by Quinn, Cari
Had he been sitting like that the whole time we’d been gone?
“You sound like a jealous husband.” I grabbed my bags. “Super creepy.”
He lifted the bottle in a salute. “Bella’s not here.”
I frowned. What the hell did that mean?
His eyes burned into mine. He seemed unreasonably angry, considering he was the one who blew us off earlier. “I’m going to go unload my purchases.”
“Familiar sight,” he murmured.
My chest and neck heated at the memory. I’d had way more bags that night. Instead, those bags had been all the high end labels available in New York City. Not the vintage shirt bin that I’d just dug through.
And with those memories, others always surfaced.
Christ, it wasn’t like the sex had been that good. Intense, yes, but it had also been fast and furious. Anger-fueled, like everything else Nash touched. It hadn’t been a slow burn seduction.
Exactly what I’d needed that night. Something I’d never had. Again, why it was burned so deep into my damn brain.
No one had ever treated my body like that before Nash. And no one since.
I rushed up the stairs.
“What the hell crawled up your ass?” Logan’s terse voice followed me upstairs.
Damn good question.
Eleven
I sipped from my water. My throat had been raw all fucking day.
The urge to sing had left it tickling with agitation. Add in the burning leaves from a house down the hill from Logan’s and I was irritated inside and out.
Then came the barrage of Lindsey sightings that had attacked my fucking phone. Her hugging Logan. Her mouth so fucking close to his in the truck. From that angle, it could have been more.
Kissing.
Touching.
Her laughing.
Her grinning up at Logan as she was signing something for a fan.
Her.
Logan.
Laughing.
The bottle crinkled under my grip. I forced myself to release it and clutched my hands together under the table.
“You do remember you’re married, right?”
Logan gripped the back of the chair at the end of the table. “Excuse me?”
I tilted my head and gave him a hard stare. “Bella doesn’t deserve you.”
“I know that, but I’m pretty sure not for the reasons you’re going on about, son.”
I flicked my phone out of my pocket and slid it down the table. “What’s she going to say about that?”
Logan didn’t bother looking down at the phone. “Why don’t you tell me in clear, concise words what you’re thinking, Nash?”
I stood and kicked back my chair. I flattened my hands on the table and leaned forward. I had to stop myself from putting my hands around his neck.
Mine.
The idea that his lips were on hers.
His hands on her skin. On that sensitive area behind her ear. The place that made her whole fucking body tremble. I was going to kill him.
Mine.
“She’s not yours.”
“Who? Isabella? She is fucking mine. I’ll rip out—” Logan raked his fingers through his hair as confusion cleared and shock registered. “Holy fuck. Are you fucking kidding me with this? You think—Christ, you are so fucking stupid. Beyond stupid. Since when did you give two fucks about whatever people say about us in the papers?” He slammed the chair out of his way and came around the table. “You, of all people.”
“I saw her with you. Before it didn’t matter.” Oh, it fucking mattered. It still killed me that Logan had been with her at all. That anyone had touched her before me sliced into me. But my friend? Back then, it had been bad enough. But now? The rage fed inside of me until I could barely see around the black dots. “You’re fucking married.”
“Yes. More than married, I’m completely in love with my wife.”
I stalked forward, my fingers fisting in his flannel. “Even worse. Bella means more than that.” Lindsey meant more than just a fuck.
Not for you. She was never for you.
Mine.
As I usually did, I tried to block out the idiotic voice inside me. To drown it with silence and push away the softness, the music, the sound of her voice. I stuffed it back into the dark corner where it belonged. Not in the light.
I didn’t deserve the light. But Logan didn’t deserve her light either.
Logan’s hands fisted at his sides. “We are not discussing this. If you’ve got questions to ask, you do it with her.” He turned on his heel and went up the stairs.
“Where the fuck are you going? We’re not done.”
Logan was already out of view when he called down. “To get Lindsey. We’re going out. Now.”
“I don’t want to fucking go out,” I said with a growl. My throat was so fucking dry.
I stalked back into the kitchen and downed a huge glass of water, then another. Nothing alleviated the rawness.
Goddammit.
“Where are we going?” Lindsey’s confused tone drifted down to me. Puzzled, but not angry.
No, that was just for me, evidently.
My fingernails were white from the pressure of my hold on the glass. He was up there with her. Fuck, was she even dressed? Was he so familiar with her that he could actually go to her door and speak to her?
I bowed my head and seethed. I had to get my shit together, or I had to leave. One or the other. I could work remotely. I could let them work without me.
Hell, maybe I could even manage to FaceTime them in the studio if I didn’t have her clobbering my fucking senses while we worked.
The distinct clomp of heels dragged me out of my dangerous spiral. But it was her scent that slammed into me first. Always her damn scent. Midnight. She smelled of a heavy night with heat and texture.
A scent shouldn’t be full of all of that, but hers was.
Nothing about her was two-dimensional. She had layers upon layers. Sweetness and light with hints of passion and need that matched my own. The way she’d reacted to my touch told me she wasn’t used to a man like me. Not to my muddied emotions and disdainful thoughts.
