Kye
It takes everything I have not to throw my laptop across my room.
There’s always fucking something, isn’t there? Always something there to kick you when you’re down. Like I’m not already frustrated and doubting the hell out of myself for the decision I made to walk away from Chelsey last night. It would have been so easy to do what I wanted to do.
Take her home and fuck her. That’s all I wanna do every day, for the love of fucking God. I want her over a table and against a wall and under the covers. Be with her—that’s it. Even if it’s just that way.
But I want her to want it.
I want her to want me to do those things. I don’t want her to give in only after we’ve been drinking. I don’t want her to think that’s the only way I want her. ’Cause it isn’t. Fuck, it isn’t. I don’t want her to offer it just to see if I’ll bite like any sane man would. I don’t want her to offer it as a test to see if I’m just like the others, which is what I know she did yesterday.
Mostly I want her to know that if I’m inside her again, and she’s falling apart to her own tune of my name, there’s no going back. There’s no more fucking dancing around and me trying to prove to her I’m not the kind of person she thinks I am. No, if we do that again, that’s it. That’s the end of this bullshit game I’m forcing myself to stick to the rules of. It’ll be the end of this “no sex, act like a gentleman, seduce her slowly and softly” plan. It’ll blow it out of the goddamn water, and sticking to it is already hard enough.
Every time I see her¸ I want her. I want to tell myself that being the nice guy and holding the door and giving her my sweatshirt won’t get me what I want. That it would be easier to just tear her clothes off and send her to the heights of pleasure.
But I know that if I fuck Chelsey Young again, she’s mine. And I’ll be fucked if there’ll be any kind of argument over that.
Maybe she should be mine already. Maybe I am the nice guy, like my brothers have always teased me about. They’re the ones that don’t think about anything and dive into things headfirst. Don’t get me wrong, I can be an asshole as much as they can, but I just don’t have that as my default personality setting.
The only problem with being the nice guy in this instance is that I’ve got myself one hell of a pair of blue balls.
And now? Now I’ve got another problem. The email in my inbox requesting a comment to go along with the photographs of me kissing a blond girl is almost an even bigger problem.
I dial the number of our PR firm and am put straight through to Jennifer, our promotional manager. “I need your help.”
“I’m assuming you received the same email I did,” she says seriously. “How do you want this handled? I have two hours before the media outlets start running these images and attach Chelsey Young’s name to them. You know as well as I do that they’ll run the photos and this will spread like wildfire.”
“I’m amazed they haven’t run them already.”
“They’re not photos taken by staff photographers. Someone saw you, recognized you, and photographed you, then sold them anonymously,” she explains. Shit. “Does she have anyone we can contact to coordinate on this?”
“No.” I rub my hand across my forehead. “She’s just a normal chick, Jen. She doesn’t have a fucking manager or any of this stuff.”
“Your tone tells me she’s not going to be too happy about this.”
She’s going to string me up by my balls. She’s gonna hate every fucking second of this if it runs. She’ll be stalked and her privacy will be invaded—the very things she’s tried to avoid for her whole life. The things I was just trying to protect her from.
This is what she doesn’t want, what her father made her hate. This is why I should have listened to her when she told me to fuck off.
Except now it’s too late. I can’t, and more importantly, I won’t. I couldn’t walk away from making her mine if someone paid me to, but I can sure as hell do everything possible to protect her until that happens.
“Contact all the media outlets that have purchased them already. Tell them I’ll pay them double if they don’t run the pictures,” I order, getting out of bed. “Pay extra to anyone who’ll tell you who sold them the pictures and hand over their contact details.”
“There was probably an NDA involved. Then again,” she muses, pausing. “The pictures are cell-phone quality, so let’s hope they weren’t smart enough for that.”
“They were smart enough not to sell exclusively,” I point out.
“Let’s hope that’s where their foresight ended. I’ll call you later.” On that, she hangs up, and silence replaces her sharp voice.
I drop back onto my bed and set my phone next to me. My head flops forward so my face is in my hands, and the tightness in my chest makes it hard to breathe.
