Crash: Band Nerd, #3

By Danica Avet

Hey y'all, I'm Jolene Pickering, and music is my life and salvation. I came to Sauvage State to escape my past, and everything was perfect 'til Levi "Crash" Cracchiolo, all tattoos and sexy smirk, stormed into my life. He's everything I don't need, yet I'm torn between wanting him and needing to not want him.

The Crash Cracchiolo doctrine reads: 'The best things in life are music and sex, but never shall the twain meet.' My vow to avoid band chicks was unshakable until she walked on to my field. Jolene. Beautiful, talented, and completely off-limits. Then I heard her play. Now all I want is to make her believe in herself the way I do, and prove this band nerd's heart only beats for her.

I feel as lost as last year's Easter egg, because good things don't happen to girls like me. But God willing and the creek don't rise, Crash'll only ever see the person I want to be, not who others say I am.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Danica Avet
• Release date: Jul 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386132318

Book preview

Acknowledgements

This book almost wrote itself after a few stops and starts, but it couldn’t have happened without the help of a few important people.

I had an interesting start to my friendship with Lea Barrymire. I kept getting her confused with someone else, but she never once treated me like I was insane. That was nearly five years ago and she still doesn’t treat me like the crazy person I can sometimes be. When I need to brainstorm a scene, plot an entire book, or just figure out what a character is thinking, she’s always there with helpful suggestions. Honestly, I think I’d be lost without her input. Love you, girl!

I also need to thank Bridget, Micah, and Jacob for their help in coming up with the perfect prank. It’s actually kind frightening the things y’all came up with, but it was great finding out how your devious minds work.

For the readers who’ve shown such enthusiasm about the Band Nerd Series, you help inspire me to write even more. I can’t even begin to describe the gladness that fills my heart when I see your reviews, discussions, and get those questions from you. So from this band nerd to you all, thank you!

Preface

When I started writing Jolene's story I didn't intend to delve so deeply into issues of self-worth, but as her past came to light, I realized she had a lot more to overcome than many of my other characters. I'll admit, there were times I wanted to just shake her and tell her she was worth more than she thought, but that's something she had to learn for herself. In this day and age, we don't like to think that girls can think so little of themselves. Women have come a long way in modern times; however, that doesn't change the fact that there are many out there who don't think they deserve more than what they've been given. Some are lucky to have family and friends who help them build themselves up. Others, like Jolene, don't and they struggle. That's what this story is really about. It's about a girl who was told she'd never amount to much, who was told she only had one use, and who fights to rise above it. 

I hope you read this story in the light it was intended. A story to give hope, about someone who was given a raw deal and still managed to retain the purity of spirit and find the right person to provide all the love and adoration she—and everyone—deserves.

Love,

Danica

Prologue

Levi

July

There’s nothing like the first day of band camp. The drumline has been practicing since June, but only because we’ve always been one of the best regiments in the country and I want it to stay that way. When I made section leader last year I took it as the honor it was meant to be, which means keeping my line in shape. Best part is I only have one freshman this year, making my job a lot easier.

Losing myself in the cadences I composed during the off-season with help from Frosty, I don’t even realize how much time has passed until I hear the murmur of voices coming from the lobby of the band annex. Rolling out a series of single dragadiddles, I signal the end of Cadence #3 to the rest of the line. Like the well-oiled machine we’ve become in the last three weeks, we bring what I’m hoping will be used as one of the 300’s entrance cadences to an end.

Someone claps and I shoot a smile at the doors of the practice room. God, I fucking love what I do. There’s nothing in the world like the high I get from creating cadences and sequences we’ll use throughout the season. Well, there might be one thing and the thought has me grinning like an ass. Because the first day of band camp means there are all sorts of lovely new dancers waiting for me.

With that thought in mind, I lower my snare. Take twenty and meet up on the practice field, I tell my guys, nodding to Cuba, or Cube as I started calling him last season. You wanna grab the sideline markers?

Like the good kid he is, Cube hops to and scampers off. The guys who’ve been in the line with me since my freshman year just give me knowing smiles. They know what I’m planning to do.

Whistling a cheerful tune, I saunter out of the practice hall and into the crowd of band students socializing before our first field rehearsal. Lots of new faces, but still a good number of people I’ve come to know well. I shake hands, slap backs, and pass around hugs to the girls who, unfortunately, will never grace my bed. Not their fault they’re musicians, but even though some are downright fuckable, I’ll never go there.

Nope. I don’t shit where I eat. I even have a doctrine that goes something like: ‘The best things in life are music and sex, but never shall the twain meet.’

