by S. Ann Cole
“Go home, Xavi.”
I ducked into my car. Before I could even start the engine, he was at the passenger side of my car and wrenching the door open.
Crouching down at the open door, he took a huge swig from his bottle of Grey Goose. “You ever give a shit about me, whore?”
“What are you even doing here?” I snapped, growing irritated. More at myself than at him. “What is it with you rock stars and stalking?”
“Alina O’Haraaaa,” he slurred, laughing a little to himself as he rocked forward onto his knees, keeping his forearms on the passenger seat. “Always thinking everything’s about her.” He raised his unfocused eyes, and I assumed he was trying to find my face, but they landed somewhere between my ear and the headrest. “No. Nope. Don’t stalk filthy, cheating whores. Sis called me to come get her.”
“So, where is she?”
“Took”—hiccup—“her home.”
Just how long had it been since Xena and Danni left? “And then you drove back here, like this?”
Leaning further into the car, he lowered his head on the car seat, and his eyes fluttered closed. “What’d you care?”
I retrieved my cell from my purse. “You do realize you just admitted to stalking me, right? You had no reason to come back here.”
Locating Jess’s number, I tapped out a quick text:
@Golden Starz Elite.
Ur prize is blind-drunk drooling on my leather seats.
Plz come fetch him.
“No,” he insisted. “Not stalk. Just watching to see if you’d let him take you out in the parking lot to suck him off. What he’s famous for, you know that? Getting head in parking lots.”
He was one to talk. Dustin Latimore was no match for him in the man-whoring department.
“That’s still stalking,” I pointed out, rubbing the sudden heaviness from my eyes. The night’s exertion was starting to wear on me. I needed sleep.
“Smells like you,” he murmured to the leather. “This seat. Smells like you. Like my shirt you always wear and…and I…never…wash.”
I was too low on energy and strength to sort through his incoherent babbling. I just… couldn’t. I couldn’t stand the sight or smell of him there, knowing I couldn’t touch or kiss or hold him because he was no longer mine. Knowing we no longer were. Just having him that close hurt. Deep into the soul of my soul.
I just wanted him gone.
“Can I stay in it?” he slurred at the seat. “Can I stay in your smell?”
When he didn’t get a response from me, he sluggishly raised his head. Wild, darting gray eyes searched for my face. They settled somewhere near the left of my head. He had to be seeing two or three of me.
“Can I?” he prodded.
Fighting back the lava-pooling burn behind my eyes, I bit down on my bottom lip until I tasted blood. Fighting. Fighting.
I fixed my blurred vision on him. I could see one of him. I would always see one him. There would always be one Xavier Xander. No one could ever compare. My Samson. “Yes. You can.”
A droopy smile crawled onto his face, and his eyes closed down again before he hugged the car seat with all his might and laid his head on it again.
In just second, snores filled the car.
I watched him. Several times I reached out to touch his face, only to pull back at the last minute.
Never since we’ve been together had I seen him so vulnerable. The Xavier I knew was a man in control of all things. A voice not to be argued with. Strength never to be competed with. A force to reckoned. He was man. Primal. Smart. Calculated.
This person, I didn’t know. Neither did I understand. He wanted Jess, he got Jess, and all of a sudden he was back to being a slutty drunkard? Was that the kind of life Jess influenced? Did a life of orgies and threesomes and exhibitionism require him being shitfaced all the time? If Jessica cared about him like Xena claimed she did, why would she encourage this? How could she allow this?
For nineteen minutes and forty-two seconds, I sat there, staring at a snoring Xavier, half his body inside the car hugging my car seat, half out, until two bright lights swung into the now almost-empty parking lot.
As car doors opened, I squinted, expecting to see Jessica, but instead there were two tall, masculine forms. Mark and Tex.
They jogged up to the passenger side where Xavier was kneeling. Mark mumbled a “hey”. Tex was silent.
Taking hold of their drunken band-mate from each side, they tried to drag him to his feet, which was no mean feat because Xavier was a big man.
Just when they almost got him to standing, he came to, swung his head from side to side to look at them both. “Wha—” He jerked forward, dipped his head and tried to find me in the car, but they’d already begun hauling him off.
