When the plane landed, Flynn loaded us into a car and drove me to my place in Lions Bay, just north of the city. We passed Joanie’s place in downtown Vancouver on the way and dropped her off.

As soon as Flynn dropped me at my house, alone, I opened my laptop and found the email from the post-production supervisor on the documentary series. She’d already sent out today’s dailies.

I carried the laptop upstairs to my bedroom, kicking off my sandals. I curled up on my bed in the dark and clicked the link in the email. It took me to an FTP site, where I could download the video I wanted.

I hadn’t even bothered to bring my other things upstairs; my bags sat in the foyer where Flynn put them. I didn’t get changed or eat anything or even turn on a light.

Beyond the first day of filming on this series, I hadn’t even bothered to watch the dailies.

But I watched Seth’s interview footage now.

He was standing in the shade, his sunglasses pushed up on top of his head. A palm tree swayed in the background. Liv, off-camera, fed him questions, like she’d done with me, and she left no stone unturned.

She asked Seth about his addiction, about his difficult path to recovery, about his overdose, about both times he’d been fired from Dirty. She asked about the reunion show earlier this year and his audition last week.

Lucky for Liv, Seth was much more forthcoming in his interview than I’d been. And he answered every question the same way he’d answered me when I’d asked.

She also asked him about every member of Dirty.

About Jesse, he said, “Jesse is the best guitarist I’ve ever played with. Anyone can see why the fans love him. He’s the total package.”

About Dylan, he said, “Dylan’s a madman on the drums and as solid as they come.”

And about Zane, he said, “Tell me one thing you dislike about Zane Traynor and I’ll tell you five things to love about him.”

To which Liv said, “Some would say he’s a womanizer.”

And Seth replied, “Yeah. Well, he’s also fucking brilliant. He’s sharp as a fucking razor, passionate, totally committed, and no one will make you laugh harder when you’re having a shitty day. And I’ll tell you something else people don’t give him credit for. He’s got vision, and he goes after that vision like a tornado.”

“That’s seven things,” Liv said.

“Seven true things. Zane’s got a reputation, right? For being a cocky asshole. Maybe that reputation is deserved. But not many people really know Zane. There’s a lot more there than meets the eye. If it weren’t for Zane, Dirty wouldn’t be the band they are today. They might never have gotten off the ground. They’d probably have ended up just another garage band that became just another bar band playing endless cover songs to fifty people a night.”

Well.

Jesse was not gonna love that. Not sure I did either.

Yet I respected Seth for saying it. Whether it was strictly true or not, it was his opinion, clearly, and he was standing by it.

“What about Elle?” Liv asked.

“Elle is the best bassist I’ve ever played with, by miles,” was his answer.

“How so?”

“Well, a lot of bass players end up picking up the bass by default. They start out as guitarists, but migrate to bass because the band needs a bassist. And they never really bring anything sensational to their instrument. They’re just laying down that bass line, and if you’re not even conscious of hearing them in the song, they’ve pretty much done their job. But then there’s that rarer breed of musician who was just born to play the bass. Elle is one of those. She just feels it, you know? She brings the funk to Dirty in a big way. If not for her, they’d just be another group of white guys rocking out. And who needs that, right?”

Liv actually laughed in the background. “Can I play that back for them?”

Seth smiled a little and shrugged. “Do what you’ve gotta do.”

“Okay,” she said. “Now tell us something we don’t know about Elle.”

Seth went silent. He looked off, maybe trying to think of something. Maybe choosing his words. I noticed, though, he didn’t hesitate this long to sum up the other band members.

Finally, he said, “Elle’s got this thing about her. It’s like two sides of a coin. Hot and cold. Strength and vulnerability. It’s always been there. Makes you want to protect her, and at the same time, set her loose, see what she can do. She probably has the most untapped potential of anyone in the band. She’s the most diverse. That’s why her solo album was such a success. Why she’s able to dip her finger into so many pies and find success, again and again. No matter what happens with Dirty, you’ll be seeing a lot of Elle in years to come. She’s got staying power and the ability to grow and evolve.”

“And what about that hot-cold thing?” Liv asked. “I’ve heard people say that about her before. Can you elaborate?”

“It’s like I said, it’s two sides of the same coin. Or maybe it’s a double-edged sword. It’s that thing that makes her hard to know. That thing that makes guys want her and girls want to be like her. She’s fierce, and she’s fragile. She’s real. You sit her down in an interview and ask her a bunch of prefab questions, you’re not gonna get the real Elle. But put her onstage and you’ll see her pouring out everything she’s got through the music, she’s sweating, breaking down in tears, and that’s just her. That’s where you’ll find her, at that intersection between the real person and the rock star. But how do you touch that? It scares some people, I think. She’s kinda like Zane that way, I guess. The two of them are kinda larger than life. They’re hyper-real. If you really want to know them, you gotta be fearless. I don’t think many people are that fearless.”

