SHREDDED: A Rockstar Romance (Wreckage Book 3) Read online

  Shredded

  A Rockstar Romance

  Vivian Lux

  Copyright © 2017 by Vivian Lux

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  To Amelia Wilde, who helped me plot this whole book out when I was desperate for an idea. If you don’t like it, it’s her fault. ;)

  No matter how hard I try

  to be just one of the guys

  There's a little something inside

  that won't let me.

  No matter how hard I try

  to have an open mind

  There's a little cop inside that prevents me.

  -Jenny Lewis, ‘Just One of the Guys’

  Contents

  1. Reese

  2. Niall

  3. Reese

  4. Niall

  5. Reese

  6. Niall

  7. Reese

  8. Niall

  9. Reese

  10. Niall

  11. Reese

  12. Niall

  13. Reese

  14. Niall

  15. Reese

  16. Niall

  17. Reese

  18. Niall

  19. Reese

  20. Niall

  21. Reese

  22. Niall

  23. Reese

  24. Reese

  25. Niall

  26. Reese

  27. Reese

  28. Niall

  29. Reese

  30. Niall

  31. Reese

  32. Reese

  33. Niall

  34. Reese

  35. Niall

  36. Reese

  37. Niall

  38. Reese

  39. Niall

  Epilogue

  Also by Vivian Lux

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Reese

  The music hit me, and I started to dance.

  Well, not dance. More like shimmy in place as I hung above the stage, fifteen feet up, wiggling my hips in the harness as I tightened the bolts on one of the overhead amps.

  From across the way, I caught the pyrotechnics guy looking at me with a lecherous gleam in his eye. Deuces was at least twice my age, if not ten years older than that, and he had that seen-it-all swagger of one of the old guard. The kind of guy who got into the roadie life for the babes and the booze, first and foremost.

  He also was the kind guy who set things on fire for a living.

  There was only one way to handle unwanted advances from a guy like this.

  I immediately lifted both middle fingers and blew him a kiss.

  He laughed. "Nice moves, Newbie!" he shouted over the sound of the pre-show mix.

  "Lemme see yours now!" I called down.

  He dropped his tools and immediately obliged, rolling his hips and wiggling his prodigious beer gut in time to the weird sitar music the sound guy had chosen. "Woo!" I shouted, clapping to get the attention of Nashville and Bam-Bam down below as they did their last minute sound checks.

  When he saw Deuces undulating like a belly dancer, Nashville hooted with laughter. Bam-Bam pulled a dollar out of his wallet and started waving it in the air as Deuces turned around and wiggled his ass at us. "Yeah baby! Take it off!" I yelled.

  The pre-show music cut with a blast of deafening feedback. "No! Please don't!" Woody boomed over the PA, to raucous laughter and shouts of, "Spoilsport!"

  "She started it!" Deuces bellowed back to Woody, pointing an accusing thumb at me since he was missing his index fingers. "Newbie thinks she can get away with causing trouble just 'cause she's got a great rack."

  "You're damn right I do!" I agreed, letting the brake off my carabiner and rappelling back down to terra firma. Bam-Bam greeted me with a high-five that made my palm sting.

  I grinned as I shucked off my harness. "You got any moves you want to show off now, Bam?" I asked the drum tech.

  "Get enough beer in me, Newb, and you might regret that request."

  "Never," I said, with a flip of my hair. "I won't regret a thing. Why'd you think I started roadie-ing in the first place?" I deadpanned. "Because of all the fine-ass man candy, that's why." I let my eyes linger on his shiny, bald head, and then slide over to Deuces' belly.

  Bam-Bam chuckled. "You've got weird taste, Newb."

  "Call me Reese," I said, extending my hand. "That way I'll call you by your name instead of Chrome Dome."

  "Deal," he said, enclosing my hand in a giant, calloused paw. "This your first tour, Reese?"

  "First big one, yeah. I've done a few regional ones, but nothing with a set-up as complicated as this."

  "You got your own tools?"

  I rolled my eyes and brandished my wrench. "Bet mine's bigger than yours."

  Deuces guffawed behind us. "You're a wild one, aren't you Newb?"

  "You're never gonna know that for sure, are you?" I tossed over my shoulder, enjoying the hooting as I moved out of the way of the talent as they emerged from the wings.

  That's what you've got to do when you're a woman working in a man's world. Especially backstage at a rock 'n roll show. Give as good as you get. Teach them how to treat you.

  And how I wanted to be treated was as one of the guys.

  "Time to clear out, Newb," Nashville called. He was kneeling down now, taking his place by Ewan Boyd's meticulously laid out kit.

  "Yeah, I'll grab you a beer before these thirsty fucks drink them all," Deuces promised, glaring at Bam-Bam.

  "Mind if I hang back and watch?" I asked, glancing towards the stage.

  Nashville gave me a patronizing wink. "First time seeing the guys?"

  "In person? Yeah."

  "But you're a fan?"

  "I liked the old shit," I said, with a proud jut of my chin. "Before they got all over-produced."

