RUTHLESS: The Complete Rockstar Romance Series Boxed Set

by Vivian Lux

  "For some reason? Was that what you were going to say before you caught yourself?"

  "Maddie, stop. You're just, you know... Music videos, they're kind of...lower on the food chain. They'll be lucky to have you."

  "We both know I'm the lucky one here. That they'd even consider me. What's the part?"

  "Uh, standard music video stuff, I guess."

  "Mom."

  "What, Maddie? What do you want me to say?"

  "The truth would be a good start."

  "Okay, fine, yes. They're interested because of you, specifically. They want you to play the psycho ex-girlfriend and they're hoping it'll go viral because of your whole...story."

  My very public year-long meltdown. The "story," as my mom called it, was the worst time in my life and I was trying like hell to put it behind me.

  But I needed work. And I couldn't afford to be prideful if I wanted to afford food and rent.

  "Okay, sure. I'll do it!" I said brightly.

  "That's my girl. I knew you'd see the positive."

  I didn't. But...acting.

  Chapter Three

  Rane

  I rolled over, reveling in having the whole bed to myself for a change, scratched my chest and grabbed my phone from the stand next to my bed.

  Twelve angry texts over the course of the night. Good, Gina was slowing down.

  I deleted them without reading them and sighed.

  It wouldn't help Gina move on if I answered her now. It would be cruel to string her along like that. I'm an asshole, sure, but I'm not into mind games. We had some fun and now it was over. No need to belabor the fucking point.

  Besides, today was going to suck and I needed some space to breathe. I exhaled sharply....

  And right on cue, my phone buzzed in my hand.

  I recognized the caller ID and let it ring just long enough to make the vulture sweat. Then I answered. "Yeah, Dennis?"

  "Mr. Wilder?" As if someone else would be answering my phone.

  "Call me Rane. Told you that before, Dennis," I grunted, sitting up and pulling on my boxers. If Dennis were a good-looking chick, maybe I'd have left them off, but bespectacled male music journalists weren't really my thing.

  Dennis Johannson, story editor for Auteur magazine, had been putting together a big splashy cover story on Ruthless for the past three weeks. He interviewed all five of us, paying particular attention to Keir and me.

  I was hoping this little interview would be the last. I was getting real sick of talking about myself.

  Dennis cleared his throat over the static on the line. "Sorry, Rane, this'll be real quick. I just wanted to fill in a few gaps in the story. Is now a good time?"

  "Sure, fire away," I yawned.

  "Did I catch you at a bad time?"

  I sighed. "Listen, man, I'm hungover as shit, I got a chick who doesn't understand what the word 'over' means and I've got a wardrobe call for a video shoot in an hour. Do what you've gotta do and make it quick." I wandered through the cavernous first floor of the house I bought five months ago. In a fit of out-of-character pretension, I had hired some fancy-dancy art gallery chick to find some shit to hang on the walls. When she got a little too clingy, I got bored and stopped, leaving the rest of the space empty of furniture except for one big sofa I stole from my dad's basement. My gear was slung into a corner and my big screen was set up for gaming, but otherwise, my house was just a big, echoey, kind of churchy looking empty place.

  Good for parties.

  The kitchen was similarly unfurnished. I wandered in and opened the perpetually empty fridge in the vague hope that something edible might have materialized. But the same barren landscape looked back at me. Ketchup and beer and a fuzzy thing in the back. My stomach growled loudly.

  Dennis was still apologizing. I sighed and tuned back in. "....won't take a minute." I heard the ruffling of pages. "So... you said your dad bought you and Keir your first guitars. How old were you?"

  "Thirteen," I said. "Keir was twelve."

  "Had you even played music before that?"

  "Nah." I grabbed my keys from a chipped plate that I had filched from my mom's stuff after she left. It was good for holding little shit like earbuds and loose change. "I'm pretty sure Dad was out of ideas on how to keep us outta trouble. Sports didn't work, couldn't sit still in church, both sucked at school...music was the last option before juvie or military school."

  "And your mom...."

