Ice Steam (Loving All Wrong #3) Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by S. Ann Cole

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design: S. Ann Cole

  Formatting: S. Ann Cole

  Editor: Karen Anne L.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright(s) reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Making or distributing copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For permission requests, contact the publisher via email: [email protected].

  Visit my website at www.AnnCole.net

  For all those who suffer from Anxiety & Panic disorder.

  This story is in no way connected to that topic. But I want to dedicate a project I poured my blood sweat and tears into, specifically to sufferers of the mental illness; only those who have been/go through the horrific sensations from day to day knows exactly what it is like.

  Use this book as a reminder that you are not alone, and that you can be a survivor.

  Heads-up from the Author

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Acknowledgements

  “Pleeeeeeeeeeeze a beg sumting, my fren.”

  About the Author

  Do Not Hesitate to Contact Me!

  Heads-up from the Author

  Heads-up #1:

  Just in case you skipped reading the blurb, or reviews, and decided to come in blind, I want to point out that this book is a love triangle. It’s not hinted at, or implied, or mild—in which the heroine only kisses one guy and screws the other, or she has a best friend who’s always been in love with her. No. This is a full-blown love triangle: The heroine consciously sleeps with two different men. No remorse. No invocations of absolution.

  If you have ever been cheated on, or if you have a sister, brother, best friend, mother, father, uncle, aunt, dog, cat, mice, hamster, or pet gold fish that has been cheated on, or if you are a recovering cheater, or if the very thought of cheating repulses you, makes you nauseated, infuriates you, makes you want to throw stuff, or be compelled to rate an author’s hard work badly on the basis that you “hate cheating in books”, then please, for the love of God and all things Holy, STOP.

  Right here.

  Right now.

  You have absolutely no business reading this book.

  Anyone who wishes to read this book and enjoy it must be willing to accept the story for what it is, and the characters for who they are. This is fiction. Please leave your personal issues out of it. Bad ratings, reviews, and bashing based on personal issues is not fair to any author.

  Heads-up #2:

  When I first created Alina’s character in Jahleel, I never intended on writing a story about her. Alina was first created merely as a supplemental character (or rather her parents) to fatten the background story for my previous release, Chad’s Chase. It was while writing the prologue for my yet-to-be-released project, Free Hostage, that the idea for Ice Steam came to mind, and I was so excited about it that I promptly pushed Free Hostage aside and jumped to writing Ice Steam.

  If you have read Chad’s Chase, you’ll know it was about power and greed and control, which meant some outrageous amount of capital was mentioned. Alina’s parents were insanely wealthy—more so her mother who received an inordinate inheritance that has been passed down a long line of females, from generation to generation. As the next female in line, when Alina’s mother died, the inheritance went to her.

  The reason I’m giving you this heads-up is because I did not explain Alina’s wealth in this book. Why? Because Chad’s Chase was a dark, dark read. Ice Steam is a light read, rock stars and all that. I didn’t want to bring the dark, twisted stuff from Chad’s Chase over into this book, so I chose not to delve too much into explaining Alina’s inheritance. Those who’ve read Chad’s Chase will understand where I’m coming from.

  So if while you are reading Ice Steam, Alina’s inheritance seems a little outrageous to you (as it was for one of my beta readers), please understand that I did not plan on writing a story about Alina when her character was drafted, and when I did decide to write a book about her, I couldn’t change the figure of her inheritance to something more believable for this particular story, as doing so would cause inconsistencies with the previous stories. Most readers might not even bat an eyelash at this, but I know some readers pick apart every single thing.

  This happens sometimes. You don’t plan on writing a story about a certain character and then bam, a story flies into your head, and you groan, knowing you have to work with whatever you wrote in your previous books for the sake of consistency.

  Heads-up #3:

  If you are a doting mother who can’t imagine ever being away from your kid(s) for more than a week/month… then there might be some motherhood triggers in this book. *wince*

  Heads-up #4:

  If you haven’t read the previous books in this series (you don’t need to in order to read this), then the characters in this book will seem like a lot to you. And I guess there is a lot of characters in here. Among the rich and famous, not exactly a quiet and lonely place. There’s always someone for you to meet

  Heads-up #5

  This book ends in a not-so-cliffy cliffhanger. It all depends on what you consider a cliffhanger. In fact, I’d go as far as to say reading the second book is optional—there is a pseudo-HEA, but some things were left unresolved. This book is already long, and to resolve things would’ve made this book ridiculously long (I don’t know about you but I hate long books), so I decided to resolve the unresolved in a follow-up. Which might be full-length or a little longer than a novella, depending on how the story unfolds (I don’t like stretching a story—I’ve got too much characters in my head dying to have their stories told—so I rather to just get straight to the point and put out a shorter book than to fill the pages with uneventful banalities to make up for a full-length novel.) If you end up liking this book and want to read the next, don’t be disappointed if it’s not a full-length. I’ll keep ya posted!