  As soon as I said that, I saw Nashville's eyes slide from my face and land on something just over my shoulder. I closed my eyes and exhaled a soft, resigned sigh. "One of them totally just heard me now, didn't they?"

  Nashville was silent a second and I wondered just how this was going to go. Getting shitcanned on my first day on the job would be embarrassing enough. And I really didn't want to have to go back to Clay Brook with my tail between my legs. But most of all I really wasn't relishing the idea of having to hold my tongue while dealing with some spoiled, overly-coiffed rockstar with a bruised ego.

  "You're in luck," Nashville murmured, barely moving his lips. "It's Niall."

  "The bassist?" I glanced over my shoulder.

  Behind me, not even three feet away, was Niall Penrose, the impossibly tall, impossibly composed bassist of Wreckage. And in the split second that I realized that his eyes were actually green and not blue like I had always assumed, I also realized that he hadn't overheard my casual dismissal of their recent work. He wasn't paying attention at all. In fact, he looked like he barely even knew where he was. As he wandered stiffly out onto the stage, his posture betrayed just how little he cared about all the hubbub around him.

  "Is he on something?" I whispered to Nashville. "He looks totally out of it."

  Nashville sort of blinked, like the idea of a strung out rock star was completely new to him. "Doubt it. Niall's got a good head on his shoulders. Real solid dude."

  He looked anything but solid out there on the stage. In fact he looked like he was ready to float away.

  "Huh," was all I said, but I said it pretty damn skeptically.


  I was used to the shenanigans that came with caring for musicians, but I had no patience for this kind of disrespectful shit. All around him, a crew of nearly one hundred people were working their asses off to make sure he looked good. The least he could do was pretend he appreciated it.

  "Showtime," Nashville said, and I instinctively stepped back out of his way. He crouched down, watching Ewan Boyd, nodding as the Scottish guitarist thanked him with a grin and slung his first guitar around his body.

  Hudson Grant stepped up to the mic. "Test," he said in his strangely unplaceable accent. Half Texas twang, half-New York tough. "Testing one two three." He nodded, pressing his finger to his ear. "That sounds good Woody, thanks. Can you turn down the volume in my monitor a hair?"

  Niall curled his long, lean body around his bass and plucked out a few thudding notes, then shook his head. "Sorry," he muttered into the mic, and then turned to gesture to his tech. His face was tense, I could see that from way back here.

  "Try channel two," Woody instructed from the back of the house.

  Niall didn't answer.

  "Oy," Jules Spencer called from his drum kit. "Look alive, mate."

  "Sorry, what was that?" Niall said into his mic, distractedly.

  I realized I was digging my nails into my palms. Woody patiently repeated his instructions, and Niall sort of snapped back to reality and nodded. His tech plugged him into the different channel and he plucked another few distracted notes. Nashville wasn't watching at all, he was busy re-tuning Ewan's Gibson. Looking around, I wondered if any of the other crew was worrying about Niall's distracted air. Was this normal for him? I looked all over, but no one seemed bothered.

  "Lights check," Woody boomed. "Spot one?"

  A massive white beam illuminated the stage, brighter than the outdoors at noontime. I blinked at the afterimages that seared into my retina. "Holy hell," I muttered, rubbing my eyes.

  "Spot two?" Woody called.

  The daylight brilliance was cut in favor of two shafts of light crisscrossing over each other from way back in the front of the house. I blinked again and as a reflex, I looked up at recently extinguished overhead spot, just as the band started playing the opening chords of 'No Promises.'

  "Oh, what the fuck?" I muttered.

  That light didn't look right at all.

  "Watch out!" I cried.

  The shriek of metal on metal rose above the din of soundcheck, but no one seemed to notice it but me. For a half a second I watched dumbly as the band milled about underneath the rigging. The whole set-up was swaying from side to side as if dancing along to the music they were playing, but there was one light, one heavy, massive spot, that was swaying at a different frequency that the others. Faster and at the wrong angle and with that high pitched shrieking grinding noise.

  "Get out of the way!" I shouted at the top of my lungs, but the only person who paid me any attention was the drummer, well out of the way of danger. But Niall, Niall was...

  I just started running. Fast as I could, with my head down the way my uncle had taught me, football style. I ran at Niall with my hand out and slammed into him with everything I had.

  Just as the world around us exploded.

  Chapter Two

  Niall

  That fucking phone call - Izzy's wobbling, petulant voice still echoing in my head, making my stomach twist in knots of rage and guilt in equal number - was the only thing I could think of during rehearsal. That is, until something slammed into me, hard enough to wrench the breath from my lungs.

  With a muffled curse, I crashed to the ground, hitting hard enough to send sparks of shocked pain up my elbow.

  And then all around me there were real sparks, actual sparks. Like fireworks on Guy Fawkes day, the whole place lit up, and in the too-bright flash I could see Hudson's face frozen in a mask of terror.

  And then it was gone, covered like a hood had been thrown over my face to shield me from the glare.

