A Cruel Kind of Beautiful
Book 1 of the Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll Series
By
Michelle Hazen
Thank you for reading. If you enjoy this book, please leave a review.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2017 by Michelle Hazen
Cover design by Michelle Fairbanks, Fresh Design
Edited by Katie Golding, Goldnox Editing, and Sheila Athens, Author Accelerator
Copy editing by Keyanna Butler, Indie Author’s Apprentice
Beta Reading by Andrea Contos
Dedicated to Naomi Davis
Your faith in this book triggered so many amazing events in my life, and even more that haven’t happened yet. You’ve already read a few hundred thousand of my words, and you’ll read a million more before I find a way to express how much it means that you always believe in me.
Contents
Chapter 1: Meet-Ugly
Chapter 2: Disappearing Act
Chapter 3: Negative Image
Chapter 4: The Mystery of Thirty-Seven
Chapter 5: The Compliment of Gluten-Free Soup
Chapter 6: Just Coffee
Chapter 7: The Beaver Incident
Chapter 8: Requiem for a Rubber Chicken
Chapter 9: One of the Guys
Chapter 10: Ice Cream Sundays
Chapter 11: To Be Recognized
Chapter 12: Ten Thousand Hours
Chapter 13: A Cruel Kind of Beautiful
Chapter 14: Raccoon-gnawed Romance
Chapter 15: Buying Local
Chapter 16: Surprise
Chapter 17: Terrible Brilliance
Chapter 18: Cracked Paint
Chapter 19: Forbidden Fruit
Chapter 20: A Small Death, or a Good One
Chapter 21: Making My List
Chapter 22: Leaping Blind
Chapter 23: Permanent Ink
Chapter 24: The Secret
Chapter 25: Running Backward
Chapter 26: An Internet Education
Chapter 27: This is Not A Test
Chapter 28: Ballast
Chapter 29: Two Gifts
Chapter 30: Happy Endings
Dear Reader
Sneak Preview: Fill Me
Sneak Preview: Playing the Pauses
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1: Meet-Ugly
When the newspaper broke my window at four in the morning, I didn’t stop to think about the fact that I was wearing sweats. Not thin, make-your-butt-look-cute yoga pants but old school sweats: cuffs cinched tight around my wrists and ankles like rib-knit shackles, plus deflated airbags of material sagging at my crotch and knees.
This is definitely something I would have considered if I’d known I was going to open the door to biceps like his.
Turns out my renegade paperboy isn’t a boy at all; more like six feet two inches of pure man-candy. With his fist raised to knock, all his muscles stand out in exquisitely stark lines, and I’m definitely not staring. Or maybe I am, because he takes a step back and drops his hand, brow furrowing.
“Shit,” he says. “Shit.”
I quirk a brow. I’m five foot flat on a good posture day, so it must be the atrociousness of my sweats that’s putting the fear into him.
“Don’t tell me this was a revenge window-breaking and you got the wrong house.” I nod toward my neighbor’s place. “Did Mr. Schmelzly steal your girl or something?”
His eyes dip below my collarbone for a second, but I’m not exactly worried about my lack of a bra. This sweatshirt is so baggy I could be packing the curves of Santa Claus or Kim Kardashian under here and he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
“I wish I could claim it was revenge. More like a total failure of motor skills.” He grimaces. “I’m so sorry about your window. They give us a half day of training, which felt like four hours more than anybody should need, but right now, it’s looking like I could have used five.” His shoulders hunch as he gives me a sheepish look.
My annoyance melts, and I offer, “In your defense, it was the Thrifty Tuesdays paper. Tuesday has some serious heft in tampon coupons.”
“Plus, the supplemental entertainment section.” His face relaxes into a smile. “If it’d been a Wednesday, you might have been safe. Here, can I at least help you clean up the glass?” He steps forward.
