I WAKE UP with an ache in my back, the sun in my eyes, and I smile. I turn my face into Shawn’s hard chest, breathing into his fabric-softened T-shirt and loving the way his arms tighten around me like he’s never going to let me go.
We talked all night, until we curled up under the stars and fell asleep where we lay. He told me about meeting Mike and Joel, about starting the band with them, about discovering Mayhem for the first time. I learned about his mom, his dad, an older stepsister he has. We told each other our favorite colors, our favorite places, our favorite songs. We shared childhood stories, and all the crazy things we want to do before we get old. We laughed and smiled and held each other, and this morning, nothing’s changed.
What happened between us last night was real. It still is.
“Dude,” says a voice, and I jerk myself awake. Mike is standing over us, kicking the sole of Shawn’s shoe, and I remember in a daze that the click of the steel hotel door is what woke me in the first place. I shield my eyes from the sun and attempt to sit up, shrinking under Mike’s gaze. I feel like I’ve been caught red-handed—because in Shawn’s arms, I have been. But he’s my boyfriend. He fell asleep holding me. There’s no need to hide it anymore.
Nervous butterflies flutter wildly in my belly, and I manage a pathetic, “Hey.”
My entire body gets jostled when Shawn sits up in a rush, a curse word already flying from his lips. “Shit. What time is it?”
Mike’s eyes slowly swing to the disheveled boy next to me. Shawn’s hair is poking out everywhere, mussed by the sleep and the way my fingers twirled in it as we both drifted off last night. “Half past nine.”
“You’re kidding.” Shawn is already pushing to his feet, and I’m left sitting on my sore ass, rubbing my sore back, looking like a sore mess.
“Everyone is looking for you,” Mike tells him, and I don’t doubt it. We were supposed to leave for the next city before the sun broke the horizon this morning, but now it’s high in the sky, casting light over a secret Shawn and I have been keeping for weeks. Mike’s gaze swings down until I’m shrinking again. “And for you.”
Under the sun and our drummer’s scrutiny, last night suddenly seems a little less real, a little further away. It’s not just Shawn and me anymore. It’s not just us in the dark.
When calloused fingers drop in front of my face, both Shawn and Mike watch me, waiting to see if I take Shawn’s hand. My palm is clammy when I do, but I hold on tight and let him help me up.
The contact is broken as soon as I’m on my feet—by me, by Shawn, by habit. I brush myself off while trying to think of what I can possibly say to Mike.
But Shawn beats me to it.
“Hey,” he says as he combs his fingers through his hair, “don’t say anything to the guys about this, okay?”
I can feel Mike shift his attention to me, but I’m too busy staring at Shawn with my stomach dropping to my knees to care. When I finally turn my head, Mike reads the hurt in my eyes and then looks back at Shawn. He shakes his head and sighs. “Whatever you say, man. See you back at the bus.”
With that, the steel door of the hotel clicks shut behind him, leaving Shawn and me just standing there. Alone. Again. And last night suddenly seems impossible—if Shawn told me it was all a dream right now, I’d believe him.
He finally turns toward me, but I quickly drop my chin. The gravel crunching under my boots is real. The way my fingernails are stabbing into my palms is real. The metallic taste of my lip between my teeth—that’s real too.
“Hey,” Shawn says, his finger lifting my chin. Enchanted green eyes search mine.
“What do we do now?” I ask with his fingers gliding over my cheek, threading into my hair.
“What do you mean ‘what do we do now?’ ”
I step away from his touch, and his hand falls from my face. “Last night,” I stammer. “It’s cool if you . . . I mean, I’m sure Mike won’t say anything . . . and, I understand, you know . . . ”
Jesus, I’m tripping over words and feelings, crashing with no one to catch me. But then Shawn steps forward, his hand capturing mine. “Whoa. You’re not changing your mind, are you?”
