This One’s For You

  This One’s For You

  Taylor Holloway

  Copyright © 2019 by Taylor Holloway

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  About This Book

  1. Ian

  2. Vanessa

  3. Ian

  4. Vanessa

  5. Ian

  6. Vanessa

  7. Ian

  8. Vanessa

  9. Ian

  10. Vanessa

  11. Ian

  12. Vanessa

  13. Ian

  14. Vanessa

  15. Ian

  16. Vanessa

  17. Ian

  18. Vanessa

  19. Ian

  20. Vanessa

  21. Ian

  22. Vanessa

  23. Ian

  24. Vanessa

  25. Ian

  26. Vanessa

  27. Ian

  28. Vanessa

  29. Ian

  30. Vanessa

  31. Ian

  32. Vanessa

  33. Ian

  34. Vanessa

  35. Ian

  36. Vanessa

  37. Ian

  38. Vanessa

  39. Ian

  40. Vanessa

  41. Ian

  42. Vanessa

  43. Ian

  44. Vanessa

  45. Ian

  46. Vanessa

  47. Ian

  48. Vanessa

  49. Ian

  50. Vanessa

  51. Ian

  52. Ian

  53. Vanessa

  54. Vanessa

  55. Vanessa

  56. Ian

  57. Ian

  58. Vanessa

  59. Ian

  Epilogue

  Admit You Want Me

  Exclusive Teaser: Bad For You

  Also by Taylor Holloway

  “The internet thinks I’m a homewrecker and your band’s fans are out for blood.”

  “Just convince them you’re with somebody else. Somebody harmless. Me.”

  If a fake relationship with rockstar and infamous bad-boy Ian Conroe seems like the answer to all your problems, you know you’re in deep.

  When bills from a traumatic accident were threatening to crush my spirit, a chance run-in with the world’s hottest drummer felt like fate.

  He offered me the chance to film his band’s secret show and even though I was risking my dead-end job, I couldn’t say no to such a great opportunity.

  I couldn’t say no to Ian, either.

  Overnight my footage became a viral sensation and I ended up on tour with the band. I thought hooking up with the wildly attractive, tattooed drummer would be a simple fling. I never imagined the trouble I’d get into with Ian in a different hotel every night.

  Or the nightmare the paparazzi would cause by spreading false rumors about me and the band’s married lead singer.

  I certainly never expected anyone to mail me a dead possum, stalk me online, or declare me public enemy number one.

  After my accident I thought I could survive anything, but that was before this crazy/sexy rockstar came into my life. And my bed.

  ‘This One’s For You’ is a romantic comedy featuring an almost entirely reformed bad boy drummer with a taste for vegan food and redheads and a tattooed girl next door with sarcasm to spare on a twisted road to happily ever after. It stands alone with no cheating, cliffhangers, or nonsense.

  1

  Ian

  “Lachlan!” I hollered into the crowd, scanning desperately for some sign of the wandering one-year-old. I was well beyond worried and beginning to enter panic territory. My first time babysitting ever in my life, and I lose the kid in a crowd of thousands within minutes. My heart was pounding, my palms were sweaty, my head was spinning, and I felt like I was gonna’ throw up.

  I had to find him.

  Immediately.

  I only looked away from the kid for one second. Just one second. And this kid—the kid I had been told couldn’t walk and was still crawling—was gone.

  It shouldn’t have worked out like this. I was just supposed to be watching my bandmate Jason’s kid in the green room for a few minutes while he dealt with the sudden loss of our videographer. Lachlan had just sort of been cruising before, holding onto his mom’s leg, a wall, or a piece of furniture. I didn’t realize he could just get up and go on walkabout. Clearly, he fucking could. I turned around and he was gone, disappeared straight out of his little playpen thing, which he could also, apparently, unlatch from the inside. The kid was a tiny Houdini.

  Poof.

  And I was a dead man.

  Lachlan’s parents were going to murder me, and I was going to deserve it.

  I was used to being called irresponsible, unstable, immature; you name the unflattering adjective, and I’d been called it. I deserved all of it. I knew that I used to be a walking dumpster fire, and I knew that was how some people still saw me, but I was better now. I was normal. Normal-ish. Normal for me.

  After bottoming out spectacularly a few years back, I was recovering from the raging alcoholism and penchant for self-destruction that had occupied the last decade of my life. I was now embarking on a future where I could be responsible and healthy.

  Some people aim for greatness; I aim for normal. And I was doing pretty well, for the most part. I was back with the band, I was writing new music, and I was fully capable of doing things like watching a friend’s child for a few minutes while he stepped outside.