“Uh...” I hesitate, surprised that he’s offering to do housework. Not to mention he probably has another twenty miles to pedal to finish his route, because who the hell gets newspapers delivered these days? Though I guess if anybody did, it would be this neighborhood, where I’m the youngest by four or five decades. Not exactly the iPad generation.
“I’m sorry, you probably don’t want a strange guy in your house who just broke your window. Trust me, I’m not a serial killer or anything. If I were going to kidnap you, I’d like to think I’d be a lot smoother about the whole thing.”
“Good to know. There’s nothing I hate more than an inept kidnapper.”
His eyes lighten at my response. “That doesn’t seem fair. Shouldn’t you hate successful kidnappers more? There’s the ride in the trunk and the whole ransom debate...it’s probably a real pain.”
“Nah, people love successful kidnappers. Because Stockholm Syndrome.” A smirk tugs at the edge of my mouth. “Shouldn’t you be convincing me to trust you, not defending kidnapping fails?”
“Right. I’m batting a thousand this morning, aren’t I? Sorry again.” He blushes, actually blushes.
He’s like a walking sex dream with close-shaved hair and a cologne-commercial jawline, and I have no idea how a guy can be this hot without a trace of cocky to go along with it. Abruptly, I realize I’ve been holding those delicious dark-chocolate eyes for longer than I have any right to when I’m dressed like somebody’s Aunt Melba. I step back to let him inside.
“No problem. I promise by the time we work the glass out of my shag carpeting, you’ll have worked off every debt you’ve ever owed.”
He glances down as he steps over the threshold, then sucks in a sharp breath. “Your feet!”
I follow his line of sight. There’s some chipped green polish on my toenails, but nothing that requires an exclamation point. Though now that I look closely, there are a couple of tiny blond hairs growing on top of my big toe. Gross. Do people tweeze toe hairs? Is that a thing?
“You don’t have shoes—are your feet cut?”
I prop one hand against the wall and lift my foot to check for blood. “Nah, I’m set.” I don’t bother to check my other foot. He’s close enough now to weigh in on my toe-tweezing dilemma and frankly, his was not an opinion I had hoped to poll.
“Here.” He hops to keep his balance as he pulls off one of his sneakers and hands it to me.
I consider this trophy, tipping my head. “Um, thanks?”
“Put it on.” He flushes, though this time I’m not sure why. “If you tell me where the dustpan is, I can start picking up the big pieces while you go get your shoes.”
Bouncing on one foot, he removes his other shoe, wobbling for a second so his shoulder bumps into mine. He blushes again at his clumsiness but earnestly pushes the other one of his Cadillac-sized Vans at me, waiting until I put them on.
Now I have clown feet.
I peek up at him, my lips losing a battle with a smile that’s pure are-you-for-real-right-now?
His eyes fly from his Vans up
to my face, his gaze snagging on my lips. “Uh...”
A year ago, a look that hot from a guy like him would have been the Holy Grail of my dating existence. But now, he’s more like the picture of Ian Somerhalder that Granna once taped to our vacuum: something pretty to look at while you clean, and nothing more.
I shrug, wishing the movement could shake off my goosebumps. “Give me a second to grab my own shoes and I’ll be right back.”
“Um, yup. I’ll just be here, then.” He folds his hands in front of him, but the corner of his mouth twitches irrepressibly upward. “Researching successful kidnapping techniques on my phone, so you’ll trust me.”
I choke on a laugh. “Yeah, because that’s not creepy at all.”
Except as the smile spreads across his face, lighting his eyes, it really isn’t. I’ve known the guy for five minutes and if a real criminal burst through the door, I’d probably jump behind him.
Besides, we already know he can do some real damage armed with a newspaper.
"If you hit expert level before I get back, I want my cut of the ransom," I call as I slide-waddle my borrowed shoes across the crunch of outdated carpet and splintered glass. Each one of his puffy skater shoes is as long as both my feet put together, and I have to shuffle along like an old lady or risk them falling off. If my bandmates could see me now, I’d never hear the end of it.
