Copyright © 2019 Michelle Mankin
All rights reserved
All rights reserved except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system without prior written permission from the owner/publisher of this book.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Edited by Pam Berehulke
Cover design by Michelle Preast at Indie Book Covers
Formatting by Elaine York at Allusion Graphics
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
About the Author
Other Books by Michelle Mankin
I’m all for the girl power and sh*t.
Guys are a disaster.
Trust me. I know.
My rule is f*ck a guy only once, then move on to the next one.
I’m Josephine Poet.
The Rock F*ck Club reality TV show is no different from my real life. Only there’s cameras rolling, and they’re offering me a ton of cash. The money and publicity are just what Joey’s Band needs. A means to an end for a bad girl who knows how to rock but isn’t looking for anything good.
But what happens when wrong and right collide?
It’s naughty versus nice in Rock F*ck Club’s Season Three.
What could go wrong?
Broken people, hollow dreams.
— “Hollow Dreams,” music and lyrics by Gale Lafleur, Anthem
Josephine
I KNEW BETTER. THIS had disaster written all over it.
And yet here I was, ripping my own heart out by the roots, or ventricles, or whatever the hell the proper anatomical term was.
Why?
Because I deserved every self-inflicted wound.
I couldn’t bring him back. Nothing I did or didn’t do would change anything. There would never be a chance for absolution. So I did ill-advised things like this, things that hurt, things that took a scalpel to my psyche and sliced more brutal cuts into it that would never, ever heal.
“Miss Poet?” the secretary called out.
“Yes.” I stood.
“They’re going into the main auditorium now. Your credentials check out. You can join them, if you wish.”
“Thank you.” I nodded at the woman behind the desk and swiped the clearance badge with my name and picture on it. Then I stepped out of her office and paused in the wide hallway, waiting for the masses to pass.
Slip in, sit in the back row, hear what he has to say, and slip out.
That was my strategy. Then I would go down the hall to attend my private session with the grief counselor, my next-to-last mandated session. Afterward, I had to get across town for our gig at the bar. It was doable.
Without a breakdown like the previous session last month?
Maybe.
As the last of the stragglers behind the crowd shuffled by, I clipped the badge onto the gaping collar of my dress and hitched the strap of my tiny purse higher onto my shoulder. The dress was borrowed from my best friend, Dolly. On her, the hem fell to just below the knees, and the cotton clung to her sexy curves in all the right places. On me, the 1920s-inspired garment was only mid-thigh length. The satin-trimmed bodice gaped over my small tits, and the skirt swam around my narrow hips.
Not that I cared. Looking good to attract the attention of the opposite sex had long ago ceased to be one of my goals.
Entering the auditorium with a capacity for twelve hundred, I noticed that the best seats were already filled. Just as the lights dimmed and the meeting’s host came onstage, I slipped into the empty aisle seat on the last row.
“Welcome to the monthly sobriety meeting for the Dallas Chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Darnell Masters. I’ve been sober twenty-four months and twenty-two days. Today it’s my honor to present our very special guest, Gale Lafleur, lead singer of the rock band Anthem.”
Applauding politely like everyone around me, I leaned forward in my seat as Gale confidently strode to the center of the stage where he belonged. My gaze followed him, noting everything, from his sexy stride to the gentle way he cradled the acoustic guitar strapped to his wide shoulder. He wore a navy button-down shirt and an indigo pair of jeans, the same outfit I’d seen him wear on his last televised interview. The items were his personal clothing. Nothing borrowed would do for the twenty-six-year-old rock star. But the shirt and jeans were looser than I remembered them being when he’d announced his return to his band.
Gale didn’t eat much, or I suspected he didn’t. I never saw him at any of the catered meals provided for the stars and crew of the Gods of Rock tour.
As the drum tech for Tyler Vaughn, the drummer of the rock band Heavy Metal Enthusiasts, I was a crew member, not a star. I looked for Gale at the meals, not obviously, but I was a huge fan. Anthem was off-the-chain good, and he was an amazingly talented songwriter.
But most of my obsession about Gale was due to the fact that he’d weathered a storm similar to mine, and yet he’d found a way to move on, or it seemed like he’d found a way. After all, he was back on tour.
I wanted to know how he managed it.
His voice was sumptuous, like the silk robe my father had brought back to my mother as a souvenir when his band played in Japan. I’d snuck into her closet while they’d been in the living room, doing the drug stuff they did together that occupied them for hours. Wrapping it around my nude body the way I’d watched her do, I enjoyed the way the luxurious fabric flowed over my skin like a lover’s whispered praise.
