Last Song (Chasing Cross Book Five) (A Brothers of Rock Novel) (rockstar contemporary romance) Read Free Page A

and
choke on his own vomit. The guy who would end up dead, rotting in an apartment.
    Rick hurried from the
kitchen and kicked through the garbage that was now his life, getting to the
bathroom. He leaned over the sink and splashed the coldest water he could on
his face and took deep breaths. Every nerve in his body felt like it was being
pinched. Every muscle shook and ached. The worst was when he stood up and
looked at his dripping face in the mirror. His skin looked pale, even
yellowish. His eyes were big and his eye sockets were embellished by the shock
and the bad nights of sleep. His unkempt face grew in uneven and messy and his
hair was a mess. Rick ran a hand through his hair and just stared at himself.
    Was this what he really
wanted?
    “No, man, no,” Rick
whispered to himself.
    What Rick wanted was to
start it all over again. To jam in a garage and enjoy the feel of music and the
company of a band that had nothing but music flowing through its veins. No more
t-shirts. No more worries of the next album and how to write it. He just wanted
to play damn music.
    Rick wiped his face with
one hand and left the bathroom. He picked up his cell phone and found the name
of a friend from California that had put him and the band up a few times.
    He dialed and waited.
    “Hello?”
    “Jackson?”
    “Yeah... who is this?”
    “It’s... uh... Rick.”
    “Rick. Rick who?”
    “Chasing Cross, man,”
Rick said.
    “Oh. Shit. Rick.”
    Rick closed his eyes. He
felt like death again. Was this the reaction he was going to get from everyone?
The second someone heard his name he was suddenly the rock n’ roll bad seed.
The guy who drank too much, partied too hard. The guy who got into an accident
and broke a bone. The guy who quit the band in the middle of a tour.
    “I need your help,” Rick
said.
    “I saw something about
you online.”
    “Can we meet up and
talk?”
    “Rick, I can’t give you a
place to stay,” Jackson said. “It doesn’t work like that now. I’m not a kid in
my twenties anymore...”
    “But you own your own
real estate company, right?”
    “Yeah. Why?”
    “I need a house, Jackson.
A house with a garage.”
    “You give up the rockstar
life for a house...”
    Rick looked around the
apartment again. Hell had come. Hell existed. Rick wanted out of the apartment.
That didn’t mean he was leaving hell, it just meant he’d have more space to
navigate around it.
    “Just meet me, Jackson,
and I’ll explain,” Rick said. “Okay?”
    “We’re meeting as
clients,” Jackson said. “Nothing more, Rick. I run my own business now. I have
a family. If you need help, like serious help, I’m going to direct you to...”
    “Just meet me in an
hour,” Rick said.
    Jackson gave his address
to Rick and Rick hung up. He considered smashing his cell phone against the
wall just to prove to Jackson that he wasn’t going to take shit from anyone, but
what would it really prove? Jackson wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t see.
    Just like the apartment.
    It was Rick’s way of
showing defiance to everything Chasing Cross had become and where they were all
going, but it was only Rick who inhaled the rotten smell of the place. It was only
Rick who partied half the night, and it was only Rick who casually looked to
small pile of vomit on the kitchen floor.
    I could have choked , he
thought to himself.
    But he didn’t. Wasn’t
that part of the life? Cheating death? Tempting death? Flirting with death?
That’s what rockstars did. Some fell off the ledge and were gone, left to be
musical heroes and geniuses. Some were brought back from the ledge with some
killer stories to tell and a long life of battling with sobriety.
    Rick was somewhere in
between that. He wasn’t exactly sure which path he wanted to take but he knew
one thing... it had been days since he played drums. The apartment was too
small for a drum set; he needed a house. A house with a garage. Then he could
fill one addiction to rid another.
    He took a fast