Hot Mess: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players #1) Read online

  What the fuck was I doing again?

  FANTASY. FUCK.

  Focus, asshole.

  I pushed past Dylan and stumbled into the store. The horrendous lighting, which seemed dull outside, was fucking painful. I wandered up and down the aisles, tripping on the uneven floor, several times—just managing to catch myself before falling. Knocked over a few things, though.

  No sign of her.

  I finally found the cashier at the far side of the store on my second stumble-through.

  Nothing.

  By the time I’d made it all the way around again and back outside… it was too late. She was gone.

  Vanished.

  Though giving a drunk guy the slip wasn’t exactly magic.

  “Where’d you go?” Dylan asked, and Janner offered me a joint.

  I just blinked at them. Couldn’t they see there were more important things at work here than getting high?

  I started to try to explain it to them, but no words came out.

  I went back inside. When I asked the cashier which way the girl with the roses went, she didn’t seem to understand me. English wasn’t very strong, and I probably wasn’t making much sense anyway. I tried to describe the pretty girl with the ponytail with hand gestures, and the cashier cringed away from me like I was some wino stalker.

  I dug through my leather jacket about five times before I finally realized my wallet was in my jeans. Then I went back and grabbed the best/worst bouquet of roses and bought them, trying to impart upon the cashier, as I did, how important it was that I find the girl who’d just bought roses here two seconds ago.

  No love on that either.

  I walked outside and stood in the rain, looking up and down the sidewalk, the roses that were gonna die tomorrow dangling from my hand.

  Shit.

  “You see the girl come out of here?” I asked the drunk assholes on the sidewalk. I was sobering up, sort of. “Yellow rain boots? Ponytail…”

  Blank stares.

  “What girl?” Dylan said.

  Even Con and Haz just shrugged.

  So much for security.

  Matt bent forward to take a good look down the sidewalk. “She hot?”

  Yeah, she was hot. Motherfucking smoking hot.

  And she was gone.

  Jesus Christ. Did I seriously just lose her?

  Again?

  “What kind of wingmen are you?” I muttered. Seriously.

  This was my night.

  My breakup party.

  Everyone was here because of me. To party with me, celebrate my freedom from heartbreak and all that shit. I’d had three heartbreaks in the past year—really fucking bad year—and I’d just broken up with my band, too.

  I was due for some good shit in my life.

  Wasn’t I?

  If destiny was a thing, it had a cruel-ass sense of humor.

  I looked up the street again, both ways, watching the cars slip past, people darting through the rain.

  If my life was some romantic movie—or maybe a decent-budget porno—I’d go running through the streets, getting drenched, until I found her, her yellow boots like beacons under the street lights… I’d grab her and kiss her, and then we’d fuck like animals while the thunder rolled.

  But my life was not a romantic movie. Trust me on that.

  If anything, it was a fucking great porno. One that was just my flavor, hit all my hot buttons, totally worked for me… until it didn’t. Until I’d seen it so many times that it was kinda getting old.

  As drunk as I was, I knew I wasn’t gonna find her. Even if I managed to corral my friends into the limo so we could drive around searching…

  She was gone.

  I headed over to the limo as the guys on the sidewalk split a gut about something, oblivious to my near miss.

  We’d been cruising around in the Hummer for the last few hours on our tour of Vancouver’s finest—term used loosely—strip joints and dive bars. Dylan wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight, since this party—my most recent breakup party—was meant, in part, to celebrate the end of my misguided love for him.

  Really fucking long story.

  But what could I say? He was my best friend. Somehow he’d shown up, and I didn’t exactly want him to leave. So yeah, that happened, somewhere along the way.

  And since Dylan had some kind of moral objection about going to a strip club without his girl, Amber—who’d also broken my heart, also part of the long story—she was with us. She poked her head out of the sunroof again as I climbed in.

  “Babyyyy,” she called out to Dylan. “I’m hungry. Can we get pizza by the slice?”

  “Sure, babe.”

  “Hurry up,” she said. “I’m getting all wet waiting for you.”

