I grab my phone off the nightstand, just to see if he’s up.
Me: You busy?
Seth: Nah, baby. What’s good?
Me: In bed. Watching Predator. You should be here.
I watch the gray bubbles on the screen appear and then disappear. Shit. I shouldn’t have sent that last part. Us staying home is becoming a sore spot. It’s an argument waiting for the right moment to erupt.
Seth: You know where I am. You wanna come thru. Come thru.
Me: U R @ Sin’s place, rt?
Seth: Yep.
Me: And she’s there?
I play the scenario in my head. Weigh the odds. I can totally see showing up at Sin’s door and having to explain I wasn’t there to see her. Yeah, no. Not happening.
Seth: She’s busy.
Me: Busy?
Seth: Maybe I should say getting busy. LOL!
Me: Is it that hotel motherfucker with Sin?
Seth: U coming?
I hate it when he does that, completely ignores the question. He won’t talk about Sin’s personal business in detail. He thinks it’s unethical because of the access he has to her life.
Me: Bet. See you in a few.
He rarely gives me details, but if Sin’s got company I already know it’s that slimy motherfucker Jacob Johnson. Sin is a shit liar. Always has been, so I knew she was banging him after the first time it happened.
She’d shown up at my house basically glowing with sex and walking on a cloud. The new song she wrote sounds more than a little sexy. That shit is aural masturbation. One of the best things she ever wrote. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together.
Jake was her muse then and no shadow of a doubt he’s her muse now. He helps her dig in and go places that only he can take. I just wish she didn’t feel the need to hide it from me.
I rev my blacked-out Ducati, maneuvering through light traffic on the 15. I make it to the Hotel in twenty minutes flat, and I only broke a couple of traffic laws. It’s easy to find a space in the underground parking garage. The only people who have access are those with a key fob to get in the gate, which is limited to the executive team who run the casino and their hand-selected VIPs.
There are no passersby, no drunk frat boys, no fans.
I pull into one of the stalls assigned to Sin City that is close to the casino entrance and might arguably be the best spot in the whole damn garage. I set down the kickstand, turn off the engine, and take the helmet off my head.
After working in casinos for years, playing in various lounges for people that had zero interest for the band on the stage, I hate being on the floor. Even one as opulent as the Hotel with its white and gold décor, hanging chandeliers, and modern furniture. I’m almost halfway to Sin’s villa when heads start to turn in my direction and fingers start to point.
A couple of twentysomethings run out of a bar to get a picture. Over their head I peep Jacob Johnson, the bane of my fucking existence, sitting at the bar. He turns his head slowly toward the commotion the girls are making and our eyes clash over the space.
There’s a whole lot of hell no in his gaze, but I gotta assume there’s a whole lotta fuck you in mine. Guess that makes us even.
The girls get their selfie and a couple of other fans get their autographs when the group disperses, and I walk into the bar and take the seat next to Jake. I try not to bristle under his scrutiny. Jake and I have never vibed on any level. I’m thrift-store jeans and a vintage T-shirt, and he’s all designer everything. I’m long hair and a motorcycle. He’s a fade and a sports sedan. I was raised by the state, and he’s the crown prince of one of Las Vegas’s most prominent families. More important than any of that, I’m Sin’s best friend, her family, and he used to be her man.
The bartender steps in front of me, sliding a napkin across the bar.
“What can I get you?”
“I’ll take whatever craft beer you have in the bottle,” I say, tipping my head toward the neatly lined bottles in the small refrigerator next to the bartender.
Resting my elbows on the bar, I give Jake a sidelong glance. He’s a mess. His hand trembles when he picks up the glass tumbler and brings it to his lips, downing the bourbon or whiskey in one swallow.
He raises an eyebrow at the bartender, signaling for him to pour another drink. He wipes a hand across his face, taking a deep inhale, and then he runs his nose to his fingers. Taking another breath, he closes his eyes and whispers, “Fuck.”
