permission,” Netty says, but she looks a little guilty about it. Well, good. Because seriously? Fuck her all to hell.

  “First, you throw tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry in the pool. Next, you hit me in the nuts. And then you go ahead and punch me in the face. You know what? Screw this. I'll figure this annulment crap out on my own.”

  I turn and start toward the stairs, ignoring Turner's and Naomi's curious expressions as I breeze past. They look like they're enjoying this way too goddamn much.

  “Wait!” Netty says, and this time she's actually following me up the stairs.

  I ignore her, padding down the hall to my room and notice that my sister's standing in the doorway to her bedroom giving me a really weird look. I flip her off, step inside my own room and slam the door behind me, hitting the lock just in time to stop Netty from coming in after me.

  Then I remember that I just left her outside with my older sister, Sydney. Even though she married the emo bitch drummer boy from Naomi's band, I know she'll give me hell if she finds out about this.

  “I've already seen the articles,” she tells me when I push the door open and end up staring her straight in the face. “But apparently your new bride hasn't.” My sister pushes cotton candy pink hair away from her face and gestures in Netty's direction. It sounds fucking cool to live in a big ass Beverly Hills mansion with all your bandmates, their families, and your sister and her husband, but … it's kind of frigging not.

  I lean against the doorjamb and cross my arms over my chest, giving my sister an I-don't-give-a-fuck look that she sees right through.

  “Treyjan—” she starts, but I'm way ahead of her. Last year, she got married to some guy she barely knew in a Las Vegas wedding chapel with Turner and Naomi and our drummer, Ronnie, and his girl. Triple wedding. Worst part is: I wasn't even invited. How's that for a slap in the face?

  “Thanks, but no thanks, Sydney. Don't need or want a lecture right now.”

  She raises her eyebrows at me and purses lips glossed the color of ripe cherries.

  “Wow. Look at you, all big and tough over there while the girl you dragged home last night is crying.'Kay, no worries then, little bro. No lectures. I'll just let you deal with your own shit.”

  Sydney moves away and slams her door in my face, leaving me with a crying stranger in the hallway.

  I guess finding out the whole world knows we got married last night is the pits for this chick.

  I know what Turner would do in this situation, what Ronnie would do, what Jesse would.

  But I kind of have zero fucking clue what I should do.

  “What's wrong?” I ask and then run my tongue over my lower lip. “Besides the obvious, I m
ean. I wan't that bad of a lay was I?”

  Netty lifts her face to look at me and doesn't bother to hide the tears.

  “Because this,” she says, lifting up the phone and showing me a picture of her and me, kissing on the front steps of some shitty little wedding chapel, “this tells them exactly where I am.”

  She sucks in a deep breath and looks at me with so much terror in her eyes that I feel bile rising in my throat.

  “And they're coming.”

  Guitar Douche sits across from me in a booth, draped over the seat like it was made for him, like he's entitled to be here, sitting in a diner with me and having a milkshake.

  I have no idea why I'm still here and not on a bus rocketing down the highway to some unknown place, somewhere I can hide. Of course, I'll have to find some way to get my sister and my cat. Everything else that I've worked so hard for, I'm going to have to let go of.

  I could tell all of this to Treyjan Charell, the guy I supposedly married and possibly had sex with last night. That's why he brought me here, right, to this restaurant in the middle of the city with sunglasses on his face and a black beanie shoved over his wild hair—as if that really makes him inconspicuous. Since I'm no tattoo expert, I can't say how many guys have black dahlia flowers tattooed on the backs of their hands, but I imagine an Indecency fangirl could spot him from a mile away.

  “So you wanna explain to me what the hell you were talking about?” he asks, but I just stare back at him because my whole story—from start to finish—is too crazy to be believed. I know if someone told me my own back story, I wouldn't believe them. You had to live it to know. You had to be there to understand the depths to which humans can dive, the darkness they can live in without ever knowing the light. That's probably why I'm so boring, uncool, and clumsawkwardy now.

  Necessity.

  My pain necessitates normalcy.

  “Not really no, but thank you for lunch.”

  Now that I'm sitting here in the middle of this weird restaurant with all the shady truckers off the I-5 hunched over the sticky countertop, I feel better. More like myself. Not that it matters. Now that my face is out there, splashed across social media feeds, blogs, and news websites, I have to erase Netty Forester and start fresh.