LOW: A Rockstar Romance (19 page)

Chapter Two

Madeline

The worst five words in the English language are, "We'll get back to you."

I was broke, blacklisted and a tiny bit desperate, but I smiled anyway. "I'm looking forward to it!" I said brightly, with much more confidence than I was feeling.

Acting
, you see.

I'm better at it than anyone gives me credit for, and the fact that I was not bursting into tears right here at the end of my screen test was my bravura performance. I deserved a damned Oscar for it. "Mr. Neil, if I could just tell you how much I admired your work with
Finn's Hollow
. The chance to work with a director with your skill and sensitivity would be such an honor."

Jonathan Neil's face was a mask, but he visibly recoiled from my cheap attempts at flattery. "Thank you, er, Miss Cole. We'll be in touch."

I pressed my lips together and nodded.

I slid off the stool with my head held high and kept my shoulders back as I walked to the heavy metal door. Another Oscar-worthy performance.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Jonathan leaning back to whisper in the producer's ear. They both shook their heads slightly.

But I still held my head high.

Because if there is one thing a working actress lives off of, it's hope. Hope that they'd re-watch my audition tape and see I was the right fit for
Skyline Drive
. Hope that they'd then call me back. Hope that I'd get the part. Hope that the film would be a success and give me the comeback I needed. Hope that 'Mad Maddie' was a thing of the past and that the tabloids would leave this version of me—sober, quiet and hard-working—alone.

Slim hopes are better than no hope at all.

Of course, the second I stepped blinking out into the bright lot, my phone buzzed in my cavernous purse.

"Do you have a spy camera trained on me or something?" I asked by way of greeting.

I could sense her mischievous grin before my mother even started speaking. "No," she explained. "I just have a sixth sense when it comes to my baby girl. You're done, right? How did it go?"

I couldn't disappoint her. My mother needed this win almost as much as I did. Maybe more.

"It's down to me and another redhead," I lied, smiling brightly again.

Acting.

"Oh, Madeline, see? See? I told you your talent would shine through."

Immediately, I started backpedaling. "I don't have it yet, Mom."

"It doesn't matter. You will." She made it sound like such a done deal. I wished I had half the confidence in myself that she had in me. "And in the meantime, I have some good news."

"Yeah?" I quickened my step, walking briskly across the parking lot to my aging Prius. Talking with my mother always made me feel like I should be doing something. Conquering something. On my way to the next big thing. Her belief in me was so strong that it carried me forward even when I felt like lying down and giving up altogether. A whole town stacked against me was nothing as long as Sylvia Cole had my back.

"It's not big. But work is work, you always say that. Can you be available tomorrow and Friday?"

My appointment book showed a big fat wad of nothing. "I can move some things around," I hedged. I didn't want my mom to know how bad it really was.

"Oh good. Thank you, Maddie. It'd be a personal favor to Michael."

"It...would?"

Michael Wilder was my mom's new boyfriend. Well, maybe not new, exactly. They started dating when I got out of rehab about seven months ago.  But it was still strange to me that I had to share her. My mother wanted me to believe I was the center of her world, but in truth, she was the center of mine. All of my so-called friends skittered off like cockroaches in sunlight when things went south for me, but my mother remained rock solid. She was the sun and I was a planet flung out in my own orbit now, but always circling her warmth and craving her light.

I wondered if Mike felt the same way.  He was quiet, with sad, slow-blinking eyes. Sometimes his lids seemed too heavy for him to stay awake. Compared with my bright and effervescently enthusiastic mother, he seemed inert, like a stationary object. But they still seemed to adore each other—Mike brightening incrementally every time I saw him. And my mother needed the project now that I was healthy again. Without someone who needed her help and care, my mother was completely lost. Twenty-three years of worrying about me was coming to an end. I was clean and sober and independent. And ready to work again, so long as someone would give me the chance.

"What's Mikey got going on?" I asked.

"Stop it, you know he hates it when you call him that."

