Insatiable (Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll Book 3)

by Michelle Hazen

  It doesn’t feel simple at all.

  With her, it’s complex and beautiful, the feelings stretching out deep and endless between us as I wind our fingers together and kiss her. I don’t even want to come, just want to stay with the tide of her, surging in and edging back out. She’s wet and wild and perfect, her strong legs leaving bruises on my hips that make me grin into her kiss.

  But maybe she’s a little affected by where we are, or everything that’s happened, because all of her daring sense of humor has fallen away. Her nails sting a little where she cups the back of my neck, her breasts heaving under a shaky breath. I pull her knee up and hug it into my side as I fill her.

  She squeezes me, deep and secret and I can’t take it. Feeling her want me.

  I grit my teeth and try to hold off, but then she runs her nails up into my hair and goosebumps stand stark all the way down my back. My balls tighten and with a roar I barely swallow, my hips buck toward her, drawn by an instinct older than both of us. I explode in short, tight jerks, every muscle in my back bulging as I take her over the edge along with me.

  Because of course she’d never make me go alone.

  When I collapse onto her slender chest, she doesn’t try to nudge my weight to the side. Just holds me tighter, pressing little kisses to the side of my overheated throat. I allow myself three long, shuddering breaths, her body hidden safely beneath mine, before I drag my caveman self under control and move off her so she can breathe, too.

  “You okay?” she murmurs, her nails trickling over my overheated skin.

  “More than,” I promise. Snagging a pillow for her, I curl behind her with my palm covering the tiny ruby piercing that glitters in her naval.

  I’m not used to feeling like this after sex. Usually, I’m exhausted, vaguely guilty, and trying to figure out how to get to the next item on my schedule while also making sure to leave the girls feeling special. I never feel...content. I sure as fuck never feel this comfortable. I kiss the back of Ava’s neck, three little words swelling in my chest with every beat of my heart. But I shouldn’t say them aloud. When that happens, I want it to be in a moment that’s purely ours, not complicated with all the other stuff going on in my life. I think that’s why she held back, earlier, though I could live for years just on the memory of the emotion I saw in her face when she said she was proud of me.

  I cough a little to clear my suddenly scratchy throat, and hold her a little tighter while I look around to distract myself. There’s more to the room than I noticed before, old awards from track and elementary school music competitions. The balloon-painted desk is cluttered with knots of them and maybe a dozen picture frames that don’t even attempt to match. I scoot up a little so I can see better.

  Dust skims the glass, and one of the frames has a little water damage at the corner, but the happiness of the people within is radiant.

  There are two little girls and two parents. I prop myself up on an elbow and steal a look down at Ava. She’s gazing at the pictures, too, her eyes far away. There are some studio shots, a candid of toddlers in snowsuits. There’s one with a teenaged Ava wearing too much eyeliner and smiling a too-practiced smile, her younger sister sullenly not smiling at all. It’s the shot with the most tension, and I wonder if it was after the choreographer incident. That couldn’t have been the problem, though, because the attack happened when she was fifteen, and in this photo, Ava looks nearly college age.

  “When did your parents stop taking turns touring with you?” I ask, even though what I really want to know is her sister’s name. In the last picture, she looks fifteen or sixteen and her hair is thick like her father’s, her skin glowing. She doesn’t look sick.

  “Three years ago.” Ava clears her throat. “Should have been seven. They tried to stay home more when Angie started getting into trouble, but then Dirk the dipshit choreographer happened and they got all overprotective of the wrong daughter.” Her lips twist in a bitter smile. “I was fine,” she says in a low voice. “I had bodyguards and assistants and handlers and all the attention I could ever want. But even after they nailed her window shut, one parent at a time wasn’t enough to keep Angie from sneaking out to party with her asshole friends.”

  That sounds like a car accident to me. Probably a sixteen-year-old’s DUI. Is that better or worse than cancer? I skim my knuckles comfortingly down Ava’s arm. “Come on, name a teenager who doesn’t have asshole friends. Mine were the worst and judging by the eyeliner in that shot”—I nod to the one in question—“yours were just as bad.”