My brows knit at him. “You just told Mike not to tell anyone . . . ”
A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, which only makes me want to yank my hand away, but he squeezes it tighter. “We’re trapped in a tin can with those guys,” he says, like that should be explanation enough. “We’d never hear the end of it, trust me. And there are only two days left of the tour.” When I continue frowning, he threads both hands into my hair and presses his forehead against mine. “I’m still yours.”
My hands close over his, and I don’t know what comes over me—maybe the spell in those green eyes. “Prove it.”
His lips are against mine in an instant, warm and intoxicating as they part mine and prove that last night happened, that what I felt between us was real. His fingers curl in my hair, and my hands slide to his wrists. I hold on as he kisses me—until my knees are weak, until my thoughts are miles away. My back collides with the brick building we’d fallen asleep against, and my fingers are tugging him close when I bite down on his lip, his body trembling against mine as a deep moan sounds from his lips.
Last night, this had been building. For weeks, this has been building. We postponed it, but now there’s only me, him, and nothing else to stop us.
When I release his lip from my teeth, he stares at me with a green fire flaming in his eyes. He kisses me until I turn my head, giving him access to erogenous zones that he knows intimately by now. His tongue flicks over a sensitive spot below my ear until my fingers are clawing desperately into his shirt. I’m squirming against him, my breaths coming out in twos and threes, when I finally find the sense to remind him, “We’re late.”
Mike said everyone was looking for us this morning, and Shawn and I are acting like no one matters.
“Adam’s always late,” he counters, his lips trailing lower, lower. He hooks a finger into the collar of my shirt and tugs it down to taste even more of me, heat pooling low in my belly—lower, lower.
“Shawn,” I protest, but it sounds like a prayer even to my own ears, and when he drops to his knees in front of me, my fingers bury in his hair.
“Five minutes,” he says, already pushing my shirt up to play his lips along my stomach.
Lower, lower.
He makes short work of my button, and then my jeans are being tugged down. Quick fingers tug at my bootlaces, and then I’m stepping out of those, out of jeans. My panties get tugged down too, but Shawn doesn’t even wait for me to step out of them before his lips press forward.
Heat—molten-hot heat—closes over where I’m already wet for him, and my head falls back in a moan that makes my knees quake. His strong hands hold my hips in place, pinning them against the wall and holding me up as the aged brick bites against my ass. My eyes are rolled back between closed eyelids, my fingers gripping Shawn’s hair as he devours me with the firm tip of his tongue and then presses forward even farther. Wetness rushes between my legs just as his hand slides up my stomach, over the swell of my bra, teasing at an impatient nipple that strains against the black lace. My entire body is alive, nerve endings dancing as Shawn tunes them like a neglected instrument, and when I open my eyes and gaze down at him, his green eyes are staring up at me under thick black lashes. He lifts a hand between my legs, finds the wet trail his tongue has paved, and buries two fingers deep, deep inside of me.
And God, the moan that pushes out of me as my knees begin to quiver, it only makes me hotter, makes his eyes darker, makes me so, so close.
“Shawn.” My voice is raw, needy, desperate. My hands are out of his hair, gripping the sides of the building because I feel like I’m about to pass out. I’ve been with other guys, but never—never—have I felt like this. I’m about to come apart. A white spark is climbing inside me, threatening to explode into a shower of fireworks.
“Come for me, baby,” Shawn says, his low, husky voice bringing another rush of warmth between my legs as his fingers make the world fall away. “We’re not leaving here until you do.”
And God, I believe him. The way he moves his talented fingers inside me, he’d be here all day, all night, forever if he—
“Oh my God,” I say as my seams burst apart, every single thread at once. My knees nearly buckle, and Shawn’s strong hands latch on to my waist, pinning me against the wall. He devours me with his tongue until I’m melting all around it, and then he catches every last bit of me, greedy as he continues licking for more and more and more and—“Oh my fucking God,” I moan as a second wave of pleasure rushes over me, taking control of my body until I’m not even sure I’m inside it anymore. “Shawn . . . oh . . . oh, God . . . ”
My moans become intelligible as the most intense orgasm I’ve ever had overtakes me, and Shawn stands in a rush, claiming my lips in a way that makes me want to reach down low.
