Rockstar Romance: Julian (Contemporary New Adult Bad Boy Rock Star Romance) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 3) (82 page)

****

Damian tried hard to come into work the next day, but he couldn’t get further than his doorstep. Everything in his apartment reminded him of Becca, even though they’d only been seeing each other a month: a keychain from the Museum of Modern Art; a finger trap they’d gotten caught in before the first night he dipped his tongue between her legs; a t-shirt she’d danced around in after finding out she had one more vacation day she could take this month. That day, they’d stayed in his bed and eaten pizza while watching movies and kissing the breath from each other’s lungs. Her hair left a scent on his pillow each night, no matter how long she laid her head on the case, and he breathed her in while he had slept.

By the third day, he was dodging calls as well as concerned emails, shutting down all queries with a single, artful word. Some of the customers wanted monetary restitution—would he make a statement?

No.

The shareholders wanted to be reassured that nothing out of sorts was going on at IQID. Would he send an email?

No.

A new employee has been hired, can he sign off on the forms?

No.

Was he okay?

No.

The ache after the initial pain was somehow worse than the sting itself. Damian couldn’t believe how hollow he felt, like a straw had just been pulled from his back. Even after the end of the first week, he couldn’t feel anything stronger than mild annoyance; then, one day, he broke a mug Becca had given him. Instead of being upset, he’d gotten angry, and he’d stayed angry since—though sometimes the bubbling rage cooled to a gently meandering acidic river. He poured his energy into pure loathing: of the mailman, of the birds outside, of bicycle bells; even a delivered lemon tart wasn’t exempt from the irrational hatred that kept him up at night. The only place his hatred never ended up was around the thought of Becca.

He never considered why because he never directly thought about Becca. Damian forced himself to think of other things, and it worked splendidly—until it didn’t anymore, and he was lost in a pit of despair again. One night he made the mistake of wandering around the city and ended up that dive bar where he first met Becca. Against his better judgement, he even went in.

Everything was exactly the same. It gave him more than comfort, and Damian signaled for a Fat Tire as he settled into the same stool. The room was just as empty as before, which wasn’t surprising, because it was a Wednesday morning. The bartender eyed him as he handed over his credit card, and he felt the stubble on his jaw as she plucked it from his fingers. He felt a flash of hatred for her, but it was half-hearted.
Hate Becca,
he told himself.
Why don’t you hate Becca?

The answer was simple: love. Damian had never been so in love with someone in his life, and part of him was happy to stay head-over-heels for her as long as he’d let himself. The other part of him was tired of being walked on, though, and it was hard and unyielding inside him. But what had that part gotten him since he’d developed it? Nothing, he realized. In fact, it had lost him more than anything else. He’d just had a chance at an incredible love, and it had withered away because he didn’t want to forgive. Damian gulped his beer, tears burning the backs of his eyes as he realized he may never have another chance.

“Bad beer?”

Damian nearly choked. Becca was standing beside him, holding a glass of Fat Tire out to him with her brown eyes held wide and careful. He started to rise and leave, but the hope in her eyes was too fresh to kill.
I’ll hear her out,
he decided.
Though nothing can fix this.

Becca sat on the stool and stared at her hands for a moment. Damian felt another flash of hatred, but this time for himself—he wanted to kiss her already, and she hadn’t even begun speaking.

When she did, it didn’t get better. She raised her eyes to his, and a ripple of need passed through him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t say it enough. I’m so sorry. But I have to tell you—I never lied about anything else.”

Damian snorted. “Right.”

Becca winced. “I deserve that, but I’m telling you the truth,” she said urgently. “And I think I’ve figured out how to show you.”

She pulled something from her purse and set it on the bar, sliding it over for him to examine under the dim light. Damian saw that it was a laminated identification badge for her newspaper. His thoughts descended into a confused chaos, but his heart pounded in acknowledgement of what this must mean.

“I quit,” Becca said. “And before you say anything…I didn’t quit
for
you. I hated my job anyway, you know that. I would have quit if a better job offer came up.”

Damian smiled. “But?”

Becca smiled back. “But…I did quit because of you. Because you reminded me that I can be passionate about things, and love things with all of my being. You taught me that I’m still alive, so I should be living…and that starts with love.” She placed one hand on his, and the warmth made him ecstatic. “You made me rediscover what it felt like. Even if you don’t forgive me…thank you. I can go chase my dreams now. I feel like my heart was clogged, and you snaked the drain.” Becca blushed as she finished speaking and dropped her eyes. “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. You don’t have to talk to me anymore.”

