Rock King

by Tara Leigh

  “I know, baby.”

  “No. You don’t.” His shook his head. “Nothing’s ever felt this good. No one.” There was a tremor in his voice that shook me to the bone. “Just you, Delaney. Just you.”

  I wanted to respond, to reassure, but I was incapable of forming complete sentences. Shane began moving again, pulling out until I was ready to cry from the loss. Pushing back in slowly. Shane’s deliberate movements, the words coming out of his mouth…too much. Excruciating. I rocked my hips forward, energy rippling through me. “I want…I want…” Tears stung my eyes, my body shaking.

  “Can’t believe you’re here. Can’t believe you fucking stayed,” he muttered against my neck as he finally gave up the last of his control, holding nothing back as he slammed me against the wall.

  Breath punched from my lungs as he filled me, thrusting deep and fast. Tiny spikes of pleasure chased a path to my center, forming a thick knot that churned and grew. This was what I wanted. No—what I needed. To be filled by Shane. Not just my body. My heart was full to bursting. Maybe it wouldn’t last much beyond the length of our shower, but for now I knew Shane was with me, really with me—and not just because I was the right size and shape to fill a void in his life. He wanted me, and he was proving it with every delicious kiss and passionate thrust. Every whispered admission.

  We moved in unison, both of us rocketing toward our ultimate goal: paradise.

  That knot compressed, growing tighter, denser. Heavy as lead.

  Until it exploded, taking me up, taking me away. I closed my eyes and there was no darkness. Only light.

  I came to earth as Shane shuddered and jerked inside me. I nuzzled against his straining neck. We clung to each other, chests heaving as we gulped down the steam-thick air.

  The water finally running cold.

  Shane

  The rental house was fairly large and new enough. Selfishly, I was glad Delaney had chosen to stay.

  Selfish, selfish, selfish.

  Even so, the walls were closing in on me. But I couldn’t leave, not unless I’d rather spend the next few months awaiting trial in a jail cell.

  Our tour had been canceled. Our label was having a fit. The guys were bored and pissy, stirring up trouble of their own back in L.A. I couldn’t even record with them because—even if I were allowed out of the damned house—there wasn’t a single recording studio in Clark County.

  My fans were my biggest defenders. There was an online petition, hundreds of Facebook groups and Twitter accounts popping up. They all wanted to #SaveShaneHawthorne.

  As if anyone could do that.

  The prosecution was pushing for another deposition. Mike Lewis’s people were pushing for another interview. People, US Weekly, TMZ, Radar Online, National Enquirer were all here, their reporters crawling all over town. I couldn’t turn on the TV or scroll through my phone without seeing someone claiming to be my best friend or former girlfriend. Some I recognized. Most I didn’t. Some of what they said was true: I was a loner, ditched school whenever I could, cared only about one thing—making music. Everything else could have come out of a script for a teen drama on the CW.

  But at the heart of it all, the truth was staring me in the face.

  Caleb was dead.

  Because of me.

  Call it an accident. Call it a crime. His death was the only fact that mattered.

  The dining room of the rental house was filled with too many people, tension as dense and obvious as the smog back in L.A. Travis and Gavin, of course, plus the legal team they’d assembled on my behalf. My publicist had brought two assistants. Piper was in the corner, her face rapt with attention, fingers tapping on the keyboard of her laptop as she took notes. Everyone was plotting and planning and strategizing.

  Getting nowhere fast.

  I stalked out of the room, disgust oozing from every pore, my boots thudding up the stairs. “Hey.” I poked my head into the bedroom.

  Delaney was reading a book with a half-naked guy on the cover. I arched an eyebrow. She’d come apart in my arms barely an hour ago. “Am I not enough for you? You need a book boyfriend?”

  A soft laugh floated my way as she set it aside. I fucking needed to bottle that sound. “You’re the only boyfriend I need,” Delaney said, the look on her face one she reserved solely for me. I fucking loved that, too.

  I hurled myself onto the mattress beside her, the book bouncing to the floor. She didn’t seem to notice, curling up against me and resting her head on my chest. “What’s wrong?”

  I would have given anything to shield Delaney from all this, but I couldn’t. There was just so damn much shit. “You mean, besides everything?” I asked, releasing a pent-up breath that sent dark strands of Delaney’s hair skittering across my chest.

  “That really narrows it down for me,” she murmured, her palm sliding over me to curl around my shoulder, her thumb sweeping along my neck, lingering over my pounding pulse.

  It was getting late, darkness seeping in through the open windows. Only one lamp was lit, on Delaney’s side of the bed. We lay in silence for a while, voices from the dining room drifting upstairs, although I couldn’t discern individual words. “It’s frustrating being stuck here, waiting for Gavin to figure out the legal end of things. For Travis to do his fucking job.”

