Rock Hard: A Bad Boy Rock Star Romance (28 page)

For me it was different, though. I wasn’t a huge fan. I’d always been more interested in Grant the man than Grant the rock star even if I had fallen under the spell of Grant the rock star on a couple of occasions. Finding out I’d been dealing with Grant the manipulative rock star who was willing to say whatever it took to get a girl in bed with him was definitely a slap in the face when I’d been so sure I was dealing with Grant the man who was interested in more than just the one nightstand.

Damn it. Damn him!

“Right. Well Blake texted Grant earlier tonight. Asked him if he’d gotten “the groupie” out of his system yet so they could move on to the next city,” I said.

Kayla moved closer and wrapped her arms around me. I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing, because otherwise I was going to lose control again. I was going to start crying again.

I’d been so sure that I had something special with Grant. He was so handsome. Talking with him came so easily. He seemed so good natured and fun to hang out with, and there were those few brief flashes when I’d seen the rock god triumphant on stage and realized in those flashes exactly what it was that all those other women at the concert saw in him.

And because of that I’d let myself be taken advantage of. Like an idiot. I wanted to scream in frustration. I wanted to smack something, preferably Grant, but he was still back at the hotel probably having a grand old time.

Something buzzed. I instinctively looked around in dread, thinking back to the buzzing noise that had heralded the end of my brief romantic liaison with the lead singer of Twenty Promises. Only of course there was no phone lying on the floor and I wanted to smack myself. I really hoped I wasn’t going to get a fear of buzzing phones because of what happened back in that hotel, because talk about the most stupid case of PTSD in the world.

No, it was Kayla’s phone. She picked it up and I saw her eyes flashing back and forth, then a smile spread. A smile that quickly turned to her cackling and kicking her feet.

“Care to share what’s so funny with the rest of the class?”

Kayla didn’t say anything. She just held her phone out for me to have a look at whatever it was she was looking at that was so damn funny. It looked like some sort of news website. No, more like an entertainment blog of some sort, because I was pretty sure CNN didn’t use bright pink in their color scheme. Then I looked at the headline.

“Grant bares all!”

Now what the hell was this all about? I moved down expecting to see an article or something. Had he given an interview in the half hour it took for me to get back to the apartment? Was this some fresh hell where he told the world all about me and what we’d just done?

Nothing could’ve prepared me for what I actually saw. A blurry picture, obviously from a phone, of Grant standing completely bare-ass naked in a hotel lobby doing his best to try and cover up with his hands and not doing a very good job of it. There were a few people at the reception desk, but unfortunately the hotel workers were all women and they all looked to be enjoying his mostly-naked state more than they were actually trying to help him out. One older lady was staring at her computer with an obvious blush on her face.

“Looks like Grant got himself into a little bit of trouble after you left,” she said.

What the hell happened? What could lead him from that expensive suite to walking around the hotel lobby in his birthday suit? Then it hit me.

“He was in the shower when I told him I knew what was going on. I actually smashed his phone. He came running after me but he must not have gone for a towel.”

“And he followed you into the hall like that?” Kayla asked, incredulous.

“I guess? I made it down to the elevators before he could catch up to me. I guess he ran out the door without thinking and must’ve gotten locked out without his key, and his cell was in pieces in that expensive shower…”

A smile spread across my face and then I was giggling and kicking my feet against the couch as well. I knew it wasn’t strictly nice to be thinking mean things about another person like that, to wish for bad things to happen to them, but on balance I figured a little bit of public humiliation was the least Grant deserved considering all the humiliation I’d had to endure thanks to him thinking with that cock he was doing a poor job of covering up with his hand.

Kayla pulled her phone back and then she was swiping through various sites dedicated to Twenty Promises. There were more and more articles popping up. It seemed that Grant Thompson was setting the Internet on fire with those embarrassing pictures. Before long it was being picked up on mainstream news services as well, and Kayla and I sat on the couch with our phones in hand basking in the glory that was Grant getting a little bit of comeuppance.

“Here’s something interesting,” Kayla said. “Witnesses report a girl storming out of the elevator lobby just before Grant appeared running through the same lobby screaming for ‘Mieke.’ Is it possible the rock star has a jilted German lover out there somewhere?”

I rolled my eyes. “Well that’s the first time someone’s made that mistake with my name.” And I’d dealt with people making a hell of a lot of mistakes with my name over the years. I suppose that was a good thing, though. The last thing I wanted was anything associating me with Grant beyond what people already knew. Things were going to be bad enough at work tomorrow as it was, and I’m sure more than a few people there were going to make the connection.

For now it seemed that Grant wasn’t talking, though. No, the pictures showed him getting a new card and disappearing into the elevator while hotel security finally seemed to pull their heads out of their asses because the last few pictures to filter online were of an annoyed looking security guard holding a hand up in front of phone cameras to prevent any new shots from being taken.

Something told me that even for supposedly being the most high class joint in town they weren’t really used to dealing with stars as big as Grant. This scandal was the biggest thing to happen to this town in forever. He was the certainly the biggest thing to happen to my love life in awhile. I sighed.

“Y’know I really thought there might’ve been something special there with Grant,” I said.

Kayla put her phone down. It didn’t seem that there were going to be any new revelations now that Grant had made his way back up to the suite. “I’m sorry Mia, but you have to realize he is what he is. Expecting a rock star like that not to go after groupies is like expecting a fish not to swim in water.”

“But he seemed different! It isn’t fair! I really believed him!”

