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

He relaxed – I guess because he thought that was my primary concern. “Whatever’s going to happen, better it happen now and we get rid of the uncertainty.”

Actually, I could have lived a few more days in uncertainty as long as I didn’t have to deal with

this.

Ryan walked over and put his arm around me. “You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to.”

But I

did

have to be here.

I couldn’t walk away.

I had to face the music.

I had to face

him.

I heard the sound of the front door opening and almost threw up.

“Here we go,” Ryan said. He stepped just far enough away from me to maintain propriety, but stayed close enough to present a united front.

Then Derek walked into the room.

He looked the same – in fact, he looked better. Same exquisitely handsome face, but without the alcoholic puffiness from his TMZ pictures. His emerald-green eyes were clear, and the dark circles underneath them were gone. His skin was tanned and radiant. He looked like he had put back on weight since his gaunt appearance that night in South Dakota.

In short, he looked healthy and vibrant.

And oh my god so hot.

My heart skipped about three beats as his eyes found mine – but he didn’t betray any emotion at all. His face was entirely blank as he walked up right in front of me, his gaze never leaving mine.

My mouth was dry, my throat constricted. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t look away – all I could do was stand there and wait for what I knew was coming: the screaming. The yelling. The insults. The rage.

Ryan tensed up next to me. I could feel him ready to leap between us, to take his best friend down.

But Derek surprised us both.

He held out his arms, moved in close, and hugged me.

I stood there stiffly, too surprised to react.

Then he pulled away and looked me in the eyes. His expression had gone from neutral to sorrowful.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for everything I did to you. I’m sorry for every time I hurt you. I know that my saying that will never be enough… but I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive me.”

I just stared at him, my lip quivering.

I wanted to cry.

Derek turned to Ryan. His face darkened the tiniest bit, but he still stuck out his hand in an offering of peace.

Ryan looked down in shock, like Derek had offered him a handful of diamonds or some bizarre alien artifact.

Then, slowly, he put out his own hand and shook Derek’s.

76

We eventually wound up on the back patio, with Ryan grilling up burgers for all of us.

Derek stood around drinking a bottle of sparkling water. He seemed calm, collected, almost zen. He cracked jokes, smiled, told stories about rehab – like how he had tried to escape five times in the first three days.

“I didn’t adjust so well at first,” he grinned.

However, Miles had posted rotating shifts of roadies surrounding the walls of the property. Every time Derek got out, a big, burly dude had chased him down, tackled him to the ground, sat on him, and then called his fellow guards to help carry Derek back inside, kicking and screaming.

“The first time it was Otto – remember Otto, with the beard?” Derek asked Ryan. “He sat on me and I was screaming, and the whole time he was shouting, ‘I’m sorry, man! I’m sorry! Miles is making me, dude! Don’t hate me, bro!’”

He went on to talk about long hours of therapy, and even longer hours of solitary soul-searching. About how he realized that he was always lashing out at the world because he felt like his father had abandoned him. How he hated authority figures because his own father had left him, so what the fuck did a teacher or a cop have to say to him?

He told us he was working the 12 Steps, and that he had a lot of amends to make. He apologized several times, and each time Ryan and I murmured

It’s okay

.

I just stared at him the entire time. Or rather tried

not

to stare at him. He was so different from how I had seen him over the last six weeks of the tour. He was relaxed, good-natured, at ease in his own skin. He would say something the slightest bit cocky, then would turn around and tell a self-deprecating story from rehab. Like how – with Miles’s blessing – the rehab center punished him for all his escape attempts by making him scrub toilets. Which Derek thoroughly, violently refused to do. So when he wasn’t in therapy sessions, he spent days four through seven locked in a bathroom with a toilet scrubber, sleeping on the tile floor with a roll of toilet paper for a pillow.

“Then I figured out I was being an asshole, so I just cleaned the fuckin’ toilet and they let me out,” he laughed.

I had worried that I would see a ghost, an empty shell. Instead what I got was all of his positive qualities with none of the rage, none of the narcissism, none of the selfishness, none of the assholish sense of entitlement.

In short, he reminded me of the Derek I had fallen in love with four years ago when I was a freshman in college.

It was something I really struggled with. Especially considering Ryan was right there, just ten feet away.

I loved Ryan; I did. He was absolutely wonderful. Sweet, kind, gentle, caring, supportive.

But all my feelings for Derek – the ones I thought I had buried with my tears and pain – were poking their way back up through the soil, like green shoots from the charred remains of a forest fire.

I almost wished he was still an asshole, because then I could have continued to hate him.

But he wasn’t. And my emotions were threatening to overwhelm me.

Luckily, I’m pretty good at hiding them.