I’d wanted to break her. To make her not matter anymore.
It had backfired. Endlessly.
I forced myself to look at her. Her hair was down. Her usually styled locks were now in loose waves from her braid, but they were messy as if she’d just barely gotten a hand through the strands before Logan had herded her downstairs.
Her face was practically makeup free. Or else it was an illusion of fresh-faced magic that only women seemed to know how to do. Her eyes were a darker blue today. Turbulent and confused with a side of wary.
Due to me. From the emotions I couldn’t keep in check around her.
Instead of the chic feminine clothes she’d worn upon arrival, now she was in tight black pants that molded to every fucking curve. And knee-high boots climbed her legs to put her almost even with me height-wise. But the kicker was the Bon Jovi shirt stretched across her cleavage. It hugged her everywhere yet somehow was loose at the same time.
She was wearing another shirt layered underneath it and a short leather jacket pushed up at the sleeves.
She looked like she was twenty-fucking-years-old.
And I wanted to bend her over the damn kitchen island and rip at those clothes. Take away that purity and innocence.
I was the broken older man who shouldn’t be looking at her, let alone thinking about all the ways I wanted to debauch her.
Jesus.
We weren’t that far apart in age—eight years—but there were leagues of experience between us. I’d made every wrong turn and wrong choice a person could and still be alive to tell the tale. While she’d ridden in the back of a limousine to every destination with rose petals in her wake.
Logan’s heavy boots came down behind her. He touched her lower back to push her farther into the room.
I was afraid I was going to break the granite counter
top under my hands.
Instead, I pushed off and stalked for the door. Maybe I should just get into my car and start driving. I could get home in a few hours and then I could breathe again.
Hell, I’d happily drive to the edge of the damn world to get away from her right now. I didn’t have the mental fortitude for the chaos she brought.
One thing was for certain—I couldn’t be in the car with them. If I saw another photo op with me in the backseat, a witness to God knows what, I’d probably lose the remaining marbles I had left.
“I’ll follow you.” I gripped my keys in my pocket and went outside to get into my wildly impractical Jeep.
I didn’t need it in the city. In fact, it was almost always in storage, but when I drove out to see Logan, sometimes I liked to head into the nearby mountains to unwind. It wasn’t as easy to do surrounded by so many people and traffic and insanity.
My nights were full of work and the busy sounds of the place that never seemed to slow. But I could hide in my space. I could read and keep my mind busy. The calming sameness of my life was necessary for me to keep sane.
And when the silence got to be too much, I found a project.
Thoughts of Angel had me slamming my gear shift with too much force as Logan’s truck lights headed down the long, winding drive and finally reached the access road. At least we weren’t heading out to see his friend again.
I wasn’t sure I was ready for the far too knowing eyes of Jacob Stack tonight.
No, we headed for town, but instead of Main Street, he took a side street. My neck stung with awareness as we approached The Barn. Cam and Logan had made some more improvements since I’d last been here.
Fresh paint and a roof gleamed thanks to another rain shower. Fall in the Northeast was all about rain until it turned to snow.
The moon was already climbing into the sky, and there wasn’t a single light on.
I parked beside Logan and followed them from a distance as they quietly chatted. She was so easy with him. The opposite of how she was with me. Big smiles and laughter as she touched his arm.
He held the door for her and waited for me.
“What the hell are we doing here?”
Logan’s eyebrow winged up. “Well, since you two can’t play well with each other at my house, we might as well try here.” He held his arm out for me to precede him into the rustic venue.
I shook my head. “This is stupid.”
I didn’t want these memories cluttering up my brain too. It was bad enough I had her scent and laughter chained inside me, but now he wanted me to walk back into this madness? To the violence that had shaken all of us?
Christ knows I had enough demons.
I turned to beg off, but Logan was already outside the door. “Work it out,” he said and slammed it shut.
The snick of the lock had me rushing forward.
“What the fuck?” I slapped my hand on the wood. “Open this fucking door, Lo.”
“Nope.” Logan’s voice was directly on the other side. “Talk to her. Get whatever it is between you under control, and I’ll be back.”
“Unlock this fucking door.”
“What’s going on?” Lindsey’s voice was lightly distressed. The kind of upset that meant a waiter had brought her ranch instead of some fat free dressing.
Panic clawed at my gut. I couldn’t be left alone with her. I didn’t trust myself.
“I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Lindsey’s huge blue eyes blinked up at me. “What did he say?”
“We’re not going anywhere, duchess. That’s what he said.”
She pushed me aside and twisted the handle. The click of the door release never came, no matter how many times she banged on the damn thing.
Resigned to my fate, I followed the light to the stage. He’d turned on a few of them so we weren’t bumping around the place. I remembered enough from the rehearsals to know the control hub was to the side of the stage. Old memories of other venues stacked on memories of this place until they bombarded me.
There was a reason I didn’t play on stage anymore.
