Dirty Like Seth_A Dirty Rockstar Romance

by Jaine Diamond

  So I kept my mouth shut as she turned to the window and told Cody, “Go ahead.” Then she slid off her bass and resigned herself to flopping on the other couch.

  I set down my guitar and sat next to her, Zane’s blue eyes glued to me as I did it.

  Cody played back what we’d just recorded; it was the best song we had so far. Elle and I had laid in some temp vocals, but clearly the song could use a stronger lead. We still weren’t sure what direction we were gonna take the vocals, but I felt kinda embarrassed listening to them with Zane in the room. Elle had a gorgeous voice, but we really hadn’t committed to what we were doing yet.

  When the song was done, Zane said, “You have some lyrics written down?”

  I had them, in my phone. But Elle liked to write everything out, longhand, in a bunch of little pink notebooks she kept in one of her guitar cases. She pulled one of them out now and flipped through, then handed it to him.

  Zane looked it over. He seemed to be processing what he’d just heard, tapping out a rhythm on his knee with his knuckles.

  Then he got to his feet.

  “Let me give this a go,” he said. And no one was exactly gonna stop him as he stepped up to the mic.

  I sat back and listened as Cody played the song back, without vocals, and Zane gave his voice to our song.

  As he sang, I got serious tingles down my spine. And a fucking lump in my throat.

  Several times he stopped, and cued Cody to stop and start again. He sang it differently than we had, more aggressively—and way fucking better.

  After several takes, he stopped. He stood there, looking at the words on the page of Elle’s notebook. Then he turned and looked at us.

  I could barely process the enormity of this moment. Zane Traynor, singing one of my new songs again.

  I had no idea if anyone in the room really knew what this meant to me.

  Zane was Dirty’s frontman, and as much as they might all butt heads with him at times, I knew the band would never agree to anything he was dead set against. But Zane had never been dead set against me. I was pretty sure of that by now. I knew he’d loved me like a brother, once; he’d told me so, many times. He’d brought me into the band, always had my back. He was the last to turn on me when things went south, and the first to welcome me back, too.

  Truly, it mattered to me—a fuck of a lot—what Zane thought about all of this. What he thought about me.

  His ice-blue eyes cut to mine. “Who wrote this shit?”

  “Seth,” Elle said.

  “It’s fucking good,” Zane said.

  “Thanks, man,” I managed to say. I was incredibly thankful; even if I never got to play with Zane again, this moment was vindication of a sort.

  Joanie appeared in the control booth, whispered something to Cody, and Cody informed us through his mic, “Maggie’s outside.”

  And my heart beat a little harder; it was already pounding ferociously.

  How much worse, or better, was this gonna get?

  “Let her in,” Zane said.

  I looked at Elle. Her gray eyes met mine; she looked like her heart was pounding, too. Her hand nudged against mine on the couch between us, and I slid my pinkie finger over hers.

  When Maggie walked in, she took one look at the four of us in the studio and her face fell. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked, in a quiet, fierce voice. She seemed to be looking mainly at Zane when she said it.

  Zane was still standing at the mic; the rest of us were still tossed on the couches, where we’d been mesmerized by him doing his thing.

  “That depends,” Elle said. “Are you here spying for Brody?”

  Maggie looked taken aback as her gaze swung to Elle. “No,” she said carefully. “I was just in the area, and Zane said you were here.”

  Elle threw Zane a look and Zane just grinned.

  “You haven’t been returning my calls,” Maggie said, still addressing Elle.

  “I told you guys I needed some time,” was Elle’s response.

  “Yeah, well,” Maggie said. “I’ve been worried about you. First, you take off to Hawaii with Seth.” She spared me a glance. “And now you’re alone all the time, shutting everyone out. Although, clearly… you’re not alone.” She looked around at the rest of us accusingly.

  I felt kinda like a kid getting caught smoking in the boys’ room. I did not know what to say. Or if I should say a thing.

  “What we’re doing,” Zane told her, “is what we do best.” And as Maggie turned to him again, he told Cody, “Play it back for her.”