Damian watched her study the glass of beer before her, brown eyes anxiously tracking the bubbles as they zipped around the glass. A part of him wanted to leave—just turn around and walk out of Becca’s life, never to see her again. It wouldn’t be hard to avoid her with the amount of money he had—but it would be hard on his heart. It was clenching even as he watched her frown, just knowing she was unhappy; Damian desperately wanted to kiss away her tension and sadness until she laughed like the first night he met her. Could he forgive her after her betrayal? Could he love unguarded again?

Damian made several decisions at once. He drank the rest of his beer and set down a tip for the bartender before he turned to Becca. She gazed at him hopefully, the warmth in her honey brown eyes heating him to his core.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “There’s only one way I’ll forgive you.”

Becca’s hopeful smile faltered.

“If we’re going to be together, we need to work as a team—and this team likes kayaking. I have a little house in Maine that’s right on a river; I know you’re afraid of deep water because of your little mermaid stint, but I need you to at least try for me.”

The smile that spread across Becca’s face was infectious. He was grinning as she leapt into his arms, and Damian stood and spun her around as her arching laughter filled the darkened bar. The patrons shot them dirty looks as they celebrated, but neither Damian nor Becca noticed—they were far too comfortable in their steely bubble of new love. One of the yellowed lamps above them fizzled and blew out, but their lips touched as the bulb darkened; Damian’s heart pounded in his chest, heavy with joy in the realization that Becca’s love brought him the key to feeling like a real person again. He was never letting her go.

THE END

Mona Myers was not like most girls. At the age of eight, she had ridden on the back of a motorcycle with her father for the first time, and though she never got her own bike or claimed to be a ‘biker,’ she grew up finding that the people who inhabited the world in which her father lived and breathed were the best kind of people to surround herself with. At the age of twenty-seven, she was tall, lean and muscular with a pixie cut dyed black with blonde highlights in her slightly-too-long bangs. She had two tattoos, one on each arm, and if a day went by that she wasn’t wearing black it was a sign that something was up.

On the day in question, she was wearing a pair of dark jeans and a green t-shirt that her father had given her when she was in high school. It clung to her chest and sat on her weirdly, too tight for her fully-grown and matured frame, but today she had to wear it. Today was the day she would bury her father.

Benny Myers was more than a founding member of the Running Hill Motorcycle Club – one of the biggest, most well-respected racing motorcycle clubs in not just Detroit but all of the US. Along with being Mona’s dad, he quickly became everyone’s father figure and best friend from the moment they entered his group. Benny built the riders many years before Mona was born, and carried the group until it grew to its forty-person size, structured as innocently as a ladies’ yacht club but functioning much more like a family of misfits, knitted close by loss and hardship. Because of this, Mona wasn’t the only person who took Benny’s death badly, and it comforted her to know that she would be surrounded by her motorcycle club family as they shared in her grief and sorrow at the loss of such a great guy.

Mona worked at a bar that was a popular haunt of the Running Hill Riders for many obvious reasons. She was the owner and bartender; the drinks were half-price for members of the club; the music there was always loud and
good
. No one ever had to punch the jukebox or pay a waiter to change the song. The aptly named Hog’s Grogs was the riders’ meeting spot, place to unwind, and more or less a second home to all of them.

On the morning of her father’s funeral, she stood behind the bar, doing her best to keep it together while she waited for her friends in the club to arrive.

The first familiar face to show up was Ryan Kirby. He was a sight for tear-filled eyes. Biting her lip, Mona gave him a smile and a friendly nod. She hadn’t seen Ryan in years. He’d been badly injured in a race about a year ago and had been on the mend ever since. She’d sent flowers and cards to him while he healed. Now that her father was gone, Mona was thinking of making Ryan the new leader of the Running Hill Riders. If it had anything to do with the giant crush she had on him, she was never going to admit that out loud.

Ryan Kirby was tall and devilishly handsome, with black hair, green-blue eyes and a sharp chin that he liked to keep covered in a close-cut beard. He had dimples when he smiled, so he did his best to never smile when he was in a race, lest people not take him seriously as a competitor. He was thirty-two years old and had been a part of the club for twelve years. Mona had adored him for just about all of those years. He smirked when he came into the Hog’s Grogs and saw her there. “Hey there, gorgeous.”

Before she could go towards him or say anything, they were interrupted by the arrival of several of the others – including, quite possibly, the worst member of the motorcycle club.

“Ryan? Ryan Kirby?”

Ryan had appeared to be all set to hug Mona and console her, but he froze as a man spoke from somewhere behind him.

