ROCK F*CK CLUB (Girls Ranking the Rock Stars Book 5)

by Michelle Mankin

  “When you’re given very little, it’s all you think you deserve.” I knew Ivan’s background too. But I especially knew Josephine’s.

  “Yes. That’s it exactly. And there’s something bad that happened with her brother. She didn’t tell me. Dolly won’t tell me, but—”

  “Ty. You’re a good friend, but you have to know. The things in her heart and the stuff she shared with me in confidence aren’t mine to pass on to you.”

  He sighed. “I agree. Normally, I’d stay the fuck out of shit like this. Only I’ve got friends on both sides of this, and I care about you both.”

  “Care about you too.” My throat tightened like it was back inside that frayed noose again. “You were a lifeline for me.”

  “I’m still here for you, and this is me extending that line to help a brother out. You’re as fucking dense as Ivan sometimes. And her too. Jo.”

  Tyler hit me with a firmer version of his previously firm look.

  “She won’t yield. Unless you force her to yield, or at least that was my experience. I thought it was all just fun and games, but looking back, I realize that was all she would allow. For sex, that might be okay. But forced capitulation isn’t the way into anyone’s heart. Especially not hers, if getting into it and staying there is what you’re after.”

  Josephine

  “SO, WHAT’S THE REAL scoop?” Drying the ends of my hair with my towel, I dropped onto on the edge of Dolly’s bed.

  “On what?” She set down her phone and adjusted the pillow on her lap, sitting up straighter so her back was propped up against the headboard.

  “Tyler Vaughn, of course.” I didn’t think the clarification was necessary. She’d been texting him just now; I was sure of it.

  “We’re just fooling around.”

  Rather than reply, I just squinted my disbelief at her.

  Dolly shrugged. “He has a big cock, and he knows how to use it.”

  Giving her a knowing look, I said, “That’s exactly what I told Marsha.”

  Dolly gave me wide I got busted eyes.

  I yanked away her pillow shield and held it over my head. “I will beat the truth out of you, if necessary.” I waggled my brows. “Your shield can now be used as a weapon against you.”

  She sighed, giving in. “I’m into him. There’s a lot of depth under that gruff exterior of his to like. Reminds me of someone else I know. Someone who also needs to realize that a shield intended to guard her heart can end up doing more damage to it than has already been done.”

  “Dolly.” I dropped the pillow. “Don’t start up again.”

  “I’m giving you major truth about me. You need to give me some about you and Gale.”

  “That head injury didn’t soften your pushiness one bit.”

  “Not when it comes to you.”

  Or me with her, apparently.

  “So,” I said, “tell me more about you and Ty. You were standing watch over him like a lioness until he opened his eyes.”

  “You’re not the only one who can be strong and protect the ones you care about.”

  “You’re actually serious about him.”

  As I fell back onto my rear in the bed, my tits jiggled in my bralette. Dolly’s gaze dipped to them, but her eyes didn’t darken with interest like they would have in the not-so-distant past.

  Astonished, I gaped at her. “I’ve been replaced in your affections.”

  “You can never be replaced,” she said, her sincerity completely transparent.

  “It’s okay, doll. I know you love me, and I love you. I’m glad for you about Ty, glad for him. Anyone you care for is blessed. Your heart is an endless well of empathy. I just want you to be sure you look after you too, and that you’re careful. That you make sure he refills some of what he takes. You’re too generous with your affection.”

  Dolly huffed out a breath. “You’re the opposite. But walls of granite can crumble. The fallout can crush you, leave you alone and living, but dead inside all the rubble.”

  “I know,” I grumbled.

  “Do you?” She cocked her head. “Why weren’t you with Gale at the hospital? You aren’t the only one upset today. He looked so haunted back in those sterile white corridors in the ER.”

  “He didn’t ask me to stay with him.”

  She gave me a disappointed frown. “He shouldn’t need to ask, Jo.”

  “That’s not what we are.”

