When my cries subside into quiet sniffles, I’m finally able to draw in a shaky breath.
“Are you okay?” he asks softly.
“No.” I keep my face buried in his chest because I can’t bear to look at him.
“What can I do?”
“Nothing.” I finally sit up, wiping under my eyes as I still refuse to make eye contact.
“What are you thinking?” he asks. His voice is edged with a desperation that slices my heart.
I press my lips together. “I’m thinking it’s like some kind of fantasy that the lead singer of my favorite band is sitting here trying to comfort me.”
“Rock stars love to make fantasies come true. It’s part of the job description. That and being a bad boy.”
I think about the image his publicist has built versus the man sitting beside me. “You’re not really a bad boy, though.”
“No? You think seducing my brother’s girlfriend is a good boy trait?”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
He stands and wanders over toward his windows.
I force myself up from the couch and step across the room. I land just behind him. “Your only shot at what?”
He spins around to face me. His eyes are full of intense determination. “At you.”
I sigh and look away from all that intensity in his eyes, but he doesn’t allow it. He grabs my shoulders and tips my chin up with his fingertip. His eyes burn into mine with a fire I’ve never seen before. “Can you be honest with me about something?”
I nod—because just like Jill said, when he looks at me with those green eyes of his, I’d pretty much do anything he asked me to do.
My eyes flick away from his.
“I asked you for honesty,” he says.
“You haven’t even given me a chance to answer.”
“You looked away. Textbook sign of forming a lie.”
“I wasn’t forming a lie.” I fold my arms over my chest.
“Bending the truth?”
I shake my head. “Yes. Okay? Yes. I love him.” Just not as much as I think I might love you. I can’t say the words. It’s too fucking terrifying.
I turn away from him because I can’t stand being scrutinized for a second longer. He’s making it impossible for me. All I want to do is kiss him, taste him, touch him. All I want is for him to wrap his entire body around me, to be inside me everywhere all at once, to fill me up as he makes us one.
All I want is to hand myself freely over to him.
If that’s not love, I don’t know what it is. It feels like some force even greater than love.
He lowers his voice to the same familiar, gritty inflection he uses in the second verse of my favorite Vail song. “After two goddamn months of torture, I finally figured it out. I know how I feel, but if you’re in love with my brother, I won’t say it. I won’t even think it. I’ll move along and hold it all inside because if you’re in love with him, I want you to be happy. I won’t stand in your way.”
I open my mouth to say something, but just a little squeak comes out. I find I don’t know how to respond. It’s not what I want. I don’t want him to move along or hold it inside.
“But I don’t think you really are in love with him. I think if you were, you’d have found a way to be on that plane with him. You’d have gotten on standby, or you’d have been on the next flight out, even if it wasn’t direct.” He takes a step toward me, almost like he’s hunting his prey. “You’d have gone with him to the airport to spend those last few seconds together.” Another step. “You’d have gone home last night so you wouldn’t have to face the temptation this morning of cheating on the man you love.” A final step, and he’s standing directly in front of me, his eyes blazing. “But you didn’t do any of that, and I know why.” His head comes down so his mouth is mere inches from mine.
“Why?” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he closes the gap between us, pressing his lips to mine as his arm hooks around my waist. I fling my arms around his neck, holding onto him like he might disappear if I let go. I can’t let him disappear. I can’t let go. I can’t push him away anymore.
His mouth opens and his peppermint tongue finds mine. His kiss is slow and seductive, erotic. I let go of my grasp around his neck to graze my fingertips against his strong jawline. The whiskers there are surprisingly soft. A low moan rumbles out of me just from his kiss. I have the inclination that this is perfection—I could spend the rest of my life right here, wrapped in his arms, gaining sustenance and strength from the emotion he pours into our single connection.
He stops kissing me but doesn’t stop holding me. “You know why, too.”
“Why?” I repeat. I’m completely breathless, panting.
“You don’t love him. You’ve convinced yourself you do, but you can’t stop thinking about me in the same way I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I finally find the strength to step out of his arms. “I can’t be a pawn in the game between the two of you.”
He grabs my arm and pulls me back to him. “That’s not what this is.” His voice is sharp and cuts into me like a knife.
“Then what is it?” My voice starts gaining volume. “You can’t stay away, you know how you feel, you know how I feel…so what the hell is it? Stop skirting around it and fucking say it!”
“I’m in love with you,” he yells back. “Okay?”
I reel back. Even though I knew it was coming, it still hits me square in the chest, knocking the breath clear out of me.
I look past him and out the window. Looking at him directly sometimes feels like looking at the sun—like little dots of his image will still be there when I close my eyes, like he’ll be burned into my retinas. He’s this huge blazing presence, and I’m snowblind. Nothing else exists when he’s in the room. I’m not sure if anything else exists even when he isn’t in the room.