“And how about the other guys?” Liv asked. “Would you describe them like that? ‘Larger than life’?”

“Not exactly. Jesse’s a star. No doubt about that. But you can get to know him. As long as you can get him to sit still long enough. And Dylan you can get to know, if you can keep his attention long enough.”

“And how about you?”

Seth shook his head, and in that moment, I could feel that the interview was over. It was the last question he was going to answer for Liv. “Me?” he said. “I’m just a regular guy, who likes to play guitar. That’s all I’ve got, Liv. I’ve got a plane to catch.”

The video ended.

I played it again, from start to finish. Then I played it again.

I listened, carefully, to everything Seth said about himself, about the band, and about me. And with every word he said, with every new thing I learned about Seth, I liked him more.

He intrigued me. And it worried me that he intrigued me so much.

But it did not freak me out as much as it should.

I wasn’t sure what to think. What to do. I did not know what this was… This strange flow of feelings beginning to build in me. This growing thing.

It was more than mere sexual attraction, though.

A curiosity?

An infatuation?

I did not know what I was getting into. But the fact was, I’d followed him here. I’d flown to Vancouver for one reason only: because I knew Seth was here.

And yet, I didn’t call him. I didn’t reach out.

I did not yet know if I would.

Frankly, I was scared. I was scared of looking into the eyes of a man who seemed to understand me so well, and who had the courage to say so, in front of the world… no matter how it might come back to hurt him.

* * *

The next day, midway through the afternoon, my drummer showed up at my house. On a boat.

He pulled up to the dock at my neighbor’s place, which I knew because she called me all in a fluster to tell me. After working his charms and getting her permission to moor there, he came on up to see me.

“Good timing,” I told him as I let him in. “Just got back from a meeting with my publicist.”

“Cool.” Dylan swept me up into a hug with his long, strong drummer’s arms. I nestled into the warmth of his T-shirt, his solid chest, and I felt… a little better. Like things were going to be okay.

Maybe.

Since we were teenagers and played in our first band together—just before Brody recruited the two of us to join Zane and Jesse’s band, and we formed Dirty—Dylan had been one of my very best friends. I was closer to him than anyone else in the band. Even Jesse.

When he released me, he looked me over and I felt weirdly exposed, like he could see everything I’d been thinking these past few days. Like he could tell I’d been lusting after Seth Brothers.

He narrowed his eyes at me a little. “You don’t look like someone who just got back from Hawaii.”

“To be honest, I don’t feel like one.”

He trailed me through the house as we headed out to the back deck. The back of the house looked west, over the waters of Howe Sound, the blue-gray humps of Gambier and Bowen Island in the distance—which was the main reason I’d bought this place. I could never get tired of that view. Gazing out at the water had a settling, resetting affect on me, at once inspiring and therapeutic… much like music did.

Dylan had brought beers and stashed them in the fridge, bringing two bottles outside for us. He popped them open and handed one to me as we sank into a couple of my lounge chairs. He’d stripped off his shirt and kicked off his shoes along the way, and now wore nothing but his shorts. They were jean shorts; ragged, faded cut-offs that ended halfway down his muscular thighs, splattered with paint and streaked with sawdust.

I smirked. “What’s with the never nudes?” It was a term we’d appropriated from the TV show Arrested Development, where one of the characters wore cut-offs at all times because he had a fear of being nude.

“Huh?” He followed my gaze to his cut-offs. “Oh. Been working on the cabin with Ash.”

“Uh-huh.” I happened to know that the “cabin” was a veritable mansion on one of the Gulf Islands, just off the coast. Dylan had bought it recently. “Renovating?”

“Converting half of the garage into a man-cave for Ash.”

Well, that explained the paint and sawdust. “Je-sus,” I joked, “are you two gonna get married, or what?”

“Maybe.” He swigged his beer and looked at me. “You cut him loose, huh?”

I rolled my eyes. “He wasn’t mine to cut, Dylan.”

“Right.”

“He still over there?”

“Yeah.” Dylan looked out over the water in the general direction of his “cabin,” though the island couldn’t be seen from here. It was close, but too far south. “He’s drowning his sorrows in hard labor.”

God. I did not want to think about Ash’s sorrows. But at the same time, I cared. I didn’t want him experiencing any sorrow whatsoever over me.

