“Jax, it’s me. I’m sorry the concert didn’t happen. I had to work. I’ll try again. Maybe in a week?”
I delete Grace’s voicemail in the car on the way back to the hotel after the show.
Straight after the last encore, I bolted. Normally I wait for my band, sometimes even the crew.
Not tonight.
Some people don’t like time alone. Me, I need to process. To turn things over, to unpack them, look at them.
But it’s a fine line between that and spinning out in my own shit.
Haley knew I was pissed. What she didn’t know was that only half of it was her fault. The rest was Cross’ ultimatum, fresh in my mind.
When I saw her walk into the hall wearing that outfit, her mouth painted the color of cherries…
It was all I could do not to drag her into my dressing room.
Then she’d hugged me.
I can’t remember the last time a girl who wasn’t my sister hugged me. I can’t remember wanting one to.
I mean, it’s a fucking hug. As innocent as it gets.
That’s why there’s no excuse for the fact that I let myself into my room, drop my shit by the door, and collapse on the bed.
The blood is pumping through my veins, and I’m alive with it.
I reach for my belt, snapping it open.
Then the button on my jeans. The zipper.
My hand is on my hard cock as I picture her singing my songs.
The way her tits looked in that top.
The curve of a smile on her red mouth when she started to relax.
I shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m tired of telling myself no.
I stroke down my cock, and a long groan escapes.
Yes. This is exactly what I fucking need. My balls are tighter than Kyle’s drum kit, and I know I’m going to come forever in about sixty seconds.
My hand plays my body, but it’s my mind calling the shots as I imagine dragging her off stage at the end of the show. This time, instead of escaping back here, I pull her into the shadows and run my hands down her sides, over her ass. I swallow her gasp because we need to be quiet if no one’s going to find us.
Because I’m sure as hell not stopping for anything short of an earthquake.
It’s pain and pleasure at once, my hand moving easily thanks to the wetness already leaking from my tip. I grip my cock harder, putting pressure on the sensitive underside. Imagining it’s Haley’s hand and I’m telling her to be rough with me.
A knock on my door has my hand stilling.
“Jax, you in there? You seen Haley?”
It’s Kyle’s voice.
I’ve got half a mind to ignore it, but the question sinks in, along with the implication.
I shift off the bed, fastening my jeans, and cross to the door.
“She’s missing?”
He holds up a glass. “I made her a drink.”
The hairs rise on my neck. “Wait. Don’t tell me she’s partying with you.”
“Yeah. She’s part of the band tonight.” He laughs as if he made a joke, but the idea of her drinking with the guys makes me livid.
I brush past him, going down to the room with music streaming from it and shoving inside.
She’s not in there.
Then without waiting for a response, I snatch up the room phone, dialing 0 and pressing the front desk clerk into giving me her room number. Then I storm down the hall and knock on the door.
No answer.
I find her at a high top table down at the bar, sitting with her computer.
She’s changed. Now she’s wearing shorts. The same sneakers as usual. But she still has stage hair. It’s big and poufy and Country Music Award worthy.
She’s also wearing something that affects me more than anything she wore on stage.
My hoodie.
I shove my hands in the pockets of my jeans.
Hard.
I shouldn’t be here. Being this restless around this girl won’t end well.
But I can’t walk away tonight.
“Close this room,” I tell the bartender. “Everyone out but her.”
He nods, and I give him a moment to clear the room.
Haley doesn’t notice me come up behind her. I peer over her shoulder, taking a moment to appreciate the profile of her face. Her small nose. Full lips. Dark lashes.
“Nice computer.”
She smiles at my voice, before she even looks up, and my abs clench.
I can’t help matching that smile. Raising her a smirk.
“I’m Jax Jamieson, baby.” I clear my throat. “Kyle said you were unwinding with the band.”
“I needed to unwind from the unwinding.” She makes a face.
“What’re you drinking.”
“Water.” Her lips twitch.
I order a bourbon from the bartender, and Haley watches with interest as he hands it to me. “That’s what Lita likes too.”
“Who d’you think got her hooked on it?” I force my gaze to the screen in front of her. “This is your school project?”
Guilt washes over her expression. “Not exactly. I should be working on that, but this is something else.”
I shift into the seat next to her. My arm brushes hers, but for once she doesn’t jump. She doesn’t even shift away.
Before I can make sense of that, she hits a button that makes another window pop up.
“It looks like the program Jerry uses,” I observe. “But the buttons are bigger.”