  I flexed my hand quickly and looked back at the flowery plate. "My mom split when I was eight. She had nothing to do with it."

  "I'm sorry."

  "It's fine." I stalked back to my bedroom. "Keep going."

  "Has the success of Ruthless surprised you at all?"

  "Nope."

  "Not at all?"

  I rummaged through my dresser and found a pair of dark jeans I didn't recognize. I probably inadvertently stole them from a photo shoot. Whatever. I yanked them on anyway. "You know, I don't get it when people ask me that. We play the kind of music people want to hear. Nothing pretentious, just straight up rock and roll. I'm not interested in some great, difficult message. I'm having fun. I want to keep having fun. The second it stops being fun, I'm out."

  "That's great, Rane. Perfect. I can use it for a pull quote."

  "Never put in an honest day's work in my life, and I intend to keep it that way.

  "Oh wow, that's even better."

  "Whatever, man, I'm telling the truth. Listen. Can we finish up? I probably should head out."

  "Yeah." I could hear pages flipping. "Just wanna check a little tidbit I picked up. Is it true Madeline Cole is starring in your video for Catastrophe?"

  For a second, I felt it. That grasping anger that takes over when things get out of my control. How the fuck did this chucklehead know about that already? Who leaked it? Was it Keir? Maddie herself? I fucking hated surprises.

  Then, with practiced calm, I let it wash over me and back out again. And I smiled. "Be patient, man. You're gonna have to watch it to find out what we have in store." I kept smiling until it felt genuine.

  "Well, this is all great stuff. Really appreciate your time, Rane." He paused and I waited with my finger poised over the off button. "Hey," he asked, his voice changed, a little higher, a little hopeful. "Can I ask you something...as a fan?"

  That's the thing I had the hardest time with the first time we broke. Music for me was a selfish thing. A safe space in my head that kept the bad feelings out. When people started approaching me, saying my words and my music 'spoke to them,' I didn't fucking get it. They were my words and I wrote them for me.

  But the longer I'd been at this game, the easier it became to detach myself from any sort of meaning. Desolation City was our third studio release and I wrote it in a week. It's a hell of a lot easier to just write the fucking songs for the fans in the first place. Bypass the feeling and go straight for the sale. "Yeah, man, what's up?"

  "I just wanted to ask, you know... Black Wings, man. It got me through a rough patch. So, maybe not so much ask you as thank you? For writing it?"

  I closed my eyes. There was this hard place in my chest that lived with me--all the time. A tight fist of held back...something.

  For one second, it eased its grip.

  "Yeah, well, writing it got me through a tough time, too." I hated talking about the reasons I wrote shit because people always wanted to pour their own feelings out, spilling their messiness all over my pristine words. But I craved it, too. What'd my shrink call this? A desire for connection?

  Made me feel like a head case.

  "Thanks for telling me," I said carefully but sincerely. He wanted more, I just knew it. But he couldn't have it. "You have a good day, man."

  He sounded defeated. "You too, Rane."

  When he hung up the phone, I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling like I had dodged a bullet. Then I shoved my keys into my pocket and headed off to play my easy, meaningless song and put these weird, unwelcome feelings behind me.

&
nbsp; Chapter Four

  Madeline

  Rock guys were all swaggering, cock-swinging douche nozzles with bigger shoe sizes than vocabularies. I was as sure of this as I was sure I didn't want to be here right now.

  But I flashed a smile to security anyway. "Hi, I should be on the list. Madeline Cole?"

  He blinked once and his eyes flicked to my hair, but he didn't say anything. I gripped the steering wheel to keep from touching the shaggy, growing-in mop on top of my head. I usually filled it in with wigs and clip-ins, but today I was actually working, so I needed to let the makeup girl make these calls. I had studiously avoided my reflection in the rearview mirror the whole way here.

  "Go ahead, Miss Cole." Once more his eyes flicked up to my hair...then down to my tits.

  Ah, there it was.

  Guys are all the same.

  But instead of lashing out, instead of throwing my water bottle in his face or calling his supervisor and having him fucking fired, I kept still. I counted to ten. I let the anger pass through me, and drove away.

