Chelsey
Holy crap.
Holy crap. Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap.
What the hell is he doing here? He isn’t supposed to be here. And why is he grinning at me like that? I let the tear-duct pipe burst as soon as I barreled through my front door and snotted all over myself, and here I am, still unable to breathe, and he’s grinning.
Why is he fucking grinning? And why does he look so goddamn hot doing it?
“What are you doing here?” I mean to say it, but it comes out a whisper. Is this a practical joke? “You’re supposed to be leaving.”
“Yeah . . .” Kye drops his hands and rubs at his chin. “About that. There’s a funny story to that.”
My body stills, and I get the feeling it isn’t all that funny. The trepidation in his eyes just strengthens that idea. “Kye . . .”
“Can I come in?” he asks, still touching his chin.
“That depends,” I reply slowly. “Are you going to leave?”
His eyes are firmly on mine when he says, “No.”
Okay then. That might change a thing or two.
I step back and release my grip on the door handle. He follows me into the apartment. The door clicking shut sets butterflies off in my tummy, and I eye the bottle of Jack on the kitchen counter. I’m fully aware of my tendency to turn to my good friend Jack in times of high emotion, but we all have a vice.
My liver is saved by the fact that it’s not even midday yet.
I pull a makeup-removal wipe from the packet I keep in a kitchen drawer and clean my face. I didn’t put any makeup on this morning, but my cheeks feel grimy from my recent tears, so just wiping those off makes me feel better and a little more like I can tackle the conversation we’re apparently about to have.
Why is it always the guy who looks hot in these kinds of conversations? For once, I’d like to be the hot, composed one while he’s the snotty mess.
“Okay.” I turn around and, ignoring the clench of my heart, meet Kye’s eyes. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Us,” he says simply, putting his hands in his pockets. I open my mouth to respond, but he shakes his head and approaches me. He rests two fingers against my lips. “Just wait before you say anything, okay?”
I nod slowly. I can do that. I can be quiet. Maybe.
“When we agreed to leave for California, we were under our old management, and the guy was a shark. He was after money, money, money, and his ruthlessness is what made us sign with him in the first place. He was what we needed then. We needed someone to help us get to the top.” Kye brushes his fingers across my bottom lip as he lowers his hand and leans against the kitchen island. “Then after that shit when he tried to use a photo of you and me to break up Ads and Jessie, we saw Marc for the asshole he was. We made the decision, as a band and as brothers, that leaving his team was the right thing. We consulted our label, put forward our argument, and they were in agreement. Things have changed epically since we signed. Sofie came back with Mila, so Conner had a family to think about. Tate had Ella, and even though she’s our assistant, she’s a homebody, too. She loves that apartment they’re renting, but they’re looking to buy next year, so that’s where half her head is at. Aidan met Jessie, and her family is here. Jessie would never leave Shelton Bay full-time, not even for him.”
I’ve never heard a truer sentence.
“And I . . .” He shrugs his shoulder. “I didn’t have anything except the desire to see my brothers happy. To see the girls happy, you know? That’s all that mattered. Until you.” He stares at me intently, and I lick my lips. “You changed the game before I even knew I was playing, Chels. You took game, set, match. You played checkmate. You scored the touchdown. The home run, before I was even at bat. You changed everything for me, and suddenly I had this desire to stay here, too. All four of us were on the same page, because we each had someone anchoring us to our hometown.” He runs his hand through his hair, and I won’t deny the thrill that ricochets through my body at those words. “Our label said we had to find a management company that already worked with them. We were determined to find one close by, whether it was in South Carolina, North Carolina, or Georgia. Between the three states we had to find someone that would take us and let us record here.”
Realization burns through me like a lightning bolt. Charleston. The studio. Tate hushing the engineer. “That’s what you were doing in Charleston, wasn’t it? At the recording studio. Y’all were testing it out.”