  “That’s not true.” Her eyes were truth-seeking missiles, like his often were. Maybe heavy artillery was needed to bash through the walls of my defenses.

  “Okay, you’re right.” I curled my fingers so tight, my nails imprinted my palms, and I winced.

  Dolly noticed . . . of course she noticed. Her expression softening, she scooted close, reaching for and prying open my hands.

  “You got that at the wreck.” She shook her head at the cut in my palm before lifting her head. “Trying to get to me, without concern for your own safety. You’re not easy to love, Jo.” It was difficult not to glance away to avoid the unfiltered truth in her gaze. “But you’re worthy of it. What’s it going to take for you to finally believe that?”

  A firm knock sounded on the door, and before we could move, someone called through it.

  “Josephine.”

  Gale’s dream-inducing voice slipped in through the loose seal around the frame. It had gotten through the layers, the walls, and all the bullshit around my heart. Apparently, it could seduce wood too.

  Surprise rounded my eyes, then realization made them narrow on Dolly. “You were texting Gale our room number. I assumed you were texting Ty.”

  “It was both. I can multitask.” Her eyes twinkled like pine needles dipped in dew reflecting the early morning light. Slipping off the bed in her cutesy powder-puff-pink pajamas, she unbolted and threw open the door. “What took you so freaking long?” she asked him, cocking her hip and fisting her hand on it.

  “I was busy talking to another interfering party.”

  His gaze left hers and latched onto mine. I felt so much looking into his eyes.

  “Concern and caring can be misconstrued,” Dolly said into the silence that followed. “They can be dismissed as pity or superficial kindness, or they can be a reflection of something deeper inside your heart. Tell her how you feel, Gale. This day has been terrible. We could use a little beauty and some hope to hold on to.”

  Gale shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Don’t you have someplace else you could go?”

  “No.” She shook her head, and my lips twitched, even though I was nervous as hell. “Jo and I are family. Lark and Linnet too. We’re a package deal. You want one of us, you get all. You’re a front man. I think you get that.”

  “I do.” He took one step toward me, his gorgeous gray eyes locked on me, where I wished they would always remain. “Josephine.” Those eyes turned shiny bright. “I missed you today.”

  I gave him a small smile. “We’ve hardly been apart.”

  “Nevertheless, I felt every single one of those hours.”

  “Gale . . .” Overcome, I swooned inside. Beauty, light, and hope in the fallout of ashes.

  “Let me finish. Don’t tell me to stop.”

  “Okay.” My eyes widened.

  “I needed you today, but I fucked up after the desert. I wanted to help you, but instead I hurt you. So I didn’t feel like I had a right to ask you to stand beside me.”

  My eyes burned from his words and the increased intensity in his gaze.

  “I hate hospitals,” he said. “Almost as much as I hate the set of circumstances that took Diana and Devon from me. But I love you more, if you would allow me to again.”

  “Gale.” I took a step forward, wanting to stand beside him. Right or otherwise, it was where I belonged. To be there, I would fight him, fight myself, or whoever I needed to.

  “Wait.” He held up a hand. “There’s more that needs to be said. I have a secret of my own that I should’ve been brave enough to share like
you did. I thought about that on the bike with you holding me from practically one state to another.”

  He raked a trembling hand through his hair. I wasn’t the only one nervous.

  Glancing between us, Dolly stood up. “Maybe I should leave.”

  “No. Stay,” he told her while his gaze remained steady on mine. “My wife didn’t die at the scene. Neither did my son. You probably know that; it’s public knowledge. But she could have lived, or I believe she might have found the will to live, if Devon hadn’t died first.”

  “Oh, Gale.” I ignored his hand this time and brushed it out of the way. It was an impediment.

  I threw my arms around him and closed them, hugging him tight. There were no words to make his pain go away, but there was love. Love made you less alone with your grief. No matter how much rubble we had to climb over to be together, shared wounds hurt less.

  I tipped my head back and took a chance, sharing the unshielded truth of what was in my heart. “I love you, Gale.”

