But I was just so fucking weary of it all.
I really needed this break.
Not only did I not know what to say to Seth right now, I didn’t have the energy to say it. To deal with whatever he might say back… or what everyone else was gonna say when they found out that I—gasp of horror—gave Seth a ride somewhere and had a conversation with him.
It was all starting to border on fucking juvenile.
And anyway, even if I’d had the energy to deal with it all, I did not have the time. Not today.
So I turned to him again and said the only thing that seemed reasonable to say.
“Do you have plans tonight?”
Chapter Seven
Seth
I stared at Elle… sitting there with her platinum hair and her flawless makeup, looking back at me with her steel-gray eyes. I wasn’t even sure what she was asking me, exactly.
My only plan tonight—and for the last many years of my life—had been to reunite with Dirty. And since that clearly wasn’t happening today… Yeah. I was pretty fucking wide open.
“No plans,” I said.
“Good. Then you can come to Hawaii.”
“Hawaii?”
“Kauai.” She wasn’t looking at me anymore, just watching traffic roll by out her window. “Have you ever been?”
“No.”
“It’s the best island. You’ll like it. Woo has a place there where I sometimes stay. I’m on my way there now.”
“Right now?”
She looked over at me. “Now.”
I just stared at her some more.
Why the hell was Elle inviting me to Hawaii?
“What is this…?” I asked her.
“It’s an olive branch,” she said. “The flight’s on me. What you do when you get there is up to you. You can stay at Woo’s with me and Joanie, if you want to. We’ll have security,” she added, pausing for effect, and the warning wasn’t lost on me. “But I can’t make you stay and talk to me. This isn’t a kidnapping. And I’m not promising you anything with the band. This isn’t about the band. I don’t speak for Dirty. This is just me, saying I’m sorry to an old friend and I wish things didn’t go down the way they did but they did… and I want you to be okay.”
I had no idea what to say to that.
This was the only apology of any kind I’d ever gotten from anyone in the band. Not that I expected any. They were justified in firing me. At least, the first time.
Was she apologizing for that? Or the second firing?
Or both?
She turned to look out the window again. “This is all I can do right now to make sure you’re okay. It’s a moment. I’m feeling generous. Just take it.”
So I took it.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll come.”
She looked at me again, her gray eyes hard and direct. “And Seth, if there are any drugs…” She trailed off for a moment. Then she finished: “I’m so gone from your life, you’ll never get near me again.”
“Understood.”
She looked away and fell silent, and she didn’t say another word to me on the drive to the airport.
I didn’t push it.
I didn’t really give a fuck about Hawaii. But this… it was something I’d fucking dreamed of.
Well… I’d definitely never dreamed of Elle inviting me to fly to Hawaii with her. That was so far beyond the realms of what I’d ever thought was possible, I’d never bothered to have those kinds of dreams. But I’d definitely wanted this for so fucking long, I couldn’t remember what it was like not to want this. Elle. Zane. Jesse. Dylan. Any one of them, actually wanting to talk to me.
I’d be stupid as fuck to pass up the opportunity to make amends with anyone in the band. But despite her apology, I still wasn’t quite sure if that was what was happening here or not.
All I knew for absolute sure—and I knew that Elle knew it, too—was that the rest of the band, and Brody, were not gonna be happy about this.
I was doing it anyway.
And for some reason that was completely beyond me, so was she.
The flight to Lihue Airport was just over six hours, on a luxury chartered jet, and there were only four people in the giant cabin. Me, Elle, her assistant, Joanie, and her bodyguard, who’d grudgingly introduced himself to me as Flynn. Five people, if you counted the flight attendant ghosting in and out.
The four of us sat in opposite corners of the cabin, and there was very little conversation.
Joanie slept most of the flight. Flynn read magazines and didn’t say a word.
Mostly I just played my acoustic, quietly.
Elle was on her laptop, ear buds in, and rarely lifted her eyes from her screen. I had no idea if she was working or what. But she didn’t speak to me.
As soon as we landed, she was on her phone. Flynn got us a rental car, a luxury SUV, and piled everyone’s bags in back. I had no bag, just my guitars, because I wasn’t exactly gonna ask them to detour into Santa Monica so I could collect my shit from Lauren’s place. Flynn got in behind the wheel, Joanie was up front, and Elle, beside me in the back, was still on her phone.
“I don’t know, Ash. I’ll let you know when I’m back,” she said. “I don’t know. We can talk about it later, okay?” She sounded irritated, anxious to get off the phone. Ash didn’t let her off, though, for another few minutes of semi-arguing.
It was the dead of night. Los Angeles was two hours ahead of us, but still. I had no idea if Ash knew Elle was here with me, but she definitely didn’t bring it up.
When she got off the phone, she sighed softly, stuffed her phone in her purse, and lay her head back on the seat.
Within a few minutes, her head lolled against the window. She was asleep.
Forty-five minutes later, as we rolled up Woo’s winding, tree-lined driveway, sparkling with lanterns in the night, I was still studying her. Trying to figure her out.
To figure out what she was really doing here with me.