I want to find his button and tear it from his jeans. I want to feel him inside me—deep, where I’m still pulsing for him. But he kisses me ravenously, stealing words from my mouth and thoughts from my mind. I’m his—utterly his, following him blindly as the kiss deepens, slows, calms. When his lips part from mine, I’m still breathless, my eyes half-lidded as I stare back at him.
In a daze, I want to tell him I love him. I want to say the words, sleepily with my eyes half-open. I want to repeat them and repeat them until he kisses me again.
Instead, I rest my forehead against his, and he smiles.
“Thank you,” he says, and an exhausted laugh escapes me as my eyes drift closed.
“Yeah, Shawn. You’re welcome.”
He kisses me softly, so softly, and then he brushes my hair from my eyes and presses his hand against my cheek. “Open your eyes.”
“Why?” I ask, already parting my lashes to the captivated way he’s looking at me.
“The way they look right now . . . ” His thumb strokes my skin. “I’ve wondered what they’d look like right now.”
My cheeks burn pink, but he’s too busy studying my eyes to notice. A soft smile blooms across his face, stoking the hibernating nest of butterflies in my stomach until they’re flapping nervously against my heart. I’m not used to this—to wanting to tell him I love him so badly, to having him make me feel like I could.
“We’re late,” I remind him once more as I reach down to lift my panties back up. My knees are still trembling as I step into my jeans and my untied boots.
“I had five minutes,” Shawn teases as I reach down to tie my laces. “I’m pretty sure I still have two left.”
I angle my chin to glare up at him, but I’m smiling, and so is he.
WITH MY HAND in Shawn’s, I float my way to the bus, my entire body buzzing with Shawn’s personally gifted brand of satisfied exhaustion. Every time my thoughts drift back to the roof of that hotel, tingles trickle across my skin and I have to resist the urge to tug him into an alley, an empty parking lot, a bathroom stall in the nearest fast-food joint. I keep stealing glances at him, he keeps catching them, and I curse every giggle that frees itself from my lips, because I’m helpless to stop them.
“Can I tell Rowan and Dee?” I ask, needing to tell someone, anyone, that Shawn and I are together. Really together. Shawn shakes his head, and I pout.
“They’ll tell Adam and Joel,” he reasons, “and they’ll make these last two days on tour hell.”
“What about Leti?”
“He’ll tell Peach and Dee, and they’ll tell Adam and Joel.”
“Okay, well, what about Kale?”
“Your brother?” Shawn slows to a stop just before we reach the parking lot that the bus is in. His smile is gone, and when I nod, he says, “Let’s . . . let’s just wait, okay?”
“Why?”
A beat of silence passes, then another and another, before he says, “He’s friends with Leti, right?”
“Yeah . . . ” Friends . . . sure.
“So he’ll tell Leti, and Leti will tell Peach and Dee, and—”
I sigh, and Shawn squeezes my hand.
“Later,” he promises. “Just not yet, alright?”
He kisses me before I can answer, a soft touch of his lips that magically puts a smile back on my face. “Okay.”
Just before we enter the parking lot, he drops my hand, and I force myself to ignore the way that makes my chest pang. I follow him to the bus, and when he holds the door open for me, I climb up onto it.
The guys immediately jump on us, and each thing they accuse us of is a truth or damn close to it. We snuck off together. We’ve been having secret hookups for weeks. We’re in “looove.” We banged each other’s brains out on the roof before Mike found us.
Shawn rolls his eyes, and Joel laughs. “We got locked up there, asswipe.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Joel teases.
“Kit was drunk and determined to get up there. What was I supposed to do, let her fall over the edge?”