  Cody played the song, and we all listened to what we’d put together, Maggie with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. With Dylan on the drums, Elle on the bass, and now Zane’s vocals… the song totally fucking rocked.

  When it ended, Zane said, “It’s fucking good, right?”

  But Maggie didn’t look impressed.

  “You guys realize what you’re doing?” She looked around at each of us. The three members of Dirty got nailed first: Dylan, Elle, Zane. Then me. Even Cody got a withering glance. “You’re working on a Dirty album without Jesse. Without Jessa. Without talking to Brody.”

  No one said anything. What could they say?

  She was right.

  And I was hardly gonna be the one to open my mouth first.

  Maggie turned and walked out, and I didn’t know the woman, but I could say with certainty that she was incredibly pissed. Hurt, even.

  Zane went after her.

  No one else said a thing for a solid minute. Then Cody announced, “I’ll, uh, take a lunch break. See you in a bit.” Then he was gone.

  I wasn’t sure what to say. But no matter what I said, this was not my problem.

  I wasn’t part of Dirty. Maggie wasn’t my management. This was something they all had to work out, and even though I’d kinda caused the problem, I figured I should get the fuck out of the way right about now.

  “I’m gonna get a coffee,” I said, tentatively. “Anyone want anything?”

  “Nope,” Dylan said.

  Elle shook her head, so I left the two of them there. Elle made no move to join me as I headed outside.

  The sunshine and fresh air were welcome after hours in the studio. After all that tension…

  I glimpsed Zane and Maggie in the small parking lot, standing by the open driver’s door of a car that must’ve been hers. They were talking in quiet, heated voices, and I turned away, heading to the little coffee shop across the street.

  Flynn was there, too, on the other side of the lot, having a smoke with another security dude who must’ve come with Zane.

  When I headed back, coffee in hand, they were all still there. Zane and Maggie were still there; they were standing close together, and things still looked heated. I watched as Zane took her face in his hands, getting closer. They were almost nose-to-nose. Her hands went to his, but she didn’t push him off. They kept talking, eyes locked on one another.

  Then she yanked away, and turned to get in her car.

  I looked away before she’d see me watching, and went to sit on the curb by the studio door. Maggie drove away, and Zane headed back toward the studio.

  When he saw me sitting here, he stopped.

  He looked at me for a long moment as I drank my coffee. Maybe wondering how much of that exchange I’d witnessed.

  Then he came over to sit beside me on the curb. He pulled out a joint and started smoking.

  “Before you go thinking I’m an asshole for whatever you just saw,” he said, “I married her. Last year, in Vegas.” I would’ve assumed he was fucking kidding me, but his cool blue eyes were dead serious. “No one knows about that, though.”

  “And that makes you less of an asshole?” I said.

  Zane burst out laughing.

  He took a few more drags of his joint in silence, then tossed it in the gutter and stood to head inside. I stood with him. He eyed me, once. He didn’t say anything else on the subject of his marriage—but I knew why he’d just
told me what he did.

  He wasn’t confiding in me because he trusted me, exactly. He was confiding in me to test me.

  Which was fine with me.

  I wasn’t about to go telling anyone that shit.

  I followed Zane back into the studio. Cody was still out, and whatever Elle and Dylan were talking about while we were gone, they went silent when we walked in.

  The four of us looked at each other and I was pretty fucking sure we were all hearing Maggie’s words in our heads. Seeing that You-all-just-fucked-up look on her face.

  We all knew we were fucking guilty as charged: somehow, without meaning to, we’d basically reunited Dirty and were starting to cut an album—without Jesse, Jessa or Brody. Behind all their backs.

  “Maggie’s right.” Zane voiced it first. “We gotta take this to Jesse and Brody.”

  “And Jessa,” Elle said.

  “And Jessa,” Zane repeated, looking straight at me.

  I nodded. If they were willing, I was on board.