  “Friends?” Ava chuckles, and it catches in her throat. “I had employees. Angie didn’t have friends, either, not really. She had men.” She gestures at the pictures. “I mean, Jesus, look at her. If she wouldn’t have had the flu the day I broke into that concert and got discovered, we would have been the duet act we’d always planned. She was going to dance, and I would play guitar and sing. She got the looks, I got the voice.”

  Angie’s stark green eyes stare out at me from their frame. She was delicately beautiful like her sister, but with smoothly wavy hair. Just like most of the wigs and hair extensions Ava wears in public. Angie’s pretty, yeah, but there’s something about her eyes that makes me want to change the subject.

  “I disagree,” I say quietly.

  “Yeah, well you’re the only one.” Ava swings her legs out of bed and steps back into her panties. “Guys wanted Angie, and they’d give her anything to get her attention. Too fucking bad what she wanted wasn’t jewelry.”

  No. My stomach drops. Please don’t let her sister be the reason Ava knows so much about junkies.

  “Angie had been to rehab four times by the time she ran away at seventeen.” Ava doesn’t meet my eyes as she busies herself hunting for her shirt.

  The smell of cooking vegetables from downstairs is making me ill. I retrieve Ava’s tank top from the rumpled coverlet and hand it to her, then sit up in her bed. What is she doing dating a guy with a pocketful of shiny new sobriety chips after what her family’s been through? No wonder her dad was so reserved with me: if he reads tabloids, he knows I’m a more likely match for his other daughter.

  “Hey, you don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

  Ava sniffs quickly, swiping at her eyes. “No, it’s important. We paid off a ton of people to keep it out of the media, so it’s not like you would have heard, and you should know what happened.”

  She doesn’t look at me, though, still stuck on the photo on the desk even as she sinks down beside me.

  “She died on her eighteenth birthday. The first day of her adult life. I should have been there, but I was so wrapped up in my stupid career..." Ava shakes her head. "After she died, every time a fan applauded, it felt like the universe was mocking me. I kept trying to disappear, hiding in all these strange places. Cupboards, abandoned cars, behind dumpsters. Dean would find me, or my dad, and then I put my foot down and made him go home." She bites her lip and I lay a hand against the small of her back. "If I wouldn't have made such a big deal about Dirk, Dad and Mom would have both stayed home with her instead of taking turns, and maybe she wouldn’t have run away. They thought I was more vulnerable, that I was the one who needed protecting." She laughs bitterly.

  I shouldn’t ask, in the end it makes no difference, but... “What did she take?”

  “Heroin.” A tear streaks down Ava’s cheek, quickly followed by another. “It was her birthday and she was alone. I don’t even know how—” She gulps a quick breath, the last words strangled almost to silence even as they come out. “If it hurt. What it was like for her, at the end.”

  I can’t move. Not now, not then.

  The night it happened, I woke up next to her, blaring New York streetlights stealing in through the rips in the tin foil taped to the windows. For a second, there was that gray, heavy drag of coming down and I wondered if I could find her stash before she got up, give myself a little bump I wouldn’t have to share. Then I saw her.

  Vomit coat
ed her mouth, dripping out of her nostrils and across her pale cheek, just starting to dry and crack at the edges. The blanket turned a sick yellow where it had soaked in, and chunks clung to the rough fibers of the polyester, the thread holding the satin edge starting to come loose.

  My pillow was stained, too, the puddle of puke stretching from where my mouth rested all the way into the first few strands of her hair.

  “I know,” I whisper.

  “What?”

  Ava’s voice frees me from whatever spell the memories have me under. The air of her parent’s house surrounds us, and I blink, breathing it in. Nothing like the cold marble and cleaning solution of my childhood. What would I have been like if I grew up here, with the scent of spices from the kitchen and the garden freshness coming in from one of the crookedly opened windows?

