I stopped dry-humping her long enough to force out, “I can’t. Jessa… it can’t be like this.”
“Okay,” she panted back.
“It can’t be like it was, either.”
“I know.”
Then she kissed me again and I dove right back in.
Harder than before, faster, deeper, my head spinning with hunger, because it was Jessa and I had no self-control left when it came to her. I’d burned it out over the last God-knew-how-many years, wanting her, chasing her, waiting for her, trying to hate her, trying like hell to get over her and failing… jerking myself raw just wishing I had her… going goddamn insane without her.
“Jesus, Jessa.” I tore my mouth away from hers. “It’s been seven years. You can’t—”
“Six-and-a-half.”
I shook my head as I fought to catch my breath. “You can’t do this shit to me.”
She chewed on her flushed bottom lip. She was still gripping my neck, her chest heaving against mine. “I’m not doing anything.”
“Like hell, you’re not.”
“What am I doing?”
“I don’t know, but it feels bloody familiar. You. Wasted. Wrapping yourself around me.” I still had her by her hips, my fingers digging into her. Afraid to let her go even as my words pushed her away. “How many times did you climb into my bed after some party? You drove me fucking crazy.” I pressed into her, grinding myself into her softness, unable to stop. “Let me guess. You’re just waiting for my balls to turn blue before you put the brakes on.”
She pulled back, releasing me. “I was young and immature, Brody.”
“You were old enough to know what the fuck you were doing.”
She struggled in my grasp, trying to break away, but I held her. I wasn’t letting go. “You think that’s who I am?” she asked, still struggling. “That’s who I want to be? The girl who left? The girl who just up and leaves everybody hanging?”
“That’s who you were,” I said. “Who the hell else am I supposed to think you want to be?”
She stared at me, her glassy eyes getting glassier as they gleamed with tears. Then she whispered, “It’s your shirt. Your Zeppelin shirt. You were right. I’ve been wearing it for years.”
Jesus.
Not something I ever expected her to say. I didn’t even know what to do with it. “Jessa—”
“Shit! I left it down on the dock. I have to get it!”
I caught her as she tried to eject herself from the counter and set her back down. “Yeah, not happening. You are not gonna ruin Jesse’s wedding because you got swept out to sea over a fucking T-shirt.”
She shook her head slowly. “You’re still mad at me.”
I pulled away, letting her go as the blood crept back into my brain. “Yes, I’m mad at you. You ran out on everyone, Jessa. You should’ve seen what that did to Jesse. To the band. What it did to Seth—”
“Don’t.”
She pushed past me, stumbling off the counter, and reached to shut off the bath water, which was about to overflow. “You can go now,” she said as she started to step into the tub, still wearing her panties and bra. “I’ll be fine.”
“Fuck. That,” I spat out. She stood there, blinking at me as I stalked over to the tub. “I waited for you for years. I gave you everything I had to give. I gave you all the space in the fucking universe, and all I wanted was for you to be present. In my life. And you refused to give me that.”
She sank into the bath without a word.
“I was mad,” I went on, “because you fucking left. Because every time I came home you were gone, and anytime we were in the same city you were too busy to see me. Because whenever I called you, you didn’t answer, and you never returned my calls. I was mad because I had to have a relationship with your voicemail for six-and-a-half fucking years.”
She looked up at me, her eyes pink-rimmed. “So you’re just never going to forgive me, is that it?”
“You broke my heart!”
I shouted it at her, hurled it at her with all the anger and frustration I still felt, just raging beneath the surface.
She stared at me, looking kind of stunned. She shook her head. Then she laughed, a humorless laugh. She stood up in the tub and pointed at me. “What’s it been, a decade?” she said, shoving her finger in my face. “Since you stood there, you stood right there in front of me and said you’d wait for me. And then I saw you with Christy Rempel.”
