Page 66 of Dirty Like Seth
There was Ritchie, therestaurateur.
There was Martin, the techconsultant.
There was John, the investor and philanthropist, who’d proposed to me. I’d turned himdown.
And then… there was Jesse Mayes. The bad boy rock star who, for some reason, had become a fantasy that I could not shake. Somewhere toward the end of my relationship with John, the idea of Jesse and I getting together had taken hold, and I could not let it go until I made himmine.
And make him mine Idid.
I went after him with the force of a smallhurricane.
Then, predictably—or at least, it was predictable to everyone but me—Jesse broke my heart, as bad boysdo.
After that, I spent a year in dating limbo, afraid to open myself up to anyone, to even let anyone get near enough to ask me on a date, much less touch me… And then, at Jesse’s wedding, I ended up fucking the baddest bad boy rock star I knew. The man who arguably surpassed Zane for male slut of the year—which was saying a whole fucking hell of alot.
Ashley Player was so not the man for me, and yet I’d fucked my way right over the line withhim.
And now, I was actually thinking about doing it again… withSeth.
No. Not true. I wasn’t thinking about doingit.
I wasachingto doit.
I’d already broken my promise to myself with Ash, yes. Not only had I sworn myself off of rock stars, I’d very specifically sworn myself off of anyone like Jesse Mayes. Gorgeous. Famous. Tall, dark and egotistical. That was the recipe for heartbreak. Guitarists, specifically, were to be avoided at all costs. More specifically, if he played guitar and sang—double threat—I was to turn my ass around and run for the fuckinghills.
Ash fit every one of those criteria, but Ash was just for sexy fun times. That’s how I justified it, to make it somehow okay that I’d broken my promise tomyself.
And now…Seth.
Seth fit every one of those criteria,too.
But I never saw itcoming.
He was gorgeous, yes. Beautiful; I’d go so far as to say Seth was a beautiful man. Sexy, definitely. Famous, too, in his own way. He was tall, and now, with his sun-lightened locks cut off, he was even dark-ish. Except Seth didn’t have the inflated ego of my last two lovers. He definitely had an ego when it came to his talent; a justifiable one. He had confidence and charisma. He had a certainty about himself, a solidness. There was something incredibly attractive about that ego, and not in the way that Jesse’swas.
Jesse was flashy and devastating. A woman could feel it across a room—Jesse Mayes was aheartbreaker.
And Ash… Ash was exactly what his name told you he was. Ashley Player was aplayer.
Seth… I really couldn’tsay.
Seth was still amystery.
Yet I could not even pretend to myself that somewhere along the way screwing super-hot rock stars hadn’t become a hot spot for me. Like some nasty addiction I couldn’t shake or deny; I knew it was bad for me. Dangerous. That it would only do meharm.
And yet… it was like I suddenly understood what all the fangirls were always losing their shitabout.
Maybe because I’d never had sex before like it was with Jesse. So motherfuckinghot. I was just so fucking into him. Shitty for me, he didn’t exactly feel the same way. And the flip side of being totally fucking infatuated with him was the devastation I felt when he rejected me—a pain like nothing I’d everknown.
I’d never had my heart broken before. Not evenclose.
And still, here I was, wanting it again; that high of wanting someone thatbadly.
If only I could have it without the crushing low of the breakup at theend.
I wondered… Was this anything close to what Seth experienced when he felt the urge to get high, even though he knew what the aftermath, the flip side of it, wouldbe?
Even as the heartbreak of the breakup had sent me screaming down a rollercoaster of emotional chaos, I’d managed to resist the urge: there were days I wanted to somehow get Jesse into bed with me, one last time, so I could fuck all my anger and hurt out—as if that would help anything. There were days when all I wanted to do was grab the nearest hot rock star, no matter who he was, and fuck him instead. There were days when I believed no one worthwhile would ever want me again. That I would never feel about anyone the way I felt abouthim.