Gale’s voice was like that. Sensual. Seductive. His eyes upped the indulgence, practically a translucent gray, mercurial to reflect his moods. And somehow . . . impossibly . . . they seemed to be focused right now on me in the very back row.
Huh. Wishful thinking.<
br />
In another world. A different world.
The world before I lost everything that meant anything.
“I’m not here today to point a finger at anyone or to judge them.” Gale shifted his weight from one navy Converse sneaker to the other. His wardrobe girl told me he had a half dozen pairs in different colors. “I only hope that my story will encourage you to remain sober.”
Tears pricked my eyes as I listened to him speak. He was Canadian, his word choice more formal than most, and his voice slightly accented as he lovingly described his wife, his son, and the dreams they’d had for their future. When he spoke of the accident, images from my own experience ricocheted inside my skull.
Once again, I could hear the screech of the brakes.
Smell the smoke from the rubber tires being stripped by the pavement.
Feel the slam of the impact.
The ripping of my flesh.
The terror—
Abruptly, I stood and turned, stumbling awkwardly to the door at the back of the auditorium. It wasn’t far away, but I was shaking, and the metal bar looked wavery due to the wet sheen in my eyes. I swallowed my sob. Depressing the bar, I exited. But not before I heard the first acoustic guitar chord.
Gale was playing the song, the one he’d written eighteen months ago. The last one he’d penned.
Where his muse had faltered since his tragedy, mine wouldn’t shut up. Phrases and words constantly came to me, and I typed them into the notepad on my phone. At night, when I couldn’t sleep, I made melodies and rhymes of the pain that I’d buried inside me, hiding it away.
Swiping the tears from my eyes, I rushed to the nearby restroom so I could calm myself before heading to my therapy session down the hall.
• • •
“So, are you using the techniques my colleague in Florida recommended?” Dr. Ravello glanced at me over the dark rims of his glasses.
“She recommended a lot of things.” I peered at him from my uncomfortable chair on the other side of his massive desk, giving him the cool stare I’d practiced and perfected. None of the therapists I’d seen really wanted to know about the darkness inside me, and how at times it nearly consumed me.
“The breathing exercises. Are they helping you sleep?” he asked.
“I don’t sleep.” The rhythmic breathing and refocusing shit didn’t work for that. Nothing did. But it had helped earlier in the auditorium, preventing a debilitating flashback.
“Everyone has to sleep, Josephine.”
“They might. I don’t.” Instead, I dozed, managing an hour or two at a time here and there.
He glanced down at his laptop screen again, going through his checklist like they all did.
I’d been through twenty-one sessions since the accident, and about that many different therapists. Nearly one for every year of my life, not that it was a real life for me anymore, apart from my bandmates, Dolly and the twins, and the music.
“You listed drum tech as your current occupation, but you didn’t write down your salary. Do you make more money now than you earned at the hair salon?”
“A little more. But the job comes with perks like food and housing.” Housing being a loose term, since in my case, it meant a narrow, cramped bunk, not a house or apartment, or even a bedroom. But it was mine.
I preferred my solitary bunk on the bus. Most of the other techs looked forward to the rare times the tour put us up in a hotel room. They coveted the extra space and reliable hot water. But my main motivation wasn’t my comfort. It was the experience I gained that I could leverage to press for a better wage on the next tour. If Joey’s Band—our band—didn’t break out by some miracle before that next opportunity occurred.
Tyler Vaughn, the handsome man-child drummer for the Enthusiasts, came to my mind since he’d employed me, a percussionist with no actual tech experience, for the current tour. But though he rose to the top of my current thoughts, I immediately toppled him from that position. He was pressuring me, trying to get close. I had to figure out a way to end things with him without getting fired.
“And the daughter of the salon owner, is she still your only friend?”
I nodded. Though I had the twins, Dolly was my best friend. She wouldn’t let me keep her at arm’s length like everyone else.
My hair slid forward with the movement of my head. Turning slightly, I let it remain as a curtain between me and the therapist. A shiny black wall, a flimsy barricade, but it sufficed to keep me on one side and him on the other.
“Her name is Dolly Reynard. Correct?”
“She doesn’t go by that name anymore.”
We had all filed to legally change our last names when we formed the band. No one had a legitimate reason for the change except me. But like so many things, we seemed to fall into doing them together. We were more than a band. We were a cohesive unit, as much as Dolly could manage us into being.
“I know why you’ve changed yours.” He gave me a disapproving look. I saw it through the gaps in my gleaming curtain. Even before the accident, the judgmental condemnation from others when they thought they knew certain things pissed me off. “But why did Dolly change hers?”
