Page 1 of His Secret Addiction

Chapter One

Sebastian

The morning sun filters through the curtains, casting a warm glow over the cluttered room. My fingers pluck the strings of my guitar idly, each note piercing loudly through the hotel suite. I have every intention of irritating the men sprawled around the room asleep, and my goal is achieved when a chorus of groans rises from every corner of the room.

“Shut that shit down, Foster!” croaks Mark, who is slouched on the couch with a hand shielding his eyes from the sunlight. “And can you draw the curtains? It’s so fucking bright in here!”

I do neither. Instead, my eyes shift to Alex, who lies sprawled on the floor, a tangle of limbs and blankets, his face scrunching in discomfort when I strum another note, pulling hard and letting it linger in the air. The fuckhead should be thanking the heavens that I don’t have a drum set nearby.

“Goddamnit, Foster! Are you trying to kill us?” cries out another voice, and this time, it’s Derrick. My eyes follow the sound to the back of the couch where the man sits up to reveal tousled hair and a stained, wrinkled shirt that are a testament to the wild night these three had.

Stupid.

How can they even get a wink of sleep after the storm they caused last night? Everyone is talking about it online, and I bet the news already made its way to the big bosses as these fucking assholes snore away.

Hangover pain? Oh, that is going to be the least of their worries. I strum the guitar again and start playing our hit song, mostly to calm myself, but the chorus of groans is an added bonus.

“I swear to God, Foster…”

“What?” I hiss for the first time since walking into the room, my eyes firmly on Derrick, who seems to be the only one capable of keeping his head up and eyes open for more than three seconds. “What the fuck will you do, Derrick?”

“What the hell is your problem, dude?”

My problem?My problem is that I want to sock every man in this room, but they are too hungover for it to really be satisfying. My fingers itch for a fight though, and that’s why I settled for punishing them by strumming the guitar without a pick. I know I’m going to feel the burn on my fingers later, but right now, I can’t bring myself to care. It’s either that or lose my temper, and since the latter is not an option, I force myself to sit still.

Alex, Mark, Derrick, and I have been in a band together for almost ten years, and our journey as a band has been anything but easy. Our relationship was a manufactured bond by the record label, complete with scripted interviews and media appearances that overplayed our closeness.

We are anything but close.

This is a business relationship, one that has been hanging by a thread for the last year and these three might have just putthe final nail in the coffin of all of our careers with the shit they pulled last night.

The door to the suit flies open, bouncing off the wall with a loud bang, and another chorus of groans fills the room as our manager, Gary, walks in, face red and jaw clenched tightly. His hard eyes sweep over the room before settling on me, the only person not nursing a hangover.

“Get the hell up, everyone,” he roars, walking over to Alex and kicking his leg before doing the same Mark on the couch. “How the fuck can any of you sleep after the shit storm you just caused?”

My bandmates groan at the disturbance, but they straighten up, clutching their heads at what I imagine is a beast of a hangover. I’ve seen the videos making the rounds online of them at the club last night, and based on the bottles littered about the room, I can only assume they brought the party back here.

“What the hell is going on?” Alex asks, turning his bloodshot eyes to our manager.

Gary doesn’t respond. Instead, he grabs the remote and turns on the TV, but he doesn’t need to search long as the news of these three is everywhere. We all watch as a celebrity gossip channel plays the viral video of my three bandmates at a club drinking, doing drugs, and dancing with scantily dressed girls, which in itself is not the biggest problem. The guys are known as party animals, but last night they went too far.

“So someone filmed a video of us partying. What’s the big deal?”

I watch Gary’s face turn a startling shade of red, and he glares at Alex. “The problem is that you fuckheads got drunk and started playing songs from the new album. An album wehaven’t fucking released yet!” He starts pacing in the trashed hotel room. “For years, you bunch have done your best to sabotage this band, but I defended you to the label. I fed them some bullshit about how all the hot artists are doing drugs and sleeping with groupies. But you played a live fucking show in that club, and the entire thing has gone viral online!”

“Look, Gary, so we played one or two of our new songs.”

Gary stops, his hard eyes turning to Mark, who by the looks of it has not yet grasped the gravity of what they did. “It is not just one song. You three fuckheads sang all ten songs from the album. You got on stage at the club and played the entire goddamn album. The songs have been leaked all over social media. All of them!” The room falls silent as our manager’s words slowly filter through and they start to realize that, maybe this time, they have done irreparable damage. “And not only that, but all three of you ragged on Sebastian between songs. You said the band would be better off without him and that he’s a ‘zero talent stick-in-the-mud asshole’!”

I flinch at the reminder of how vitriolic my bandmates were about me during their impromptu performance last night. Gary’s words are the least of what they said to say. Derrick runs a hand over his tousled hair, shaking his head before chuckling nervously. “There has to be something we can do, right? Maybe we can sue everyone who leaked the music. And we didn’t mean anything by what we said about Seb.” He turns to me with a sheepish shrug. “We were just messing around since you bailed on coming out with us.”

“Sue?” Gary scoffs, “If anyone is getting sued, it’s you. You have not only made unauthorized leaks but breached the trust of the label. A year of hard work down the drain. Maybe if it was a song or two, they could have used it as a marketing strategy to cover up your fuckup, but this cannot be salvaged.”

“W-what do you mean?”

My eyes shift back to my guitar, not bothering to follow the conversation anymore. I already know what Gary is going to say. It’s an expected outcome of what these fuckheads did. My only hope is they don’t burn down my career along with theirs.

Music has always been my life, and for fifteen years, I’ve worked my ass off to be the Sebastian Foster the world knows and loves. I have the money, the fame, and the fans, but…I never thought that a failed band would be an ugly stain on my legacy in the music world.

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