Exposed (VIP Book 4)

by Kristen Callihan

  “Bren?”

  “What?” The reply is tinged with enough wariness to make me smile.

  I wish she was back home. I would ask her to come over, just…hang out. Have pizza with me, watch a movie, have an argument with me, anything. But then she’d see me like this. I don’t want her pity. Or anyone’s; it would only make everything more real.

  But I don’t like her current mindset on our situation. She’s got it all wrong.

  I swallow past the hard lump at the base of my throat. “I need you to believe me when I say this, okay?”

  I can practically hear her mind racing. When she answers, she’s back to the cool professionalism I know all too well. “Fine. What is it?”

  My prickly girl. God, I want to wear down that spiky armor, find out if she’s as soft underneath as I suspect. “Whatever does or doesn’t happen between us, I’m never going to hold it against you. I swear to God. Okay?”

  Another pause. This one stilted. I’ve surprised her. I can feel it in the air.

  Her voice comes so soft it’s nearly a whisper. “Okay. I…I won’t either. Promise.”

  “Good.” I swallow again, bracing myself for movement. With a silent grunt, I rise to my feet. The room spins for a minute, but I take a breath and let it ride. “Now, I really do feel shitty today. So, I’m gonna go.”

  “You…What’s wrong?”

  Could that be concern? Surely not.

  “Woke up with a headache that won’t quit.” It’s partly true. I do have a headache, but it’s a mere buzzing fly in comparison to my hands.

  “One of those?” Brenna knows exactly how bad it can get for me. Everyone in the band does. I’ll be laid low, hiding out in a dark room for hours. If it happens before a concert, they’ll send in a masseuse, acupuncturist, whoever they can find in the city we’re playing.

  “Well, then,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. And for being paranoid.”

  The concession clearly cost her. Sick man that I am, I feel lighter. If anything in my life is consistent, it’s Brenna.

  “Ah, Berry. I’d take you sniping at me in that bossy-boots tone of yours over silence any day.”

  “God,” she says with a half laugh. “You really are terrible, you know.”

  The insult is laced with affection, though, and I grab on to it. “But you love me anyway.”

  I hang up before she can answer, chuckling at the thought of her cursing me. My humor dies quickly as the silence resumes, and with it, the pain in my hands and arms returns to the forefront. I have to move. Get out of here.

  Blame it on my weakened condition, but I decide to go to the one place I know I’ll find comfort.

  “Rye Bread!” My mother spreads her arms in greeting, waiting for me to step into her hug.

  I do, and she instantly wraps me up. I’m a good foot taller than she is, and my shoulders are twice as wide as hers, but when she holds me, I feel like a kid again, small and safe.

  Closing my eyes, I let my forehead rest on the side of her head. “Hey, Mom.”

  With a final squeeze, she lets go and then ushers me inside the townhouse that’s been the family home for the past forty years. Most people, when they think of townhouses on the Upper West Side, imagine sleek elegance, soaring ceilings, detailed molding, spiral staircases, and triple-height windows with light streaming in.

  My mom’s house has all of that, sure. But the wide plank floors have been sanded down to the original wood, remaining unpolished and creaking underfoot. The air smells of old pine and plaster and books. Probably because the front room has two walls of built-in bookcases crammed to bursting with books of various sizes and topics.

  I have fond memories of curling up on one of the mustard velvet armchairs in front of the ornate onyx fireplace and reading during rainy days. Yes, I was that child, bookish and shy. It wasn’t until I hit puberty and got too horny for my own good that I forced myself out of my shell.

  Mom leads me down the hall, where framed family photos share space with oil paintings by masters, and into the back of the house. The kitchen looks like something out of Victorian England, with dark-green cabinets, butcher block counters, and a pink AGA stove that warms the entire space.

  A long farmhouse table is set up in front of the double-height grid of back windows. The other side of the back room is reserved for Mom’s studio.

  The scent of oil paint, turpentine, and baking is a comforting blend that I know well.

