Dirty Like Brody: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 2)

by Jaine Diamond

  And by Seth.

  How it felt to be guarded and policed and so protected, so loved, so cherished that I was treated like a princess. That I thought I had to act like one, pretty and happy and shiny and perfect, to deserve that love.

  And the toll it had taken on me to act that way when inside, I felt anything but perfect.

  How it felt to be told I couldn’t stay out late, couldn’t date, couldn’t drink, when everyone around me was doing just that. How it felt to be left out of the party, when all I really wanted was a grand distraction from all my ugly feelings. A distraction from myself.

  I told him about the first time I did drugs to find that distraction. About the first time Seth gave me pot, when no one else would.

  I told him about the next time, and the next. About the times I’d sneak out of Dolly’s house in the middle of the night to hang out with Seth and smoke up. About the parties Seth took me to when Jesse and Dolly thought I was home in bed.

  I told him about the first time pot turned into pills. How the highs got higher, more frequent, and then the lows got lower in-between.

  I told him about how the need for a distraction turned into a desire to get high. How my guilt over lying to Jesse and Jude and Zane and Dolly and him about where I was and what I was doing and who I was doing it with just fed the darkness inside me.

  I told him about the other lies I’d told. How I’d told my brother I was at modeling jobs when I was getting high. How I told him I was sleeping over at a girlfriend’s house when I was out all night with Seth.

  And I told him. I told him what happened when I got scared Seth might stop giving me drugs. Because he’d never asked me for money to pay for them. He liked me, and he gave them to me freely. Except they weren’t really free, because Seth had feelings for me.

  I knew that, and I used it.

  I told him how, when I saw him with Christy, in my messed-up state, I’d turned to Seth for comfort, and I’d crossed that line I never should’ve crossed with him, because I didn’t love Seth.

  Then I told him about Seth introducing me to MDMA.

  “You did ecstasy with Seth?”

  Those were the first words out of his mouth.

  I could see the conclusion he was drawing in his head, and he wasn’t wrong.

  “Yes. I did ecstasy with Seth.”

  Then I told him the rest of it.

  I told him about the first time I slept with Seth so he’d keep giving me pills.

  “Please understand. At that point, I would’ve done pretty much anything if I thought it would make me feel good. I just wanted to feel better. But having sex with Seth didn’t make me feel better. In the end, it made me feel worse. I saw what it was doing to him… and I was so hurt over what was happening—or, what wasn’t happening—with you, and whenever I felt worse… I wanted to get high.”

  I told him, and I didn’t cry. I’d shed more than enough tears over all of it over the years, and I wasn’t going to cry about it now. The time for crying, and lying, and running from the truth was done.

  So I kept talking.

  I told him about the next time I had sex with Seth when we got high, and the time after that. I told him how Seth told me he loved me. I told him how I loved him, Brody, but he was with Christy, and I was so sure I’d fucked everything up, and I wasn’t strong enough to give up the drugs, or ask anyone for help, and how all my secrets and lies and pain twisted me up inside until I couldn’t stand myself.

  I told him, for the first time, why I ran away that last night I saw him, during that break in the tour.

  “I saw Seth that night, too. He cornered me and he was all fucked up. I knew he was doing a lot of coke then; I didn’t even know what else, but I knew he was in bad shape. He said he wanted to be with me. He wanted me. He wanted… what we had before. I told him I couldn’t do it anymore. When he pressed me on it… I told him. I told him I was in love with you.” I could barely look at Brody as I said it. The shame of it was crushing, the regret, that I’d never told him how much I loved him. I’d only told Seth. “I told him I loved you and he called me a whore. And I felt like a whore, Brody. I’d let him fuck me for drugs when I was sixteen. It went on, off and on, for almost two years. I never told anyone what was happening. I just let it happen. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about myself anymore. I just wanted the pain to stop. The thing was, I just got more pain.”