  “I haven’t finished.” His eyes softened as he stared down at me, but he didn’t return my embrace. “You don’t know the rest. You don’t know how I failed her. How I harbor resentment toward her for leaving me. I’m not the good guy you think I am.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re better.”

  Gale’s arms came up then, and he wrapped them tightly around me. So tight, my lungs practically collapsed, yet I suddenly felt like I could breathe easily again.

  “Can I tell you the rest?” he asked softly.

  “If you need to.”

  “Maybe not.” His eyes searched mine.

  Their silver surface wasn’t reflective now, but absorbent. Because I felt the warmth of the sun in a wide-open blue sky, and the depth of that warm radiant heat had to be my own. For surely, he couldn’t love me as much as I loved him.

  “I need to speak it. I think for us to move forward into the future, we both need to be free of our past.”

  “Yes. I want a future with you, Gale. That was why I couldn’t keep my secrets from you, not any of them.”

  “I do too, Josephine. It’s what I wanted from nearly the beginning. But I must say that knowing you have faith in me, that you love me without even knowing everything, gives me the courage to say what I need to say to tell you all of it.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I did, actually.” His mouth curved on the one side.

  I lifted my hand to cup his face. I wanted to anchor that touch of amusement. “It’s not courage to recognize courage in another, Gale, or strength to recognize strength.”

  “No, it’s a miracle, a chance for absolution for both of us. A kind of grace I never expected to find. Love, hope, and a chance for happiness I never want to let go of. But like you, I want to move forward without anything between us.”

  He set me from him and pulled in a breath.

  “I went to Diana first at the hospital. But she refused to go back to surgery without seeing Devon beforehand. He died before we could get him to her, and she died within moments of getting the news.”

  His eyes filled, and mine did too.

  “That’s terrible.”

  Gale shook his head. “I’m terrible. I’m worse. For being mad at her for not fighting harder to live. For loving our son more than me. For leaving me alone in a world without both of them.”

  “You’re not terrible.” A tear spilled, leaving a warm trail on my cheek, a familiar path. “You’re not bad. There are more grays in this world than absolutes. Those are your feelings. You’re not perfect, but you’re you. You’re trustworthy and honest, loving and loyal. Diana is gone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be angry at her and still love her. You’re a sensitive man who’s hurting and misses his family.”

  “Loved.” He reached for me. His eyes were storm clouds flashing with lightning, but he bridged the distance between us. “I loved her, Josephine. And now, I love you. I refuse to deny it. I would be betraying not only her but my own heart not to love you.”

  “And I love you, Gale. She’s gone, the past is gone, but you’re here and so am I. I’ll always be here for you, if you’ll have me.”

  “I’ll have you,” he said, yet shook his head. “But I’m not worthy of you, Jo.”

  “I don’t think love is a matter of earnings and worth. I think it’s a connection. It’s you and me and the complete whole we make together.”

  I got my hands in his hair, threading my fingers in the satiny bounty of it. My brow creased as I searched his eyes and my mind for the words I wanted.

  “You showed me what love is in the desert. It’s about being a light for someone else. It’s about kindness, concern, and understanding. It’s about acknowledging the darkness, but deciding when all is known, to choose to walk in the light you make together.”

  “GALE, YOU STILL AWAKE?” I whispered.

  He was in the hotel bed, behind me. Dolly was in front, facing me.

  Declarations followed a terrible tragedy. Hope after hopelessness. Light after unbearable darkness. Love after loss. It was a new world, but the players were familiar, and no one, not even my best friend, wanted to be alone tonight.

  “Yeah.” He groaned and tightened the arm he had around my waist. “Impossible to sleep with you in that lingerie you call pajamas and your sexy ass cradling my cock.”

  “Shhh. Keep your voice down. Dolly’s finally asleep.”

  I reached out and stroked her hair. After inviting Gale to stay with us for the night, I’d brushed her hair smooth, then plaited it into one long French braid. Her head had started to nod before I’d tied off the end. The adrenaline fueling her, fueling all of us since the accident, had burned itself out.

