Like it might have been a little fucked-up on its own that she was an eighteen-year-old virgin who looked like she did. I still couldn’t quite understand how that was possible.
But what was really fucked-up was what it was doing to my head.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Abouther.
I. Couldn’t. Stop.
Even though I knew I couldn’t have her. Because I knew, just like her brother knew—and had fucking inferred when he told me to leave her alone—I wasn’t good for her. Worse; I was bad for her.
Definitely wasn’t good enough to be her first.
Then who is?
Yeah. Great fucking question.
The obvious answer wasno one… But if Courteney Clarke was looking to lose her virginity, it wouldn’t exactly take her long to find someone who’d be more than willing to help her out with that.
And every time I thought aboutthat…
I just fucking couldn’t. I couldn’t think about that at all.
Every time my thoughts wandered in that direction, my teeth fucking vibrated and I started walking into shit. Like I couldn’t even see what was in front of me, I was so fucking consumed with all this shit in my head.
Courteney shit.
If she was gonna be anybody’s, she was gonna be mine.
Only slight problem with that—she couldn’t be mine.
So there I was, on a plane with Dean. He was heading over to Spain, kinda spur-of-the-moment, to meet up with some chick he’d hooked up with on tour. He’d decided to stop off in Portugal on the way, for a concert. Dirty was playing there.
He said he’d spring for first class tickets, and invited me to come with him—along with his bodyguard, and Lucas, of course.
So why the fuck not?
I’d never been to Portugal anyway.
It was just over twelve hours from Vancouver to Lisbon, via a two-hour stopover at Newark airport, and as it turned out, I really didn’t see much of Portugal. By the time we arrived at Newark we were nicely drunk, and proceeded to get more drunk in the airport lounge. Then we passed out and slept crossing the Atlantic.
When we touched down in Lisbon and got our asses in the limo Dirty’s management had sent for us, we were fresh as week-old daises—and promptly resumed drinking.
By the time we rolled into Dirty’s hotel, we were drunk again. We had pre-show drinks in the hotel bar with everyone we could round up, which turned out to be Zane Traynor’s wife, Maggie, Dylan Cope’s girlfriend, Amber, and Dylan’s bodyguard, Connor, who’d been hanging with Amber while she did a photo tour of the area that afternoon. I’d been friends with Dylan, Dirty’s drummer, for years, so I didn’t mind getting to know his girlfriend a little better. She was a photographer, she was cute—and I made sure to send him some drunken selfies with my arm around her and a dirty smirk on my face.
He sent me back a selfie of his middle finger.
The band and crew were at soundcheck, and then Dirty was doing some pre-show interview; so Maggie said. While they worked, we drank. Then we all piled back into the limo, and by the time we rolled in backstage at the venue, we were wasted.
At least, Dean and I were wasted. Like epically wasted. I hadn’t been that wasted in a long time.
The girls were drunk too, for sure.
The security guys were respectably responsible and sober, since they were looking out for our drunk asses—even though Dean and I had tried like hell to get them onboard the vodka train with us.
We met up with Dirty backstage, just before show time. As soon as Maggie went over to her husband and hugged him, Zane put his arm around her. He took a good look at her, then threw me a look. “You got my wife drunk?”
“She sent a limo to pick us up. Least I could do.”