The bartender sets the drink in front of me. His worried gaze moves to Jake, but I shake my head, letting him know I got it. I pick up the glass, rolling the smooth surface between the palms of my hands.
It’s obvious he’s going through some shit and more than likely that shit centers around the woman we both know and love. If he’s a mess I have to assume Sin is too. I need to tread lightly, but I’m not leaving here until I figure out what the fuck is going on.
We sit side by side, our eyes straight forward. I quietly sip what I now know to be a pineapple lager and try to find an in with a guy I’ve always struggled to like. From the moment Sin introduced us, he rubbed me the wrong way. He was arrogant, rich, and entitled. I’d dealt with assholes like him, people who thought their money made them better, my whole life.
“I could say I’m surprised to see you sitting at the bar closest to Sin’s villa, but I’m not.” I don’t turn my head to look at him. My eyes stay focused on the bottles behind the bar.
He takes a sip of his drink this time, jaw clenched, lips twisted with irritation.
“And before you ask, no, Sin hasn’t told me the two of you are doing whatever it is that you’re doing. She didn’t have to. I knew the minute she slept with you because she showed up at my house the day after our debut residency show, notebook full of lyrics.”
I stare hard into the eyes reflected by the mirror behind the bar and dare him to tell me I’m wrong. He breaks eye contact first. The universal sign of guilt. With a knowing smirk, I raise the glass and take a long pull before I continue.
“Here’s the thing though . . .” I pause until he raises his solemn hazel eyes up to mine. “I’ve known Sin since we were thirteen years old. In all that time I’ve never seen anyone, including Javier Shenault, get under her skin the way you do.”
“Who . . .” he says, lifting his glass in the air, rattling the ice. “Is Javier Shenault?”
“The first boy she kissed when we were in the ninth grade.”
His face crumbles, a tumult of emotion roiling in the depths of his eyes and pulling the corners of his mouth down in a frown.
“She kissed . . . ?” He shakes of his head. “Did you know I had to steal our first kiss? I asked her at first, but she said no. She’s always saying no.”
“Not always,” I quip, but he’s so far gone, deep in his drink and even deeper in his feelings, he doesn’t acknowledge that comment.
“She didn’t say no when she fell for you.”
“She did though. All the time,” he says. “She said no to coming home. She said no to getting married. She said no to having a baby. She said Adam and the band need me. I’m on tour. Men don’t look at me like that.”
“Can you believe she said that?” he asks in a disgruntled voice. “She said that men don’t look at her like that. There isn’t a man alive that wouldn’t want Sin,” he says, but he’s wrong. I don’t. At least not like that.
Sin is beyond beautiful. I’ve asked myself a million times why I’m not sexually attracted to her. I love her to the bottom of my heart. We make way more sense than the two of them ever could. I get her in a way I don’t think he comprehends yet.
“You know it’s never been like that with me and Sin. She’s my family. Besides Dan and Miles, and now my little sister, she’s the only family I’ve got.”
“But you have her.” He presses the tips of his fingers into his eyes like he’s trying to squeeze out an image. “Her. Not the public persona that all these people get.” He points a finger,
making a circle in the air. “Or the compartmentalized version I get. She freely gives you her smile, and her tears, and her creativity. All she gives me sex.”
I choke on a sip of beer. TMI, my dude, TMI.
“And you want more that sex?” I can’t keep the laughter out of my voice.
“I . . .” his voice breaks. He clears his throat and tries again. “I know you think I’m a piece of shit. Hell, I’m—was a piece of shit. You think I don’t see me? I see me,” he mutters, stabbing himself in the chest with a finger. “I love her, you know? It’s just . . . I can’t . . .”
He drops his eyes and I pretend not to notice the misery gathering in his eyes and threatening to fall down his cheeks. If he wasn’t drunk, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation or interacting in any meaningful way. For that reason alone, I’m going to say my peace and let the man keep what remains of his dignity.
