“No cherry talk!” Larissa complained. “It’s bullshit. If boys lose their virginity when they’re thirteen, they’re studs. Girls have cherries that need popping. It’s degrading and medieval.”
“He’s not into me,” I informed them, kinda gritting my teeth. I’d already told them so, many times.
For some reason, they didn’t believe me.
Plus, I hated that my ongoing virgin status had become open to group discussion at all times. Like the older I got and the longer I stayed a virgin, the more invested my friends seemed to get in whether or not I lost it and with whom… and when, where and how.
They were probably taking bets at this point.
“The pig and I have a solid, hateful truce going on right now,” I told them, “and it works for us just fine. I’d like to leave it that way.”
Larissa actually laughed. Then she choked a little when I shot her a look.
“What?” I snapped.
“Um. Ladypants,” Shay addressed me. She only called me ladypants when she was dosing me with #TheTruth, as she saw it. “Did you not just see him hovering over you? He may as well have just rolled out his dick and slapped it in your mouth.”
“Rolled?” Larissa said.
“You know he’s got a long dick. Hello? Drummer? Look at those hands.”
“Can you please stop talking about his body parts?” That was me, desperate to get them off this runaway train. The one my friends hopped onboard every time Xander came around, or came up in conversation. “It’s not like that.”
“Oh, he’s got a thing for you, fo sho,” Shayla insisted. “And it’s called an erection.” She took a swig of her blueberry stuff like she was congratulating herself on her observational skills.
“Uh, no. No, he doesn’t,” I corrected her. “I’m just a child, remember? One who doesn’t belong among the grownups. He told me so.”
Shay made an exasperated sound and rolled her eyes at Larissa. “Can you please talk some brains into her, smart girl?”
Larissa looked me over thoughtfully. Her gaze lingered on my blue bikini. “I don’t think it’s possible for any man, no matter what he thought of you previously, to still think you’re a child after he sees you in that. So, no matter what he thought of you, that’s done now.”
“Yup,” Shay agreed. “Done. Just like your virginity is gonna be by the end of the summer. Hashtag: prediction.”
I ignored Shay; I expected this shit from her. I frowned instead at Larissa. “Who’s side are you on?”
“Yours,” Larissa said. “But that doesn’t change facts.”
Shay sighed dramatically. “You’re the one who labelled him a slut—”
“Um, no,” I cut her off, “I think the female population at large awarded him that label.”
“And if that’s the case…” She looked me over. “Yeah. He’d do you in a second.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because he doesn’t like me that way.”
“You are so old fashioned. He doesn’t have to like you to fuck you.”
“I think that’s true,” Larissa said, wrinkling her nose. “Unfortunately. But I think it’s better if he does. I mean, not him. Just… in general.”
“You should put it to a test,” Shayla said.
“A test?”
“Yeah. Find out what he really thinks of you. You’ve got the power, babe, and it’s in your bra. Like, if I were you, and I had your boobs, I’d wear that in front of him,”—she pointed at my bikini, wiggling her finger at my chest—“and get close to him somehow. Put my nips in his face or something. See how he reacts.”
Right. What a great idea.
And another opportunity for him to ignore me. Because my boobs had a power, alright. In Xander’s presence, they had a superpower.
They became invisible.
“What if I don’t want him to react?”
My friends looked at each other.
“What does that look mean?” I demanded.
“Leave her alone,” Larissa said. “Every time you bug her about him, she gets that look on her face.”
“What look?”
“The one where you look like you just sucked on a dirty dish rag,” Shayla supplied.
“Because he’s that filthy,” I said.
“Filthy… delicious,” Shay replied.
I scowled.
“Yup, there it is. Dirty dish rag face.”
“I. Don’t. Like. Him.”
I didn’t. My feelings for Xander Rush went so far beyond like to something so totally warped and disturbing, I wouldn’t even try to explain it to my friends.
“Okay, okay.” She rolled her eyes. “So no hot drummer for you this summer.” She looked to Larissa. “Let’s get back to the pool boy…”
The two of them got talking about Stephan, but I really wasn’t listening anymore.
Instead, I was trying to process everything they’d just said. And imagine how it might play out… if I took Shayla’s advice.
Would Xander react to me in a bikini? If I put my boobs right in his face…?
Would I want him to?
I could still remember the look on his face, vividly, that night in his car… three weeks ago. And a shiver ran right through me. Just like it did that night.
Because that night, he’d definitely looked at me.
Did I really want him to look at me like that again?
Yes. Of course I did.
Warped.
I told myself to just forget about it. Like I did on a daily basis. Try to put that look right out of my mind.
He didn’t really mean it.
He was just trying to scare you off.
Xander Rush is never going to look at you that way and actually mean it.
I knew that was true.
So why couldn’t I stop wishing that he would?
Chapter Four
Xander
I met my buddy, Trey, at his gym downtown around one o’clock. One of the perks of being a rock star—or in Trey’s case, a self-made multimillionaire? You did pretty much everything, including working out, whenever the fuck you wanted to.