  Or I thought I was, anyway. Until three minutes ago when I lost a child in the busy crowds of South by Southwest. I stared wild-eyed into the crowd, hoping Lachlan had just wandered off and wasn’t kidnapped by some psycho baby-snatchers. His dad would kill me if anything happened. No. His mom, Wendy, would kill me while Jason watched, and then she’d kill him for leaving her precious child with me. Actually, I would kill myself because I was a nightmare human who couldn’t be trusted with a child for five minutes and basically just a total failure at life.

  The point was that I had to find him before someone died.

  “Lachlan!” I yelled again. “Where are you, little dude?” I whispered to myself. “Where did you get to so quickly?”

  I caught a flash of something tiny and toddling through the crowd.

  There.

  I found the little bastard.

  Between the legs of hipsters, I saw the dark mop of curly hair and bright red T-shirt. There weren’t a lot of one-year-olds at this music festival.

  I hightailed it over, only to be blocked by scores of other hipsters. Some of them wanted autographs and pictures. Ordinarily I’d be stoked to meet fans, but I was in no mood. I had a baby to catch.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I mumbled to my fans, trying to break through the crowds of people, “I really need to get that toddler over there.”

  The people reluctantly parted to let me through. By the time I made it over to where I thought Lachlan was, he’d vanished again. I swore under my breath.

  Now where’d he go?

  I heard a familiar, high-pitched giggle and whipped my head around. There he was, heading for a swag table.

  I was suddenly grateful to my younger brother, Ryan, for making me run that horrible zombie-themed obstacle course 5k the week before, because I now possessed some pretty sweet evasive maneuvers. The hipsters around me weren’t zombies, but they lumbered with the same plodding obliviousness. I raced around them, slid on my knees like a baseball player, an
d grabbed the kid under the arms.

  Gotcha.

  “Lachlan, buddy, where do you think you’re going?” I asked him, exhaling in sweet, transcendent relief. The cortisol levels in my brain went down by fifty percent in an instant.

  He giggled at me, seemingly very amused by my panic. His little dimples were adorable.

  I took a deep breath and reminded myself that it was all okay. I found him. He was fine.

  In my relief-addled state, I sat down on the ground next to the swag table and clutched Lachlan against my chest. He was very much into that, wrapping his arms around my neck and hugging me back with more little gurgle-giggle noises. He was awfully sweet for being so evil. He was probably drooling on me.

  It was while I was sitting on the filthy ground, thanking my lucky stars, and rocking Lachlan back and forth, that I saw her.

  Vanessa Evans.

  My dream girl.

  My jaw dropped open.

  I thought I’d never see her again.

  But now that I’d seen her, I couldn’t look away. In the sea of people, she easily stood out. The curvy, porcelain-skinned, red-haired bombshell had been briefly introduced to me by her roommate, Caroline, some time back. She’d attended a trauma support group I also frequented. It was a long story, but the point was that she’d made an impression, enough to occupy my thoughts nonstop for weeks. And then she never came back.

  The moment I laid eyes on her, I’d been instantly and thoroughly smitten.

  And now she was here, carrying a camera and wearing a press badge. I didn’t know how, but I had to speak to her. I looked down at Lachlan, and a thought occurred to me. I didn’t have the same brain for scheming as my lawyer brother, Ryan, but I wasn’t useless. I could come up with plans, especially when I as properly motivated. Today I was very motivated.

  “Hey, Lachlan,” I said, pulling him back to look at me. He was indeed drooling. His face was wet with it. I wiped it off with my T-shirt. “Hey, buddy, do you want to play a game with me?”

  He drooled some more in reply. As far as I was concerned, that was a yes.

  “So, you can walk, right?” I asked him. “You can walk really, really well can’t you?”

  Lachlan, who didn’t really talk yet, responded with more drool, and more toothless, baby smiling. He knew what I was saying though. I could tell.

  “Do you see that pretty lady over there?” I pointed over at Vanessa, who was standing behind a news camera, pointed out at the crowd. “See the pretty lady with the red hair?”

  We both looked. Vanesa seemed a bit bored, to be honest. It seemed like she was shooting footage of the crowd. That, admittedly, didn’t seem very interesting. Caroline had told me that Vanessa had started doing freelance video work. That fit perfectly into my plan.

  Lachlan’s attention pinged from her to me, and back again. He made a vowel noise that may have been his attempt at repeating ‘pretty lady.’ I nodded encouragingly at him.

  “That’s right, buddy,” I told him. “She is a pretty lady.”

  She was. She really, really was. But she was more than that, too. I’d been waiting for something like this to happen, some chance to see her again. This was my shot.

  Lachlan made the slurred ‘pretty lady’ noise again, and I glanced down at him. I wanted this to work. All of a sudden, I needed it to work.

  “Lachlan,” I said seriously. “Do you think you could go walk over to her? Can you go walk over to the pretty lady?”

  He gazed at me, then over at Vanessa. Then at me. I saw the lightbulb go off in his proportionally gigantic baby head. “Ah!” he said. I took that for an affirmative and let him wander out of the reach of my arms. He made a waddling beeline toward Vanessa.

