As always, thanks for reading. I hope to see you back for the rest of Sinful Serenade.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Storm Hardy wants her, but he can’t have her.
Lotus Irving wants him, but doesn’t know who he really is.
He left Ocean Beach to pursue a career in the music industry.
She stayed behind, her world rocked by one terrible tragedy after another.
What if all your best memories are behind you? What if you lost the one friend who understood you better than anyone else? What if your greatest wish is to recreate the past instead of imagining a brighter future?
Storm by New York Times bestselling author Michelle Mankin is a novel about never giving up, no matter what life throws at you. It’s about the importance of love and learning to dream again. It’s about looking beyond the wind, rain, and lightning to find the calm. It’s about holding on to the right person who helps you to be strong.
Lotus
Fifteen years ago
“Out of my way!” Dwayne Ray shouted.
Without time to move, I fell as he shoved me in the back, landing hard on my hands and knees. My back hurt, and so did my hands. Lifting them from the gravel, I flipped them over. The skin on my palms was red, and several cuts were bleeding.
Tears filled my eyes and my bottom lip trembled. All the other kids on the playground had seen me fall.
“Leave her alone, Dwayne!” a strong voice said, and an older boy approached.
“What’s it to you, Storm Hardy?” Dwayne tilted his head back as the older boy stopped directly in front of him.
Storm planted his feet. “She’s just a girl, and she’s smaller than you. You should be more careful.”
Dwayne’s nostrils flared. “She should stay out of my way.”
“You’re a bully.” Storm crossed his arms over his chest, and his dark brown brows slammed together. He was mad too, but it was a different kind of anger, directed at Dwayne and not me.
“I’m not a bully.” Dwayne’s mouth twisted. “You are. You’re the one who’s always in trouble with the teacher.”
“I only get in trouble if I need to.” Storm’s eyes flashed. “Would you like some trouble? I’m happy to give it to you.”
“No.” Dwayne’s eyes widened and he took a small step back.
“Then. Go. Away. Now,” Storm said slowly and quietly.
Dwayne dropped his shoulders, shoved his hands in his pockets, and turned away.
“Thank you,” I said as Storm crouched beside me. Staring at him, I tried to figure out why he’d helped me. I’d noticed him, but he’d never talked to me before. He usually had a different recess period.
“Are you okay?” he asked gently.
“I think so.” I met his gaze, and my bruised heart melted at the softest suede-brown eyes I’d ever seen. “I’m Lotus.”
“I’m Storm. I won’t let Dwayne hurt you again,” he said firmly. “Or anyone else. Don’t be afraid of me. Okay?”
“I’m not afraid.” I decided I didn’t need to figure out why he’d helped me. The important part was that he did.
Storm frowned, looking away. “Most kids are afraid of me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m big, I guess.” He shrugged. “And I get mad a lot. Like my dad and my brothers.”
“My dad says it’s not what others think about you that matters, but what you think about you, and what you do that matters. You helped me. That was a nice thing to do.”
“Your dad sounds great. Mine’s not.” Storm reached out to me. “I’ll take you to the nurse. Take my hand. Let me help you up.”
I put my hand in his. It was much bigger than mine, but he clasped my smaller fingers as carefully as my dad did baby seedlings when he planted them.
“I’m seven,” I said proudly, locking eyes with him as I stood.
“I know.” Storm smiled, and his smile was even better than his eyes.
It made my hands hurt less, and helped me feel steady and sure. Like when I dug my toes into the warm sand at the shoreline and the water rushed in, causing me to sink in deeper, making me part of the land and the ocean at the same time.
“My mom left my dad.” I decided then and there that this boy was going to be my friend, and if he was going to be my friend, he needed to know the worst of it right away. “She went to Thailand. My dad says she might come back, but I don’t think she ever will.”
“Oh.” Storm stopped smiling. “I’m sorry.”
