JAGGED: A Rockstar Romance Page 3

  "Is this...?" August shouted into my ear, just as the tune was starting to become recognizable. "Are they playing...?"

  "Wrecked," I agreed. "It's a Wrecked song, but they're not..." I trailed off as I listened. The unseen band onstage was playing a song off the first Wrecked album but they were playing it...different. Tighter, leaner. Instead of the soaring harmonies of Killian Ness and Jane Doe, there was only a one male singer growling out the lyrics in a snarling undertone. His vocals blended into the music in a mumbled bass, almost disappearing, but the music...

  The music had me on my feet. Swaying. Shouting along the words I knew. I looked over to August who was staring openmouthed. "Can you see them?" I asked my taller friend.

  "A little," she said, bouncing on her toes. "The drummer definitely looks like Jules Spencer. I mean, he's got the hair anyway. And the bassist is tall as hell, like Niall Penrose is, but...I can't tell..."

  "Are they a cover band?" I wondered. But even as I asked that I was shaking my head. This was no cover band, cranking out cheap imitations. This was — somehow — the real deal. But Wrecked was over! I was there when it ended! I lost my job because of them, and because of Ewan Boyd being a dickhead out for blood. Roger had needed a scapegoat and his intern was a convenient one. Turned out he fired me for no reason, as the guys had left Crux Records that very afternoon. It should have been comforting, but it wasn't.

  I jumped in place, trying like hell to see who was playing right now. I caught a glimpse of the guy at the mic, but his face was obscured by a tangle of dark hair. The Wrecked cover ended and they immediately crashed into another song, but this one I didn't recognize. It was a lean, spare, almost punk sounding three-chord assault. Deceptively simple, it was the kind of polished perfection that got under your skin immediately. I knew I'd be singing this song for the next week.

  "Holy shit," I shouted to August. "Is it me, or are they really fucking good?"

  She nodded, wide-eyed. "Imagine what they'd be with a better name?"

  "Or with a label behind them?" I said slowly.

  August turned and I could see the wheels turning in her brain so fast her ears could start smoking. "Get them, CeCe," she hissed, grabbing my arm tightly. "Go. Before someone else poaches them from you. Twat Yacht is your discovery." My heart started pounding. "This is exactly what you need. Let's go sign them."

  Chapter Four

  Ewan

  "Well," Jules said, exhaling a long, deep breath. "That wasn't...terrible."

  My head was still reeling from the applause. "Where the fuck did all these people come from?" I wondered again for probably the billionth time in the last five minutes. We had only played a twenty-minute set. It was all I was ready to deal with, but the people who showed up, the ones packed in shoulder to shoulder and shouting along the words to our songs so loudly that I could barely hear my own voice, were still out there, clamoring for an encore we weren’t ready to give.

  "You all right mate?" Jules asked, clapping me on the back. "You look a bit pale there."

  "Fuck," I exhaled. "That was..."

  "Surreal," Niall supplied for me. "Must have been strange being the one up front, yeah?"

  I realized my fists were still balled at my sides and slowly unclenched them, shaking the feeling back into my fingers. "Yeah," I barked out in a trembling breath. I ran my hand along the back of my neck, trying to rub out some of the tension there. "I never wanted to be a frontman for good reason, I think," I finally managed to laugh. "I'm pretty shit at it."

  Jules shrugged. "Those fuckers out there?" he pointed back in the direction of the packed club. "They didn't give a shit. Too busy singing your words for you."

  "Where the fuck did all these people come from?" I repeated.

  The knock on the green room door made me jump. Jules shot me a threatening look. "Sit down and have a beer before you give me a heart attack, mate. I can hear your teeth grinding from way over here."

  "Never thought you'd get stage fright, Boyd." Niall looked genuinely concerned.

  I rubbed my neck again and tried to look composed, but there was no hiding how rattled I was. The only reason I'd done the singing tonight is because I was the only one of the three of us who didn't sound like a cat in heat when he tried to do vocals. But up there, fuck, it was so much more than just making mouth sounds. Feeling every eye in the place focus on you.

