Whole Lotta Love: Rock Star Hearts - Book #1

by Amity Cross

  How the hell had we gotten here? From everything to nothing in the space of thirty seconds?

  I fell to the floor and let out a sob. Ziggy nudged my hands with his wet nose and I held onto the little dog as tight as I could as I cried.

  I cried because I cared about Sebastian. I cried because I was going to lose everything. I cried because I had no fucking clue what to do about any of it.

  I’d opened my heart, and Sebastian had lived up to his reputation and shattered the last hope I’d had in my life. I should have known better.

  And that’s where Vanessa found me twenty minutes later. A broken mess on the floor of a failing shop.

  14

  Sebastian

  I took the coastal road away from Point Mambie.

  The ocean stretched out to my left and clouds swirled overhead, echoing my mood. A few patches of blue shone through, but they were gone as soon as they’d appeared.

  Juniper was terrifying. Everything she represented, the possible future I could have with her, the feelings she stirred inside me, the excruciating pain her tears had seared into my heart—all of it was fucking terrifying.

  My fingers tightened around the steering wheel, the leather creaking.

  Fucking was a sport for Beneath. Which groupie would we bang tonight. Like complete misogynistic arseholes, we ranked our conquests and gave them points. Had, I corrected myself.

  I didn’t want to be that guy anymore. The guy whose mother would disown him if she knew how perverted he actually was.

  I couldn’t blame Juniper for wanting the money. I had a reputation she assumed was real, and her shop was in trouble. In her mind, I was going back to my life without her. In her mind, she thought I’d used her to soothe an ache.

  I could keep driving. Just head into the sunset and never look back. Disappear for real.

  Yeah, right.

  I pulled the car into a viewing area on the side of the road and checked the mirrors. Seeing there was no traffic, I did a U-turn and headed back towards town.

  I could’ve stopped at the Page Break Bookshop. I could’ve done a lot of things, but I kept driving. She was right. When I went back to my life—because everyone had known it was inevitable except for me—what would happen then? Would she come with me? Would she be able to handle the pressure of being Sebastian Hale’s girlfriend?

  I sailed through town and I didn’t have the courage to look sideways.

  Ahead, the beach house came into view, the reinforced gate looming over the car. I let my mind wander as it scraped back. I was used to being talked about in less than pleasant tones. My many indiscretions were forgotten in days thanks to clever marketing. I was a hot, young, rock star, living the rock star lifestyle. It was expected of me to be a hateful little prick. As long as I kept making music and telling people what they wanted to hear, then I was golden. The world was such a demented place.

  As soon as the gate was open, I tore through the opening and pressed the button on the fob I’d tossed onto the dash, closing it behind me.

  Looking up at the house, I scowled. It was an empty shell. A motherfucking representation of all the shit things I’d done. I couldn’t go in there.

  Snatching my beanie from the seat beside me, I shoved it on my head. Getting out of the car, I flipped up the collar of my coat and walked across the grass. Unlocking the side gate, I left the grounds and ventured out into the real world, working my way towards the cliff. There was a semblance of a path up here, a trail worn down by countless boots, but there were no safety barriers keeping wayward souls from leaping over the edge.

  Behind me, the beach house sat nestled against the hillside, and I wondered where that photographer was hiding. Burying into my coat, I put my head down and kept walking. It didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  When the abyss was a handful of metres away. I stopped, my boots burying into the scrappy greenish grey grass.

  Juniper’s dad had thrown himself off a cliff when she was five. Maybe it was this one. The wind tore at my coat, so I didn’t venture any closer towards the edge. A gust in the wrong direction would send me falling to the rocks below.

  The ocean was choppy and whitecaps were frothing from the shore to the horizon. Every day I’d been here it’d rained, was windy, or was so fucking cold my dick almost froze off. There was an analogy for that—a shit storm. Seemed appropriate.

  I was in the middle of a shit storm of my own making.

