by Selena Kitt
You woke my heart in a burst - that first time - all I saw - was a light-flooded night—
Only promises to come - all we had - was everything - between kisses and sighs—
Undressing as we dressed – perfect day - diner breakfast – love like art on the walls—
Knowing that we’ll never die—
Then it was my turn, my eyes on Rob’s, feeling tears slipping down my cheeks, my voice a little husky:
Waking wide in your gaze – without guile – state of grace – small and wild in your arms—
I felt so safe to be free - surrendered heart – frayed desires - wanting only for more—
Unshaven chin brushing my skin – down on my knees -your poetry – a symphony of guitars—
Love deep inside unfolds alive – lightning strikes – thunder roars - bursting my skies like a storm—
Knowing that we’ll never die—
And then it was the two of us, my voice following his in each sad refrain:
Then the hard came – like a hard rain – like a night train – and the hard pain – to watch your light fade—
You watched my light fade – darkening your flame – and your heat was – so far away – and my heart broke—
And your heart broke – and her heart stopped – and my heart stopped – I was helpless - and the night came—
And the night came – and the darkness – it was heartless – and our hearts stopped – and the light died—
And we began to die—
And in the end, it was both of us singing together, our voices lifted in sweet harmony:
Then I found your hand – reaching out in the darkness – and I felt you touch me inside – holding my heart in your hands—
And then I saw your eyes – through the river of blackness – burning flames in the darkness – you were my midnight light—
You are my midnight light – through the pain and the anguish - you cannot be extinguished – you are my midnight light—
You are my midnight light – through the pain and the anguish - you cannot be extinguished – you are my midnight light—
You are my midnight light—
You are my midnight light.
We sang the last few notes, our voices carrying together on the wind. Our gaze met and locked, and I saw all the sadness and love and pain and joy in his eyes. We had loved and lost the world. We had held our own beating heart in our hands for one brief moment.
Rob got to his feet, holding his hand out to me, and I took it, letting him help me up.
“It’s time,” he said.
And it was.
It was time to share her light, and ours, with the world.
Double Trouble: BOOK DESCRIPTION
Sabrina, always one of Trouble’s biggest fans, doesn’t quite know how she found herself engaged to uber-sexy rock star Rob Burns--it all happened so fast! Not only does he want her to marry him, he wants her to join the band, too!
But the entire world seems to be against them, from Rob’s crazy ex-wife to a band who believes Sabrina is Trouble’s own Yoko Ono.
When Sabrina uncovers a dark, long-kept secret, it turns their lives completely upside.
DOUBLE TROUBLE
Chapter One
“Goddamnit!” Rob grabbed the first thing he could find and swung it.
I ducked into a corner, although I wasn’t anywhere in his vicinity, as the Stratocaster smashed against the studio wall, leaving a giant hole in the drywall and popping strings on the guitar that lashed his hands. He bled but didn’t stop. The guitar continued to do damage I knew we were going to pay for, but the real damage was being wreaked inside.
With every blow, that guitar was doing all sorts of damage—in me, in Rob, in Tyler, who stood leaning against the door—the messenger Rob had avoided killing, at least so far. Rob was taking it all out on the guitar. And the wall. Now the keyboard in the corner received the brunt of his anger, until the guitar’s fifty-thousand-dollar neck finally snapped, and Rob’s bloody hand was left holding it, strings dangling, coiled like snakes.
“You done?” Tyler uncrossed his arms, standing fully upright.
“I’m just getting started,” Rob said softly, dropping the neck of the guitar to the floor, his breath coming fast from exertion.
“Rob…” I slid back up the wall to a standing position, daring to speak, to call attention to myself. “Don’t…”
He turned his head, dazed, eyes unfocused, not really seeing me. I felt his every breath as my own hitched in my chest, and his blood, dripping from his lashed knuckles, was mine too. I wanted to run to him, to comfort and soothe, but I knew he wouldn’t accept it, not now.