The Marching 300 is a big part of my life and I don’t want the drama of a one-night stand haunting me all season long. Maybe that makes me sound like a dick, but I’ve been there and done that and I don’t want to repeat it. I mean, it isn’t like I hump and dump. I do repeats now and then, but I always make sure the girls I fuck know we’re not doing anything resembling a relationship, although I do remain friendly with them.

What can I say? I’m a friendly guy. Plus it makes it easier if I do want a repeat performance.

Someone asked me once what I’d do if some guy treated my little sister the way I do the girls I have fun with. The violence that consumed me at the thought almost made me rethink my non-commitment position. But then I realized what Erika does is her business. I don’t break hearts so it isn’t like the girls I’m with are going home to cry every night because I didn’t call them. Now, if some motherfucker broke Erika’s heart, they’d learn what the Cracchiolo temper can do.

I eye the fresh faces of the girls hanging with the band members. Cute. Some of them are very fucking cute, but nope. I resolutely seal them in the off-limits box and move on. The dancers are part of the 300, although more like an auxiliary. Most of them aren’t musicians, aren’t taking any music classes, which means they’re in my hunting grounds.

And when I step outside the lobby to see the girls clustered together, my smile grows even bigger. I love women of all kinds. Short, tall, lean, round, light, dark, and everything in between. I love the way they move, the way they smell, the way they talk, and I love the way they feel around my dick.

Crash! a few of the girls squeal when they see me and within seconds, I’m surrounded by soft, sweet-smelling bodies.

They’re four of the veterans on the dance team, all of whom I’ve enjoyed at some point in the last three years. I give them hugs because while we have history, they’re all dating and I’m happy for them. Yeah, I know. Weird right? Them dating puts them firmly in the off-limits category, but just because I’m against relationships doesn’t mean I begrudge anyone else having one. Hell, my parents have a fantastic marriage, my dad claiming Mom was his saving grace. No, I don’t have a problem with other people being in relationships. Just me.

It’s good to see you, I tell them sincerely, taking in the happiness on their pretty faces. Last season, huh?

They start chirping about graduation and some of my elation fades. I’m officially a senior now, in my fourth year at Sauvage State, and I’m no closer to graduating than I was two years ago. It isn’t because I’m failing or anything. My grades are great, but band, classes, and work means I’ve had to take my courses at a much slower pace. I take just enough credits each semester to qualify as a full-time student, but it’s nowhere near as many as I need to get my degree. Whatever it’ll be.

Did you have a good summer? one of the girls asks, breaking into my depressing thoughts.

I smile by rote. Sure as shit did, parties, girls, music. And backbreaking work at the nursery. What more could a guy ask for?

They titter and I look over their heads to the gaggle of new girls. Well, not all of them are new. I notice Angelle is still in the fold. She’s sexy, but not one I plan to fuck anytime in the future. I’ve seen how bitchy she is to the other girls and my spidey senses tell me she’s one of those girls. The crazy kind who fucks great, but thinks she can lead a guy around by their balls.

The others are sweet and fresh-faced, eyeing me like a bunch of innocent lambs waiting for the big bad wolf to devour them. And looking forward to it.

Hell yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. They’re all eighteen, pretty with great bodies, and looking to explore their newfound independence.

I fucking love college.

I’m about to make my way over to introduce myself, lavish them with the infamous Cracchiolo charm, when I see her.

Pretty sure I mentioned before that I love all women in all shapes and sizes. It’s just the way I’m made. But in that moment, I swear I may have fallen in love for real. Well, maybe not love, but definitely instant lust.

Golden blonde hair drapes over her shoulder, showing off a face that should be gracing a runway somewhere. Wide blue eyes, a heart-shaped face, and the cutest little rosebud of a mouth make her a knockout. Add that to the tiny babydoll t-shirt hugging a fantastic rack, tiny waist, and little, flirty shorts that display a pair of legs that would have a man begging to have them wrapped around his hips as he drilled into her, and she’s perfection. Absolute perfection and I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything else before. Even the Mapex Saturn V kit I managed to buy for myself last Christmas.

She’s talking with a few of the newer dancers and a tiny bit of a girl who looks a little familiar. Every move she makes is graceful from the way she throws her head back to laugh, to the way her hands move as she speaks. I devour her, soak her in, and decide she’s mine. For a while, at least. Despite the way my heart pounds at the sight of her, the way my dick threatens to throw wood, I’m still not in the market for anything permanent. Not only had I been through a shitty breakup, but I watched my uncle go through hell because of getting tied down too young. That’s not gonna be me. I know I’ll settle down at some point. Probably when I’m forty or something, but that’s years and years away from now. For the time being, I’ll just focus on the fun I can have with that beauty. Because I can already tell I’m really gonna love tapping that ass.

