Sam

One Month Later

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

“So we’re going to tentatively plan all of our Europe dates. Killian’s head of security, obviously. He’s already made it very clear that he gets to sign off on every venue. But we’ve got the first five in the clear.”

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

The feel of her skin. Of being inside her. Like coming home. All of the music inside of his head, all of the chaos, emptied the moment he locked eyes with her. Her lips, tasting of strawberry. The flushing of her face when he called her “babe.” Fuck, the honesty of her face in front of him. Stripped of all intentions, of all pursuits. Not wanting anything but him. The real him. Not the adorned version, the shiny, fucked-up Ken Doll. Not the Sam used for mass production. No, the stripped-down version. The one no one saw. Not even the band. Not even the mirror.

And somehow he’d shown her, shown himself. And then realized what he’d done when he showed that. Then he fucked it up even more than he thought imaginable. Fucked up as bad as he ever had in his life—and he once took home two washed-up child stars who were strung out on meth.

He was the king of fucked-up shit. Usually it was funny. Made for a great story, great headline, great memory.

But this one haunted his steps. The impact of his sticks on his set. Every damn day. Every fucking hour.

His hands itched for something to take the edge off, the craving for that more intense than he’d had in a long while.

The craving for her touch couldn’t be recreated by any drug. Battling both was his own personal hell.

Not even the good kind. Kurt Cobain was nowhere to be seen.

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

“We’ve got the set list. I need you to organize who you’ve got coming. Which groupies are on which rotation…”

Her face. Fuck, her face when he pretended he forgot her name. Fuck. That was imprinted on his fucking soul. She was stripped bare to him too. Not just in that moment but every fucking moment before that. That’s why he’d called her Thumbelina, because she was so delicate, so breakable.

Not weak. No, he saw it in her eyes, the strength that only experience of pain could produce. But not jaded, not ruined by it. Not guarding herself with a mask that everyone seemed to wear. And that’s why she was that little beautiful girl. One of a kind. And if he wasn’t careful, she’d be crushed in the palm of some asshole’s hand.

That, beyond the obvious fact that she was a fucking knockout, was why he’d made it his mission to take her home. At the beginning, it wasn’t to fuck her. He’d wanted to do that the moment he laid eyes on her, of course, but he’d decided he wouldn’t. This wasn’t a girl you just fucked and politely put in a town car in the morning with a memory to take into her golden years. This was a girl you held the fuck on to. With both hands. That you took home to your parents. That you made a home with. Had some sort of ending with.

Sam didn’t do endings. Happy or otherwise. He was all about the journey, the ride, not the destination. The destination, being stationary, was death.

But that had changed after he watched her. After he watched her throw her head back, laughing at what that fuck Jagger said. Laughed. Like music. Music that exploded through the room in a way Kurt Cobain shouting about life, love, and death just couldn’t do.

And he watched that, and the way he saw the other fucking bikers watching, and he had to stop himself from doing something that would most likely get him shot. Or at the very least punched in the face.

He wasn’t afraid of a punch to his face; it wasn’t his moneymaker. His hands were. And even then, at that moment, he’d have crushed them both against the hard jaws of the biker who was standing way too fucking close to the sun. His sun.

Bullets too. He’d take them.

But it was Lexie’s wedding. She’d had enough of bullets.

That thought had set his blood cold. Distracted him of thoughts of her for just a moment.

The memory of his best friend dying right in front of him. The man who considered her his sun dying right in front of him as his sun went out.

The time in the hospital when a part of him died too. When he was faced with it. The reaper. The very real fucking prospect of death. The terrifying reality of it happening. Not to him. He wasn’t afraid of that. He wouldn’t be here to give a fuck about that. But to someone else who he cared about.

That had been the scariest moment of his life.

And he’d do anything and everything to make sure he wasn’t put in that position again.

Which meant not making a home with anyone but his music and his family. The crowds he played for were bright enough to warm earth ten times over. His earth, at least.

Or so he thought. Until that fucking laugh.