“Right,” I said. “You have a really fucking selective memory if that’s the way you remember things going down. I told you I’d wait for you, Jessa, and I did. I didn’t say I’d be a fucking monk while I did it.”
“And I told you that waiting for someone forever is a bad, bad idea.”
“Yeah, because you saw it in some bullshit movie. And that’s where you live, in a fucking movie, between the lyrics of a fucking song, Jessa, because you sure as fuck don’t live here with me.”
“I told you not to wait for me!”
“And I told you I was in love with you.”
She drew her head back, like I’d slapped her. Probably should’ve; I fucking wanted to. “You did not.”
“I did. That day in my truck, in the rain. I told you.” My voice got quiet as I remembered, but I kept looking her in the eye. I wasn’t running from this shit anymore. “I told you I’d loved you forever.”
She hugged herself. “I mean… you kind of said something about—”
“Kind of? How does someone ‘kind of’ pour their heart out to you? I begged you not to leave, and you left anyway.”
“Because I had to!”
“Why?” I took a step closer, as close as I could get without falling in the tub. “Tell me why the fuck you had to.”
Jessa slumped into the water with a splash and didn’t look at me again. “I didn’t know you were in love with me,” she said, “and it’s not my fault if you were.”
I stared at her, but she didn’t say another word. For fuck’s sake. That’s all she had to say?
“Yell if you’re gonna drown or something,” I bit out, slamming the door as I left the room… before I drowned us both.
Chapter Ten
Jessa
My brother didn’t mess around. As soon as I told him I’d be staying in Vancouver after the wedding, I saw the musical gears turning in his head. Not that I’d decided to stay for musical reasons, but it was a little flattering how quickly he set out to woo me.
Yes, I’d planned to leave right after the wedding, but that was before Brody decided to dry-hump me within an inch of an orgasm.
I’d made my decision at brunch the morning after. When I’d walked into the lodge, hungover, just hoping to fade into the background and maybe force down some French toast without barfing, I instead found Brody and Amanda gone and everyone else staring at me as my brother raised a toast to me. He then announced, in front of everyone, that he and Katie had decided to postpone their honeymoon so he could stay in town and spend some time with his sister. “And just maybe,” he’d added casually, “we’ll write some music together.”
To which everyone went nuts with excitement.
Yeah. No pressure.
I’d looked around at all those hopeful and expectant faces and told my brother, in front of everyone, that I could stay for ten days. After that, I had a photo shoot in L.A. I was committed to. And while I loved my brother, the truth was that I was only partly staying for him.
The other part was because I just couldn’t leave things the way they were with Brody—which was all kinds of fucked up.
My memories of that night were… unclear. But I remembered enough. I remembered rubbing myself off on the stiff package in his jeans, ready to blow up like a load of fireworks dropped in a volcano. And I remembered what he said to me, too. About me breaking his heart.
I also remembered, more or less, how I’d handled that information, and it was pretty cringe-worthy.
Did I really throw Christy Rempel in his face?
What was I, fifteen years old?
So yes, I was staying, because I had to talk to him. I had no idea how I was going to do it, to work up the courage to start that conversation, though. The I know that you know that I’ve fucked up, but here’s what you don’t know conversation.
Hardest conversation I’d ever have to have.
Luckily I had ten days to figure it out, and by the looks of things I could easily fill those ten days with musical distraction. Because apparently my brother was planning to make full use of those ten days—and every available tool in his arsenal to persuade me to write some music with the band.
The night after the wedding, as I arrived back in Vancouver with Roni and got settled into the guest bedroom of her condo, Jesse sent an incredible acoustic guitar over for me to play on: a brand new Gibson Hummingbird Vintage, which was kind of a monster. A powerhouse of an acoustic, it was probably too much guitar for me—and not like my brother didn’t know it. Clearly, it was something for me to grow into.
Something for me to write new music on.
The next morning, he sent Maggie over with a car to drive me out to Dirty’s new rehearsal space for a little jam session with him and Zane.
Cool, right?