The gym was on the seventeenth floor of the high-rise where Trey lived. He had the penthouse level on the eighteenth, and this was his private gym.
“Trey Fucking Jones,” I greeted him as I walked in the door, and we slapped hands. The brother hugged me and looked me over.
“Xander Rush. Where the hell have you been?”
“On tour, the fuck do you think?”
Honestly, it hadn’t been that long; I’d seen him three weeks ago. And he knew exactly where I’d been.
Was nice to be missed, though.
“Isn’t that done yet?”
I followed him into the gym; he was holding his cell phone like he was still on a call. He was usually on a call. “It is now.”
“About time.” Trey knew, as all my good friends knew, that I’d been itching to be done with that tour from pretty much the moment it started.
“Yup.”
He waved me over to the treadmills so he could finish up on his call. I dropped my gym bag and headed over, got on a treadmill and started jogging, and when he finished up, he came over to join me.
“Always in demand, you,” I ribbed him.
“Always,” he said, looking me over. “You’re getting soft, I see.”
I chuckled. If anything, I was in better shape now than when I’d left at the start of this tour. Nothing like exercising like a madman to work out the frustrations I’d had with my band members. None of whom ever hit the gym with me.
Just one of the many ways we didn’t gel.
Trey got on the treadmill beside me, setting his phone on a mount on the front of it. He turned on some music; April Wine’s “Roller” started rolling out the surround sound speakers, and we got running. The treadmills faced a giant wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked northwest, over the trees of Stanley Park.
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“So tell me what’s new in Trey Town,” I said.
“I just bought the McCawley-Laughlin tower,” he said, super fucking casual. And damn, the man was smooth. He could’ve been telling me which socks he’d put on this morning.
“The whatnow?”
“Well, it’s the BHR Tower now.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I’d never heard of the McCawley-Laughlin tower, but I knew Trey had been looking to buy an office tower in downtown Vancouver, somewhere in the financial district, for the last few years.
“Deal went through on Monday,” he said. “Brick House Records is now the soon-to-be resident of the twenty-first and twenty-second floors. My office will be on the twenty-third. Top floor, baby.”
“You absolute fucker.”
He grinned and tapped his phone, and the song switched; the Commodores’ “Brick House” started playing, and he did this slow-motion strut/dance thing on his treadmill, as only Trey could.
“Thinking of getting some modeling agencies to move in down below…” he added, just fucking rubbing it in. “You know, see those honeys in the elevator.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“You gotta come by and check it out.”
“I will.”
He grinned wider, and I shook my head.
I’d met Trey years ago, when we were just teenagers. Sixteen or something. At the time, I was a major fucking geek who lived and breathed music and even back then, before either of us had amounted to shit in the music scene, I was not cool enough to hang with the Trey Joneses of the world.
I knew this.
So I made it my mission in life to master the drums, make myself indispensable in the music scene in Vancouver.
That, and I knew everyone.
I made friends with a lot of guys like Trey, because I knew one day, maybe they’d make it, even if I didn’t. And maybe they’d remember me.
By the time we were eighteen, Trey was working security at a lot of gigs I played, and eventually we played together in a local band; that was back when Trey played guitar. He didn’t do that much anymore. Too busy with all his other endeavors, really. He’d never amounted to much as a musical artist.
Instead, he’d migrated out to Toronto, where he did get discovered.
By a modeling scout.
We’d all laughed about that—until we saw him on TV.
The guy made a ton of cash stalking runways and doing broody shit for the camera in wet T-shirts and unbuttoned jeans.
But music was his first love.
That, and making money.
So while I was hustling my way through the Vancouver bar scene, trying to find a decent band to rock out with, Trey was traveling the globe as a model and meeting everyone under the sun. He worked his ass off, making connections, and made his way into talent scouting—in music, not modeling. Then A&R, signing bands for a record label out of Toronto.
Then he opened his own indie record label, Brick House, based in Vancouver.
Then he started putting a lot of his money into real estate, investing. The guy was a brilliant businessman.
Now, Trey Jones was a one man empire. Though, to me, he was just Trey. We’d been workout buddies since way back, when maybe he took pity on the scrawny geek that I was and kinda took me under his athletic wing.
We’d stayed tight over the years, and every time I saw him, seemed like he was even more successful.
It was good to have people like Trey in my life. People who could inspire me, remind me never to settle. And make me feel like a fucking loser whenever I dared drag my heels.
“You sign anyone new lately?” I asked him.
“Yup. This sweet little honey, right out of the prairies. Got a voice like an angel on the verge of an orgasm. She’s gonna go mad viral.”
“Nice.”
“The best part? She’s sixteen. Gotta sign them young, before someone else does.”
“How come no one signed us when we were that young?”
“Because we fucking sucked.”
I laughed.
“Who knows…” he said. “Maybe you and I finally ink a deal. This year gonna be the year we do it, brother?”
“Maybe…”
He raised an eyebrow. “You going solo?”
“Yeah, for sure. Everyone wants to hear a drummer play a full album by himself.”
Trey laughed. “I can hook you up, baby. Hot lineup, best writers, best producers around. Toastin’ singles like fresh bread.”
