Cherry Beats

by Vicki James

  Cherry Beats

  A Rock Star Romance

  Vicki James

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  PLAYLIST

  About Vicki James

  Also by Vicki James

  About Victoria L. James

  Cherry Beats

  ©2019 VICKI JAMES

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author, except that of small quotations used in critical reviews and promotions via blogs.

  Cherry Beats is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products, for the most part, of the author’s imagination, except for those venues which do exist in the world. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, events or any other incident is entirely coincidental

  COVER DESIGN:

  L.J. Stock of LJ Designs

  EDITED BY:

  Claire Allmendinger of BNWEditing

  PROMOTIONS:

  Wendy Shatwell and Claire Allmendinger

  Bare Naked Words

  Dedication

  Cousin Dave

  For the lifetime of best-friendship,

  For the music education,

  And for loving me anyway, despite promising to never speak to me if I was born a girl.

  You can’t win ‘em all, kid.

  You just have to make the best of the losses.

  Acknowledgments

  When I first started this book, I told everyone it would be done in a couple of months.

  I had no idea it would take a couple of years. Life got in the way (the good life, I must add) and Presley West proved to be a character who wouldn’t settle for anything but the best. In those two years, the following people have been on this Cherry Beats journey with me through thick and thin.

  Cousin Dave – for providing drummer boy feedback and music inspiration along the way.

  Lou J Stock – for telling me how Presley West was her favourite book boyfriend EVER, and how I couldn’t quit on him, no matter what. Cherry Beats wouldn’t be what it is without you.

  Claire Allmendinger – my precious editor, for always saying “Haven’t you finished that bloody book yet?” You know how to light a firecracker under my arse.

  Sue Hollingmode – for the never-ending encouragement, selfless love, and unwavering support along the way.

  Of course, it takes a village to make an actual book come to life.

  My cover and graphic designer, Lou J Stock. You are a genius and I simply adore you and our friendship. You’re also talented as all hell. Never leave me.

  Mary Green. The one and only COOPS! You take my books and spot things I’ve missed a thousand times over. You’ve become an intricate part of my release process now, and I love you.

  Sue Hollingmode. What a goddamn cheerleader you are from the very first chapter. I couldn’t cope a day in this book world without you.

  Wendy Shatwell of Bare Naked Words. Thanks for always believing in me and rolling those eyes when you know I’m freaking out without need. ;)

  Claire Allmendinger, the best editor on the planet!

  My Wonderland crew – Amy Trevathan, Charlie M. Matthews, Francesca Marlow… life is good with you guys in it. Thanks for the friendships. <3

  The J TEAM!

  My favourite place to hang out, talk books, anxieties, friendships, share memes, and generally laugh. I’m so glad this book world and Facebook brought us all together.

  My family, your patience is appreciated, and your love is the most precious thing in my life. Thank you for being what I need when this book life gets too manic.

  To every blogger out there who chooses to help me: THANK YOU.

  To my readers.

  Thank you for being here.

  Thanks for taking a chance on me.

  Thanks for making my dream a reality.

  I will always be in debt to you.

  Forever and ever.

  Now… let’s rock!

  Vic x

  www.victorialjames.com

  Prologue

  Hollings High’s Got Talent!

  So far we’d seen a ginger kid juggling two satsumas, a dance troop of two boys and two girls perform to Britney Spears’s Toxic, an exchange student from Italy stand on his head for six consecutive minutes, and our resident rapper perform his version of an explicit song—one that got him dragged off the stage by Mrs Rufus when he forgot to bleep out the bad words.

  Four down, seventeen acts to go.

  I was about to put my hand in the air and try to look sick so I could be excused when, beyond the black curtain of the school hall, I heard the gentle tapping of sticks followed by the heavy press of a drum pedal. I stilled, mouth agape as the hairs on the back of my neck slowly rose.

  Music. Real music.

  The curtains peeled back to reveal Joshua Smith at the front. He was the high school stud, and four years older than me. His brown eyes, already-broken voice, and his flawless black skin made Joshua the object of everyone’s affection, but it was the way his infectious bright white smile lit up the room that made us really giddy. As soon as the crowd realised who was standing there with a microphone in hand and his famous grin in place, the girls giggled, and the boys began to cheer.

  Kimmie Brewer shoved my shoulder and whispered how she’d love to be that microphone just so she could be close to his lips, but I was eleven, and I’d not really had thoughts like that about boys yet.