How am I supposed to tell Chelsey?
“Kye?” Leila knocks at my bedroom door.
“Hold on.” I put a pair of sweats on then call for her to come in.
“Everything okay? I heard you say something about paying lots of people.”
I sigh and explain everything to her, finishing up with the question I just asked myself. “How do I tell Chelsey? How do I explain that I ignored my gut and kept kissing her? It was stupid, Leila. So fucking stupid. I should have stopped it.”
And that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? I know better than to put on a show. I shouldn’t have wrapped my arms around her and allowed myself to get drunk on her kiss.
My baby sister pulls her dark hair into a ponytail, securing it with a band snapped from her wrist. Her eyes are soft, and her lips are turned up in sympathy. “You really like her, don’t you?”
It’s crazy to consider that “really like her” is somewhat of a fucking understatement. Right?
I shrug and open my curtains. My bedroom has always been at the back of the house, facing the beach, and the sight of the waves crashing against the sand beneath gathering storm clouds is a calming view. “That’s a pretty vague statement, sis. Am I falling for her? Yeah. Quicker than she’s fucking falling for me, if she’s even approached the ledge.”
“She wouldn’t spend this much time with you if she didn’t like you,” she replies softly. “Chelsey is hard to figure out. We’ve known each other forever, and I don’t even feel like I know her at all sometimes. She’s . . . guarded.”
“No shit.” I snort. “What’s wrong with me, Lei? Ads, Tate, and Con all just went for it. They didn’t fuck around like I’m doing.”
She walks to the window and hooks her hand inside my elbow. Her hair tickles my back as she rests her head against my upper arm. “You’re softer than them, Kye, and that isn’t a bad thing. You care about how Chelsey feels. You care about what she wants. I’m not saying they don’t care about Sof, Ella, and Jessie, because they do, but you just put Chelsey before yourself. You really think they’d have called Jennifer and offered up a ton of money to protect her from the public eye? Jessie went postal on Aidan’s ass after her car got egged, remember?”
How could I forget? To hear Aidan tell it, she blended his balls and threw the soup all over him.
“If I had to pick a guy like any of you, I’d pick one like you,” she continues quietly. “Being the nice, caring guy doesn’t mean you have to finish last, you know? You’re a total dick sometimes, but there’s a reason Sofie and Jessie turned to you when everything got tough. You have the biggest heart out of all of you, and think of it this way: cocks stop working long before hearts do.”
A small laugh escapes my mouth, and I wrap my arm around her for a quick squeeze. “Thanks, Lei. Now how do I tell Chelsey she could be the newest Dirty B. Twitter trend?”
My sister backs up, hands in the air. “I don’t know. I just imparted my daily dose of wisdom with the cocks quote. I got nothin’ past that.”
Great. I love it when she’s that helpful.
The day passes slowly. Really freakin’ slowly.
It’s been eight hours since my conversation with Jennifer, and all the info I got was that she’d managed to buy off all the media outlets and was sending a list of checks I need to make out.
Fine. Whatever.
But no one gave up the details of the “cell phone bandit,” as Tate dubbed them not one hour ago. As soon as he heard, presumably from Leila, his big-brother instincts kicked in and he hightailed it back here to make me recount the whole story.
“Think, Kye. Someone nearby had to be suspicious.”
I give him the stink eye. “I was kissing Chelsey. I was hardly payin’ fuckin’ attention, now was I?”
“Start kissin’ with one eye open.”
Ella thumps his arm without looking up from her tablet. “Don’t be an asshole, Tate.”
Yeah, living with Tate means she’s finally saying “ass” as much as a normal person.
“There’s nothing. Yet,” she says, barely glancing at me. “I keep searching your name on Twitter and the last thing someone said, apart from excitement over the new single coming next month, is a berating tweet because all she could do was stare at you in the store yesterday.”
Despite my worry, my lips twitch up. I figured that one would come eventually. They always do. Might as well enjoy it.
“Oh,” Ella says, “And she followed it up with a picture of her schedule for the week and asked you to come back in any of those times.”