  “Why’d you want to know if I was awake?” His warm breath brushed over my ear, making my scalp tingle and my body shimmer with pleasure.

  “Because I can’t sleep.”

  “We could slip out of this bed and go to the other one. Plenty of stuff we could do together, if you’re not tired.”

  “I can’t,” I said with a sigh. “I mean, I could. I want to, but it wouldn’t be right.”

  “She would be jealous.”

  I bit back a laugh. “No, she’d probably want to join in.”

  “Probably?”

  “She’s with Tyler now.”

  “I thought so.”

  “But it’s more that I don’t want to leave her. If she wakes up and finds us together, it’ll seem to her like she isn’t a priority to me.”

  “I get that.”

  “Dolly is a priority.”

  “I know, Jo.”

  I pulled in a deep breath and shared one of the last pieces of the puzzle. “After I got released, no one would hire me. I discovered people were just as cruel outside prison as they were inside. I believed . . .”

  My voice caught, snagged on the sharp edges of ugliness from the past. With no more secrets, no more protective layers remaining between me and Gale, it was easier to regain my voice and continue.

  “I used to believe I deserved all the bad things that happened to me.” I curled my fingers tightly over his where they rested just beneath my breastbone, needing the reminder that this was now and that was then.

  “You’re not terrible or bad. Those are your feelings.” Gale gave my words from earlier back to me. “You made a wrong choice and you paid the ultimate price, losing the only person who loved you.”

  “That’s what Dolly said. Even when I was covered in dirt, she saw that and the potential inside me.” I stared at her pretty face. She was beautiful, but it was her soul that took my breath away. “She talked her mom into hiring me and letting me sleep in the storage room. Every day, she came in early, shared her breakfast with me, and talked to me like I was just a normal person. I can’t tell you how crucial that was, how much it meant to me.”

  “She’s very kind.”

  “She is, but she was more than that. She helped me process what happened to me inside. I was so young when I went in. Only
the one sexual partner, one sexual experience. Most of the girls knew more than me, and they took advantage. Inside, they make sexual favors a commodity. I did things to survive that I didn’t want to do. I grew ashamed of my sexuality. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to accept physical affection again, and I wasn’t even certain when I got out if I would want a man or a woman to touch me again. I didn’t really even like myself. But Dolly helped me find my way, find myself. She was the first person to really love me besides my brother. But she wasn’t easy on me. She made me work to find my own way, to be who I wanted to be.”

  “Knowing yourself is the most important thing in all of this.” Marsha had said that about the RFC, and she was right. But it applied here too.

  I carefully turned over in the bed, flipping from my left side, facing Dolly, to my right side, facing Gale. I placed my hands on his chest, waiting until I registered the pounding of his steady heartbeats before I glanced up. His light gray eyes sparkled in the semidarkness. Aglow from his compelling soul, they were the stars I planned to steer my life by from here on out.

  “I might have started the process of discovering myself with Dolly, Gale, but I’m very much looking forward to continuing my life with you.”

  “We’re on a shared path going in the same direction,” he said softly like a vow, and I was brought back to the desert again, just the two of us and the limitless canopy of the star-filled night sky stretched over our heads. “Two imperfect souls making their way together in an imperfect world. You might have imperfections, Jo, but you’re you, and to me, you are amazing.”

  He returned to my earlier words and added to them, confirming, though there was no longer any doubt, that he was the one for me.

  “The circumstances you endured would have crushed a weaker person. But you did more than endure, you overcame them.” He covered my hands with his. “I had to get on my bike and go away to reclaim my life. But you dug deep and found your best parts, because they were always there inside you. You’re strong, sacrificial, brave, and protective. Dolly might have helped point those things out, but she didn’t devise them. You’re the hero in your own story, and it’s your hero’s heart that I fell in love with. Your love beams bright like a beacon. It transforms the darkness, not just for you, but for everyone around you.”