Rock All Night

Rock All Night By Olivia Thorne

The Rock Star’s Seduction Part 2

1


Derek Kane.

Hottest guy I’ve ever seen. Not to mention charismatic, smart, and funny to boot.

I met him when I was a college freshman and he was wannabe rock star.

We had a sweet, ill-fated romance that lasted all of two weeks, whereupon I left to go reunite with my boyfriend of three years.

Horrible, horrible mistake.

Over the years, I’ve lain awake thinking about it for more nights than I care to admit.

Should I have stayed? I should have stayed. I should have thrown out all my plans, broken up with Kevin and stayed with Derek, and then everything would have been perfect.

Those sorts of thoughts just naturally drift into What if we met again? What would happen? Could we start again where we left off?

If only we could have a second chance…

But I never contacted him, for good and sufficient reasons. And he never contacted me.

And that was that.

Except I got a second chance.

…sort of.

The wannabe grew up into a bonafide Rock God who refused to talk to the press.

I grew up into a struggling journalist who couldn’t get an article published to save her life.

Then my roommate from college met an editor at Rolling Stone, and the Rube Goldberg machine that is Fate was set into motion. After initially saying ‘no,’ followed by a great deal of agonizing, I agreed to meet Derek and write a story for the magazine.

And so the Rock Star and the Girl From His Past were reunited, and they lived Happily Ever After, right?

Nope.

Not even close.

The story has a happy ending, though not the one you’re expecting.

And the moral of the story is this:

Be careful what you wish for.

Because you might just get it.





2




I had just gotten off a plane in Los Angeles, walked into a luxury hotel called the Dubai, and been told by the concierge that Derek Kane himself had requested – nay, demanded – my immediate presence in the lounge.

And so it was, after four years of never hearing from him, that I stood at his table in the back of a dimly lit bar and stared into the green eyes that had once captivated my heart.

“Kaitlyn,” he said in that sexy, low growl of his. “I’ve been waiting a long, long time for this.”

I slid into the booth and tried to camouflage how nervous I was with a bit of attitude. “You could have picked up a phone if you didn’t want to wait so long.”

He grinned at me.

God, I’d forgotten how beautiful his smile was.

“What, no ‘hi, hello, nice to see you’?” he asked, acting vaguely injured.

“Hi. Hello. Nice to see you,” I said coolly, even though my pulse was racing.

He stretched out his arms along the top of his seat, which made his $300 designer t-shirt strain against his chiseled chest.

Unnnnhhh.

“I’m sensing a little hostility here,” he said good-naturedly.

“Not hostility. Just… guardedness.”

“Guardedness? Against what?”

Against having my heart broken again.

“I don’t know,” I fibbed, and searched for a better lie. “You’re not real fond of journalists.”

“Other journalists. I’m very fond of you.”

My heart fluttered the tiniest bit, but I kept my outward cool.

I think.

“Hence the guardedness,” I said.

He leaned forward. Besides noticing that his arms looked even bigger and more muscular than the last time I’d seen them (double unnnhhh), I could smell the alcohol on his breath.

Bourbon.

I imagined it was the good stuff.

“What exactly do you think is going to happen here?” he asked.

You’re going to try to seduce me. And finally put a notch on the bedpost in that one blank spot that’s been annoying you for years.

“I’m going to do an interview. Then I’m going to write an article. It’s going to get published.” Hopefully. “Why, what do you think is going to happen?”

His eyes searched mine. “I was hoping we might be able to talk.”

“That’s typically what people do in interviews.”

“No – I mean, talk.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“How about why you’re being like this?”

I stared into his eyes. He seemed genuinely puzzled. “Do you really have to ask that question?”

“Yeah, I really do – because I have no idea why you’re doing the whole ice queen thing. You weren’t this cold four years ago, not even when we met the first time.”

I paused for a long, long time, thinking about my next move.

We were talking around the elephant in the room: our last few moments together, outside that Krispy Kreme doughnut shop on Highway 78.

Specifically, the moment where he told me he loved me… I told him I loved him, too… and then I drove away in tears.

But there was another elephant in the room, as well: all the pictures I’d seen on Facebook of gorgeous, half-naked women hanging all over him. And that was before his band blew up. Since then, it was pictures in US and People and TMZ.com of gorgeous, half-naked, famous women hanging all over him.