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Prologue
Lucy
Everyone has ups and downs. I’m no different. I’ve had some really amazing ups, but I’ve also had some crap-tastic downs.
When I was four, my biological mother died. I don’t remember crying for her. She’d never been the type to cuddle me, tuck me in, and read bedtime stories. That job was pushed off onto my sister Lana. She did her best to take care of me until Mom died. After the funeral we went to live with our older sister, Layla, and I got to see what a real mother was supposed to be like.
When I was six we moved to Malibu for Layla’s new job as the housekeeper to one of the world’s most popular rock bands and their manager. When my sisters told me that we were going to live with Demons I was definitely not looking forward to it. Then I met Nik, Drake, Shane, Emmie and the man who would one day become one of my favorite people in the world: Jesse Thornton.
By Christmas my oldest sister was married to the Demon’s Wings drummer. Six months later they made me theirs and adopted me. The day I became Jesse’s daughter was one of the best days of my life. I felt like I belonged to someone for the first time ever.
But you know the rules of fate, or at least the rules it feels like those bitches have specifically for me. Something truly amazing always seems to be followed by something really, really shitty. When I was nine, my real dad was released from prison and kidnapped me for a crazy amount of money. I still have nightmares about that night.
I got through it, though. My parents sent me to a good therapist, but it was my best friend, Harris, who really got me through that time in my life. When I couldn’t sleep I would call him and no matter how tired he was he would stay up and talk to me until I would finally fall into an exhausted sleep. He was the kind of friend that one text and he would drop everything for me.
Too bad my hormones got in the way of our friendship. At twelve, puberty hit me hard, and the love I felt for my best friend got complicated with a crush. They’re called crushes for a reason, something I’d learned real quick that year. I pushed him away to avoid the agonizing pain that my crush made me feel.
Now it’s been years since I’ve seen him. He’s graduated from college and moved forward with his dream by opening his first club. First Bass is the most popular nightclub not only just in Los Angeles, but in all of California. I’m so proud of him, but I’ve avoided going to check it out. After an email that twisted my heart into knots, I’m finally going to head over there.
Maybe I won’t still be crushing on him. Maybe we can go back to being best friends.
Maybe…
Chapter 1
Lucy
I stared at my laptop’s screen and bit my lip hard. I didn’t want to face this right now, but it was about time I finally took care of it. I’d been expecting an email like this for weeks now. Months, really. I’d planned on how I would word my reply to it once I got it. Planning and actually doing something this painful were two different things, though.
I’d gotten the email three weeks ago and I still hadn’t responded. A part of my brain was screaming at me that I was being a coward, and the other part was yelling for that damn voice to shut her mouth.
Closing my eyes I tried to block out the sight of the words, but I’d read the damn thing three thousand times already and they were burned into my brain. Grimacing, because I was just making myself crazy, I double clicked on the reply option. It didn’t help, because the email was still there, right below what I should be writing that very second.
Lu,
I hope you had a great time in Paris over the summer. You deserved a trip like that. Guess I’m just selfish because I was hoping to see you with the rest of the Demons at the big opening night. Natalie told me that you would be back by this weekend and I’m gonna play my best friend card and ask you to come check out my club. Bring as many friends as you want. I’ll leave word with Tiny and put you on the VIP list. I want to see you, Lu. I miss you…
H
My heart clenched at that last sentence on the screen and my fingers actually trembled over the keys as I fought with myself with what I needed to write and what I knew I was actually going to write instead. I looked away from the screen as I typed my reply—maybe my fingers could lie to my brain as long as my eyes didn’t see—and quickly closed the laptop before I lost my nerve and sent a second reply flaking out.
Heart racing, I leaned my head back and groaned. I was stronger than this, so much stronger. But when it came to that boy—man, he was a man now—I lost all common sense and reasoning.
If I were honest with myself I would admit that I had missed Harris too. Probably a hell of a lot more than he had ever missed me in the last four years. He had been my best friend, and I didn’t say that lightly. It was hard to make a real friend in my world, but with Harris I’d known that I had the real deal.
For one, he knew how it felt to wonder if the people who wanted to be your friends were there for you or for the fame that came with being a
rocker’s kid. Since he’d been born into it, unlike me, he knew that far better than I did. His dad was the drummer for one of the hottest rock bands in the world, OtherWorld. We shared that in common since my dad was the drummer for Demon’s Wings. He’d seen the behind the scenes stuff that went on in the rock-n-roll world at a young age that I hadn’t been allowed to see until I was in my teens.
Even though we shared so much in common, the biggest reason he had been my best friend was because he had been there for me during some of the toughest moments in my life. They had not been pretty. Ugly didn’t even describe the crap that I’d been through back then. I was good with words most of the time, but I didn’t think there was a word in any language that would describe how shitty that point in my life had been. Even now it was hard to think about without wanting to lock myself in the bathroom and… But, yeah, it had been bad.