I’d done it for Logan because of a long held debt. Friendship and my beloved piano, Matilda, had been enough for me to come and help out Logan. Knowing he’d been drowning in his own personal hell due to Aimee had given me the kickstart I’d needed to get on stage with him. I’d reasoned I wasn’t alone. I could stuff memories of my own spiral into drug-fueled mania into a box for a handful of songs for charity. For Logan.
I’d shovel millions of dollars into charity coffers before I’d willingly return to the stage. But I’d done it for him.
For one of the few people who’d stuck by me when I literally crashed and burned. Even if Logan didn’t really know all that had gone down on the night that changed my life.
Changed two lives.
I brushed my hand over my throat to the scars that climbed up my left side and teased my neck. So minor compared to Kyle’s scars. Reminders of all I’d lost and didn’t deserve.
“Can you believe him?” Lindsey stalked up the aisle to the stairs on the side stage. “Does he think we’re two, for God’s sake?”
I blinked out of the way, way back, but The Barn’s hooks wouldn’t quite let go of me yet. The screams were embedded in the seats and the rafters. In the kaleidoscope of lights that had twirled drunkenly as Aimee came completely unhinged onstage.
As she’d killed one of Logan’s best friends to get to him.
No one had believed him. She was just as famous as he was. Rich and entitled in ways that should have given her the world. But all she’d wanted was a man who didn’t want her back.
The parallels made my head swim. I’d been just as wild and rage-filled.
Or fucking close.
“Alex?”
My spine snapped straight at Lindsey’s use of my given name. No one else did.
She came up to me and touched my upper arm. There was a softness to her eyes I didn’t want any part of. “Are you all right?”
I took a large step back. “I’m fine, duchess.”
Her chin lifted. “Can’t control that dickishness for a second, can you?”
I leveled my gaze at her. “I can control it just fine if you remember correctly.”
“Pig.”
I walked across the stage to the tented piano. It wasn’t Matilda, but Logan’s upright was always a welcome friend. I snapped the canvas cover off, then lifted the key guard and drifted the tips of my fingers over the mahogany finish, picking out a few notes.
“Do you have any idea why Logan would lock us in here? Besides his masochistic tendencies.”
“Know him well, do you? Can’t say I have such carnal knowledge.”
“Carnal? Are you high?”
“Nope. Not for ten years and seventy-eight days-ish.”
“Ish?”
I shrugged. “Give or take a timezone.”
She tilted her head. “That’s quite specific.”
“I like specifics.”
I actually hated them, but facts and figures, and harmonies and words were always fresh in my mind. Once upon a time, I’d loved that part of myself. I could learn any song and call upon it whenever I needed it. A cover song at a club, at a party, on a large stage. To show off for a woman. To show off, period.
The problem with that was that I also remembered every detail of my mistakes.
Of a crumpled car.
Of my best friend’s screams while he burned.
Of a stage filled with chaos.
Of Lindsey’s moans that were part purr and all throaty groan.
Of her silky, drenched pussy under my fingers and just how perfectly she clasped around my cock.
I remembered far too much.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “What the hell do you have against me? That’s the part I can’t figure out.”
“Oh, can’t you?”
She closed her eyes and I was pretty sure she was counting to five, maybe te
n. She blew out a slow, measured breath. “Look, I get it. We fucked.”
“Oh, duchess, such foul words out of that pristine mouth.”
Her eyes flashed anger and the air crackled around her. She was so goddamn beautiful. Without the stage artifice, makeup, and glitter, she was still the most stunning woman I’d ever fucking known.
“We come from the same world. Don’t give me that bullshit.”
I snapped back down the key guard on the piano. “We aren’t even on the same plane of existence.”
“Evidently not. Since I got over my mistake and you’re still hung up.”
I crossed the stage to her, crowding into her until she backed up two full steps and bumped into Logan’s Baby Grand piano. Having only one piano on stage wasn’t enough for him. “You wouldn’t be so pissy if you’d gotten over me.”
“I was never hung up on you. It was just a wild night. No more, no less.”
I stared down at her mouth, my gaze drifting lower to her heaving chest with the eighties’ hair band stretched across her perfect breasts. I pinned her to the piano, my arm curling around her waist, my fingertips digging into her tight ass. “Is that why your pupils are blown out? You’re practically vibrating to get closer to me. No big deal though, right?”
She lifted her chin. “I’m not ruled by my baser needs.”
“Oh, I might be hard for you, duchess, but I don’t need you or to be any man’s sloppy seconds. Been there, don’t need a repeat performance.”
“What?” Rage quickly tumbled into shock as she shoved me away. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Instantly, my arms felt empty. “Nothing. Forget it.” I turned away from her.
She grabbed my arm. “No, you’ve had something up your ass about me since I got here.”
“You think far too much of yourself.”
“No, I think that’s all you. I know my worth.”
“I’m sure you do, duchess.”
“Fuck you with the duchess.”
“Oh, yeah? Sure Daddy wouldn’t take away that fancy house of yours?”
“I don’t lean on my parents for support.”
“Anymore?”
“I’ve worked harder than most to get where I am. What have you been doing? Hiding in your secret lair in New York City?”