Westside Series Box Set

by Monica Alexander

  “I’m sorry,” I told him.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked me, not acknowledging my apology. “I didn’t eat much at the wedding, and I’m kind of starving.”

  He started to ease me off of him as he slid off the bed and rose to standing. I lay on my side and took a few seconds to admire the view. It was even better from this angle, and I made no qualms of hiding what I was doing. After saying another guy’s name in bed, I wanted him to know that he was the only guy I wanted.

  “Like what you see?” Van asked, flexing his arms and sounding a bit more like himself.

  I nodded. “So much.”

  “Good.”

  He winked at me as he disappeared into the bathroom to dispose of the condom. When he came back out, he grabbed a pair of basketball shorts from one of his drawers and pulled them on, sans boxers.

  “Can I borrow something to wear?” I asked him.

  “Sure,” he said, pulling out a pair of boxers with little bow ties on them and a long sleeved UNR t-shirt. He tossed them toward me. “Meet me downstairs whenever you feel like getting that sexy ass out of bed.”

  I grinned at him. “What if I want to keep my sexy ass right here?”

  “You won’t hear me arguing,” he said as he sauntered out of the room.

  I was glad he hadn’t put on a shirt. Seeing him shirtless was going to be one of the highlights of my night.

  After taking a few minutes to clean up in the bathroom, I got dressed and made my way downstairs to find Van toasting Eggos and pouring glasses of orange juice.

  I smiled at the familiarity of the scene. I’d forgotten about his love of frozen waffles, especially after sex. I wondered how many other women had gotten to experience his post-coital ritual. Just thinking that made me realize how tasteless my earlier comment had been.

  I walked over to where he stood in front of the toaster, waiting patiently for his waffles to pop up, and wrapped my arms around his waist. I pressed a kiss to the middle of his back.

  “There is no Jamie,” I told him. “Please don’t read into what I said.”

  “I know,” he said, not turning around. “But there have been other guys, right?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling like it was fruitless to lie to him.

  “The surfer dude from the club?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed, and even though I knew he was being a little hypocritical considering he’d been dating Blair when I’d slept with the surfer, and he’d slept with some random girl in New Orleans, a part of me only wanted to comfort him. The urge to tell him exactly how I felt about him burned stronger than it ever had before, because I knew if I told him the truth, it would wash away whatever ego-bruising he was experiencing.

  But I couldn’t get the words out. It was too soon.

  “Van what’s wrong? I’m here with you. Isn’t that enough?”

  His waffles chose that moment to pop up, but instead of retrieving them from the toaster, he turned to me.

  “Is this just physical for you?”

  “Physical? What?”

  He shrugged.

  “Van, what’s going on?”

  “Don’t you think we ought to talk about things?” he asked me.

  I was confused.

  “Talk about what thi– oh, you mean things. Got it.”

  He wanted to have ‘the talk’. I hadn’t been expecting that, not from him, and not tonight.

  He ran a hand back through his messy hair that had even more of a ‘just rolled out of bed’ look to it. “Yeah, I kind of thought that was what you wanted when you said you wanted to come back here tonight. I wasn’t honestly thinking you’d even let me kiss you let alone anything else – you kind of threw me for a loop with that. Not that I’m not thrilled with how things turned out, but I think we probably need to talk about stuff too.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever you want.”

  This was a completely different guy than the one I’d dated the first time around. I realized that now. Back then we never really talked. We had serious conversations, but they were usually about our careers or our families. We never really talked about us. Was that what he wanted to do now? Did he want to define us? Did he want there to be an us? I wasn’t really prepared for that conversation.

  “Cool,” he said, leaning down to kiss me. “Meet me on the deck. We’ll have waffles and talk.”

  “Sounds great,” I told him, while on the inside I was sort of freaking out.

  I legitimately hadn’t thought this through. I’d gotten caught up in all the little moments of being with him, but I hadn’t ever thought past those moments. Van was kind of blowing my mind right now, because I’d never expected this from him. I had no idea what kind of talk he wanted to have.

  But instead of asking him to break it down for me so I could be prepared to answer him with thought out, yet careful responses, I had to sit and wait for him to join me on the deck. I sat on his chaise lounge because it was squashy and comfortable.

  When Van came outside ten minutes later, carrying a tray with two plates, two glasses of juice, butter and syrup, I moved my legs to either side of the chair, and he set the tray in front of me, sitting down at the end of the chaise with his legs crossed in front of him.

  “If your fans could see you now,” I teased him, loving how casual and normal he looked.

  He smiled. “They’d be jealous as hell that I’m here with you.”

  “They might try to push me over the edge of the deck,” I said, looking back at the darkness behind us. It was a good twenty foot drop to the ground.

  “I’d fight them off,” he assured me. “I’d protect you.”

  “Oh, thank you, good sir,” I told him as I speared a bite of waffle with my fork. “So what do you want to talk about?”

  I put the bite in my mouth and chewed as he eyed me thoughtfully. “Tell me what you want.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Me. Us. What do you want?”