I’d heard her on the phone with Ash, and it wasn’t the kind of conversation friends have. Obviously there was something going on there. And I’d seen the way men looked at her. Men at the airport. Our pilot. Even Flynn.
It wasn’t just that she was gorgeous. Beyond her looks, Elle had always had that something about her; she just wasn’t your ordinary girl. She carried herself in a way you could feel across a room. Literally, heads turned for her.
She was a star, in every sense of the word.
And I wondered where that bright, sassy, but down-to-Earth girl I used to know had gone.
I could still see her, sitting there, just an arm’s length from me. Under the designer clothing and the makeup. I saw her, living this massive, glamorous life, just like it was second nature to her, yet she didn’t seem comfortable in the middle of it. More like… practiced. Like she’d learned to live with it.
I saw how she wore it, like a tailor-made dress, one she’d forgotten how to take off at the end of the day. Her cool detachment from it all. Her aloneness in the middle of her own life.
The most famous member of Dirty…
I shouldn’t have been able to get near her, of all people, but for some reason, she’d let me in. At least this far.
She was the only member of Dirty who’d extended the olive branch to me.
And I could not figure out why.
“Bella will set you up in one of the guest cottages,” Elle said, as she introduced me to Woo’s housekeeper. We were standing in his enormous kitchen, one wall of floor-to-ceiling windows standing open to the night. It smelled of freshly-brewed coffee and flowers and the ocean. I could hear the waves crashing on the shore beyond the yard, below the rocky cliffs.
“It’s all ready for you,” Bella said, smiling up at me. She was a tiny, lively sixty-something. “I can show you the way, if you like.”
I glanced at Elle, who stood back, watching me. She crossed her arms but said nothing. I noticed that Flynn and Joanie had vanished into the woodwork. Flynn ha
d briefly scoped out the house before disappearing. I didn’t even think Joanie had set foot inside.
There were four small but cozy-looking guest huts in the side yard, and all of us, except Elle, were sleeping in them. It was around four a.m., but I didn’t feel much like sleeping.
“Thank you,” I told Bella. “I can find it myself.”
After a quick chat with Elle at the front door, Bella headed home. She’d waited up for us to arrive, and had insisted on giving me a tour of Woo’s house when we did. In what would’ve been a den off the dining room, there was a full recording studio. The living room had a grand piano and high glass walls that looked out on the back yard, where there was a sprawling patio with a fire pit. The five bedrooms upstairs overlooked the tree-lined yard, rocky cliffs and the dark expanse of the ocean beyond.
The house was tucked away from the road, among the trees. Private and about as secluded as you could get around here.
All in all, I could see why Elle chose to come here.
She drifted back into the kitchen, where I was leaning on the island, looking out into the dark. I’d already poured myself a coffee.
“You want one?” I asked her, lifting my mug.
Her eyes met mine. She had her arms wrapped securely around herself, but she said, “Sure.” She settled onto one of the cushioned window seats overlooking the back yard. I felt her eyes on me as I fixed her a coffee.
“You like cream? Sugar?”
“Just cream,” she said.
I brought her mug to her. It had a little hula girl on it and said I Got Lei’d in Waikiki.
“Thanks.” Her lips quirked a bit at the mug, but she didn’t exactly smile. She took it and sipped. She was still looking at me, on and off, and since she hadn’t told me to fuck off yet, I figured I’d just stick around until she did.
I took a seat in one of the cushioned chairs opposite her, facing out the window. She had her back to the dark now, facing me, with her legs pulled up on the window seat, her long, soft gray dress wrapped around them. She’d changed since we arrived. The dress had thin straps; one of them was almost falling off, her tanned shoulders bare and set squarely against me as she hugged her knees to her chest.
“So,” she said. “Are you okay?” She looked and sounded guarded, but at least she was talking to me.
And I thought about what she might want to hear. About how loaded that question, and the various answers to it, might be.
“Most days,” I said.
It was true enough. Ever since I got clean, my life had been a pretty steady stream of okay.
She nodded once, like she was squaring that away inside herself. Checking off a box somewhere in her head. Then she sipped her coffee and looked at her toes. Her nails were painted in gold glitter and she wiggled them, picking at the toe ring on her middle toe.
“How about you?” I asked her.
She looked up at me, her slim eyebrows squeezing together. “I’m fine.”
“Yeah? How’s life in the eye of the storm?”
She shrugged. “It’s what it looks like.”
“It looks exhausting.”
“Yeah.” She looked exhausted when she said, “It’s that.”
“Do you enjoy it? Everyone wanting a piece of you?” I held her steel gaze and added, “Loving you… Loving to hate you… Just waiting for you to fuck up.” I knew, personally, that was my least favorite part of fame. But you couldn’t take all the perks of success as a rock star without the rest of it.
She nodded, slowly. “You could say it’s a real love-hate situation.”
“Lonely?”
“What?”
“Is it lonely?” I asked her.
She looked baffled by the question. Caught off-guard. Maybe no one had ever really asked her that before. Her eyes narrowed at me a little and she frowned. “Why would it be lonely? I’m never alone.”
I said nothing.