“I thought this might be easier for him to see. And there are prompts based on the routines we usually run. I’ve been interviewing him about the different venues, adding what’s in his head into the code.”
Her gaze turns fierce, her mouth set in a determined line.
There’s no market for sound programs for users with cognitive degeneration, but it doesn’t matter because Haley’s worried about him.
I take a deep breath. “I know, Hales. About his Alzheimer’s.”
Her eyes go round, and the emotion in them turns me inside out. “Oh.” Her voice is small, and un-Haley-like. “I thought I could help him.”
This girl.
This fucking girl…
“Why do you care?”
Her mouth twitches as if she’s just come up with an inside joke she’s not sure about sharing with me. “You can’t ask that. You care about every person on this tour. I see how you take care of them. People talk about how brilliant you are, but they don’t talk about how kind. They really should.”
“That’s bullshit,” I say softly. “I’ve got enough darkness in me to swallow the world, and enough scar tissue to bury it with. You? You’re bright. And shiny. And so damned new it’s a crime to take you out of the box.”
She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, and I have the sudden insane urge to trace the shell with my tongue.
Get a grip, I tell myself.
A smile dances on her lips. “You know the difference between you and me, Jax Jamieson?” I wait because I can’t do anything else when she’s looking at me like that.
“Nothing,” she says finally. “I mean, besides the obvious.”
I raise a brow. “That I’m a multi-platinum recording artist and you’re a college computer whisperer.”
“No!” she exclaims. “That I can’t come close to peanuts and you can probably devour them by the handful.”
I want to crawl inside her.
But I decided before the dangerous series of events starting in KC that she’s off-limits. And in that sense, nothing’s changed.
She unplugs the earbuds from her computer, wrapping the cord into a tidy little ball before her gaze comes back to mine. “I thought I’d be exhausted after tonight. It’s more energy than I thought. But…”
“But you can’t unwind,” I finish.
Haley looks past me toward the door, the smile lingering on her lips. For the first time I notice the music in the background. Something low and bluesy.
As if deciding something, she shuts the lid of her notebook and tucks it under her arm, rising and peering down at me. “Hey, Jax,” she whispers.
Electricity lights up my body. My torso tightens in anticipation. “Yeah, Hales.”
“Want to get out of here?”
I know I’m going to regret this before I even shoot a look toward the door. “I have an idea.”
The Dolly Rock-N-Bowl is open twenty-four hours, and at midnight, it’s hopping.
There’s no way I won’t get recognized, but I grab the fake moustache I haven’t used in ages and do my best incognito.
When she comes up to me, she laughs. “You look like such a redneck.”
A gray-haired couple in line behind us interrupts as we’re getting our shoes.
“Aren’t you the cutest,” the woman says. “What’re your names?”
“Leonard,” Haley supplies with a grin.
“And Dolly,” I say, deadpan.
“Like the name of the bowling alley?”
“One and the same.”
I can tell they don’t know who I am, so I let down the hood of my hoodie.
“How long y’all been dating?”
We exchange a look.
“A year,” I say at the same time as she says, “Two weeks.”
It feels good to be anonymous, to pretend. We used to be able to get away with it, but I gave up trying two tours ago.
Tonight I need it.
We stake out our lane, and when the server comes around, I order two beers.
“Can I see your ID?” he asks Haley sheepishly.
Haley straightens and flushes. “My birthday’s next week.”
For a moment, I’m afraid he’s going to ask for mine, but he doesn’t.
I hand one of the beers to Haley when he leaves. She glances up from where she’s entered Leonard and Dolly into the electronic scoring system, and I grin.
“Can I tell you something?” she says after taking a sip of her beer.
“I wish you would.”
“I go back and forth between wanting to find out who my dad is and thinking I’m better off not knowing.” I ignore the pang of guilt. “I finally decided to do one of those Ancestry tests. You know, the kind that checks against the general population to find people in your family tree?”
My heart thuds dully in my back. “And?”
“Nothing came back,” she says. “Maybe it was an immaculate conception.”
“The nuns would approve.”
She laughs as she rises from the seat to throw her first ball, taking out five pins.
Guilt works through me because I’m leaving the tour, and her, and she deserves so much better than Cross.
Part of me wants to forget I ever learned they’re related. She’d be better off without him.
But if he is ready to acknowledge her, apparently that comes with a trust fund. Which she could clearly use.
“My father was out of the picture by the time I started recording,” I say as I watch her take out two more on her second, “but before that, he hurt my mom. Sometimes me.”
