Guitar Freak Read online

  “Yeah, good point.”

  She gave a little hiccup that somehow managed to sound cute.

  I pushed her gently to the side so her weight wasn’t on me. The thread from my sweater had become entangled with a button on the front of her dress. I tried to pull it loose. God, it had to be that button, right there. It wouldn’t unwind. I tugged it, but the fiber was too strong to break.

  Her hand clasped my waist so she wouldn’t fall away from me. Her leg wedged between mine. That was way too close for comfort, but there was no way out of it. Not with us tangled together. I tried to think of passionless things, like ice-cold showers, but my cock had a mind of its own.

  “I’ll take to take my sweater off,” I said. “Stay still.”

  I tried to get it over my head, but I couldn’t, not with the two of us wedged together like that. My right arm was pretty much useless.

  “You’ll have to do it,” I said.

  Hell, I was asking her to undress me. I hoped like buggery that we weren’t on the security camera.

  “Sit up a little bit,” she said.

  I propped myself up on my elbow, and she slid the sweater up on my left side.

  “Nope, not working. You’ll have to wiggle down. That’ll work best. I’ll hold the sweater, and you squirm out of it.”

  This was shaping up to be one of the worst nights of my life. Well, maybe not the worst, but the most embarrassing, for sure. I moved my hips, easing my way out of the sweater. This stupid plan was actually working.

  As I moved farther down, Polly grabbed the sweater sleeves so I could get my arms out. With my left arm loose, I gripped her thigh for traction.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Elijah’s laughter rang out in the hallway.

  Fuck. Fuckity fuck. The most embarrassing night of my life had just gotten far, far worse. Heat flooded through my body. I’d never hear the end of this.

  “It’s not what it seems,” I said, my voice muffled by my sweater.

  “Of all the people I thought I’d catch rutting in the hallway of a hotel, you’re the absolute last on the list, buddy. Shit, Damo, don’t you know if you wanna do it in the hallway, you go for a knee trembler against the wall. Otherwise, you get carpet burns.”

  “My sweater was stuck,” I said, finally freeing myself.

  “Oh, the old ‘my sweater is stuck on your button’ routine. Tried that a few times myself.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Damn. That was Crow. The last thing I needed was more witnesses.

  “Look,” I said and held up my sweater, still attached to the button.

  Then Polly gave a gentle snore. She was asleep. In the hallway.

  I got up to return to my room.

  “You can’t leave her there,” Elijah said. “I always thought you were the gentleman in the band. Not the blow-and-go type.”

  “I didn’t blow, but I am going.”

  “Yeah, you didn’t blow. I can tell by the tent in your pants.”

  I gave Elijah a look that would shrink his testicles. Although I was the one who needed shrinking.

  “Get her key out of her pocket and carry her to her room, at least,” he said. “Even if you don’t care about her, think what the cleaning staff will say if they find her like that.”

  He had a point.

  “Give me a hand lifting her off the floor,” I said. “She’s heavier than she looks.”

  Elijah helped lift her into my arms, then ran ahead and propped her door open.

  Polly sank into my arms, warm and soft, my sweater still attached to her. She wound her arms around my neck without waking, her head resting on my neck. Now that she was asleep, everything about her suggested sweetness, but I knew that was far from the truth. There was not one thing sweet about her.

  I got her into her room and lowered her onto the bed.

  “Make sure you take her boots off,” Elijah said, then he disappeared, shutting the door.

  I did not want to touch her feet, but he was right about the boots. I unzipped one boot and pulled it off her foot. As I removed it, she squirmed a little, her dress riding up way too far. I tugged it down to cover her.

  I tried the second boot. My hand accidentally touched her leg as I pulled on it, and she giggled, a soft, breathless sound. There was something overwhelmingly sexy about that giggle. I needed to get that boot fully off her and get back to my room.

  The giggle stopped, and she let out a soft snore. That made me smile. I had no idea why I’d want to linger, watching her. That was just creepy and wrong.

  Before I left, I tried to untangle my sweater. One simple pull, and I got it free. Damn.