“Jake?” I place a hand on his shoulder, jostling him in the chair.
“Hmm.” His head hangs heavy between his shoulders, but he turns his head in my direction, so I know he’s listening.
“All those years ago Sin fell for you too. In all fairness, she never got back up. The new songs she’s writing are an indication she’s falling even deeper this time, but she’s scared. The last time the two of you were in the same hemisphere it was a disaster. On that last tour before the two of you called it quits—”
“I never wanted to call it quits. I wanted to fix it and then you hit me.” Damn straight I hit his ass. When Sin showed up at my house, teary eyes and heartbroken, I’d wanted to do more than that.
“You didn’t have to say the words when you accused her of cheating with me to cover your bullshit. Or when you ignored her calls to punish her for being gone and following her dreams.”
He opens his mouth to respond but, thinking twice, he closes it.
“You didn’t care how many times she told you we were just friends. For the record that really is all we are, all we’ve ever been. I don’t think you understand how much that fucked with her. When the shit went, she was convinced you cheated because she didn’t do enough. Wasn’t home enough. Wasn’t enough for you.”
“She thought she wasn’t . . .” He pitches forward like he’s been punched in the gut.
He picks up the now full tumbler of bourbon and gulps it like he’s drinking ice water. Emotion cascades across his features in crashing waves. The internal battle of love and rejection, and hope and crushing despair, all clash in open combat on his face. I quite literally watch as first one and then the other tries to pull him under.
“She’s all I’ve ever wanted,” he whispers. “The only one . . . ever.”
I didn’t believe it then, but I do now. It’s written all over his face, in the lines of his body, in the sad eyes that keep filling with tears he not so discreetly tries to blink away. This is the first time I’ve seen or talked to him without Sin as a lens or a filter and it’s . . . eye opening.
He loves her. I recognize the look on his face because it’s the same one I have when I look at Seth. If he cares even half as much about Sin as I do about Seth, which he obviously does, I really hope they figure their shit out. If Sin can find her way back to Jake after the cheating and drama of their past, there’s gotta be a way for me and Seth to move past the being out thing.
“You’re not the only one who fell. Sin fell super hard and fast too. I don’t know everything going on between you two, but back then one of her major hang-ups was even though she fell, she didn’t expect you to catch her. When you hurt her, you proved her right.”
“What do I do now?” he asks in a despondent voice.
“You prove this time won’t be like the last one. You redefine Sin and Jake because she doesn’t trust herself to do it. You remind her what you had and you’ll both be better if you have it again.”
Jake nods, over and over, taking that in. I can see it rolling around his mind, embedding itself in his psyche, taking root in his heart.
“She shut down on me,” I continue, just about done with this conversation. “She poured everything into ‘Exquisitely Broken,’ but everything since has been her going through the motions. Until about four months ago, which I’m going to assume is when this all started.” I wave a hand toward the general area of Sin’s villa.
I kill the rest of my drink and face Jake. His eyes are glassy from liquor, but sharply focused on me.
My chair scrapes the floor when I push away from the bar. I don’t say anything else because what can I say? He and Sin will have to figure it out for themselves, but if he’s as smart as Sin claimed, he won’t let her get away a second time. He’ll pull out every stop. His eyes never leave mine as he watches me stand in the mirror behind the bar.
“You have my word I won’t hurt her again,” he says. “I don’t think I could. Even if I wanted to. She’s impenetrable, an iceberg. I can’t get through.”
I tilt my head, like if I get a better angle, I’ll understand the words coming out of his mouth. That doesn’t sound like Sin.
“Sin? An iceberg?”
He nods more at some internal dialogue than my words.
“Deep down it has to be there still. The love, I mean. There is no way in hell she could be as hot in bed if there weren’t something driving it. Right?”
What the fuck do I say to that?
Nothing. I say nothing and I end this conversation before it crosses any more boundaries.
Seth
“You took a long time,” I say quietly, dropping a quick kiss on Adam’s lips.
