Dirty Like Zane: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 6)

by Jaine Diamond

  Definitely mindfucked myself to hell and back over Maggie.

  But unlike fucking Buddha here, mind over matter wasn’t gonna cut it for me.

  I did believe in a higher power: the music we made together as a band.

  I believed in the structure of the Big Book, too, the guidance of working through the Twelve Steps, even when I didn’t fully buy into them. Even when there were times I totally fucking resented needing them.

  I needed AA. Most of all, I needed the meetings. They’d always worked for me, too. When I went to them.

  Since this tour had started, I hadn’t dragged my ass to one.

  “And just to be clear,” Seth said, “I’m not preaching anything. Everyone’s got their own path to sobriety. You got a road to walk that’s yours alone. For a lot of alcoholics, AA works. Belief in a higher power works. I’m not offering solutions and I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what works for me, because you asked. I’m your friend, and I’m a friend who’s walking a similar road. So I’m here to listen, to talk, to share, to support, or whatever it is you want me to do short of lying to you, supporting your addiction and getting you booze. And I’m not gonna blow sunshine up your ass, placate you or sugarcoat this shit, either. I brought you to an alcohol-free environment so you could get your shit straight with a clear head, if that’s what you want to do.”

  “What, right now?”

  “You got a better time in mind? A better place?”

  I looked around at the desert like we were on the surface of the fucking moon. “It’s not like I can do this shit in one night.”

  “It doesn’t happen in one night. It happens in one moment.”

  I looked at Seth, but it was too dark to see his eyes under the brim of his hat or the expression on his face.

  “And in every single moment there is, it happens over and over again,” he said. “All you really need is one moment.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. Christ, but I wanted a toke.

  Did I really have to listen to this shit?

  “Just one, huh?”

  “What else have you got? The past is done. The future is uncertain. All you’ve got is this one moment, right now. You’re alive and sober, right now. What are you gonna do with this moment?”

  He went silent for a long moment, and I was silent as that sank in. I really didn’t have an answer for that question. Which was maybe my problem.

  “You gonna have a drink?” he pressed. “Because you take one sip of booze and your life is fucked, I guarantee you that. And by the way, case you haven’t figured it out yet, you think your life isn’t out of control because you smoke pot daily to mellow out and you’re itching for it right now and you’re in love with Maggie but you keep fucking it up, you are straight-up deluding yourself.”

  I stared at him.

  I walked over to where he lay and stood over him, staring down, but he didn’t move.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know you’re in love with Maggie, and I know you’re probably wondering where the fuck I stashed the car key right now, ’cause you want to get right back in that car and leave me in the dust so you can go get stoned. So. What’re you gonna do?”

  Fuck.

  I rubbed my hands over my face and sighed.

  Nothing. I wasn’t gonna do anything.

  I wasn’t even mad at Seth, really. Except that I kinda was. I was itching with the need to smoke up, and I hated myself for it.

  I hated people calling me on it. Pointing out my weaknesses to me.

  I wasn’t fucking stupid. I knew I shouldn’t be smoking weed. I knew it was a fucked-up replacement for liquor, in a way. Way less volatile in my life, but no less addictive. No less dangerous to an addict like me.

  Fucking insidious shit; it was gonna do me in one way or another.

  I’d never wanted to admit that to myself, but I fucking knew.

  I knew I was a cranky bastard when I didn’t smoke up, when I was craving it, whenever withdrawal started to hit. That I was moody and uneven depending on how much I did or didn’t smoke.

  It was fucking bullshit, and like the addict I was, I just kept telling myself the solution was more weed.

  More weed, and I’d feel better.

  Fucking pathetic.

  I never wanted to end up as fucking pathetic as I’d been at the height of my drinking; when I’d looked back with sober eyes and really seen the shit I’d done.

  Or at least, the shit I could remember doing.

  But here I was. Heading right down that same hole.

  Same fucking shit, different pile.