When I get to my room, I shove a dark strand of hair back into my messy bun, ignoring the small, hopelessly female part of me that wants to search for a hairbrush. I kick off his shoes in favor of a pair of pretty ballet flats, then glare down at my feet. I peel them off and stuff my feet into a heel-squashed pair of slippers. My subconscious definitely cannot be trusted.
After Andy and I broke up, I set my Facebook status permanently to Single and dropped my makeup into a bottom drawer. I’m done putting my ass on the line—or into a set of Spanx—to impress a man. So instead of primping, I hook two fingers into the back of the stranger’s Vans and carry them into the living room.
“The trash can is in the kitchen,” I call out, “but if you want to do some heavy lifting, my behemoth of a vacuum cleaner is in the hall closet. We call her Bessie. Well, and a few other names I probably shouldn’t mention if you happen to be religious. You’ll see why once you—” I break off as I round the doorway and realize I’m talking to myself.
I glance at the huge sneakers in my hand, then up at the rest of the room. My guitar still sits in its stand, my crate of semi-collectible records resting next to my antique turntable. Everything that might interest a thief is still here, but of my walking sex dream, there’s not a trace.
He’s just gone.
Chapter 2: Disappearing Act
I kind of forgot to be upset about the window when it came with a chocolate-eyed, blushing newspaper deliveryman. Unfortunately, now he’s MIA, leaving me with an abandoned set of Vans that don’t fit me, a giant hole in my house, and a new song eating a matching hole in my brain at a truly inopportune moment. Sitting back on my heels, I drop another shard into the dustpan and glance at my phone to check the time.
“Come on, Danny.” If my friend doesn’t show up before Western Civ starts, I’m going to have to choose between my attendance grade and leaving my house with a convenient burglar’s entrance in the front wall.
Sighing, I give up on the glass for the moment because it seems to have set up shop inside the shag carpet. I dump the full dustpan into the kitchen trash, whacking it against the side of the plastic bin in an attempt to block out the lyrics playing through my mind. When my band performs, the drums are my jam, but when I write our songs, I don’t always start with the percussion. I just get it however it wants to come, and when it plows in this fast, I’m pretty much useless until I finish writing. If I try to drive somewhere, I’ll end up in a part of town I don’t recognize or stopped mid-street at an invisible stoplight.
When my life actually gives me the time and space to grab a guitar and work it out, the experience is phenomenal. Music never sounds as good as it does when the muse is feeding it straight in through my bones. Not Zeppelin, not Jack White, not even Hendrix.
But on a day like today when my schedule holds two classes, a shift at the bar, and three pages left on a research paper due by eight a.m. tomorrow? Music is just a bitch.
Hurrying down the hallway, I rip the elastic band out of my hair and shoot it in through the bathroom door. The mass of deep brown falls over my eyes and I blow it out of my way, some of the lighter, sun-bleached strands catching in my eyelashes. My brush rests on a hall table and I snatch it up, taming my hair with one hand as I shimmy out of my horrific sweats.
Ever since I was a kid, I would kick off my blankets and wake up shivering before morning. Eventually, I had to give up and go to bed in something a little warmer. Turns out, the tight cuffs on old-fashioned sweats don’t leave as much room for a draft to squeeze in. Highly convenient, though they’re awful looking and I didn’t start wearing them until after I stopped caring about looking cute for a boyfriend.
By the time Danny strolls in with a bag of Cheetos, I’m wearing unzipped jeans and I’m half-in, half-out of a black tee shirt with a picture of a zombie garden gnome on it. All I need is to pull the shirt over my right arm, but I’m busy scrawling on a vodka bottle with a Sharpie, sketching the shape of the melody so I can capture it long enough to make it stick in my mind.
“Hey, Jera? Since when do you drink vodka?” My best friend and bassist plops onto my bed with a protest of metal springs. He tosses a Cheeto up in a perfect arc that ends with the snap of his teeth.