“Yeah. That isn’t going to happen.”
“You should also know that I cleared twenty-nine emails containing selfies of girls in various states of undress from your personal email yesterday morning. Do you ever even check that account?”
“No, ma’am, I do not,” I say.
She lifts her eyes to mine slowly. “You should consider starting.”
“Were the girls hot?” Tate asks, looking at her.
Her heated gaze slides to him, and I relax. Phew. She might be small, but she’s passionate.
“Never mind,” she mutters.
“What? It’s a legit question. If they’re hot, he might start fuckin’ checkin’.”
Well . . .
“Told you.” Tate smirks smugly when I don’t deny it.
What? I’m a hot-blooded male. If I knew there was the chance of some legitimately hot girls sending me nudes, I might have checked it long before now. Just out of curiosity, you know?
Ella shakes her head and goes back to her scrolling. Tate gets up and grabs a can of Diet Coke from the fridge and steals the remote before he sits back down.
I throw my phone up and catch it. I repeat this as thoughts trawl through my mind nonstop. None of them makes much sense, so I get up and shove it in my pocket.
I head for the garage. Old habits die hard, for all of us. Stress needs to be alleviated through music, through the gentle vibration of the guitar strings under my fingers.
Once I’m in the garage, I shut the door connecting it to the house and move to the stool where I always sit. My guitar case is lying on the cold stone floor next to it, and I crouch to remove my first love from her case.
It feels like forever since I picked this up, when in reality it’s only been days. I rest the smooth wood side against my knee and hesitate before playing.
My phone burns a hole in my pocket, and against my better judgment I pull it out and unlock it. I tap the Twitter icon on my menu, although I know it’s the stupidest fucking idea.
It’s easy to obsess over what people are saying about you, and, really, whether they’re saying anything at all. All of us did it at first. We’d spend hours reading tweets and articles and all that crap, until we realized it was doing nothing but destroying us a little more.
This, though? This isn’t about me. This is about Chelsey.
I take a deep breath and click on the Trending page.
“Kye! Don’t check—” Ella bursts through the door, and my heart drops as the words on the screen in front of me sink in.
“Fuck,” I mutter, almost letting go of my phone.
Ella rushes over and takes my guitar as my grip wavers on it. “It came out of nowhere,” she says, setting the instrument down in front of my feet. “I was hoping you hadn’t looked yet.”
“Fuck!” I get up and press the heel of my hand to the center of my forehead. Fuck, fuck! Why did I think I could buy my way out of this? I’m not that fucking naive. I should have known that one way or another we’d be exposed.
Everything I’ve done to convince Chelsey I’m not like her dad is now shot to fucking shit and burned to a crisp for good measure.
“Kye.” Tate leans against the doorframe as he leaves the room. “Call her. Now.”
I dial her number and raise the phone to my ear before I can change my mind.
She answers instantly. “Fuck off.” And then the line goes dead.
I grimace and lower it, staring at the screen. “That went well.” Instead of calling again, I open our text message thread and send her two simple words.
I’m sorry.
No you’re not, comes her reply. If you were sorry you would have listened to me in the first place and left me alone.
You’re right. But can you at least stay on the line long enough for me to explain?
Explain what? That my father called my best friend to verify the rumors that you and I are dating because the media called him? That now a swarm of reporters are gonna drag their asses down here to get quotes from the daughter of rock music’s darling and the fourth member of the boyband the world is losing its shit over? What a match made in fucking heaven.
I’m guessing calling you again would be stupid.
Einstein? Is that you?
I don’t respond, but she sends another message immediately after.
Yes. Calling is stupid. Fuck you, Kye. Seriously, fuck you. I don’t want anything to do with you.
I lean against the garage door and slide my phone into my pocket. The strongest feeling of regret I’ve ever experienced is snaking its way through my body, my heart pumping it through my veins, the chill of it creeping across my skin. Every hair on my arms is standing on end, and there’s a heavy feeling in my chest.