  Having three members of Dirty in a room with me, making music, and not hating me? It was more than I’d dared hope for these last few weeks. If I had any chance at all of Dirty talking about me in a conversation that didn’t involve plotting my death, I’d take it. Whatever came of it, I’d take it.

  Even if it was just a fucking truce.

  “How do you think they’ll take this?” Dylan asked.

  “Who the fuck knows,” Zane said. “But we’ve got four people here. Jesse’s gonna have a hard time arguing that.”

  “Maybe it’ll bring us together,” Elle said, but there wasn’t much hope behind it, maybe just a little sarcasm.

  “Or tear us the fuck apart,” Dylan said.

  In the silence that followed, I found my voice. “You guys don’t have to do this. We can all walk away, right now. Elle and I can do our thing, alone, or we can give that up, too. I’ll do whatever she wants.”

  And with those words, the guys both looked at me, hard.

  Then they looked at Elle.

  I’d pretty much just admitted my feelings for her. I was pretty fucking sure they could hear it in my words.

  Elle looked only at Zane. “Do you want Seth back in the band?” she asked him, point-blank.

  “Yup,” he said, looking back at her, dead-straight. “If Jesse and Brody can get on board.” Then he looked at me, and I nodded. I wanted to thank him, really, but the words got stuck in my throat.

  Elle turned to Dylan. “And you?”

  Dylan shrugged. “You know I’m easy.”

  “No,” Elle said, shaking her head. “That’s not good enough here. On this one, you have a fucking opinion, and you need to voice it now, Dylan.”

  Dylan kinda inwardly sighed and looked over at me. He considered me for a moment, then said, “I’ll play with you. If Jesse’s okay with it… I’ll play with you anytime, Seth.”

  And I really could’ve wept with relief. It meant a whole hell of a lot to hear those words out of Dylan’s mouth.

  But Zane… Zane pulled serious weight, with everyone—from the band to band management, from the fans to the record company—and I knew his support was probably the one thing I needed most.

  I also knew that if he went head-to-head with Jesse and/or Brody, it would not be good. For anyone. With Jesse alone it would be bad enough, though Brody could probably mediate that. I was pretty fucking sure Brody wouldn’t normally go against Zane, but when it came to Jessa, it was a different story.

  Always had been.

  “Then let’s talk to them,” Zane said, his tone decisive. “Tell them what’s going on here.”

  “Yeah,” Elle said, and she gazed at me, a soft, proud look in her gray eyes. “Let’s do that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Elle

  The next morning, I woke up feeling like shit. I felt sick, and I had no idea if it was legitimate nausea or if it was entirely self-manifested.

  Late last night, after we left the studio, I’d had Flynn drop Seth back at his hotel. It was the first night in about a week-and-a-half that he hadn’t stayed over at my place, but I’d told him I was feeling shitty and needed to get some sleep.

  He didn’t push it, giving me a sweet kiss on the cheek and telling me to call him in the morning when I felt better.

  But now it was morning, and I did not feel better.

  After we’d dropped him off, I’d made Flynn swing by a late-night drug store so I could grab myself a handful of pregnancy tests. Because sometime between Maggie arriving at the studio and the rest of us deciding to talk to Jesse and Brody about what we were doing, it had occurred to me, out of nowhere, that my period hadn’t come in a while.

  In the car on the way home from the drug store, I pulled up the calendar app on my phone and figured it out. I was usually meticulous in tracking my cycle—whether I was sleeping with someone or not—though sometimes it got away from me if I was crazy-busy. Usually, I marked the day I expected my next period to start on the calendar with an X.

  But this past month, I’d forgotten to mark it down.

  As I totally fucking panicked, trying to remember when my last period was, it came to me. Midway through the very first week of auditions in Vancouver, before we headed down to L.A.; that was when my last period started. It stood out in my mind only because I’d been so caught up with the auditions that I’d forgotten about it, it had caught me unprepared, and I’d had to borrow a tampon from Maggie.

  Relief washed through me as I realized what that meant. I hadn’t had sex with Ash since the week before the auditions started.

