Slide (Black Addiction #1) Read Free

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    Hard to believe two years ago my life was so remarkably different. Twenty-four months. That’s pretty much all it took for us to be plucked from obscurity, playing shitty bars to playing on a massive tour.
    Of course we weren’t headlining, no—we were playing second fiddle to Power Station, the big shot rock stars who had more platinum gracing their walls than the Queen of England had in her fancy tower. Our chance of a lifetime had come at the hand of Angie, our front woman, who happened to have once shared a fence line with their drummer. Family friends and all that.
    In any case, their regular support act had shit the bed, fucking up hardcore and got tossed off the docket. Enter Black Addiction ready to take up the slack. Their loss was most definitely our gain. And what a fucking gain it was.
    Show after show packed to capacity, we played each gig like it might be our last. And realistically, it might very well have been. So we made it count and got some attention from the powers that be. Fancy suits started knocking at our door wanting a piece of the pie and before you knew it, we weren’t nobodies anymore.
    Of course we didn’t just end the tour with a deal and a few more thousand fans. My front woman Angie ended up shacked up with Power Station’s keyboard player. They’d gotten hitched and were now expecting a kidlet. It was the ultimate tour souvenir; T-shirts are so redundant these days.
    So, we were famous right? Nope, not even close. People knew who we were for sure, and there weren’t many nights I spent alone. Girls wanting to be my muse and all that. But as far as fame and fortune went, we were still lacking.
    That deal we’d signed, completely shafted us. New York suits trying to make us sound like 5 Seconds of Summer . I literally want to kick my own ass when I look at our album cover. Sad, sad times.
    Luckily for us, while we didn’t get the accolades and piles of green rolling in after that bullshit attempt of mainstreaming, we did get our asses pulled from the fire by the one and only Power Station. Seemed liked the guys felt like playing fairy godmothers, because for a second time they’d given us a reprieve. This time in the form of a shiny new contract signed to their new label. The gift of current paperwork giving us total creative control. Gratitude didn’t even come close. Although there was that whole procreating with one of my band members, so I guess it all came out in the wash.
    “Sooooooooo . . . Should I go?” My lady friend from last night walked back into the bedroom carrying two steaming hot cups of Joe. Her long hair flicked off her shoulder as she sat down beside me on the bed.
    “Yeah, I’ve got a session. Last night was fun though. We should do that again.” The cup she had so generously brought to me made its very much-needed journey to my mouth. Mornings were not usually my friend, their existence made better by caffeine and a cigarette. Today I was going to have to settle for just the coffee.
    “Last night was fun. Do you even remember my name?” She sat smiling as she watched me drink.
    “Caroline, and I never forget a name, sweetness.” My recall earned me an even bigger smile.
    That was my super power, my party trick—and the reason I was able to play a song perfectly after hearing it just one time. Photographic memory. Names, faces, music, dates, phone numbers—all of it stored in the huge vault that was my gray matter. It wasn’t even something I had to think about, just boom—it was committed. High school was a walk in the fucking park, I even aced my SATs. And while my folks were creaming their pants over the college offers I was receiving, I turned my back on all of it. The stage was the only place I was going to be spending my days and for better or worse, I made my choice. Which in this case obviously paid off, and I was finally able to give a big fuck you to everyone who thought I’d end up working at 7-11.
    “I could call you later? Or