“It makes my dad sad. It makes me sad, but my brother is too little to be sad. I take care of him for my dad.” Biting down on my lower lip, I straightened my shoulders. “All by myself sometimes.”
“Well, you don’t have to be by yourself at school. I’ll look after you and be your friend. Will you be mine?”
“Yes.” I said it like a promise, because it was. A promise I meant to keep forever. “Best friends.”
Lotus
Eleven years ago
“My fingers keep slipping.” I blew out a puff of air that lifted wispy tendrils of my dark brown hair.
Storm wrapped his strong arms around me. “Don’t give up.”
I listened to his voice, letting it soothe me instead of getting more frustrated. From the moment he’d offered me his hand to help me when one of the boys had pushed me down during recess, he’d become my hero, back when I was seven and he was nine. Even with the two-year age gap, we’d been best friends ever since.
“It’s too hard.” My stomach flipped as his hand covered mine on the guitar strings.
“It’s not.” Patiently, he guided me through the simple chords again. His long legs bracketed my shorter ones on the seat, and his warm breath stirred wisps of hair near my ear.
“It’s not difficult for you.” I grumbled, though I really didn’t have a lot to complain about.
I was with my best friend. We were in his backyard, and there was a pleasant tang of salt from the Pacific Ocean, which was only a few blocks from his house.
“Only because I’ve been playing guitar longer.” His hand slid along the skin of my cheek as he gently turned my head.
As I glanced at him over my shoulder, his face was all I could see. That cute face was all I wanted to see. Everything else faded when I was with him, even my doubts.
Storm was my favorite person in the whole wide world, aside from my dad and my little brother. The palm-shaded alcove we sat in was my favorite place, our very own private refuge. Lush, it was as lovely as the rest of Storm’s backyard that my father had landscaped.
“You were good at it from the moment you picked up your first guitar,” I said softly, my admiring gaze drifting over his handsome features.
Music was the only outward sign of Storm’s inner artistic spirit. Everything else about him was orderly as his father demanded.
Storm’s sun-streaked light brown hair was shorn military style close to his scalp. His boyish features were rounded, but most times schooled into determined lines. His clothing was wrinkle-free. His shorts and T-shirt were like mine, but unlike mine, his were as clean as when he’d first put them on at the beginning of the day. If he got them dirty or wrinkled, he got into trouble.
His father was a navy man, a petty officer first class in charge of an electrical team of fifty men on the USS Embassy. He ran a tight ship, both at his job and in his home. Even when he was stationed away, like he was now, he expected his wife and three boys to adhere to his rules. All his rules.
“Why do you want to learn to play so badly?” Storm asked.
Because it’s my connection to you, I thought, and I don’t have many left except for surfing and music.
Storm was in middle school now, kissing and dating girls, entering a world that I was too young for. I felt naive and foolish around him a lot of the time, and I could feel it happening, the separation between the two of us. My best friend was growing up faster than me. Soon, he would leave me and childish things behind. I was losing a little more of him every
day.
“It helps me, gives me a beat for my rhymes,” I said, shrugging one shoulder as my eyes remained locked on his.
The soft earth-brown color of Storm’s eyes grounded me as much as having my hands wrist-deep in rich soil did. I was my father’s daughter, and loved planting things and watching them grow as much as he did. But unlike him, I also loved words. Arranging them into pretty patterns helped me make sense of my world, something that was hard for me to do whenever I thought about my mother. I didn’t understand why she left my father, my brother, and me.
What was wrong with us—with me—that she’d never once tried to see or talk to me again?
“I like your poems,” Storm said, and his voice cracked. His voice and his body were undergoing so many changes, and I didn’t want our friendship to be one of them. Yet, in one way I did.
My gaze dipped to his mouth. His lips were as firm as his features. They tempted me lately, the warm terracotta color and the sculpted shape of them. I imagined pressing my mouth to Storm’s. I’d imagined that a lot. Dreamed about it.