Haley turns back to me, riveted. “What about your sister?”
I shake my head. “I never let him hurt Grace. I wouldn’t. It was the one thing I could control. The only thing, sometimes, until I started playing guitar and singing.” I go and choose the heaviest ball I can find, letting it loose. I turn back before it hits the pins at the other end. “My mom died when I was seventeen. Grace was three years younger.”
It's the most I've talked about it in… probably ever, but with Haley, it comes easier than I expect.
“When I started recording those videos,” I go on, selecting another ball and adjusting my angle to take out the final two pins, “it was a way to get out of my head. I never dreamed anyone would watch them. I was trying to keep food in the fridge. I tried working at a corner store. Waiting tables. Nothing stuck. When Cross showed up at my door, I thought it was too good to be true.”
I cross to where she’s perched on the edge of the bench, hands clasped.
“No one comes to pluck you from obscurity,” I go on. “But after ten years of this, I realize how wrong I was. So much is luck and chance and the whims of men powerful enough to make you a god by snapping their fingers.”
Her face is a mask of empathy. “You regret leaving.”
“I should’ve been there to take care of them.”
I offer my hand. After a moment's hesitation, she takes it, rising, and moves past me to choose a ball.
The electricity between us is gone as quickly as it came.
She throws a decisive strike and turns on her heel. I offer her a fist bump, which she takes. “Maybe you were taking care of them here.”
Her gaze is level, but I shake it off. “It’s not that simple, Hales. Money doesn’t fix absence.”
“You hate Cross for what he did?”
“Yes,” I say, though I’m sure she doesn’t know what I mean. “He’s used a lot of people to get where he is.”
“The tour’s almost over.” I swear there’s a note of sadness in her voice. “What’re you going to do?”
“Atone.” I throw again, missing entirely.
“That’s not a job description.”
My mouth twitches.
“Are you going to keep recording? Go on some speaking circuit?” She makes a face. “Or you could get married. Have kids.”
I throw once again, this time clearing half the pins. I turn back to her as the pins reset, peering into her flushed face. “So now you’re worried about me dying alone.”
She skirts me, shooting a look on the way to select a ball. “Not worrying. Just wondering.”
Hairs stand up on the back of my neck. “If I want company, Hales, I’ll make it happen.”
Something flickers through her eyes, but it's gone as fast as it came.
Haley throws, and two pins go down. I take a seat on the bench as the song in the background switches to Elvis and yellow and pink lights swirl over the lanes.
“What about you?”
“I’ll go back to school, finish my program. Professor Carter is helping me. He doesn't love music like I do, but he's a coding genius.” Her voice is determined as she selects her second ball.
“Professor Carter. I’m glad you’ve got some old guy wrapped around your finger.”
I don't know how if she gets a strike or misses entirely because all my attention’s on her. “Wait, what?”
She comes to stand in front of me, folding her arms over her chest. “Technically, he’s a year younger.”
She’s looking at me as if I’m crazy, but I feel as though I’m the only sane person here.
I don’t know if there’s a right way to respond in this moment. All I know is I’m responding the wrong way.
I don’t give a shit.
“Hales. You like this guy.”
She flushes. I've felt a lot of dark feelings, but the one that rises up now is more jealousy than protectiveness.
And why the hell shouldn’t it be? She’s off-limits to me, there’s no way she’s going to go back to Philly and fall into the arms of some guy who should know better.
“Too bad he can’t touch you.”
She brushes off her hands, giving me an arch look. “Touching someone isn’t always terrible. Not when it’s someone I know. And when I’m in control.”
“So what. You’ll blow him all night but he can’t go down on you?”
I shove off the bench, eliminating the inches between us. Forcing her to lift her chin and meet my eyes.
Haley’s eyes widen in surprise. I know I’m out of line, but I can’t seem to stop.
“Jax?” she murmurs in a voice that has me remembering what I was doing thinking about her not even two hours ago.
“Yeah.”
“You sound like you’ve got it bad.”
Blood surges through my veins. She has no idea.
Haley points across the room. “I saw a vending machine. They probably have Snickers. You can eat it over there.”
I blink.
Is she really so blind she has no idea how she affects me?
I should be grateful she’s not thinking about the things we could be doing together in a hotel room right now.
“Shit, Hales. I don’t need a Snickers.” I let my eyes fall closed for a second, counting the breaths because I feel disoriented and it’s not on account of the fake moustache.
