Rockstar Romance: Julian (Contemporary New Adult Bad Boy Rock Star Romance) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 3) by Jade Allen Read Free Book Online

told her. Fran hesitated for a moment; then she grabbed her phone, unplugged the headphones, and unlocked the screen. After a few more swipes and taps, she set the phone down; the sound of a metronome came up, and then a syncopated beat, followed by a slightly faltering but pitch-true guitar run. “Is that you?” Fran nodded.
    “I know what I want it to sound like,” she said, frustration in her voice. “But my playing isn’t strong enough to really capture it.” She sighed.
    “That’s not a big deal,” I said. “This isn’t bad.”
    “It could be better, though,” Fran said, giving me a wry grin.
    “Well yeah—nothing is ever perfect. Everything can always be better.” I listened more intently; I almost thought I could hear Fran’s breathing on the recording, a soft hiss when she almost missed a note. “That’s actually really good.” The song was solid, I had to give her that; it was more complex, more developed than most of Juniper Woolf’s songs. “Do you mind…?”
    “Go ahead,” Fran said, looking at me intently. I stood and grabbed one of the guitars hanging on the wall in the rec room. I caught the beat again as the song began to replay automatically. I sat down on the end of the couch, listened for the notes that Fran had put down on the recording, and found them on the neck of the guitar. Following the beat, I started to play along, adding a few little flourishes, a few bends and twists here and there.
    I came to the end of the song and looked up. Fran looked utterly rapt, her eyes almost glowing in the weird, yellow light of the rec room. “That was amazing,” she murmured. I shrugged it off.
    “It was okay,” I countered. “Be better if I listened to the song a few more times.”
    “Could I get you to record that?” I pressed my lips together, considering.
    “Can’t see why not,” I told her. “I mean, we’re supposed to be collaborating, in some kind of partnership, right?” Fran chuckled.
    “I don’t think solo material was what they had in mind,” Fran said. I shrugged.
    “Material is material, right?” I put the guitar aside. “Maybe it’ll be workable into a song we can do together to fulfill that last bit of the deal.”
    “You know I was against that deal at the beginning, don’t you?” I looked at Fran in shock.
    “You were?” She nodded, smiling wryly.
    “You were too, right?” I hesitated, but nodded. Fran took a quick, deep breath, and I wondered what was going on in her brain. “We need to talk about what’s going on between us,” she said.
    “You’re all over the place tonight,” I told her, shaking my head in confusion.
    “Sorry.” Fran rubbed at her face. “It’s just…the way that we’re sneaking around: it’s not going to last forever. Someone’s going to end up catching us in the act, or they’re going to figure out that we both end up missing at the same time, or something like that is going to happen.”
    “Well that’s just the nature of the beast,” I pointed out. “It’s a small world on a tour bus.”
    “The fact that we’ve made it two months without getting caught is…” Fran shook her head. “I’m almost suspicious of it.”
    “If anyone had figured it out in my band, I’d have heard about it—I promise that,” I told her. “What about your band?” Fran thought about the question and shrugged.
    “No idea. I’d think they’d say something—but they might be waiting for me to tell them.”
    “Are you going to?” Fran pressed her lips together. She shook her head after a moment.
    “I don’t want to start drama about it,” she said. “We’re going to have to deal with it at some point though.”
    “Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said with a shrug.
    “It might help if we know what to call it,” Fran said. She bit her bottom lip. “Oh god I sound like I want to try and make you ‘commit’ or something.” She shook her head. “As far as I can recall, this is just…us