  “You’re not going to throw yourself off, are you? A lot of people have invested a crap load of money in you.”

  Turning, I scowled. Vix stood beside me, the wind buffeting her blonde curls around her face. She scraped them behind her ear and raised her eyebrows.

  “I don’t even want to know how you found me,” I said.

  Vix had this thing where she must’ve been Sherlock fucking Holmes in a past life. As Beneath’s road manager, she was responsible for getting us from point A to point B, making sure we had everything we needed, and looked after our interests with the media, venues, hotels, and transport. She wasn’t our manager per-se, she was our ‘on the ground’ contact. Yeah, we were that bloody important we needed more than one manager, but she had a litany of minions who ran around and did her bidding, too. It was a full-on circus act if you asked me.

  “It wasn’t hard, douchebag.” She smirked, her red lipstick bright against her pale skin. She also looked like Courtney Love’s evil doppelgänger, which was a feat considering the real Courtney Love was wild in her day. “You’re not exactly keeping a low profile.”

  I grunted and balled up my hands inside my pockets.

  “Fuck, it’s cold out here. Let’s go to that huge arsehole mansion back there, huh?”

  “You need to work on your vocabulary, Vix.”

  “Who died and made you a saint, Seb?” She laughed and urged me away from the cliffside. “The way I remember it, you’re the dirtiest out of all of us.”

  I didn’t like the way the wind stole my breath, so I humoured her. We walked back to the beach house in silence, but I knew the moment we were inside, I would cop a serve.

  Vix’s boots stomped on the tiles in the foyer as she entered, and she dumped her coat and bag on the hallway table. The house seemed emptier than usual, even though it was full with her massive bitch of an ego.

  Moving into the living area, I turned on the gas fireplace.

  “You could’ve gone anywhere, but you came here.” She sighed and turned her gaze to the kitchen, taking in the empty bottles of alcohol, and the view through the windows. “Which means you never really wanted to leave forever.” She picked up an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label. “Some tantrum. These are two hundred bucks a pop. How many have you got? Five?”

  “Eat shit, Vix.”

  She slammed down the bottle and glared at me. “You need to stop this childish bullshit, Seb.”

  “Childish?” I scoffed and wished I hadn’t drunk the last of the scotch last night. “You wanted me to have a fake relationship with Mallory. You wanted us to stage fake paparazzi shots. You wanted the entire band to fake shit. You wanted me to lie to my fans. It’s not about me, Vix. It’s about the music.”

  “I didn’t hear you complain about Mallory. From what I remember, you wanted to ‘nail a pop star with your impossibly large cock.’”

  She had me on that one. I’d fucked Mallory, but only after I’d come home to find the pop starlet naked on my kitchen counter with whipped cream all over her pussy. What was it she’d said to me? Lick my hole with that bad boy tongue of yours.

  “No one wants their miserable fucking one-night stands hanging around,” I drawled, the dickhead in me coming out to play. “She wasn’t real. Our relationship was empty, Vix.”

  “Don’t tell me you want to settle down.” She laughed and shook her head, her blonde curls bobbing. “That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.”

  “Would it be so bad?”

  “You poor boy,” she purr
ed, shaking her head.

  “You wanted me to lie to the fans.”

  “It’s your image, Seb. That’s what they buy into.”

  “Shit, and here I was thinking they were in it for the music.”

  “The music is the soundtrack, but they want you. Women want to know you’re within reach. They want to know they could fuck you if they wanted. And men, men want to be you. They want to be the guy who doesn’t give a shit, sticks it to authority, and fucks beautiful women on the bonnet of a Ferrari.”

  I grunted. “That was one time.”

  “Who do you think let the photographer in?” She grinned, obviously pleased with herself.

  I gritted my teeth and rested the urge to throw her out.

  “You’ve got a sold-out gig at Festival Hall in two weeks.” She eyed me sternly. “You have to be there. Cancelling is not an option.”