“I’m in love with you, too.” My voice is low and defeated. My chest hurts, my stomach hurts, and my heart hurts. Telling someone I love him shouldn’t make me feel this bad.
“So where do we go from here?” he asks.
I huff out a laugh and allow my eyes to flick back over to him. “You’re asking me?”
He lifts his shoulders and throws his hands up. “I’ve never been in love before.”
“You haven’t?”
He shakes his head.
“So of all the things you’ve done, all the things you’ve been through and experienced, the platinum records, the different women, the adventures and journeys…I’m your first?”
The different women. I wonder how many there have been since we were together. It shouldn’t matter—I’ve been with his brother, and he knows that. But it does matter. It hurts even thinking about it. I have no claim over him other than the fact that I hold his heart in my hands.
“That pretty much sums it up,” he murmurs, turning his gaze back to the Strip.
I stare at the back of his head as he stares out the window. His honesty, his vulnerability…they both scream sincerity.
“Then how do you know it’s love?” I ask. My heart races and my palms start to sweat as I await his answer.
He turns around to face me. He crosses his arms over his chest, his biceps flexing with the movement. His cheeks flush, something I never expected to see on the formidable Mark Ashton, and he shakes his head as he averts his eyes to the floor. “That article from the night I sang with Noteworthy pegged me. They knew it from the words I wrote. They knew it before I did. I’m a different person since the night we met, Reese, and it’s fucking agony to watch you with my brother.” He tightens his arms crossed against his chest, and his shoulders drop a little.
Seeing him so vulnerable cuts into my chest. I want to comfort him, want to love him. It may be wrong because I’m still with another man, but as I stare at him across the room from me with the sun coming up over the Strip, I know that it’ll only ever be Mark for me.
I take a tentative step toward him and run my fingers along the tattoos on the back of his arm. He whips around to face me.
“You’re really in love me?” His voice is tentative, nervous, and again I’m struck with the contrast of the image I had in my mind of this man and the man in the flesh.
“I’ve loved you since I was seventeen.” My voice comes out more desperate than I intend it to.
He shakes his head. “You’ve loved an image of me since you were seventeen, not me.”
I shake my head. “It was always you.”
“You didn’t know me then. And you still don’t know me now.”
“You don’t know me, either. But you know how you feel. Right?”
He uncrosses his arms and finally pulls me against him. “Right.” He kisses me again, long and slow, and the ache that’s been building in my core since the night he snuck out of his brother’s bedroom intensifies so sharply that I nearly cry out.
My cries are swallowed by his kiss and I’m lost once again to the world.
Until my cell phone starts its annoying jingle in my pocket.
Mark lets out a frustrated moan and breaks away from my mouth. He holds me and gazes heatedly down into my eyes. “Don’t answer it,” he begs.
“I have to.” I step back from him to slip my phone out of my pocket. Brian Fox. I flash the screen at Mark so he can see who it is, and then I pick it up. “Hello?” I wander away from Mark. I can’t look at him while I’m on the phone with his brother. I feel him keeping pace with me as I attempt to move away from him, so I turn around. He’s standing directly behind me, close enough to touch, and his eyes blaze. I can’t tell if he’s pissed or turned on.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Brian says. I’d normally read into his tone, but I can’t get a gauge on it when my eyes are locked on the man who I was just kissing while I talk to Brian on the phone. “I’m on the plane in my seat and just wanted to say bye one last time before we take off and I’m off the grid.”
I slept with your brother.
Mark closes the gap between us and attacks my neck with his lips. I let out a gasp as he sucks on my skin, pressing kisses to me and nipping me. The ache inside grows to unbearably painful levels. I nearly stick my fingers into my panties to alleviate myself. I shouldn’t feel this way, shouldn’t want Mark so badly, shouldn’t be doing this to Brian.
“You okay?” Brian asks.
I clear my throat. “Yeah,” I squeak. My hand comes up to grip the back of Mark’s head in a feeble attempt to stop him, but it has the opposite effect as it pulls him closer to me. “Fly safe.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Mm-hm.” My eyes roll back at the feel of his mouth on my sensitive, hot flesh. He starts to trail kisses down my neck, his scruff tickling my skin as it ignites the already flaming embers inside me.
“I have to put my phone in airplane mode, but I have wifi, so if you need anything at all, just send me a message. Okay?”
Mark’s lips trail down into my cleavage.
“Mm, yeah.” My voice comes out all breathless. I force myself to focus not on the way Mark’s mouth is moving over my body but on the voice on the other end of the phone. My mind is a jumbled mass of emotions. I should be telling Brian it’s over so I’m free and clear to be with Mark, but it seems like something I need to tell him in person. That thought cuts through the cloud of lust settling over my body.