Shawn lies easily, and if I didn’t already know the truth, I wouldn’t even doubt him. The deception melts on his tongue like sugar, and I’m sure I would’ve eaten it right up.
When Joel looks to me, I rub my temple like I have a hangover. “Don’t ask me. I don’t remember shit.”
I’m no stranger to lying myself, especially when it’s convenient, but this one . . . this one tastes sour.
“I almost fell off a roof once,” Adam offers as the bus merges onto the highway, carrying us to a new day, a new city, a new show. “Actually”—his brows furrow—“I think I did fall off a roof once. Shawn, do you remember that after-party in Cold Springs?”
Shawn chuckles as he gathers his things for a shower. “Yeah, man, you definitely fell off the roof.”
Adam nods to himself and rubs a phantom lump on the back of his head. “Yeah . . . I thought so.”
When Shawn slips into the bathroom, Joel’s attention snaps to me. “So you guys seriously just got locked up on the roof?”
I stick to Shawn’s story, and Joel pouts, but he lets it go—and so do the rest of the guys, even the roadies. After another round of harassment at soundcheck, the entire morning gets discarded and forgotten. And I don’t text Rowan. I don’t text Dee. I don’t text Kale. I don’t text Leti.
At soundcheck, Shawn resumes our covert flirting, and even though all of his touches are secret and fleeting, they still make my heart rush just as fast as it had this morning when he was . . . when we were . . .
My cheeks flush fire-red at the memory as we perform that night for a sold-out crowd, and when I glance across the stage at him and his eyes are already on me, I giggle. I giggle in the middle of a damn song, with muscle memory being the only thing that keeps my guitar pick hitting the right strings. Even though it’s still a secret, he’s my boyfriend. My freaking boyfriend. The smile on my face is a living thing, sneaking there at inopportune moments and threatening to tell all my secrets to every single face in the crowd.
I hate that we didn’t tell the guys about us, but I get it . . . I guess. Yeah, they’d be annoying. Really freaking annoying. We wouldn’t hear the end of it until the tour was over and we were home. But the girly part of me would’ve welcomed that. She would’ve stoked the fire with an unrivaled level of PDA that would’ve embarrassed the hell out of everyone—herself most of all. Because Shawn was finally, finally her boyfriend, and she didn’t want to hide that—ever, at all, from anyone.
But he was right about there being only a day and a half left of the tour, and I get that too . . . I guess. I’m sure he doesn’t want the guys giving him a hard time. Or maybe he doesn’t want them giving me a hard time. Or maybe he just wants to be able to steal another quiet morning in the kitchen with me without everyone hooting and hollering at us from the bunks . . . and after what happened on the roof? Yeah, I can live with that.
I smile at him across the heads of fans in the parking lot. The show tonight was incredible, and when we finally walked out to the bus, it was surrounded. I’ve taken so many pictures, spots dance behind my eyes as I leave Shawn, Adam, and Joel behind and step up onto the bus.
Mike is already on board, and I follow him to the kitchen in the back. Shawn mentioned that he’d talk to him about this morning, but after being caught like a rebellious teenager about to do the walk of shame, I feel the need to say something too—even though I have no freaking idea what that something is.
“You had a lot of fans tonight,” I tease in spite of how nervous I’m feeling. I plop down on a leather bench, careful not to steal Mike’s usual gaming spot, and wait to see if he brings up this morning. He grabs two beers from the fridge and closes it with the toe of his shoe.
“That one woman was like fifty years old,” he exaggerates of a cougar dressed in, yes, cougar print, who was waiting outside the bus. There are some women who just have a thing for drummers, and this one made no secret of it—which, I’m guessing, is why Mike is currently glancing toward the front of the bus like she’s about to storm onto it SWAT-style at any given moment.
I laugh and tease him some more. “Not all of your fan club was that old.”
He gives me a look and collapses onto the seat next to me, handing me one of his beers before starting his Xbox.
“How are you going to meet your future wife if you won’t give any of them a chance?”