I scrub my hand over my face as these sensations settle into my body. My gaze falls on my guitar and, as if they have a mind of their own, my feet move, pulling me toward it. I grab it with a little too much force and drop onto the stool. The guitar rests on my knee comfortably, and I run my fingers over the strings, briefly checking the tension.
Music. Always the music.
It’s the only thing that can kill this thought flashing so desperately in my mind.
I tried to protect Chelsey from everything she hated, and the absolute irony is that, by doing that, I was putting her right in the way of it.
After all, I’m everything she hates. Although her perception of me couldn’t be more wrong, I’m still the embodiment of everything that’s ever hurt her.
I was fucking stupid for thinking for a second that she’d ever change her mind.
“Go home,” I vaguely hear Tate say to Ella. A moment later, the garage door shuts, and I follow Tate with my eyes as I let my fingers touch the guitar strings however they want.
Without a word, my eldest brother removes his own guitar from the case, sits on his usual stool, sets his guitar on his knee, and on the count of three, joins me in playing.
We’re barely in sync, and it grates on me, so I move into one of our songs. Tate picks up the cue immediately, and his eyes close as he plays wordlessly.
For me. Just so I’m not alone.
I close my eyes. Our transition between songs is seamless. Every note I play, I feel a little more of the tension knotting my muscles dissipate, just enough to make it manageable. I can breathe through the tight twisting of my stomach as the regret filters its way down there, too.
Mostly I’m angry. I’m so fucking pissed at myself. I told Aidan I’d never do to a woman what he did to Jessie, when he kept her in harm’s way because he couldn’t let go. And what did I fucking do?
Threw Chelsey under the bus, and I ran her the hell over with it.
It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t been attacked—although the Diva keyboard warriors are probably doing that right now—or that she isn’t in any real danger. The spotlight, she hates it. Cameras, reporters, everything. It’s her biggest peeve, the one thing she could easily live the rest of her life without.
And I did everything I could to pull her into the thick of it, even though I thought I wasn’t at all.
She just told me in two very simple words that this is done. I should give up. Maybe she’s right.
She’s prickly and she’s guarded. It’s a miracle if you can get a laugh from her on a daily basis. She’s also a bitch, but it’s not without reason. She’s a bitch because it’s the only way she knows how to protect herself.
Fuck it all, though, because I wouldn’t change a damn thing about her. I wouldn’t change the way her calculating gaze sweeps over me, or the way she always looks surprised when I hold her hand or hug her.
I wouldn’t change the fact that I’m falling on my fucking ass for her either. Even if it means I’ll never get to call her mine. ’Cause just for the last few days we’ve spent together, she gave me an escape from the reality of being part of Dirty B. She reminded me that there are bigger things.
That’s enough.
The garage door slams open, and both of us stop playing for the first time in what could be hours. Aidan is standing in the doorway, his arm around what can only be described as a fall-down-drunk Chelsey’s waist. He staggers to the side a little as she raises her arm and points at me, giggling.
“Hey, look! You’re playing!”
Aidan helps her stand up straighter. “I think she belongs to you.” He looks at me pointedly.
“News to me,” I mutter, setting the guitar to the side. “What the hell happened?”
“As soon as Jessie saw the articles she dragged me to Chelsey’s. Chelsey already had the bottle of Jack Daniel’s ready, and Jessie went armed with vodka.”
“Naturally,” Tate snorts.
“Hey!” Chelsey slurs, narrowing her eyes at Tate. “Whatchu sayin’?”
“Nothin’.” His grin says otherwise.
“Anyway,” Ads continues, turning to me. “I was subjected to two or so hours of them drinking themselves silly and listening to various rants from them both, interspersed with loving monologues from Jessie.”
“She’s stupid,” Chelsey giggles, then hiccups. “Oops!” Another giggle. “No offense, Aidan.” Hiccup.
“Trust me, darlin’, I’ve heard worse.”
“So why did you bring her here?” I ask him just as she hiccups again. She makes a big show of holding her breath and drunkenly counting to ten on her fingers. Miraculously, it works.