  “Can we talk here?” I glance around. There’s no way her parents can hear from downstairs, or she never would have let me take her to bed, but I can’t take any chances. I know I have to protect Kate, even as my heart bounds in my breathless chest, telling me my secrets are finally safe here.

  I’m safe with her.

  “Yeah,” Ava says, her brow crinkled slightly in confusion. “Of course.”

  I tug her blanket across my lap, sitting up straighter. I’m a little dizzy, like the very first time I stepped out onstage, but exhilarated, too. I’ve always thought that as soon as she knew about me, she’d hate me. That’s always been my knee-jerk reaction: to her, to everyone. And I’m tired of being the man I’m about to tell her about.

  We’re only as sick as our secrets.

  “Listen, I want to tell you something.” I clear my throat. “But you have to swear no matter what you think of what I did, you’ll never tell anyone. If it came out, Kate would be charged as an accessory.”

  She stares at me. “Accessory? Jax, that only really applies in the case of...”.

  I catch her hand, wrapping it into a fist and holding it tight against my own knuckles to seal the promise, my eyes boring into hers. “Kate can’t go to prison. Not right now. Not for me.”

  “I don’t understand.” She exhales shakily. “Does this have something to do with Angie?”

  “No. Yes.” I shake my head. “Promise me.”

  She’s already nodding. “Just tell me what happened, and we’ll figure it out. I’ve got lawyers on retainer, and I’m not going to let anyone hurt Kate.”

  My heart thumps giddily, and my fist unravels, both my hands taking hers. God, I love this girl.

  I love the feel of her soft skin and tough knuckles. I love that she can pour out her heart on a stage in front of five thousand people and not know an instant of fear, that she can throw a punch as well as I can. I love that she’s strong enough to stand with me against all the darkness of this fucked up world. Death and cancer and failure and the ravages of addiction.

  I’m starving to feel her lips against mine, but I can’t. There’s one more secret, and I can’t wait to kiss her without it between us. She’ll be my first; the first woman to want the real me.

  Maybe Danny isn’t the only one who can know the truth and still look at me exactly the same way. Jera can’t. The more vigorously she denies it, the clearer it becomes. And Kate...she’s my friend, but she has no delusions that I’m a good person. Ava, though, I think she could understand. After all, she never stopped loving Angie, no matter how low she went. And even if she wasn’t there in the penultimate moment, Ava’s known the horror of a body that drugs have drained beyond all repair. She gets that kind of helplessness.

  “Your sister didn’t hurt when she died,” I say, and Ava’s hands go limp in mine. “I know, because I overdosed, too.”

  “What?” Even her voice trembles. “Were you trying to...”

  I shake my head. “No. I mean, we all are, a little bit. But I didn’t think of it that way at the time.” I think about getting my jeans, but it feels wrong to break the connection between us right now, even for a second. “This all happened right after Danny and Kate’s wedding last winter.”

  Ava’s skin pales, and she lets go of my hands, hugging her knees up into her chest. Apparently she was expecting a story from my past, not my present. But she’s not falling apart, and she’s still here. It gives me the strength to take a breath and take this one final plunge.

  “We landed a deal with our dream label, did two tours, and both my best friends had gotten married within a year of each other. Everything was amazing, perfect, and I was a mess.” I glance at Ava. “I don’t know what it was like for you, but once I got up on a stadium stage, it was the only place I ever wanted to be. The rest of my life turned into a waiting room with bare walls and a loudly ticking clock and I would do anything to liven it up.” I wave a hand. “Cue the violins. I got into partying and girls. Think dirt bag musician straight out of Central Casting.”

  “Because it’s impossible to balance a life like ours,” Ava says. “It’s not healthy, or normal. We all do the best we can, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy, Jax. Give yourself a little credit.”