  If I’d gotten pregnant, it had happened with Seth.

  As Flynn drove me home, I’d let that sink in.

  I’d counted the days on my calendar three times to be sure. I was pretty sure it was day thirty-five of my cycle, and normally my period started like clockwork on day twenty-seven. A day or two early or late was normal.

  Eight days late was not.

  As soon as I got home, I’d ripped into the first box of pregnancy tests, promptly peed on a stick—and just about threw up when the little pink line appeared in the window. I compared it to the instruction sheet, and rationally accepted the fact that the test was telling me I was pregnant.

  However. These things could be wrong.

  The instructions also said first morning urine was best. So I went to bed, went to sleep, and as soon as I woke up, I stumbled into the bathroom and peed on another stick.

  This one adamantly agreed with the first one.

  I checked the expiry dates on the boxes, even though I’d already done that. The tests were not expired. I’d followed the instructions. The pink lines stared me in the face.

  This time, I did throw up.

  Then I tossed the sticks in the garbage and went on with my day.

  I was the last one to arrive at the church.

  Brody had told us all to expect this day; that Liv and the producers were planning on filming a day of interviews and follow-up with the band, discussing where we were at and making some semi-final decisions about what was going on here. The network seemed to be getting impatient, pushing for us to close the deal on a guitarist.

  Meanwhile, Zane, Dylan and I knew we had a different agenda in mind.

  When we’d discussed it at the studio, Zane had seemed completely unvexed by the idea of having this discussion—the discussion about Seth—today, on-camera. Dylan had suggested that was a bad idea, and Seth had agreed. Myself, I hadn’t yet decided if the cameras would work in our favor or not.

  But either way, by the time I arrived at the church, following the forty-minute drive to get here… I couldn’t deal with any of it.

  I walked into the beautiful old church, Dirty’s jam space, our sacred rehearsal space, now crawling with film crew, and I almost fell apart.

  I could not do this. Not with those pink lines floating in my head.

  I felt borderline hysterical and wondered if there was some kind of hormonal surge at work.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry first.

  Instead, I went straight over to the first person in my path, who happened to be Jesse, and said, “We can’t film this.”

  He turned to me, and the look he gave me pretty much reflected back whatever crazy, wound-up vibe I was giving out. He grabbed my arm, like he thought I might fall over if he didn’t, and said, “Okay. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. We need to talk to you.”

  His dark eyebrows twisted together. “Who does?”

  “Zane,” I said. “Where’s Zane?” I started looking around, but the room was a blur of faces I couldn’t make sense of.

  It occurred to me, as Jesse suddenly steered me over to a pew and sat me on my ass, that I was very possibly having a panic attack.

  I was aware, dimly, of Maggie kneeling in front of me and telling me to put my head down. I did that. I folded over my knees, swallowing back a rush of nausea. I literally bit it back. I squeezed my eyes shut. For a terrifying second, I thought I was gonna projectile all over them.

  I was aware, too, of a bunch of people being cleared out of the room. I heard the big doors at the main entrance shutting and someone throwing the bolt. It was quiet, deathly quiet when my head cleared. I realized the room had been spinning a little, and I opened my eyes.

  I was still folded over my knees, staring at my sandals. They were gold. My toenail polish was sparkly turquoise. Next to my feet, I saw Jesse’s Converse, black with white soles and laces. They were clean and new. He’d never worn Chucks before. Not until he met Katie.

  I just stared at his shoes.

  I heard them talking over me. Zane and Dylan, explaining what we’d been doing.

  Making music with Seth. The songs he and I had written.

  The songs we’d been recording.

  I heard Maggie, and she seemed to be defending us.

  I heard Brody and I heard Jesse, but I was so detached from what was going on in the room, it didn’t even bother me that they clearly weren’t taking things well. At least, it didn’t bother me more than anything else I was feeling. My guts were roiling; I kept getting this salty rush of saliva in my mouth and swallowing it back, as I breathed in and out, slowly, through my nose, in an even, careful rhythm.