Page 2 of The Fix

Show nights have stopped including after-parties with booze and girls and blow.

Tours are paused for the foreseeable future.

Even writing new music and practices have been capped.

All thanks to the permanent pussy these bastards picked up.

Grumbling, I push up from the stool with a spinning head and wrap a fist around the bottle I’ve been nursing.

I’d rather be drunk off my ass than sit here any longer with a bunch of old bastards that have given up on this rock star life we were all so desperate for as kids. Dreaming and planning about, together, since fucking grade school.

We couldn’t fuckin’ wait to get our hands on it. Now look at ’em.

“Bunch’a nannies. All of you.” I gesture around the room at the big tatted bastards I call brothers that fit right in when they should be standing out against the frilly decorations and whitewashed walls.

Just like my granny’s place. She blended in so much with that shit I almost got myself in trouble a lot.

Like that time I tried to sneak two chicks in after a garage show, only to be stopped by the old cockblock of a woman jumping out of the dark.

“You mean Nancy’s,” Mac corrects with a scowl I meet through a haze.

“I said what I said.” Flicking a hand in dismissal and realizing it’s my bottle holding hand, I forgo the glass and pull straight from the neck.

The whiskey used to burn when I drank it straight like this. But at some point, the hair on my chest thickened, and now I don’t even bother with a mix or a chase.

“Dude, it’s snowing outside,” Rex calls when I make it through the mountains of fan mail clinging to all the surfaces in this room and the kitchen.

“It’s cool,” I say on a shrug and whip open the door, then hold my bottle up as the chilled wind rushes in. “I know how to stay warm.”

I don’t wait for any more protests. Or for someone to call Leo and report me like some kind of misfit kid that needs a sitter.

I don’t need a damn sitter.

Instead, I step out into the winter with only the leather vest over my tee and damn near lose my untied boot in a pile of built-up snow blocking the stairs. It’s abnormally icy and snowy for this time of year, the shit soaking into my boot as I walk the slick sidewalk.

They think they’re so much better now that they have steady broads. Better now that they have someone waiting for them at home.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that shit, and it still pisses me off every time they bring it up. Because they all do, except for Leo.

And Mac.

Like it wouldn’t take the right groupie on the road to change all that, but whatever.

Means more for me.

Chapter Two

Anna

“Have you seen Toby?”

Juggling a crazy amount of crap in my arms, I manage to tuck my phone between my ear and shoulder before it tumbles into the snow. Or worse, I lose my travel mug. “No, why? What did he do now?”

I hate that my first assumption is Tobias Jeffers has done something incredibly screwed up, but that’s the persona he’s given himself.

“He—Uh.” My caller huffs, and I feel it down to my exhausted bones, doing my best to walk the snowy parking lot without losing my balance in these heels. They aren’t stripper tall, but they’re tall enough to make slick weather difficult.

But they’re also one of my favorite pairs.

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