He nods, regret flitting across his face. “We used the duet as a partial cover. I won’t lie to you, babe. But I say ‘partial’ because we still have a little hope you’ll sing for us.” His lips quirk. “It seemed like the only way I could do everything I wanted and also show you that the team we could choose to work with isn’t full of young, hot chicks desperate for our cocks.”
“You put it so eloquently,” I snort.
“I do, don’t I?” He grins and reaches for me. I can’t resist anymore, and I step into him, and he clasps his hands at the base of my back. My fingers trail down his chest until they come to rest halfway down his stomach, where I can feel each of his breaths. “Anyway . . . we made the choice after that. It was our favored studio, and Charleston is close enough that we can drive in and out ninety-nine percent of the time. The management team gets what we want. We want family time, home time. We make music because we love it, not because we want millions. If we didn’t love what we do, we couldn’t keep doing it.” His nostrils flare and his chest rises with a deep breath. “So today, when we were supposed to head to California, we were actually driving to Charleston to sign our contracts. We were going to come back and surprise everyone with the news on Christmas morning.”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek, and when the sting registers, I release it. “What changed y’all’s minds?”
“Mila,” he answers honestly. “Fuck, the way she cried. She ripped our hearts out, babe. That was it. We got off the damn bus as quick as we’d got on it and as soon as I’d had my fill of Ella and Jessie ripping Tate and Ads a new one,” he grins, “I came here. To tell you.”
I glance at the door. The meaning of his words hasn’t exactly sunk in yet. It’s still hazy in my emotionally clogged mind, so I take a moment to breathe. I nod my understanding, or my half-understanding, and gently push away from him. He must sense I need a moment to let his admission register.
“So the secret meetings the girls were talking about. The phone calls and emails and stuff—that’s because of this?” I ask, stopping in the middle of my front room.
“Yep.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that. Why would you keep it secret? Why wouldn’t you tell anyone what’s going on? Conner didn’t even tell Sofie? The mother of his child?”
“We didn’t do it perfectly,” he admits, pushing off the island and shoving his hands back into his pockets sheepishly. “We had this grand plan. We were gonna be there when everyone woke up on Christmas morning and make everyone’s day, but you know what they say about the best laid plans. A screaming two-year-old will always change that shit up.” He shrugs.
I guess toddlers do have the tendency to do that. Especially a headstrong one like Mila Burke.
“So what does this mean, really? Everything, for you guys. What does it change?”
“Recording won’t start for a few weeks, the album will be slightly delayed, the world tour will be pushed by a month maybe, but those are little things. We haven’t released any information on that stuff yet.”
“No. I mean for you. In your lives. Not the band stuff. That’s logical stuff.” I wave my hand, trying not to hold my breath in anticipation. Is it bad that I’m hopeful?
Fuck, though. I’m so hopeful.
I can’t help it. Ever since I kissed him outside that bus earlier and fully realized there was a damn good chance I’d lost this incredible, sweet, thoughtful guy forever, my world shifted on its axis. Everything changed and blurred, leaving the only clear thing standing: him.
That’s how it is now. My whole world is blurred, and Kye Burke is the only thing I can see clearly.
His blue eyes reflect the hope I feel blossoming in my chest. “What does it mean?” He takes slow steps toward me. “It means we have time for our family. It means we can fuck around in Aidan’s attic every Saturday night if that’s what we want. We can invade Mom’s house for pot roast every Sunday. We can have a life as well as a career.” He stops in front of me, and I feel his presence everywhere, even though he isn’t touching me. I inhale deeply, my chest stinging with the desperation of my breath, and Kye swallows hard. “It means we have time for what we want,” he says in a low voice. His hand reaches up, and he brushes his thumb across my cheek, looking at me so softly that I turn my face into his touch.
“And that is?” I whisper into his palm.
“For me? You. You’re the one thing I want, Chelsey. You’re the only woman I want. And this? I hope it gives me a chance to have you, once and for all. You’re my happy place, babe. But know this,” he warns gruffly, forcing me to meet his eyes. “Know that if you fight this, it’s futile. I know you love me, and I’m so fuckin’ in love with you that the idea of letting you go is a fuckin’ fairy tale. I don’t do fairy tales. I do real life, and you’re my real life. I’m gonna fight for this, for you, for us, until you feel the same as I do.”