  “You did not just say that,” I muttered, flopping onto the seat next to her.

  “I meant the rain!” Amber said, peeking down at me as she hugged herself in her little dress, shivering in the cold.

  “Sit your ass down,” I told her, smacking her ass, and she dropped down next to me, shaking out her wavy caramel hair.

  Summer got in next, all thick dark hair and eyelash glitter.

  “Jesus, you’re a bunch of cockblocks,” I grumbled. I gave Summer a cold-ass look as she settled in on my other side.

  Summer just cackled. Girl could hold her own, but I hadn’t seen her this drunk in… ever? In her commitment to supporting me and my breakup party tonight, she’d sworn an oath to go shot-for-shot with me. Very bad idea, and just another reason I was gonna have to stop drinking sooner than later. Really didn’t need Summer getting alcohol poisoning because of me.

  Anyway, it wasn’t exactly her fault she was cockblocking me. Summer was a DJ; she was just doing her thing. Keeping the party rolling, spinning her dirty-ass songs.

  Did anyone even see my dream fuck out there but me?

  Janner slid in, looking more wasted than he did even five minutes ago. Technically, I was also supposed to be “celebrating” the breakup of my band, the Penny Pushers, tonight. Which meant, technically, none of my former bandmates should really be here.

  Yet somehow my former rhythm guitarist had joined the party, and what was I gonna do, send him away?

  Most of Dylan’s band, Dirty, was partying with us tonight. Xander, an old friend of mine, who’d just been touring with Dirty and his band, Steel Trap, was partying with us. Some people I’d never even met before had joined the party along the way.

  The invites had been fairly liberal.

  Janner was the only member of the Pushers who was in town right now, so really, it would’ve felt wrong to exclude him.

  He’d lost his band, too.

  We’d partied together hundreds of times over the years, but I was pretty fucking sure at this point that Eric Janner was an addict—one of many reasons the Penny Pushers had imploded—so at the end of the day, I felt shitty for him. He had worse problems than I did.

  Serious problems.

  Yes, I’d been a fucking mess these past few months, but at least I was pretty sure there’d be a light at the end of the tunnel.

  Some fucking day.

  Janner, on the other hand, kept refusing rehab. Kept denying he had a problem, when everyone around him knew he did.

  At least I knew I had a problem.

  And it wasn’t booze or drugs.

  It had a lot more to do with this lingering fear of actually trying to get on with my life in the wake of having my heart broken—several fucking times—and failing.

  Yeah… The fucking classic fear of failure.

  And seeing so many of my friends happy, successful… in love… I was happy for them. Really. When I was feeling mature about it.

  Other times?

  It stung.

  It just reminded me of how badly I’d been broken, and how hard it was gonna be to pull my life—and my heart—back together. How last year, I’d thought, for a brief moment in time, that I had it all. Everything I could ever want.

  Incl
uding love.

  And then I lost it.

  Well, realized I’d never actually had it.

  But as of right now, I wasn’t dwelling on that shit anymore, right?

  This party was about letting it all go.

  I watched as Seth, Dirty’s rhythm guitarist, climbed into the limo, and Summer cuddled up to him. Not a flirtatious thing, just a keeping-warm thing. The two of them were tight now that Elle, Dirty’s bassist, was having Seth’s baby, since Summer and Elle were super-tight. Elle probably would’ve been here too, if she wasn’t about to burst—she was overdue to give birth—and if part of the reason I needed to have this breakup party in the first place wasn’t because of her.

  Seriously a long story.

  Now that the father of Elle’s baby, who was also a member of my best friend’s band, was partying with me, I’d pretty much surrendered to the fact that no breakup with any of them was gonna mean they were gone from my life.

  We were all family now, for better or worse.

  As if reading that thought, Amber looped her arm through mine. “Earth to Ashley Player…” she teased.

  “Huh?” I tried to focus on her face. Her pale-green eyes, peering up at me with amusement—and a little concern.

  “I saw the girl,” she told me.