  I wasn't used to that.

  Playing live shows was my passion. I loved getting lost in the music, feeling that special frisson in the air when you and your bandmates were in sync. The hair stood up on the back of your neck because you're not just by yourself anymore. You're connected, one organism made up of many different bodies. It's fucking magic.

  But when I stepped up and tried to sing, my mind took over. I was all in my head, worrying about how I looked, how I was playing. There was no more magic, just one long excruciating four-minute block. Four minutes of torture.

  "Oi," I grunted to Jules and Niall. "I know I agreed we're gonna make another go of it, yeah?"

  "You backing out?" Jules wondered. The knock on the green room door came again. "Wait a bloody minute!" he shouted, then looked at me. "Spit it out, Ewan. You look green around the gills."

  "I'm not a bloody singer," I suddenly thundered. "Never wanted it. We start over again, we need a new front man. Or woman. Whatever. But it can't be me, okay?"

  Jules looked at Niall. Niall ducked his head and I felt something pass between them. "What?" I demanded.

  Niall shrugged. "Fine with us, mate."

  "You were kinda shite, anyway," Jules laughed, and then opened the door before I could deck him. "Oi, where's the bloody fire?" he yelled at the hapless person on the other side of the door.

  "Mr. Spencer?" came a female voice. "I've got two women here that wanted to talk with you. One from Anthem Records?"

  I looked at Jules and Niall, wide-eyed. We were all thinking the same thing. Anthem was a boutique hard rock label, an imprint under the much bigger Silvergate Recordings. They were a way bigger deal than Crux, and their CEO Ricky Silver had a reputation for being much more interested in the development of his acts.

  This was a big fucking deal.

  "Yeah sure," Jules grunted nonchalantly. "Send her back."

  I stood back up again and started pacing. Meeting with a label rep? Already? We'd agreed that we'd get back into it, but this soon? "This is good news, mate," Niall said softly as he watched me pace.

  "Jumping ship to a new label already? That seems..."

  "No one is jumping ship," Jules reminded me. "We're just talking to some bird who liked our set. She probably has no idea who we even..." He trailed off as he looked out the door.

  "What?" I asked, skirting around the couch to see who he was staring at. "Who is it?"

  Jules swung the door open wider.

  There were two women on the other side of the door. One had a cloud of flame-red curls on top of her head that reminded me of Jane so much I felt a pang in my heart. But that wasn't why my pulse was suddenly thudding in my ears.

  "It was you guys," the petite brunette in the tight little T-shirt said.

  "Hi again," I said, feeling my stomach dropping right down to my combat boots.

  Jules, who up until this moment had been standing there like a statue, suddenly burst out laughing. "Oi mate!" he sang out, slapping his knee. "That's her! That's the nice girl you got fired!"

  Chapter Five

  Celia

  My heart dropped down to stomach even as the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  His face was comically shocked. I would have laughed if I wasn't so pissed to see him again,

  At least he knew who I was. He remembered, that much was clear. "Celia, right?" Ewan said in an outrush of breath. "Hey I'm sorry about what..."

  "What happened?" I supplied icily, looking over my shoulder to glare at August.

  But she was paying no attention to my humiliation. She had her face buried in her phone, scrolling through somet
hing with widened eyes. I looked back at Ewan, who was standing there with his hands outstretched in mute appeal. "For making Roger fire me?" I finished.

  The corner of his mouth lifted in an apologetic smile. "I dinna actually want anyone fired," he said in a lilting brogue. "Bloody Yanks don't understand the fine art of sarcasm. I'm sorry about that love. Let me buy you a drink."

  "That's not necessary," I said icily. "In fact I was just about to be on my way so..."

  "Twat Yacht!" August suddenly exploded.

  All four of us looked at her as she snapped her head back up from her phone. "I found it!" she said, as if that was any sort of explanation.