“And if I don’t fight?” I cover his hand with mine, on red alert, on freak alert, on fuck-this-I’m-melting alert.
“Then you get me.” He lowers his face to mine. “You get me and everything I am, even though it ain’t always that much. You get every damn inch of me. You get someone who will love you unconditionally, even though you’re the most difficult person I’ve met.” I smile, matching his. “But you’re gonna get someone you can trust. I promise.”
And I believe him. Am I annoyed he kept something this huge from me? Yes. Am I annoyed that he kept it secret when it could have made such a huge difference and saved us a lot of pain? Yes.
“You know if you’d just told me all this before, it could have saved a whole lot of bullshit,” I tell him.
“Yeah . . . but it was only just confirmed. I didn’t want to do this whole hope thing when it may not have worked out and we’d still be forced to go to L.A.,” he admits.
And if I’d have known, maybe I’d have never realized just how much he means to me. I’d never have been slammed in the face by how much I truly love him, and I never would have gone to him the way I did.
He never would have known what he is to me.
“And earlier this morning?”
“Yeah . . . I don’t really have an excuse for that. Fuck it.”
I laugh. At least he isn’t trying to cover it up. He knows what he did wrong. I’ll take it. He tried to make it better. He did it in a totally fucked-up way, but he did it.
“Okay,” I whisper with a smile. “Since you’re gonna be here anyway and you’re so insistent . . .”
He whips me around and throws me onto my sofa. I shriek with laughter at the fall and the suddenness I hit the sofa with, but my heart is beating so harshly.
“Okay?” he mutters, leaning over me. “Just okay? I just declared my everlasting love for you, and all you can say is ‘okay’?”
“You kept a massive secret. I told you I loved you in front of your whole family in a movie-worthy scene, then you turn up at my door and all you could say was ‘all right, babe’? so I don’t really think you can use that one.”
He pauses. “Shit. Yeah. There is that.” I throw my head back, laughing harder, and rest my hands at his waist. Before he realizes what I’m doing, I haul his hard, muscular body onto the seat next to me. I think he bangs his head on the hard part of the arm, but he doesn’t complain, especially not when I climb on top of him.
I look down at him, my hair forming a curtain between us and the rest of the apartment. “I love you,” I say softly. “I’m kinda real mad at you right now, because I’ve cried a lot, and I don’t ever cry, but I guess I can forgive you if you love me, too.”
His bright blue eyes twinkle with happiness and love as he gazes up at me, and his arms snake their way around my body. “I guess I have a lot to apologize for. No one is expecting me back anytime soon, so may I suggest we get started on that?”
“Sure,” I murmur, fighting my smile. “My bathroom needs scrubbing, and my feet really hurt. . . .”
He growls, and with the expertise of a guy who knows how to handle a woman, he flips me onto my back and leans over me. I laugh again—I’m always laughing around him—and wrap my hands around the back of his neck. My fingers tease his wild, dark hair, and lust floods me as he pushes his hips against me.
“Really,” he breathes, lowering his lips to just millimeters above mine. “I was thinking more like apology by orgasm. Meaning, several of.” He grasps my thigh and lifts my leg so it hooks over his hip, then slides his hand down to my ass. My clit throbs at the positioning, and I feel my teeth sink into my bottom lip.
“Several of. You game?” he rumbles.
“Plenty of.”
“I think I could be persuaded to jump from several to plenty,” he mutters, kissing me deeply before moving to my jaw and peppering kisses down my neck. “On one condition—you admit that you’re mine.”
I sink my fingers into his hair and force his face back to mine. I search his gorgeous gaze and smile. “I’m yours. But you’re mine, too.”
He squeezes my ass. “I’ve been yours since the very first time your lips touched mine.”
I can’t help but agree.