Heavy Metal (A Badboy Rockstar Romance) by Octavia Wildwood Read Free Book Online Page A

It happened to be a festively decorated games booth where vendors tried to lure park guests in with promises of gigantic stuffed animals and other eye catching prizes.
    “Want to play the ring toss?” I asked.
    “Sure,” Brandon agreed, easy-going and open to whatever I suggested.
    As it turned out, I was pretty terrible at the ring toss.  Brandon’s aim was only slightly better than mine, which wasn’t saying much.  But he was determined.  He refused to leave until he won me a stuffed animal, and eventually, he managed to do exactly that. 
    I chose a tiny stuffed lion with a big furry mane. 
    “Ferris wheel time?” he asked.  “I think I’ve made a big enough ass of myself at the ring toss.”
    Giggling, I tucked the lion under my arm.  “Ferris wheel time,” I agreed.
    Once Brandon and I were seated on the otherwise empty Ferris wheel, the guy manning it turned a crank and we began to move.  I felt pretty special knowing that the ride was being operated just for us.  And the view we had at the top of the Ferris wheel was gorgeous.
    “Look at that!” I breathed as I tried to take it all in.  “You can see the entire park!”
    “You can see the river too,” Brandon pointed out.
    “Oh wow!”
    As I gazed around, I was overcome by how small and insignificant everything beneath us was.  Up there in the sky, life’s little problems didn’t seem quite so overwhelming.  In fact, everything looked miniature and perfect, like I was staring down at the world’s greatest dollhouse. 
    All too soon, we were headed back down to earth. 
    But somehow Brandon seemed to know I wasn’t ready to get off the Ferris wheel yet.  Or maybe he wasn’t ready himself.  Either way, he called out to the attendant and asked if we could go around again.  And up we went.
    “This is so nice,” I said once we had stopped at the top again.  “We’re practically in the clouds!”
    “It is pretty nice,” Brandon agreed.
    Turning my attention to him, I asked, “So what’s your story?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Last night on the drive to the city I told you a bunch of embarrassingly personal details about myself,” I reminded him.  “And yet I know next to nothing about you.  You’re in a band and girls chase after you everywhere you go.  Oh, and you like donuts.  And you have a mean left hook,” I added with a wink.
    “Then I’d say you know a hell of a lot about me,” Brandon observed.
    “Mmhmm, but tell me more.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “Everything,” I replied.
    He thought for a moment.  “Well there’s not much to tell, to be perfectly honest.  I’m an only child and was never that close to my parents.  They worked long hours and acted like I was more of an inconvenience than anything.  Like I told you before, I was kind of a loner in high school.”
    “Why’s that?” I asked, thinking he and I had more in common than he knew.  After Angie had moved away I had found myself pretty much completely alone and entirely dependent on Carl.  It was the way he’d wanted it.
    “In retrospect maybe I was a bit depressed, I don’t know.  Or maybe I was just socially inept,” Brandon joked, displaying his self-depreciative sense of humor once again.  “I wrote songs to pass the time.  They were like my version of a journal, I guess.  Then I went to college.”
    “What happened there?”
    “I met some buddies – the guys who are in the band with me now.  I stopped being such an outcast.  We started playing music.  On the weekends we’d do sets at the local campus bar, and before long we had a bit of a cult following, I guess you’d say.  I never set out to be famous, but I liked being a part of something,” he confided.  “I liked feeling as though I finally fit in somewhere, for once in my life.”
    “And then you hit it big?”
    “And then we hit it big.  I can still hardly believe it myself.  It was all such a whirlwind.”
    “Well it couldn’t have