  Good.

  Very good.

  Go little man. Go get her attention so I can have an excuse to talk to her.

  This was so totally going to work. It might be a trick, but it was harmless one. I hid behind the swag table and watched.

  2

  Vanessa

  Through the narrow viewfinder of my camera, I watched a toddler dart between two groups of drunk co-eds in crisp, high resolution 1080P. He moved with more grace than his short, chubby limbs would suggest possible, at least until he stumbled and almost face-planted on the filthy convention center floor. After a narrow recovery, he continued on his way a bit more carefully. The adults didn’t notice him. They were far too distracted by the spectacle of South by Southwest taking place three feet above his dark, curly head.

  I swept the camera from side to side, looking for the boy’s parents in the crowd. I was supposed to be shooting b-roll for the local news, but it suddenly seemed even less important than it had a moment ago. In the thick sea of people before me, it was impossible to pick out anyone that seemed like an appropriately panicked parent. Mostly everybody was just drunk and excited.

  Maybe his parents hadn’t noticed he was missing? Who brings a little kid to South by Southwest, anyway?

  Concern and irritation fought for my attention. Concern for the kid won out over irritation that someone had clearly misplaced him and no one else seemed to care. The toddler was continuing his unsteady, careful progress through the crowd, and was only a few feet from me now. I set down my camera, dropped to my knees as he passed by, and put out a hand to stop him. He leaned against my hand and stared up at me with wide, guileless blue eyes and a tiny, adorable pout.

  “And where do you belong, young man?” I asked the toddler.

  He giggled at me, smiling to reveal just a few, tiny baby teeth. I felt a matching smile spread across my face. He was a little lady-killer.

  “La-ee,” he chirped. “Pree-ee.”

  I smiled, but that vowel salad response was not very helpful. He said it very decisively, but it was baby nonsense.

  “You don’t have a VIP badge,” I continued seriously. “I’m gonna’ have to make sure you get back to where you belong.”

  Hurried footsteps reached my ears just a split second before a man scooped up the little boy in an obviously panicked rush.

  “Lachlan, you scared me to death!” a semi-familiar voice exclaimed, and I blinked up in amazement, “Are you okay?”

  My heart skipped a beat as my brain caught up with my eyes.

  Standing before me was Ian Conroe, the drummer of rock mega-band Axial Tilt. Ian was lanky, tattooed, perfectly rock-star disheveled, and ridiculously hot. I’d actually met him once before, and I’d never thought I’d meet him once, let alone twice in my life. I definitely didn’t think I’d see him here today, chasing after toddlers.

  I gulped down a deep breath, forced myself to get up off my knees, and scrambled to get my wits together. Ian had sort of flirted with me when we’d randomly met a number of months ago at a trauma support group (of all places). My old roommate, Caroline, who ran the support group was actually friends with him. She’d been seriously holding out on me. Anyway, I’d played the whole thing so incredibly cool that I, well—I lost my nerve, went silent, and probably made him think I was an idiot. At least I could comfort myself with the utter impossibility of a repeat encounter. And now this.

  I prayed that he wouldn’t remember me.

  I prayed that he would.

  In that moment of frantic, conflicting prayers, Ian’s attention turned from the toddler (named Lachlan, apparently) to me.

  “Vanessa,” he said a moment later. He was staring at me like I’d materialized out of thin air. He sounded shocked.

  I tried not to give in to a sudden, lightheaded feeling.

  He remembered me.

  A hot, stinging blush burned my cheeks. My face was probably the same bright red as my hair. It was easy to be overwhelmed by Ian. He ticked all my boxes. From his shiny, wavy, longish dark hair, down the fit length of his body, the tattooed exposed skin at his arms and neck, to the tips of his black leather motorcycle boots, I didn’t know where to focus. I ended up staring into his very bright blue eyes.

  “Hi, Ian,” I managed to stutter out.
Were we on a first name basis? I had no idea. We’d met that one time. “I, uh, I found your kid?”

  I hadn’t known that Ian had a kid. It wasn’t on his Wikipedia page or his fan page or any of his social media. Not that I’d stalked any of those. Okay, I had. A lot. But he didn’t need to know that. Ever.

  At my question, Ian glanced back down at the kid in his arms like he was confused to suddenly be holding him. He held him at arm’s length.

  “Oh, you mean this kid?” His voice was raspy. It was almost like I’d accused him of something or caught him in the act.

  I blinked at him. What was happening? It wasn’t his kid? Whose kid was it?

  Ian cleared his throat in apparent embarrassment. “This is not my kid,” he clarified. “He doesn’t belong to me.”

  I nodded, although I wasn’t any less confused. This entire situation felt beyond surreal. “He’s not yours? But you were looking for him.”