“Trust me, any girl I’d want to be with is not one waiting outside of a tour bus.”
“I’ve waited outside of my fair share of buses,” I counter. For autographs, pictures, hugs. Nothing more, and I certainly wasn’t dressed in cougar print.
“Exactly,” Mike says, and when I drop my jaw and smack him hard across his shoulder, he laughs.
I smile and relax back against the seat, waiting until he’s playing a game to say, “Thanks for not saying anything to the guys about me and Shawn this morning.”
“You should’ve just told me,” he says with his eyes on the screen and his fingers frantically pushing buttons. “I knew there was something going on with you two.”
“That obvious, huh?” I try to ignore the fire-breathing dragon beneath the brightening skin of my cheeks.
Mike glances at me and chuckles. “Yeah. But don’t worry. You’re a much better liar than Shawn is.”
I grin at the smart-ass compliment, and then I ask, “How so?”
“Dude,” Mike says, “he gave it away from the moment you auditioned. I just never really got why he looked at you like that.”
My nose crinkles. “Huh?”
“At first, I honestly thought he just didn’t like you.” Mike laughs. “I had no idea you guys hooked up in high school.”
A ringing in my ears. A loud, loud ringing. “Wait . . . what?”
All sorts of warnings are flash-firing in my brain, causing my heart to protest painfully against my ribs. He had no idea we hooked up in high school? In high school?
Mike glances at me again before turning back to the TV with a chuckle. “Relax. Shawn told me everything. Your secret’s safe with me.”
“He . . . told you we hooked up in high school?”
That’s impossible. He doesn’t remember we hooked up in high school . . .
Mike curses and jerks to the side along with the character on the screen. Then he regains his composure and says, “At Adam’s graduation party, right?”
“Yeah . . . ”
“Kind of epic, if you think about it. It’s like you guys were always meant to be together or something.”
“Yeah,” I mutter again, with dread pooling coldly in the pit of my stomach.
Shawn remembers?
Shawn remembers.
When Mike glances at me again, I disguise my emotions with a fake smile, and he smiles back at me before returning to his game. “I think you guys will be good together.”
I walk away from him in a daze, icy shivers dancing over my arms and up the back of my neck as I replay his words over and over again in my head.
I had no idea you guys hooked up in high school.
Shawn told me everything.
You guys hooked up in high school.
In high school.
At Adam’s graduation party.
Shawn has remembered this entire time. He’s known since my audition, since the first time he locked eyes with me after six years of nothing. He knew when he gave me a hard time at our first practice and I ended up throwing a guitar pick at his head. He knew when I kissed him in Mayhem, when he kissed me back and I ended up making an idiot of myself on the bus. He knew when we sat up on the roof of the hotel and I admitted I had a crush on him in high school. He knew with every kiss he stole, every smile he took, every time he made me look like a stupid fucking girl harboring the crush of a fifteen-year-old freshman.
Betrayal plants in my belly and spreads like a weed, choking out the butterflies and making one thing perfectly clear: he doesn’t want to tell the guys about us because he never wants them to know. He didn’t want them to know back then, and nothing has changed. He only told Mike because Mike caught us and he had some serious explaining to do. But he doesn’t want me to tell Rowan, or Dee, or Kale, or Leti, because after all these years, I am still just his dirty little secret.
When he climbs onto the bus and smiles at me, it takes everything I have to not cross the distance between us and clock him in the face. He’s not my boyfriend anymore, not the guy who made me giggle tonight onstage. He’s the guy who fucked me in a dark room and never called. He’s the guy who has lied to me for months. He’s the guy who broke my heart—twice.
Once, shame on me. Twice, you are so fucking done for.
After Adam and Joel pass by me to get to the back, I catch Shawn’s arm and haul him to the front, closing divider curtains the entire way. Driver is still on the other bus, and I have only minutes before he appears to drive us to the next city.