“We wanted to have stage names.”
“For the band?”
“Yes.” I tensed. All of the therapists got onto me about this.
He removed his glasses and set them on the desk as he frowned at me. “That’s not your dream, Josephine.”
I swept my hair aside to stare at him. “It is now.”
“You have a degree. There’s no reason you can’t go on to get a teaching certificate. Music and literature go very well together in a liberal-arts-centered curriculum. You’d only need to explain your circumstances to a prospective employer.”
“I’m not explaining shit to anyone.”
No one understood, and no one in my current life knew the whole of my past except my therapists and Dolly. My former life and all that it had contained was over.
Tears stung my eyes, but I stemmed them. Sorrow and regret were pointless emotions. I channeled my energy into one thing, and one thing only.
Achieving his dream.
“EXCUSE ME,” I SAID, my head down and my throat tight as I collided with an immovable man as I charged out of the therapist’s office. Wobbling, I stepped back.
“You seem unsteady.” Gale’s familiar voice slammed recognition into me before the rest of him did. “Let me help you.” Strong hands closed around my upper arms.
Don’t look up from his navy-blue shirt. Don’t note how the individual threads mold ever so finely to his noteworthy chest. Don’t inhale another breath of that incredible what-the-hell-cologne-is-it scent.
Just move.
Move now.
“I’m just a little unbalanced.” Focusing on his navy sneakers, I shrugged loose from his gentle grip, ignoring the tingling pleasure that lingered on my skin from his touch. “I have to go.”
I quickly skirted around him. With tears threatening, I needed to be someplace alone to release them.
“I saw you at the assembly,” he said as he jogged alongside me. “You were in the last row, the seat on the aisle.”
“I had an appointment. I was sad I missed your song.” Walking fast in the long corridor, I ducked my head, hiding behind the black fall of my hair.
“You were talking to a grief counselor. I saw the sign on the door you came out of.”
Gale touched me, a coaxing caress with the pads of his calloused fingers along the length of my arm from my elbow down to my wrist, yet my skin burned as though it were dry kindling and his touch a spark.
“You’re upset. You shouldn’t drive. Stop for a minute. Don’t go outside yet.” He moved in front of me. “Please don’t get in a car and drive.” His plea was earnest, his voice radiating the warmth of his concern.
“I’m not driving.” My chin remained tucked to my chest, my head down. “Some friends dropped me off. I’ll take the Dart bus.”
“Let me take you wh
ere you need to go,” he murmured, his voice low and soothing.
“No. You can’t.”
Too seduced by Gale’s care and concern, I lifted my head, even though I knew I shouldn’t. The curtain drew back, and electricity crackled like a bolt of lightning when my eyes met his.
“Whoa! I mean . . . wow, you’re pretty.” His silver moonlit gaze drifted over my features, his perusal nearly as tangible as his caress had been.
“Thank you.” Blushing, I dove headlong into his fathomless liquid metal eyes, not even trying to disguise the pleasure his compliment gave me.
“You’re welcome.” He shifted his weight from one sneaker to the other. “I’m sorry. You’re going to have to help me out here. I’m usually better with words, but I’m out of practice. I don’t know how to do this anymore. I had someone. You know I had someone. Everyone knows what happened. It’s just that up until now, I’ve never been interested in talking to anyone else.”
“I’m . . .” I paused to find the right words, wanting to be as honest. “I’m flattered. But I’m not who you think. I mean, I’m not like her, like your wife.”
I stared down at my feet, shifting from one foot to the other like he had. The metal on my black boots jangled like my nerves suddenly did. I’d borrowed the dress from Dolly, but the shoes, the cropped top, and the leggings underneath, all the rest was just me. And I wasn’t worthy of Gale’s interest or anyone else’s.
“I’m not looking for a replacement.” He slipped his curved finger under my chin and lifted my head. “I just want to give you a ride.” His eyes searching mine, he dipped his hand into the darkness of my hair on one side and brushed it over my shoulder. “Let me do that. Please. Let me take you where you need to go. I want to talk to you some more.”
“Yes,” I said, agreeing without thinking. Correction . . . I didn’t want to think when he was looking at me and touching me. I just wanted to drown in his warm approval.
“Great.” He grinned. The way his dark brows slanted low over his quicksilver eyes made him look studiously serious, even when he was obviously pleased. “My bike’s in the parking lot over there.”
ROCK F*CK CLUB (Girls Ranking the Rock Stars Book 5) Page 1
