We’d all come a long way.
I could already see how far Seth had come. Not just getting clean, but finding some kind of peace within himself that wasn’t there before. I could feel it, just sitting here next to him.
And I decided to trust that feeling. Let down my guard a little more.
“You want to play together? Just once?” I shrugged, striving to sound casual about it, when actually, I was itching to play. “You know… for old time’s sake.”
Seth tipped his chin at the array of guitars before us. “Pull up a guitar,” he said, a spark of challenge in his eyes, and I knew he was itching, too.
I took him up on that challenge, pulling the nearest acoustic into my lap.
He selected one, and started right into a song… “Angel” by Jimi Hendrix. Maybe because he knew that I loved me some Jimi.
Maybe because of what that old homeless man said?
Sometimes the angels come a-callin’. Be a fool of a man to pass ’em up…
I followed his lead as best I could. I knew the song, but I wasn’t exactly a Seth Brothers-level guitarist, much less a Jimi Hendrix-level guitarist. I was a bassist, but I could hold my own on a six-string. Seth sung as well as I did, arguably better, and I found myself holding back so I could listen to his voice… realizing, in doing so, how much I’d missed it.
Listening to him sing.
Listening to him play.
Just watching him, feeling him make music.
Beyond that… there had always been an undeniable chemistry between the members of Dirty when we played together. It’s why I knew, no matter what other projects called to me, I could never, ever leave the band. Not only because I loved the guys personally, but because of that chemistry we had, musically. I would’ve gone so far as to agree that it went beyond chemistry, to something that Zane liked to call motherfucking magic.
As Seth and I played by the fire, under the stars, that magic was still here, alive and crackling between the two of us. One song just flowed into another, and another…
And I had so much fucking fun.
We played the Rolling Stones, “It’s Only Rock ’n Roll (But I Like It).”
We played April Wine, “Bad Side of the Moon.”
We played Journey’s high-energy anthem, “Any Way You Want It,” which Seth sung in its entirety because, of the two of us, only he could pull off anything close to Steve Perry’s voice. I joined in at the chorus, and by the end of it we were both smiling, and next, we were laughing.
We played Stealers Wheel, “Stuck in the Middle with You,” that cool, classic tune Seth and I used to play together after shows, in the wee hours of the night, in the middle of whatever crazy party we were at, as the two of us avoided the Zane-and-Jesse circus.
We played Trooper, “We’re Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time),” like this really was the last time we would ever play together. Like this was some kind of a goodbye.
The farewell concert.
But all the while, I felt something else catching fire between us, undeniable…
The sparks of a new beginning.
Chapter Twelve
Seth
I found a long rock on the quiet beach, kinda bench-shaped, and sat my ass down on it. It was a small, pale beach in a rocky bay. There was a couple lying on a blanket near the other end, enjoying the sunrise, but otherwise the sand was deserted.
I sipped my coffee, absently, gazing out at the waves. Watching them crash over one another in an endless rhythm.
But in my head, I didn’t see the ocean.
I saw Elle in her skimpy bikini.
I hadn’t slept much since I got here. Managed to get some sleep last night, but it was full of disturbing dreams. Dreams about Elle. Panicky dreams where I’d lost her. She was there, somewhere, but I couldn’t find her. She wouldn’t speak to me anymore.
Even with my eyes open, I had Elle on my mind; memories of her, crashing through my head. Memories breaking free from someplace I’d locked up tight and ignored for too damn long. Memories that spending time with her and jamming with her last night had brought back in a flood.
These didn’t feel like the kinds of memories, though, that my conscious mind had temporarily lost track of because I’d been wasted—damaged and sketchy and discomfiting. These were pure and bright and oddly painful… more like the kinds of memories that had been consciously suppressed out of some innate sense of self-preservation.
Memories in which I watched a young, effervescent Elle sparkle and shine—from afar.
Even if I was standing right next to her, I held myself at a distance in those memories. It was like watching some movie I knew I’d seen before, and I knew I liked, a lot, though I couldn’t recall a single scene until I saw it again, and then it all came flooding back to me.
How fucking lovely she was.
How much I used to smile when I was around her.
How the whole place—any place—would just light up when she walked in. How the stage caught fire when she was on it, making music, right next to me.
And how I’d told myself—trained myself—that I could never get near any of it.
I never even used to stare at her; I was pretty sure of that. Staring at her would’ve been a bad idea for all involved. I knew that.
But I used to think about her. A lot.
Like I was doing now. Like I’d done every waking minute last night.
I’d definitely forgotten, somehow, how potent it was to be around her. How potent she was. Sexy… all strength and vulnerability. That hot-cold thing that had always intrigued me, secretly confounded me and made me wonder about her… How she could burn like a thousand suns onstage, and then act so damn cool off of it.
And how I’d always been drawn to those two conflicting sides of her—in equal measure.
I’d almost forgotten, even, how I’d let myself fantasize about her… about touching her, just once, to feel that fire ignite between us.
How I’d pictured her, taking off her clothes for me, slowly, baring herself to me, letting down her guard.
Letting herself be vulnerable, with me.
Choosing me.