  That is all…I think. :)

  HAPPY READING!

  Why must I be judged for how I choose to love?

  Scratch that.

  Why must love be judged in the form that it comes?

  Love is.

  It exists outside of time and space.

  It is uncontrollable.

  Unfathomable.

  Ineffable.

  No start. No end. It is.

  And like the air we cannot see but only feel, love cannot be caught and bottled. Cannot be given a shape or form. Ca
nnot be told which way it should flow, how it should flow, or how much of it should flow.

  No.

  Love is wild and frenzied. It sees with blind eyes. Flies with broken wings. It is out and about. Around us. Inside of us. Flitting in and out.

  Unseen, we walk right through it. And even after we are long gone, it still remains. Uncontained. Flirting with new fools.

  It sweeps us up and fills our pores, jerking us every which way.

  We love one.

  We love two.

  We love three.

  Who knew love was this much? This wide? This galactic?

  But if love is this great, this abundant, this cosmic…

  Existed before, exists after, exists always…

  Why then must I believe I can only love once?

  Why then must I accept I can only love ONE?

  “Davi, I’m…I’m pregnant.”

  I paced back and forth. Sat down. Knees bouncing up and down. Got up again, looked at myself in the full-length mirror and practiced the delivery again in a more confident, robust voice. Undaunted, without a hint of nerves. “Davi, I’m pregnant.”

  Much better.

  I could do this. I could totally just tell him. Spit it out the second he walked in and get it over with. Then, maintaining an insouciant demeanor, accept whatever decision he made about our unexpected predicament. To take responsibility or not.

  Truth was, I couldn’t imagine his reaction to this news being cathartic or rhapsodic, considering our “relationship” had been sporadically on and off, hot and cold, I want you and I don’t.

  Considering it was just four months ago he’d heatedly, wildly, ravenously, lost all restraint and pierced my innocence. A burst of passion. An explosion of pent-up need finally being unleashed. A year-old desire being quenched.

  We made love. We shared. We explored. We gave up and gave in.

  Now, I was nineteen and pregnant.

  Let’s face it; he was going to freak out. Go ballistic. As much as I wasn’t ready for this, Davian was worse. Even though he was seven years older than me.

  Davian Hamilton was the son of a legendary rock star, retired. One would think being the son of a legend would make things easier for him in the music industry. Far from it.

  Head of his garage band, Ice Steam, he was struggling to get noticed. Doing a lot of free gigs. His washed-up dad hardly getting any strings pulled; probably didn’t even care to.

  The band was crazy good, and I believed in them. I believed if they got a chance at some exposure, their rise would be meteoric.

  This faith in the band had me busy for the past couple of months, begging my temporary guardian, Saskia Day, who was an esteemed British pop rock princess, to pull some strings or get her manager Lion to sign them.

  See, Saskia Day was the ex-girlfriend of the lead singer of the biggest rock band in the world right now, Ninety Miles. Lead singer, Tex Laklin, was so disturbingly obsessed with her that he’d give her his balls if she asked him for them, anything to be with her again. However, he’d once tried to sabotage her engagement to her now husband, Jahleel Kingston aka JK—an outrageously famous professional dancer/choreographer, who was more famous for his good looks and being an asshole, than for his talent. Therefore, as much as I begged until I was blue in the face, Saskia flat-out refused to go there with her ex.

  “JK would bloody well kill me!” she’d said.

  Making a U-turn from that dead-end, I took it upon myself to take a secret trip to L.A. and spoke with Lion in person. If there was anyone in this world who could turn a crusty pebble into a star in 0.5 seconds flat, it was Lion T’mar. The man was a genius. A magician. Everyone knew that.

  Which was the main reason I’d returned from L.A. crestfallen when he told me he couldn’t take on anymore artists at the moment. He did, however, tell me, in a perfunctory, not so promising tone, that he would see what he could do for Ice Steam, and if he did get them signed, I would have to sign a contract with him.

  Ever since Lion first set eyes on me at age seventeen, he wanted to shove me head-first into the modeling world. I wasn’t interested, so I kept turning him down.

  Nonetheless, this time around I agreed to it without a second thought; he gets Ice Steam signed, I’d sign with him.

  All this was done behind Davian’s back. He had no idea I was soliciting favors on his band’s behalf.