  "What did you find, love?" Jules asked, giving her a patronizing smile that I wanted to smack off his face. I wanted to smack all of them. Even shy, polite Niall who was hiding in the background as usual. I felt lied to. Like they all had conspired to force me to fall in love with their music under false pretenses. Like they were all playing some elaborate joke on me. It was crazy, I knew it was crazy but the hot, bilious anger was filling my mouth with the taste of copper pennies and I was ready to either start kicking and screaming or just start running for the nearest exit.

  "Who you are!" August said, brandishing her phone like a weapon. She stalked up and shoved it under Jules' nose.

  "They're Wrecked," I said through gritted teeth.

  "Nah, we're not," Ewan said softly.

  "Twat Yacht," August read from her phone. "The name Jules Spencer and Ewan Boyd from Wrecked used to play under back when they were first starting out."

  "It says that?" Jules asked, grabbing August's wrist and staring at her phone screen.

  "It does."

  "Fucking hell." Jules looked up at Ewan. "I guess that's why all those people showed up."

  "I hate the fucking internet," Niall growled. "I really fucking do."

  "So wait," I clarified. "You guys booked tonight under an old name?"

  Ewan shrugged and smiled that half-apologetic grin again. He had a dimple I'd never noticed before peeking out of his left cheek. But it was more of a groove than a dimple, following the clean angle of his jaw as he smiled at me while I worked my hardest to stay pissed at him. "We thought it was funny back when we were lads," he explained. "Because they rhyme, yeah? But they're spelled different?"

  "And because one of the words is twat," Jules piped up, cuffing Ewan on the back of the head. "Don't try to sugarcoat it into being all literary and shit."

  "Well yeah, that too."

  "I made them change it," Niall spoke up. "When I joined."

  "To Wrecked?" I asked.

  "Night that Niall showed up there was this big fight at the pub," Jules explained. "We watched some bloke get absolutely wrecked by his mates. Just pummeled into the ground."

  "We thought that's what our music would do," Ewan added with a grin. "Just knock you as flat as that poor drunken sod."

  "But then Killian," Niall said.

  "Fucking Killian," Jules spat. And all three of them fell silent, the air hanging heavy with regret.

  Something inside of my chest loosened a little when I saw how much pain they were in. Killian's arrival in their band was the stuff of rock legend. Apparently they three of them crossed the Atlantic with dreams of making it big in New York. They booked a series of club shows around the city and on the third night they played a place downtown from here. That was the night that Killian Ness jumped onstage and started playing with them, completely unannounced, but that show ended up being a YouTube sensation because a sixteen year old Jane Doe was there in the audience, watching, having run away from her small town to New York City only the night before. It was like three paths converging on the same place. The formerly obscure British trio became a five-piece and their meteoric rise to the top of the charts began.

  "Killian's gone now," I finally piped up. "So, you guys sort of have a second chance."

  Ewan's crestfallen face suddenly lit back up again. His hair was long and dark, falling in curtains around his face, but when he swung it back out of his eyes, I could see how blue they were. "That's what the lads were saying to me earlier," he said. "A second chance."

  Why was my throat suddenly dry? "Yeah," was all I managed to say.

  "So how about that drink?"

  "What?"

  He grinned. "Second chances and all. I fucked things up for you at Crux, I know."

  "No you didn't!" August chirped, interrupting him. I shot her a look but she was already running her mouth. "She's working A&R for Anthem now, which is what she wanted to do anyway."

  "August," I warned.

  "You actually did her a favor getting her out of there," August barreled on. "She was stagnating." She looked at me and widened her eyes. "What? You were! You'd been interning there forever instead of actually getting out there and making your name. I don't know what you're so afraid of, CeCe. You know talent when you see it. You've got an amazing ear for the right sound. That's why you came back here to talk with them in the first place."

  "Thanks, August," I muttered. I could feel all three of the band members staring at me, their expectant gazes boring into my body, waiting for me to open my mouth and say something.

  I swallowed hard, the sudden realization that I'd actually never done this before rendering me speechless. I'd never even seen a label rep in action. Roger had kept me behind his desk, swamped in paperwork and phone calls. The actual legwork of what an A&R rep did was a mystery to me, and yet everyone expected me to be able to just walk in a do it because of who I was. My legacy. The music that ran like blood in my veins. The crushing weight of my famous last name.