  I wasn’t a man to these people. I was a product.

  “Who is she?”

  I glanced at Vix and scowled.

  “I know that look,” she went on. “Your cock’s hungry for someone’s pussy.”

  “You’ve been talking to Josh.”

  “Of course I have.” She nodded and leaned against the back of the leather couch. “Juniper Rowe. Small-town pussy. Owns a bookshop that’s haemorrhaging money. Both parents are dead. She’s borderline homeless.” She eyed me and blew through her lips. “She’s playing you, you clueless arsehole.”

  “There was a pap outside yesterday,” I said, changing the subject.

  Vix rolled her eyes. “Of course there was. You couldn’t have hidden here forever.”

  “How did they know?”

  “How did you think I found you?” she replied. “When I got wind of a tip-off from some bogun arsewipe, it was all I could do to keep it out of the press. You owe the label twenty thousand bucks, by the way. They wanted double what they paid out.”

  “Who gave the tip?”

  “Some guy.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter who. At first, I thought it was this Juniper chick, but I was surprised. There’s always a first, I suppose.”

  Vix didn’t have to give me a name, I already knew. Robbo. That fucking arsehole. He was ten thousand dollars richer and free to walk the streets after assaulting Juniper. She should’ve called the cops, not rolled him into a gutter.

  Shit, and Juniper. I’d accused her of selling me out. I’d let my fear take over and drive her away. I’d broken her fucking heart all because I was a pussy. I was afraid of my fake reality coming in and crashing the party, that what I was feeling for her was a product of my longing for something more. Turned out, she’d been the one who was real all along.

  “Go pack your shit,” Vix said, looking bored. “We’re going back to the city and you’re going to rehearsals.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Her eyes flashed and she straightened up. “Do I have to pull the contract card, because I will. The label will sue your arse for everything you have, then you won’t have to play at slumming it, Seb. You’ll be living in the gutter for real.”

  My chest started to ache like a thousand knives were being plunged into it. Juniper was on the edge of financial ruin and that was her reality. She wasn’t playing at life, not like I was. I had the power to help her, just like she’d helped me that day on the beach. She hadn’t realised how much I’d needed the taste of anonymity, not then, but now...

  Oh fuck, I cared about her. I cared about her and I shit all over her truth.

  “I’ll come back,” I whispered, knowing I was fucked either way.

  “Good,” Vix declared. “I want to be back in the city by tonight. I’ve got a meeting with the marketing team and they’ll be out of their minds when they hear you’re back.”

  “I’ll come back,” I said more firmly, “but not today.”

  “What?”

  “I need to make things right with Juniper, then I’ll come back.”

  “Fucking rock stars.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “You better, Sebastian, otherwise the label will make things difficult. I can’t hold them off for long.”

  “I’ll be back before the concert.”

  She eyed me with an air of skepticism and punctuated the look with a sharp nod.

  “Thanks, Vix.”

  “This is the first and last time,” she warned. “Get yourself into trouble again, and you’re out, got it?”

  “Got it.”

  15

  Juniper

  My heart was numb.

  Standing in the middle of the Page Break Bookshop, I couldn’t help my wandering mind when it settled on Sebastian. Things had fallen apart so easily, and it wasn’t until he was gone I’d realised just how deeply he’d dug into my life. Those stormy eyes had been a category five hurricane, smashing through everything I was and ever would be. Sebastian Hale had left a wound so deep, I wasn’t sure it’d ever heal.

  He’d only been in my life for three weeks. Three fucking weeks. I was my mother’s daughter, through and through.

  “This is a prime position,” Helena Hopkins said, scribbling something on her clipboard with her fancy silver biro. “Main road, heritage façade, two-story, facing the ocean, residential and commercial overlay.”

  Helena was one of the local real estate agents, and I watched her wander around the Page Break Bookshop with a sick feeling in my stomach. Behind me, I felt Vanessa glare at me through the window.