  Mom shoves me into a chair. “Sit. Let me make you some tea.”

  Early on, when we were becoming friends, Whip, Jax, Killian, Scottie, and I figured out our parents’ shared obsession with tea. We all grew up knowing that tea arrived with every visit, to fix every ill, to top off the day, or to close out the night. Jax is still fairly obsessed with making the perfect cuppa. I can take it or leave it, but I’m not about to contradict my mom.

  “Your father was here earlier. You just missed him.”

  My back tenses, and I spread my palms wide on the smooth wood table. “What a shame.”

  My mother doesn’t miss the sarcasm in my voice—not that I was trying too hard to hide it—and she turns to give me a reproachful look. “I’ve forgiven him. Why can’t you?”

  Forgive my dad. There’s a thought. It isn’t as though I haven’t tried. But then I’ll hear about him cozying up to my mom again, and my eye starts to twitch. I shouldn’t be upset. As she said, it’s her life. She can make her own choices. Only I was the one who heard her cry in her room every time she caught him cheating. I was there when she walked around the house like a ghost, so deep in her depression from Dad’s antics that she forgot to feed herself or me. Eventually, they divorced. But he keeps coming back. And he keeps failing her. They’re stuck in an ugly loop, neither of them able to break free.

  He isn’t a bad guy in all other respects. He started as an investment banker but is now an adjunct professor of finance at Columbia, mainly because he’d wanted to retire but still needs to keep busy now and then. He likes the idea of torturing—that is, teaching—bright and malleable minds.

  As for my relationship with Dad, he’s always been supportive. Which makes it harder for me to see him break her heart over and over again.

  Mom is still giving me that disappointed look, and I feel small for sticking my nose in their business again. But I can’t stay silent, apparently. “I just…” I blow out a breath then start again. “How can you trust him?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t. But some people are inextricably linked to each other in life. Your father and I are like that. We keep trying.”

  I want to put my face in my hands and block her out. How the hell can she defend infidelity like this? As soon as I hit puberty and understood exactly how my dad had hurt my mom, I vowed I’d never let anyone have that much power over me. Ever.

  But I didn’t come here to fight with Mom. I want peace. Quiet. Comfort. So I let out a long breath and roll my stiff shoulders. “I’ll try to let it go.”

  She glances at me, and I get the feeling she’d been expecting an argument.

  “Good.” A slow smile spreads over her face when I simply meet her gaze with a placid expression. Mom huffs under her breath in wry amusement before heading for the stove. “You could stay for dinner, if you like.”

  “I have plans for later, unfortunately.” It’s a lie. I love my mom, and I have the feeling if I hang out in this house for several hours, I won’t want to leave.

  Pushing aside a teetering stack of art books, then resting my arms on the worn wood table, I watch my mother move around the kitchen. She’s tall for a woman, nearly six feet, and sturdy. Over the years, her ash-blond hair has become steel gray, but she wears it now with copper-bronze tips. The thick mass is piled up on her head in a messy bun and glows against the pitch black of her standard turtleneck and pants set.

  She reaches for the kettle, exposing the faded black tattoo band about her wrist of stylized stalks of rye—her homage to me. The other tattoo she
has is known only to herself, my dad, and anyone else who has seen her naked…and I really don’t want to think about that or where it might be.

  “You’re making a face,” she says, scooping loose Assam tea into a pot.

  “A face?”

  “Mmm. Like you’ve just smelled something off.” She glances my way and her brown eyes light with amusement. “My kitchen smells just fine, I’ll have you know. So I can only assume you thought of something that upset you. Is it about your dad—”

  “No.” I pause. “And I didn’t make a face.”

  “Did too.”

  Grinning, I shake my head. Hell if I’ll tell her just what imagery upset me. I’d probably be subjected to a “sex is a natural expression of the soul” talk. Again. I had enough of those during puberty and am lucky I didn’t turn out scarred for life. “Stop fishing.”

