Marked Steel: A Stand Alone Dark Romance (Steel Crew Book 8)
Page 1
Contents
To The Reader
Synopsis
La Défense Arena
Ranger-ed
Monsters
London, England
Fucked Up Again
WiZink Center
Madrid Spain
Art and Culture
Stripped
Back to Black
Making Peace
Wild Things
Unwell
Every Beat
Uncomfortably Numb
RFC, Italy
He Loves Me
Something Extraordinary
First Date
Rome
This is Us
No More Time Apart
He Loves Me Not…
The First Day of Forever
High
Low
A new day
Epilogue
Next In Steel Crew
More Tris and Matteo?
Books by MJ Fields
About the Author
Copyright © 2021 by MJ Fields
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Jersey Girl Designs
Edited by C&D Editing
Proofread by Julie Deaton
Photographer: Wander Aguiar
Model: Andrew
Anchor: Autumn
ISBN: 978-1-954112-25-4
To The Reader
There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line.
~Oscar Levant~
Synopsis
Tris
When a spring flower blooms too early, it often wilts while others blossom during their proper season.
That’s me in a nutshell, and what eventually landed me in the nuthouse.
Through necessity, I found a new passion, one that helps mask the darkness by thrusting me into the spotlight.
Each show is a session, ending in a kiss meant for revenge.
He broke me, and I will make sure I do the same to him.
Matteo
Wealth is the very thing most people desire above all else, except those who have it and know the truth in its empty pleasures.
Love, the ultimate luxury, is the one thing that even the wealthy cannot afford.
I lived without it all of my life, and when I found love, I could no longer live with it.
On my journey from then until now, I have accepted my fate and found solace in molding beautiful things that others can love.
I am a broken man, but I’ll make sure all I leave behind is whole.
This is a story about two broken hearts—one danced in dark and one in light—who were both marked by tragedy yet found love, and together, they created a beautiful life.
La Défense Arena
Paris, France
Tris
“You’ve got this, Tris,” Patrick says loud enough so that I can hear him over the roar of the sold-out show in Paris, France, as he gently squeezes the tension from my shoulders.
I look back at him and roll my eyes dramatically, telling him, no kidding.
He smiles the way he does in a way that is meant to calm me. It does. But, what he doesn’t know is that he isn’t calming my nerves; they have been shot for months. What he is doing is giving me a reminder that I need to calm my monsters.
Closing my eyes, I whisper my mantra, “Note by note.”
In a world full of scrutiny and screaming self-doubt, I’ve found solace in blending sounds together, making music, to drown them out.
My monsters are calmed by taking everything note by note.
“You ready to rock, Trouble?” Finn Beckett, bass guitarist from STD, is standing beside me, his arms crossed over his chest, a slight scowl forming a V between his brows as he looks at the stage from the wing.
Finn loves music, but hates being on stage. On the total opposite side of the proverbial guitar pick is Memphis Black, the lead singer of Steel Total Destruction, which happens to be the band we are opening for on our first ever tour. He loves the spotlight.
Sometimes, I feel like Finn, and sometimes, I feel like Memphis.
The highs and lows of being a teenager blows, and so does the fact that our brains aren’t truly mature until we are close to twenty-five years old. My therapist, Dr. Winslow, assures me that once my hormones are balanced a bit more, and my brain syncs up, I will no longer be inclined to define myself by my past choices, or however it is he is treating me.
By then, I will be better.
I’m getting better.
“Always,” I answer.
“Good luck, One.” Billy, another member of STD, smirks.
Billy calls me One; our bass player, Zoey, Two; Mae, our other electric guitarist, Three; and Rain, our drummer, who happens to be River’s daughter, who is STD’s drummer, is Four.
Keanna, her mom, continues messing with Rain’s pom-pom-like pigtails as she winks at me. “These ladies don’t need luck when they have talent and killer style.”
When this whole music thing started, it was supposed to be just me. I was fine in the studio with Uncle Xavier and Tricks. Even with the radio, podcasts interviews, and performances used as promotion when my one solo single released and hit number one on the pop music charts to help promote the upcoming album and tour. The issue? I didn’t pick up the guitar all that quickly, and Patrick, my cousin, aka Tricks, refused to be on stage. His words, “I wanna stand back and watch you fly.”
The problem for me was that the only time I shined in the past year live, and in living color, was when I went off at Seashore on … him and my “cousins” and ended up getting kicked out of school and spending five days and four nights in the nuthouse. No one, aside from my parents and Momma Joe, my grandmother, know that’s where I was, not even my siblings. Everyone thinks Momma Joe took me on a mini vacation.