“You looked hot onstage tonight,” I say, my voice carrying a manic sort of recklessness that I’m hoping he can’t hear. I boldly reach up and curl my fingers in his hair, a wild energy buzzing in my veins and threatening to make my fingers shake.
It would be easy to confront him, and it would be easy for him to lie. I’d look absolutely crazy—like just another one of the scorned groupies I’m sure he’s collected over the years. Shawn could deny everything—every kiss, every touch, every word . . . every goddamn fucking thing I was stupid enough to think meant anything. And honestly, I’m not sure who the rest of the guys would believe. The forgettable little girl from high school? Or their best friend since forever?
Yeah.
So instead of screaming and crying and kneeing Shawn where it counts, I twirl my fingers around and around in his hair, flashing him a wicked smile that’s full of bad intentions. And when the green flames in his eyes ignite, I can tell he’s misinterpreting every single one.
My fingers are still twirling when his lips drop to mine. He kisses me just like he had last night, and the sting of it makes me pull away, but slowly.
“Can you imagine how many times we would have hooked up by now if you had known about the crush I had on you in high school?” I whisper, watching his reaction closely and trying not to get my hopes up.
I’m giving him an opportunity to come clean. All these months, all he would’ve needed to do is tell me the truth and say two words. “I’m sorry” would’ve been all I needed to hear to forgive him, and I’m giving him one last chance to say it.
His smoldering gaze meets mine from centimeters away, and I watch the way it dims and sobers. Now that I know what to look for, I spot it—the recognition.
He kisses me again, and I spot that for what it is too—a distraction. The hope in my chest dims, and I pull away again. “I thought about it, you know.” He watches me, and I watch him right back, trying to see him for the guy he was with me last night, and not the one who has lied to my face for four and a half straight months. “About what it would be like to be with you . . . I bet we would have been amazing.”
I’m desperate for him to just admit it—to tell me I’m not forgettable, to tell me I was worth remembering, to make me believe I still am.
“We’re amazing now,” Shawn says, and this time, when his fingers tangle in my hair, there’s no pulling away. The way he kisses me makes me want to pretend. I feel myself start to fall—start to forget, to forgive—and the only way I can save myself is to bite down. Hard.
“Fuck!” He jumps away from me, his hand flying to his mouth. He stares at me like I’ve been possessed, and maybe I have been, because all I can do is stare blankly back at him. It’s like I’m seeing him for the first time, through someone else’s eyes.
“What the hell was that for?” He wipes his thumb across his bottom lip and glances at the streak of red blood that clings to the lines of his thumbprint.
“I guess I got carried away.”
His dark eyebrows are pinched tightly in my direction when the nearest curtain swings open and Joel saves me from having to explain myself any further. “What the hell are you yelling about?”
Shawn’s torn jeans get stained red when his thumb wipes across them. “Nothing. I bit my lip.”
Another lie. And it rolls off his tongue so easily, my blood boils.
“Oookay . . . ” Joel stares back and forth between us—at Shawn, glaring at the apparition I’ve become, and at me, with the taste of his blood still on my tongue. “What are you guys doing up here?”
“Obviously having another secret rendezvous,” I answer flippantly, and Joel has no idea how honest I’m being when he brushes me off.
“Ha, ha. Seriously though, what are you doing?”
“Wondering where Driver is,” Shawn answers for me, but I’m already walking away from his forked tongue, back through the bus. In the bathroom, my back slides down the closed door until my ass hits the floor and the world stops falling out from under me.
Pathetic.
Disposable.
Shawn threw me away after having me six years ago, and now? Our last show is tomorrow night. Just one more day on tour . . . and then what? Were we ever going to tell everyone? He said that we would, but he never said when, and even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered.
Because Shawn said a lot of things. And all of the things he didn’t say mattered just as much.
I used to have a crush on you in high school, you know.
Did you? he asked.
It was one of a thousand lies left unspoken. One of a thousand, and I fell for every single one.