Delaney
Pulling the covers over my head, I stubbornly ignored the sound of a restless surf beating against the Pacific coastline. And the knocking on my door.
Instead I clung to the remnants of sleep, desperate to escape back into my unconscious, where I’d been wrapped in Shane’s arms, his breaths filling my ears, his mouth blazing a trail of fire across my skin.
At some point during my mostly sleepless night, I’d finally realized the flickering thread of possibility I felt with Shane meant more to me than blindly following a set of rules I’d had no part in making. The next six months were going to pass regardless of whether I spent my nights with Shane or not. I could take a chance and make the most of our time together. Or not, and guarantee that I would be miserable.
It was a gamble, but if Shane Hawthorne wasn’t worth the risk, no one was.
My epiphany may have come too late though. Outside of this cozy cocoon, my reality was filled with grief and guilt. And so many regrets. What if Shane became one of them?
“Delaney.” The door swung forward on silent hinges, Shane’s head appearing within the opening. “You awake?” he asked in an exaggerated whisper.
I grudgingly opened one eye, squinting against the brightness of the California morning sun. I’d forgotten to close the shades last night. No. “Yes.”
I might be awake, but even my reality felt like a dream.
“Good morning.” Shane’s cheerful tone caught me by surprise, given the way last night had ended. Swim trunks were riding low on Shane’s lean hips, droplets of salt water still clinging to his well-defined abs.
I dragged my gaze back to his face, noticing his thick tangle of hair was slicked back and still dripping. No man should be so good-looking. “You’ve been for a swim already?”
“It’s almost ten.”
Working in a restaurant, I’d become accustomed to keeping late hours, usually sleeping until eleven unless I was working the lunch shift. Since he hadn’t fired me yet, Shane was technically still my boss. A boss with amber eyes and lashes most girls would kill for. And, of course, those abs.
I fought for something to say, some way to be useful. “Can I get you something?” Me, maybe? His presence changed the energy in the room, added a boost of intensity to the ocean breeze coming through the open window. Every part of me wished he would come closer, following that strangely undeniable thread between us, until he crawled into bed with me.
Butterflies dipped and swirled inside my stomach, their eager wings making me tingle in places I didn’t know I had. I would have given anything to capture every last one of them in a net and release them from the balcony, watch them fly far, far away. Because I didn’t want to feel this way. Off-balance and excited. Nervous and insecure. Invigorated by a man whose presence in my life was only temporary.
“What were you thinking of?” On its face, the question was perfectly innocuous. Shane’s full lips, one corner lifted by a lopsided smile, eyes shining with mischief, added another layer of meaning. I wanted to raise the covers in invitation, but I hadn’t even brushed my teeth yet, and there was the little matter of crying in his arms just last night.
“Breakfast?” I squeaked, my stomach surprising me with a quiet rumble.
Shane’s grin dropped, and he pushed off the doorjamb. “Actually, I’m already late for a meeting. How’s your foot?”
My foot? “Oh.” I’d forgotten all about it. Sitting up, I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress and stood up gingerly. I felt a little twinge, but that was all. “Actually, not bad.” I pivoted, facing toward Shane. “I must have had a pretty great nurse.”
Shane’s eyes traveled from my foot, up my leg, landing on my skimpy excuse for pajamas. “Great,” he bit out, the possibility of dialogue held in check by a clenched jaw. “I’ll be back in a few hours. You should check your e-mail. Piper sent us details for a few appearances tonight.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks.” Shane left, and I sat back down, deflated. I should have been celebrating—I hadn’t been fired. But I wasn’t.
I didn’t need to hear his car roar out of the driveway to know he was gone. As I crawled back beneath the covers, Shane’s absence gaped as widely as a black hole. I wasn’t hungry anymore. Instead I craved another chance, or maybe a do-over.
If my mother were still alive, I’d be on the phone with her already. Growing up, I’d always been more of a daddy’s girl, but when I left home, I finally realized how much I’d relied on her as a sounding board for all my decisions. Rather than tell me what I should do, she’d helped me drill down to the core of what I really wanted all along. My mother had a way of making answers seem simple, even obvious.
I would have given anything for just one conversation with her right now.
I missed her so much. And I had no one to blame but myself.
A seagull landed on the railing outside my window, its gray beak tapping against the mesh screen.
“Go away,” I mumbled.
It squawked, fluttering its wings. Another bird flew down, and I watched as they preened at each other, making enough noise to have an entire conversation. After a few minutes, they flew off together, soaring and dipping. Free.
Unlike my father.
I couldn’t destroy my only chance of helping the one parent I had left.
With a groan, I flung off the covers. Whatever Shane’s motives, I had a job to do. Wallowing in regrets was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
I picked up my phone from the nightstand. It was dead, but once I plugged it into the charger, it came to life, beeping and buzzing like an epileptic with Tourette’s. I didn’t even have a chance to see what had it so agitated before it started ringing. “Hey, Piper.”