Dr. Winslow told me I was giving him power by not using his name.
Marcello had left more black roses in my locker, and I’d had enough of the snickerings from his little gutter whores, my second cousins, so I made them eat them. That probably wouldn’t have gotten me kicked out, but when he pulled me off them, yes, both of them, I proceeded to kick the shit out of him. That probably wouldn’t have caused me to be kicked out, either, but then Ms. Pinkertits, the English teacher who I didn’t even see, and the back swing that gave her a black eye sealed the deal.
Not my finest hour.
Honestly, I don’t even remember most of it, but whatever. It still got me kicked out of that hellhole, a hellhole where black roses bloomed every morning and black clouds hung over me all day, inevitably landing me in the nuthouse.
Rage was something I had never felt before that day. Rage of the blinding, amnesia-inducing type. Rage that is so strong that it took Max and Amias tackling me to the ground and pinning me down to tame.
When the rage faded a bit, things still were fuzzy, like a screen full of static on an old TV, filtering the world around me. That lasted for three days, extending my stay at Chateau de Crazy for another day. Unlike the chateaus in the picturesque countryside surrounding the
city of Paris, they served pills and not wine. The static gone, the itchy fuzziness softened, anger and pain became like a childhood blanket … the only things that comforted me.
After that, I wrote words that made little sense to anyone but me. Patrick and Kiki polished them and made them marketable, while I was finishing my high school career … online.
Online.
It’s been weeks since I have unblocked him—him being Marc—and not once have I not had to force myself to stop doing so.
Keeping busy has definitely been the key.
Busy.
I feel it, my heart beginning to race like it does whenever I think of him, and it sickens me.
I hate him.
He hates me.
I hate him more.
I take a deep breath then exhale slowly. It calms the racing. Well, the imagery of the act does. I picture the black cloud of fog entering my body through my nose, removing it from the space around me, giving me the ability to … see more clearly. See the path in front of me and not the carnage he caused behind me.
Note by note.
I close my eyes and turn from the stage when the first few notes of the medley that Uncle Xavier and Tricks composed, combining “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” “Humpty Dumpty,” “London Bridge,” and a few others ending with “Eeny, meeny, Miny, Moe.” All of them combined brilliantly based on something that I scribbled on a notebook during a particularly “cloudy day” where I was trying to make sense of when my childhood ended, and all the monsters came marching in. That scribbling shaped our forty-five-minute performance as the opening act and was pushing our album up the charts all around the world.
I feel Rain and Mae grab my hands and open my eyes. Zoey walks up beside them and rolls her eyes slightly as she takes their hands. It’s time for our pre-performance ritual, which I find annoying sometimes and comforting at other times.
Today, it’s annoying as fuck.
Because you’re thinking of him.
Marcello.
Rain says her prayer, “Lord, bless this music so that it may spread love. Use our talent to serve You. May Your presence be found in each word and note, to reach hearts of the people, and draw them closer to You. Let Your spirit guide our instruments for peace and Your purpose. Amen.”
My eyes lock with Zoey’s as I wait for her to react, because she always does. But, right now, she’s looking at me with an odd mix of concerned annoyance etched across her face.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re up, Mae,” Tricks says before she can answer.
Mae skips onto the stage in her hot pink attire as the lights begin to rise and the instrumental arrangement continues. Rain is next, wearing a pale pink.
“You better bump up, Tris,” Zoey says as she rubs her finger under her nose. “You look half-asleep.”
“Get out there, Zoey.” Tricks nods toward the stage as he hands me a headset mic.
After slipping it on, I adjust the mic, holding it to my mouth, and start the show the same way I have the other four shows that we have done by asking the question, “Are you ready to play?”
The noise level of the crowd crescendos as I begin the walk from the wing toward the stage.
“Kick ass, kiddo.” Memphis grins as I walk past him, hoping to absorb not only his energy but some from the forty thousand fans gathered here at La Défense Arena to see them and make them my own.
I head center stage, mimicking the smile that is always donned on my sister’s, Brisa, face while staring at the spotlight to blind my view of the crowd to shield them so that I don’t get stage fright, or worse, sick again like I did the first two shows.
I stop at Zoey, and we do our handshake, palm to palm, then grasping thumbs, sliding our hands away, stopping to wiggle our fingers against each other’s, ending with a hair flip, and then on to Rain, doing the same thing but ending with a hip check, and finally Mae, doing the same damn thing and ending with her doing a back flip and me a front, before making my way to the center, in line with “my girls.”