"I know, that's why I called him that." I grinned and slid into the baking interior of my car, then leaned against the seat. Maybe I could sweat the stink of failure out of me.

"Actually, it's not really him so much as his boys."

"Oh god...."

Mike's sons. Two-fifths of one of the biggest names in rock right now.
Ruthless
was a band that even if you didn't listen to that kind of hard-driving cock-rock, you still knew about them. Or if not about them, about the Wilder brothers. Their pictures stared at me from the covers of magazines in doctors' waiting rooms and pharmacy shelves. Keir and Rane Wilder—the headbanging boys who brought the swagger back to rock and roll.

Ick.

I swallowed down my initial revulsion. Work was work, and I wasn't above using nepotism to my advantage. I needed any advantage I could get. "What do they need?"

"You know they're musicians, right?"

"If you want to call them that, sure. Cock-walking rock and roll douchebags aren't really my thing."

"Be nice.  Well, anyway, their band is shooting a music video up at Gray Haven tomorrow and their actress got food poisoning last minute. Mike suggested your name to them and...." she hesitated, "they went for it."

"For some reason? Was that what you were going to say before you caught yourself?"

"Maddie, stop. You're just, you know... Music videos, they're kind of...lower on the food chain. They'll be lucky to have you."

"We both know I'm the lucky one here. That they'd even consider me. What's the part?"

"Uh, standard music video stuff, I guess."

"Mom."

"What, Maddie? What do you want me to say?"

"The truth would be a good start."

"Okay, fine, yes. They're interested because of you, specifically. They want you to play the psycho ex-girlfriend and they're hoping it'll go viral because of your whole...story."

My very public year-long meltdown. The "story," as my mom called it, was the worst time in my life and I was trying like hell to put it behind me.

But I needed work. And I couldn't afford to be prideful if I wanted to afford food and rent.

"Okay, sure. I'll do it!" I said brightly.

"That's my girl. I knew you'd see the positive."

I didn't. But...
acting
.

Chapter Three

Rane

I rolled over, reveling in having the whole bed to myself for a change, scratched my chest and grabbed my phone from the stand next to my bed.

Twelve angry texts over the course of the night. Good, Gina was slowing down.

I deleted them without reading them and sighed. 

It wouldn't help Gina move on if I answered her now. It would be cruel to string her along like that. I'm an asshole, sure, but I'm not into mind games. We had some fun and now it was over. No need to belabor the fucking point.

Besides, today was going to suck and I needed some space to breathe. I exhaled sharply....

And right on cue, my phone buzzed in my hand.

I recognized the caller ID and let it ring just long enough to make the vulture sweat. Then I answered. "Yeah, Dennis?"

"Mr. Wilder?" As if someone else would be answering my phone.

"Call me Rane. Told you that before, Dennis," I grunted, sitting up and pulling on my boxers. If Dennis were a good-looking chick, maybe I'd have left them off, but bespectacled male music journalists weren't really my thing.

Dennis Johannson, story editor for Auteur magazine, had been putting together a big splashy cover story on Ruthless for the past three weeks. He interviewed all five of us, paying particular attention to Keir and me.

I was hoping this little interview would be the last. I was getting real sick of talking about myself.

Dennis cleared his throat over the static on the line. "Sorry, Rane, this'll be real quick. I just wanted to fill in a few gaps in the story. Is now a good time?"

"Sure, fire away," I yawned.

"Did I catch you at a bad time?"

I sighed. "Listen, man, I'm hungover as shit, I got a chick who doesn't understand what the word 'over' means and I've got a wardrobe call for a video shoot in an hour. Do what you've gotta do and make it quick." I wandered through the cavernous first floor of the house I bought five months ago. In a fit of out-of-character pretension, I had hired some fancy-dancy art gallery chick to find some shit to hang on the walls. When she got a little too clingy, I got bored and stopped, leaving the rest of the space empty of furniture except for one big sofa I stole from my dad's basement.  My gear was slung into a corner and my big screen was set up for gaming, but otherwise, my house was just a big, echoey, kind of churchy looking empty place.

