Page 4 of Pretty Little Rocker

I had my goals—take Autumn’s Slumber to the top—and if I got to rub that success in my deadbeat father’s face along the way, all the better.

But there was no denying how beautiful Hayat Cutter was. What a goddess she was without even trying to attract attention. I’d be lying if I denied I wanted a taste of her. Jamie and Sparks got a hard-on for the occasional tabloid picture of her too, so I knew they were just as affected as I was.

“Dude,” Jamie hissed, pulling Sparks and me away from the others so they couldn’t hear us. “She has sick talent. We should grab her now.”

Sparks glared at the bassist. “Are you crazy? Yeah, sure, having Hayat Cutter’s name associated with the band would get us out there, but we don’t want success that way. Ky has always been adamant about doing this without any outside help. That’s why none of us have revealed who we really are. If we can’t make it on our talents alone, then fuck it. Right, Ky?”

“Maybe she’d be okay with keeping her identity low-key, like the rest of us,” Jamie argued, unable to hide his pout.

“Yeah, right,” Sparks snorted. “Pick up any tabloid with her name in it, and you’ll see she feeds off the drama that comes with being a celebrity princess. Skills or not, she isn’t what we want.”

I could hear the lie in his voice just as easily as Jamie could. But it wasn’t her skills as a drummer he was pretending not to be interested in. It was her, the full package. What I wouldn’t give to have a night of getting lost in her tight body. With or without my two best friends.

“You’re brain dead, you know that?” Jamie grumbled. “Skills are the only thing we are looking for. And she has them. How could she not, with who her grandfathers are?”

“Her dad has never shown any talent for the drums. Just because she has the last name Cutter does not make her the badass Devlin Cutter is.” Sparks crossed his arms over his chest, his signal that he was done arguing the point and was leaving the rest up to me.

Frustrating asshole.

“Ky, come on.” Jamie’s eyes pleaded with me. “Just give it a chance.”

Squeezing the bridge of my nose, I stepped away from my two bandmates, pulling Harris’s attention back to me. “We don’t want to put anyone out. But we will accept the chance to hold open auditions here.”

“Fair,” Harris agreed with a wicked grin. “Besides, I think you pissed Hayat off with your little whispering battle over there. Today must be your lucky day. Or maybe it’s mine. My kid leaving rather than choosing violence makes my life a little bit easier for a few more hours.”

He lowered his head slightly. I was six foot three, and while the man was only three inches taller than me, I suddenly felt much shorter standing in front of him. “You three have a talent I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s fresh, and I think we’re going to be able to get you the deals you deserve with this contract. But only if you find a drummer with skills equal to the three of you. Hayat would have been the perfect fit. Too bad for you that you didn’t grab the chance while it was right in front of you.”

Chapter Three

Hayat

Hitting replay on my laptop, I watched one of the many videos that I’d been able to find of Autumn’s Slumber online. It wasn’t the first time I’d watched the same clip—it wasn’t even the tenth. Each time, I told myself that I was only going to focus on the drummer or the bassist or even the other guitarist. But no matter how hard I tried to keep my attention on just one of them, the three remaining members of the band kept tugging my attention away.

Sparks’s fingers were magic on the guitar, never missing a chord as Ky sang the cover song with such emotion, it caused goose bumps to pop up along my arms. His voice was ethereal in a way I’d never heard before. Ky brought the music alive, creating a story with each different octave of his magnetic voice. But Jamie and Sparks, they added to the ambience and created an entirely new experience that I wanted to get lost in. Over. And over. And over.

With the masks taking up the majority of their faces, and paint covering the rest of it, I couldn’t see a single feature—except their lips as they formed each word. Ky’s teeth were starkly white against the dark tones of the paint. Across his chin and down his neck, one color smeared into another, giving the impression of the changing leaves during fall, just like the other two did. From there, the paint was arranged in varying patterns of handprints that covered every inch of exposed skin so that not even a birthmark could be detected beneath.

But I sure as fuck could see the hard ridges of Ky’s abs. Jamie’s ripped chest. Sparks’s defined arms.

From the furious way the other two band members of Autumn’s Slumber had been whispering to Ky about me after Dad asked if I could help the guys out, I knew they didn’t want me. Some guys were just ignorant assholes when it came to girls playing drums. I’d been dealing with it all my life, which was why I’d kept my real identity so secret when I’d started my Havoc personality for my followers.

Havoc started when I was fifteen and just playing around with social media platforms. I’d been committed from the beginning to hiding my true identity. It wasn’t about getting followers or clicks. All I’d wanted was somewhere to share my talent, and if people liked it, great. If not, they could keep scrolling. I didn’t even tell anyone but my best friend Abi at first, not wanting anyone in my family to share my videos.

But within a year, my following went from five to five hundred thousand, and then in the span of another three months, I was in the millions. Sponsors started reaching out, and because I’d been a minor at the time, I’d had to let my parents know for legal purposes.

I had thick skin, and it was hard as hell to hurt my feelings. But I was definitely easy to anger. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling after the snide way the guitarist, Sparks, had looked over at me while he was grumbling something to the bassist, Jamie. All I’d heard was that I wouldn’t bring them the right kind of attention.

He would have no doubt laughed his ass off if I’d told him I didn’t want to bring them any attention. At least not with my name—or the drama that the tabloids tended to make up about me. Eighty percent of the shit they printed about me was fake news. That left twenty percent of my…antics that were somewhat of the truth. But that was only when I was with Abi, and sometimes with Maddie.

My best friend was in Creswell Springs at Trinity University for the spring term, and considering how obsessed she’d become with her history professor, I wasn’t confident she would come home for more than a few days for the summer break. Which meant I was going to be mostly bored, but at least I could work on more content for Havoc.

I definitely would not in a million years consider auditioning for Autumn’s Slumber. They didn’t want me, and I wasn’t the type of person to force my presence on people who didn’t want me around.

But…

If I just went to prove a point, there was nothing wrong with that.

It would simply be me showing them what they were going to miss out on with the most badass drummer in the world playing with their band. And then once I blew their minds, I’d smile and tell them to fuck off. Because who wanted to play with a bunch of stupid, stinky boys anyway?

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