That fantasy had gotten me so fucking hard the first time I’d really thought it through, suddenly, late one night on the tour bus… it had scared the living shit out of me.
Scared me… but didn’t stop me.
I’d jerked off in my bunk thinking about her that night, and for a long while afterward, jerking off thinking about Elle had become a habit. That was just after Dirty had hit the road in support of our debut album, and just like so many of my habits in those days, it was deeply dangerous and self-destructive.
I’d even fucked other girls, back then, thinking about her. Blonde girls. Girls who, if I was just wasted enough, reminded me of Elle.
I’d rationalized to myself that what I was doing was for the best. That it was necessary, even. So I didn’t bring any of that misguided lust into my life with the band; with Elle. I’d just screw it out and no one ever had to know.
A man was entitled to his fantasies, right? It didn’t mean anything.
And yet, it did.
I could see that now.
I could see how blind I’d been.
It wasn’t like I’d totally forgotten about that particular crush… yet I’d managed to convince myself that it was just another fucked-up thing I’d done at a fucked-up time in my life, and swept it under the drug abuse rug.
I’d more or less pretended it didn’t happen.
But it did.
And I’d never really examined it.
It was probably the only thing from that time period that I hadn’t talked through, in depth, with my sponsor. On my path to sobriety and living chemical-free, I’d talked to him about everything. I’d talked to him about Jessa.
But not about Elle.
Instead, I’d managed to downplay my attraction to her in my own mind. To convince myself it never mattered.
And yet, somehow… it
really did.
And now I’d seen her nearly-naked… and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. That bikini she was wearing… It was some kind of really loose knit, and through the holes… yeah, I’d seen her. Pretty much all of her. And it seemed to be changing everything. Shifting the Earth beneath my feet in some seismic upheaval, unsettling and resettling my relationship with her so that it felt all weirdly off-kilter.
I knew it wasn’t just that I’d seen her like that.
It was that she’d let me see her like that.
Maybe she wasn’t expecting me to come strolling along while she was on the patio, but when I did, she didn’t exactly run away screaming, or even cover up. She looked flushed, a little embarrassed, maybe, but not in a bad way. More like in a self-conscious way, the way you looked when you knew someone was looking at you, but you wanted them to look at you.
And then she checked me out. Slowly. Or at least, it felt slow to me. Maybe because it was something I’d wanted so long ago, but believed would never happen, and now that it was happening, I’d only been able to process it that way.
Fucking slowly…
Sitting here on the beach, shirtless, with the warm breeze licking my body… I could practically feel her eyes moving over my bare skin, again. It made my nipples harden. My cock was hardening, just like it started to before I’d walked away… Worse now, because Elle wasn’t here to see it, so I didn’t try to fight it, to deny it. My balls grew heavy and my cock swelled as I thought about her… her long, lean, tanned body stretched out on that lounge chair beneath me.
Her pussy, pink through the little holes…
Christ. The way she looked up at me… surprised—but not disappointed—to see me. And something else… maybe?
Shit.
Was I this fucked in the head? So fucked up, I couldn’t even tell when a woman was sending me signals, and what kind of signals those were?
As much as I’d tried to deny it, ever since Brody accused me of raping Jessa… I had to wonder.
I’d pretty much shied away from getting involved with anyone since then. This whole year, so far, I hadn’t touched a woman. Even when I crashed at Lauren’s place in L.A.… and her signals weren’t so hard to read. I’d known her a long time, and besides, she was vocal about her desires. She’d outright asked me to come to bed with her, but I didn’t. When she asked me what the hell was wrong with me, I told her; Lauren was the only one I’d talked to about it, until Elle.
And Lauren’s response? She’d laughed.
Then she’d realized I was serious.
How could anyone who knows you think that about you for a second? she’d asked, genuinely bewildered about the whole thing.
At times, I felt bewildered too.
I mean, you’re like, the most respectful man I’ve ever known, Seth, Lauren had said. I just can’t imagine you hurting a girl to save your life.
I couldn’t either.
But tell that to Brody.
“Mind if I join you?”
I looked up at the soft voice, warm tingles shooting down my spine when I realized Elle was there. She was standing on the beach, right behind me.
I sat up straighter, feeling guilty—about thinking with my cock like I’d been doing. I’d totally fucking lost myself to thinking about her. But I looked at her now; all of her. My eyes seemed unable to resist drinking her in, any chance I got.
Might be my only chance.
Any time now, she’d be gone from my life again, and I may never get another opportunity to look at her.
She was wearing a long, loose flower-print dress that fluttered around her in the breeze. She had her arms wrapped around her waist, her hair in a long, loose braid over one shoulder. Little wisps of it were blowing around her face. She looked ethereal and otherworldly, like a mermaid washed up onshore.
Beyond beautiful.
I shifted over on my rock bench to give her room. It gave me the chance to adjust and conceal my rigid dick; luckily I’d worn loose pants.
I swallowed thickly as she came closer, her footsteps silent in the soft sand. My heart was kinda racing and I took a long, shallow breath to try to calm it. She sat down next to me, and I could smell her. Warm and coconuty, sweet and vaguely spicy. Her dress fluttered against my leg. The wisps of her hair tickled my shoulder.
