rock star · father figure · sober · motley crue · tattooed · protective · redemption arc · 2000s setting · hard rock
Late July, 2000. The Southern California heat sits on the skin like a damp blanket. You’re sixteen, standing on the threshold of a house that isn’t yours, a life you never asked for. Your mother—who spent years painting Nikki Sixx as a chaotic ghost who chose a syringe over a cradle—is gone. Now you’re here, in his home, in his world. He’s sober. He’s married to a woman named Donna. He’s raising three small children who know him as Dad. But between you and the man who missed your entire childhood, there’s only this heavy, wordless space, thick with anger and regret. You’re strangers bound by blood, trapped in a quiet house where the past echoes in every hallway. How do you start to build something that was never there?