  Only then did I look in the mirror to check my face.

  I looked calm. In control. No sign of Mad Maddie anywhere.

  I used to feel everything. It was too much, hitting me from every angle. Wild, manic exultation, then crushing, suicidal depression. And all alongside of it was rage. Anger at, well, everyone I met. Agents, managers, producers, studio heads, all the usual suspects, but it was more than that, too. There were the kids that wrote in to my fan club, telling me I was their role model without me ever asking for the pedestal they placed me on. And the parents who thanked me for being a role model, then straight up begged me never to fuck up.

  I was America's princess. For ten years, I was Parker Paisley, the All-American girl next door who turned out to be secret royalty. It was a brilliant conceit, playing on every little girl's princess dreams. The longer I played the role, the more the role became me. People were unable to separate the wholesome Princess Parker from Madeline Cole, real-fucking-person. I grew up in the public eye, went through puberty, developed crushes, all the normal things normal girls do, but I couldn't party and rebel in a normal way because then the public would find out. Having to live up to my fan base was like answering to a million mothers far stricter than mine. Everyone was watching. And when things started to go sour, when normal teenager rebellion became something evil and self-destructive...they turned on me.

  As far as I could tell, I hadn't changed. But the world had put me on such a high pedestal, there was nothing for me to do except fall.

  Or throw myself off of it.

  Now it was time to prove that I had landed on my feet. I snuck one more glance in the rearview mirror, ready to put it all behind me. If that meant being in a rock music video, well, then I was ready to do what it took.

  Grey Haven Manor loomed above the hills, a moody, gothic pile glowering down at everything it surrounded. The perfect set for a mental institution, which today it was being meticulously turned into. I walked to the imposingly tall oak doorway, holding myself fiercely in check.

  A cute brunette wearing a low slung maxi skirt and thick, schoolgirl bangs was crouched against the marble, sneaking a cigarette. As I watched, she surreptitiously threw her cigarette butt into the bushes, then caught me staring at her. "Sssh," she whispered, fanning the air frantically. "Not allowed."

  I grinned. "I won't tell so long as you tell me where I'm supposed to be. I'm Madeline Cole?"

  Her eyes went wide. "Shit, you're here already? You're early."

  I grinned blandly. "Sorry. I wanted to be on time."

  The girl pulled a cell phone out of her purse and widened her eyes at the time. "Well, fuck me, looks like I'm the one running behind." She rolled her eyes. "You have to remember I'm used to dealing with musicians." She extended her hand. "Harlow Grant. Hair and makeup. You're with me, Madeline." She turned back to the ornately carved doorway and beckoned me to follow her into the vaulted front foyer.

  "Holy shit," I murmured.

  "Right?" Harlow agreed, looking around. "The set design people did a hell of a job. This place is giving me the creeps."

  The wide foyer had been transformed into a dusty, cobwebbed nightmare, gray-shrouded and menacing. The bright sunlight pouring in through the two-story windows lit the manufactured gloom incongruously, but I knew once they hit this set piece with the blue-filtered lights, everything would be sufficiently moody.

  Harlow led me around the corner to a hastily set up vanity table plopped in what must have been the kitchen at one time. "So, you're Madeline Cole?" she asked, checking her clipboard. Then she did a double take. "Oh wow...I didn't realize...when they said Madeline Cole..."

  I kept my face neutral as she stammered, then finally composed herself. "Sorry. You must hate that. Hey, for what it's worth? Your hair is growing in really cute."

  I folded my hands in my lap. "Thank you," I said, as warmly as I could manage. Ice was flowing in my veins. It was a wonder my teeth weren't chattering.

  Harlow was either supremely oblivious or supremely stoned, because she didn't seem to notice my obvious discomfort. Or maybe I was just really getting good at hiding it. "Can I ask you something?"

  I swallowed. "Of course."

  She lifted her chin towards my shaggy head. "Why'd you do it?"

  Some of the anger leaked into my voice. "Right to the point, huh?"

  "Sorry, you must get this question a lot."