“Come on, buddy,” Tex mumbled. “Let’s get you home.”
“No. She said I could stay,” I heard him telling them. “She said I could stay.”
While this was happening, I leaned over the console, reached out for the passenger door, and pulled it shut. Then I started the engine. Wanting to get out of there.
Just as I began reversing out of the parking space, Xavier broke free of his band-mates and ran up to my car. He kicked it so hard I winced. He kicked it again. Kicked the doors. Kicked the tires. Over and over.
“You lying whore!!” he barked at the car. “You said I could stay!”
Carefully, not wanting run over his toes, I swung the car around to face the exit, while he kicked and kicked the hell out of it, roaring, “You lying whore! YOU LYING WHORE!! Don’t go to him! Don’t go. Stay. STAY!!!!”
Once again, no easy feat, Mark and Tex got a hold of him, struggling to restrain him.
In my rearview mirror, as I drove off, I saw him break free and punch Mark in the face, before breaking into a sprint after my car.
I hit the gas and sped off. I kept on speeding until his white shirt was nothing more than a speck in the mirror.
Less than five minutes of speeding, I had to pull over, because I couldn’t see. Couldn’t see the white lines in the streets, couldn’t see the other cars around me. Nothing at all. I could see nothing at all through the blur of tears.
They came. Hot and heavy. Obstructing my vision. And though I tried, I couldn’t get them under control, couldn’t hold them long enough to drive.
It hurt. All of it. Seeing him. Being so near to him. His scent still lingering in my car. And knowing he wasn’t mine anymore. All of it hurt.
Turned out I couldn’t drive home after all. Not because I was drunk, but because I was blind. Blind by pain. Blind by mistakes. Blind by love.
Hands shaking, I picked up my cell and called Mel.
CHAPTER TEN
A TINY FINGER POKED MY CLOSED EYELID. I smiled in my sleep. All too familiar with that poking. That poking used to be my alarm clock. An alarm clock I missed sorely.
Smile stretching across my lips, I blinked into focus bright blue eyes and a gummy, spitty grin. Laughing at me. “Awuvu akay?”
As I curled in to peck his button of a nose, my gaze collided with identical blue eyes, adult ones, staring at me, a touch of question and bewilderment swirling inside them.
To escape answering the question or clearing the confusion in those eyes, I rolled to my back and hauled my son on top of me. His chubby legs straddled me and he immediately began bouncing up and down on my stomach, screaming, “Awuvu! Awuvu!”
“You’re in my bed,” Davian pointed out the obvious, voice groggy.
I afforded a sheepish smile. “Yeah. Sorry. I missed him last night.”
After my encounter with Xavier last night and bawling myself into exhaustion, I’d had Mel take me to Davian’s place instead of mine. All I’d wanted after all that heart-twisting pain was to hug my son. The one thing I was sure of in this world. My blood, my heartbeat. I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to fall asleep unheld.
Dave was up swigging a beer and watching television when I’d gotten in, but Davian
had been out cold in his room with Jacob sprawled on his chest. The sight had melted me, tugged warmly at my heart. Just the warmth I’d needed. Kicking off my heels, I’d climbed in, wrapped my trembling arms around them both, and fell instantly asleep.
“Don’t apologize,” he whispered. “I’ve dreamed this scene a million times.” He curled up to a sitting position and rubbed his eyes. “I only wish it was a lot realer than it appears…”
“Davi—”
“Nothing at all you say right now will change the fact that I’m mad in love with you, Ally.” He angrily swung his feet off the bed and to the ground, giving me his back. “The truth is the truth. I’m not gonna suppress it just because you don’t wanna hear it.”
“Awuvu akiy? Awuvu! Awuvu!”
Davian sighed, and his shoulders slumped with the gesture. “What on earth is he saying? He repeats that garble every time your name comes up or he sees a picture of you.”
I laughed, tickling Jacob’s belly. “We had a little chat, is all.”
Davian’s head turned, trying to look at me over his shoulder. “So ‘awuvu’ is some kind of top secret I’m not privy to?”