“Apparently y’all talk better when alcohol is involved,” he explains. “Or maybe that’s just her,” he reasons, giving her a sidelong glance.
“Nope! Him, too!” Chelsey protests, pushing Aidan off her. She wobbles for a second before grabbing the doorframe and focusing on me. Well, she tries to, but judging by the frown on her face, she’s seeing more than one of me. “You!” she snaps, pointing slightly to the left. “Nope. Whoops. You,” she repeats, this time pointing at me. “You, sir, are a royal fucktard.”
There’s one for the books.
“You didn’t even want me. I totally propositioned your hot ass after we went shopping, and you say no, and then we are all over Twitter! All over!” She punctuates the final two words with a big sweep of her arm. “Everywhere! And people are calling me! And my dad. And Jessie. And apparently one of your fans thinks she’s hotter than me. Pffffft!” She laughs loudly. “Silly bitch.”
Tate drops his head and rubs his hand over his mouth. His shoulders shake, and I know he’s laughing. Hell, even Ads is trying hard not to laugh.
I’m wondering what her point is.
“Anyway! Like I was saying. Yoooou said you wanted to fuck me. And then I said, ‘Okay!’ And yoooou said, ‘I’m taking you home now,’ ” she mimics me in a deep voice. “So, basically, what I wanna know is, what the hell is up with that?”
“You got drunk and came here because I took you home instead of having sex with you?”
She frowns. “No. I got drunk because you pissed me off, you asshole. I came here because you only listen to me when you’re drunk. And we have sex when we’re drunk.”
“Okay. I think you need to go to bed.” I cross the garage and wrap my arm around her waist, shocked at how much she leans into me.
Her smile is woozy. “Are you coming with me?”
“And I’ve heard enough.” Aidan slaps me on the shoulder. “Good luck, man.”
“Me, too.” Tate does the same and follows him outside. The last I hear is Aidan telling Tate to fuck himself after he asks for a ride home.
“Kye?” Chelsey says, her voice a little quieter now.
“No, babe.” I guide her through the house to the stairs. “I’m putting you in Aidan’s old room. I’m sleeping in my room.”
She stops walking up the stairs and turns to me. “Please don’t.”
“I’m not having sex with you, Chelsey. Not when you’re like this.”
“There’s still time for you to—hic—get drunk. And I don’t want to sleep in Aidan’s room. I want to sleep in yours.”
Jesus. Okay. Fine. I’ll sleep in Aidan’s room. I all but force her to go the rest of the way upstairs and maneuver her into my room. “I’m not getting drunk. I fully expect you’ll need to throw up in an hour, and, call me old-fashioned, but vomiting halfway through drunk sex isn’t exactly a real big turn-on for me.”
She thinks this over for a moment, sitting on the edge of my bed. “You could be right. Wait. Where are you going?”
I stop by my door. “To sleep in Aidan’s room.”
“Uh.” She glances at me. “Do you have to?”
Her voice is so small and weak. It hits me right where it hurts, and I know I can no more sleep in Aidan’s room than she can think straight.
I look her over as she tucks some hair behind her ear and turns her face to the window. It’s later than I thought, so it’s pretty dark outside. The hazy reflection of the moon filters through the window and casts shadows over her face.
She looks sadder than I’ve ever seen. Her lips are fully downturned, and her eyes are glossy. That could just be the alcohol, but there’s a heavy emotion lingering there that I can’t put my finger on. It seems like it’s a mixture of sadness, regret, and maybe even guilt.
I turn away from her and grab a T-shirt from my dresser drawer. I throw it at her. “Here. You can sleep in that.” I move into a dark corner of my room, and with my back to her, I take off my jeans, socks, and T-shirt.
I don’t care if we’re not having sex. I can’t sleep in a damn T-shirt.
I cross the room, shut the curtains, and tap the sidelight before I get into bed. I pull back the quilt and look up at Chelsey. Whatever high she was on ten minutes ago has definitely disappeared, because she’s sucking her bottom lip into her mouth and staring at my bed.
