Hard as Rock (The Rock Star's Seduction 3)

“Thank you.”

Ryan grimaced. “I’m sorry about back there. If I’d known that would happen, I would never have taken you.”

I wondered: if I’d known Derek would act like that and say those things, would I have still gone?

It was like an electric jolt when the answer hit me:

No. I’m through with him being a dick to me.

With that, I finally got a hold of myself. Derek had proven himself to be an absolute asshole; he didn’t deserve a single

one

of my tears.

“Why is he

like

that?!” I wondered aloud, my nose stuffy, my voice thick from crying.

Ryan thought about it for a second, then said, “I think he basically sees it as him against the world. And if you’re not for him, then you’re against him.”

“But we’re

not

against him! You’re the best friend he has!”

“Yeah, well… he doesn’t appear to see it that way at the moment.”

“Was he always like this?”

“Yeah… pretty much. Although I’ve never been on the receiving end like this before.”

“He’s been mad at you before?”

“Of course. We fight, we get pissed off at each other, it blows over. We’re best friends, it comes with the territory.” Ryan paused, then sighed. “

…were

best friends.”

My stomach turned when he said that. “You think… this is the end?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

I sat there in silence, remembering what Riley had said:

But if Derek finds out, that’s IT. That’s the end of the fuckin’ band. You know that, right?

“Is the band going to break up over this?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about it, so… maybe. Maybe not.”

Ryan sounded so…

philosophical

about it.

I stared at him. “You don’t sound too alarmed.”

He smiled as he stared out at the road. “I love being in Bigger. I love Riley… I guess you could say I love Killian; I definitely love playing with him. I even love Derek, as big a prick as he’s being right now. But being in a famous band can wear you down. The touring, the lack of privacy, the pressure… not to mention a lead singer who thinks the world revolves around him.”

I laughed when he said that. I couldn’t help myself.

“If we broke up,” Ryan continued, “it wouldn’t exactly be the worst thing in the world.”

My mouth dropped open. “You would

quit?!”

“Yeah… probably.”

This was beyond comprehension. “You’d quit playing

music?!”

“What?! No, of course not – I’d quit

Bigger

. I’d never quit

music.

I’d just do my own thing, that’s all. Like the Beatles becoming a studio-only band. That’s what I’d probably do – cut out the touring altogether. Just record. Do my own thing. And I know I could get Riley and Killian to help me out, no question.”

“But… you just talked about the Beatles. When they broke up, people would have given anything for them just to record one more album. Don’t you feel like you’d be cheating all your fans if you broke up now?”

He cocked his head to the side and considered that for a few seconds.

“That’s a pretty good argument. And as somebody who wishes there was another Beatles album… and that Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain had never died… and that John Bonham’s death hadn’t broken up Led Zeppelin… yeah, I can see what you’re saying. And if you’d asked me three years ago, I might have agreed with you. But now I see it from the perspective of the bands who broke up. After a certain point, it’s better just to walk away than beat a dead horse.”

“This horse isn’t dead,” I pointed out. “Not yet.”

“Well, then, better to walk away than to beat it to death.”

I sat there and thought about that. I couldn’t believe that the band might actually break up… and over

me.

That was fucked up.

Not to mention I was going to have to go into hiding from all the Bigger fans who would want to see me dead.

Then I thought about it some more, and realized that if the band broke up, it wasn’t going to be over

me,

but over something even stupider: Derek thinking that Ryan and I were lying.

“Why didn’t he believe us when we said there’s nothing going on?”

Ryan was silent for a moment. Then…

“Because he knows how I feel about you. And he knows that if our situations were reversed, he’d lie, cheat, and steal to get you.”

I knew I should feel uncomfortable about the conversation. Ryan was basically laying out his feelings for me – putting all his cards on the table yet again.

But the scene in the jail had broken Derek’s spell over me. It had shown me how much I had wasted my emotions on someone completely unworthy of them.

But Ryan…

…Ryan was different.