  "So what's the word then, CeCe?" Ewan prodded gently. "You're with Anthem now, right?" He looked at Jules and then Niall. "Hard rock always was more of our thing."

  "Tell 'em, C," August said encouragingly. "I'm sure your dad would be thrilled to land Wrecked, version 2.0."

  I snapped my head up to glare at August. Too late she seemed realize her mistake and clapped her hand over her mouth. "Sorry," she squeaked.

  But Niall's sharp brown eyes were already peering at me. "Your dad?" he prompted.

  "Who's your dad, Celia?" Ewan asked.

  I swallowed again. Their keen, expectant expressions were bearing down on me. Now that they knew who I was, that would be all they could see. My father's daughter. Nepotism, a foot in the door. Not my own merits, however small they were. "Nobody," I squeaked, and turned for the door.

  Chapter Six

  Ewan

  "Fuck," I hissed, darting a look towards August.

  "I talk too fucking much," she moaned and started rushing after her friend.

  But that twinge of regret I'd been feeling since the moment I laid eyes on her again made me step in her path. "Can I go?" I asked her. "I'm the reason she lost her job in the first place."

  "You do know she hates your guts, right?" August pointed out.

  "You don't pull your punches, do you love?" Jules muttered.

  "Yeah," I said. "I get that. That's what I'm trying to fix."

  I turned to follow CeCe, unsure as to why it mattered so much to me that she not be angry at me anymore. Her father's position, whoever and whatever he was, meant little to nothing as far as I was concerned. If I wanted to pull strings to revitalize my career, I only had a few calls to make, a few favors to call in. I didn't need her family connections, whatever they were, so it had nothing to do with that and everything to do with....

  What? How brown her eyes were? How good she looked in her faded T-shirt?

  I shook my head and rushed out into the main part of the bar, glancing around at the small clumps of stragglers who still hung around after the show. A few surprised heads turned my way, but the days of getting swarmed by Wrecked fans seemed to be over, because everyone kept their distance, allowing me a clear view of CeCe's shining brown hair swinging over in the corner in some roped off section. She seemed to be ducking around collecting her things, which meant I only had a moment to head her o
ff before she...

  "Hi!" I practically shouted as I moved directly into her path.

  She glared up at me. God, she really was such a tiny thing now that I was standing right in front of her like this. She barely made it up to my chin.

  But she had the stone-faced glare of a woman twice her size. "I'm tired," she informed me icily. "I'd like to go home now."

  "Let me buy you that drink?" I begged. This was more effort than I'd put into a chick in a long time, and she looked almost as surprised as I felt. "I really do owe you one after costing you your job."

  "It's fine," she huffed. "August was right. I needed to get out of there anyway." She tried to sidestep me but I stepped back into her way, and she glared up at me again. "Look, it's fine. Roger barely paid me enough to keep the lights on. I'm making like double that now..."

  "Working for your dad?" I ventured.

  She took a step back. "You know who I am?"

  I shook my head and grinned. "Not a bloody clue other than your name, love."

  She lifted her chin. "You remember my name?"

  "Celia Gilbert," I parroted back instantly. That name had been banging around in my head for the past two weeks.

  "It's not actually Gilbert."

  "What?"

  "My last name?" She gathered her hair up into her fist, lifting it off her neck before letting it fall back down like a waterfall around her shoulders. The movement was so captivating that I almost missed what she said next. "It's not Gilbert. That's my grandmother's last name. That's how Roger knew me."

  "What are you, in the bloody CIA?"

  A small grin curled the corner of her mouth. "Do they even have the CIA in Britain?"

  It was my turn to grin. "MI6 then. Should I call you Bond? Celia Bond?"

  "Silver, actually."

  I paused for a moment. From the look on her face, I could tell that this revelation was one she didn't make lightly and I knew not to react the way I wanted to. Which was to yell "holy fucking shit are you serious?"