Harris had helped me through it, however. When I couldn’t sleep from the nightmares, I would text him to see if he was awake. Most of the time I was sure that I had woken him up, but it didn’t matter because he would call me and talk to me until I fell asleep. Usually that was just before dawn when exhaustion would consume me. And still he hadn’t cared.
I’d been nine when all that bad crap had happened. He’d been fourteen. My dad had been cool with it though, and his dad had been almost grateful for our friendship. Apparently I had been a good influence on his son or something. At least that was what Mr. Cutter had said back then.
Our closeness had lasted several years, until I’d turned twelve and my hormones had started to kick in. That was the year I’d become a ‘woman’ as my dad put it. I couldn’t remember how he’d talked about it without rolling my eyes. What he’d meant was that was when I’d gotten my period and started having mood swings worse than my mom had had when she’d been pregnant with my twin little brothers. Or maybe he had meant that I was starting to look more like a woman. I’d started growing curves that year. Lots of curves that my mom had said would send my dad into either cardiac arrest or into a jail cell. She’d only been joking, but considering what had happened when I was nine the thought of my dad in jail had not made me want to laugh.
With the new hormones had come a new awareness of cute boys. I’d always considered Harris Cutter beyond cute with his dark tan complexion and those dreamy aquamarine eyes, but that year he became more than my best friend. He became my crush. The guy I couldn’t stop thinking about…that way. When he would come over I’d spend more time spaced out imagining kissing him than I would actually talking to him.
Harris had been sixteen that year, sixteen and discovering girls on a whole new level. While I was childishly imagining getting a peck on the lips from him, he had been learning all about the birds and bees in an entirely different way. Seeing him with girls, hearing about the girls he would have a date with on Friday nights, had stung in a way that only a girl with her first crush would consider a pain worse than death.
My heart had been shattered, but I’d had no one to blame but myself. I’d let my love for my best friend turn into something that I couldn’t understand nor deal with at such a tender age. I’d begun to distance myself from him. Dived into more extracurricular activities so that I had good excuses not to hang out with him. Before long he’d moved on to different friends…
My phone made a ping sound and I reached for it without really thinking about whom it could be. When I saw I had a text from my friend Kin, I pushed a mass of long curly hair out of my face and opened the text.
What u doin’?
I didn’t bother to text back, but called her instead. I didn’t think I could deal with texting at the moment. I doubted my brain would even understand or be able to communicate back to my friend’s texts. It didn’t even get done ringing once before she answered.
“Save me,” Kin grumbled.
I sighed. “Put on something you would wear to go clubbing.” If I was going I wasn’t going to show up alone. I needed Kin tonight more than I could ever explain to her.
There was a pause on the other end and I could actually hear the wheels in my new best friend’s head turning. “Where we going?” she finally demanded, and I smiled at the sound of her Southwestern Virginia accent. I’d only met Kin a week ago, but we’d become friends fast.
Last weekend she had even stayed over, gotten to meet my crazy family, and she still liked me. Guess that was something. Aunt Emmie had liked her, so yeah that had been something very serious for me. Few people could say that my aunt liked them; even fewer of them were actually my friends.
“First Bass,” I told her and pulled the phone from my ear when she screamed so loud that I was sure my dad had heard her from the first floor of our house.
“No way!” Kin said after a minute, her voice not even the least bit hoarse despite the fact that she had just screamed loud enough to break glass. “How are we going to get into First Bass? All the papers say that there is a waiting list to even get on the waiting list. The place has had lines that span six blocks since it opened in June. And isn’t there an age limit or something?”
“I know someone,” I told her, daring to look at my closed laptop again. “So you want to go with me? It will just be you and me. And Marcus.” I couldn’t forget Marcus. Of course, I should have been thankful for my personal bodyguard. He would be the reason I would get to go out later.
“I’m getting into the shower now,” Kin assured me. When I heard the shower turn on, I grinned. “What should I wear? You trolling for hot guys?”
I snorted out a laugh. “Do you remember who my dad is? I mention the words ‘hot’ and ‘guy’ in the same sentence and I’ll be locked up until I’m thirty.” I sighed and shook my head. “No. I’m just going to go and pay my respects to an old friend.”
“Did someone die? I’m not cool with a funeral right now, Lucy. I’ve just buried my mother…” Her voice faded and I could have kicked myself for my poor choice of words. Kin’s mother had died from cancer the week before she had moved to California to follow her mom’s last wish, that she spend a year getting to know her father and his family. Kin had only been there for two weeks now, but she was already beyond miserable.
“No,” I rushed to assure her, “no one died, babe. I’m just being morbid. You can kick my ass when you see me.”
“Then what are you paying your respects to?” she demanded.