But I knew he would never really kiss me. He didn’t think about me the way he did those older girls. Storm and I were only friends, but I thought about him as more. I wished for him to one day think about me as more than just a friend too.
“You asked me to teach you, Lilly,” he said.
“Yes, I did.” Refocusing on reality, I found his gaze on me.
My heart raced whenever he called me that. He told me I was beautiful and strong like the blossom. I loved that he thought that. I wanted to be beautiful and strong. I could be for him.
“So learn to play,” he said sternly. “You can do it. You only fail if you stop trying.”
Storm said wise things like that a lot, only he didn’t seem to realize how wise he was. I think the way he saw himself was damaged because of his dad. His father only yelled at him and criticized him, and his mother devoted most of her attention to his brothers as if she wanted to ignore Storm’s existence. Neither seemed to notice how uniquely creative he was, or how deeply he felt things, but I noticed.
Storm’s wisdom sprang from his sensitive heart. He wasn’t the destructive part of a storm. He was the calm at the center. Except when he clashed with his father.
“Okay, I’ll try harder.” I dropped my chin, focusing on the guitar and the proper positioning of my hands on the strings.
Storm’s fingers skated down my arm, sliding across my skin on their way toward my hand.
His gentle touch awakened a flurry of sensations. He awakened so many sensations. He was blindingly bright like a cloudless blue sky. A gale force rattling the canvas of a sail. The sun dazzling like diamonds as it danced on the surface of the ocean.
We were just friends. I knew that was all we were. But it wasn’t all I wanted us to be.
Storm
Nine years ago
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my shorts as I stood under a tree—a champagne cork palm. I knew the name of it and most plants because of my best friend, Lotus Irving. Ironically, her brother, Cork, was named for the sturdy spindle-trunked palm. Lotus’s father adored her and her brother, and had named both his children for the plants that he most loved. He was so very different from my old man.
My eyes narrowed on Lotus as she exited the school and crossed the front lawn. She walked toward me, but she wasn’t alone. Dwayne Ray, once her tormentor, was now a wannabe boyfriend, and he was making his move. Each Friday when I picked her up from school to take her surfing, Dwayne wormed his way a little closer. He’d had a thing for her since elementary school, seeing like I did that she was on the verge of becoming more unforgettably beautiful than ever.
My fingers curled into fists inside my pockets as he tucked a strand of her gleaming mahogany hair behind her ear. He was going to kiss her, and I needed to let him. Dwayne was her age, thirteen, and she was only my friend. Unlike the girls I fooled around with, I shared my inner truths with her.
She meant something to me. In fact, she meant everything. No one else counted.
But it didn’t seem right, Dwayne and Lotus. He didn’t know her like I did. He saw only her outward beauty. There was so much more to her than what could be seen.
“Yo, Lilly!” I called.
Her head snapped up, and her uniquely shaped eyes scanned the lawn, following the direction of my voice.
I knew the moment she found me. I felt it, the connection of her gaze to mine. It rocked me like a lightning bolt, right in the center of my chest.
Her expression brightening, she touched Dwayne’s arm. She said something to him that made him frown, then skirted around him on her way to me.
In the past, Lotus might have run to me. She loved our Fridays, surfing at the bottom of Sunset Cliffs, almost as much as I did. But lately, she seemed troubled, less carefree.
I knew some was her sensing and reflecting the tension I had going on inside my home, but some of the tension was her own. Her dad was dating, and I knew it hurt her. It was confirmation that he no longer expected her mother to ever return from Thailand. Though her parents had never officially divorced, Lotus hadn’t forgotten her mother, and had never fully gotten over the pain of that abandonment.
“Hey, you,” I said when she reached me. “How’d school go?”
Unable to resist, I reached out and brushed a long strand of her dark brown hair over her slender shoulder, probably the same strand Dwayne had touched. I wanted my touch to replace his. It was a douche move, but I didn’t care. I was edgy about Dwayne, edgy about Lotus and me. Honestly, I was edgy about a lot of things.