“I can’t hear you, Paris. I asked: are you ready to play?”
The lights begin to change as the instrumental changes from nursery rhymes to our intro song, the first four minutes of the show from our set list, “Are you ready?”
Lined up, we start our over-choreographed dance, side by side, as the arena and stage light up in a kaleidoscope of pinks.
One by one, we take our turns asking the question then striking a pose, starting with Mae. “Are you ready?”
Next Zoey. “Are you ready?”
Then Rain. “Are you ready?”
And me. “Are you ready to play?”
Mae intros herself in song, “Mae be yours, but for now, I’m mine. And, as you can see, I’m doing single just fine. Are you ready to play?”
Then Zoey, “Lipstick stains, horns and flames, get too close, and you’re to blame. Are you ready to play?”
“Thunder, lightning, pouring Rain. I’m a daddy’s girl. Bet you know his name. Are you ready to play?”
The crowd’s noise level raises to a roar, and amongst the cheers, River’s name comes to life.
“Trysts and twists, and kissing games. I’m no one’s girl, but do lay claim. Are you ready to play?”
They scream my name, my heartbeat begins its race, and my insides catch fire. The monsters inside … well, they fucking bow to me and my music.
We shed our cloaks, all made of our signature colors; mine being the only one that’s not of the pink variety—it’s blood red—as the lights dim.
In leather hot pants and halter tops, we start the next song in the set, “Wanna Be,” a bitch-slap in the face to the thunder twat twins. Every one of my band members knows it’s about them, too. And, even though I don’t feel as close to them as we portray, I know, in this instance, that they play it up on stage, sometimes even bigger than I do.
“Crew Love” is the third song Tricks and I wrote about what matters the most: loyalty, friendship, family by choice. It’s a slight contrast to the man-hating and slightly sexual—and only slightly because I have a few more months until I’m eighteen and my father insists—undertone to our set list.
After “Crew Love” and another costume change, we’re all in what I call our power outfits and the dance heavy beginning of our show is over.
Emotions simmer to a rolling boil as I get through “Somewhere In-Between,” “Kiss it Away,” “Love Doesn’t Always Win,” and finally “Red Roses Turn Black,” or, as I call it, “Monsters.”
Burnt and broken, left in the dark.
Never saw it coming, bit like a shark.
Shattered screen, broken dreams.
Tormented by thoughts, your traitorous team.
Loved you, swore it to you, until our very last days.
Caught in a web of deceit, false promises, their childish praise.
Don’t wanna be yours, just wanna be all right,
so I’m gonna kiss someone else tonight.
Chorus
Cruel winter, even crueler spring.
Thought one day, I’d wake from this goddammed dream.
Ebb and flow, like a thawing mountain stream.
Been tossed like waves, turned like a ring.
The only cure, open up and sing.
Didn’t wanna be left.
You were always right;
The whole damn thing, a fight.
Bled and cried in the pouring rain.
I’m on the brink, going insane,
Laying here with my monsters tonight.
Smashed my heart, unrecognizable to me.
The mirror, the crowd cannot see.
Took a swing, killed loves light.
Crushed plans, no longer my knight.
Bended knee, foolish me.
Don’t wanna be yours, just wanna be all right,
so I’m gonna kiss someone else tonight.
Chorus
Cruel winter, even crueler spring.
>
Thought one day, I’d wake from this goddammed dream.
Ebb and flow, like a thawing mountain stream.
Been tossed like waves, turned like a ring.
The only cure, open up and sing.
Didn’t wanna be left.
You were always right;
The whole damn thing a fight.
Bled and cried in the pouring rain.
I’m on the brink, going insane,
Laying here with my monsters tonight.
Don’t wanna be yours, just wanna be all right,
so I’m gonna kiss someone else tonight.
When red roses turn black, never turning back.
Don’t wanna be yours, just wanna be all right,
so I’m gonna kiss someone else tonight.
When red roses turn black, never turning back.
Like every night, pretending it’s part of the act, of course—but it’s not; it’s out of complete need … self-medication for my soul and with a healthy dash of revenge—I jump off the stage and hurry to the closest and least secure part of the barrier between the crowd and stage before the unsuspecting security guard can get to me.
The crowd goes wild, as it always does, while I search for the lucky person to lay my lips on. Someone, anyone. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be a male, and yes, I am so fucking straight that I could be a pin. But the thought that he—Marcello—may see it on some random concert-goers’ live feed, or uploaded video, that I’ve kissed a girl—and although I’m not Katy Perry—“and I liked it,” I love the thought of it making him crazy.