Dirty Like Seth_A Dirty Rockstar Romance Read online

  Then Jesse’s sister, Jessa, told them some ugly shit about me.

  Then they fired me again.

  For six months, I waited for a call that never came.

  And now here I was. Poised to prove to them all how wrong they were about me, as I played my nerves out with the music. As the red door finally opened… and Jude appeared.

  Big, muscular dude. Intimidating, if you didn’t know him. Or maybe even if you did. Dark, almost-black hair. Black T-shirt, gnarly tats down his arms, jeans and biker boots.

  And one hell of an unimpressed look on his face when he saw me.

  He gestured at the plainclothes guy, who was still loitering on the sidewalk, watching me. Just a flick of his chin. Take a walk, that gesture said. The dude was gone, around the front of the bar and out of sight by the time Jude stepped out into the parking lot and the door slammed shut behind him.

  I’d switched songs, so now I was just trying not to fuck up “The House of the Rising Sun” as Jude stalked over. He stopped two feet from his bike, from me, and looked me over like he was making sure I hadn’t gone crazy.

  “You kiddin’ me?” were the first words out of his mouth. They weren’t exactly hostile. More like he was mildly stunned, though not as stunned as the kid with the taco.

  I stopped playing, flattening my hand over the strings to silence them. “You rode your bike here from Vancouver,” I observed. “Took a few days off?”

  He crossed his massive arms over his chest. “Like to do that sometimes. Hit the road. Alone. Tune out all the bullshit.” He raked his dark gaze over me again. “You bringin’ me bullshit?”

  “Guess that depends,” I said, “how you look at it.”

  “From where I’m looking, it looks like bullshit.”

  “No bullshit. This is an audition.” I played a few lines from Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child.” Showing off, maybe. “I’m here to audition.”

  Jude still looked unimpressed as shit. “Auditions are closed. Invitation-only. Pre-screened. And I never saw your name on the list… Todd Becker.”

  “So screen me now,” I said, still playing, quietly, as we spoke. “What do you wanna hear? ‘Fortunate Son’…? ‘Roadhouse Blues’…?” I played a little from each song as I spoke. “‘Dirty Like Me’…?”

  Jude remained silent, arms crossed, dark eyes watching me as I played. The dude was tough to read, but the Jude I knew had always liked listening to me play.

  We’d established a game, early in our friendship, where he’d toss a song title at me and I’d play it for him. If I didn’t know the song, no matter what it was, I’d learn it, quick. It was because of Jude and this little game of ours, in part, that I’d become as good as I had on guitar. Because if I ever struggled to master a song he’d requested, he never let me hear the end of it—no matter that the guy couldn’t strum out a tune to save his life. And he’d made it a favorite pastime to challenge me with the hardest songs. In some cases, songs I never would’ve learned if it weren’t for him egging me on.

  “You still into Metallica?” I started playing “Master of Puppets.” Not my favorite band, but back in the day, I’d mastered “Master”—no easy task—to entertain him.

  He cocked a dark eyebrow at me, so maybe we were getting somewhere. “You remember it.”

  “Hard to forget. My fingers actually bled learning it.”

  He grunted a little at that, which was about the closest I was gonna get to a smile right now. I knew that.

  “Or how about some Rage?” I switched to “Killing In the Name” by Rage Against the Machine, another of Jude’s favorites. At least it was, years ago.

  He shook his head, which I took to mean his admiration of my guitar skills was neither here nor there at the moment. So I did what I knew how to do: I kept playing. My talent was the only real card I had to play here.

  Maybe it was the only card I’d ever had to play.

  “Killing” was another hard song—both heavy and difficult to master. I’d mastered it. I’d played it for him enough times, long ago, that it was in my blood. Any song I’d ever learned was in my blood; once I’d learned it, good or bad, I’d never lost a song. Even when I was fucked out of my tree on whatever junk I was on. Which was probably how I’d lasted as long as I had with Dirty.

  Yes, I’d OD’d on the tour bus and almost died. But I could always get onstage at show time and nail any song.

