Page 3 of Pretty Little Rocker

Harris turned slightly, just enough to let us know he was no longer including Hamel in the conversation. “Find yourself a new drummer, and the year-long contract is yours. Every band who has ever been given this contract has ended up with a record deal, almost every single one of them managed by Emmie Armstrong’s team.”

“They won’t replace me,” Hamel said confidently, a cocky smirk on his face. “We come as a package deal or not at all.”

“He doesn’t speak for us,” my guitarist assured Harris. Sparks’s jaw was clenched in a way that told me he was considering ending Hamel’s pathetic life in more imaginative ways than I was. “We’ve been considering replacing him for a while now.”

“Yeah.” Jamie nodded in agreement. “We’ve lost out on a few gigs because of him. But we haven’t had a chance to find a replacement.”

“Fuck you guys! You need me,” Hamel snarled. “You’re not shit without me.”

Jamie and Sparks both huffed out a laugh, rolling their eyes at me. I grimaced in an attempt to fight my own amusement. This was an important meeting. Laughter was appropriate at certain times and places, and this wasn’t one of them.

Harris shifted his gaze to me, one brow raised. “Your choice, boys. The contract is on the table for Autumn’s Slumber to snatch up. But with the stipulation of finding a decent drummer. I will even go one step further and offer to host auditions here next week.”

Every muscle in my body tensed. This was what I’d been hoping for. And Sparks and Jamie weren’t wrong. We’d been discussing replacing Hamel for a while now, especially after he lost us a gig opening for an up-and-coming band three weeks ago.

Finding another drummer, one who meshed with the rest of us, who wasn’t put off by our obsessive need for anonymity—hence our masks and body paint—would be difficult. But it wasn’t a challenge I was going to turn down if it meant playing weekly at First Bass. Exclusive gigs like that were rare, but the real prize was what came with it.

Potentially getting signed with Emmie Armstrong, not just to have her as our manager, but to get a record deal with her and Shane Stevenson at ASM—Armstrong Stevenson Music. Their record label had the top musical talent in the world. Getting a deal with them was like winning the golden ticket into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Minus the sinister plot of potentially never leaving the factory again.

But I’d risk being sucked into the chocolate milk pipe or dropped into the garbage chute and burned alive. Fuck it, I’d even risk being turned into a blueberry if it meant a single chance of working with the powerhouse who ruled the music world, Emmie Armstrong.

My mom, Autumn, had loved the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie. When she was bedridden with the cancer that had stolen her from me at the age of ten, we would curl up in her bed together and watch the movie on repeat until she finally fell asleep. It was because of her that I’d fallen in love with music. Naming my band in honor of her was all I had left to pay tribute to the love and sacrifices she’d made for me.

Nothing was going to make me let her down. Not my prick of a father and his vapid bitch wife, Hadley. And sure as fuck not Hamel.

I offered Harris my hand, while Sparks and Jamie slapped me on the back. “You have a deal.”

At my response, Hamel went ballistic. “Stupid bitch ruined—”

That was as far as his snarling got before Harris Cutter drove his fist into my ex-drummer’s gut. I could picture Hulk destroying Loki with the noise that Hamel made. It was a sickening, gasping sound that would have been a perfect effect for some supernatural slasher-horror flick. But it only lasted a few seconds before he caught his breath.

Staggering forward a step, malice flashing over his face, he went to push past Harris again, but someone else stepped up beside the club owner. A sharp uppercut had Hamel going limp. He fell flat on his face, the thud of his body causing the bartender, who was setting up for the opening in a few hours, to groan sympathetically.

Sparks, Jamie, and I stood there blinking at the newcomer. Jace St. Charles, lead singer of Tainted Knights, the very first band to be given the year-long weekly gig at First Bass. A man whose career I’d followed most of my life.

Shaking out his hand, Jace turned so his back was to the knocked-out man on the floor. “Great show you three put on. Glad Hayat was around to save you on the drums. Damn, if I were any good at the instrument, I would have jumped up there and helped too. Would have hated it if Harris had to tell you no because of this piece of shit.”

“What’s all the groaning about out here?” a man in a First Bass T-shirt and faded jeans asked as he came out from a door behind the bar.

He stopped when he saw Hamel on the floor, Jace still shaking out his hand, the knuckles busted open. “Well, fuck. We haven’t had this kind of fun since the Blondes beat the hell out of whatever his name was twenty years ago.” He snickered when he saw Hamel slowly coming around, looking around in a daze. “I sure miss the chaos those girls caused every other day. Not so much when they take Riley out partying, though. Sin, Cash, Derrick, and I had to bail them all out of jail two weeks ago.”

“I don’t miss it at all,” Harris grumbled. “Those four still give me a headache, and they don’t even work here.”

“Ah, come on, Nate. You know you love Ro.” Jace snapped the fingers of his uninjured hand. “Hey, Aubree isn’t doing anything right now. Maybe she can fill in for these guys if they don’t find a drummer right away.”

Sparks and Jamie kept looking at me like they were struggling not to froth at the mouth. Aubree? Blondes? It didn’t take a genius to put together that they were talking about the Blonde Bombshells’ drummer. From every piece of tabloid news I’d ever read, she was a hell-raiser. Whichever way the dice rolled determined whether that was the fun kind of hell or the spicy.

Some would consider the spicy fun.

“Aubree is going to Australia with you in a few weeks,” Harris reminded him, glancing over his shoulder. “Hayat, do you want to help these guys out?”

With Jace and now Nate crowding around us, I couldn’t see who he was talking to, but everyone who knew anything about Harris knew he had a daughter named Hayat. She was in the public eye enough for me to picture her without having to see her standing closer to the bar.

She would be wearing some kind of sweats outfit she’d taken a pair of scissors to, athletic shoes, a sexy-as-fuck sports bra or bralette beneath a hoodie, and hair that even in photos appeared to have a life of its own with all those curls that fell past her hips. When she smiled for the camera, it looked like her dimples were endlessly deep, her eyes glittering with some secret mischief that only she knew.

Where she went, drama followed, and that wasn’t something I needed at the moment.

Or ever.

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