“It went well.” She smiled, and being on the receiving end of her happiness jolted more high-voltage current through me. “Miss Ryan read my poem in poetry club today.”
“Nice.” I returned her smile with a grin. “Which one?”
“Alternate Ending.”
“Ah.” That was the one Lotus had written about her mom staying after falling in love with her father instead of returning to Thailand. “That must have been intense for you.”
“It was, a little.” She nodded, a sudden dark cloud chasing away the previous sunniness of her expression.
“I’m sorry. Here,” I said gently. “Let me have that.” I slid her backpack off her shoulder and onto mine, wishing I could take on her heavier emotional burdens as easily.
“Thanks.” Licking her lips, she dropped her gaze.
Does her heart race, and her mouth go dry when I touch her?
Sometimes I thought that she felt what I did. But even if she did, it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t cross that line. She was too young, and even if she weren’t, I wouldn’t risk messing up our friendship.
Lotus was the only person I could share my feelings with. The only person who truly understood me. She knew I was an outsider in my own home. She knew how trapped I felt, sandwiched between an older and a younger sibling who, unlike me, resembled my father and were acknowledged by my mother. My older brother, Saber, did everything my father asked him to do, wanting to earn his approval. My younger brother, Shield, hid behind Saber, doing his best to be invisible.
Me? I didn’t have it in me to try to fit in anymore. I’d accepted that I didn’t belong.
“You sure you can carry all that?” Lotus watched me as I grabbed the two surfboards, hers and mine, that I’d leaned against the trunk of the palm.
“Two surfboards and backpacks?” I scoffed, noting that her pretty brown eyes were darker than usual and flecked with fire. That usually meant she was excited. “Yeah, I think I can handle it. C’mon. Let’s get going. Good surf’s not gonna wait.”
Nodding, she fell into place at my side.
We walked companionably on a route that was familiar. The wide sidewalk took us around the perimeter of the school. Then we turned left on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, strolling the palm-tree-lined street past residences and a couple of churches before crossing over Newport Avenue, the frequently photographed thoroughfare that led through t
he center of downtown Ocean Beach. Downhill our path would go until it ended at the water’s edge, a concrete pier on the left and the three-story Ocean Beach hotel on the right.
“You’re awfully quiet today,” I said, giving her a long, searching side glance. “Everything okay at home?”
“It’s all right.” She shrugged one shoulder.
“I don’t believe that’s true,” I said, and she glanced at me.
“How do you—”
“I know you,” I said quickly, keeping her from attempting to deflect me. Her shoulder shrug was a sure indication something was bothering her more than she let on. “And I care about you. You’re upset. I could tell when I picked you up. Tell me about it. Is it because of your dad’s dating?”
“Yes.” Lotus sighed. “It’s just weird. Uncomfortable. Awkward. Honestly, I guess I’m a little jealous that he doesn’t have as much time for me as he used to.”
This was one of the many things about her that I admired. That she could be so candidly honest about her most vulnerable emotions.
I wasn’t wired that way. My feelings were emotional land mines, so I buried them deep inside me.
“It’s understandable that you feel that way.”
I stopped in front of one of my favorite houses, a small whitewashed bungalow with a red clay roof. The front lawn was filled with pink bougainvillea, purple oleander, fragrant white plumeria blooms, and lush green palms. The yard appeared to be overgrown, but it was planned overgrowth. One of her dad’s designs. If only the chaos inside me could be tamed as prettily.
“Have you tried talking to him about it?”
“No.” She dropped her chin to her chest.
“Why not?” Wedging a finger under her chin, I lifted it.
“It’s hard to explain when I don’t really understand it myself.” Her eyes a little glassy, she sank her teeth into her full bottom lip.
“Your dad’s a good guy. You love him,” I said gently, framing her face in my hands. “He loves you. It’s worth making the effort to try to explain.”
My Night with a Rockstar Page 20