  Jude just stood there, that impassive look on his face; a look perfected over many years working security for Dirty and riding with an outlaw motorcycle club. But since he hadn’t yet told me to take a hike, I knew what he was probably thinking.

  It wasn’t so much that he was considering his own ass—how this might play out for him if he let me into that bar. More likely he was considering how badly my ass was gonna get kicked.

  “You want me to dance for you, too?” I challenged, allowing a little sarcasm into my tone.

  Jude remained silent until I ran out of song. Then he said, “So this is how it’s gonna be, huh?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Looks like an idiot playing guitar in a parking lot,” he said. But then he uncrossed his arms with a small, inaudible sigh. He was looking me over again, top to bottom, seeming to contemplate how quickly the band was gonna recognize me.

  I knew the auditions were blind. But it’s not like I was hiding who I was. Other than the assumed name, I was still me.

  I’d cut off my hair as soon as I arrived in L.A.; it was fucking hot, but the truth was, I was hungry for a change. A fresh start, maybe. No one had seen me with shortish hair since I was twelve, so that was different. I also had a short beard, but I’d been rocking a beard, on and off, for the past few years, and Dirty had seen me bearded. I had aviators on, but this wasn’t exactly a glasses on / glasses off Superman trick. I wasn’t masquerading as Clark Kent and planning to whip out my cape later.

  This was just me.

  Faded Cream T-shirt, worn jeans, snakeskin boots, bandana in my back pocket. Metal bracelet with the word BADASS stamped into it, which Elle had given me when I first joined Dirty and I’d never stopped wearing.

  They’d see me a mile away and know who I was.

  Seth Brothers.

  Former rhythm guitarist and songwriter with Dirty. Fallen star. Pariah. And still, whether Dirty liked it or not, fan favorite. No guitarist who’d come after me was loved as much as I was. No one wanted me back in this band more than the fans. I knew that much from the messages I still received on a daily basis. It was the only reason I kept a Twitter account.

  It was a big part of what was keeping me here, in the face of increasingly-bad odds. I was starting to feel how bad those odds were, given Jude’s hesitation to even let me in the door.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. I’d never expected Jude to be my problem.

  “You sure you want this?” he asked me, his dark eyes locked steady on mine. “Now?”

  “You once said you’d have my back, when the time came.”

  “I say a lot of shit,” he admitted. “Not all of it smart.”

  “Then we have that in common.”

  He grunted again. “Tell you what. You play Metallica for me, you’ve got your audition.”

  “Great,” I said.

  Not great. The only Metallica song I knew well enough to impress anyone—maybe—was “Master of Puppets,” and that did not feel like the way to go with a Dirty audition. Dirty was not a metal band.

  Clearly, that wasn’t Jude’s problem. He turned his back on me, a non-verbal dismissal, and headed back toward the bar.

  I blew out a breath; kinda felt like I’d been holding it all fucking week.

  I stuffed my acoustic into its case and picked it up, along with the other case, the one that held my electric guitar—my favorite Gibson. Then I fell in behind Jude.

  It wasn’t exactly a red carpet, but it would do.

  Chapter Two

  Seth

  Metallica?

 
What the fuck was I gonna do?

  As I followed Jude through the red door, I tried to work it out. I’d planned to play “Voodoo Child,” a song that not just any fool with a guitar could pull off, because I knew I could kill it. And because I knew Zane would be impressed with the ego it took to kill it, Jesse would be impressed with the guitar work, Dylan would be cool with pretty much anything Zane and Jesse were cool with, and Elle fucking worshipped Jimi Hendrix.

  So much for that fucking plan.

  But I didn’t have much time to put together another one. The mood of backstage hit me immediately, familiar and unsettling, as I shadowed Jude. The backside of the building was a network of hallways, offices, and storage rooms that snaked behind the main room of the bar. Between the auditions and the filming of the auditions there were a lot people, security, crew, and others who worked for the band or the bar, all bouncing around in a very tight space, kinda like pinballs. Hurried but unhurried.