“Yeah, everything I read said he wasn’t like that on this tour, but I guess the blogs can be wrong about that sort of thing,” Kayla said.

I thought I was done with staring at my phone, but at that moment my phone buzzed. I jumped. Damn it. I forced myself to look down at the screen. After all, it’s not like every time I got a message it was going to be from…

Grant.

“We need to talk.”

Four words. So simple, and yet they seemed to have a pull on me that was stronger than anything I’d ever felt before. Kayla noticed me freezing and she glanced over my shoulder. I heard her hiss as she pulled the phone away from me, which was probably a good thing because I was about to tap out a reply. That was how much of a spell I was under when it came to Grant Thompson, even after everything that had happened.

I was starting to really sympathize with girls who’d been fans of the band their entire life. If I had it this bad after a couple of nights then I couldn’t imagine what it must feel like after a lifetime of worshiping the group.

“What if he really wants to talk?” I asked.

I felt like an idiot even as I said it. If he did want to talk it was probably just to get pissed off at me because I was the reason he ended up in that hotel lobby. Besides, I’d made it absolutely clear that I didn’t want anything he was peddling.

It was probably a good thing Kayla snatched that phone out of my hand before I could give in to my moment of weakness. I saw her tap a couple of times and then she grinned.

“There. Grant’s number is blocked and deleted from your phone. The only way you’ll be able to get in touch with him is if you memorized it,” she said.

I blinked. That had a lot of finality to it. Isn’t that what I wanted, though? Didn’t I want to never talk to that asshole again? And yet there was still a part of me that wanted to talk to him. That was still under his spell.

I needed to be strong though. He’d taken advantage of me, and I didn’t want anything to do with him.

“Fine,” I said. “No more Grant Thompson. No more Twenty Promises in my life. I was right about hating them back then, and now I have a real reason.”

“Well I can’t say I’m going to stop liking them myself,” Kayla said. She grinned. “I will stop bothering you about them, though. I figure you deserve a pass now that you have a real reason to hate them.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. So all it took to get Kayla to finally stop bothering me about liking Twenty Promises was getting into an ill-advised disastrous affair with their lead singer? I guess I’d take it if it meant she’d finally shut the fuck up about that band and the pretty boy assholes in it. I was done with Grant Thompson, and I was done with Twenty Promises.

Forever.

29: Mia's Song

Through the lobby. Out into the streets beyond. Cameras flashed all around me. Everybody knew I was staying at the hotel and it appeared everyone decided to camp out and take part in the shit show that was Grant Thompson showing off naked for the world.

Twelve years. Twelve years on the road and I’d managed to avoid letting any asshole with a camera get an embarrassing picture of me like that, and then I’d gone and done it to myself by running out of the hotel room completely naked without thinking.

I was going to send a sternly worded letter to the hotel chain as well. I saw how those girls at reception, and one guy who’d been more interested than I thought was entirely proper, had been looking at me. None of them had the audacity to pull out their phones like those girls at the store in the mall earlier, but they weren’t exactly moving to expedite helping me out or anything either.

And I didn’t care about any of that as I stepped onto the sidewalk and found myself confronted by more people with cameras. No, all I cared about was looking at the phone I’d had run over to the hotel while I was getting dressed.

I guess it was a good thing I was still in the habit of keeping spares ready to go, a holdover from the days when I routinely partied to the point that my phones didn’t have a very long service career, and I was really glad I opted for the cloud backup. Otherwise Mia’s number would’ve been lost with the phone she destroyed in the shower.

“We need to talk.”

I thought about that before I sent it. Was it sending the wrong message? I really just wanted to talk to her. I wanted to apologize for everything. To know there was still a chance.

More than anything, though, I just wanted to talk with her. I was feeling a strange new sensation in my chest. In the pit of my stomach. An ache that I was having trouble explaining. Heartache. I was actually feeling broken hearted at the idea that she might never want to see me again, even if I did sort of deserve it for the way I’d treated her, if not directly then I’d certainly been an asshole to her indirectly because I was still having trouble getting rid of some of the habits of my past.

Habits that led to the Incident. Habits that led me to lose Mia, the first girl I’d truly been interested in. The first girl I wanted to have a real relationship with, not just settle down with her because she might be pregnant with my kid.

Yeah, this had turned into a cluster fuck and it was all my fault.

The message went through and I stared at my phone waiting for a response. Held my breath hoping, praying for a response. A response that never came, though at least looking down at my phone had the side benefit of hiding my face from all the idiots who were trying to take my picture.

Including a couple of outlets that hadn’t been interested in me or the band in the better part of a decade. I guess it took a good embarrassing incident to get them to crawl out of the woodwork. The fucking vultures.

They kept following me and I kept right on ignoring them until I found myself standing in front of the back entrance to the arena. And immediately I found myself in a different sort of trouble as some of the fans who’d been waiting the night before were still camped out by the buses. No doubt waiting for a chance to see one of the guys.

Not that it was likely. Those buses were fortresses that were designed to cater to our every need for a couple of days without resupply if need be. I was sure the married gentlemen in the group were probably busy getting busy with their wives. If the bus was a rockin’ and all that.

And Blake. Well, Blake was probably sitting back wondering where the hell I was. He probably had no idea that I wanted to punch him right in his smarmy face. Sure it wasn’t exactly a fair thought, I might as well want to punch a shark for eating fish or punch a wolf for killing cute woodland critters. Blake wasn’t being malicious when he sent me that text asking when I’d be done. Blake was just being Blake, and he was operating under a false idea of who I was. An idea I’d done nothing to stop.