“You look different,” she said. She wasn’t looking at me, but out over the water. “It took me a while to put my finger on it, but when I saw you without your shirt yesterday… You lost weight since I last saw you.” Then her gaze flicked down over my bare chest.
My head scrambled to keep up with what she was saying as I felt her gaze moving over me. “Yeah.”
Her gray eyes met mine. “That was barely seven months ago.”
It took a moment, but I caught up to that, too. The question behind her words was clear enough: she wanted to know what I’d been doing to lose so much weight, when I really didn’t need to lose weight.
Maybe she was having trouble trusting that I was done with the drugs.
If so, I couldn’t blame her.
Maybe the entire band had figured there was a pretty good chance I’d spent the last half-year on the receiving end of a needle. Maybe they assumed when they fired me, the second time, I’d just scurried away with my tail between my legs and plummeted straight off the wagon.
But the truth was, I went down south to breathe. To get away from the lawyers and the media and the bullshit. Find my head, get my shit together—and stay clean.
It wasn’t easy.
Along the way, I stopped eating, stopped sleeping. I lost twenty pounds overnight.
I also lost some serious respect for myself when I didn’t go right back and face down Brody’s accusations.
No matter how hard it was, though, I didn’t break. If anything was gonna break me, losing Dirty—again—would’ve done it.
Or seeing that look in Jessa’s eyes when she met me in that cafe, after the band asked me back—and she asked me why I didn’t just leave.
Didn’t you already ruin enough?
Or Brody, putting his fist in my face.
Or Jude, telling me that I was dismissed. Again.
But I didn’t break. I didn’t once feel the itch—that overwhelming desire to get fucked up.
I didn’t think I ever really would again, but I couldn’t be sure of that. It would be stupid to believe that. Which was why I still did the meetings, still worked every day at living clean and what that meant to me and why I was living clean. Still spoke with my sponsor at least once a week.
But I just told her, “It was a rough seven months.”
Elle absorbed that, her eyes moving over my bare chest again, just like they had yesterday. “You do look healthy, though,” she concluded. Then her eyes met mine again.
And damn… she was gorgeous up close. Like all the rest of her, her face was strong but delicate, with high, Scandinavian-looking cheekbones, though I knew her ancestry was mainly French. Her straight nose with the pretty little tip… her carved lips… all the clean, curving lines of her. And her eyes… cool and gray with little streaks of blue and silver.
I didn’t respond. I had no idea what to say. I felt tongue-tied, looking into that face. Seeing the wisdom there, and the control. This was a woman who had her shit together, clearly. I knew it, because when she looked at me, this close, it made me question everything I thought I’d ever figured out about myself.
“I am lonely,” she said suddenly. So suddenly it caught me by surprise.
I didn’t respond, and she looked out over the water.
“I mean… I have a lot of people in my life,” she said. “A lot of friends. Family. But there’s a deeper connection that’s, I don’t know… missing. Some days I ask myself what it is that could possibly be missing from all of this…” She gestured out, over the ocean, gleaming in the morning sun. “And I don’t even know. But it is missing… and it’s not just being in love. I was in love with Jesse, and I still felt alone.” Her ey
es met mine, and I felt the full force of them, locked on me. “And it’s not just feeling wanted. I’ve been wanted by men and still felt lonely. It’s a weird thing, being surrounded by people, being wanted by so many, admired, and still feeling alone. But… I am lonely.”
I nodded, like I understood that feeling, and I did, in a way. I’d had a taste of fame. But I was no Elle Delacroix.
“I get that,” I told her. “Feeling lonely. But sometimes we feel alone when we’re not. I’m sure you’ve got more love than you could ever know.” Because that’s what she was saying, right? That’s what she was missing?
Love.
“What about you?” she asked. “You’ve probably still got fans. Legions of them, really.”
“I’m not talking about fans,” I told her. “I’m talking about people who love who you really are, not who they think you are. Real love.”
She cocked her head a little. “What happened with your friend with benefits?” she asked, her eyes holding mine, like she was peering into me again, searching for truth. “Melissa?”
“Michelle,” I said, though it felt awkward, suddenly, talking about another woman when I was this close to Elle. When I could smell her and see those little flecks in her eyes. When my cock was still half-hard. “I guess… the benefits just kinda faded over time. Friendship felt like a better option, so we went with it.”
“That’s good. That you’re still friends.”
I shrugged. “Sometimes it works, afterward. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Yeah,” she said softly, and something flickered over her features. Regret, maybe?
Pain?
“How about Ash?” I asked her. “You two still friends?”
Her eyes twitched a little and her face hardened, but I couldn’t read the emotion there. “Yeah. Ash and I are friends.”
“And what about Jesse?”
“Yes,” she said, “we’re friends.” Her eyebrows pinched together a little and she added, “Of course we’re friends.”
“Yeah? What happened there? I thought you two were gonna go the distance.”
I did think that. Maybe because the media seemed to want the world to think it, and plastered the two of them all over every magazine cover in existence for about a year. Maybe because they just seemed so damned perfect together, like some royal couple of rock. Seemed like what they both deserved—to blaze off into the sunset together.
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