Chapter 2

Quentin entered his office once more, splaying the magazine spread atop the mahogany desk. The Morning Stars were still there, with two of them rolling cigarettes and seated in expensive office chairs. Their jeans stunk of alcohol and marijuana, the two most essential things from Quentin’s old, rock star life.

“Great,” Quentin said, his eyes snapping past each of their faces. “I think we have a good interview here.”

“We really need good sales for this new record,” Mark, the lead singer, began. “People don’t buy CDs like they used to, when you were in the business. It’s fucking tough to get by.”

“I’ve seen the sales,” Quentin said, his voice booming. “But you’re making it up in concert tickets, aren’t you? That Brooklyn crowd is probably as hot as ever, these days.”

“These fucking girls, man,” Connor, the guitarist, said. “Dude, you remember, what was it, ten years ago? When we were playing that show in Queens and you were on MDMA? You grabbed that girl in the front row, lifted her onto the stage, and just started making out with her in the middle of the song. You missed the second and third verses, and the chorus. But the band had your back, just improvising until you let her go.”

A mad smile stretched over Quentin’s face in memory. He remembered the stink of that girl, how she’d pressed her lips onto his and lifted her legs around his waist. That had been before so many things had changed in his life. That had been before he’d gotten “serious.”

“That was around when you got that tat. Of your girlfriend at the time, that model from Paris,” Connor said, leaning closer. As he did, Quentin could see how rough the years on the road had been to him, aging him horribly, and causing tight lines to form between his eyebrows. The Morning Stars hadn’t had to give up on the party. They hadn’t had to go home. And they were destroying themselves, becoming assholes in their mid-thirties who still did lines of coke before shows and hooked up with girls in their late teens.

“I still have it, of course,” Quentin said gruffly, lifting his bicep. He swept his suit jacket from his shoulders and rolled up his white button-up, revealing several black inks on his forearm, all the way up to the big-titted woman on his upper bicep. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t remember her name, now.”

“She probably doesn’t have those tits anymore, that’s for sure,” Mark said, laughing. “Good thing you got them inked to you forever. For the memories.”

“For the memories. That’s all I live for now, boys,” Quentin said, tipping back in his chair.

“Right. You’ve got that kid, now,” their drummer, Will, scoffed. “Cute little thing.”

“Yeah. Yeah, she definitely changed my life more than the others. That’s for sure,” Quentin said, snapping out of his reverie. He rolled his sleeve back down and slid his arms into his suit jacket, ready to send the boys home. “Well, thanks for this interview. Sure is nice to see you guys.”

He didn’t sound the least bit sincere, and he knew it. He swept his hand out and shook theirs, making momentary eye contact with each of the men before him. The men of his past; the men who’d picked him up from bathroom floors, coated in cocaine and other, unknown drugs, and plugged him up with alcohol and watched him make drunken mistake after drunken mistake.

“And that little intern we saw out in the main office—“ Connor said then, making deep eye contact with Quentin before snapping his eye in a wink. “Don’t suppose you have big plans for her?”

“Oh. Charlotte?” Quentin said, sounding blasé. “She’s a kid. You saw her.”

“I did,” Connor said, his words filled with meaning. “And I know exactly what the old Quentin would have done with her.”

The Morning Stars left, then, leaving Quentin to brood, with the blinds closing him off from the rest of the office. He sat back in his chair, knocking his feet up onto the desk and pressing the back of a pen against his lips. His mind raced back to an image of Charlotte, bending down to retrieve her notebook. His member pressed against his pant leg, becoming insistent.

God, that ass. The curvature of it, dipping out from beneath her little business dress. Her thin, stick-like legs had been reminiscent of any groupie from his former band days, ones that had wrapped around his waist countless times as he’d fucked them from above—almost never remembering their faces, nor their names. Seeing Charlotte out there had forced him through countless memories, gorgeous ones.