  “So this is the part where I go hit the nearest meeting and start working the Twelve fucking Steps all over again?”

  “Told you. I’m not here to tell you what to do. But you want steps? Step one, flush your weed down the nearest toilet, all of it, and stop that shit. And once you stop jonesing and twitching for it and actually have a clear head for once, take a look at Maggie and see what you see. If what you see is the woman you want by your side for the rest of your life, then you find a way to make that shit happen.”

  Yeah. Fucking brilliant advice.

  If only I knew how.

  “And here’s another guarantee I can give you, brother,” he added. “You’re never gonna make that happen while you’re smoking up and fucking other women.”

  I turned away and looked out at the fucking desert, like it had any answers.

  Empty.

  The sky was pretty fucking empty, too. Just a big void of silence, echoing back the truth of Seth’s words.

  “Maybe if I had her,” I said, “I wouldn’t be smoking up and fucking other women.”

  “Uh-huh. Because it’s her fault, right?”

  I looked at Seth, lying there with his hands folded over his ribs.

  Jesus Christ, whose side was this fucker on?

  “It’s her fault if you fuck other women now,” he said, sounding bored, “and she’s smart enough to know that down the road, if you’re with her and something goes sideways and you end up fucking other women again, you’ll make that out to be her fault, too. Just like it’s her fault she hasn’t thrown caution to the wind to take up with an addict. I haven’t known Maggie all that long, and I don’t know her all that well, but even I can see she’s not the kind of woman who’s gonna do that. And if she was, brother, you wouldn’t want her anyway.”

  I’d started pacing again while he spoke, and I paced right back over to him. “So that’s it? Everyone else in this band gets the woman of their fucking dreams, huh? Everyone else gets to smoke up, but I can’t, right?”

  “Yeah, and this is the part where you feel sorry for yourself.”

  Seth sat up, spinning his hat around backwards so I could see his face. He threw his arms on his knees and looked up at me, meeting my eyes.

  “Throw yourself your fucking pity party, Zane, pile on the excuses to go have a drink. But nothing’s gonna change the fact that yeah, most of your friends probably can smoke up, and no, you can’t. You see me smoking up? It’s different for us, and you know this. Other people can have a beer, smoke a joint and have a good time, get up and go on with their lives intact the next day. It’s not like that for you and me, and it never was. That shit is poison for us. How many times can you smoke weed before you slip and decide a beer is okay? Once? A thousand times? I don’t know the answer to that, and neither do you. But you and I both know, you will slip. And once you take that first sip, you’ve fucked away your choice about it. That shit gets in your body, and you don’t get to choose anymore if you take the next sip or the next. It’s over. You want to flush your life down the toilet like that? You want to die?”

  “No. Obviously I don’t want to fucking die.”

  “Good to know. You gonna drink?”

  I knew what he was doing.

  I’d been through this same conversation, more or less, with Rudy, about a thousand times.

  “Don’t be an asshole. Do you see a fucking roadhouse o
ut here?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m an asshole. Everyone is an asshole, and you’re the king of the assholes, right? You got it all figured out and then some. That’s why you’re standing in the middle of some desert right now, fucking lost, with no idea what you’re gonna do with your next breath.”

  “Got some idea,” I muttered. “Kicking the shit out of you right now sounds like a good one.”

  “Go ahead, you think it’ll make you feel any better,” he said, calm as shit. “But it’s not gonna change the fact that you’re a superstar and you’re actually standing here considering shitting your life away. You have everything, and you’re just gonna flush it away. Sounds pretty fucking pathetic to me.”

  “I don’t have everything!” I leaned over him and shouted it in his face. Where the fuck did he get off calling me pathetic? Maybe I was, but shit. “I don’t have shit,” I growled, “because I don’t have the one thing I fucking need.”

  “Yeah?” he said, still calm. “Tell me, Zane Traynor. You’ve got mad talent, fame, friends, pretty much any fucking thing money can buy. What else could you possibly need?”