  Not until my eyes drifted to the drum kit behind Joshua.

  There, sat a boy shuffling on a stool, his jaw set in place and long blonde hair hanging down as he twirled a drumstick in his hand and bounced his knee in time to a beat nobody else could hear. While Joshua introduced the band, my blonde-haired boy’s eyes were cast down to the floor, lost in a daydream.

  “Beautiful,” I said on a breathy whisper, my mouth agape.

  The boy wore a denim jacket with a black hoodie underneath, as well as a beanie hat perched on the back of his head—one that looked like it could fall off at any moment.

  “Tessa?”

  I blinked, tearing my eyes away from the drumming angel to look at Kimmie. Her smile was wide. “You okay?”

  “Who is that?”

  Kimmie looked up, frowning. “The drummer?” She leaned closer. “That’s Presley West. He only talks when he wants to. He always has his earphones in, but he’s super popular here. I overheard a year ten girl say he was the poster boy for any teenage girl addicted to ang
sty romance, whatever that means. Dreamy, though, right?”

  I didn’t get time to answer. Presley tapped his sticks in the air three times, and it all began. The first live gig I’d ever witnessed, and the one that would stay with me for always. I knew there and then, sitting on the hardwood floor of my high school hall, that I could never forget that moment.

  I couldn’t forget the way his eyes scrunched shut and his teeth sank into his bottom lip as his knees bunched up and his arms came down in wild, fluid movements that defied all laws of possibilities. Music had always been a part of my life, but looking at Presley, I saw how music could be a part of someone’s soul. The quiet boy who’d stared at the floor like he didn’t care had gone with the first hit of his stick on the snare drum. He’d been transformed into a rock god before my eyes, lost in the beat, the lashing of his arms coming down to hit every drum and cymbal with perfect precision.

  “How old is he?”

  “Fifteen? I think. Four years older than us.”

  Fifteen and already so talented—so in tune with his passion.

  And there I was enduring my first year of high school, staring up at the magician on the drums, feeling those flutters in my stomach, and a deep throbbing in my chest.

  Respect.

  Admiration.

  Desire.

  I had no idea boys like him existed before then. Or that I’d spend the next eight years wishing he could be mine.

  Chapter One

  Eight Years Later

  I’d been wiping the same glass dry for five minutes, staring at him from across the almost-empty bar.

  The girl sitting opposite him leaned over the small mahogany table they were sharing, her boobs pressed against the edge just enough to give him a peek of what was on offer. Her fake lashes fluttered every time he spoke, and she pretended to be hypnotised by what he was saying—like she wasn’t just there because he was our local rock star hottie everyone wanted a slice of.

  Presley West was reeling her in without much effort.

  He never had to try, but he did so anyway, lavishing them with unnecessary attention and serving them a scoop of his moreish personality. He gave them his everything when he was one-on-one because that’s just the kind of guy Presley seemed to be.

  Attentive.

  Focused.

  “Hot,” my boss Bourbon chirped beside me, interrupting my reverie.

  I turned and stared into the dark grey eyes of my thirty-something boss as he moved closer. Bourbon was only a few inches taller than me—not good for a man when I was a pathetic five-foot-three inches tall—and he always wore cowboy boots with a good chunky heel on them to give him those extra few inches.

  I heard those extra few were important.

  Bourbon glanced down at the squeaky-clean tumbler I still turned in my hands.

  “The glass.” He nodded at it. “Rub it any harder and the damn thing will overheat and shatter in your hands, dolly.”

  Bourbon always called me dolly. According to him I was so small, he could pick me up and put me in his daughter’s toy Silver Cross pram and push me around town.

  “You’ve gotta stop this.” Bourbon sighed, jerking his head in the direction of Presley who was currently making his potential-lover hoot like a canary. “You’ve got to stop letting him get under your skin.”

  “Who?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Romeo.”

  “Pah. He doesn’t get under my anything. The only thing I wish he would get under is that girl’s clothes, already. They’re the last people in the bar again. He takes so damn long warming these dates up, I think he forgets it’s me who loses precious beauty sleep because he keeps me here, at work, where I don’t want to be.”

  “Remind me why I pay you so much when all you do is destroy my business with your words.”

  “You don’t pay me enough.” I placed the super clean glass on the bar, dragged my cloth through my free hand, and then flicked it on Bourbon’s arm. “What are you still doing here, anyway?”

  He shrugged his shoulders beneath his far-too-faded denim shirt and glanced over at Presley and his… acquaintance. Let’s call her Gertrude.