Those full lips twist in a sardonic smirk beneath mine. “You have no idea.”
With that cryptic sentence he presses the door closed with only the barest sound and walks as stealthy as motorcycle boots on a hardwood floor can allow.
Once in my room, we move into what has become our routine, stripping down to bare skin, crawling under the covers, TV on something with car chases, things blowing up, and gratuitous violence.
“Is this a Netflix and chill kinda night, or are we just getting straight to the chill part?” Adam asks, his lips at my ear, warm breath caressing the sensitive skin.
“Baby, I’ve told you before. You want something from me? All you have to do is open up that pretty mouth and ask.”
“Oh, it’s like that?” His voice is a low growl that raises goose bumps on my skin.
“It can be.”
Adam is used to quick fucks in hidden places and nameless places attached to nice bodies. He doesn’t recognize we’re building a foundation, that every minute we spend doing ordinary shit like watching a movie in bed draws us closer.
Makes us a we instead of an I.
“I saw Jake downstairs,” he says, shifting the topic.
I knew that was a possibility when I heard Sin tell Jake to leave about an hour ago. There’s a lot of history there, a lot of hurt feelings, and a lot of drama but that man’s nose is wide open and Sin either doesn’t see it or doesn’t trust it. He’s about a second from losing his shit.
He’s not a threat but the next time she tries to fuck him and toss him out he might just grab onto the leg of the closest chair and refuse to leave.
“Yeah,” I say noncommittally. I don’t break Sin’s confidence by going to Adam with private details like who spends time in her bed. She wants to talk that’s her business. Not mine. I’m sure he’s probably put two and two together anyway.
“It was some gnarly shit. He was at the bar all but crying in his bourbon.”
Sounds about right.
“And we talked.”
I perk up at that. Adam and Jake are oil and water. My interaction with Jake has been limited. But on GP those two are no bueno. Adam is all electricity and movement. Jake is cool, still waters. Their differences start at a cellular level and diverge from there.
“How did that go?” I lean back to search his eyes.
“I’m not sure. He was three sheets to the wind. I don’t know if he heard me.”
“He’s torn up about their whole situation. I know it’s only a matter of time before Sin is just as bad.” His fingertips idly trail a path from my hip to my knee and over the coarse hairs on my leg. I move a little closer to his heat. Lulled by the cadence of his voice, I close my eyes and relax against the pillow.
“Was it really that bad?” I ask on a stifled a yawn.
“I don’t know. At the time it felt like it was. Sin was a mess but in the creative zone, and it pulled us all in. It felt huge because it was a catalyst for everything, made Sin City what it is today. But talking to him put it in a different perspective. I never considered the toll being on the road had on their relationship. The only people in my life who mattered were right in the thick of things with me, but Sin had Jake. They were actually living together by the time we got our first big tour. Man, that tour lasted five, maybe six months longer than it should. The promoter kept adding dates, which was awesome for us as a band, but shit hit the skids for Sin and Jake after the third month.”
“I get that.” Being in the military I watched my buddies’ marriages disintegrate on the weight of a long deployment.
“You sound tired,” he says, kissing my still closed eyelids.
I am. “Shit. I’m sorry, baby. I know you didn’t come to watch me sleep.”
“Says you.”
I force my tired eyes to open and find his. Silence stretches between us, intimate, comforting, real and he feels it—me—in a way that surpasses the sex and attraction.
“Go to sleep,” he whispers.
“Wake me up before you go,” I whisper back.
“Bet.”
“Mmmm,” I moan into the pillow, flexing my hips back into the warm tongue tracing the crease between my ass cheeks.
His big palm traces the curve of my spine, grasping my hip, encouraging me to come up to my knees, and the other one spreads me open. “Good morning, baby,” Adam says in a gruff voice. Reaching around to grip my dick while lapping at the sensitive nerves around my hole.
Exquisitely Hidden: A Sin City Tale Page 14