“Uh-huh,” I hummed. “Mother and son thing.”
Snorting, he stood and padded to the foot of the bed. “You wanna sort him out while I make breakfast or you wanna do breakfast?”
“I’ll deal with him.”
He nodded but didn’t move off, a touch of sadness in his blue depths as he watched us. “Is he usually so adaptable? I mean, he doesn’t fuss or cry or make me regret asking to keep him like I thought he would. He’s just…okay. With everything. Cool as a cucumber. Kinda reminds me of how you used to be.”
“Yep,” I replied through a grin, proud as a lion of my boy. “That’s your son. I swear nothing bothers him. He shrieks when he’s hungry and that’s it. First time I tried breastfeeding him, he grimaced, forced my nipple out of his mouth with his tongue, and shrieked, so loud and so hard you’d think I was murdering him. He only drinks from the bottle. He’s so mellow you won’t be able to help falling hard for him.”
“I already have.” Davian looked as proud as I felt. “I can take him anywhere. Anywhere. He’ll just chill and take it all in. Like a boss.”
“JK said the same thing.”
Rounding the bed toward us, he pressed a kiss on top of Jacob’s head, and before I could stop him, he pressed one on mine, too, before turning and sauntering out of the room with a strut that said he was the luckiest man in the world.
Our morning as a “family” was fun and flowing. At one point, I found myself wishing I could just let Xavier go and be with Davian.
Before Xavier, I imagined this moment a thousand times. Dreamed of reuniting with Davian and coming together as a family, raising Jacob.
This, right here, breakfast around a proper table with my son and his Dad, talking nonsense and cracking jokes, was what I’d yearned for. What I thought I came to L.A. to achieve. Now that I was right there, smiling in that picture I’d always conjured up, it didn’t feel…right.
Not that Davian couldn’t make me happy. He could. He used to make me hella happy. But all those things, all those feelings, all those dreams, was before Xavier busted into my life, armed and dangerous, shredding me and rebuilding me. No, Davian would never be able to make me feel alive and invincible like Xavier did. That man had woken something inside me that I didn’t even know existed, and that’s the reason I chose him.
After breakfast, I loafed and played around with Jacob in his cool-as-hell playroom that his father had designed for him. By noon, worn out, he fell asleep on me.
With nothing left to do and dreading being alone with Davian anywhere at all in that house, I decided absconding was the best option.
I was still wearing my revealing bodice from the night before, so I snuck into Davian’s room and stole a plain T-shirt from his drawer.
My goal to slip out of the house unnoticed was an epic fail, as Davian was downstairs in the living area putting together a train station for Jacob. An area I had to walk through to get to the front door. What made me think he was in the kitchen?
He looked up when he heard me, a pleased smile curving his lips at the sight of me in his T-shirt. Then said lips curved down at my purse. “You’re leaving?”
“I don’t live here, now do I?”
He abandoned his task and followed me as I picked up the pace to the front door. “That can be easily arranged.”
“Nice. I’ll think about it,” I joked, turning the door handle. “Who doesn’t want to live in a mansion in Bel-Air?”
His hand covered over mine on the handle, stilling me, and he wasn’t joking when he urged, “You should. None of this makes sense without you here, Ally. I need you. We need you.”
I turned my head to him. Wrong move. I stared. For a minute too long. Swept up in the mesmerizing, soul-capturing blue of his irises. I was transfixed, lost for a minute too long in the unkempt, lazy-Sunday yumminess of him that I’d denied myself the right to savor earlier that morning. All a minute too long. Because I didn’t think to stop him when he leaned in and kissed me. I didn’t stop my lips from parting and accepting him. Didn’t stop my free hand from fisting his shirt and yanking him closer, nor did I stop my moans from spilling down his throat.
My purse slipped from my hand and fell to the ground with a “phhud”, and Davian immediately drove me back against the wooden door, as we both got swept into a vortex of burning lust and heightening desire and unquenched longing.
One eager hand worked a path down between my thighs and he cupped me. I thrust into it. Welcomed it. Because, in that moment, I wanted him. After everything, I wanted to let him have me. Right here and now.