  “Nothing to go home for. Fliss will be asleep by now, and I’ll be bored.”

  “Even you have Netflix.” I grinned, nudging his shoulder with a weak fist.

  “Just nobody to chill with.” He tried to remove the cloth from my hand. “Go home, Tess. I’ll lock up tonight. DiCaprio could be here a while.”

  “No, I want to stay.” I clung onto my precious security cloth, pressing it against my chest.

  “For the rock star?”

  “Not for him. For me. I’ve made a bet with myself that he’ll waste at least another half an hour chatting shit with her—which, by the way, turns this particular girl colder rather than hotter because she isn’t exactly the intelligent conversationalist type—when he could be back at his place already, getting his dick sucked and his balls tickled.”

  “Tessa Lisbon! Is that what you think all men want from women?”

  “It’s what I’d want if I were a guy. How does that feel, by the way?” I leaned in closer, folded my arms over my chest and cocked my hip to the side.

  He chuckled. “I can’t even pretend that shit ain’t good when it’s done right. But, as your boss, this probably isn’t a conversation I should be having with my nineteen-year-old bartender.”

  “Don’t deny me. I have penis envy. Those things look like so much fun. I’d love to just stand there spinning it around if I had one.”

  “Jesus, Tess.”

  “Ah, come on. You know I love guy talk.”

  “Guy talk, guy humour, guy clothing.” He scanned me from head to foot, taking in my ‘Just because I have tits it doesn’t mean you can milk them for free’ slogan black T-shirt and black ripped jeans combo. His eyes widened on my cherry red Doc Martens before they shot back up to my face.

  “This isn’t guy anything. It’s, I don’t know. Gender neutral? Unisex? My personality. None of your business. What the fuck is wrong with what I wear?”

  “Nothing, dolly.” He laughed again and dropped his hand to my shoulder. “You wouldn’t be you if you were any other way. No one else could match the colour of their hair to the colour of their boots.”

  I beamed, flicking him with my cloth again. “Get outta here. Go home. Search for a life on the journey. Find the end of a rainbow. Capture the leprechauns. Control the genies. Make three wishes and fly. Live, boss, live.”

  Bourbon twisted his body and reached down for his keys beneath the cash register. “Make sure rock star and his groupie have left before twelve thirty.”

  “Always do.”

  “And be safe.”

  “Always try.”

  Bourbon threw his keys in the air and immediately caught them before he pressed a chaste kiss to the back of my head and turned to leave. To people who didn’t know us, that kiss might have looked like he was stepping out of line, but they didn’t know our friendship. They didn’t understand how much I adored my boss, and that was one of the reasons I was willing to cover for him so much, work my fingers to grimy little stubs, and clean glasses until they exploded. They didn’t know that Bourbon may have only been thirty-four, but he’d had one hell of a horrible, difficult life, and if he chose to gift me with a friendly kiss on the back of the head as a way of telling me how much he appreciated me, I was going to take it. His quiet love comforted me. Lines we’d never had to speak were drawn the minute I’d started working for him. He knew if he ever tried anything, I’d get a chokehold on his balls and twist them until they popped like an exploding balloon.

  Ours was a platonic, potentially ball-busting love.

  I began to wipe down the bar surface, a soft smile gracing my face when I glanced up to stare at Presley. Was it weird to say he had a beautiful back? He did, and it was covered in a well-worn leather jacket, with his too-long, wavy blonde hair curling over the back of the collar. His shoulders always looked so strong and…
assured.

  “You’ve got twenty minutes, DiCaprio,” I called out to him.

  I could practically feel his smirk power punching me in the ovaries from all the way across the room. He didn’t have to turn around for me to see it. Presley slowly, ever so confidently, raised his arm in the air and flipped me the backward bird.

  Anyone would have thought he’d just fingered me, my cheeks blushed, and my legs closed quickly.

  “Arsehole,” I muttered under my breath.

  Even the insult was a lie, but it felt good to at least pretend I hadn’t been in love with Presley Aron West for the last eight years. It felt good, at this life-altering age of nineteen, to fool myself into thinking I’d gotten control of the way I felt about the blue-eyed, blonde-haired drummer god who had somehow managed to acquire bad boy looks with a good boy attitude.

  “Tess?” he called out at once.

  “Yeah,” I croaked back, ducking my head under the bar to shuffle a load of empty glasses around, just so I sounded busier and more carefree than I actually was.