He turned toward the voice numbly, clearly holding out hope that he was wrong about the speaker even as his eyes rested upon Lance Olsen — as angular, pale and freckled as ever, but slightly more broad than he’d been the last time they met. Mona’s mind flashed back to the last time the two young men had met up, and she had to suppress a smile; they’d been racing down the city’s smallest hill, and Lance’s bike had stalled unexpectedly, sending him tumbling onto the pavement, his pride more bruised than his knees.

“Hey, Lance,” Ryan said, trying to keep his voice light. “How are you?”

Lance grinned, flashing a silver cap on one of his front teeth that glinted under the glowing yellow lights of the bar. “Much better now, especially since I changed up my ride.”

He nodded his red head toward a cherry colored Harley leaning against a glowing street lamp outside.

Mona scoffed at him. “You’ve finally upgraded to the big boy bikes, then?”

Lance’s smug look faded. He was known for being fond of smaller, Japanese models of racing bikes when he joined the club about three years ago. Benny had been reluctant to invite him in; Lance was a cocky jerk. Mona couldn’t deny that. If it had been up to her at the time, she would have denied him entry. But now that Benny was gone, she couldn’t make such a rash change without angering more than just Lance. Her father trusted her to do right by the club. She was its owner now, by rights, but she was no biker. She didn’t know how to go about choosing racers for the team.

Lance looked from Mona to Ryan and the grin returned. “You up for a practice run later today? Ten bucks towards the club says I can beat you.”

“We’re a charity racing club, not the kind that just races along residential neighborhoods,” Mona argued.

He pointed a long index finger at her without looking her in the face again. “You stay out of this, bar wench. The men are talking.”

Ryan kicked aside a chair. “I’ll never be afraid of racing you, Lance. Ever.”

Lance’s smile widened, and he lowered himself into a chair at a table by the front door, his muddy brown eyes glinting with malice. “Sure, Ryan. Just come get me when you’re done fluffing up your feathers.”

Ryan bunched his hand into a fist, seconds away from breaking Lance’s freckled nose—

“That’s enough, boys!” Mona shouted, hitting her rag against the bar’s countertop. That alone wasn’t threatening but she had banned people from her bar before and was not above banning members of the club if they got too violent in her establishment. “Ryan, don’t forget that you
have
been arrested for fighting once in your life, peaceful and cool-headed though you may seem.”

Guiltily regarding the fine, wooden floor of Mona Myers’s bar, Ryan nodded and sat down at the bar. She did her best to contain herself that he’d chosen to sit close to her, though it wasn’t so surprising. Compared to Lance, anyone would want to sit by the level-headed daughter of their late leader.

Lance was the newest and youngest member of their gaggle of misfits. He was twenty-nine years old, but one wouldn’t know it to look at him or observing him in conversation. Because he was a rather green racer, he took losses hard and far too personally, and the loss of the group’s de facto leader was one he apparently hadn’t learned to deal with.

Ryan was baffled; his temporary departure from the riding club had gone very smoothly for the most part, but he hadn’t anticipated the flak he eventually caught from some of the younger, lower-ranking members. Most of them settled for making him the butt of ‘friendly’ ribbing that targeted his masculinity or even his dashing good looks, and that he could handle; he was less able to deal with the aggressive, strangely leading questioning that Lance preferred.

Now that Ryan was back in the motorcycle seat, Mona hoped that he would get everything back in order with the club. Several of the members had been absent lately and many of their charity races had gone with only one or two members racing. Benny’s ideal motorcycle club involved racers who knew their bikes and knew how to win. Their winnings earned money for military hospitals and families who had lost loved ones in combat. Sure, a lot of motorcycle riding was fun and games, but it was a sport that Benny took seriously. It wasn’t about being cocky or being the best to him; it was about following the rules and being the fastest.

Their races were performed largely as exhibitions at things like air shows and festivals. They were performed on race tracks. Benny did not condone street racing of any kind, which was why Lance’s roughhousing on the road was a problem for Mona. She was not good at being an authority figure. That was one of the many reasons that she was glad to have Ryan back around.

Now that the two boys had settled down and more and more of the other members of the Running Hill Riders were present, they could get started with their memorial service.

“Dad loved you all,” Mona said as she stood on the bar, looking as many of them in the eye as possible as her eyes scanned the large room full of leather-clad men. “He loved racing, too, and nothing would please him more than to know that we are going to continue on in his mission statement. We are going to participate in as many fundraisers and biking performances as we can possibly fit into a schedule. And we are going to do it… FOR BENNY!”

“FOR BENNY!” everyone else chanted in unison.

Everyone drank beer and celebrated the life of Benjamin Myers that morning. Mona and her workers did her father proud in the wining and dining department long into the night. Everyone seemed to take notice and appreciate all of her efforts and hard work getting the whole gang back together for this event.

No one noticed half as much as Ryan.