  “Maggie. I need fucking Maggie.”

  “Ah, bullshit.”

  “What?” I pulled back like he’d bitch-slapped me. “The fuck do you mean bullshit?”

  “I mean bullshit. That. Is. Fucking. Bullshit. It’s not Maggie you need so fucking bad that you just keep sabotaging it so you can never have her. It’s all that stuff she’s got that you want. All that good shit in her that you feel when you’re with her. All that stuff you wish you could have. That fucking hole she fills in you with all her beautiful.”

  I was pacing again, listening to him, wanting him to keep talking because everything he was saying was making some kind of sense—and wanting him to shut the fuck up.

  “It’s all that shit you probably think you don’t have in you and don’t deserve,” he went on, “which is why you can’t get your shit together. But I’m telling you, man, you deal with your shit, you get yourself straight, fill those holes with whatever the fuck you’ve gotta fill them with… if it’s AA or it’s music or it’s God or it’s whatever-the-fuck, as long as it’s not booze or drugs or other women, or some other new addiction… if Maggie’s really the woman for you, she’s gonna come for you like a lightning strike. She won’t be able to stay away.”

  “Yeah?” I pushed back. “That how it was for you and Elle?”

  “Yeah. That’s how it was for me and Elle. That’s how it is for me and Elle, every moment of every day.”

  Well, fuck.

  He was serious about that.

  I stared at him for a minute and he stared right back.

  Then I turned away. My eyes were starting to burn, because listening to him talk that way about his relationship with Elle… it did something to me. Grabbed my heart in a steel fist and fucking twisted.

  I was jealous of that shit. Fuck, was I jealous.

  And he was right. I didn’t think I really deserved any of that beautiful shit with Maggie.

  I never did.

  Maybe partly because she’d been pushing me away since the day we met…

  But what the fuck was I doing with the weed and the other women? I’d been pushing her away, too.

  She wasn’t the only one who was hiding from our shit instead of dealing with it head-on.

  “It’s a choice, brother,” Seth said, his tone softening. “Elle and I, we’ve got some magic shit between us. Can’t keep off of her, can’t keep her off of me. But it’s not an addiction. It’s not some unhealthy, fucked-up obsession that we have zero power over, that’ll drive us both into an early grave. It’s something we’re both strong enough to know we could walk away from and we’d both survive on our own, but we don’t. We don’t, because our lives are better when we’re together. It’s a choice, every moment, to be together.” He blew out a breath. “When you’re in a relationship, love isn’t a noun, man. It’s a fucking verb. Maybe you can’t always choose who you fall in love with, but it’s a choice to wake up every morning and love the one you’re with, to be there for them and do whatever it takes to put their needs right up there front and center with your own.”

  He went silent, and I really didn’t know what to say anymore.

  “For addicts like us,” he said after a moment, “it’s hard. We’re selfish fucks. Plus, we’re weak.”

  I glanced at him. He spun his hat back around, tugging it down over his eyes, and lay back down.

  “I’m telling you, brother, if Elle left me tomorrow, I’d still love her, but killing myself over it, that would be a choice. Every moment of every day, I choose to live. I choose to stay clean. I choose my relationship. And I choose to love Elle enough to put her ahead of my addiction. If it came down to it, I’d leave her if I had to.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m fucking serious. You think I’d let some sketched-out addict around that beautiful woman, and that beautiful kid she’s gonna have? I’d leave her before I’d let her live with a junkie, and she knows it. And I don’t want to leave her. She doesn’t want me to leave. She accepts me for the imperfect person that I am. We’ve sat up talking until dawn on many, many nights about all the fucked-up shit I’ve done, and it doesn’t scare her away or turn her off. It just makes us closer. That’s love.”

  I stared at him, but that was it. Seth was done. He just lay there in the dark.

  I turned and started walking.

  “Where you going?” he called after me.

  “For a walk.”