“How about you?” she asked. “How’s Ray?”
I shrugged. “Same old Ray.”
Ray Brothers was my foster father, for lack of a better term. A simple man, Ray liked simple things. His TV, his couch, and his lite beer. But he was a good man. Took me in at thirteen and took care of me for a few years, on and off—whenever I wasn’t in juvie for getting caught dealing pot. Even after his wife died, he’d taken me in, until he injured his back at work and had to go on disability and the powers that be said he couldn’t anymore.
He’d been the closest thing to an actual father figure in my life. My own father, Todd Becker—a man who’d bounced in and out of jail before bouncing right out of my life—definitely hadn’t been. Ray had even offered me his last name when I turned nineteen. Said I could have it, if I wanted it. Said it could be a new start, a chance to start fresh on a life of my own and leave behind my crappy childhood.
I’d taken him up on the offer. At the time, I really thought it was a fresh start.
Little did I know that the worst times of my life were yet to come.
“Think he’s waiting on me to visit,” I added. “He doesn’t like that I live so far away these days.”
Elle cocked her head at me a little. “Where do you live?” she asked. And it felt so fucking strange, that she didn’t even know the answer to that.
But why would she?
“L.A., sometimes. New York. Austin. Wherever.”
“You have a place there? ‘Wherever’?”
“Have a lot of places,” I said. “None of my own, if that’s what you mean. I kinda float around. Rolling stone gathers no moss, or some such shit?”
“And you like that? Floating around?”
“Mostly,” I said.
“It doesn’t get lonely?” Her steel-gray eyes held a challenge.
“I’m never alone,” I said, repeating her own words.
“Uh-huh.” She looked me over, carefully, like she was trying to read me. Or understand me. “You have a girlfriend?”
I shrugged. “There was a girl. Michelle. We had a thing on and off, last couple of years.”
“And?”
“And she’s in Boston. And I’m here.”
“You’re not together anymore?”
“We were never really together. Just… good friends.”
“Friends.” Elle considered that. “With benefits?”
“If you want to call it that.”
She shook her head as she said, “I don’t know, Seth… Boston seems like a long way to go for a booty call.”
“Not if you live in Boston,” I said.
“Oh.” She went silent, maybe wondering when the hell I’d lived in Boston.
“Before that,” I offered, “there was Lauren. She’s in L.A..”
“Another friend?”
“Right. And before that… I was a junkie, and so was pretty much every girl I got involved with. The ones that weren’t… well… once they see behind the curtain, it ain’t so pretty, they don’t last very long.”
“But that was a long time ago.”
Yeah; she was definitely challenging me. Feeling me out. Watching for any sign that I was gonna fuck up. Any sign that she needed to call Flynn in here to vacate my ass.
“Right,” I said, holding her gaze. “A long time ago.”
“Have you ever had a real relationship?” She sipped her coffee, watching me over the brim of her mug. “You know, since you got clean.”
“What is that?” I asked her. “Flowers and walks on the beach?”
“Maybe? Those seem like pretty regular things to do with someone you care about.”
“Then I guess I’m just not that regular,” I said.
Chapter Eight
Seth
“And what about Jessa?” Elle asked me after a long, but not uncomfortable, silence.
She was still sitting in the window seat, still on guard, but as we’d sat in Woo’s kitchen, talking, it felt like we were gaining ground. Millimeter by millimeter, maybe. And it seemed to me that the world outside was falling away. Tha
t nothing was more important than this conversation. Right here, right now.
Me. Elle.
Answering her questions and chipping away at the bullshit that time and hurt feelings and too many stupid mistakes had layered between us.
I had no idea, though, how to answer that particular question.
“What about Jessa?”
“She’s with Brody now,” she said, studying my reaction.
I didn’t really have one. I’d accepted, long ago, that Jessa Mayes wasn’t mine. That she’d never loved me the way I hoped she would. That her heart had always been out of my reach, because it belonged to someone else.
And the fact that she was with Brody didn’t surprise me. It only surprised me that they weren’t together from day one.
“Yeah,” I said.
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“Why would it bother me?”
“I don’t know. You two dated.”
“Yeah. I guess you could call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
“Jessa and I had a relationship,” I admitted, treading carefully. I had no idea what Elle knew, or believed, or how she felt about that relationship. “It wasn’t exactly… conventional. We were both kind of… lost, back then.” I didn’t know how else to put it. “And it wasn’t out in the open. But you know that now.”
“We all know,” Elle said. “But it’s not like we didn’t have a clue back then. At least, I did. I saw how you were with her. I just thought…” She trailed off, hugging her knees tighter. She looked down at her feet and picked at her nail polish. And it hit me, as I watched her face change—that Elle felt… guilty? For what happened between me and Jessa? “I just thought you had a crush on her.”
“I can imagine,” I said, carefully. “I can imagine what you saw.”
“Brody didn’t want to see it, I’m sure. But you did like her.” She looked up at me. “And as far as I could tell, she liked you, too.”
“Yeah, I liked her.”
That Jessa liked me too, at some point, was beyond question. But how much and for how long, I really couldn’t say.
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