“Sounds dope. Speaking of hot lineups, though…” I hadn’t told him yet, but now that I was off tour… I’d already mentally split with my band, would soon split with them for real, and I was officially seriously considering the only worthwhile professional offer I’d received lately—and I definitely wanted his take on it. “Ashley Player asked me to join his new band. He’s putting something together with DJ Summer. He said they’re bringing in Brody Mason to manage.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Alright. So here’s what you do. Before you sign any shit with Brody Mason, you bring it to me. Let me look it over with you.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
“And if you do that deal with Brody, and you wanna bring me Ashley Player and DJ Summer, I’ll sign you guys to Brick House Records. We bring Cary in, get him producing down at Little Black Hole, and off we go. Number one shit, straight out the door.”
“Sounds great.”
I knew Trey meant it, too.
These days, there was street Trey and there was office tower Trey, and anytime you talked to office tower Trey, street Trey was in there too, calculating the best way to alleviate you of whatever he could leverage out of you. Music. Talent. Money. The man was brilliant at making money, even more brilliant, maybe, at connecting, marketing and distributing talent.
Everything I’d need with my new band.
I was done with caving in, letting my bandmates choose our management, our record label—choose every-fucking-thing, when I knew in my gut they were getting it all wrong. Just because I was the drummer and I sat in the fucking back didn’t mean I was taking a backseat to that shit anymore. I’d done that for years, to try to appease everyone the fuck else, and look where it got me.
Starting all over again, at the age of thirty. Like the last ten years of my life, drumming my ass off all over the world, amounted to little more than nothing.
“Don’t know if Cary’ll be on board with that, though,” I told him, honestly.
He looked at me for a moment, considering. People almost always got awkward when Cary’s name came up.
Even people as smooth as Trey.
“How’s my blond brother doing?” he asked.
“Not so fucking good. We, uh, got word last week from the lawyers.” I cleared my throat. Always fucking uncomfortable to talk about it. “Joseph Fetterman—you know, the guy who set the fire… He died. In prison.”
“Damn, Xan. That’s dark shit.” Trey eyed me sidelong. “Not good news, though, I guess?”
“I don’t know. It’s news. Cary’s kinda… I don’t fucking know. He never talks to me about that shit anymore.”
“Right.”
Silence fell.
Even Trey seemed to come up short. No one really knew what the fuck to say about Cary’s… situation… anymore.
“Well,” he said, “when you see him, you tell him I said hey. Tell him to swing by and check out the tower, maybe we can work something out. New studio space… whatever he might be looking for. I can set him up in an office. You know, change of scenery. Might do some good?”
“Thanks, man. I’ll tell him.”
Sure, I’d tell him. It wouldn’t do any good, though.
As far as I knew, Cary hadn’t left his property in four years. He barely saw anyone besides me and his sister. His mom and dad, on occasion. His housekeeper. The occasional persistent friend who managed to sweet talk their way behind the soundproofed doors.
>
Even the bands he’d produced these last four years never got to actually meet him. They recorded their albums at Little Black Hole, he produced the albums from his home studio.
He wasn’t gonna suddenly open up shop in some skyscraper downtown and start taking meetings.
“So what’s happening with those Steel Snatch boys?” Trey poked, gently changing the subject.
Yeah, Trey had always called my band Steel Snatch. To him, Steel Trap sounded too much like Steel Pussy. Just another thing I could’ve listened to his counsel on when we’d first set out, but didn’t, because I didn’t want to step on my bandmates’ toes.
“Going their separate ways,” I said. “I mean, I’m going my separate way. Don’t know about the rest of them. Don’t really care. I’m over it.”
He hardly looked surprised. “You’ve talked to the boys upstairs?”
By that, I knew he meant band management, the record company.
“Soon. But if I go with Ashley Player, Brody Mason will probably take over anyway.”
“You want my advice…”
“I do.”
“For the chance to be managed by Brody Mason, I’d probably take Ashley Player’s offer. Especially if DJ Summer’s onboard. Girl is infernal-hot. Though I’d still run it be me first… and make sure you sign with the hottest record label around, of course.”
Of course.
Hard to say, just yet, how it would all fit together, though. I hadn’t even decided yet if I was joining Ash and Summer’s band, so I wasn’t exactly ready to start talking about signing a record deal.
“That would be sweet. Dirty’s been working with Woo for so long, though…” I broached the subject carefully, hoping it wouldn’t piss him off. Dirty was the biggest rock band to come out of Vancouver in the last decade, and Brody was their manager. Woo was their record producer. Love Street Records was the label Dirty had been signed to their whole careers, and Jesse Mayes, Dirty’s lead guitarist, was now co-producing their albums with Woo. I didn’t know if working with Brody would naturally extend to Woo and Jesse producing our album, but if I joined Ash and Summer’s band, I’d definitely be hoping it would. “Jesse Mayes has been producing with him, the last few years… I was hoping we’d maybe head in that direction. Pretty sure if we get Woo, though, he’d want us down in L.A., at Love Street.”
Filthy Beautiful: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players #2) Page 6