  I shake my head. “It wasn’t the lifestyle that sent me over the edge. It was Danny’s wedding, in a tattoo shop of all places. He and Kate are so freaking perfect for each other and they didn’t give a damn what anybody else thought about them, or their relationship. They were happy, and I was so far from that I couldn’t even translate it with subtitles. I played best man at the wedding and the next day, I skipped town for this traveling party of addicts in New York City. As far from home as I could get without a passport.”

  “Didn’t you grow up in New York?” Ava asks quietly.

  “Yeah, I guess.” I scrub my hand over the back of my neck. “Haven’t lived there since I left for college, though, and my mom and I were politely ignoring each other’s existence last winter. Anyway, I ended up in this girl’s apartment. Or she might have been squatting there, I don’t know.” I snort. “We felt so fucking sorry for ourselves, sitting there with eviction notices on the door, a bag of H on the table, and scabs on our eyebrows from picking at them when we were smoking crystal.”

  Ava tucks a hand under the edge of the blanket, her hand warm on my leg. It’s hard to sit still, and I grip my wrist with the opposite hand, squeezing until the bones start to grind. The next part is the easiest piece of the story, but any guy worth his testicles would be embarrassed to admit it to his girlfriend. I say it anyway.

  “We were crying together, all whining about how no one in our lives trusted us and how they all expected the worst of us.” I huff a breath out through my nose. “Which yeah, we were so proving them wrong just then, you know?”

  Ava’s gaze flickers.

  I drop a hand to touch her wrist. “I know you feel guilty you weren’t there with Angie, and you think you divided your parents’ attention when she needed both of them, but Ava, none of that matters to a junkie until they want to get clean. My band was there for me every step of the way. Every time she saw me, Jera’s eyes went to my arms to check for track marks before she even finished ‘hello,’ but she never stopped coming over. I attacked Danny, Jesus, so many times.” I shake my head. “It didn’t matter how much of our blood was on the floor, he’d hold out a hand to help me up, right after. And that was all before I ended up in New York, complaining about how nobody loved me.”

  Ava presses her lips together and just listens. I can tell she doesn’t quite believe me that it’s not her fault but it’s still something she needed to hear. I’ll tell her as many times as she needs me to, because I’ve been on both sides. You can support an addict, but recovery is a path nobody’s shoes can walk but your own.

  “Anyway, we’d known each other like two days or something. We made this pact that we’d trust each other, even if nobody else did. So I closed my eyes and she got the needles ready. I didn’t even check how concentrated she made it because I trusted her, this girl I barely knew.” I swallow, tasting the scum of bile coating the back of my tongue. “I shot her up. I laid her on
her side and covered her with a blanket before I did my own. She didn’t have any extra pillows, and I was too eager for my fix to find some other way to prop her up so she couldn’t roll onto her back. She loaded the syringe, I pushed the plunger, and I woke up next to her corpse.”

  I drop my head. I can’t stand seeing that dead girl’s face superimposed over Ava’s, so I stare at the carpet as I finish.

  “I don’t know for sure, won’t ever know. But I was out way longer than I should have been and we both threw up sometime after we passed out. I think she meant for us to die together.”

  I pinch my hand across my eyes, ignoring the dampness on my fingers. The scent of melted butter and spices drifts up the stairs. This room is a continent away from her quiet bedroom in Brazil, but it feels just as gentle, in spite of the churning in my gut.

  It’s the only time I’ve told this story without wishing I would have died on that bed.

  It makes me think of the first breath I took in Brazil, the one Ava forced me to endure—maybe that was the beginning of being able to bear my life without the drugs and the music and sex and everything I pour into me to fill the hole where strength should have been. But God, I wish it hurt just a little less.

  “Did you do CPR? Sometimes they say if you just clear the airway quickly enough...”

  My mind is too busy to decipher Ava’s tone but I shake my head. “I jumped up and ran around the room, tried to climb out the window to the fire escape and nearly fell before I realized there wasn’t one on that building. I didn’t even think to check her pulse for a long time. I can’t remember if she was cold, or still warm. I have no idea how long she’d been dead.”