  Even though that visit to Lion T’mar was over three months ago and there was still no word from him, an opportunity could pop up at any moment. So this was how I knew Davian would go off the deep end when I told him the one single time we’d forgone a condom in the rain, in his backyard pool, one determined little sucker had head-butted its way through my egg.

  There was no room for this BS in a rock star’s life—a struggling rock star at that.

  And that’s the reason behind my anxiety right now. Not because I would have to drop out of college to be a mother, but because of him. This inconvenience wouldn’t bode well with him.

  I got up and paced again, checking the time on his bedside clock.

  I was at his house, in his bedroom, waiting. Earlier I’d phoned him and told him there was something I had to tell him. He’d chuckled mysteriously and said he had something to tell me, too. Said he was leaving a meeting, heading home, and I should wait for him in his room.

  His house was just one fence partition away from Saskia Day’s, where I lived. Big and commodious. Housing just him, his little sister Kaydeen, and their once-upon-a-time rock star father, David Hamilton.

  His bedroom smelled like him. The sheets, the walls, the curtains. Everything had his scent trapped inside its fibers and creases. His scent of orange peel and lime-grass. If I wasn’t so nerve-wrecked right now, I’d be wandering around sniffing everything, cocooning myself in his soft sheets and humming sweet lyrics, just like I had done so many times before I gave in to him. I would come over with the pretext of spending time with his sister, and then sneak into his room when he left, touching and smelling his stuff like a creep.

  If only I hadn’t wasted so much time. For a whole year he’d pursued me. And for a whole year I’d played hard to get. From the very moment I first met him, I knew, just knew he was it.

  But I was hardheaded and liked the thrill of the chase, so I tortured him by giving him only friendship, hanging out with the band 24/7, making sure I was always pretty, always well-dressed, always tempting. I loved the game.

  By the time I was ready to give in to an official relationship, he had to leave. He left for six months with his father on a tour called Final Roll, where a host of old legendries got together and did one last hoorah.

  I counted down the days to his return, and when he came back five months ago, I ambushed him in his garage and confessed how I truly felt about him. The six months of not seeing him had been a rude awakening of how I could lose him if I didn’t quit it with the games and claim him.

  The night I fessed up was one of the most intense, unforgettable nights of my life. Bowled off his feet at my admission, he kissed me with a fierce hunger, went down on me right there in his garage with my back against the wall, then carried me up to his room, and with gentle care and tender passion, deflowered me, marked me, owned me.

  “You kept me waiting for damn near two years, Ally,” he’d whispered as he pushed into me, breaking me. “This is our beginning…”

  Now, I wasn’t so sure about that. Because when I broke this news to him, it could very well be our end.

  The door handle twisted, and I jumped, nerves on edge.

  As was usual whenever I saw him, my heartbeat sped up, and then it slowed, expanded, released, then went back to beating normal.

  Davian wasn’t easy to look at. And that wasn’t because he was ugly. But because he was so hot he stung, burned, hurt worse than a heartbreak. Dark-brown bedroom hair, perpetual five o’ clock shadow on acute jaw, sapphire irises that showed me my entire future. Six feet one,
ripped, olive-skinned.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling.

  That smile, it was different. And I knew right then that his news would be terribly good news, and my terribly bad news would slay his terribly good news. Big time.

  Carelessly dumping his messenger bag on the floor, he walked over to me, tipped my chin up and kissed me, deep and long, then bumped his forehead to mine. “What did you do, Ally?”

  “What?”

  His blue eyes swept me up in them, wrapped around me like an ocean wave, whirled me around, dipped me and taught me how to surf, before spitting me out on the sandy shore. “I—we… my band just came out of the most baffling, out-of-the-blue meeting with our minds blown. Even now I’m still wondering ‘what the hell’?”

  “What was the meeting about?”

  He gave me a ‘quit the act’ look. But I wasn’t acting. I had no idea what this was about. “Ally, it can’t be a coincidence that Lion T’mar, Saskia Day’s manager, got Benny Stucco, Ninety Miles’ manager and owner of Street Run Records, to sign us. Nobody garage band Ice Steam.”

  Holy shit. “Holy shit.”

  “You did this?”

  I took a step back. “I-I went to him…but I didn’t expect…holy wow, Davi.”

  “Like I said, mind equals blown,” he whispered. “Apparently Stucco had a representative sitting in at a number of our gigs over the last few weeks, recording us on phone. Wanted to see if we were consistent in giving great performances. The label’s in love with us. They want us on tour with Ninety Miles…” He raked both hands through his hair and dropped his gaze. “Immediately.”

  I took two steps back this time. “As…as immediately as?”

  “We fly out tomorrow for Milan to get there in time to open for Ninety Miles.”

  I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was suffocating. “For how long?”