  I swallowed the bite to buy time. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  I watched him chewing the inside of his cheek as he thought about what he wanted to say next. Then he let out a soft sigh.

  “When I saw you again, I realized pretty quickly that I’d made a mistake and I wanted you back.”

  “Technically, you never had me,” I pointed out, gesturing with my fork. “We were never exclusive.”

  I watched Van pick up a butter knife and make stabbing motions at his chest. Then he put it back down. “I know. I regret that. I really do.”

  “You do?” I asked, taking another bite of my waffle.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I do. I was an idiot, thinking I could have everything, and it ended up costing me what I really wanted. I just didn’t realize it at the time.” He sighed. “Lis, everything I’ve told you over the past two months has been the truth. I didn’t lie. I didn’t embellish, and I didn’t use lines to try to get you to sleep with me.”

  “If you did, it worked,” I joked.

  He shook his head. “Don’t do that. Not now.”

  The seriousness in his voice sobered me, and I made the conscious decision to take what he was saying to heart. This talk was obviously important to him, and I needed to respect that. Jokes that stemmed from my nerves weren’t going to help things.

  “Okay, so what are you saying?” I prompted him.

  “I’m saying that I want to be with you. I want you to be my girlfriend. I want us to be exclusive.”

  Wow. I set my fork down, needing a few seconds to process what he’d just said.

  “And I can tell from your silence that you don’t want the same thing,” Van said glumly when I didn’t respond.

  “No. No, it’s not that,” I said quickly. “Please don’t think that. It’s just – wow, it’s definitely not what I expected you to say, and to be honest, it’s a little more complicated for me.”

  “Because you don’t trust me,” he grumbled.

  “No, but
Van, this is a lot to take in. It’s fast – at least for me. I literally just admitted how I feel about you to someone other than myself last night.”

  Had it really been only yesterday that Keri and I had been talking about Van and how I felt about him? It felt like days ago. So much had happened since then.

  Van nodded, as if trying to understand my perspective. “Who did you tell?”

  “Keri, but she’d already figured it out anyway.”

  “And when did you admit it to yourself?”

  “The launch party,” I said softly.

  “The night you pushed me away,” he said resolutely.

  “It was actually after that – when you were on-stage. I realized how I felt and that I’d been fighting my feelings for a while. But then things were weird between us, and you wouldn’t even look at me during the party. I didn’t exactly have a chance to tell you.”

  “I was hurt,” he told me, sounding so raw and vulnerable.

  “I know, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about that. I just – I panicked after Katherine talked to me. I didn’t know what to do, so I pushed you away. I lied and told you I was seeing Jamie, but it couldn’t have been farther from the truth.”

  “Katherine?” he questioned, his brow furrowing in confusion. “What did she say to you?”

  I sighed. “She reminded me in not so many words that she’d fire me if anything happened between us. She saw you flirting with me, and she knows about our history. When I agreed to take the job with Westside, she made me promise that I’d stay away from you. Back then I didn’t think it would be an issue.” I gestured between us. “I didn’t exactly expect this to happen.”

  Van’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Can she really do that? Fire you?”

  I nodded. “Actually, yes. I’m her employee, and if she doesn’t want me involved with a client and I disobey her wishes, she can technically fire me.”

  “Shit. That sucks.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve never had the desire to date a client, so this is a first for me.”

  “And you’re saying you have a desire to date me?” he clarified.

  I smirked at him. “I’d say that’s a definite possibility.”

  “But you can’t risk your job. I won’t let you,” he said determinedly. “Although, don’t I sort of have some pull. I’m the talent after all. Doesn’t Katherine technically work for me? Can’t I overrule her?”

  That made me laugh. “You’re too cute, but I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t work that way. I doubt you carry that much weight.”

  His shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I know. She and Damon make all the final decisions. The guys and I get to weigh in, but I’ve never thought we had any actual say. So what does this mean for us, for you and me?”

  I’d be lying if I said hearing him refer to us as an ‘us’ didn’t give me a thrill.

  “I don’t know what I can give you right now,” I said honestly, hating that I had to say it. I wanted what he was offering, but it just wasn’t possible. “I want to spend time with you, Van. I want to get to know you again and see what happens, but I’m not sure how we can do that without drawing suspicion.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, that does present a problem. It’s not like Katherine’s around all the time, but my life isn’t exactly private either. No way could we hide out in the open while we’re on tour.”

  “And we still have five months to go,” I reminded him.

  “Fuck, you’re right,” he said, running a hand back through his hair. He looked up at me. “Could we sneak around?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can we keep a professional front when we’re in public and be together when we’re alone, you know, spend the night together when we’re in hotels, find ways to see each other, make it work somehow?”

  “I don’t know. I have to room with Keri when we’re in hotels, so it’s not like I have my own space. Don’t you guys usually get the penthouse suite?”

  He nodded. “We do, but the guys would be cool about you staying with me. They wouldn’t say anything.”

  I shook my head. “You can’t tell them, Van. Seriously. They can’t know. No one can. I can’t risk it.”