“So, they sent you to tell me?” Rob looked at Tyler, his bandmate and best friend, with pained eyes.
“Just the messenger.” Tyler held up his hands in a warding off gesture.
“So, I’ll switch labels.” Rob’s wheels were spinning. “Record with someone else.”
“You can’t do that, bruh.” Tyler shook his head sadly. “They’ll sue you so fast it will make your head spin.”
“Fuck.” Rob hung his head, eyes closed, taking a deep breath. I saw his hands tremble as he made them into fists and I knew I needed to intervene before he put any more holes in the wall.
“Rob, it’s not that important.” I went to him, pressing my chin into his upper arm, nudging the sleeve of his shirt up, kissing his skin, flushed and hot. “Let it go.”
“I can’t.” He looked down at me, that same, pained expression in his eyes. “Trouble is my band. This is my album.”
“It’s ours, last time I checked,” Tyler piped up, pressing his mouth into a thin line. “Yeah?”
“Let it go,” I whispered, pressing my cheek to his upper arm, my hand curled in the middle of his chest, over his heart. “Just… let it go…”
Rob clutched my hand in his bloody one. His knuckles were ripped to shreds and I winced just looking at them.
“So, Arnie told you this?” He snapped at Tyler. “You got it from the horse’s mouth?”
“Call him yourself.” Tyler shrugged. “They have no problem with you recording a solo album. But they’re not going to let Sabrina be on Trouble’s.”
“What the fuck?” Rob exploded again. “What the hell have I been working for?”
“Nothing, apparently.” Tyler glanced at the door, seeing Celeste appear from around the corner. “I set up a meeting with the guys later. You want to come?”
Rob shook his head, his back stiffening as he turned away from his band mate.
“All right, I’m out.” Tyler was gone.
“Everything okay up here?” Celeste took a step into the room, looking around at the carnage in disbelief. She had her Blackberry in hand, as always—Rob’s assistant had to constantly be connected and she was incredibly organized.
“We had a little…” I looked at the wreckage of Rob’s gorgeous guitar. “Meltdown.”
“So I see.” She blinked, looking between us and what was left of both guitar and wall.
“Just… get someone to fix this,” I told her, taking Rob’s unbloodied hand and leading him out of the room. “And see if you can get the guitar… repaired.”
“On it.” She was already on the phone, stepping out of the way as we passed.
“Sabrina…” Rob saw me for the first time since he’d gone off, when I sat him down on the edge of our bed.
“Shhh.” I kissed his bloody knuckles. “We’ll work it out. There are worse things than this.”
My words reached and finally broke him. He touched my cheek with bloody fingers, rubbing a thumb over my lips and I felt tears sting my eyes. His were wet when I went to the bathroom to get something to bandage his hand. The weight of our loss came suddenly, like an elephant sitting on my chest, just for a moment, just long enough for me to acknowledge it.
Rob was quiet, watching me kneeling, wiping the blood slowly, carefully, from his poor, ruined hand. And of course, it was his right
hand—his guitar playing hand.
“I want this for you,” he said softly as I bandaged his fingers, using gauze and antiseptic and tape. “For us.”
“I know. I want it too.” It was true. I wanted it more than I could say. I’d left so much behind for it—for Rob, for our life together, for our dreams of writing songs and playing together. “But maybe… maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.”
I met his eyes, feeling it pass between us, that horrible knowing. We’d both had plenty of experience with things that just weren’t meant to be, with terrible loss and painful letting go.
“I just feel like the entire world is against me. Against us.”
I didn’t say anything to refute him. Sometimes I felt that way too.
“You’ve got me.” I stood, putting my arms around his neck, feeling his hands move to my hips. “I’ve got you. What else do we really need?”
“A magic wand.” He sighed, nuzzling his face into my t-shirt, against the swell of my breasts. “I want a magic wand.”
“You have one.” I smiled slyly, sliding a hand down between his thighs where I found him stirring.
