CLASS ACT (A BRITISH ROCKSTAR BAD BOY ROMANCE) by Julia Gardener Read Free Book Online Page A

alley.”
     
     
    “I’ve done some research… on your parents,” she said after a pause. Not too many people knew about my fucked up parents. I preferred to keep it that way since the media would have a field day. Jared or the other band members must have filled her on me. “Your father had a criminal record. Your mother had some misdemeanors.”
     
     
    I gave a cynical laugh. “Parents of the year, right? He was a loan shark for some small gang and she was a street hustler. Dad would’ve spent most of his life in prison if the jailhouse wasn’t so booked. He got off early more due to budgetary issues than anything else.”
     
     
    “What happened to them?”
     
     
    “Dad got killed in a drunken brawl after the local football team lost,” I continued. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer man. “Mum always lived in the bottom of a bottle. It wasn’t long after her liver gave out.”
     
     
    “Do you ever miss them?”
     
     
    “He beat me every other night while mum watched with some cheap ale in her hand,” I stated plainly. Charlotte’s expression turned to that of horror. “When he wasn’t busy thrashing me, the man told me I was a piece of shit who wouldn’t amount to anything. Funny thing is, I believed him for so many years.”
     
     
    “I’m so sorry, Heath,” she whispered. “I didn’t-”
     
     
    I spat back. “I don’t need your fucking pity.”
     
     
    “It’s empathy, not pity,” she replied, her eyes glimmering. Charlotte reached across to grasp me hand. It calmed me even if my rage just boiled under the surface. “I shouldn’t have probed that hard. Please, forgive me.”
     
     
    “Well, the door is open,” I grumbled. I didn’t know how we got from the subject of dyslexia to my fucked up childhood but we managed to do it. “Why not walk through it? What else do you want to know?”
     
     
    “After your parents died, you were sent to an orphanage,” she continued. “What was it like? Did the people in charge support you?”
     
     
    “Some of the best years of my life,” I reminisced with a small smile. “We were all poor as fleas but it didn’t matter. I felt like I was part of a real family for the first time in my life up to that point. I had chores to do but I did them with a smile. The matron in charge would chew me out if I misbehaved too badly. The other orphans were like my brothers and sisters. It was something out of fucking Harry Potter!”
     
     
    “Did anyone notice your problems with reading?”
     
     
    I nodded. “Ms. Fincher, that was our matron, sat me down every night and helped me read at a passable level. I never had the stomach for learning but I tried for her sake. Howard did his best to help me as well.”
     
     
    “What did he do?”
     
     
    “He showed me to make music,” I answered, my voice growing soft. “My brain couldn’t handle words but I was born to read musical notes. Howard helped me go over the patterns and symbols. He taught me what they meant. Funny thing is that reading lyrics on sheet music was never much of a problem with me.”
     
     
    Charlotte brought a hand to her chin. “Interesting… did Howard have a musical background?”
     
     
    I nodded. “His parents were as sweet as mine were savage. They were a good, honest couple that ran a music shop under the house they owned. That is until a damn fire broke out in their home and left Howard orphaned.”
     
     
    That whole family was mired with tragedy. Two good parents were taken before their time. Their son soon followed just when his music career was about to take off.
     
     
    How did a fucking guy like me live on when Howard got scattered his ashes scattered over the Irish Sea?
     
     
    “Do you think it will help if we did some writing exercises on sheet music?” Charlotte asked, breaking me out of my morbid thoughts. “It’s unusual but I try to approach my students’ challenges on an issue by issue basis.”
     
     
    “It’s worth a