She smiled even bigger. “Then you’ll sit for me? While you’re in town? I can sketch you out, it won’t take too long. I’ll take a few photos too, for reference, so I can get the details right.”
“Sure,” I said, because it was Katie. She’d put off her honeymoon for me; how could I refuse? And it was just my image. If Dirty wanted my picture on the album, as part of their tenth anniversary, I could give them that.
I took off my ball cap and shook out my hair. “Maybe… you could just let me brush my hair first?”
“Of course.” Katie beamed at me. “There’s a washroom in back…”
But I wasn’t listening. My eyes had caught on a painting, partly tucked in behind one of Elle.
“You painted… Seth?”
It was him; no doubt in my mind. I recognized his eyes above all things, and my stomach turned over. A pale, grayish-green with a burst of gold around the pupils. She’d captured them perfectly. There were more lines to his face than I remembered, and his hair was longer. In the portrait, he had a beard.
But it was Seth.
“Oh. Yeah,” Katie said, distracted, as she sorted through tubes of paint. “He came to sit for me the other day.”
He came to…
Seth Brothers was in town?
At Katie’s studio?
“The band wants him in the album artwork,” she said. “They want him involved. At least, his image, since he co-wrote some of the most successful songs. The band wants to pay tribute to that history, to his contribution. Just like they’re doing with you. Cool, right?” She smiled at me again. “For a bunch of people with such giant egos, they’re pretty humble, huh?”
“Right,” I said. “Cool.” But there was a lump in my throat as I turned away from that painting, from those eyes that seemed to look right through me.
Chapter Twelve
Jessa
As it turned out, posing for a painting was nothing like posing for photographs.
While Katie worked I could talk, drink wine, snuggle with Max and pretty much get up and walk around whenever I wanted to. I didn’t even have to suck in my gut or arch my back. She was only doing a portrait of my face.
She even said I was free to go once she’d blocked in my face on her canvas and taken a few pics with her phone, but I was in no hurry. It was fun watching Katie work. She got all serious and her eyebrows pinched together, and I could feel how much passion she had for her art.
I could also see why my brother gave her the studio. There was something special here, in her work; in her need to do her work. It was the same thing I saw in my brother when he played: a true life’s passion in action.
Made me wonder what the hell had happened to mine.
As a girl, all I ever wanted to do was write. I loved music, poetry, movies, fairy tales and love stories of any kind. I was such a little dreamer. When my brother’s band started writing their own material instead of just playing cover songs, I started playing around with writing lyrics, and as it turned out, I found my passion in it. Not only that… I had a talent for it.
I’d co-written songs with Dirty that millions of people loved. Songs that had made them both famous and respected in the music industry—and made us all a lot of money, too.
And then I’d walked away.
I’d given up the thing I most loved, most wanted to do—and the man I’d most wanted to have—and pursued another life. One that I was good at, but at the end of the day really meant nothing to me.
An empty life.
A life that only felt emptier when my brother showed up to flirt, grope and generally adore Katie right in front of me.
By the time I got back to Roni’s that night I was starting to wonder, seriously, if I should just leave town. Now. Before things got any worse.
Because where did I fit into all of this anymore? Did I fit in, at all?
Had I ever?
Right now I felt so lost, I didn’t even know.
One thing I did know, for sure: the more times I came face-to-face with Brody Mason, the more impossible it became to think of leaving him again.
But I was going to leave; I knew that, too. This wasn’t my home anymore. I couldn’t mope around Roni’s place forever. I had a career to get back to, and an apartment in New York.
But I also had to think about what my brother said.
Remember this…
After we’d jammed together at the church, Jesse had asked me to give some serious thought to writing a few songs with the band. Just for fun, he said. They didn’t have to go on the album. But I knew that was lip service.
He wanted me to write with Dirty again.
I wanted that too, but I would never tell him so and risk him getting crushed when it didn’t happen.
For the most part, Jesse and Zane wrote Dirty’s music. It had always been that way, ever since I left the band and Seth was kicked out. And we all knew that was why the songs weren’t ever as strong as the ones on the debut album—when we were all together. It wasn’t that Jesse and Zane weren’t great writers. They were. They’d managed to turn out hit after hit over the years.
But there was something different, something special about those first songs, that without Seth and I, the band had never been able to touch.
There was magic between the six of us.
A magic that my brother and I had tapped into while writing the songs for his solo album together. And feeling that magic again, just messing around, jamming and letting the music flow with Jesse and Zane at the church… I was sucked right into it again.
Nothing else in my life had ever felt like that. That sense of harmony. Like things just fit. Like they were meant to be. I’d only ever gotten that feeling writing music with my brother and Dirty.
And, years ago… there were times… times when I felt that rightness with Brody.
But now I just kept hearing his words, like tiny electrical shocks, rewriting the truth on my heart.
I’ve advised them against writing with you.
Now, Brody didn’t want me around. He’d made that much clear. He thought I should leave, for the band’s sake, if I had any doubts at all about working with them again. And I did have doubts. I had big, huge doubts that Brody would ever forgive me and let me work with them again. And if he thought I shouldn’t work with them… he was probably right. Dirty and Brody were a package deal, and obviously, I’d hurt them all when I left.
