Rock Hard: A Bad Boy Rock Star Romance

by Archer, Arielle

  I wasn’t going to embarrass myself by going into the details of why things never worked out with me and Grant. Details that I knew she desperately wanted to hear but was always too polite to ask.

  I found myself wondering who that was but then I caught the announcer and suddenly I wasn’t curious anymore. Suddenly I couldn’t get away from the elevator fast enough.

  “And that was the surprise new smash single from Twenty Promises who will be swinging back around to our city for a second…”

  I didn’t hear the rest. I tuned it out. I did not need to know anything about Twenty Promises or what they were doing on the second leg of their tour. I had a pretty good idea of exactly what Grant was doing: any pretty girl who stood still long enough for him to work his bullshit seduction routine on her. The poor things, but that wasn’t my problem. The only thing I could do was make sure I wasn’t that girl again.

  I’d finally stopped getting text messages a month ago. I still wasn’t sure if I was more disappointed or relieved that he’d stopped, because every time he messaged me, it came up as an anonymous number since Kayla had deleted him from my phone book but she hadn’t actually blocked him no matter what the poor tech-unsavvy dear had told me at the time, I was tempted to respond.

  I was proud of myself that I never did. I could kick myself that I never did.

  As I walked through the apartment doors I wanted to scream out in frustration. My ears were assaulted with the same strangely compelling sound I’d heard in the elevator.

  “Kayla, we have a rule!” I shouted as I made my way back to my room where I could close the door and be free from that song. Mostly. The walls weren’t exactly all that thick in our cheap apartment.

  She’d been surprisingly understanding of my “no Twenty Promises” rule since the incident, but maybe she thought I wouldn’t know that new song was theirs or something. Either way I needed to get away from it. I needed to get away from anything that would remind me of Grant and what he’d done to me. I needed to not think about him because that led down a path where I remembered all the wonderful things he’d done to me right along with all the terrible things.

  Remembering those wonderful things made me want to dig out that number and send a message. It always sent me into a spiral of weakness where I had to put my phone in a drawer until I’d cooled down. I hated that he could still do that to me a couple of months after he’d broken my heart by revealing himself to be exactly what I’d thought he was all along.

  This was one instance where I hated every day how right I’d been.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Kayla said just before I reached my room. I turned and raised an eyebrow. What the heck was she going on about?

  “What? I know that’s a Twenty Promises song and I’d rather not have any reminders of Grant,” I said.

  “You need to come in here and see this,” Kayla said.

  “See what?”

  “Grant was just in playing an acoustic version of his song for the local news and he’s about to do an interview.”

  “An interview? Isn’t local news a little small scale even for a fading star like him?”

  “Fading? Have you been under a rock Mia?” Kayla asked.

  “When it comes to anything to do with Twenty Promises yeah, pretty much,” I replied.

  “Well you need to come see this interview or I’m never letting you borrow any of my clothes ever again and that’s final,” Kayla said.

  I let out a frustrated growl, but I also let her pull me back into the living room where I plopped down in front of a TV that was playing commercials at the moment.

  “Great, they’re having a sale at Downtown Pizza. Why don’t we go there instead of sitting here listening to this stupid interview?” I said.

  “No way. You need to see this.”

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” I replied. “I thought I made it clear I don’t want to see anything to do with…”

  I stopped and stared at the screen. I couldn’t help myself. He was sitting there with some local news anchor who I vaguely recognized from billboards around town but I couldn’t remember her name if my life depended on it. She was staring at Grant with a look that I’d come to recognize during my brief time with him. A mixture of being star struck and turned on at the same time.

  It was just the sort of effect he had on women. It was certainly the effect he had on me. Damn did he look so fucking good sitting there with that easy grin on his face and an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder.

  “So we’re back with the lead singer of Twenty Promises, Grant Thompson!” the girl said. “You just heard him doing an acoustic performance of the chart busting number one single, “Mia’s song,” which they’ve released while on tour. A tour that has had a second leg added thanks to that song’s popularity, and which is in town tonight only for a limited engagement downtown!”

  I blinked. “What did she say the name of the song was?” I asked. I decided that I was going to ignore the fact that he was in town right now. He was downtown, which meant they were probably somewhere that was a decently short walk from our apartment. I tried not to think about how I could be at his bus’s front door in under twenty minutes if I really wanted to.

  “Mia’s song,” Kayla said.

  “So is that his mom’s name or something too? Because that’s going to make things really creepy on top of heartbreaking.”

  Kayla grinned and shook her head. I sighed. I didn’t figure there would be any important woman in his life named Mia. No other woman but me, that is. I suddenly found myself wishing I had heard that song even as I was kicking myself for making that wish.

  Still, I felt something towards Grant Thompson that was very different from the usual anger I’d been feeling. Hope. If he was writing songs about me then maybe there was still hope, though I was also thinking I was a silly little girl who’d grown up drinking the Disney happily-ever-after Kool-aid just a bit too much if I actually thought a happily ever after was in the offing for me right now.