  Mom shrugs and finishes up the tea. She sets the pot, a set of teacups and saucers, milk, and sugar—the whole deal—on a tray and carries it over. Because it isn’t proper tea if you half-assed it by fixing your cup at the counter like I did when I was at home.

  “Baby boy,” she says, handing me a cup. “That hello hug spoke for itself. Something is bothering you.”

  I wait until she pours my tea and adds milk and sugar to answer. “It’s a blue day, that’s all.”

  Blue days. That’s how she describes them. When you feel down and can’t find your way back to the light.

  Her cool hand settles over mine. My mother’s hands are beautiful but battered. Rough with red patches, swollen knuckles, and bits of color stuck under short, unpainted nails. But I can’t ignore the way her skin seems thinner now, the veins on the back of her hand thicker. “We all have blue days. But, Rye, I know you. What’s wrong?”

  My throat closes, and I have to take a sip of tea. Warmth slides down my throat and floods my belly. Maybe there is something to the ritual of tea. Shaking my head, I stare down at the cup—a pretty little thing of hand-painted fuchsia flowers and gold edging. “You ever think of how it might be if you couldn’t do your art?”

  My mother is a world-famous artist, known for her enormous portraits and stylized urban landscapes. She spent her twenties and early thirties in obscurity. Then, when I was five, a local dealer featured her works. She took off, and our life went from quietly wealthy, due to Dad’s work, to famously rich, with her doing portraits for royalty and movie stars. But Mom never changed. She is an artist obsessed with her work, through and through.

  “Why would you…” She bites her lip as if to physically stop the question. Slowly, she sets her hands on the table and presses them against the wood. Her concerned gaze meets mine. “I’m trying to decide if you’d like the easy answer or the difficult one.”

  I huff a laugh. “You have to ask?”

  A smile creases the corners of her eyes. “You always took the hard path.” Lightly, she touches my forearm. The skin there is dark with intricate ink. Most of the tats were first drawn by her. Doodles I’d taken from pieces of paper she left around the house, sketches she did when she was with me. I put them on my skin to honor her, my family, my history.

  She traces a hothouse lily in full bloom. “Well, my sweet son, the truth is, my art is the deepest expression of my soul. Without it, I think something inside me would wither and die.”

  Wither and die. It drops like a stone in my gut, and I swallow twice.

  “Are you afraid of losing your music?” Mom asks softly. She’s trying pretty damn hard not to show her horror, but I see it lurking in her eyes all the same.

  Everything inside me clenches tight and churns. I wrap my sore hands around the teacup, but it’s too tiny to provide much warmth. “I’m…I just…” I sit forward, wanting out, wanting to confess everything. “When Jax was sick and having a time of it, we all dissipated.”

  Mom nods, because she was there. She knows how much it affected me, all the times I came home to sprawl on her couches and read or listen to old music while she painted, anything to get away from the sorrow clogging my chest and eating at my skin.

  “Your art,” I continue through numb lips, “is solely yours. But I’m part of a group. A cog in a machine.”

  “You are not a cog!”

  I smile weakly at her instant rise to defend her baby. “It’s not a bad thing, Ma. I like being part of something.” With a sigh, I rub my hair and try to ease the tension riding me. “But sometimes, I can’t help thinking about the future. As much as I love my music, I can’t picture hauling my seventy-year-old ass on stage like the Stones do.”

  “Hey!” Mom swats my arm. “Old people can kick ass too, you know.”

  “I don’t mean it like that,” I say, laughing. “Or maybe I do. It’s exhausting, you know. Getting on that stage and doing what we do. I’m thirty-one in a few months, and already I find it draining.”

  Mom sniffs, slightly mollified.

  “I don’t want my entire existence to be dependent on my ability to make music.” I lean in, gripping the edge of the table as her eyes widen. “And it is, right now. I either play or I’m…It’s like I’m not truly here. I don’t…”

  Frustrated, I break off and rub my hands over my face.

  “You’ve finally discovered you need more,” Mom says.