  I found myself looking for familiar faces. Wondering who I’d run into first—and how pissed they’d be at me.

  Though not everyone in the Dirty universe was pissed at me.

  Jude wasn’t the only one who might have my back, when it came down to it. I knew that, and yet, as I looked around… I had to wonder. The truth was, I really had no idea who might be cool with me and who might tear me a new one. In part, this was because, as far as I knew, most people didn’t really know why I was fired from the band this last time. It wasn’t exactly made public.

  But mostly it was because I had trouble remembering, even on the best of days, how things had ended the first time I was fired, with most of the people I’d once loved like family.

  It was embarrassing—fucking shameful, actually—to have to admit that to myself, but right now, I couldn’t hide from it.

  I’d been clean and sober for almost four-and-a-half years now, since finally getting rehab to stick, but my recovery was definitely ongoing. My feet were on the ground, but my head still wasn’t right. Most of my memories from the years when I’d been using were not wholly intact or clear; the ones that had gone and later come back to me were often in disparate, discordant fragments. There were memories that had taken years to come back, and I knew there were some that would never come back at all. And I had to live with that, every day.

  It was incredibly off-putting, this feeling… The sketchiness of my own memories, the lack of reliability of my own mind. My confused emotional associations to my old crew, my old family.

  I knew I’d disappointed a lot of people with everything that had gone down. Hurt people. People who’d once cared about me.

  Even if I couldn’t remember it.

  But as I passed through the halls, my chest tight, meeting the eyes of anyone who glanced my way, my aviators still on… I didn’t recognize a single face.

  And somehow that made me even more uncomfortable.

  I could face up to my mistakes. I could look people in the eye and take the accusations or the disappointment or the anger, no matter how hard it would be. I was ready for that.

  As ready as I could be.

  But seeing all these people—strangers to me—working around the band… It just reminded me how much time had passed between us, how much things had changed. Not just for me, but for them.

  And for the first time since setting out for this audition, I doubted myself.

  Would I really fit in with them again, even if they gave me the chance, like I’d convinced myself I would?

  Jude led me directly toward an office, and it was at the threshold, just as I was about to step inside, that I glimpsed the first familiar face in the hallway outside.

  Katie.

  Jesse’s wife.

  I’d met her, briefly, at the reunion show in Vancouver. Sweet girl. Big blue-green eyes that were staring at me now. Which meant she recognized me, too.

  I paused and slipped my sunglasses onto my head. She snapped her mouth shut, like she’d just realized it was hanging open. She was standing by a table of food with a few other girls I didn’t recognize; none of them were looking at me. Just Katie.

  I nodded at her.

  She crossed her arms and looked unsure. Then she nodded back.

  Then she turned away, her dark hair falling over her face, and I followed Jude into the office.

  He was arguing with someone as I set my guitar cases down. A woman. Petite and pretty, she had long, sleek dark hair, and I knew who she was.

  Maggie Omura, Dirty’s assistant manager.

  I’d never worked with Maggie. She’d come to work with Dirty after I was fired, but she’d been with the band a long time. Longer than I ever was.

  “It’s just one more, Maggie,” Jude was saying.

  “Who?” she said. “What’s his name?” She was on an iPad, and hadn’t even noticed me yet.

  I just stood there next to Jude, and when he said, “Todd Becker,” Maggie glanced up, her face blank.

  Then she saw me.

  And her pretty face frosted over.

  “Oh, hell no. How did he get in here?” Her striking, gray-eyed gaze stabbed at Jude. “You let him in here?”

  “Have I ever asked you for a favor, Maggie May?” Jude replied calmly.

  “Oh, don’t Maggie May me, Jude. You never Maggie May me.”

  “So you can see how important this is,” he said.

  “Brody will fire me,” she hissed. “And you.” She didn’t even look at me as she said it, as if doing so might speed up the firing process. Instead she stared Jude down—not easy to do, since Jude was huge and she was tiny. The two of them reminded me of that Looney Tunes cartoon with the bulldog and the kitten.