“Reese?” Brian says.
“Yeah?”
“I love you. I can’t wait to see you in a few days.”
“You too.” I clear my throat again. “Fly safe.” I force myself to contain the ohhhh sound on the tip of my tongue.
“I’ll call when I get there.”
“Mm-kay.” I need this call to end.
“You want me to text instead?”
I don’t care but I know I need to get the hell off this fucking phone right now. I draw in a deep breath just as Mark’s fingers tangle into my hair and his mouth presses harder to my throat. “Either.”
“Okay. Have a good night and I’ll talk to you when I land.”
I somehow manage a response, though I’m not sure what it sounds like. I say goodbye and drop the phone to the floor. I’m not even totally convinced I hung up the call, but when Mark is touching me and kissing me, all coherence and sense leaves me.
The same can be said for Mark simply being in the room, I suppose.
“Oh my God,” I moan.
His mouth trails up to meet mine, and he kisses me with hunger. With need. With a craving so strong it knocks the breath out of me. It scares me how powerful this is.
I push him away because I need to breathe. “I need to end it with Brian first,” I say.
“He’s gone for at least ten days. I can’t wait that long.” His gaze is intense on me, and I duck out of his arms to gain some distance.
“Control yourself.”
He laughs. “Around you after you admitted how you feel about me? Right. That’s like telling the sun to stop shining or the rivers to stop flowing.”
“That’s dramatic.” Despite my sarcastic reply, his words spread warmth through my chest.
He shakes his head and averts his gaze back to the window thoughtfully. “It’s the truth. I’ve waited my whole life for you. Don’t you get that? I can’t let another second go by without knowing you’re mine.”
“I am.”
“Call him. Tell him now. Tell him before his flight takes off.”
“I can’t do that to him and you know it.”
He blows out a breath. “You’re right.”
“It’ll do you some good to repeat that phrase since you’ll be using it a lot.”
He laughs—a genuine, real laugh that feels good after the heavy morning we’ve had. His phone starts to ring. “Fuck,” he mutters.
“What?”
We both look at his phone sitting on the kitchen table. “That’s probably Penny calling to remind me I need to get my ass to Los Angeles.”
“This early?” I glance at the clock on his oven. It’s not even six yet.
He shrugs. “She never sleeps.”
“Did you?”
He shakes his head. “Not last night. Not knowing you were sharing a bed with my brother under my own goddamn roof.”
“If you’re supposed to be in LA, why are you here?” I ask.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Spell it out for me.”
He steps toward me, ignoring his ringing phone. “I’m here because you’re here.”
I gasp. I’ll never get used to this—never get used to the idea that Mark Ashton wants me. Loves me. It’s overwhelming. “But you have work to do.”
He nods in acknowledgment.
“Don’t let me stop you from that.”
“I’ve written some of the best lyrics of my career since I met you. I might be fucking things up everywhere else, but you’ve inspired me in ways I can’t even explain.”
“What if I say I’m yours, then? You got the girl. You’ve emerged the victor. So now what?” I’m terrified of all this. What if he decides this isn’t what he wants after I break it off with Brian? What if now that he won the contest, he loses interest?
He looks at me in wonder, like he can’t quite decipher what I’m getting at. “Now we start living. Life begins.”
I rush into his arms and allow him to hold me, but only for one moment that is way too short. “You need to get some rest and you have work to do. And I need to go home to let you do that.”
He shakes his head. “It can wait.”
His phone starts ringing again, a clear indication that it shouldn’t wait.
He sighs in frustration, and I step out of his arms. “We have lots of time.”
“But I want you in my bed. Now.”
“I want that, too.” God, do I want that. “But I need a bit of space to process all this.” I sweep my arms around.
He grabs my arm and pulls me back against his chest. He lowers his head until his lips are mere centimeters from mine. “Don’t you dare go home and change your mind,” he says.
I press my lips gently to his. “I won’t.” My soft voice betrays a pure vow.
He closes his eyes and rests his forehead to mine for a tender beat. His phone starts ringing again, and he finally blows out a breath and backs away to pick it up. I head over to the counter to grab my overnight bag.
“Get some rest, do what you need to do, and expect me to stop by later today,” he says as I rest my hand on his doorknob. “I’m leaving for LA either tonight or tomorrow and I refuse to go before I get a chance to kiss you again.”
I blow him a kiss from the doorway, an innocent and almost childlike gesture after the heavy conversation we just had, and he grins at me before he answers his call.
This time when I call the elevator, I press the button just once and wait patiently for my ride to arrive.