“Brat.” His mouth opened over my t-shirt, tonguing my nipple through it, sending bright, hot sensations through my limbs.
“Lunch is waiting for us.” Daisy—Rob’s personal chef—had called up before Tyler arrived, telling us food was waiting on the patio. My stomach growled.
“It can wait.” He pulled my t-shirt and bra up, eyes brightening at the sight of me topless. “I’m hungry for you.”
No matter what, we could always do this. Loving Rob always felt right. Even after we’d lost Esther, our tiny baby, born too soon, there was no hesitation, no fear. We came together like two beings separated down the middle, meant to be joined, connected, always. We’d both cried that first time, both during and afterward, our union made even sweeter, somehow, by our loss. He kissed me and loved me then, just like he did now, as if there was no other woman in the world who could satisfy him.
His mouth caught mine and he kissed me to the bed, trapping me happily beneath him. I took his full weight, wrapping my legs around his waist as if, by pulling him to me, I could get more of him still. He was my everything, my whole universe, and when we were like this, he made everything else fall away. There was no real world out there—just us. There were no fans, no agents, no record labels, no assistants. No tabloids to cover the story of his crazy ex-wife wailing about losing her husband to a lascivious fan. Even the good things—Tyler and Katie, my best friend in the world—seemed ephemeral and were lost.
Nothing mattered but this. Him. Us.
And there weren’t words. We didn’t need them. Not anymore. His body and mine moved together. It was like dancing, but the music was always new, fresh, bright and hot. Our clothes melted away. Jeans, t-shirts, underwear, gone in a murmur, with the yank of a wrist. He entered me always like it was the first time, my sex clenching around him, welcoming him home.
I could still taste his blood on my lips as we kissed, mouths aslant, hips locked together, grinding toward release. Rob rolled us, with me cocooned in his arms, across the big expanse of the bed, until my head was hanging off the edge and I saw the ocean, a blue haze in the distance, through the open patio door, and his teeth grazed my throat. He was full, throbbing, impaling me with every thrust. I never wanted it to end.
But it couldn’t last forever, even as much as I wanted it to. My sex quivered and spasmed, my toes curling, nails digging deep into the flesh of his back as he grunted and drove in deep, letting himself go in a way he never did anywhere else. This was my man at his most vulnerable, limbs tensed, back arched, hips pinning me deep against the mattress as he emptied himself into me completely, and I reveled in it.
I thought—I hoped—he had been sufficiently distracted from the reason for his earlier tirade as he collapsed beside me on the bed. He pulled me to him with a low grunt, leg over mine, thigh snugged up against my still aching crotch, arm heavy across my breasts as he buried his face in my neck and hair, breathing deep.
But I was wrong.
“I’m going to make this happen.” Rob’s lips moved against the damp skin of my throat. “One way or another.”
“Don’t do this.” I sighed. “To me, to you, to us. It’s not worth it.”
“Don’t say that.” His head came up, brows knitted. “You’re worth everything to me.”
“Trouble is the reason you’re here, Rob. Trouble is what people want,” I reminded him. There were few bands left like Trouble. Their music had a broad appeal, defying genre logic. They’d come on the music scene with a bang and hadn’t slowed down since. I knew Rob wanted me to be a part of it, but the rest of Trouble, aside from Tyler, wasn’t so thrilled about the idea. They saw me as some sort of Yoko Ono, taking their lead singer away, and I understood. Besides, I didn’t want to be somewhere I wasn’t wanted.
“I know what it’s like to be one of those girls who want you, who dream about you.” I ran my hand through the hair on Rob’s chest, watching it curl around my fingers. It wasn’t so long ago I was just another one of his fans, after all. I remembered it quite well. “Your agent and your label are only protecting you, protecting Trouble. Those girls want you to be single, and if you’re not single, they don’t want that fact rubbed in their faces. They want you. And they all want to believe they can have you.”
“They can’t have me.” His arms tightened around me. “You already do.”