  Hunched over the table, I look at her with a helplessness that has my jaw clenching. But I nod. “When the stage lights go off, when the music stops, what am I? Where do I go?”

  God, I hate this. I’ve been avoiding these very thoughts for years. They’ve built up like water against a dam, rising and rising. My body breaking down and weakening is the final straw. I can’t hide anymore.

  Mom sees it. She knows me too well. And her hand grabs mine again. Gently. Does she know I hurt? I don’t ask; I can barely hold her gaze as it is.

  “I know I said art was the expression of my soul.” Mom shakes her head, a wrinkle forming between her brows. “But that’s not the entire picture. Art, the soul, it needs to be fed. And I know you’ll accuse me of being hokey…”

  “Me? Never,” I tease weakly.

  “But love is what feeds me. Your father, you, the family—although not so much Uncle Jay and Aunt Lydia.”

  Her nose wrinkles, and I laugh. “Well, they’re kind of assholes.”

  They are pious to the point of extremism and do not approve of Mom’s art or my music. Fuck ’em. Mom and I share a look that says exactly that, and she grins before sobering.

  “Are you lonely, Rye?”

  Shit.

  Releasing her hand, I sit back. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay if you are. There is nothing wrong in wanting to find someone to settle down with.”

  A choked laugh escapes. “Just the term ‘settle down’ gives me hives.”

  I know relationships can work. I also know that when they fail, they fail spectacularly.

  Being my mother, she leans in and inspects my arm. “No hives here.” She winks. “Stop being a male cliché, bitching about commitment. It’s pedestrian.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Ma…”

  “I’m serious. You need love. You always were a sensitive boy…”

  “God.”

  “You’ve been part of your band for years. Now they’re all pairing off. It’s natural for you to want that too.”

  “Okay.” I press my hands to the table and stand. “I’m leaving now. Good talk.”

  “Chicken shit.” She says it with a gleam of evil humor in her eyes.

  “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be cautious with giving my heart away. I’m not unaware of the benefits. Hell, my friends have transformed in front of my eyes, becoming happy in a way I don’t understand, content, satisfied. It can’t be all bad. But I’ve seen the dark side too. I’d never say it, but some days I’m afraid for them. I don’t think any of them would recover if their relationships soured.

  As for myself, I don’t know what would be worse. Turning into my mom and cl
inging to something toxic and ugly. Or my dad, unable to remain faithful but also unable to give up the safety of a sure thing.

  Mom stands and gives me another surprisingly strong hug. I soak it in because I’m her boy, even though I give her lip, and I feel guilty for thinking of her as weak. She’s not; she’s merely human. Maybe that’s the problem. We all think we’ll act strong, do the right thing, but the reality of it is harder than it looks.

  She leans back and cups my cheek. “I love you, Rye Bread. One day, someone else will love you too.”

  “You have to love me, Ma. I’m your son. Not everyone finds me as lovable.”

  A journo once called me Rye the Good-Time Guy. Like a ride in a carnival, I was good for some thrills and fun. I’d get you off, but too much of me would leave your head aching and stomach reeling. I probably shouldn’t have slept with her and called it quits before she wrote the interview. Lesson learned and all that. But she wasn’t entirely wrong. Everyone sees me that way.

  Everyone, it seems, except my mother.

  Shaking her head, Mom pats my cheek. “You’re too smart to think something so stupid.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rye

  I’m feeling slightly low and morose when I get home, but I stop short at the sight greeting me in front of my apartment door. “Bren?”

  She’s bending down to set something on the floor but snaps upright and whirls around at the sound of my voice. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Well, I do live here.” Shock has me staring. I’ve never found anyone at my doorstep before.

  I live in the Dakota—a New York City icon. Each apartment is like a Gilded Age mansion in miniature. The condo board might be picky as fuck, but the natural light and feel of the space is incredible. Moreover, the gothic building has been home to Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, and, most infamously, John Lennon. He was murdered outside its doors. It might sound morbid to some, but I choose to remember that he had a life here.