“Seriously, little sis, that stuff isshit-hot.”
“Yeah,” my brother agreed. “You stick around a while, we’ll make some of that intosongs.”
They stared at me expectantly. All of them. Jesse. Zane. Even Maggie looked up from her laptop, her face lit up in the glow of the screen, a pretty little blip in the dark at the back of the church. The sun had gone down a while ago and she’d lit candles for us; there was a whole mess of them burning all over the stage, sending shadows up the walls and giving the stained glass a moody, almostromanticlook.
And not like I hadn’t noticed the feast she’d brought in for dinner or the wine and cold beer that had been rolled out, or the joints that had been offered my way. Obviously, what Dirty had going on here was the perfect setting for writing their next kickass rock album—and yet they’d been struggling writing it, coming up with only three semi-finished songs in the last several months. So I knew what this little jam session was allabout.
They were trying toseduceme.
Over the years, Dirty had tried about everything to get me to come back and write with them again. Every member of the band had hounded me about it. Not Elle, not as much as the others; she usually just opted to casually probe the subject whenever we saw each other, and let it drop when I brushed it off. But my brother? Dylan? Even Maggie? Relentless. And Zane? Obsessed. Every time we were both in L.A., he’d find out where I was, drag me back to his ubermansion and force me to listen to whatever they’d been working on mostrecently.
Please, Jessa, he’d beg, a big, charming grin on his face—the kind a Viking must’ve worn just before plundering some defenseless village.Don’t make me sing these shitty lyrics Iwrote.
And if I was any other girl—one who hadn’t known him since I was four years old and would always see him as an obnoxious big brother—that grin probably would’ve worked. Because it wasn’t like I wasn’t at all tempted to write with the bandagain.
Farfromit.
Writing with Dirty was the best thing I’d ever done. It was the only thing I’d ever really wantedtodo.
But writing with Dirty meant working with Brody. And I just didn’t know how that couldeverwork.
Consider me deadtoyou.
Well, clearly, he wasn’t dead to me. Because Brody Mason would never be deadtome.
But after the other night, when we’d made out and then he’d stormed out, I really wasn’t sure how much better or worse off we now were than when he’d uttered those five horrible wordstome.
Maybe… one step forward, threestepsback?
But of course, my brother had no idea about anyofthat.
“Let’s do this again tomorrow,” he said when I remained silent. It wasn’t really aquestion.
“Definitely,” Zane agreed. Also not a question. “First, though, we should throw some of those lyrics down on that track we were running through last week. You know the one.” He and my brother exchanged a conspiratorial look. “I smell a tasty hook on that last line Jessa just sang. We’ve gotta twist that shit right into thechorus.”
“Likethis?”
And then my brother was off, fingers flying up and down his fretboard as he ripped into some new song I hadn’t yet heard. When Zane kicked in with the vocals I didn’t know the words. But sure enough, he threw in some of my new lyrics and what started to sound a hell of a lot like a song—a catchy, edgy Dirty song—took shape. It started out kind of dirty-bluesy… then Zane laid my words into the much heavier, raunchier chorus, indulging himself with a Robert Plant-esque scream that went straight to my girl parts and probably cracked a few sections of stainedglass.
Jesus.
If I just closed my eyes and pretended it wasn’t my family upthere…
Wet panties.Guaranteed.
I kept myeyesopen.
They played it again from the top, and again, until Jude slipped into the back of the church to listen and Maggie rose from her seat to stand next to me and watch; I’d cleared my ass off the stage when the guys started rocking out, because we were now deep in Dirty territory and I didn’t belong upthere.
When they finally finished, there was about a minute of silence as we all stood there, staring at each other. My ears were ringing. Then Zane threw his head back and laughed, his white teeth gleaming in thecandlelight.
“What the hell was that?” Maggiedemanded.
“That,” Zane said into the mic, “was our next single, Maggie May.” Then he did a dramatic mic-drop and jumped down off the stage to tusslemyhair.
Next single…noshit.
Something had just happened on that stage, while Zane belted out my words to Dirty’s music. Something I hadn’t been a part of in far, far too long. I wasn’t blind to it and I wasn’timmune.
