Page 68 of Dirty Rock

Fucking shit.

I can’t do this.

I can’t stay in this house, pretending I’m the same kid in my early twenties who I was before I made it with the band.

I can’t live here anymore.

I loved my mother—stepdad, too. I was grateful for their warm arms around me on cold days and the fact that they’d raised their boy into the kind of man who hadn’t ended up in prison yet. I’d lay myself down in front of a moving truck and give up my life for either of them, but I couldn’t stay.

I was different now. I wasn’t the same Rhett who loved to just sing and play the guitar.

This village wasn’t my home. The world was. All of it. The sky was my ceiling, and the air was my walls. The stage was my bedroom. The place I found peace.

My head was swimming with all the memories of being on tour, the endless women, the laughs, the spectacular sights and sounds of standing on stage in front of fans from all over the world, and all the days I’d spent with Julia, not knowing she’d one day have me strung up and strung out this way.

JJ Jones.

Angelica Leyton.

Dominique Blake.

Hindi Butrav.

Rhonda Wills.

Reese Whittaker.

Lovely long-legged Lacey Benson.

Names I’d cosied up to. Women whose lips I’d pressed mine to, whose underwear I’d slid my fingertips beneath, whose whispered words were memories forever etched in my mind. Women I’d spent time wooing. Women I’d thought I had to conquer, only to push them out of bed before sunrise.

And in all that time, when I could have been having the best sex of my life, not once had I thought about fucking Julia Speed. What a goddamn waste.

Now there was no escape. The woman was stuffed so tightly in my chest, I couldn’t breathe without hearing the whispers of her name falling from my every exhale.

I slumped down on the edge of my bed, pulled out my phone, and I hit up the band’s group chat.

Me: Ever had sex so good, you felt like your head was going to explode more than your balls?

Presley: Yeah. Now I’m marrying the woman.

Me: **removes Pres from group chat**

Presley: Dickhead.

Big D: Got head once that was better than sex.

Coops: Once. Never since.

Hawk: Did you fuck Natalie Portman, man?

Me: Natalie Portman gave me her number last year actually, but I like my women a little morally corrupt.

Hawk: Bullshit! You could have screwed Padmé Amidala?

Me: Who the fuck is that?

Coops: He’s talking about Star Wars.

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