  “So can you tell us a little more about where you got the idea for Mia’s Song? There have been a lot of rumors, you even had an ex-girlfriend try to sue you saying it was about her, but that got thrown out and the mystery endures.”

  Grant laughed and shook his head. I definitely did not notice the way his curly hair flew this way and that as he shook his head. I wasn’t paying attention to the way his teeth seemed to shine a pearly white. I definitely wasn’t looking at the way his smile seemed to create laugh lines that gave him a little bit of distinction that was missing from some of those early Twenty Promises posters that I totally hadn’t been obsessing over in the couple of months since our brief and totally doomed romance.

  No, I wasn’t paying attention to any of that because I was still totally pissed off at Grant Thompson. I still wanted to reach through the television screen and punch that pretty face, didn’t I? I mean not really. Punching the screen would just result in a broken television and it’s not like either Kayla or I could really afford to replace the thing right now on what we made.

  I steeled my resolve. I was not going to moon over this guy just because he happened to look handsome sitting across from that simpering bitch who was doing just about everything but ripping her clothes off and jumping on him to try and catch his interest. Honestly, this is what passed for professionalism with journalists these days? It was disgusting. I had half a mind to write a letter of complaint to the news room, but of course what would I say? That I was pissed off the traffic reporter who was hired for her looks was mooning all over a man I had a brief fling with a couple of months back and could you please fire the airheaded bitch because she wasn’t even that good at reporting traffic in the first place?

  Yeah, I’m sure that would be good for a few laughs in the news room.

  “Oh the lawsuit? Yeah, that was interesting. She made the mistake of filing that in the same court where she tried to go after half my stuff the first time around,” he said. “The judge
threw out this one in record time. I didn’t even know the legal system could work that fast, but apparently Her Honor had a long memory for frivolous suits.”

  “This would be the same woman who claimed that you got her pregnant ten years ago only to find out once she had the child that it wasn’t yours?” floozy reporter asked.

  I leaned forward with sudden interest. This was a new wrinkle to the Grant Thompson story that I wasn’t previously aware of. He’d had a girl he dated? That he thought he got pregnant and then it turned out it wasn’t his? Now that was a chewy bit of gossip that I hadn’t latched onto because the only Twenty Promises related information I’d allowed myself in the past two months was mooning over those aforementioned posters and daydreaming about the magical twenty-four hours we’d shared and what might have happened to keep it from blowing up in my face.

  “What’s she talking about, Kayla?”

  Only Kayla didn’t have a chance to answer. Grant was shaking his head but he still had that grin on his face. I was amazed that he could think about an experience that must’ve been extremely painful for him and laugh like that. I tried to imagine what it would feel like if I spent nine months thinking a child was going to be mine and then it turned out it wasn’t, though admittedly for something like that to happen to me I’d have to be in some sort of nightmare scifi/horror scenario or something considering I was the one carrying a kid, but still. It seemed like one hell of a nightmare scenario even if Grant wasn’t the one actually carrying the kid.

  I wondered how the hell a girl could do that to him. My eyes narrowed and my fingers were flexing without me even realizing it. It was like I was preparing to claw the eyes out of some girl I didn’t even know.

  Weird. I forced myself to unclench my hands from the old fashioned catwoman claws, but it took some doing.

  “Yeah, it was none other than. I guess she’s still so self-absorbed that she thinks everything I do is about her. Truth be told I’ve spent the past ten years or so trying to forget about her. She really screwed me up. Really screwed the band up,” Grant said.

  “So can you tell us any more about who this mysterious Mia is? Word on the street is you haven’t dated much since that incident. Has that changed? Is the great Grant Thompson, the most eligible rock god bachelor in the world, finally spoken for?”

  Traffic Floozy was leaning forward and she even licked her lips as she said that! Talk about unprofessional. Talk about really acting the floozy part! I couldn’t believe they even let this girl on camera when her only qualifications were looking good in a low cut top and a short dress. It was obvious she was drooling all over Grant. Why didn’t the station manager or whoever the hell was controlling things step in and put a stop to this ridiculous behavior?

  “Well I wish I could say I was spoken for,” Grant said. “But I’m afraid that this song’s namesake doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

  Traffic Floozy’s eyes went wide. “Wait, so you’re actually finally going to say something about the girl you wrote the song about? You’ve been mysteriously quiet about it this whole time.”

  Grant leaned back and took a deep breath. Let it out. I tried not to focus on how hot his chest looked as it expanded almost to the point of sending buttons flying off of his shirt. I tried not to think about how incredible that chest had looked while he was hovering over me pumping his shaft inside me over and over while my breasts bounced under every thrust…

  “Mia! Pay attention!”

  I snapped out of my reverie and smiled at Kayla. A good thing she could tell when I wasn’t paying attention, because I suddenly didn’t want to miss a moment of this interview. I also had to shift on the couch just a little because I was starting to get flustered.

  “Well I didn’t need to come clean about who the song was about because I figured it would be painfully obvious to everyone who was in the know exactly what the song was about.”

  “But it isn’t?”

  Grant shrugged and sighed. “Let’s just say that song was a desperate cry and an apology all wrapped up into one, but I don’t think it’s being heard by the person who needs to hear it even though the rest of the fucking world loves it.”