Until that fucking flushed face and electric eyes taking over his vision and her naked proposition.

Even now, the memory of it made his dick hard.

Though it went soft pretty fucking quickly when he remembered what he’d done that morning.

The morning after.

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

“Sam! For fuck’s sake, will you stop with that incessant tapping?” Mark snapped.

Sam’s attention was thankfully diverted from the replay reel of that morning to the present moment. To the room in the towers of their recording company where Wyatt, Noah, Mark, Jenna and some other suits he hadn’t bothered remembering the names of were organizing the world tour they were setting off for in a month.

Lexie had been cleared to fly, and although Sam was itching for the oblivion of the crowd to swallow him up, for the music to replace his thoughts, for the drums to drown out the echoes of her words, of his own, he was not happy about going on the tour when Lexie had only just recovered. And yes, the madman who had stalked her, kidnapped her and almost killed her was dead, but the idea of him was still alive. Sure, they were rock gods, but they weren’t immortal.

Only music was immortal.

The people who made it were a lot more breakable.

Lexie was the heart of the body that was Unquiet Mind. And—even he could admit it—the brains too. And the beauty. All of it, really.

The rest of them, they were just fucking decoration. She could take over the world on her own. But she didn’t want to. She never would. None of them would ever go the way of Guns N’ Roses. He was sure Axl, Slash, Duff, Steven and Izzy had thought the same in the glory days, when the money was bountiful, the fans loving and the novelty far from wearing off. But there was something in him, a certainty that he knew he would be playing in Unquiet Mind until he was old and gray. Well after the crowds had moved on to the newer, younger version of him. And his family would be beside him.

Since they were family, Lexie was the little sister they all adored and they eventually gave whatever she wanted to.

And she wanted to tour.

So they were touring.

Sam looked at all the eyes focused on him, his smile already in place. He was an expert at not betraying the battle in his mind to the masses. Even to his family. Especially to his family. Because if you couldn’t hide your true self from your family, who could you hide it from?

He glanced down at his hands, which had been, of their own volition, tapping his drumsticks against the table, giving the chaos of his thoughts a rhythm of its own.

Everything had a rhythm.

Even chaos.

Especially chaos.

“What?” he played dumb. It was what all the most intelligent people did. “You can’t try to scold me when I piss you off. You’re the one who insisted I be here. You know what I bring to the table.” He played a short Guns N’ Roses solo—it was only apt—and then held his drumsticks up with a grin. “In addition to good looks, insurmountable talent, sheer sex appeal, and obviously a smile that even Julia Roberts can’t beat, I bring the boredom in face of organization. You didn’t give me crayons.” He pouted, then held up his sticks. “I had to entertain myself. Which I would rather being doing with the Russian model I’ve got on speed dial,” he lied. “Why do you need me here when we pay you all disgusting amounts of money to do the boring stuff so I can do the fun stuff? The fun stuff that actually seems to pay all your bills.”

Wyatt shook his head. Noah grinned.

The suits shifted in their seats.

Mark did nothing but stare at him blankly. Dude had his emotions locked down tight. It was necessary to be a shark, he guessed. Mark was the band’s manager, so he was an actual shark; he spent his days biting shit, drawing blood, organizing the band.

“You need to be here because you’re part of this band,” Mark said dryly. “You need to know what’s going on when you go on your world tour. Especially considering you’ve got an interview coming up in a couple of hours. It would be good for the band to actually know stuff that helps promote the tour that pays for all the fun stuff.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “I know plenty of stuff,” he replied, standing. Sitting there ignoring all of this talk was not good for his state of mind. He needed a stage or, failing that, a bar.

It just so happened that he had an excellent bar at his house.

“You don’t worry your graying head over how I’m going to handle the press.” He winked at his publicist. “That’s what we pay Jenna for.”

Then he left, hoping copious amounts of alcohol might help him escape from those pesky fucking emotions. Those pesky and fucking painful thoughts of her, wondering what she was doing, who she was with.

But, as he knew far too well, hope didn’t really exist.