You broke my heart!
I kept hearing those words, the way he’d yelled them at me, hurled them at me, like an indictment.
And maybe he was trying to protect the band… but maybe he was also trying to push me to leave so he wouldn’t have to deal with me.
I just didn’t know.
I didn’t know if he really wanted me to go, or just wanted me to prove to them all how much I wanted to stay. To earn it.
And if so—did I take that chance? Throw the white flag at his feet and tell all, and hope he could somehow forgive me? Was there any chance that he could do that?
More… that he could ever be mine?
That I could have both Dirty and Brody back?
I lay on my bed in Roni’s spare bedroom for hours, staring at the ceiling as I thought about him. It had been this way for years; no matter where I went or what I did, I thought about Brody. The shadow of him was always with me, keeping a running count of my failures.
Because I could never think about Brody without also thinking about the many, many chances I’d had to make him mine… and fucked it all up.
I could hear the thumping rhythm of The Doors’ “Back Door Man” spilling out of the giant barn at the edge of the field. Even at nineteen, Zane could belt out that song, and the newly-formed Dirty—Zane, Jesse, Dylan and Elle—were beyond amazing. I was thrilled that Brody had discovered Dylan and Elle playing with their other band at some party and poached them for us. Everyone knew the four of them were magic together. We finally had our band, and we were going places.
As long as
those places had me home, in bed, by eleven o’clock.
It was so fucking unfair I couldn’t stand it. How was I ever going to be the next great songwriter if I wasn’t even allowed to come to the show?
Yes, I was fifteen, but so what? I was old enough to party. I wasn’t naive. I knew what went on at parties like this… more or less. I wasn’t going to go all Girls Gone Wild or anything. I just wanted to hear the band and have a beer and be part of it.
Which was why I’d let Roni bring me here, to some biker party outside of town where Dirty and a couple of other bands were playing. Me, just aching for a night of freedom and hoping to soak up some of the musical vibe, and her, hoping to run into Jude’s brother, Piper.
Roni was new to my high school that year. She was a grade above me, pretty, popular, and always up for anything. My brother didn’t particularly like her, since he probably figured she was a bad influence on me. It wasn’t her fault, though, that her entry into my life happened to coincide with me growing a pair and deciding I wanted a life.
Or maybe he just didn’t like that half his friends wanted to screw her. Fat chance, since Roni had her sights set a little… older.
As soon as Roni found out that my brother’s best friend’s older brother was a member of the West Coast Kings—a real, badass motorcycle club, which meant the seriously criminal kind—she was all in. Apparently, my friend Roni not only liked older men, but if they liked to live dangerously all the better. My other friends thought Piper was scary, and not sexy-scary like Jude, just scary-scary. I’d known Piper since I was a little girl, so I didn’t think he was all that scary, but I could see why other people found him intimidating, since he had all the muscles and the tattoos and he didn’t exactly walk around handing out lollipops.
Not Roni. For Roni, the scarier the better.
“You have to introduce me to him,” she told me as we wound our way through the crowd.
“You know the minute he sees my face, I’m getting kicked out of here?”
“Whatever. Just wait ’til he sees your ass in those jeans.”
Oh, Roni. She did not get it. It didn’t matter how my ass looked in my jeans. Correction: the better my ass looked in my jeans, the faster I was getting kicked out. Especially with the way the guys—men—in this place were looking at us as we made our way through the crowd.
Well, looking at Roni, for sure. You couldn’t really miss her in her black velvet bustier and skin-tight jeans, a line of rhinestones up the back of her butt that looked like a bejeweled g-string and made it really, really easy to picture her wearing nothing but one—which was probably the point.
I was a little more low-key in my brother’s QOSA Songs for the Deaf T-shirt. It was red and had a black pitchfork across it. I’d cut both the neck and sleeves off so he’d never demand it back, and wore it hanging off one shoulder with my tight black jeans. I wasn’t exactly Roni-hot, but I was feeling pretty cute, pretty good all around, until…
“What. The. Fuck.”
Great.
I turned to face him.
“Hey, Brody,” I said.
“The fuck are you doing here?”
Shit. He was pissed.
“You’ve got five minutes,” Jude said, appearing next to him. No pre-amble, no “nice to see you, bratface.”
“Five minutes until what?” I asked innocently.
“’Til I bounce your ass out of here,” Jude said. “Say your hellos and goodbyes and let’s get going.”
Roni flipped her dark hair, looking bored. “I’m gone,” she told me. “Call you later, ’kay?” Then she flashed Jude a smile. “Later, jailor.”
“Keep an eye on that one,” Brody told Jude as she sashayed off into the crowd.
“Why?”
“’Cause she’s sixteen. She gets to drinking, bounce her ass home.”
Jude snarled, throwing me a why-the-fuck-has-this-become-my-problem glare, and headed off in pursuit of Roni.
“Good luck with that!” I called after him, feeling all sorts of bitchy.
“You.” Brody pointed his finger at me. “Outside.”
He turned and stalked through the crowd toward the barn doors.
“What about my five minutes?” I called after him. Geez. He couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.