  “What girl?” Summer asked.

  “With the yellow boots,” Amber said.

  “What yellow boots?”

  “You did?” I blinked at Amber.

  “Yeah. You were talking to her.”

  “Which way did she go?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” Amber shrugged. “She went into the store?”

  “You didn’t see her come back out?”

  “Uh, I wasn’t really paying attention…”

  “She was distracted,” Summer provided. “You know, Dylan was sucking her tongue out of her head.”

  Right. Fucking figured.

  The guys outside cheered, and then Dirty’s lead guitarist, Jesse, slid in. He was followed by Jude, Jesse’s best friend and Dirty’s head of security, and Jude’s girl, Roni. All three of them were drenched.

  “You’re all assholes,” Jesse informed us, as he shook the rain out of his hair like a dog.

  We were. The limo was Jesse’s contribution to my breakup party, but we’d made him walk after the last bar, and Jude and Roni had gone with him. They were supposed to get donuts, for some reason, but I didn’t see them carrying any.

  No one asked about it.

  I’d been sent walking, too, with Haz; I was supposed to get pink lollipops. Couldn’t remember why.

  “Everyone stays in the limo this time,” Roni announced, settling in with her man. “I’m cold.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “No more of Amber’s weird photo scavenger hunt thing.”

  “Aw,” Amber said, hugging her camera.

  “Thank fuck,” Xander said as he climbed in. He was followed by three random chicks he’d picked up at the last strip club. No idea where they’d come from; thought we’d lost them somewhere.

  Matt followed them in. “Nice roses,” he said as he climbed past me.

  “Hold them up,” Amber prompted. I obeyed halfheartedly as Matt leaned down next to me, flashing the devil sign, and she took a photo of the two of us with the roses. Matt Brohmer was Dirty’s temporary bassist; he was playing on their current world tour while Elle procreated.

  “So cute!” Amber said, turning the camera to show me the pic on the screen. She was right. Matt was cute.

  Nice tongue, too. He was sticking it out, Gene Simmons style.

  I looked grumpy as shit.

  “What happened to the donuts?” Dylan asked as he climbed in, tussling the rain out of his wavy auburn hair. He was followed by Con and finally Haz.

  “What donuts?” Matt and Summer said.

  “Scavenger hunt donuts,” Amber complained. “I’m bored of barhopping.”

  “We just started barhopping,” Roni said.

  “Hey, what’s up with you?” Dylan reached across Amber and poked me. “You okay, man?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “You ever have that moment when you realize your life is a tired old porno?”

  Dylan’s green eyes crinkled, one corner of his mouth lifting as he smiled at me, that gorgeous crooked smile of his. “Nope.”

  “My life is a fucking fantastic porno,” Matt said.

  “Me too,” Xander said. “Let’s all go back to my place and make a porno.”

  “Let’s not,” Amber said.

  “Let’s go back to Zane’s,” Jesse suggested.

  The party had started with dinner at Zane’s house—yesterday.

  Zane Traynor, Dirty’s lead singer, had hosted several of my breakup parties over the years; it was pretty much tradition by now. This time, the rather civil dinner had been followed by a friendly-ish high stakes poker game at a posh hotel, just eight of us guys. But that had gone most of the night. A few of us hadn’t even slept, and the party had rolled right into the morning, with a catered breakfast and a visit to a topless psychic, who told me, among other weird, useless things, that she saw a ring in my future.

  When Dylan asked if that was a wedding ring or a circus ring, she said she didn’t know.

  Fucking brilliant.

  That was followed by a lunch buffet at a strip club where I was treated to a private room with both female and male entertainment, then another dinner with more of my friends joining in.

  Zane had outdone himself, as usual, but no way were we going back to his place now. Not everyone wanted to drink their bodyweight in booze and stuff cash in g-strings all night. Go figure, right? But these days, Zane’s number one focus was staying sober and married, so barhopping around the clock wasn’t exactly high on his priority list.

  “We’re all drunk,” I said. “We’re not going back to Zane’s.”

