The Rocker That Needs Me (The Rocker...) Read Free Page A

myself no longer afraid of him. He went out of his way to make Lucy laugh. Every time I picked up something heavy, he quickly took it away from me and carried it to the truck himself. Drake the rock star might be a total prick, but apparently Drake the man was a gentleman.
    I felt as if there was an invisible force pushing me toward him. Normally, I would have put on the E-brake fast. Rock stars were bad news. I had grown up with one after another warming my mother’s bed. I had seen firsthand how they treated people, and it wasn’t pretty. But for some reason I felt like Drake and Jesse were different.
    Just as I felt that Shane and Nik were different when I met them later that day as they helped us unload the moving truck. They were all really nice, and I felt comfortable around them all. And Emmie? She reminded me of Layla a little. Someone who didn’t let anyone walk all over her, who didn’t let the world pull her down.
    By the end of the day, I found myself crushing on Drake. It was crazy. He was thirty one, and I was seventeen. Sure, rockers dated younger women all the time, but I wasn’t going to be some rocker’s Priscilla to his Elvis. Nope, not going to happen!
    Sunday was my homework day. I normally didn’t mind doing homework. Layla was a hard-ass about getting good grades, and it came easy for me. I studied hard and took extra classes. Since I had been living with Layla and I no longer had to spend so much time taking care of Lucy—something I had done from the day she was born up until our loser mother had died—I started taking the extra credit classes my high school offered. The classes were basic general studies classes for college, and at the end of this term I would have enough college credits to qualify as a sophomore when I actually started college.
    Monday, I drove to school by myself for the first time. Layla was awesome. She was letting me drive her old Corolla so I didn’t have to transfer schools. It wasn’t that I would miss my friends; I spent so much time at school either studying or participating in the mandatory sports program—I had chosen track because I sucked at team sports—I didn’t have any friends. Not one.
    Of course not having friends made it hard at school sometimes. None of the girls liked me because they either: A - thought I was a stuck up bitch because I refused to let them suck me into the everyday drama that tended to be a teenage girls life; or B - they thought I wanted their man. My answer was always C . I didn’t have time for anyone’s drama but my own, and I wouldn’t touch their boyfriends if they paid me. Not having friends had given me time to observe the goings-on of others around me, and I had discovered that most of the boyfriends that I was accused of wanting were total tools and were getting more side action than their girlfriends realized.
    The day before, Layla had bought two new phones. She had given Lucy her old one in case of emergencies, but I got my own, along with an unlimited text plan to go with the internet and call plan. Of course I had given my number to Drake. I wasn’t sure how it had happened, but we had ended up texting back and forward until after midnight last night. And today, even though I knew he was supposed to be in the studio working on new material with the other guys of Demon’s Wings, we had been texting regularly.
    During English he sent me a funny picture of his brother goofing off at lunch. Because I hadn’t been expecting it, I didn’t think to control my snort of laughter while my teacher was giving a boring lecture on the importance of a strong introduction to an essay. I hadn’t been paying attention because I had already taken college English 101 and passed it with an A. The only reason I was even in the guy’s class was because I had to have it to graduate.
    “Miss Daniels, is there something you would like to share with the class?” The jerk asked in a nasally voice that always grates down my spine. Mr.