  He looked surprised. “So, you’re not going to tell Keri?”

  “No. I’m not going to tell anyone. I can’t.”

  He sighed. “Okay, so how about we get our own room when we’re in hotels.”

  “And how exactly are you going to swing that? Won’t it look suspicious if you start booking another room when you already have one? Someone will figure it out.”

  Van grinned. “I’ll have Marshall do it. He’ll use an alias or something. He’ll use his credit card, and I’ll reimburse him, so no one will ever know.”

  I bit my lip, not sure this was going to work, and if it backfired, it was my ass on the line.

  Van reached out and took my hand. “Lis, please. This is the only way I’m not going to go insane over the next five months. If I can’t be with you, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Seriously.”

  He had a point that I couldn’t argue with. I felt inclined to tell him I was thinking along the same lines, but I was afraid to open up too soon.

  “If we do this, I have to tell Keri.”

  “But you just said we couldn’t tell anyone.”

  “Yeah, but she’s my roommate, and I’m not the type of girl who makes a habit of staying the night in other hotel rooms, if you know what I mean. She knows that. She’ll get suspicious, so I’d rather her know the truth than go hunting around for it.”

  Van smiled. “I can’t say I’m not glad to hear that about you. So does this mean you’re in?”

  “Are you going to see other people?”

  “No,” he said, almost immediately. “I’m done with that. I told you, I want you to be my girlfriend. I get that you’re not ready for that, but I am. I’m not going to see anyone but you, any way I can see you.”

  I smiled. “Okay, then I’ll do the same, and we’ll see how it goes, but we cannot get caught,” I said as Van set the tray of food on the ground. He crawled over to me, pushing me against the back of the chair. “Van, I’m serious.”

  “I know you are,” he said, his lips inches from mine. “I’m serious too. You know, right before the tour, I was out here on this very chair, drunk as shit, thinking about you. I remembered the time when we were out here together. It was the first time I consciously thought about what I wanted, and that desire, that utter need I felt that night has only gotten stronger over the past few months. It’s bad, Lis.”

  I smiled at how adorably desperate he sounded. “You want to have sex right here, right now, don’t you,” I teased.

  He nodded, a devilish grin on his face, and an endearingly pleading look in his eyes. How was I ever going to say no to him? We had to be so careful when we got back to the tour, and I had a feeling that was going to be harder than ever – especially for Van. He was terrible at hiding his emotions. But then again, knowing how much he wanted to be with me, and knowing that he’d be all-in if he could, gave me more reassurance than I could have hoped for.

  He wasn’t the same guy he’d been, and I’d never been so grateful to realize that. This was the guy I’d wanted him to be all along, and I loved that I was finally getting to be with the fantasy I’d harbored for so long. It was real. He was real, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever been as happy as I was in that moment.

  “Okay, fine,” I told him, but he was already tugging my shirt over my head, determined to get his way. And in situations like this, I’d let him have it every time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Van

  When I woke up, I stared at the ceiling for a solid thirty seconds, trying to remember if what had happened the night before had been real or just an incredibly realistic dream. Then I dared a glance next to me, relieved to see that the other side of my king sized bed had definitely been slept in, although it was empty now. I blinked a few times, letting my mind drift back to the night before, to
Elisa wrapped in my arms, to her smile, to what it felt like to kiss her again. It had been the best night I could remember in a long time.

  I rolled over and stretched my arm out over the expanse of where she’d slept, catching the sweet scent of her shampoo on the pillow. She wasn’t gone. I didn’t exactly know where she went, but I knew she hadn’t left. She’d promised me before we’d fallen asleep that she wouldn’t leave in the morning before I woke up.

  Her flight was at noon, which didn’t give us much time, but I’d wanted to see her, to have a few more moments where it was just us, before we returned to the real world where we had to pretend we weren't together. That was the only part I hated. It sucked. But I understood the severity of her situation, and I wasn’t about to let her get fired because of me. That wasn’t happening.

  Hell, I was grateful that she’d agreed to what she had. What we’d talked about doing wasn’t without risks. Too many people could find out if we weren’t careful. But I’d been honest when I told her I couldn’t stay away from her for five months, not after she’d finally let me back in. I’d take what I could get if it meant I got to be with her in some capacity.

  That was all I wanted. Then in October, when the tour was over and she no longer worked for us, we wouldn’t have to hide anymore. Then I could call her my girlfriend. By then she’d be okay with it, because she would have had enough time to get to know me again and for me to prove to her that I wasn’t going to let her down. I could be faithful. I could be in a committed relationship. I was worthy of her.

  Sliding out of bed, I ran a hand through my hair as I ducked into the bathroom to make sure I was minty fresh for the kissing I planned to do when I saw Elisa. When I left my room a few minutes later, I glanced briefly into my library, but she wasn’t in there. I had a feeling I knew exactly where she was.

  I wasn’t wrong. I found her curled up in the chaise lounge that we’d spent a little time on the night before, drinking a cup of coffee, a glazed donut sitting on a napkin on the arm of the chair, her phone in her hand as she scrolled through it.