I knew I’d have to talk to him about it. Soon. I’d been the one who insisted we were only friends. Which meant a friend was what I’d have to be. Though part of me thought he was being a little ridiculous, making more out of this than there ever was.

I didn’t say all that to Dylan. Dylan had a special relationship with Ash, like a brother bond that went even deeper than what he had with Jesse and Zane. He’d be protective of Ash, and I had no idea what Ash had told him about “us.”

I really didn’t want to get into it with him, either.

I just watched him for a minute, stretched out on my lounge chair. His ruddy, slightly tanned skin. For a redhead, he tanned decently. His hair was dark auburn, but glinted all kinds of copper and red and gold in the sun. It flopped over his forehead in waves and curled around his ears. He had a straight nose and high, fashion-model cheekbones, a slight divot in his chin, and an underwear model’s body—literally.

When we’d met, Dylan Cope had been a cute but gawky teenager, all flailing limbs, wailing on his drum kit. Somewhere over the years he’d grown into a total stud of a man. Women melted into puddles of giggling gush in his wake. And even I didn’t mind occasionally checking him out.

I’d tried hooking him up with pretty much every available female I knew over the years. Sometimes with success, sometimes not. But even though Dylan was a total babe, I’d never felt even a twinge of What if…? the way I had with Jesse. I’d never once thought about hooking him up with me.

It was a personality thing. Dylan and I were nowhere near couple material, and we both knew it. Maybe it was my hot and cold personality. As a bandmate, he’d never been bothered by it. It just kinda rolled off his easygoing nature.

But as a couple? Disaster.

The truth was, Dylan was just too laid-back for me.

Usually.

He could, however, be coy, calculating, and far too aware of his own charms. Like right now. I knew he wanted the goods on Seth and Hawaii. But he wasn’t outright asking.

As we had beers over the water, he just kept saying things like, How was Woo’s place? and You look like you got some sun… and Met anyone lately?

“Are you ever just gonna come out and ask?” I asked him after my second beer.

“Ask what?”

“Dylan. Don’t be an idiot.”

“What?”

“Just ask me about Seth or whatever, so we can get past it.”

“Okay,” he said. “Tell me about Seth.”

“Tell you what?”

“Why’d you take him to Hawaii?”

“To talk to him. We already went over this.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Everything.”

“You guys are cool now?”

“I’m not sure we were ever uncool… but yes. We’re cool.”

He nodded. “Cool. You know you shouldn’t have done that, though.”

“Done what?”

“Take him with you.”

“Why the hell not?”

He sighed, looking exasperated. “Because it’s just causing more shit with the band, Elle.”

“I didn’t cause shit,” I said. “I did what I did. If the guys have their panties in a knot about it, that’s their fucking problem.”

His eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything. It was enough to make me feel shitty.

Really shitty.

“Do not give me shit, Dylan. Do I ever give you shit about where you go, or with whom you go, or what you do on your time off?”

“Nope.”

“Right. So shut it. You want another beer?”

“Yup.”

And it pretty much went on like that for the rest of the day.

He brought it up, every once in a while, pointing out that we now had the fallout of this shit storm to deal with, but offering no suggestions on how to deal with it. Finally I asked him, “So what do you want me to do about it now? I can’t turn back time.”

And he said, “Maybe we should talk to Brody.”

That was his answer for everything.

Let’s talk to Brody.

Brody will have the answer.

Usually, he did. But on this one, I was hardly gonna defer to Brody.

“Let’s just do the rest of the fucking auditions,” I said, “and let the bullshit with Seth drop.”

“Fine with me,” he said. But after a minute he added, “Don’t think Jesse’s gonna let it drop, though.”

“Jesse can bite me,” I said, and Dylan finally shut up.

By now, I was pissed right off. I knew Dylan meant well. He was just concerned. Trying to do his part. Thinking that coming over to talk to me over beers before the next round of auditions would help.

It didn’t.

It just made me feel more defensive of what I’d done, and more defensive of Seth. This was Dylan; he was gonna be the easiest on me, and it was already feeling hard. If he was having this much of a problem with what I’d done, what the hell was Jesse gonna say? Brody?

But I couldn’t exactly start defending Seth to the guys without setting off warning bells—and another shit storm.

By the time Dylan left, I knew, by how defensive I felt of Seth, that I had to see him again. There was so much left undone there, and unsaid.

It took mere seconds from the time Dylan sped off in his boat for me to get Joanie on the phone.

“I’m gonna text you an address,” I told her. “I need you to send a car there, to pick up Seth Brothers.”