I stood there with my arms crossed, huffing. I watched the band play for a few seconds.
But yeah, I went.
If I didn’t, Brody would’ve just found me again. Even if he had to stop the band and announce over the mic that I was here, I was underage and it was past my bedtime—he’d done it before—and drag me out, which would’ve been hella embarrassing in front of all these people.
I followed him into the night, into the rain that had started to mist down, across the edge of the field and into the sprawling backyard of whatever biker’s house this was. We were alone in the yard, so I knew he was probably going to rip into me any second.
I went first.
“I can’t just leave Roni! We came together!”
Brody turned on me so abruptly I slipped on the damp grass and skidded into him. I grabbed onto his leather jacket to steady myself.
“How did you get here?” he demanded.
“In her mom’s car.”
“Then she’ll get home in her mom’s car. You,” he said, “are coming with me.” Then he hooked his hand around my arm and hauled me across the lawn toward his Harley, which was parked in the deserted back lane alongside a couple of trucks, instead of out front where the Kings’ bikes were. And not like I could stop him. He was twenty, I was fifteen, and he was way the hell bigger than me.
“Wait! I want to stay! Stop dragging me around!”
He released me in the middle of the yard, putting himself between me and the barn. “Get on the bike, Jessa. I’m taking you home.”
“No, you’re not!”
I resented that I wasn’t allowed to be there; that my brother, Jude and Brody made all the rules and I had to follow them.
I resented that every time I came to a show without their permission, I was thrown out.
Most of all, I resented that Brody didn’t want me there.
He swiped a hand over his face and swore into the dark; I could practically see the steam coming out his ears as he turned back to me. “Where the fuck is your jacket?”
I hugged myself against the misting rain. “I didn’t wear one.”
Brody scowled; his eyes had locked on my chest, where my shirt had slipped off my shoulder, baring part of my bra. He took a step closer, looming over me. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing wearing that in there?” He jabbed a finger at my chest, into the Sinners MC pin that I wore on my bra strap, just over my left breast, grinding it into my skin.
“Ow!” I gasped.
“You know who those guys are in there?” He punctuated his words with more jabs. I backed away but he just followed, jabbing all the way. “You know what they are? You know what they’ll think when they see this?”
“It’s mine!” I said, slapping his hand away. “Stop jabbing me!”
“It says Sinners on it,” he said icily. “That sound like a bunch of old ladies sitting around knitting scarves to you? It’s a fucking motorcycle club, Jessa. That pin belongs to them, and so does any chick stupid enough to wear it to a party crawling with bikers.”
“You gave it to me!”
“When you were fucking five! And I told you long ago to stop wearing it.” With that, he ripped my beloved pin off my bra and whipped it into the wet grass.
“That’s my pin!” I screamed at him. “You can’t do that!”
“Like fuck I can’t!”
My hand clutched at my bra where the pin had been. And yes, I knew what it was. Which was why I wore it under my shirt. I wasn’t an idiot. “Why did you give it to me if you didn’t want me to wear it?”
“Christ,” he muttered, raking a hand through his rain-dampened hair. “Jesse is way too fucking soft on you.”
“What
does that mean!?”
“It means I thought you’d wear it for a couple of weeks, lose it, and forget about it. Or your brother would make you get rid of it. Or some teacher would get wise and tell you you couldn’t wear it anymore. You weren’t supposed to keep it forever. Now stop acting like a brat. You’re not five years old anymore.”
“I. Was. Eight!” I shouted. “And you shouldn’t have given it to me if you didn’t want me to wear it!” With that, I dropped to my knees in the grass, searching for my pin.
Brody grabbed my elbow and tried to pull me up, but I jerked from his grasp and scrambled through the grass on my hands and knees in the direction I thought the pin might’ve bounced. He stepped in front of me, stomping his boot down on a flash of silver—
My pin!
“Get OFF!” I cried, pushing and then pulling at his boot, but it was no use. The leather was damp and slick, and he weighed like five hundred pounds; the rocks in his head weren’t helping. “You’re so fucking BOSSY! You think you know EVERYTHING! LET. ME. GO!”
But he was already hauling me to my feet. “Jesus, Jessa.” He shoved me back, all the way back, across the yard and up against the rough, scaly bark of a tree. I was so mad I could’ve spit. Maybe I should have. Probably would’ve been more effective.
When I struggled and tried to knee him in the groin, the way my brother had taught me to do, he shoved his knee between my legs, grabbed my wrists and pinned them on either side of my head. Then he pressed his hips against me, trapping me against the tree with his weight.
So much for my brother’s self-defense lessons.
“Get your shit together, princess,” he said in a low growl, “and calm the fuck down.” It was oddly quiet; the throb of the music from the barn was muffled as the rain misted down around the tree, and Brody’s breathing was all raspy and weirdly uneven. “You wanna bring the wrath of the Kings down on me over a junk pin?”
I looked up into his dark blue eyes. His body was hot and heavy against me. I’d never had a boy—a man—pressed against me, so I only had the stories of some of my girlfriends to go on, but he definitely felt… hard.
A flood of heat rushed through me as I swallowed.
Dirty Like Brody: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 2) Page 13