Rocked Senseless: A Stand-Alone Rock Star Romance Read online

  Contents

  1. Madison

  2. Madison

  3. Logan

  4. Madison

  5. Madison

  6. Logan

  7. Madison

  8. Madison

  9. Logan

  10. Madison

  11. Logan

  12. Madison

  13. Logan

  14. Madison

  15. Logan

  16. Madison

  17. Logan

  18. Madison

  19. Madison

  20. Logan

  21. Madison

  22. Logan

  23. Madison

  24. Logan

  25. Madison

  26. Logan

  27. Madison

  28. Logan

  29. Madison

  30. Logan

  31. Madison

  32. Logan

  33. Madison

  Epilogue

  SPECIAL NOTE

  Playlist

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books By This Author

  Note From the Author

  ROCKED SENSELESS

  Copyright © 2019 by Alyson Hale.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: October 2019

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead— is entirely coincidental.

  To my husband and son . . .

  My heart’s melody and lyrics. The loves of my life.

  My surroundings fade in as a chorus of machines beep and tick in my ears. The accelerando of my rapid heart rate compounds on itself, sending me into a panic.

  Where the hell am I? And why does my head feel like someone dropped an anvil on it?

  I scan the room. The cramped space is lit only by a solitary window on the left wall. Divorce Court is playing on a small TV mounted to the wall opposite my bed. The sunlight pouring in from the window creates a glare that covers half of the TV screen.

  I groan and start to press myself up to a sitting position. As I push down on the mattress, something sharp pricks my hand. A metallic taste swims in the back of my throat.

  “Ouch.”

  I look down and see myself hooked to an IV. When I pushed my hand down, the needle almost broke through my vein. Sterile white sheets, an IV, a heart monitor . . .

  Why am I in the hospital?

  For the first time, I notice a head of spiky black hair with green tips resting on the edge of my hospital bed. The head seems familiar, but I can’t place it. It belongs to a muscular man with deep tan skin. His sculpted body slopes down into a dated chair with worn, cracked turquoise cushions. The green tattoo peeking out from under his sleeve on his left arm is shaped like a dragon’s tail.

  I wonder what the rest of it looks like . . .

  My hand hesitates as I reach out toward him. I don’t know who this is. I’m almost afraid to find out. But he’s the only one here, and I have to talk to someone. I have to find out what happened to me and whether or not my life is in danger.

  When my fingers graze his shoulder, he startles, inhaling a ragged breath. He rises to a sitting position. His soft-looking hair remains spiked in all directions, as if intentionally defying gravity. I notice the Avenged Sevenfold logo on his t-shirt and feel an odd sense of comradery. My gaze travels to his full lips. My stomach swims as he smiles at me. His eyes remind me of smooth black stones bouncing into a river.

  For the life of me, I can’t remember his name. I hope he’s not my brother or something, because that would make the instant attraction I feel to him extremely awkward.

  Come to think of it, I can’t remember my name. That seems even stranger.

  His big, rough hand moves up to scoop my jaw. As soon as he touches me, my skin breaks out in goosebumps. I melt into his touch. Obvious love and affection pour from his wonderful eyes into mine.

  Okay, not my brother. That’s a relief.

  Tears well in his eyes and one breaks free, tumbling down his cheek. My heart clenches at the thought of causing this beautiful man any pain. I want to take it all away, and maybe even replace it with some pleasure.

  His deep, pleasant voice breaks. “Cricket . . . you’re okay.”

  Cricket. Is that really my name?

  “What am I doing in the hospital?” I ask, embarrassed that I don’t remember his name. We seem to be close, maybe even a couple, but I’ve got nothing. It’s as if my mind is a dry erase board that’s been wiped clean. I feel cold sweat rising up in my pores.

  Why don’t I remember anything? Should I tell him?

  Dream Guy, which is what I’m calling this person until I can remember his name, hesitates before giving me a response. When he chews on his lower lip, the hollows under his cheekbones deepen. They end just over the top of his short, dark beard. The joy and hope that were in his dark eyes moments ago fade into a darkness that seems to pulsate from his very soul. If I’m in love with him, it’s plain to see why. Just looking at this perfect, brooding personification of testosterone is enough to take my mind off my throbbing headache and the liquid sensation between my ears.

  “You took a dive off the stage and split your head wide open,” Dream Guy tells me. “You went into a coma for a few days. We were worried you wouldn’t make it.”

  I sit back on the bed, stunned. I must be a performer of some kind. Probably reckless and dumb too, since I ended up in a coma after hurling my body off a platform.

  I look down at my arms to check for further injuries. Other than a few scratches, nothing else seems to be damaged or broken. My head must have taken the full blow. My arms are covered in tattoos, but none of them mean anything to me. I don’t remember any of these things that were so important to me, I etched them forever into my skin. I don’t remember how old I am, who my family is . . .

  I need help.