  I looked at Brody, feeling shaky. Through it all he’d sat next to me, his thigh pressed to mine, holding my hand, barely breathing. When I saw his face now, his blue eyes dark and storming, I could see the force of his anger, barely restrained. I could see it rising in him, like a tidal wave about to crash and smash everything in its path. And for once I saw it for what it was. It was not anger aimed at me.

  “He was struggling,” I said softly. “He said he was in love with me, and—”

  “He raped you,” he said quietly; deadly quiet.

  “No. It wasn’t like that—”

  Brody stood abruptly. “You’re telling me you had sex with Seth so he’d give you drugs. For two fucking years. Behind all our backs.”

  I stood to face him. “He didn’t force me. I wanted—”

  “Like hell he didn’t. He took advantage of you.”

  Then he turned away, like he couldn’t even look at me anymore.

  I got up close behind him, wanting to wrap my arms around him, but I didn’t.

  What if he pushed me away?

  I didn’t know what else to say to him. I didn’t want to make it worse. I just wanted him to understand.

  “I didn’t run away from you, Brody. I didn’t run away from Seth, either. I was running from what I’d done to myself. I wasn’t that girl. That twisted girl who’d made so many mistakes, who felt dirty all the time and so completely lost. I wasn’t your princess either. Do you understand? I just needed to find me.”

  He turned back to me, his eyes shining with tears. “And did you find that? Did you find what you were looking for when you left?”

  “No.” I shook my head, hugging myself. “I got clean. Things got worse before they got better, but I got clean. It took a few years to totally stop with the pills, to stop thinking I needed uppers or painkillers to deal with my life. But it was what I had to do. I’ll never regret that part.” I sighed. “I was terrified of going on tour with the band, Brody. I’m not going to say there weren’t temptations everywhere I went. There was plenty of partying in the life I chose; but going on tour…. I just couldn’t go on tour with Seth. I needed to distance myself from him. Not because he was awful to me. Because he was tied up in my drug use, and I knew it would be one party after another. I don’t know where I would’ve ended up if I kept on like I was. It wasn’t even the drugs… I wasn’t using every day or anything; I can’t even say for sure if I was an addict. I can still drink or smoke a joint without going over to the dark place. But the pills were different. Maybe it was the timing of it all, or my age, but I was losing myself. And I was so fucking depressed. It would’ve been the depression that killed me, just like it killed my dad. And the pills… they fueled that.” I moved a little closer to him, looking up into his face. “But no, I didn’t find what I was looking for until now. When I came back to you.”

  Brody looked down at me for a moment, his eyes gleaming. Then he drew me into his arms… and the relief I felt at his acceptance was so intense, so overwhelming, I did start to cry.

  “Jessa. Don’t cry.” He kissed the tears from my face. “You never did anything wrong. Please tell me you know that by now.”

  I shook my head. How could he say that to me after everything I’d just confessed?

  “I did everything wrong, Brody.”

  “No. We did wrong. We didn’t protect you.” He held me tighter. “I didn’t protect you. I thought I was doing the right thing, giving you space. You were young, and…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Fuck me. How could I not’ve seen what was going on? All that time?”

  “Don
’t do that,” I told him. “Don’t blame yourself for my mistakes, Brody. I lied to you. I hid what I was doing from you and from everyone else. You guys had a lot on your plates and you were away a lot. It really wasn’t that hard to keep it a secret; I had excuses for everything back then.” I shook my head at the memories. “But no more excuses, and no more lies. I just want it to be over. And I don’t want to blame myself anymore. I’m working on forgiving myself. But with you, there’s nothing to forgive. You tried to love me and I ran away. That wasn’t your fault.”

  I sighed and dropped my head against his chest, emotionally exhausted. I clung to his solid comfort, to the fact that he wasn’t walking away. That he was holding me, despite everything I’d just said.

  “I just need it to be done,” I told him. “Once and for all. I need it to die, where it belongs. In the past.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Brody

  I found him at the church.

  He was onstage, with the band, and they were in the middle of playing one of the new songs—one of the songs Jessa had co-written; the one about Katie and Jesse… “She Makes It Easy.”