“And I’m the only one who needs to know that.” I smiled and rubbed my cheek against his chest. “But if I’m out there performing with you, if we’re recording together, on stage together, everything changes. Now we’re a couple.”
“But we already were!” he protested.
“So were you and Catherine,” I reminded him.
The thought of Catherine made my blood turn to ice. I still had the scar on my shoulder from the gunshot, a twisted, ugly thing. Rob always kissed it tenderly when he saw it, especially when I protested my disfigurement, telling me he was just grateful I was alive. I was grateful too, but the memory of Catherine and that gun and the look in her eyes when she pulled the trigger, still filled me with fear. And that was followed by both anger and a deep, profound sadness, because it was that gunshot wound which had caused me to lose Esther, our unborn baby, too young to be born, too young to even take a breath yet.
“You and Catherine were all over the tabloids as a couple,” I said softly. I’d been just a fan then, just another girl dreaming about meeting a rock star. “I read about you all the time in People and Us. I knew you were married—everyone did.”
I’d known he was married that first night. Of course, he’d told me they were separated, had been for almost a year, but still… I’d known. I wasn’t proud of what I’d done, but I also felt, in some way, it had just been meant to be. How could you fight against feelings so strong? I was weak when it came to Rob.
“But, Rob, this is different.” I tried to make him understand what I saw, what everyone else but him could see. “You didn’t parade Catherine out on stage…”
“I’m not parading!” he scoffed.
“You just can’t see how it looks.”
“I don’t care how it looks!”
“But everyone else does!” I sighed, remembering a conversation I’d had with Celeste about this very thing. She was Rob’s assistant, fielding all the calls and hearing all the protests and serving as a shield for him in most things. Sometimes I think she shielded him too much. He was blind when it came to me. “That’s all they care about. They only see you from the outside. And right now, Trouble is… in trouble. And it’s all my fault.”
“No, Sabrina.”
“They all see me as a threat.” I overrode his protest. “Your fans see me as competition. Your agent, your label—they see me as a PR disaster. The media has painted Catherine out to be the victim in all this…”
“You’re the one who got shot!” He roared, and I knew, I understood his
frustration, but reality was reality. It was staring at us in the face. Rob ran a thumb over the indented scar on my shoulder, his face so pained it broke my heart. “My God, Sabrina, what we lost…”
“No one sees that,” I whispered, feeling tears stinging my eyes. “They didn’t… they didn’t hold her little body in their hands while she struggled to take a breath.”
“Stop…” he said hoarsely, shaking his head, closing his eyes against it.
But he had to see. He had to see what everyone else did.
“They see you sleeping with a fan.” I grabbed his shoulders and shook him, forcing him to open his eyes to me, to the truth. “Getting her pregnant, while you’re still married to another woman. They see poor Catherine, driven to the brink of madness over your infidelity.”
“That’s not—”
“Don’t you see?” I cried. “It doesn’t matter what the truth is! They see what they want to see. I was shot, my daughter’s dead, but Catherine is the victim. Poor, poor Catherine, who will do her time in a state mental hospital ‘healing’ from her trauma.”
“No!” he growled, twisting away from me, grabbing the edge of the sheet, taking it with him as he began to pace, back and forth in front of the open patio door. The breeze off the ocean was cool and full of the sea, a smell that made me ache for a happier time before pain and loss and fear had invaded our world.
But I couldn’t undo it. I couldn’t take it back, as much as I wanted to. And he couldn’t either. I didn’t stop with my relentless assault, uncovering the reality of perception. True or not, it was what people saw.
“And now you want to parade me out like some Yoko Ono, breaking up Trouble!” I half-sat, watching him pace, sheet around his waist, eyes wild as he ran a hand through his spikey black hair. “They see it like you’re rubbing it in their faces. It’s no wonder!”
“I’m done. I’m just done. I can’t do it anymore.” Rob’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper as he sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m done trying to hold it all together. It’s tearing me apart.”