  “Can you call a nurse or a doctor in here?” I’m questioning reality so much, I’m not even sure that’s who I’m supposed to be asking for.

  “Sure.” Dream Guy nods and presses a button on the side of my bed. He tells the nurse “Madison Daley” is awake and wants to talk to her doctor. I’m relieved to know “Cricket” isn’t my given name. “Madison” is respectable. I can live with that.

  A gaggle of nurses enter and exit my room in quick succession as we wait for the doctor. They tell me they’re checking my vitals so they’ll be able to give her a status update when she arrives. With every person who enters the room, I grow a little more agitated. Being poked and prodded with cold metal instruments is only amplifying the throbbing pain in my skull.

  Finally, a petite woman with a chin-length bob and kind brown eyes walks into the room. She approaches my bed, shakes my hand, and introduces herself as Dr. Hirati. Dream Guy moves to stand on the other side of the room, presumably to give me my space. Our eyes meet when his back meets the wall. I’m taken aback by his height. He has to avoid the TV because of how tall he is. He graces me with a slow, twinkly-eyed, reassuring smile.

  Damn. A man this sexy should come with a warning label.

  Dr. Hirati takes an instrument with a bright light and a magnifying lens and holds it up to my eyes. “How do you feel? Are you confused at all?”

  “A little,” I admit, trying not to recoil from the light. I see spots where the light was when she takes the instrument away.

  “What do you remember about the accident?”

  Her question catches me off-guard. “Uh . . . ”

  Again, my mind is completely blank. It’s making my skin crawl. I hope to God this isn’t permanent.

  She moves her finger in front of my face. “Follow my finger with your eyes.” She moves her finger to the sides and up and down. I pray my eyes are following her. I can barely see through the water in them. “Good,” she says. “Let’s start with something simple. What is your name?”

  I pinch my eyelids shut, trying to let them recover from the light, and dig in my short-term memory for the name I just heard. “Madison Daley.”

  Dr. Hirati gives me a pretty smile and nods. “Good. Birthday?”

  A date flashes into my mind. I hope it’s right. “October 31?”

  “Right.” She nods as she moves her fingers up to press them gently against my neck. “Tell me if anything hurts, okay?” I mutter my assent. She continues to probe my neck. I bristle under her touch when she moves up toward my head. “Still sore, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Her finger feels like a dagger when she presses it into my forehead. I hiss through my teeth and pull away. She gently prods to the left of my wound.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six.” My body relaxes as my memories start coming back to me. She asks me what year it is and some other random questions, and to my relief, I’m able to answer them. I must have done a number on myself this time. I had straight-up amnesia for a few minutes there.

  And I woke up thinking my best friend was my boyfriend. What?

  Out of the blue, I start cackling
like a witch. Doc raises an eyebrow and eyes me as if I just grew a second nose. “You okay?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I’m great,” I choke out through my laughter. I look up at Logan, my best friend of fifteen years and someone I’ve definitely never referred to as “Dream Guy” before. “Is Nana here?”

  “Yeah, I’ll go get her.” He sweeps out of the room at a brisk pace.

  As I endure further poking and pressure from the doctor, I chuckle at the insane thoughts that ran through my head when I first woke up. I was there when that boy got his dragon tattoo. He got it in honor of his Korean grandmother, who he was close to before she passed away when he was a boy. I was proud of him for stepping out of his comfort zone, and then he fainted dead away as soon as they touched him with the needle. It’s probably the only tattoo he’ll ever get because he’s so petrified of needles. In comparison, I’ve had five tattoos, each one for a family member or friend I’ve lost.

  How the hell could I ever be attracted to a man who can’t even look at a needle without having a panic attack? Bitch, please. I need a man who can tolerate a little more pain than that.

  Logan returns with an elderly woman with white, wispy hair matted to her head and brown eyes magnified by her thick glasses. Deep fissures riddle her beige skin, emphasized by the rouge on the tops of her cheekbones. Her navy blue t-shirt reads “Born and Bred in South Carolina” in bold white letters, with the white silhouette of a palmetto tree underneath. She hobbles across the tile floor and pulls me into a suffocating embrace.

  “You little hooligan! I thought I’d lost you.” She weeps against my shoulder.

  “Nana,” I breathe. I pull her into my signature squishy hug. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You scared us real bad,” Logan says. I lift my head to meet his gaze, and a rock falls into my stomach. If he knew what I thought of him when I first woke up, I’d never hear the end of it. He would mock me without mercy until the end of my days.

  Better keep that funny little tidbit between me, myself, and I . . . and maybe Ana, my best girlfriend. She’s gonna piss herself laughing.

  I slice straight through Logan’s gorgeous head with a glare. “You deserve it . . . you and Dalton and Jay. That’s what you fuckers get for daring me to try a stage dive.”

  “Madison Abigail Daley, watch your language,” Nana barks. She yanks away from my embrace and holds up a knobby forefinger between my eyeballs.