  “You gonna drink?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Zane

  I walked for maybe an hour, maybe two, mostly pacing. I went as far as I could comfortably go without getting lost. It was black as shit, everything was flat and looked the same, and there was no cell service.

  The only light this far from the road was a half-moon and the stars; the car was a tiny little glint in the distance, and I stopped just before I lost sight of it. Some clouds were rolling around the sky and I didn’t even think I’d be able to map out any kind of pattern in the stars to find my way back.

  I was a city kid. If I was tossed out here by myself, sad truth was I’d probably get eaten by a coyote.

  I paced, wearing a fucking path on the desert floor, and I thought about a lot of shit. I thought about my addiction, all the shit I’d tried to convince myself I’d put to rest, and how I’d almost broken right the fuck down tonight. How badly I’d wanted to take a drink—and maybe I would’ve if Seth didn’t intervene.

  And how badly I needed to get my ass to an AA meeting.

  But mostly, I thought about Maggie.

  I thought about how she’d told me she loved me.

  And I knew, I fucking knew in my bones that she probably loved me all along. Which meant love was never our problem.

  Because I’d definitely loved her all along, too.

  I’d loved Maggie Omura with everything I had in my broke-ass heart of holes, for a long, long time. Seth was right; there were a shit-ton of holes in me. Holes left by my parents a long time ago. Holes with deep black roots, that I’d never known how to fill. It was like Swiss fucking cheese in there.

  I used to think I could fill those holes with booze and pussy and the adulation of a few million fans.

  But that was all bullshit.

  All that shit just went through me like a fucking sieve.

  What I needed was the love of this one woman. And I really didn’t need Seth to tell me I was never gonna get it until I started filling those fucking holes myself.

  The signs were there all along.

  I just didn’t want to see them.

  So I kept fucking things up instead.

  I loved Maggie, and yet the common thread through all our shit was me fucking it up.

  According to her, I’d fucked up pretty much everything—right down to our wedding song.

  She’d told me as much a couple of mon
ths after our wedding, when things were at their fucking worst between us. I’d stopped by her place one night to talk to her, but instead, we’d ended up in a massive fight. I knew any second she was gonna throw my ass out.

  But then she paused to take a breath from reaming me out. And she sighed and said to me, I love this song.

  I’d barely even noticed she had music playing. It was some acoustic song with a dude singing; I’d later found out it was Stereophonics, “You’re My Star.” But at the time, I didn’t know what song it was. Only that Maggie apparently loved it, and I’d ruined it for her.

  I really hope something can save this song for me one day, she’d told me, because you’ve just ruined it for me. You know, I heard it for the first time a few months ago and I thought, now there’s a song I’d love to have play at my wedding someday. But I guess you ruined that, too. Lucky me… I got married in Vegas in some tacky theme chapel, to my dad’s bullshit “Schoolgirl” song playing on repeat.

  Objectively, I knew that part was her dad’s fault as much as it was mine, but at that moment, I wasn’t gonna argue the finer points with her.

  Married to a man who can’t keep it in his pants to save his life, she’d added. Or at least, to save his marriage.

  And she was right. I didn’t keep it in my pants.

  As a husband, I was a fucking failure.

  Out in the world, I was a rock star. Like Seth said; I was a superstar.

  I didn’t set out to be a superstar.

  I set out to be a musician, and the rest was golden icing on the cake. I was never gonna say I didn’t want it. Far from it; I got a taste of the sweet life at twenty-two, when Dirty’s debut album hit, and all I wanted was more.

  There was a time I’d fucking glutted myself on it.

  And in that life, in the eyes of the world, I was a kind of demigod.

  But in Maggie’s eyes… a failure.

  A man who’d pretty much tricked her into marrying him, then failed to be any kind of decent husband.

  Fact was, I didn’t know how to make her happy, and it fucking killed me. When it came to my relationship with Maggie, I felt like a fucking failure. Every time I looked at her and she looked back at me with those all-seeing gray eyes of hers, I felt like a fucking fraud.