Especially when the new rehearsal space turned out to be an old church outside of town. When my brother mentioned “going to church,” I just thought he was being cute, referring to the religious nature of his passion for music.
Apparently not.
The building was maybe a century old or so, smallish, originally built of gray stone that had seen better days. A lot of the exterior was in disrepair. Inside, beyond the entrance vestibule, there was the big main room, along with a small office, a washroom, and a tiny renovated kitchen. Most of the original wooden pews had been removed, but there were still three rows of them at the back. Some of the walls were partly deconstructed. There was exposed wood everywhere, a high arched ceiling, and a big, gorgeous stained glass window, which, like the rest of the place, had been hastily repaired over the decades but still held a kind of timeless, awe-inspiring beauty.
Where there would have been some sort of altar there was now just a large, low stage area blanketed with worn Persian rugs and lined with an intimidating wall of Marshall amps. Other music gear was strewn around, including several of my brother’s guitars and one of Dylan’s massive drum kits.
Best of all, the church sat on a corner lot butted up against an auto wrecker’s lot and a stretch of farmland on the other side; no neighbors to complain about the noise.
“It’s fantastic,” I told my brother as he gave me the tour. “How did you get it?”
“Brody found it for us last summer,” he said. “Apparently it hasn’t been used as a church for about two decades. It’s a bit of a drive, but I like it. I just make sure I go off rush hour and use the time to clear my head, work on writing and stuff.”
“What happened to the other place?” The band’s old rehearsal space was a studio right in the middle of town, not far from my brother’s house.
“Gave it to Katie,” he said with a grin. “She’s using it as her art studio. But we moved out here before that happened anyway. Wanted a bigger space.” Then he plugged in a black-on-black Fender Strat and let his fingers fly—and raw, twisted, gorgeous music roared out of the amps behind him like some pissed-off beast awakening from its beauty sleep.
Holy hell.
My brother was a total rock god.
I plopped back on a stool to listen as warmth flooded my chest, like I’d just downed a shot of good whiskey. I had memories of Jesse rocking out when we were kids. He was good then; really good. He’d always been a gifted guitarist, but he was better now than he’d ever been.
I could hear it right away.
I could hear how his playing style had developed over the years, matured… his sound mellowing out around the edges and growing more substantial in the middle, fattening up… and it wasn’t just the better, more expensive equipment. I didn’t even know how to describe it, exactly. All I knew for sure was that when my brother took a stage and started working a guitar, my hair blew back and even I could see why girls threw themselves at him, half-naked, at his shows. Jesse had matured along with his music, and my once-annoying but cute big brother had grown into a rather beautiful, force-to-be-reckoned-with type of man.
I loved watching him play.
I’d seen him in concert over the years, here or there, but I’d always been careful to stay away from his shows unless I was one hundred percent sure Brody wouldn’t be there. Which meant I missed out on many more shows than I ever attended. I’d also missed out on a lot of hang time with my brother, the time we might have spent together if I wasn’t always so nervous about running into Brody. But today, treated to a private show and a front row seat, watching him play while his wedding ring gleamed on his finger, I really got to see and hear the man and the musician my brother had become.
There was also something fresh, new and alive in his playing, like I really hadn’t heard since we were kids, and I was pretty sure that had a lot to do with Katie. My brother was crazy in love; I could feel a kind of unbridled bliss dripping from his fingertips as he played. And I couldn’t stop smiling.
“Shit, brother.” Jesse stopped playing as Zane walked in, a big grin on his face to match my own. “Is it okay that shit gave me a boner?”
“Since when do you care if anyone’s okay with your dick being up?” my brother said, throwing him a look. “And if it is, don’t sit next to my sister.”
Zane didn’t sit next to me. He sat in a pew, next to Maggie, who ignored him as she worked on her laptop. A short while later, when Zane joined Jesse and I onstage to jam and he promptly made the mic his bitch, belting out his sexy, angsty version of The Beatles’ “I’m a Loser,” Maggie put on coffee and settled in with a mug.
