Page 4 of Oops Baby for the Rockstar (Oops Baby #2)

Three

Jett

P resent day

“He’s moping again.”

Danny flicks the back of my head as he walks past my chair, leading the others into our dressing room. This venue is fancier than the others we’ve been to lately—a big old theater instead of the usual sports stadiums—and in front of each little personal area is a mirror surrounded by lit up bulbs.

I avoid my own reflection, chair turned away and tipped back on two legs, my boots propped on the dressing table. A guitar is nestled in my lap, not plugged in but humming away as I pick at it.

“Who’s moping? I’m not moping.”

It’s a lie and we all know it.

Rocco and Zeke trail inside after Danny, kicking the door shut behind them, blocking out the roar of the crowd waiting for us out there. Baying for our sweat. It may be a fancy old theater, but our fans are still the same—wild and wanting a good time.

A pair of toffee brown eyes drift across my mind, fringed with dark lashes. Soulful eyes. The kind of eyes you look into once and remember every day for the rest of your miserable life.

Now that was a good time. So good it’s ruined me.

“Maybe she’s out there tonight,” Rocco says, dropping like a sack of bricks into his own chair.

Our drummer is never a dainty man, but a good portion of those screaming fans out there are screaming for him.

They like his tattooed arms, his strong chest, his buzz cut, and the mean look in his eye.

If only they all knew he’s the mother hen of this group. “Perk up, man. You’ll find her again.”

A string twangs on the guitar, and I silence it with my palm. I sit forward, irritated. “It’s been three fucking months.”

Danny snorts from where he’s picking over a punch bowl of chocolate bars. “Three months of no fucking, more like. Now stop torturing my guitar.”

Jaw clenched, I swipe the nearest thing to hand—a box of Kleenex—and fling it at his head. Danny grins as it bounces off his forehead, way too light to do any damage.

“You want candy?” he asks.

My head drops back, the chair creaking dangerously beneath me as it teeters on two legs. “No.”

No, I do not want candy. I don’t even want to play this goddamn gig, even though a cross country tour with Wishbone was the big dream of my life for so long. The only thing I want is her .

Tamsin.

The girl with the VIP pass, all those months ago.

The girl who lit up the room with her wicked smile, and teased me in that raspy voice, and let me take her back to my hotel suite… then slipped away before dawn.

I mean, who does that? She didn’t even rob me. My wallet was out, ready for the taking, and Tamsin didn’t even take cash for a cab. She just snuck out while I was crashed out on the bed and probably snoring like an asshole, then disappeared like a wisp of smoke. Like a dream.

If the guys hadn’t met her too, all saying hi and shaking her hand in that VIP area, I’d think she was a hallucination. Even now, on my lowest nights, I’m not one hundred percent sure I didn’t drink something I shouldn’t and imagine the whole thing.

But if it was all in my head, surely I wouldn’t feel this ache for her. This constant physical ache in my chest, like I’ve been hollowed out and left empty.

Where is she? Why didn’t she say goodbye?

“Fancy,” Zeke says, swinging a chair around and straddling it back-to-front beside a lit up mirror. He pulls a kissy face at the glass, batting his eyelashes. “I could get used to this. An actual dressing room instead of an old locker room. Doesn’t even smell like socks.”

Rocco snorts. “ Yet. After a night of you assholes sweating up onstage, it’ll reek as bad as anywhere else.”

Danny says something in reply, but I’m not listening. I’ve tuned them out, suspended on two chair legs, lost in memories from three months ago. In vivid thoughts of silky dark hair, plump lips, soft skin. A sweet, raspy voice and the way it cracked when she cried out as she came.

Tamsin.

My heart thuds in my chest, but it’s a dried out husk these days. Weak and woeful.

“Jett,” Danny says, like he’s repeating my name for the third or fourth time. A candy bar bounces off my chest, and my chair slams back down onto four legs.

I glare in his direction. “What?”

“I said , we’re gonna get you laid tonight. No more moping after some random girl. You need to get her out of your system, man, and it’s not like there aren’t enough beautiful women nipping at your heels.”

“No.” My gut lurches at the thought.

“It’s happening,” Zeke agrees.

“Yeah, I’m sick of those hangdog eyes,” Rocco puts in. “It’s like that girl chained you out in the rain, instead of screwing you all night long and then leaving before you had to kick her out.”

“I wouldn’t have kicked her out. That’s the whole fucking point.”

“She did you a favor, man.” Danny tears a candy bar open and takes a giant bite, then speaks through a mouthful of chocolate and nuts.