“Ahrrgghmmm.”
At the sound of the intruding harrumph, we both jerked away from each other.
Dave. He was standing to the right of us with a sandwich in one hand and a Collins glass of lemonade in the other. “Try to remember I live here, too, kids.” Giving us ‘the look’, he took a giant bite of his sandwich and continued his stroll.
Oh hell. What was wrong me with me?! Why was I making things harder for myself? I knew who and what I wanted. So why did I almost let Davian screw me against his front door?
Davian, with a ragged breath, opened his mouth to say something, but before he could suggest we go upstairs and finish what we started, I ducked, snatched up my fallen purse, and skedaddled.
I seriously needed to up my therapy sessions.
I pushed into the lobby of my apartment building in time—the wrong time—to see Tex turning away from the concierge’s desk. Of all the people I could’ve imagined coming across in my lobby, Tex wasn’t one of them. Welp, some poor girl’s heart got broken this morning, that’s for sure.
Fishing for my keycard from my purse, I careened to the left, thinking it best to give the scumdump a wide berth.
“Alina!”
I kept walking, because I figured there had to be some other Alina in the building and she’s the one that jerk face was calling. Not me. Nope. No way.
“Alina,” he called again, and this time he was closer. In the next second, his hand was on my arm.
Slow and steady, I turned to face him. “I’m sorry, are you sure you’ve got the right person?”
With unconcealed annoyance, he combed his fingers back through his long black tresses. “Lower your horns, Lucifer’s Bride. This ain’t no joy trip for me either.”
“What do you want, Tex?”
Eying my outfit—leggings and thigh-high boots from the night before and a man’s oversize T-shirt—he asked in a tight voice, “You seriously stabbed Latimore last night?”
Full on attitude, I crossed my arms. “And how’s that any of your business?”
Weary, bloodshot eyes narrowed in on me, a tic jumping in his tightly clenched jaw. The dude looked like he wanted to throttle me. “Gimme an answer. Yes or no.”
“Go face-plant on a knife, Tex. Who I open my legs for is n
one.of.your.business.” I whirled around and continued toward the elevator, all but pounding the call button.
Tex followed, stepping up beside me, his phone pressed to his ear. A few seconds passed as I waited, and then, “’Sup, Latimore…Nah, I’m good. Hey, quick question: Rumor has it you bitched out Alina O’Hara last night. How true is it?…Ahhhh…Nah, it wouldn’t…Yeah, man, we cool. Link up’s at Chino tonight.”
By the time he hung up, I was both gaping and glaring at him. Did he seriously just… “You did not just do that!”
“Now that I know that’s Davi’s shirt and not Latimore’s, can we talk?”
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
The elevator opened just then and I started to walk in, but Tex gripped my upper arm, keeping me back.
“Let go of me,” I hissed through clenched teeth, this close to whipping out the mace in my purse.
A frustrated noise rumbled in his throat. “I don’t like you, Alina. You know I don’t. Coming here was hard enough, and the longer I stand here with you the more nauseous I feel, but I’m sucking it up because this is important. You’re a lying, untrustworthy, selfish, manipulative bitch. But you chose him. So you had to have cared about him. At least a lil’ bit.”
Ohhhh, this was about Xavier, not Xena. “What is it?”
He shot a glance at the elevator and shook his head. “I’m not interested in going up to your brothel. So if we could grab a seat down here, that’d be great.”
Ugh! What a jackass.
Jerking my arm from his grip, I glowered, but he just spun and made a beeline for the sitting section in the lobby. We settled on a two-seater sofa, leaving plenty of space between us.
“Xavier needs help,” he said, getting straight to the point.
“I think all of L.A. can agree on that,” I returned through a humorless laugh. “But what does that have to do with me?”
“All of it has to do with you. You left, and now he’s worse off than before. What the hell did you do to him?”
My head snapped back, indignant, and I sputtered, “W-what did I-I do to him? I chose him. He chose Jess. How dare you come here pointing fingers? Your bandmate’s unstable? Boo-hoo, I don’t give a shit! Go to Jess. He’s her problem now, not mine.”