  I didn’t know he’d be here, or so I told myself. Really, I figured I’d held myself remarkably together to make it out here. To convince Jessa I was just gonna head to the gym to blow off some steam after I took her back to my place and tucked her into bed. She was all tender and exhausted and I’d left her there, when I probably should’ve just stayed.

  I barreled straight up onstage, past a curious Zane, a slightly shocked Elle, and right over to Seth, who barely had time to register what the fuck was happening before I punched him in the face.

  I’d only done that twice in my life.

  I’d been in a lot of scraps when I was an angry kid with a chip on my shoulder and shit to prove. Had been in a few tussles at some bar or crazy party or another with the band over the years. Mostly in the early years, when we were still young and still had shit to prove.

  But only twice in my life had I been pissed off enough to sucker punch a guy right in the fucking nose. Once, when that photographer had his lens up Jessa’s skirt.

  And right the fuck now.

  “You fucking raped Jessa?!” I bellowed in his face.

  “What?” That was Jesse, somewhere behind me, and there was a bunch of ugly feedback as someone’s guitar—maybe all of them—went flying.

  “No! Fuck, no!” Seth said, as I slammed him up against the wall of amps, but I wasn’t fucking listening as I drove my fist into his face, again and again.

  “No? What the fuck do you call it when you make a sixteen-year-old girl suck your cock for drugs?”

  I was gone by that point. I felt the hands on me, even as Seth and I grappled for control. He was trying to fight me off and we went down, him half on top of me, and not because he was on the attack—because I was holding onto him. I wasn’t fucking letting him go. But I hit something on the way down and then he was gone as someone tore him off.

  I was vaguely aware of someone holding my head as a shit storm went off around me.

  “I would’ve killed him,” I said, panting. “I really would’ve killed him.”

  I wasn’t sure if I meant just now or years ago.

  “You’re not killing anyone.” It was Elle. She stroked my hair back from my face. “Just breathe.” She was dabbing something against my cheek.

  Blood. She was mopping blood off my face.

  “Jesus Christ, Maggie, call an ambulance!” I heard her shout over the other voices, but I was fading fast.

  Maggie was here? Hadn’t even seen her when I walked in.

  Tunnel vision.

  “Motherfuckerhitme,” I said, words slurring together. “Gonnabesick…”

  Then I was sick. And seconds after that, I was gone.

  Chapter Thirty

  Brody

  The next time I walked into the church, the setting sun was turning the stained glass window to liquid gold, amber, and scarlet. Candles by the dozens were lit all across the stage on candelabras caked in months’ worth of dripped wax.

  Jessa and Jesse were there, right where they should be: sitting cross-legged on the edge of the stage, facing each other, bent over their guitars, their heads bowed together as they scribbled in their notebooks.

  It’d been days since I’d broken Seth’s nose. The rug where we’d both bled—and I’d puked—had been removed, and you’d never know what went down here. And Jessa didn’t, exactly. She knew I’d gotten into it with Seth, but I’d spared her the details. Pretty sure everyone else did, too. The truth was, if Jude and Zane and Dylan hadn’t been here to tear us apart, and I hadn’t hit my head on that amp and gotten a mild concussion, I didn’t really know what would’ve happened.

  I’d had no plan when I walked in here other than talking to the band, then confronting Seth. But as soon as I saw him, that plan changed to making Seth Brothers hurt. And once Jesse realized why, he was on board with that line of thought. Not that Jude and the others weren’t, but everyone was so shocked by the sudden bloodshed, the situation was diffused pretty fast.

  Jessa had spent the last few days telling me, over and again, that Seth never raped her. He’d never forced her, never threatened to stop feeding her drugs if she didn’t put out. But her words of reassurance did fuck all to calm the ugly black rage festering inside me every time I thought about it.

  Yeah; I’d have to get on that anger management thing. Soon.

  I headed over to where Maggie was slumped back in a pew, feet up, half-listening to Jessa and Jesse as she worked on her laptop.