  “So you think I could get a good price?” I bit my bottom lip, anxious to hear the results of the evaluation.

  Helena smoothed down her black blazer and tugged at her black, white, and gold silk scarf—the colours of the agency—with her free hand and smiled.

  “I think we can get you a good price, Miss Rowe. A very good price.”

  “I’ve known you most of my life, Mrs. Hopkins,” I said, my hopes rising slightly. “Please, call me Juniper.”

  “Juniper.” She smiled. “Are you sure you want to sell? This place has been in your family for over twenty years.”

  She was right, I was considering selling what was basically my childhood home, but I wasn’t sure I had any other option. I couldn’t afford to keep running the Page Break at a loss, even though I owned the building. Council rates and all of the other things that went with being a responsible homeowner ate almost everything I was able to bring in, even with the summer trade.

  Glancing out the window, I didn’t have it in me to return Vanessa’s glare. Hugo’s family owned the pizza place and the fish ‘n’ ship shop, so she could afford to hang out with me all day and not get paid. I knew she wanted me to keep the Page Break, but I wasn’t sure she fully understood.

  Turning back to Mrs. Hopkins, I noted she didn’t ask me to call her Helena. “I’m weighing my options. Business isn’t what it used to be.”

  “That’s the way of the world, I’m afraid. Progress in the big city squashes towns like ours.” She clucked her tongue and wrote something on the form clipped on her clipboard. “I’ll have some figures drawn up for you as soon as possible. For sale and lease. Give you some options to think over.” And of course, she’d be glad to handle both.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hopkins.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve got the gall to come back here!” Vanessa’s raised voice echoed from outside, and Mrs. Hopkins and I turned to find her shouting at someone who was standing just out of view of the windows.

  A pang of I don’t know what tore through my chest and I glanced at Mrs. Hopkins.

  “As I was saying,” she said, clearing her throat, “you have options, Juniper. You could rent the shop and apartment separately. There’s a lot of money to be made in short-term holiday leases.”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” Vanessa was still jabbing her finger at someone down the footpath. “That fucking woman is pure, and you accuse her of selling you out? You piece of shit!”

  Ziggy started to bark, pulling on his lead.

  “She’s in there talking about selling the Pag
e Break!” Vanessa went on. “She doesn’t want the stinking tabloid’s money! She never did!”

  Oh fuck. Sebastian was out there.

  Mrs. Hopkins blinked, dazed by the commotion outside. “Uh, I can help you get started if that’s what you want to do...”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hopkins,” I said ushering her towards the door. “I’ll have a look at the figures when they’re ready and we can talk about it then. I just need to know my options first.”

  “Okay. I’ll give you a call in a day or two.” She fussed with her clipboard and I knew she’d go straight back to the real estate office and tell Marg—Vanessa’s gossipy rival—all about what happened here today, and my private business would be all over town before dinner.

  I opened the door and the commotion instantly ceased. Mrs. Hopkins glanced at Vanessa, then towards the spot I supposed Sebastian was standing, before striding down the footpath, her heels clicking on the concrete.

  I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him. If I did, I wasn’t sure what would happen.

  Staring at Ziggy—who sat and watched me with his little brown eyes—I began dreaming of the dog’s life yet again—sleeping, eating, and bodysurfing. It sounded better than my current predicament, which was shoved between a rock and a hard place.

  “Do you mind?” I snapped. “You’re shouting my business down the fucking street.”

  “Juniper, can I—”

  “No,” Vanessa snapped at him. “You can’t anything with her. You might be a rock star fuckwit, but that doesn’t mean you can treat my best friend like crap. She’s got enough to worry about without you breaking her heart.”

  “Vanessa,” I said, my shoulders sagging.

  “No, he needs to hear it, Juni. You’re the best person I know. I’m going to protect you. So is Ziggy.” She glared at Sebastian. “I’ve been teaching him how to go for the crotch.”