“Girls don’t want to date a rock star. They want one wild night to brag to their friends about, and then they wanna go and settle down with some sensible accountant. Do the picket fence thing.”

Is that true? Well, I could do the picket fence thing. It’s never crossed my mind as something to want before, but if Tamsin wanted that, I’d give it to her.

“I’m not screwing some groupie.”

Zeke scoffs, still pulling faces at the mirror, and Rocco rumbles with laughter. “We’ll see.”

Yeah, we will. Setting the guitar down on the dressing table, I swallow down the sourness building in my throat and snatch a bottle of water instead. Drinking gives me an excuse not to speak.

You know, the four of us used to be closer than brothers, but the other guys just don’t get it. It doesn’t compute for them.

But I’m deadly serious. I won’t lay a finger on any woman except Tamsin.

* * *

The after party is in the theater’s loading bay, with almost the whole back wall of the building opened up to the night sky.

This is where the trucks will load up tomorrow night after the gig, before we set off on the road once more, but tonight, the docks are empty and partiers spill out to dance beneath the stars.

Everyone is wild and primal, grinding on each other and knocking back drink after drink.

Rocco has stripped to the waist, and he’s got a pretty young thing perched on his back, pretending to ride him like a jockey.

Zeke’s got two girls pressed up against the back wall of the theater, alternating between kissing each one, and Danny’s holding court in the center of the party, standing on top of a huge crate of beer to dance above his admirers.

Me?

I’ve done three laps of this party already, checking the face of every guest. Even the girls who are making out with other people—it made acid eat at my belly, but I checked them all too.

Tamsin isn’t here.

Now every step feels like a huge effort.

Gusting out a sigh, I trudge out to the loading bay and sit down on the cement, legs dangling where the trucks normally drive up.

The stars glitter high above, and the moon is bright and full.

It’s warm in this city, the air balmy even late at night, and a nearby row of palm trees are silhouetted against the sky.

Music throbs behind me. Screams of laughter echo, and there’s the sound of shattering glass. Tipping my bottle back, I sip my beer and stare blindly across the empty loading bays, lost in memories from three months ago.

Her husky laugh.

The eager way she tore my leather vest off, then licked me from navel to collarbone.

The way she curled into me in her sleep, burrowing close.

A flash of movement catches my eye somewhere far across the loading bay, out where our half empty equipment trucks and the crew bus are parked up on a sea of concrete.

A small figure wanders away from the parked vehicles, head ducked, shoulders rounded.

They’re too far away to see any details in this gloom, too far to see anything, really, and yet my heart jolts to life in my chest.

I sit up straighter, squinting into the darkness. My grip tightens around my beer bottle. It’s been three months now, with only my memories to go by, but Tamsin was small like that. Delicate.

High above, the moon slips behind a cloud, and the darkness deepens. I blink, and then I can’t see the figure at all.

“Is this seat taken?”

A perky voice makes me jump, and I glance over as a young redhead sits beside me without waiting for an answer. She cuddles up close, her leg pressed against mine, and strokes one hand down my bare arm.

I shudder, leaning away, but she doesn’t get the hint. She laughs, coy and flirty, like we’re playing some little game.

“You looked lonely over here, all on your own. Danny said you need cheering up.”

“Did he?” I shift away a few more inches, putting empty air between our bodies. “Well, Danny needs to wind his neck in.”

The redhead blinks at me and laughs. She still doesn’t get it, but then with her flushed cheeks and dilated pupils, she’s clearly on her own planet anyway. A small palm lands on my thigh and squeezes suggestively.

“I could help you forget all about her.” The redhead leans close, her breath tickling my ear. “Tammy, was it? I could help you forget she ever existed.”

My body moves instinctively, lurching away from her touch. Before the redhead can blink, I’ve jumped down off the loading bay, and I’m striding off into the darkness. I don’t turn around once, not even when she yells, “You don’t have to be such a pussy about it!”

Whatever. I flip her off over my shoulder without turning, even though she probably can’t see in the gloom.

As I march across the concrete, my heart rattles uneasily in my chest, and Christ, I’m suddenly craving a long, hot shower. She barely touched me in the end, and even so, I want to claw my own skin off. Thankfully our hotel isn’t far.

Is this what Tamsin meant to do to me when she kissed me outside that stadium three months ago? Is this what she meant to leave behind when she snuck out of my room before dawn?

A ruined man.

A husk.

Well, if so, she can pat herself on the back for a job well done, because it’s been three months since the night I met Tamsin; three months since the night I loved and lost her. And with each passing day, I’m sicker with wanting her. More desperate to see her again.

And make no mistake: I will see her again.

I have to.

Else I’ll lose my goddamn mind.