I realize too late that the T-shirt she’s wearing is one from our last tour, and the frayed hem tells me it’s one I’ve worn often. Damn, should have given her a new one. “You want me to sleep in Ads’s old room? I can still go.”
She shakes her head and, tentatively, gets into my bed. She rolls over so she’s facing me. “You’re naked,” she whispers.
“No. I’m wearing underwear.” I gesture, prove my point, then lie down. “Go to sleep, babe.”
She nods, snuggles into the duvet. I reach over her and switch off the light. Darkness swallows the room.
“Kye.” Her voice is soft. “Will you hold me?”
I take a deep breath. “Sure. Come here.” I put an arm under her head and she moves into me. My arms wrap around her, her head on my shoulder, and she buries her face into the crook of my neck.
“Thank you.”
I touch my mouth to the top of her head and close my eyes tight, ignoring the ache that this is causing. Fuck, I’m such a pussy. I should have made her go into Aidan’s old room. I should have made myself. “Anytime.”
Silence hovers, and just when I think she’s asleep, she proves me wrong.
“You know,” she whispers into the darkness, her voice catching. “If you were anyone else, you’d be so perfect.”
I squeeze her gently, her words resonating with their truth like a knife to my heart. “I know.”
I walk back into my room to find Chelsey sitting up in the middle of my bed, bending forward, her palm pressed against her forehead. “Mornin’, Miss Sunshine.”
“Shhh,” she hisses, holding up her other hand. She looks up at me. “How did I get here?”
“I was led to believe you demanded Aidan bring you here last night so you could interrogate me as to why I didn’t fuck you the other night.”
The horror that spreads across her face is fucking hilarious. “Oh my God. I didn’t, did I?”
I smirk, nodding.
“Oh my God,” she groans, leaning back against the headboard. “I am so sorry.”
“Don’t worry.” I put down the glass of ice water I brought upstairs for her then hand her some painkillers. “Here.”
“Thank you.” Her cheeks are bright red, and after swallowing the pills, she drinks the water without taking a breath. “Wow. So. I really did that, huh?”
“Oh yeah.” I pull the belt from yesterday’s jeans and put it through the loops on the pair I’m wearing.
“And did we . . .” She points at my side of the bed, then to me, then back to herself. “Did we have sex?”
I raise my eyebrows. “You think I’d do that?” Christ. I’ve never had sex with someone, drunk or not, who wasn’t able to completely control themselves and their actions, who wasn’t fully aware of exactly what was happening at every point. And last night, she could most definitely not do any of those things.
“No. Sorry. I just . . . you know. Wondered.” She looks at her hands sheepishly.
“Your clothes are on the chair over there.” I nod toward where I folded and put her clothes before I went downstairs. “Mom is making bacon to help with your hangover.”
She claps her hand over her mouth. “Oh God. Your mom didn’t see me, did she?”
“No. She was out on a date with Dad.” I smile. “Don’t worry.”
“Oh. Good. Okay.” She clutches at the duvet. “I’ll be right down.”
I leave her in the room and head downstairs. If she can’t remember how she got here, I doubt she’ll remember the last words she said to me last night. Just as well though, right? She’d probably have some bullshit explanation for them—like she was too drunk to know what she was saying. Which, in all probability, is totally fucking accurate.
I sit at the table and mumble “Thanks” to Mom when she sets a bacon and egg sandwich in front of me. I nod when she asks if Chelsey is coming down. She puts another down in front of the seat next to me just as Chelsey appears at the bottom of the stairs.
“Mornin’, darlin’!” Mom chirps. “Coffee or juice?”
“Oh, um, both, please.” She sits down quietly and gratefully accepts the ready-made mug Mom hands her. Because Mom is organized like that and already had both poured for her.
We eat in silence while Mom hums to herself, cleaning. She disappears, only to return with laundry a few minutes later, then passes through to the laundry room. The door closes behind her, and silence once again reigns supreme.
“Better?”
Chelsey glances at me then focuses on the dark liquid in her mug. “Yes. Thank you.” She drinks the rest. “I have work this afternoon. I should head home.”
“Jessie called you in sick.”