“Oh. My. God. You are fucking brilliant. I can’t believe I ever doubted you!”
I flinched, holding the phone away from my ear. “The pictures turned out okay?” I asked, assuming she was talking about my first experience with the paparazzi in front of the restaurant. Piper had spent nearly an hour teaching me how to stand, how to smile, the angle to tilt my head, what to do with my hands. Getting a good shot was not nearly as effortless as it looked.
“Okay? They are amazing. You in that little, barely there nightie and Shane, bare-chested, with you in his arms. Wow. Ah-may-zing!”
I clutched the phone to my ear, feeling light-headed. “Wait, what? I meant from the restaurant. What photos are you—”
“The ones from the beach. Shane’s publicist must have had someone out there. Fucking brilliant, if you ask me.”
A chill swept over my shoulders, and I gathered the sheet to my chest. I didn’t want to continue this conversation. Truthfully, I never wanted to speak to her or Travis or Shane ever again.
Just another photo op.
We’d been a hair’s breadth away from making love. Was it all just a ploy, a PR stunt? Had Shane let me run to him, roll naked in the sand with him, knowing someone was capturing every passionate moment on film? Had it all been staged to give the tabloids a few steamy photos?
With a sickening lurch, I wondered if Shane had been hoping for a sex tape.
What have I gotten myself into?
Shane
“Nice job, Shane.” Travis’s voice boomed through my car’s Bose speakers. “You two are killing it.”
I winced, grunting out a mangled, “Thanks.”
“No, really. I mean, those shots on the beach. Fucking priceless.”
The blood drained from my head, my vision going gray at the edges. “What shots? We didn’t take any photographs on the beach.”
But I knew.
I knew.
“Ha,” Travis scoffed, thinking I was kidding.
I wasn’t.
“Just when I think you’re getting too comfortable, resting on your laurels, you prove me wrong and remind me that you’re still a hustler at heart.” The pride seeping from his voice slipped into my bloodstream, becoming a curdled mass in the pit of my stomach. Bitterness rose, coating my throat, burning my tongue.
Fuck. How could I have been so stupid? Just because we didn’t see the camera didn’t mean our every move wasn’t being captured on film and sold to the highest bidder. I gripped the steering wheel, knuckles going white as I remembered exactly what we’d been doing on the beach. And how little we’d been wearing.
I swiped at my mouth with the back of my hand, as if I could erase the sour taste. It didn’t help.
I was used to the circus my life had become, but Delaney wasn’t. Should I call her? Warn her? I swore again, out loud this time, but Travis was too busy prattling on about hits and views to notice. I wasn’t listening to him. Eventually he segued to a few new offers that had come in, and plans for a charity concert. I did my best to tune back in, but all I could think about was Delaney.
Maybe I was taking the easy way out, but the memory of her all sleepy and sweet…I wanted to believe she’d slipped back under the covers and was temporarily unaware of the bullshit being thrown her way because of me.
Eventually, I pulled into the parking lot of my label’s downtown office and cut off Travis midsentence—the only satisfying moment of our entire conversation. I spent the next few hours going through the motions, agreeing to things I normally would have fought, flicking a dismissive glance over the final list of roadies that had signed on with the tour when I normally lingered over every name. Greenlighting changes to the set list without any consideration. Not that I didn’t care. I just couldn’t focus.
Because my head was back at the beach house. With Delaney.
“Shane!”
I jerked, swiveling my head toward whoever had pelted my name from across the room. Zeroing in on my target. “Landon, what the fuck?”
My bandmate tossed a rueful laugh. “What’s up with you, man? I called your name three times.”
I glanced around at the other guys in the room, their nods confirming Landon’s charge. “Sorry.” We were in a lounge just outside one of our label’s in-house recording studios, going over a few last-minute details for the tour and deciding which single to drop next. I had yet to say a word.
Several couches were scattered around the room, and I’d claimed one of them an hour ago, sprawling across it with my boots hanging off the side, my muddled head flopped on a cushion. Landon was leaning against a wall as if he alone were holding it up, a scowl on his face and what looked like a blond rat’s nest on his head. “What the fuck’s going on? You checked out, or what?”
I heaved myself upright. “No, I’m good.”
He shook his head, looking at everyone but me. “Boy look good to you?” A chorus of no’s echoed from my bandmates, our tour coordinator, and a pair of industry execs. Travis had arrived a few minutes ago, but he was too busy thumb-fucking his phone to pay any attention.
Landon and I went way back, to when I first showed up in L.A., signing up for open-mic nights and looking for anyone with a guitar or a set of drums to jam with. We were the two original members of Nothing but Trouble, had spent more than ten years making ourselves worthy of the name.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “Just want to get on the road already.”