At some point I start walking over to the small cluster of girls without even meaning to. I normally let them come to me, but there’s this pull I can’t deny and I don’t even want to. If I don’t get to her first, one of the other guys will and we don’t need that kind of drama the first day back. Once I know all of her secrets—important things like the way she tastes, smells, and feels—then they can make their move. But I saw her first, which means I get dibs.

She notices me, turning that cornflower blue gaze my way and my heart does a stutter beat because fucking wow. She’s... I don’t even have words to describe her. I swear I feel as though someone whacked me in the head with something heavy because I feel kind of dizzy, a little unsteady, but still determined to have her under me sometime today.

The other girls notice me as well, although I’m barely aware of them. Not with me standing close enough to see she has a small smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and the tips of her long eyelashes are golden like her hair. Not only that, but I can smell her. Sweet. Fruity. Like peaches.

I love peaches.

Hi, she says shyly, those eyelashes dipping down over her eyes in a move I’ve seen girls perform so many times before it shouldn’t affect me, but somehow does.

Hey, I respond, my voice kind of gruff. I clear my throat and pull myself together. Smile, asshole. Smile. I do and yeah, she responds the way I want—no, need her to. I’m Levi Cracchiolo, drumline section leader. But everyone calls me Crash.

Her eyelashes flutter a little and the pulse at the base of her sun-kissed throat does the same. Then she smiles back and it’s like a friggin’ shot to the heart. The girl has dimples. Hi, I’m Jolene Pickering, she says in a soft drawl that slides across my skin, forcing me to fight a shiver. Freshman trumpet player.

And just like that, all the feel-good happy thoughts in my brain flee. She’s a goddamn trumpet player, a member of the Marching 300, and completely off-limits. Little lines form between her perfectly arched eyebrows as she stares up at me, probably wondering if something’s wrong with me, but it doesn’t matter what she thinks. She’s a fellow musician.

Motherfucking shit.

I feel my blood pressure rising as my temper ignites. Now, this might surprise people because I’m known as laid-back, easy-going, chill, whatever you want to call it, nothing gets me worked up. I may be Italian and have a family that lives up to the passionate stereotype, but I’ve always been a little different. Instead of vocalizing my anger, I take it out on my drums. Beat all the fury, hurt, disappointment on my skins, but in this moment, I feel like I’m about to explode from the emotions swirling around me.

Because it’s fucking unfair. The most perfect, beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my entire life is a musician. A girl I’ll have to see throughout the entire year at practices and games, probably have in some of my classes, which means if I don’t shut this shit down now, I’m looking at a miserable year.

Welcome to the 300, I tell her shortly and turn my smile on the dancer standing next to her. I know she’s one of the dancers because I clearly see she’s wearing a Spartans’ Steppers t-shirt. She’s cute. Not as cute as Jolene, but she’ll do. Hey, honey, how you doin’? Yeah, it’s a lame line, yet it works every time.

The semi-pretty girl nearly swoons at my feet, introducing herself and her fellow dancers in a stammering voice. Jolene and the tiny chick sort of melt away, which is for the best. I don’t need that fucking drama to ruin what’s meant to be the best years of my life.

Even if part of me still pouts like a goddamn toddler having its favorite toy taken away.

Jolene Pickering isn’t for me and never will be.

Jolene

AFTER WAVING GOODBYE to my new friends, I trudge into my dorm hall because I can’t really lift my legs. Still, the soreness can’t burst my bubble of happiness. I have friends. Becca, who attached herself to me at freshman orientation last month, is a complete scream. And through Becca—who I swear doesn’t know a stranger—I also met Nessie and Lena, the tuba chicks. Which is awesome. They have to be the most confident girls in the world to stick their toes in that pool of testosterone, but it doesn’t seem to bother them at all.

Overall, I have to say my first day as a member of the 300 is a complete success.

As I start up the stairs to my third floor dorm room, some of my happiness fades. Okay, today wasn’t a complete success. I over exaggerate. There was that impossibly handsome drummer who walked right up to me with a smirk on his face that had parts of me tingling and heating up.

I thought my heart was gonna stop when he smiled at me. Even now, hours and hours later, I still feel a little breathless. They don’t make boys like him back in Pepper Ridge, Georgia. Dark hair, sinfully dark eyes, tattoos scrolling down his muscled arms, and a smirk that would make Ms. Lona Hogelbee forget about her vows of chastity. Ms. Hogelbee is the resident old maid of Pepper Ridge and her dislike of anything male is well-known, but even she wouldn’t be able to resist the many physical charms of Levi Crash Cracchiolo.