  Ten, nine, eight... I took a deep, calming breath. "Actually," I sighed as I leaned back in the chair, "no one has asked me, honestly. They tell each other why I shaved my head, assuming it was drugs or a bad breakup or maybe more drugs. But no one has actually come out and asked, 'Hey, Maddie, why did you take your father's old beard trimmer to your head?'"

  Harlow pressed her hands together in a gesture of supplication. "Hey, Maddie, why did you take your father's old beard trimmer to your head?"

  There was the question that had no answer. Or maybe there were too many answers. I didn't want to delve deep--this was not the time or the place. And it certainly wouldn't help put my past behind me if all the makeup girl could think about when she worked on me was how I had lost it one night. How it didn't even feel like my hair when I shaved it. I was a doll, a bath gel, a Lego set, a Pez dispenser. The studio owned my likeness, and my long, wavy, copper-red hair wasn't mine anymore. It belonged to the studio and Parker fucking Paisley.

  So it had to go.

  But all of those words were right there at the surface, begging to come out. I was talking before I could get my thoughts under control. And even as the words spilled out of my mouth, I longed to catch them and stuff them back in.... "On that night? Because I was trying to sleep and it kept getting in my mouth and going up my nose and wrapping around my neck. Because the week before, someone had patented a Parker Paisley sex doll and there was nothing I could do because the studio owned the rights to my likeness." Harlow winced sympathetically. "Because my hair was really fucking heavy and I was tired of dragging the weight around."

  She nodded. "I get it."

  "You do?"

  "What about the naked part though?"

  I pressed my lips together. "It was hot and my AC was busted, so I was sleeping naked. The fire alarm in my building went off and I was scared."

  She froze for a second. "That's it?"

  "That's it."

  "Huh..." She blinked slowly, her brown eyes darting a little from side to side. She chewed the side of her cheek and seemed about to say something when she shook her head and dipped her sponge into a vat of foundation. "Lean back," she told me.

  You revealed too much, I chastised myself. How the hell is she supposed to look at you and not think you're crazy now?

  Fuck. Pull yourself together.

  I closed my eyes and tried to find the calm again. Being back on set...it was too familiar. The nerves were all too close to the surface and I needed to push them back down again. Find the thick skin I had thought I developed.


  The soothing feel of Harlow's practiced fingers against my skin helped. The feeling of being on set, the electric buzz of all these people working together to create something brilliant helped, too. You love this. You want this. Once my nerves loosened their stranglehold, I could feel the excitement starting to seep in. I was in my element again. I was on a set. It was not the set of Princess Parker, but that was okay. My abrupt firing for breach of contract was okay. My tabloid-worthy meltdown was okay.

  Just hold it together. You're going to be okay.

  Chapter Five

  Rane

  Pepper was the first of us to walk through the doors of Grey Haven Manor. Her head swiveled sharply for a second, then she stopped short and very deliberately resumed her trademark slouch.

  "This place looks like a funeral home threw up on a whorehouse," she declared in her bored monotone.

  Twitch didn't notice his twin had stopped, and nearly careened into the back of her. "Oh, wow, cool spider webs!" He bounced up and down like a kid at Christmas while I stepped neatly out of reach of his pointing, flailing arms.

  Keir came in with Balzac and looked all around, expressionless. Then he leaned back on his heels and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Huh," was all he said, but there were layers of meaning in that one syllable.

  I couldn't help but needle him. I knew exactly what he was thinking. "What?" I grinned.

  Keir didn't want to do a video. Thought they were a dead medium. Thought we were wasting time and energy. The only way we could convince him was promising that I would be the one "starring" in the damn thing. I could tell he was feeling pretty fucking smug in his decision. "It's certainly...something." He smirked.

  "We hired Warlox for his vision," Balzac rumbled, ever the diplomat.

  "And that vision is, 'Tim Burton in drag,'" Pepper opined, staring at her nails.

  Keir surveyed the rest of the set, his mouth open like he was going to add something profound. Then he snapped it shut. "I need a drink." He sighed and headed back out to the limo for his flask.