  “No, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong,” Jesse was saying. “It’s ‘If you could only be…’ and then it’s ‘dirty like me…’ and then the chorus.”

  “No,” Jessa said. “No fucking way. You should’ve dropped the chorus after that first hook, then it’s ‘If you could see.’ You’re fucking up the song. It’s a progression of emotion. You can’t have the ‘If you could see’ before the ‘If you could be.’ How can you see that you are something if you haven’t even been it yet?”

  “It’s about the other person seeing it in me, though.”

  “No, it’s about the singer of the words seeing it in himself.”

  “So it’s not about you, the listener, anyway, it’s about me.”

  “No. You’re not getting it.”

  “What the fuck, Jessa,” Jesse grumbled, playing a couple of lines from the chorus. He hummed along irately as Jessa grinned to herself.

  “This been going on a while?” I asked Maggie.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I thought they already wrote ‘Dirty Like Me,’” I said, amused. “Ten years ago.”

  “Uh-huh. They’re rearranging it. You know, for shits and giggles.” She rolled her eyes. “Artists.”

  “Perfectionists.” I headed up toward the stage. “Quit kicking that horse,” I told them as I approached. “It’s dead, yeah?”

  Jessa looked up at me, smiling. “We’re just messing around.”

  “Yeah. Because my sister informs me that I played it, quote, ‘all wrong’ on the solo tour.”

  “You did,” she said.

  “How was it wrong?”

  “I just told you.”

  “Lyricists,” Jesse bitched. “Think you know everything. Learn to tune your guitar properly and we’ll talk.”

  “I know how to tune my guitar.”

  “Not well enough to hear how that song is supposed to sound.”

  “I wrote that song, jackass.”

  “You wrote the words, baby. Not the same thing.”

  “Without which, you all would have no song. No hit song, which made you rich and famous.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “Hate to tell ya.”

  “Don’t take her side just because she’s cute and she knows how to rhyme.”

  “Ugh. You’re such a dick.”

  Jesse grinned a shit-eating grin.

  “Can I have a word?” I asked him.


  He untangled himself from his guitar and set it aside. I kissed Jessa on the head and she gave me a sweet smile as Jesse hopped down from the stage. As we headed up the aisle, I could hear her twiddling on her guitar, tuning it.

  “We good?” I asked him when we stopped just inside the entrance.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’re good.”

  Great. Because the other day, while I was on bullshit post-concussion bedrest and he’d come to my place, ranting and raving about leaving the band if I didn’t get rid of Seth, like yesterday, it was definitely not good.

  “Then we don’t need to be looking for two new guitar players?”

  “Nope.”

  I stared him down. “You know you own part of Dirty, right? You go, the name probably goes with you.” It was true. Jesse left the band, we had all kinds of legal bullshit to deal with, and the other band members would have to fight for the right to use the name… and possibly lose it. If he wanted to be a dick about it, they probably would. He owned a fourth of it, on paper. They split the royalties on everything, but he also wrote a fuck of a lot of the music and could fight for more if he ever wanted to. “Not to mention you write most of the killer shit. So basically, the band is fucked without you.”

  “I know that.”

  “Plus, you know, the chicks dig you something fierce. You and all your fucking leather pants.”

  Jesse grinned that dazzling grin of his, so like his sister’s. “Know that, too.”

  “Good. Don’t forget it.”

  “I’m here, Bro,” he said, getting serious. Then he pulled me in for a quick hug.

  “Glad to hear it.” I slapped his back and released him. “Maggie’ll take care of the press. I’ll deal with the record company. Zane’s gonna do a couple of interviews, deliver a statement we’re preparing, and you all can vet it before the lawyers do. Jude’s got us covered with everything else. I’m hashing out some ideas with Maggs on how we’re gonna find our new rhythm guitarist. You don’t need to worry about that. Just keep your focus where it should be—writing a kick-ass album of number one shit with that sister of yours.”