I stood at the foot of Vaughan’s bed, slowly looking the half-naked man over. Moonlight shone through the open window, a summer breeze toying with the curtain. The things he did to me. All the emotions and effects of just being near him. Crazy. It was crazy.
“What?” he asked, voice husky.
“Just thinking.” I smiled.
“About?”
“How hot you look lying on your bed with a bag of frozen beans stuffed down your jeans to ice your bruised balls.”
One side of his cracked, puffy lips started moving upward. Then stopped. “Ow. Thanks.”
“Is there anything else I can get you?”
“No.” He patted the mattress beside him. “Sit with me awhile?”
“Sure.” I sat by his side, trying not to move the mattress too much and aggravate his sore bits. Kind of hard considering the beating he’d taken.
“Can’t believe Eric kneed me in the groin,” he said, sounding wounded. “Even for him, that’s low.”
“You did attack him first.”
“Mm.” He sighed. “He had no business talking about Nell like that. I don’t care what’s gone down between them or how long I’ve been away. I’m still her brother. No way could I just stand by and let him say those sorts of things.”
“I get that you needed to defend your sister.”
He made a noise. God only knew what it meant.
“I thought it was nice of Officer Andy not to throw you all in jail.”
Vaughan snorted. “He would have if Nell hadn’t been here. Schmuck. Couldn’t believe the way he was crawling up her ass.”
“It’s just as well she could talk him into walking away.”
He watched me from his one good eye; the other was hidden beneath an ice pack. Shadows and lumps marred his beautiful face and one side of his ribs.
“I better let you get some sleep.”
“You okay?” he asked.
I halted, searching for the right words. Thing was, there were none. “The fight scared me, Vaughan. Hell, it terrified me. You could have been seriously injured.”
“Lydia,” he said, then stopped. With various pained noises he moved himself over, making more room. “Lie down.”
With nil grace, I did as asked, kicking off my shoes and lying down on the bed beside him. Head on the pillow, I immediately started to yawn. It had to be three, four in the morning at least. Any alcohol-induced happy buzz had worn off hours ago. Soon enough the sun would be rising. What a night.
“Hey.” He hooked my pinkie with his, holding on tight. “Thanks for worrying about me.”
“I was worried about all of you.”
A pause. “That’s not what you said.”
“Yes, it was.”
“No. You said, you could have been seriously injured. ‘You’ meaning me,” he said, carefully turning his head to face me.
I just sniffed tiredly.
“You were worried about me.”
“Whatever.”
Shadows shifted across the ceiling, dark and mysterious. Outside, with the exception of the occasional horny bug sending out its booty call, silence reigned. Everyone was asleep. Or at least everyone in our little corner of the world.
“Is that why Andre had his arm around you,” he asked out of nowhere. “Cause you were scared?”
I rose up on one elbow. “You and Eric were trying to kill each other and you still somehow managed to notice this?”
No answer.
Amazing. The man was simply amazing. I lay back down, resumed staring at the ceiling. My ribs felt a size too small; all the important organs in there were overexcited. I tried not to smile, but failed.
“You going to say something?” he asked eventually.
“You like me.” The knowledge sank deep, soaking into my bones and settling. With it came a strange sort of calmness, a rightness, even though I should have been freaking right out about how transient we were. Sensibility dictated I keep him at arm’s length. Sense wanted to stick its hand down his pants, bury its nose in his neck, and get something going. Now.
“Didn’t we cover this already?” He gave my pinkie a squeeze.
“I don’t know. Somehow it feels more real now. Or maybe I wasn’t listening properly before.” I grinned. “Or maybe I’m just having a moment.”
“You’re always having moments.”
True. “Deal with it. If you hadn’t gotten involved in the fight we could be getting biblical.”
A long and loaded moan. “Do not talk to me about sex right now.”
“I’m just saying…”
“Well, don’t.”
“Fine. I won’t.” I shut my eyes tight, took a great big breath then slowly let it out. Disappointment. It sucked. Things low in my belly leading to my loins were aware they’d been very badly treated.
Completely denied.
Christmas lay right beside me, but I couldn’t touch my present for fear of hurting him further. I might just beat up Eric myself. Slap him around the head a few times with a handbag, something like that. It would be fitting.
Vaughan’s hand slid over mine. Care of the calluses on his fingers from playing guitar, they weren’t soft. The skin there was harder, jagged, even. But I didn’t mind. He could touch me as much as he liked. Hell, mood I was in, I’d tape myself permanently to his side if I could get away with such a thing.
“Did you hear from the real estate agent?” I turned my hand over, palm side up. All the better to catch his fingers with mine and hold on.
“He’s bringing through some people tomorrow. Guess the trashed sitting room isn’t going to look so great.” He swore softly.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Nell and Rosie and I cleaned up the worst of the mess. If they ask, he’ll say you’re a minimalist who doesn’t believe in having much furniture or something. It’ll be fine.”