  My lips curl into a smirk. If only she knew I have the vocabulary of a drunken sailor whenever she’s not around.

  Logan rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. I have to admit, he does look kinda cute doing that. But seriously, Logan and me? That would just never happen. Ever.

  I wonder why I’m having such a hard time convincing myself of this . . .

  “Yeeeah, sorry about that. We’ve all learned our lesson. We’re never gonna dare you to do anything ever again, and we’re definitely not going to let you snor—”

  “Ah, ba-ba-ba!” I shout nonsense as I scramble to my knees and crush his lips with my forefinger. Dude was about to spill the beans about me snorting cocaine before the concert in front of my conservative Southern grandmother who raised me and won’t hesitate to whoop my ass. That’s a major no-no.

  Damn, his lips are soft . . .

  I jerk my hand away. My stomach swims.

  What the hell is happening to me?

  Logan mouths the word, sorry. I flash him a small smile. The intimate grin he returns to me melts my insides into pudding.

  Uh-oh.

  I woke up in far more trouble than I anticipated.

  “Nana, that’s enough. My pillows are fine. You don’t need to fluff them again.”

  Pretending not to hear me, the spindly elderly woman continues to beat my pillows with a force that shakes the entire hospital bed. Finally, she lets out a grunt of satisfaction. “There. Now your pillows don’t look like Sasquatch sat on them.”

  I snort as Nana snatches up her flowery tote bag from a nearby chair. She has every medicine under the sun in there and all kinds of helpful items like antibacterial wipes, travel scissors, and nail clippers. Even when she’s not far away from home, this is the norm. Going anywhere with Nana is like having my own traveling survival pack.

  “I’m going back to the hotel for dinner,” Nana informs me.

  “Your hotel serves dinner? That’s nice.”

  “No. I have a microwave dinner and a program to watch.”

  “Oh. Well, have fun.”

  Nana leans in and kisses my cheek. She points a gnarled finger in my face. “You hurry up and get better so I can eat my microwave dinners and watch my programs at home.”

  “I’ll try.” I give her a weak smile. Nana turns and scurries out of the room. For a woman of her age, she moves fast.

  After she leaves, I sit on the side of the bed and attempt to stretch my limbs out. I’ve already done this several times, but they still feel kinked up from not moving for the past five days. My hand is still punctured and bruised from the IV. They took it out as soon as I started drinking water on my own. Physically, I seem to be on the mend. My mental faculties are fine too, except for this sudden, weird attraction to my best friend of fifteen years.

  I shudder at the strangeness of it. I’ve seen that boy puke in the middle of the school cafeteria. We all got the stomach flu because of him. Mine lasted for five days. I’ve helped him detach ticks from his scalp. I’ve cleaned up his bloody wound when he fell from a tree and busted his head open on a limb on the way down. When he failed miserably at wooing high school girls, I taught that boy how to talk to a crush.

  And now, all of a sudden, I want him for myself? That’s ludicrous.

  Granted, I never imagined he would grow up to be model-beautiful, but that never affected me until now.

  The door to my hospital room clicks open. When Logan enters the room, my stomach jumps.

  Calm the fuck down, you idiot!

  I force an awkward smile as he presents me with a meatball sub, Cool Ranch Doritos and a Dr. Pepper.

  “Here you go, my favorite girl’s favorite foods.” He kisses my temple and deposits the items on a nearby table, which slides neatly over the top of my bed. I settle back against my freshly fluffed pillows to eat. Logan sits in the same chair beside my bed, opens a paper-wrapped sandwich and bites down into what looks to be a Philly cheesesteak. He also has chili cheese Fritos and a Red Bull, two of my least favorite junk food items.

  “Aren’t you worried your girlfriend is going to castrate you for calling me your ‘favorite girl’?” I unwrap my sandwich, salivating over the smell of the meat and marinara sauce.

  Logan shrugs. “She can get over it. You know you’ll always be number one.” He winks, but his smile fades as his eyes linger on me. “God, you have no idea how scared I was that we’d lost you. I would never have forgiven myself.”

  I feel a surge of guilt. I can’t even imagine if it had been Logan who was in a coma for five days. I would have been a mess. We’ve been inseparable since middle school. Other than Nana and his mom, we’re all each other has.

  I flash him a smile. “I’m alright. Really. You can stop worrying.”

  Logan takes a big bite of his cheesesteak. He swallows and gives me his big, dumb grin, the one I know is hiding years of pain and loneliness for which the only cure was our friendship. I know, because mine is just the same. “Well, you’re Madison Fucking Daley. I should have known you’d come out swinging.”

  Chuckling, I shake my head at him. My teeth are halfway sunk into fluffy Italian bread and a plump, juicy meatball when two tall men near my age walk into the room. Jay, my cousin, has dark hair that contrasts with his light skin and blue eyes. People often mistake us for siblings because we look so much alike. Dalton is a sandy-haired, golden-eyed force of nature. You don’t want to stand in the way of this guy’s dreams.