  “Never gonna happen, darlin’,” Jude drawled. “And all I’m asking you to do is look the other way.”

  “Don’t darlin’ me either,” she said. “What you’re asking me to do is tell Liv and Brody and the band that we need to keep filming, which is not my call. We’ve already wrapped for the day.”

  Liv.

  Someone else I knew, from way back. Liv Malone was a crazy-talented director who’d directed Dirty’s first video, and I knew she’d worked with the band on a lot of projects over the years. She’d also directed the video for Jesse’s solo album version of “Dirty Like Me”—one of the most popular rock videos ever. If she was directing this shoot, that could work in my favor, maybe. Liv and I had always been cool. That was back then, though; I hadn’t seen her in years.

  “Let me see Liv?” I asked. “Please.”

  Maggie looked at me, finally. The full force of her sharp gray eyes bore into me. Then she glared at Jude again. “This is on you,” she said, but kind of sighed as she turned and strode from the room, like she knew it really wasn’t.

  “Don’t worry,” Jude told me. “She’s a kitten.” Then he grinned halfway, and as he followed her out the door, he added, “Stay the fuck here.”

  Not a problem. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  The door was still open, and I could see up a short hallway. A few people passed by, but no one noticed me as I waited, alone.

  I looked around the office; it was a typical bar office. Cheap office furniture and a safe. A bunch of tattered band posters wallpapered the walls. I stared at one of them. It was a picture of Elle, the cover of her solo album from a few years back. ELLE it said, in big gold letters. Then the title of the album in black underneath: BOLD.

  She was standing against a white wall, wearing skin-tight white jeans and a white tank top. Her hair was smoothed down over one shoulder and her lips were cherry-red. She was staring out at me, all sass and confidence.

  I stared back at her for a moment, the way I always did when I saw her picture.

  Then I turned away.

  I took my Gibson from its case and strapped it on, and I started to play, practicing a bit. I kept it quiet, not wanting to draw attention.

  When I looked up again, Elle was there—in the flesh.

  She was standing in the hallway, talking with Ashley Pl
ayer, lead singer of the Penny Pushers. Clearly, neither of them had seen me.

  The Pushers often toured with Dirty, and I could only guess that Ash was here because of Dylan; I knew the two of them were best friends. But it wasn’t Dylan he was talking with now, in low, hushed tones—and standing really fucking close to.

  I watched as Ash put his hands on Elle’s slim waist. As his fingers curled into her. I couldn’t read the exact mood of the conversation, but it seemed… intimate.

  I looked away, a heartburn feeling rising up in my throat. I swallowed. My hands were starting to sweat and I had to stop playing to rub them off on my jeans.

  It was a challenging song. Especially when I hadn’t played it in years and my hands were wet.

  Jesus, maybe this was a mistake.

  Visions of my failure, of fucking up this audition and making a total fucking fool of myself, flashed through my head…

  But I’d asked Jude to bring me this far, and now Maggie was involved. Liv was about to be.

  So fuck it. I was committed now.

  I owed Jude that much.

  He was right about what he’d said when he fired me—the second time—on the band’s behalf. It was never about money, or even about the music. For the band, and for me, it was about far more than that.

  It was about loyalty. Bandmates. Family.

  And I could not walk away from that without a fight.

  I’d sworn to myself I’d never do that again.

  But still… I was getting nervous as fuck about seeing the band. About them seeing me.

  I hadn’t been face-to-face with any of the members of Dirty since they fired me over six months ago. Since the blowout with Dirty’s manager, Brody Mason, at the old church where the band wrote music and rehearsed; when he’d punched me in the face onstage—several times.

  I’d spoken with Zane a few times over the phone, briefly, and though he didn’t sound happy about it, his stance had been along the lines of: Not much I can do, brother. This is Brody and Jesse’s deal.

  Spoke with Dylan once over text, and he’d said pretty much the same thing.

  Neither Jesse or Brody would talk to me.