A sigh. “Yeah. Well, it’ll have to be. Thanks for helping out.”
“No problem.” I gently lifted his hand to my lips and kissed it, careful to avoid the two cracked knuckles. “Can I ask a personal question?”
“Shoot.” He didn’t even hesitate.
“What’s the deal with Eric and you? Why did he react so badly to you working at the bar in the first place?”
The groaning was back, but it soon turned into laughter. The sound was not a happy one. “Thought you’d have asked about that before now, actually. After that damn scene at the bar last night.”
“I didn’t want to pry.”
Without a word he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it. Oh, god. I was melting. All they’d find of me come morning was soppy goo on the bed and it was all his fault.
“I like you, Lydia.”
“I like you too, Vaughan. Now give me the gossip.”
His laughter turned to an altogether more acceptable sound. “Eric was in the band all during high school. Helped me put it together, actually. We were tight back then. His parents only live a street over, so we pretty much grew up together…”
“What happened?”
“Same things that’s happening now. He fucked it up with the band. He was always screwing around, never taking the group seriously. All he had to do was learn how to hit the fucking drums in time, but was he able to do it?” He held my hand to his chest, heart pounding away against the back of my hand. It felt strong, good, like the man it lay within. “Not a chance. I warned him, if he didn’t get his act together then he wasn’t coming west with us after graduation. Guess he didn’t believe me. Time came and I had to tell him he was out. He didn’t take it well.”
I sucked in a breath, blowing it out between pursed lips. “Hell. That must have sucked. Now I know why you were nervous about showing up to work at the Dive Bar.”
“Yeah.” He said no more.
We lay in silence, holding hands, ever so slowly dozing off to sleep. Despite my busy mind, exhaustion called to me loud and clear. Sheets and pillow smelling of Vaughan, the heat of his body right next to mine and a cool early morning summer breeze blowing in through the window. My own personal paradise. God, if anything I was overtired. The weight of my body seemed to have tripled, and yet, it felt light as a feather at the same time. Like I could feel myself sinking through the mattress and floating off into the ether, attached to the earth only by Vaughan’s hand. I wanted to float there forever, having sweet dreams.
I wondered how Chris and Paul were doing, living it up in Hawaii. Interesting, the thought could almost drift through my brain without me wanting to go into a berserker rage and set fire to shit. Almost. The time Chris and I had spent together, the wedding that never was, all of it just kind of free-fell through my mind.
Beside me, Vaughan’s bare chest rose and fell in perfect rhythm. All of his immaculate ink no more than a blur in the low light. The eye that I could see was closed, his poor battered face relaxed.
“I didn’t love Chris like I should have,” I whispered. “I think I was just lonely and all the attention … I don’t know, it went to my head or something. But it wasn’t real.”
He didn’t move. Nothing changed. The night went on.
I stared back up at his bedroom ceiling, my old friend. It made as good a witness to my confession as any. “In two and a half days I think I’ve honestly come to feel more for you than I ever felt for him. It’s different, though. I thought I knew exactly how life would be with Chris. What we’d do, how we’d be together. He fit into this mold that I thought I wanted and understood, and you don’t.”
I rolled my eyes back, moaning at my own drama-itis. Nothing made sense. Everything perplexed me. Vaughan Hewson had my vagina on insta-dial if he could just figure it out. Pathetic, crazy, and all the rest. Hang my sad sore heart to dry and be done with it already. Gah.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is, I wouldn’t give up a second with you for all the months of being lied to and manipulated by him, as insane as that sounds. That’s all. The end.”
There, it was out there, floating around in the universe. The truth as I knew it released.
God, it felt like some mammoth weight, some big cumbersome bastard, had been lifted off me and thrown into the abyss. Down and down into the darkness.
Let the new day begin and all of yesterday’s crap go. I was done with it. It hurt, it cost me, and I was done with it. I’d lived, I’d learned, et cetera.
Wisdom came at a bitch of a price. But I’d paid it and now I’d move on.
“Babe,” said a voice in the darkness, grasping my hand.
“I thought you were asleep,” I said, voice weirdly clogged. I guess throwing off your emotional crap into the depths of space took a toll on your nasal cavities. “Are you in pain? Do you need me to get you something?”
“No. Just stay with me.”
“Okay.”
Silence.
“Are you drunk?”
“No,” I said, feeling myself inside and out. “No, I don’t think so. I think it wore off a while back.”
“’kay.”
Silence.
“Lydia, the band breaking up, having to come back here…” His breathing in the darkness sounded so loud, profound, even. The silence broken and my secrets revealed. Man, it was so always the way with him. I couldn’t hide if I tried.
“Yeah,” I asked, urging him to go on.
“Meeting you makes it almost worthwhile.”
Almost. But his pain, his dreams had taken a decade or more than mine to grow and die. Our situations weren’t the same. That was the truth.
“Thank you,” I said, holding on tight to his hand.
“Go to sleep, babe. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
“Okay.”