  Traffic Floozy had a moment of panic as she looked around. “Grant, you can’t say that on the air!”

  “Then delay me or something love, because I’m going to say whatever the fuck I want on here. You can bill me for the fucking fine later.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The look on her face was so delicious. The look on his face was so mischievous. It was obvious he was enjoying himself, and I couldn’t help but enjoy the moment right along with him. Particularly since it was a moment that came at the expense of Traffic Floozy. It suddenly occurred to me that he knew all along that she was trying her best to flirt with him and not doing a very good job of it. This must be his way of getting a little dig back at her.

  “Anyways. Everyone in the world loves the fucking song, but unfortunately Mia seems to be ignoring it. At least she’s ignoring my texts. That’s why I decided to come on this local news circus. I’m hoping that even if she isn’t paying attention to her text messages she’ll see this broadcast. Or her friends will. What the fuck ever. I’m desperate at this point.”

  “Well I guess you’re hearing this now,” Kayla said. She nudged me in the ribs with her elbow. “See what a good friend I am pulling you in here to see that someone’s been trying to get ahold of you? Good thing I blocked his number, huh?”

  “You didn’t block his number,” I said.

  “What do you mean? Of course I did?”

  “Nope. I’ve still been getting his texts.”

  “And you’ve just been ignoring them?”

  I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m still pissed off about how things went down.”

  “But what about the interview? What about all that stuff about the girl who broke his heart? I didn’t realize you’re the first girl he’s actually gotten with since… you know.”

  “Actually, I don’t know.”

  And I didn’t get a chance for Kayla to tell me either because Grant’s voice pulled me back to the TV. Mainly because it sounded like he was calling me out directly.

  “Mia, if you’re out there then this is for you and just for you. I’ve made some terrible mistakes with women over the years and I don’t want you to be one of them. If you come to the concert tonight there’ll be tickets waiting for you and your friend.”

  He grinned and laughed just a little. “I think Blake might enjoy seeing you again, Kayla. Believe it or not he hasn’t been up to his usual adventures ever since that night. You know what I’m talking about.”

  For a moment I had a hard time hearing anything because Kayla was squealing and kicking her feet against the couch. I put a finger to my ears but it was too late. By the time she was done shrieking my ears were ringing up a storm.

  I glanced back at the TV but they were back to the anchor desk where they were chatting about the concert that night and trying to pretend that Grant Thompson hadn’t just gotten a couple of nice FCC fines levied against the station while at the same time using an interview as an excuse to pick up a girl. I wondered if Traffic Floozy still felt like a serious journalist now, but I didn’t have much time to think about it because Kayla was pawing at me and looking like a little kid who desperately wanted mommy to buy her a toy.

  I knew what she wanted, and to be honest there was a part of me that wanted it too even though I was still reluctant. Sure I got distracted by the sexy with Grant, but there was still the matter of everything he’d said that night. Of that text he got from this Blake guy who was supposedly so eager to see Kayla. How could we know whether or not this was all just more lines designed to get us to the concert so they could get in our pants and leave us behind like they did last time?

  Then again I was the one who technically did the leaving last time. I was the one who’d been ignoring his text messages and on a couple of occasions even his phone calls. At the e
nd of the day which one of us was it who was making the bad decisions here? The man was on local television pouring his heart out to the local metro area and I was sitting here thinking about whether or not I wanted to go see him after he did that?

  Even if it did just turn out to be another ploy, something I wasn’t discounting entirely because fool me once and all that, all checking it out would mean is maybe losing a night at a concert. I could get out my earplugs and deal with that. And if it turned out that he was sincere with the whole apology thing…

  Well, probably best not to think about that. Not until I was actually at the arena.

  “We’re going to a concert tonight, aren’t we?”

  “You bet your ass we are!” Kayla said.

  I turned to her and grinned. “Looks like it’s time to break out the bottom drawer again!”

  31: Crazed Fangirls

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” I asked.

  Kayla shrugged. “I figured you would’ve looked Grant up. Done your research. Figured out just how fucked up his past was thanks to trusting a groupie.”

  I sighed and leaned back against the cab. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this changed everything, but it certainly painted Grant in a new light. I had no idea that he’d been in a relationship with a girl he met on tour. A girl he stood beside for nine months because he thought he’d knocked her up in a moment of passion in the back of his bus and wanted to do right by her. A woman who’d ultimately betrayed him when the kid popped out and it turned out it wasn’t even Grant’s.

  And we’re not even talking about the sort of scenario where the baby comes out and it’s a different color or anything dramatic like that. It definitely wasn’t the sort of situation you’d see on daytime TV or read about in some scandalous article your great aunt Mildred forwarded in an email. No, there were plenty of pictures on fansites that depicted a happy Grant standing in the hospital with what he thought was his new baby daughter. Pictures from before his manager insisted on a paternity test before Grant signed any birth certificate and it turned out whoops, mommy was trying to use someone else’s baby as an anchor to connect her self to Grant in a more permanent manner.