  “Yeah. That would be dickish,” Amber agreed. “They’re probably sleeping anyway.”

  “It’s five after nine,” Seth informed her, and Amber’s jaw dropped in confusion. Drunk as we were, it would’ve been easy to assume that it was like one in the morning at this point, but I was pretty sure Seth was right. He was sober, and besides, the sun had just gone down.

  “Zane and Maggie aren’t sleeping at five after nine,” Xander informed her. “They’re fucking.”

  “Which is why we should go over,” Jesse said with a wicked grin.

  “Nah, let’s go to the island,” Dylan said, tapping Seth’s boot with his. “You coming?”

  “I have a choice?” Seth said.

  “Mmm, nope,” Roni said.

  “Anyone okay to drive the boat?” Matt asked.

  “Connor can drive,” Dylan said. “Can’t you, Con?”

  “Yup,” Con said. I glanced over at Dylan’s bodyguard, who was stretched out at the far end of the limo, behind the driver’s seat. Haz, sitting next to him, nodded at me, like Don’t worry, brother, I’ll make sure your drunk ass gets home in one piece.

  None of the members of Dirty seemed fazed that we were dragging security around the city with us while we partied. It was their job, sure, but I wasn’t quite used to having a bodyguard of my own yet. Still kinda felt like an asshole getting drunk and stupid while Haz watched over me like I was a toddler.

  “In case you haven’t figured it out,” Summer announced, “Seth isn’t leaving town with us. Elle could go into labor at any second. He’s just being polite. First chance he gets, he’s ditching our drunk asses.”

  “That true, brother?” Matt asked.

  “Afraid so,” Seth said, smiling.

  “What do you want to do, Ashley?” Amber asked me. “It’s your party.”

  “The island it is,” I said.

  I was cold, damp, and I’d had enough strip bars and whiskey shots for one day. Let’s be honest. No matter where this party headed, I’d probably just end up fucking one of the bimbos Xander brought along before the night was done. Just the way it went, right?

  At least aft
er that, I could call it a night and pass out. Mission accomplished.

  Breakup party complete.

  Con told the driver where to take us—some pizza place for Amber, then Coal Harbour—and finally, the Hummer pulled out into traffic. Summer cranked Def Leppard, “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” like it was nineteen-eighty-whatever, and the chicks started dancing.

  At least, Xander’s three new friends started dancing. With each other. One of them was an actual stripper, I was guessing, by the way she shoved one of the other girls down and started giving her a lap dance like a pro.

  Couldn’t even remember why I’d thought one of them was cute about half an hour ago.

  Definite miscalculation.

  Come to think of it… my dick wasn’t interested in much of anything that was going on around me. Even Dylan and Amber, who were already making out. To be specific, they were snuggling and kissing, probably trying to keep it as PG as possible for my benefit.

  They’d become annoyingly considerate like that since breaking my heart.

  I watched Xander pull the third girl onto his lap, and Matt went kinda liquid, sliding down in his seat to watch the ensuing lap dance.

  Which was when I realized why Seth was sticking so close to Summer, and Jesse was glued to Jude and Roni. Because Seth and Jesse’s women—who were both pregnant right now—weren’t here, and they wanted nothing to do with the randoms.

  Couldn’t blame them.

  There was a reason I was sitting between Summer and Amber myself, wasn’t there? Because I wasn’t all that interested in a random hookup tonight. And no way was I even thinking about trying to fuck either of my exes in the world’s most stupid drunken mistake.

  Not with dream girl on my mind.

  Danny.

  Her name was Danny.

  I’d met her once before, four years ago, and never seen her again.

  Until tonight.

  Holy fuck. Did that really just happen?

  Yes. Yes it did.

  Jesus… I really needed to drink some more to wipe that shit out of my mind or something. Either that, or stop drinking before I did anything even fucking stupider tonight.

  But what could be stupider than meeting a girl like that, for the second time, and letting her slip away?

  Two chances. I’d had two chances.

  And fucked them right up.