And for a moment there, first day at band camp, far away from everyone who treated me like one of the notorious Pickering Women of Pepper Ridge, I thought the cutest boy in band was going to ask me out in front of the entire 300. It was in the way his already dark eyes heated, the way he watched me like a hawk and I was a rabbit he really wanted to gobble up.

But as soon as I introduced myself, that expression disappeared like someone hit a switch. He turned away from me, his handsome face impassive until he started flirting with one of the girls I was talking to. It was as though with that one look, he knew.

Knew I was Jolene Pickering, second out of Sheila Pickering’s six daughters. Knew I was one of the girls boys back home would take out for fun, but never take to meet their parents. Like he could smell the taint of the trailer park clinging to me no matter how hard I try to scrub it away. It was disgust and something else and it left me feeling exposed, as though his dismissal of me pointed out to the other students just how trashy I am.

Thankfully, I appeared to be the only person who thought his behavior was strange. Then I learned he doesn’t date. At all. He just has sex and only with non-band students.

I shake my head and push open the door to my floor. He’s exactly like the boys at home, the ones who chase after a girl until they get what they want and then move on to the next without a single thought to her feelings. Although that behavior seemed to extend only to me and my sisters. I can’t even count how many times I had to comfort Delia when one of the boys from town broke her heart. Or how many times I had to do the same for Mama.

Praying Lucille, Maggie Mae, Jeanie Marie, and Ruby escape the same fate, I push open my door and stop in my tracks. When I left this morning, everything was nice and neat. I grew up in a trailer, sharing my room with two of my sisters until I moved to LaSalle, so I have this thing about tidiness. It’s not quite OCD, but it’s close.

So to see clothes strewn about, boxes and cases littering the floor, my fingers twitch with the need to pick up. Except it’s not my stuff. I’ve been in the dorms since last week and I’ve anxiously awaited the arrival of my new roommate. Now though, I’m rethinking my warm welcome.

The door to the bathroom we’ll be sharing with the girls in the next room opens and a girl emerges. She’s stunning with pitch black hair, yellow-gold eyes, and a Mae West figure. The black on black on black clothes she wears don’t detract from her prettiness, nor do the various piercings in her face. One through her eyebrow, another through one of her thin nostrils, and yet another through her lip. She’s got thick black bands on her wrists, almost like arm warmers but much shorter. They make her look militant, as though she might be hiding razor blades in them just in case she wants to cut someone to pieces. I’ve seen girls dressed like her on television and a few back in school, but she somehow manages to scare me more than any of them did.

She’s not quite what I was expecting when I thought of my future roommate, but bolstered by the budding friendship with Nessie, Becca, and Lena, I push my small-town reservations aside and open my mouth. But any greeting I planned to give her freezes on my lips when she takes one look at me and curls her lip, her eerie gaze flicking over me with contempt.

I glance at her bed where the card I’d made when I first moved in is shredded into little pink, glittery pieces. I made it by hand, painstakingly using my best handwriting to welcome my new roommate in the hopes it would make her feel at home. And now it’s scattered all over her covers and the floor.

Okay then, maybe she’s not into glitter and greeting cards. Mustering all of my beauty pageant training—smiling even when my shoes pinch or I was sicker than a dog—I beam at her. Hi, I’m Jolene Pickering. I’m so glad to meet you.

She was hostile before, but it’s as though hearing me speak set her off because her yellow eyes narrow on me with dislike. Well, fuck me, she sneers. "You’re my roommate?"

Y-Yes, I say slowly, still trying to keep my smile in place. Where are you from? I moved here from Pepper Ridge, Georgia.

It doesn’t seem possible, but her lip curls even higher, baring her white teeth. Fucking great, I get to room with motherfucking Trailer Trash Barbie from Bumfuck, Georgia, she snarls under her breath. Stressing my home state with a horrible imitation of my drawl.

I’m not sure if she meant for me to hear that or not, but my smile crashes. I feel it happen. I-I’m sorry?

She grimaces and pushes past me to the boxes. Stupid fucking rules, she mutters. I could rent an apartment, but no, I’m a freshman so I have to stay in the dorms and get stuck with the President of the Ho Club. She finally turns to me. Look, we’re stuck with each other unless you want to request a room reassignment—which I suggest you do before the semester starts because I’m not about to deal with your fake sugar-wouldn’t-melt-in-your-mouth bullshit. But this is my shit, she says with a