  I gave her one last glance. The urge to kiss her forehead before I left became almost too much to deny, but that would be creepier than just watching her. I needed to get away from her and whatever weird magic she had used to get me this confused.

  Chapter 9: Damo

  The next day, I took the tour manager, Fartstard, out for coffee. Fartstard wasn’t his real name; Elijah had nicknamed him that the first time we met him. A juvenile joke, but the name had stuck. Fartstard was only too eager to get a free coffee.

  There was a small cafe near our hotel. I wanted to talk to him, and I didn’t want to risk the other band members interrupting us. Still, I sure as hell didn’t want him in my room. This place suited my style. The place was buzzing enough that our conversation wouldn’t be overheard but wasn’t busy enough to be annoying, either. We grabbed a booth at the back.

  “We need to get rid of them,” I told him after we sat down.

  I leaned back in my seat, right foot on my left knee, giving him my “don’t fuck with me” stare. It’s best to intimidate people when you want them to do something for you. And when it came to icy-cold stares, no one could beat me.

  That effort was wasted when Fartstard didn’t raise his head from the menu.

  Finally, he looked up.

  “Who?”

  As if he didn’t know. It was blindingly obvious we’d made a mistake putting Wreckage on the bill. I hated making mistakes, but I wasn’t too proud to admit that I’d done wrong. I just wanted this mess cleared up.

  This guy was as laid back as they come. Sometimes you had to wonder if he was actually awake. But he got things done and got them done properly. I didn’t care how he did it or how offensive his personal odors were if he did his job well.

  “Wreckage,” I said. They aren’t working out as openers.” Then I called out to the waiter, “Two short blacks.”

  “Make one of those a latte, and I’ll have a big breakfast with an extra side of bacon,” Fartstard added.

  “Didn’t you get breakfast at the hotel?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, but that was two hours ago. I’m a growing man, and tour managing is hard work. Dude, you have to keep your strength up in this line of work.”

  I shook my head. No wonder he was called Fartstard. All that grease in his belly.

  “You sure you want to get rid of Wreckage?” he asked. “They seemed pretty tight to me.”

  “Are you doubting my judgment?”

  He shook his head, but that look on his face said otherwise.

  I was sure he already knew about the incident in the hallway. Stories like that spread fast on tour. Everyone from the guys working the lighting rigs to the sound techs and the people selling merchandise would know about it. I should be damn grateful that no one had pulled out a camera while it was happening.

  Then I told Fartstard about the fight backstage. That kind of shit shouldn’t happen. If I’d been walking a little faster, that bottle might’ve hit me. I’d first thought that Polly would be the problem, but it seemed the whole band were messed up.

  “Maybe they had good reason.” He shrugged.

  “You’re way too easygoing,” I told him.

  “I need to make up for you.”

  A waiter set our coffees down in front of us. Fartstard looked around for his food.

  “Shouldn’t you be
talking to your management team back home?” he said. “I’m not sure I’m the right person for this.”

  He was the right person. He just wanted to dodge the responsibility.

  “You’re tour manager. You manage the tour. Make it happen.”

  Fartstard picked up a couple of the sugar sachets and stirred them into his coffee. He took a sip, then added some more. The dude was on the fast track to the cardiac ward. I wasn’t about to lecture him on his food habits, not when I needed to keep him focused on the more pressing issue of the opening band, but I didn’t want our manager dying on tour, either.

  “I don’t want drama. I don’t want to have to deal with that kind of volatile shit. Get someone else. I don’t care who we get to replace them, so long as there are no bottles being smashed backstage.”

  “It’s not so easy, Damo. We’ve paid for publicity, posters and the like, with their names on it. It’ll cost a fortune to change that. Then, they have a clause in their contract. We’ll have to pay them out if they get kicked off the tour. That’s another huge slab of money. You can’t expect the other guys to take a hit just because you aren’t happy.”

  He frowned, obviously overwhelmed by the task. But I didn’t care how he sorted this out, so long as it was sorted.

