LOW: A Rockstar Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

redeem the entire band in your eyes.  I wouldn't want to lose a fan."
    Her eyes twinkled. "I'm not a fan."
    "No?"
    She leaned forward, placing her hands right on my knee. The jolt that went through me when she touched me made me twitch just like my nickname. "I'm a music writer," she told me, holding my gaze. "This is my job."
    I swallowed. "Well," I told her. "You're really good at it."
    The way she smiled told me that I'd said something she really needed to hear. "Thanks," she said, very sincerely.
    Curiosity ignited, I turned and rapped my knuckles on the bar. "Another Blue for me, and whatever she's having."
    She absentmindedly tucked her hair behind one ear, exposing her shoulder. There was one, long, smooth, beautifully curved line that stretched from the soft place behind her ear all the way down to her exposed shoulder. Without meaning to, I closed my eyes, trying to hold that picture in my head for as long as possible.
    I was ready to marry her right then and there, and that was even before she called out her order. "Jack on the rocks."
    A girl after my own heart. I held up my flask. "My first choice as well."
    She smiled at me. I smiled back. It was beautiful and perfect and for once in my life I was content to just let the anticipation hang there in the air. It was the first time I ever sincerely wished time would just stop and I could just live here, frozen in time, looking at her face, forever. I wanted to hold on and savor... something to counteract all the rapid-fire changes in the past year.
    Her lips seem like a good place to start.
    I leaned forward.
    She licked her lips.
    "Hey!" Scarlett flung herself breathlessly between us. "Sorry! Sorry!" she said, drunk and apologetic. "I'm shit at introductions. Twi-er-Low, this is my friend Zoe."
    Zoe snapped back from me like Scarlett had caught her with her pants down. "Hi there!" she chirped.
    Her voice was false and wrong sounding. That's how I knew that moment I wanted to capture was lost forever.
    "We've met," I told Scarlett, as politely as I could.
    Zoe swayed in place. "So... I think we're going to go dance now," she said, sounding dazed.
    "Okay, cool," I said, popping up from my stool without a second thought.
    "You're coming?" she asked.
    "Sure I am."
    She seemed amused. "Really?"
    I gestured to the banners. "It's my fucking party, after all."
    She bit her lip, but with the way her shoulders hitched, I could tell she was trying not to laugh. "I guess it is," she hedged.
    Eager hope flooded through me. "And I want to dance with you, Zoe."
    "You know how to dance?"
    I pretended to take offense. "I'm a drummer, may I remind you. I have a fantastic sense of rhythm. I won't embarrass you. I promise." I held out my hand.
    She slipped her hand into mine. I looked down to where we were connected, her slim fingers entwined with mine. Fuck the moment we shared before, this was the one I wanted to hold on to forever. And I was starting to think of a way that I could.
    "Okay," she said, bouncing a little with excitement.  "Dance with me, Low."

Chapter 7
    Zoe
     
    I used to pride myself in being the life of the party. Put me in the middle of an awkward situation, and I nearly always knew just what to do. In fact, Grip used to send me out to do interviews with the reclusive musicians, the ones who hid and eschewed the press. Because I was so good at drawing people out of their shells.
    But in the year I'd spent sitting at home, waiting for the phone to ring with the job offer that never came, I'd formed a shell of my own. The longer I stayed inside, away from people and music and the life I had loved, the more frightened I became. Rejection after rejection covered me in a thick coat of depression. The longer I stayed unemployed, the more that coat calcified around me, suffocating my joy and squeezing out my self-confidence.
    Inside the shell, I was hard and brittle, fearful and sarcastic. I was hesitant in a way I didn't recognize; self-conscious in a way I couldn't