“What?”
I shrug. “Ads called me to see how you were. I told him you were still sleeping, and he told me to leave you because Jessie called the bar and said you caught a stomach bug. Plus, Jennifer, our PR manager, called.”
She groans and slumps forward. “Fuck.”
“Yeah. Apparently we should expect reporters in town by tonight. The ice storm has caused some chaos in-state apparently, so we have a little more time than usual.”
“It hasn’t hit us yet, has it? I need to get deicer for my car.” She looks to the window, but the blinds are still shut.
“Nah, not yet. But it’s fuckin’ cold and raining like crazy.”
“Okay. I should still head home so I can get to the store before the roads are impassable and I’m stuck eating ramen noodles and tortilla chips for two days.”
I grab my keys from the bowl in the middle of the table. “I’ll take you.”
“It’s just a bit of rain.” Chelsey gets up and moves the blinds to the side, peering out. “It’s not coming down hard. It’ll take me five minutes.”
She stalks past me toward the front door.
“Don’t be dumb, Chels.” I stop her before she opens the door. “You don’t have a coat, and this sweater is hardly suitable for the weather. Let me take you home.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t need to play the hero, Kye. Not now.”
“Fuck, what kind of assholes do you hang out with if you think me driving a woman home so she doesn’t get sick in the middle of winter is playing the hero?” One of my eyebrows quirks up. “I’m being a fucking gentleman here. It’s just courtesy. Don’t worry, Chels. I got the message last night.”
She swallows hard. “I’m good. I’ll walk.”
I let go of the door when she yanks again. The cold air hits me immediately, but she’s undeterred as she walks out into it without betraying any hint of a shiver.
“You’re not actually gonna let her go, are you?” Leila says in a muffled voice from behind me.
I turn and see her standing halfway down the stairs, her toothbrush in her mouth. Like she needs me to answer that.
I grab my jacket from where it’s hanging up behind the door and run outside. The door slams behind me, and I unlock my truck. Chelsey is halfway down the street, so I get in and drive a little quicker than I should to catch up to her.
“Go away,” she yells, glancing over her shoulder.
I drive alongside her slowly. “Get in.”
“Fuck you.”
“Get in.”
“I said no.”
“No, you said ‘fuck you.’ ”
“Fine. No. Fuck you.”
“You’re so fuckin’ stubborn.”
“From the guy who insists I get in his truck.”
“I’m an alpha male. It’s what I do, babe.”
She snorts but doesn’t respond. I drive alongside her in silence for a minute before she turns into the park, even though it’ll add another five minutes to her walk.
Fuck.
Asking nicely isn’t getting the job done. Maybe my brothers have a point—maybe hauling her over my shoulder and throwing her in my truck would be the way to go.
I swerve into the parking area and get out, making sure to grab my jacket. “Chelsey!”
“Oh my God! Go away!” she yells, stopping and turning to me. “I don’t care, Kye. I don’t want to talk to you. I have maybe twelve hours before my privacy goes to shit. I want to savor them!”
“Here.” I throw my jacket at her. “At least wear this.”
“Oh,” she says as she catches it.
“You’re welcome,” I snap, my patience running thin. “Give it to Jessie next time you see her. I’ll get it from their place.”
I turn around and retrace my steps in the direction of my car. If she won’t let me take her home, the least I can do is try and make sure she doesn’t catch a cold in this weather.
“That—that’s it? You’re just gonna throw a jacket at me and walk away?” she calls, disbelief rife in her tone.
I throw my arms out, still walking. “That’s what you asked for, babe.”
“Do you know how fucking ridiculous this is?”
“Do I know how fucking ridiculous it is that you won’t let me talk to you about what happened yesterday?” I spin on the balls of my feet. This time, my patience has snapped. “That you won’t let me tell you how fucking hard I worked with my team to keep those pictures out of the media? How many checks I signed to media companies to buy their silence? How many hours I spent deciding how to tell you before I realized I was too fuckin’ chicken? That? Yeah. It is fucking ridiculous, isn’t it?”