  “Take it out of my share. I don’t give a shit,” I told him.

  “You can say that, but you don’t know how much you’re giving up. For nothing, really. Just let it go. It might be a one-off thing.”

  He could say that, but he wasn’t the one who’d been caught squirming around in the hallway with a drunken bass player. The thought of it made me a little ill, churning in the belly. She’d caused so much trouble in just one day. I’d known from the minute I’d first set eyes on her that she wouldn’t work out. I didn’t want to think about the softness of her body slumped against mine as I carried her to her room, or that soft giggle as I took off her boots. I didn’t want to think about her at all, but while she was on this tour, I wouldn’t be able to think of anything else.

  “If you cover the expenses, you’ll make practically nothing on this tour.”

  The waiter brought over his breakfast. That was a mountain of food.

  “I don’t care. Don’t you understand? Money means nothing to me. What matters to me is my career, and that means having peace and quiet. I’m thinking long-term here. We need this tour to be beyond a success. So far beyond a success that it makes success look like a pale, washed-out thing. That fight wasn’t even a tiff. It was a full-on fight. If I hadn’t turned up, hell knows what would’ve happened.”

  What had happened was that that guy, Miles, had tried to corner me a few times to give his side of the story. I had no fucks to give about his side of things. I got the feeling that if you opened the door to that kind of discussion with him, it’d never end. He’d rant and rave. I never wanted to know about people’s personal issues, and I really didn’t want to get mixed up in it all. They could go. We’d get someone else. End of story.

  I picked up my coffee and drank it down in one gulp.

  “Just make it happen, okay? No matter what it takes.”

  I threw some notes on the table to cover my coffee. I had no idea how much. I didn’t have a handle on this money yet.

  “Hey, you can’t walk off and leave me eating on my own,” Fartstard said.

  He’d already scoffed half that breakfast.

  I shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll manage.”

  I had to get back to the hotel. I had stuff to do. Stuff that didn’t involve thinking about Polly.

  Chapter 10: Polly

  The Freaks’ set was even better the second night. I hadn’t planned on sticking around to watch, especially with Damo being so snotty to me, but I couldn’t help myself.

  He’d walked past me in the corridor before we went onstage and had looked through me as though I didn’t even exist. The other guys all said hello, but not him. No matter what he thought of me, that was damn rude. How hard was it to say a simple hello? It wasn’t like that would kill him.

  What the hell had happened when I got back to the hotel? I had vague memories of rolling around with him in the hallway of the hotel, but surely that had never happened. That must’ve been one of those drunken dreams, because I couldn’t imagine Damo rolling around with me anywhere, let alone in the hotel hallway. But my dress somehow had that musky smell of him.

  It might not have even been him. Something might’ve happened at that bar I’d gone to. Who knew? God, I had to cut back on drinking.

  So, I had no idea why Damo was so pissy.

  Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have thrown that bottle at Miles. The way Damo had glared at me when he saw it had burned itself into my brain. Miles had glared too, but screw him. He’d deserved it, and I didn’t regret doing it. I just regretted Damo having seen me act so trashy. And now I couldn’t resist watching them play.

  God, the way Damo’s tattoos ripped as he played guitar, though. I could almost forget how annoying and rude he could be. The movement of his forearms hypnotized me. He did have a certain hotness, even if he wasn’t my type. The way his jeans hugged his butt didn’t hurt, either. He moved across that stage not with a swagger, like most guitarists, but with a quieter authority, as though he had nothing to prove to the world.

  But I wasn’t getting my panties all wet over him. No way.

  I’d had enough of control freaks in this lifetime. Miles. That jerk. His control freakiness was different from Damo’s, though. I had a feeling that, no matter how Damo felt, none of that would ever show onstage. He was a professional; I had to give him that. Miles was the opposite. His passive-aggressiveness drove me nuts. If he had issues, he should keep them off the stage. He hurt himself as much as he did me, and he hurt Jax, who had nothing at all do with any of this.

  Bastard.