I blink down at the bottle. “I don’t. Actually, where the hell did this come from? Did Jax leave it last weekend?” Jackson Sterling, the lead singer of our band, has been known to hit the hard stuff pretty darn hard when he’s in a certain mood.
Danny tips his head toward me. He's all messy black hair and vivid eyes, his arms decorated with spare, inky twists of art that complement every bulge of muscle without ever obscuring. He’s the only tattoo artist I’ve ever met who doesn’t believe in full sleeves, and I can’t imagine anyone ever disagreeing once they’ve seen his arms—or his portfolio.
“Any booze left?” he asks.
“Nope,” I lie. The bottle holds about an inch of liquid but if I’m forced to watch him drink cheap vodka with Cheetos before eight in the morning, I might barf.
My hair is at least partially brushed, so I wind my hair up on top of my head and stick the Sharpie through it, then finish getting dressed.
A Cheeto crunches as Danny goes back to considering the ceiling, crossing his unlaced boots at the ankles. I glance down at him, the weirdness of my morning calming a little at the sight of his eyes—the familiar gold-green hazel that’s a darker version of my own. Between that and the way we’ve picked up each other’s gestures and expressions over the years, people often mistake us for siblings.
Then again, that could just be the bickering.
"You're the best house guarder in Portland.” I bend to leave a smacking kiss on Danny’s cheek. He grimaces at the sound and selects another cheese-flavored snack as I sweep up my messenger bag. "I owe you one.”
The crunching ceases. "Pizza?"
I wrinkle my nose and trot down the hall. "Only if you don't insist on putting pineapple and potato chips on it. Again."
Danny's a vending machine vegetarian. No meat, but he's not into fruit stands and farmer’s markets, either. He subsists entirely on items that can be deep fried or bought from gas stations. Somehow, he still has a flat stomach with just the hint of a six-pack to it, though in seven years I’ve never seen him do a sit-up.
Life? Is not fair.
I nab my keys and slam through the side door, the books in my messenger bag thumping together when I swing it over my shoulder and hit the garage opener. I kick a leg over my bike, and coast out from under the still-rising door.
When I inherited this house from Granna a little over a year ago, I meant to tear up the shag
carpet and bag the avocado green curtains, but it never happened. I did manage to line the whole garage in Auralex foam to make a practice space for my band, but the rest of the house is still more suited to doilies and Precious Moments figurines.
I gave up on a lot of things when Granna died, and decorating was one of them. But the house is conveniently located only a mile from campus and today I'll be much less likely to get myself killed if I bike instead of drive. Mostly because the drums start hitting behind my ears with the first stroke of the pedals and then I’m lost in a haze of music.
By the time I lock up my bike on the Portland University campus, I have two more lines of lyrics and the kind of restlessness that leaves me feeling like I don't really live inside a body anymore. It is days like today when I think I might not be cut out for college.
What I need is a crappy job waiting tables and nothing in my life but space to fill with songs I invent. Unfortunately, that's what Mom is afraid of, and it would make Dad a little too proud. Besides, when I don't have a song that’s begging to be written, I like going to class.
But right now, my fingers tingle with the gravitational pull of chords I need to play and I don’t care about anything but writing them down. When the flow of students bottlenecks in the doorway, I grind my teeth until they start to move again, then beeline for an open seat, clawing my notebook out of my bag.
As soon as I open it my mind goes completely, cursedly silent. I hiss a four-letter word and slump in my seat.
Without the gleam of the muse’s magic to distract me, the classroom looks dull, like I’m seeing it through the washed-out lens of a daytime soap opera. Cheap blue upholstery on the stadium seats, and centuries-old news waiting to be transcribed into two hundred dutiful notebooks as we all fulfill our general grad requirement.
Shit, I need to call my homeowner’s insurance. I pull the marker out of my hair to jot that in my notebook where notes and lyrics should have gone. I haven’t called the insurance company since I switched Granna’s policy into my name, and I can’t look up the number until I can remember their Super Generic Insurance Company Name.
A Cruel Kind of Beautiful Page 1