Jude was there too, but he was in and out of the church, on his phone a lot. If he wasn’t directly working in his capacity as Dirty’s head of security—which probably kept him busy enough, what with managing a security team to cover the asses of four mega-famous rock stars—he was working something else. I was pretty sure when he was in town he did work of some kind for his brother’s motorcycle club. And maybe when he was out of town, too. I didn’t ask. I’d learned many years ago not to ask those kinds of questions. But I was used to having them all around—Jude, Piper, all the security. The constant entourage. And I loved that they all had my brother’s back. That he was so loved. Jude had been a permanent fixture in our lives since my brother met him at age ten, and Zane since a couple of years before that.
This was my brother’s tribe. My tribe.
I’d never realized how much that was true until I sat back in an old church and listened to Zane and Jesse jam on a bunch of old songs; just stuff they used to play together for fun in Dolly’s garage when we were kids, or around a fire as we grew up. CCR’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?,” The Box Tops’ “The Letter,” Van Morrison’s “Gloria.” I played along on my fancy new guitar, just keeping up wherever I could. Which wasn’t really happening, but I had fun trying.
Where I was more useful was adding my backup vocals to the mix—and generally fangirling over my brother and Zane. Because seriously. These two got together to make music, it was like clash of the Titans. Just sit your ass down, try to keep up, and try not to get slaughtered by falling debris. The two of them together had always had crazy, off-the-hook energy, and chemistry through the roof.
Not only were they an extraordinary musical match, but their lifelong rivalry added an edge to everything they did. They were constantly competing, as far as I knew, for everything under the sun—other than women, which was probably a really, really good thing, and the only reason they’d managed to keep it together as a band—their friendship riding that delicate, serrated edge between soulmate and nemesis. It was kind of a love-hate-love thing.
They loved each other.
They hated each other.
&nbs
p; They loved each other more.
By late afternoon, we were all caught up in the music, playing original stuff for each other, bits of whatever we’d each been working on since we last jammed together, which in my case, was a hell of a long time ago. They played me the few songs they’d already written for the new album, which were pretty killer, though I was eager to hear them played again when the whole band was here. For my part, I really hadn’t been writing much these last few years, or at least I thought I hadn’t been. But once I’d pulled out my phone and started sharing all the little bits of lyrics, poetry and general ramblings I’d been making notes of whenever the mood struck, there was a lot more of it than I’d thought.
“It’s mostly a bunch of verbal vomit,” I told them. “You know, shit I come up with in the shower to entertain myself.” I’d just finished singing them some bits and pieces that I thought I might develop into a full song, but I hadn’t yet. “I don’t really write full songs anymore. Other than when Jesse held me in a room at gunpoint and ordered me to write them for his solo album.”
“Right,” Zane said, his expression thoughtful. “Same thing he did to get Katie to marry him, I guess.”
Yeah. Childish burns like that… all day long. My brother just threw a drum stick at him.
“Seriously, little sis, that stuff is shit-hot.”
“Yeah,” my brother agreed. “You stick around a while, we’ll make some of that into songs.”
They stared at me expectantly. All of them. Jesse. Zane. Even Maggie looked up from her laptop, her face lit up in the glow of the screen, a pretty little blip in the dark at the back of the church. The sun had gone down a while ago and she’d lit candles for us; there was a whole mess of them burning all over the stage, sending shadows up the walls and giving the stained glass a moody, almost romantic look.
And not like I hadn’t noticed the feast she’d brought in for dinner or the wine and cold beer that had been rolled out, or the joints that had been offered my way. Obviously, what Dirty had going on here was the perfect setting for writing their next kickass rock album—and yet they’d been struggling writing it, coming up with only three semi-finished songs in the last several months. So I knew what this little jam session was all about.
Dirty Like Brody: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 2) Page 11