  At least tonight Miles had made it through our set without being a prick. I’d been on edge the whole time, waiting for him to do something, some jerk move that would make me look like an idiot. And one good night just meant he’d flare up later, like a ticking time bomb of jerkiness.

  I hated that I had to rely on him.

  Instead of going back to the dressing room, I’d hung around the stage to avoid Miles. I couldn’t avoid him forever, but a few hours’ peace was welcome. I’d kept my bass with me because it gave me comfort, instead of letting the guitar techs pack it away. I needed to practice some stuff, but I’d do it later.

  The Freaks moved on to the next song. One of my favorites. I loved the bass line in this song. It sent shivers down my spine. I’d played it a heap of times, just mucking around at home, because it was so awesome. There was something immensely satisfying about playing it.

  Just before the chorus, something went wrong. Elijah went off-key, then the bass stopped completely. Shit, he’d snapped a string. The other three kept playing, but Elijah looked like he’d die onstage. One of the techs ran over to help, but it’d take a while. The song would be finished before they replaced that string.

  Before I could even think, I grabbed my bass and ran onstage. It might piss Damo off, but I had to save the song. Without the bass line, it was a pretty meh song, to be honest.

  Damo scowled at me as if to ask what the fuck I was doing onstage. I ignored him, giving him a wave to say continue on with what you’re doing. He kept playing.

  I bumped Elijah out of the way with a grin. He grinned back, unplugged his bass and handed me the cord. Smooth transition, and I came in with perfect timing. Only the most switched-on punters in the crowd would’ve even noticed anything astray. It felt like that had taken forever, but really it was mere seconds. Not enough time to process what I’d done.

  Sure, I’d played around with the bass part before, but I’d done it alone. Technically, I knew how to play it, but now I had to work in with the other guys. That took a lot more focus. I put all I had into doing this right. I didn’t even draw a breath. I just made sure I played this right. Moving my fingers—that was all that matt
ered.

  Soon, I had it. At the end of the chorus, I exhaled. This thing was actually possible.

  Playing with The Freaks was easy. With Miles, playing felt like a constant fight. He did what he liked, and I followed.

  Our own set earlier had been tense as fuck, so this was euphoric. A dream. Sure, the other guys were playing to me in a way they never would for Elijah. Damo seemed to be able to anticipate what I’d do, and he adjusted his playing to match mine. So smooth, so slick.

  We got through to the end of the song without me fucking it up. I looked to Elijah to check if he was okay to carry on. He had his bass strapped back on and gave me a thumbs-up.

  “Thanks, Polly, for helping us out there.” Damo gave me a gritted-teeth smile as he talked into the mic.

  Was he angry? I couldn’t tell.

  “No problem,” I shouted, looking out to the crowd.

  The crowd gave an extra cheer as I walked offstage. I barely managed to pause and wave. I’d done that, and I’d done it well. The buzz rushing through my body was different from when I played with Wreckage. I’d loved the challenge, and I’d loved the way they played.

  My heart pounded but it was a happy pounding. I’d enjoyed playing with them. It made me crave playing with a band who actually worked together. A grin spread over my face.

  “What was that about? Trying to big-note yourself?” Miles had snuck in beside me. I hadn’t noticed him until he spoke.

  I wanted to ignore him, but he wouldn’t give up until I answered. I knew that.

  “Elijah broke a string. I filled in.”

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  I turned my shoulder. All the happy buzz of playing drained from me.

  Miles could think what he liked. I hadn’t been trying to call attention to myself. I’d just seen them in trouble and had wanted to help. Like any normal human being would. It hadn’t been about me, but Miles would never understand that. Even the buzz I’d gotten up there hadn’t been about me, it’d been about the song.

  Eventually, he realized he’d get no reaction out of me, and he moved off. As he moved away, I exhaled. A whole bunch of muscles I hadn’t even realized I’d tensed suddenly relaxed. God, working with your ex was a pain, but I couldn’t do anything to change that. I just had to persevere. But, fuck, I hated persevering. It was the worst, the booby prize. The gritting-your-teeth part of life. Clean breaks were so much better.