I open my eyes, my gaze landing on her oval face, her eyes framed in extra-dark lashes leftover from the stage makeup.
“You want to know what I wrote on this sweatshirt?” I ask. “‘This is me, signing your tits’.”
Haley’s snort cuts the tension. “You did not.”
“Did too. Says so right here.” Without breaking her gaze I trace the letters over her chest, my finger pressing into the swell of her breasts through what I’m suddenly regretting is the thickest sweatshirt in the history of the world.
Her eyes darken.
It could be innocent. It should be.
It’s not.
I watch the awareness creep over her face, the realization that what I really want to do is touch her, and it’s goddamned pornographic.
She doesn’t.
My fingers go dangerously low, and I catch the edge of one pebbled nipple.
Her eyes aren’t brown or green now. They’re black.
I wonder if her pulse is hammering like mine.
That’s the only possible reason neither of us notices the whispers sooner.
But when I tear my gaze away from her, I can see we've been spotted. The group in the next lane has their phones out and is whispering and clicking away.
I grab Haley’s arm—the arm of my sweatshirt, technically. “Time to go.”
We take off across the bowling lanes before sprinting out the door. We find a building to hide behind and collapse, breathing heavily.
She looks down and laughs. I realize we’re still wearing our bowling shoes. “Is this every day for you?” she asks.
“Usually I have enough security. And I don’t spend a lot of time in public like that.”
I call a car to get us, and we spend a few minutes alone in the dark.
“Sorry about the quick getaway,” I murmur, careful to keep my voice low.
“Are you kidding?” She pants out a laugh. “Being on that stage tonight, sharing it with you, the crowd, your music… Tonight’s the best gift anyone’s ever given me.”
My chest tightens.
I’m a bundle of issues, and getting closer to this girl is not what I should be doing.
Haley reaches up, and I hold my breath until I feel the tugging at my lip.
She peels the moustache off, sticking it to the arm of my T-shirt like a decoration before meeting my gaze. “Better,” she decides.
“I like you the way you are.”
When the car pulls up, I follow her inside.
The Town Car’s spacious enough, but it’s no limo. There’re a few inches of space between us. Less than the designated middle seat because one or both of us unconsciously decided that was too big a gap.
I clear my throat. “Can I ask you something?”
“Hit me.” Her voice is low and soft beside me.
“What do you do when you feel trapped? I have to make a decision. Either option is bad. Both ways hurt people I care about.”
I feel her gaze work over me in the dark. She doesn’t press, or judge.
She wouldn’t blame me for not having her back, which only makes this harder.
“You always have a choice, Jax. Kierkegaard said when you’re standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down into the abyss, you’re twice afraid.” Her voice is low, barely audible over the running noise of the car. “Once for the knowledge that you could fall and perish. And once for the knowledge that the choice of whether to stay or whether to jump is ultimately yours.
“He called it the dizziness of freedom. Because no matter what we’re given or what’s taken from us… we’re all free to choose how to live.”
“Don’t tell me this is another one of your professors.”
She laughs. “Philosopher. Long dead.”
“Good.”
I want to shift over her, to take her mouth with mine and vanish into the blackness. To see if we can create the same bubble with our lips and tongues and hands we seem to be able to when we talk or smile or tease.
I’ve moved closer somehow, my arm brushing hers. Haley’s shoulders tense, because we’re closer than two people have a right to be. A little noise escapes from her throat, and that alone has desire pounding through my veins.
No one would know if I kissed her right now. Not Cross, not Nina, not anyone. Just her and me and the back of this Town Car.
I wait for her to push me away.
Instead, her fingers brush my cheek. It’s light and innocent, but everything that isn’t her fades away.
My mouth grazes her temple. The sharp intake of her breath sends the need inside me twisting tighter.
The other.
She smells like hairspray and sweat, but underneath I catch a hint of her tropical shampoo.
I already care too much, and the kicker is she’s not mine to care for. Cross has more of a claim on her than I do.
Even if I wish it were otherwise…
I have nothing to give her.
Finding restraint I didn’t know I had, I pull back to rest my forehead rests on hers. “Hales.”
“Yeah.” Her whisper is as quiet as mine in the dark.
We’re sharing breath, and the twisted part is this is the closest I’ve felt to someone in years.
“I can’t be what you want.”
I expect her to protest or pull away.
Instead she smiles, the tiniest gesture in the blackness of the car, but I feel it in every part of me. “You already are.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of a man who’s well and truly fucked.