He knew better than to take me at my word. “This have anything to do with those pics popping up on my phone all morning? The ones of you and the new girl?”
“Yeah, how’s the new girl?” Jett piped up. If he weren’t such a damn good bass player I would have kicked him out a dozen times over. The newest member of Nothing but Trouble, Jett knew just enough about my past to make me a little uncomfortable. Things I’d told him when we’d partied together and I was half out of my mind. Reason number three hundred sixty-eight why I could never go back to my boozing, snorting, whoring ways. I had too damn much to lose to go spilling secrets that needed to stay buried.
But not a single detail had emerged in the press, and I knew they wouldn’t. Jett might be a wiseass with no filter, but he’d never be some gossip hound’s unnamed source. And Dax barely said a word to anyone, even the chicks pawing him at every opportunity. Especially the chicks pawing him at every opportunity.
Nothing but Trouble was a dysfunctional family, but I was damn grateful for every one of them.
“She has a name.” One I didn’t offer. “And she’s fine. Are we done here?”
No one looked in any hurry to leave. Landon jerked his head to the recording studio on the other side of the clear glass. “Wanna dick around for a little bit?”
I sure as hell needed something to do with my dick. “Yeah.”
The four of us strutted out into the next room, one of the execs calling in a producer in case we came up with something worth recording. I reached into my pocket, where I’d stuffed a piece of paper before leaving my house.
Landon eyed the crumpled page, covered in my chicken scratch. “New?”
“Yeah.”
He reached out a hand from behind his drum kit, and I handed it over reluctantly, knowing the mess of emotions I’d laid bare, an alphabetic riot of love and hate and need and want. Of guilt and pain and hope and fear. My heart and head in black ink on a yellow legal pad, buzzing as loudly as any honeybee. Because that was what I was after. Honey. Sweetness. Delaney.
Except Delaney wasn’t a dainty sprinkle of pollen. No. She was an iceberg lurking beneath a smooth sea, her long legs and lush curves and guileless face hiding a danger that would gouge the most vulnerable parts of me. Especially the parts I’d long considered invulnerable.
Landon’s eyes, as black as pitch, took everything in, eyebrows lifting as he deciphered the words I’d bled onto each line.
I shouldn’t have looked in on her this morning. Should have left a note or sent a text and headed out to deal with whatever shit I needed to deal with. Because everything I’d written last night, everything Landon was skimming, his head nodding to a beat only he could hear right now but that soon would emerge fully formed from his drums, was about me. And Delaney. And how Delaney affected me.
This morning, just once glance at her still sleepy eyes, mounds of dark hair glinting against pale wrists as she batted wayward strands off her face, and I realized it wasn’t only about me anymore. Delaney was real. And no matter how strong my armor, there was a weak spot just her size. A hole she’d already found, slipping inside with her wide-eyed, fish-out-of-water eyes. I scared her, obviously, but there was a pulse of desire that hummed beneath her skin whenever she came near me, the same pulse that hammered in my ears at the sound of her voice.
Desire she was determined to not give in to. Knowing her reasons, I couldn’t blame her.
Landon handed back the single sheet. “This is deep, man.”
“Worth putting down on tracks?” There was a thread of insecurity woven through my words, and I wanted to rip it out. Music was my constant, the one thing I could count on. And somehow Delaney was making me doubt even that.
But Landon was already distracted by the thrill of a new song. “Fuck, yeah. You haven’t written lyrics like these since—”
Shoulda been me.
I interrupted, not needing the confirmation. “Yeah, I know.”
He held my gaze a beat longer than was necessary, then picked up his custom-made, white oak drumsticks. “Let’s do it.”
Last night was in the past. Exactly where it belonged.
But my song would bring it to life, keep it in the present.
Maybe not today, but eventually we would record it. Release it. Anyone would be able to listen to it anytime they wanted. Sure, the details were obscured behind soulful lyrics, melodic verses. But if they listened closely enough, they would know. I was an asshole. Damaged as hell and a danger to anyone crazy enough to get too close to me. Delaney was already close, and bound by a contemptible contract. I might ruin her, climb high with her in my arms, not even realizing we were on a pyre until it was raging all around us.
I would destroy her.
But maybe, just maybe…she could save me.
It had been done before, right? I mean, billions of people believed they were saved.
I’d sat right beside my father in church for more Sundays than I could count, reading the prayer book he would hold open for me with one hand while his other curled paternally around my small shoulder. And then we’d go home and those hands would do other things. Punching, slapping. He’d happily beat the shit out of me, my brother, and especially my mother, invoking the Lord with each bone-crushing blow.
I wasn’t looking for some invisible force to save my soul.
But Delaney…I’d be damned if I didn’t feel salvation every time I looked in her eyes.