Good for parties.

The kitchen was similarly unfurnished. I wandered in and opened the perpetually empty fridge in the vague hope that something edible might have materialized. But the same barren landscape looked back at me. Ketchup and beer and a fuzzy thing in the back. My stomach growled loudly.

Dennis was still apologizing. I sighed and tuned back in. "....won't take a minute." I heard the ruffling of pages. "So... you said your dad bought you and Keir your first guitars. How old were you?"

"Thirteen," I said. "Keir was twelve."

"Had you even played music before that?"

"Nah." I grabbed my keys from a chipped plate that I had filched from my mom's stuff after she left.  It was good for holding little shit like earbuds and loose change. "I'm pretty sure Dad was out of ideas on how to keep us outta trouble. Sports didn't work, couldn't sit still in church, both sucked at school...music was the last option before juvie or military school."

"And your mom...."

I flexed my hand quickly and looked back at the flowery plate. "My mom split when I was eight. She had nothing to do with it."

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine." I stalked back to my bedroom. "Keep going."

"Has the success of Ruthless surprised you at all?"

"Nope."

"Not at all?"

I rummaged through my dresser and found a pair of dark jeans I didn't recognize. I probably inadvertently stole them from a photo shoot. Whatever. I yanked them on anyway. "You know, I don't get it when people ask me that. We play the kind of music people want to hear. Nothing pretentious, just straight up rock and roll. I'm not interested in some great, difficult message. I'm having fun. I want to keep having fun. The second it stops being fun, I'm out."

"That's great, Rane. Perfect. I can use it for a pull quote."

"Never put in an honest day's work in my life, and I intend to keep it that way.

"Oh wow, that's even better."

"Whatever, man, I'm telling the truth. Listen. Can we finish up? I probably should head out."

"Yeah." I could hear pages flipping. "Just wanna check a little tidbit I picked up. Is it true Madeline Cole is starring in your video for Catastrophe?"

For a second, I felt it. That grasping anger that takes over when things get out of my control. How the fuck did this chucklehead know about that already? Who leaked it? Was it Keir? Maddie herself? I fucking hated surprises.

Then, with practiced calm, I let it wash over me and back out again. And I smiled. "Be patient, man. You're gonna have to watch it to find out what we have in store."  I kept smiling until it felt genuine.

"Well, this is all great stuff. Really appreciate your time, Rane." He paused and I waited with my finger poised over the off button. "Hey," he asked, his voice changed, a little higher, a little hopeful. "Can I ask you something...as a fan?"

That's the thing I had the hardest time with the first time we broke. Music for me was a selfish thing. A safe space in my head that kept the bad feelings out. When people started approaching me, saying my words and my music 'spoke to them,' I didn't fucking get it. They were my words and I wrote them for me.

But the longer I'd been at this game, the easier it became to detach myself from any sort of meaning. Desolation City was our third studio release and I wrote it in a week.  It's a hell of a lot easier to just write the fucking songs for the fans in the first place. Bypass the feeling and go straight for the sale. "Yeah, man, what's up?"

"I just wanted to ask, you know... Black Wings, man. It got me through a rough patch. So, maybe not so much ask you as thank you? For writing it?"

I closed my eyes. There was this hard place in my chest that lived with me—all the time. A tight fist of held back...something.

For one second, it eased its grip.

"Yeah, well, writing it got me through a tough time, too." I hated talking about the reasons I wrote shit because people always wanted to pour their own feelings out, spilling their messiness all over my pristine words. But I craved it, too. What'd my shrink call this? A desire for connection?

Made me feel like a head case.

"Thanks for telling me," I said carefully but sincerely. He wanted more, I just knew it. But he couldn't have it. "You have a good day, man."

He sounded defeated. "You too, Rane."

When he hung up the phone, I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling like I had dodged a bullet. Then I shoved my keys into my pocket and headed off to play my easy, meaningless song and put these weird, unwelcome feelings behind me.