But no. God, no. He wasn’t that person anymore. He’d stopped with the drugs. He’d stopped with the sex addiction. He’d gotten married, briefly, and they’d had his daughter, Morgan, seven years before—when he’d been twenty-nine years old. Sure, he hadn’t been ready to have a kid back then. Half-drugged, out of his mind, he’d blasted into the hospital room to find his large-breasted model wife stretched out on the bed, holding onto that tiny infant. Her eyes had bled red with anger. “You missed the birth of your daughter,” she’d hissed, no longer seeing him as the amazing rock star on stage, the lead singer of Orpheus Arise. In that moment, he was just a small, bruised little man who wasn’t there when his wife and daughter needed him most.

When he’d first held Morgan, he’d decided to change. For good.

But, Jesus, seeing someone like Charlotte forced him to reconsider.

He turned to the office roster on his computer, then, and found her name: Charlotte Barracks, interning in music writing. From western Ohio, near the Indiana border. Majored in writing and music in college, listed her top favorite bands in her résumé, and didn’t include his.

Digging a bit, Quentin typed her name into a search engine, discovering a photograph of her easily on a social media page. That stunning, angelic face peered back at him. She was an absolute knock-out and, best of all, didn’t even know it. She looked as if she’d been born and bred in the very shadows of Ohio cornfields, hidden from the world for over two decades. Naïve. Young. Fresh. Easily destroyed.

Insistent, his cock pulsed up against his pants once more. Slowly, methodically, he reached for his belt and undid it, unzipping his pants and wrapping his hand around his veiny, rock-hard member. He remembered getting naked on stage, over ten years before, and penetrating some raucous groupie in front of the drum kit, as fans watched nearby.

SEX-CRAZED ROCKER had been the headline. He remembered reading it, from this very magazine, before he’d known he’d be any kind of “suit” in an office. Before he knew he’d ever grow up. He’d loved the title, slicing the magazine pages out and hanging them in his shitty, studio apartment in Brooklyn.

As he thought back to these glory days, all the women in his memories transformed into the little Ohioan intern. He yanked his cock from his pants fully, now, and began to ease his palm up and down gruffly, imagining her lips wrapped around the tip. He imagined those bright red lips bobbing up and down, her eyes gazing up at him from between his legs. He would shove his cock deeper between her teeth, watching as she deep-throated him.

Shivering with lust, his eyes turned toward the clock. It was nearly three-fifteen in the afternoon. His phone began to blare with the alarm he set, always certain he’d be too caught up in writing to remember. Shocked, he dropped his cock, slipping it back into his pants and re-zipping, re-buttoning, re-clasping.

He had to pick up Morgan from piano lessons. It was his day. It was his turn.

Shaking his head gruffly, he stood, tapping his muscled ass to ensure he had his wallet and keys. He sent a brief email to Maggie, that poor, rough-looking thing, who—yes—he’d fucked ten years ago. She was a stunning writer, a real asset to his team at MMM. But she always brought up the issue of them once copulating, never considering that he’d been too addled on mushrooms at the time to know if she was an actual woman or just a figment of his unending imagination.

Had to pick up Morgan, he typed furiously for Maggie, already running a bit late. I’ll be back tomorrow morning, early, to approve the rest of the magazine spreads. Good luck with the interns. I know they drive you wild. He tapped send swiftly and forced his laptop closed, bolting for the door. He avoided Maggie’s glance before escaping to the elevator. He couldn’t afford the time she required, half-casually flirting with him.

The tension and jealousy she created was sometimes an assault to his office frame of mind. He certainly didn’t want to give her any cues that it could happen again, although he knew she wanted that. He could feel the simmer in her glances, sense the way she shoved her breasts upward when they spoke.

By the time he reached the sidewalk in front of the Manhattan office building, his brain was diluting itself from the hard day at the office, even allowing him a slight reprieve from thoughts of that hot intern, Charlotte. He was transitioning, now. For the next few hours, he would be a father. And damn, he’d be a good one.