  It took several slow blinks before the hood resolved itself into a curtain of jet-black hair.

  It took several more blinks before I realized that the hair belonged to a woman. A woman who had slammed her body into mine to save me from the falling spotlight.

  Sounds of shouting rang in my ears but I only noticed her breathing, and the way her body pressed against mine. The months of wan monkish celibacy after Izzy's bombshell and the loneliness of never being in one place for long decided to take that moment to assert themselves and all I could feel was this new woman's breasts pressed against up my chest.

  And they were fucking spectacular breasts too. I had never seen her before, of that I was sure, because I sure as shit would have noticed breasts like these.

  "Who are you?" I heard myself say, but it came out more like a sigh because I still couldn't seem to get enough breath in my lungs. I pushed up onto my elbows, wincing at the sharp pain in my left one.

  "Don't move," she ordered me. She had these light, snapping eyes. Feral eyes that shone like a cat's at nighttime. Too light for her dark, dark hair. They made her look like something out of one of the bedtime stories my mother would tell and then I would warp so as to terrify my little sister. Something seductive and deeply dangerous.

  I shifted to get off my sore elbow. "Don't move!" she barked again. Her accent was pure American drawl, broad flat vowels dripping wth back roads and moonshine.

  "I'm not," I protested. Why would I want to move? Why wouldn't I just stay like this with those tits pressed against me for the rest of my life?

  "You're wiggling," she accused, completely exasperated with me for some reason. "There's glass everywhere. If you move, you're gonna get cut and then you'll have to cancel the tour and I won't end up getting paid."

  That solved the mystery of where she had come from, at least. "You're with the crew?"

  She gave me a withering stare. "What else would I be?"

  I tried for charm. "Figured you for an angel, darling."

  She rolled those incredible eyes. "You need to get your hearing checked. I yelled at you to get out of the way." She held up two fingers and waved them in my face. "Twice."

  I shrugged. "Yeah my hearing is a bit shite. Standing in front of amps for a living will do that to you."

  Behind me I could hear a techie with a broom making quick work of the blinking shards that surrounded us. I had a sudden, sharp urge to tell him to slow the fuck down so I could savor this...whatever it was.

  "All set!" he said instead.

  My savior leaped off of me. Then, like God above reaching down the from cloud to touch Adam, she and stretched out her hand down to me. Completely flummoxed, I allowed her to close her thin fingers around my wrist, feeling strange whisperings of tenderness in my chest as I gripped her in turn, liking the way her pulse beat under my thumb.

  Then with a savage jerk, she yanked me up to my feet.

  Bloody strong for a girl.

  I stumbled to my feet and sort of staggered around drunkenly as what she'd just saved me from became apparent. One of the huge central spotlights that lit the whole front half of the stage was now shattered in the place I had just been standing. The sheer weight of the thing left a dent like a meteor crater in the stage floor.

  "Bloody hell," I whispered.

  She gave a short, mirthless laugh. "That's all you have to say, huh?"

  I looked around, reeling. My bandmates were watching us like we were both risen ghosts. Hudson was a white as a sheet and looked like he needed to lie down. I fucking needed to lie down, but this tough as nails bird was asking me to make some kind of speech or something. I glanced at her, honestly wondering, "What else is there to say?"

  "I just saved your life, you know." I wasn't sure what she muttered next but it sounded a lot like, "You stuck up Brit."

  I chose to ignore the last part. "Aye," I agreed. "And you have my gratitude, darling."

  Her eyes flashed. "What I should have is a raise."

  My disbelief at escaping decapitation by spotlight
was being replaced by disbelief at her sheer, bloody gall. I looked her up and down. "You're new right?"

  "First day."

  "And you're asking for a raise on your first day? You've got some cheek."

  She turned and faced me head on. Well, more like chest on, as she was at least a full head shorter than me, if not more. "If I were a guy," she challenged. "You'd give it to me."

  "If you were a bloke, I wouldn't have enjoyed you on top of me like that nearly as much."

  Something I very much liked sparked in her eyes. "Really? I thought British guys were supposed to he totally repressed."

  "Funny thing, that. Here I thought Southern girls were supposed to be charming."

  "Not Southern," she corrected. "Country. Which is why I should kick your ass right now."

  I shrugged. "Then you'd be out of a job, so..."

  That spark again. She was enjoying giving me shit. And I hadn't had this much fun with a girl in months. Maybe years. "So you should give me a raise," she said, tilting her head a little. "So next time a light starts falling, I don't just let it hit you."

  "That sounds like bribery."

  "Call it extortion,"

  I grinned. "How about I just tell you 'thank you?' And you let me buy you a beer after rehearsal's over?"

  "Call it a shot of bourbon and you're got a deal."

  I reached out my hand. She took it and we very solemnly shook on it. "I'm gonna go help the rest of the guys deal with the..." she gestured to the shattered spot. "Mess. Try not to get yourself killed while I'm gone, okay, Niall?"