  Delaney’s head lifted, her brows pushing together over the question marks shining from her eyes. “I understand your brother’s role in all this. But what do you mean about Travis? Isn’t he in a holding pattern until all this is resolved?”

  “Exactly. He’s supposed to resolve it. All of it,” I shot back.

  “But…” Her words dragged. “How can he—”

  “Because that’s what Travis does. He makes my problems disappear.”

  Delaney jerked back, a flash of distaste streaking across her features.

  “What?” I asked, instantly on the defensive.

  “What?”

  “That look.”

  Her face pinched, eyes sliding away from me. “What look?”

  I caught Delaney’s jaw between my fingers, waiting until she was looking my way again. “Like the opinion you’re holding back tastes like dirt. You might as well spit it out, because it’s threatening to burst through your lips.”

  She pulled away and rolled to the side, studying her fingernails as if the answer were written in nail polish. “Is that really what you want?”

  I seethed. “For this to all be over so I can get out of this house and back onstage? Yeah, that’s what I want.”

  “No. I just mean…” Delaney wavered, drawing her lower lip between her teeth as she decided how much to say. Finally, she let go, exhaling a frustrated sigh that reverberated through me. “Do you really want a buffer between you and every unpleasant aspect of your life?”

  My shoulders bunched together at the nape of my neck. “Travis is my agent.”

  Delaney shook her head, her still-damp hair undulating in dark waves down her arm. “No, he’s not.” Her tone was firm. “He’s your fixer.”

  Every fiber of my being rebelled against the truth behind Delaney’s certainty. And yet I couldn’t deny it. I grabbed at the bottom of a curl, pulling it straight and letting go, watching it spring right back. Reached for another one.

  She took my hand, holding it between her own. “Shane, I think you need to talk to them.”

  I shuddered. “I’ve been down there for the past hour. They’re too busy listening to the sound of their own voices to bother listening to me.”

  “No. Not them.”

  I shifted, rolling onto my side and propping my head on my palm. “You don’t mean…”

  Delaney nodded, dragging her fingertips over my ink. The barbed wire. The screaming gargoyles. The little boy. She lifted her sad gaze to mine. “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”

  I ran my tongue over my front teeth, absorbing the impact of her words, each one burning my skin like acid. “They won’t want to talk to me.” Wind gusted through the branches of the tall
maples surrounding the house, rustling their leaves.

  “I bet that’s exactly what they want,” she said softly. “You were the last person to see their son alive.”

  I could barely stay still under her patient gaze. “Because I’m the guy who killed him.”

  Delaney didn’t flinch. Her hand slid up my chest, fingers threading into my hair. “Stop saying that. It was an accident. They’re still grieving, and they should know you are, too. That you didn’t forget about him.”

  She found the C etched over my heart, planting a kiss on the bleeding letter. “Talk to them. Explain about the drinking. Let them know that you’ve never forgotten about their Caleb.”

  “What if they don’t want to see me?”

  “What if they do?”

  Reluctance bristled along my skin like velvet rubbed the wrong way. I sucked in a deep breath, blowing it out through pursed lips. “Maybe I’ll give it a try.”

  Shadows danced on the walls as the sun slid lower on the horizon. “So, if you—” Delaney cut off.

  “If I what?” I prompted.

  “Well…Not that it’s going to happen, but if you were—” She stopped, restarted. “If things here don’t go your way, would you let me visit you?”

  “You mean, in prison?” I asked, not really needing clarification as much as a second to gather my thoughts. Every cell in my body was screaming in protest. “No. I wouldn’t want you to visit,” I admitted, shaking my head.

  “Why not?” she demanded, her body tense.

  I lifted a hand to her face, running my knuckles along the plane of her jaw. Studying the perfectly symmetrical set of her features, her flawless skin. Delaney Fraser was the Gerber baby, all grown up. I had to make her understand, even if it hurt her feelings. How could I survive being locked up if she could come see me but I couldn’t touch her? Couldn’t run my fingers through her hair, smother her with kisses, make love to her. How could I watch Delaney walk away from me, iron bars holding me back, and not go crazy? “If I go to jail, you have to forget about me. Your father is your blood. I’m not. If I go to prison, promise me you’ll forget about me. About us.”

  Her voice was a husk of itself. “I could never forget you, Shane,” she breathed. “Ever.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Shane

  My request for a face-to-face meeting with Caleb’s parents didn’t go over well. Not with Travis, or Gavin, or the team they had assembled on my behalf.

  And I didn’t care.

  If the Branfords didn’t want to talk to me, I could respect that. But in my heart, I knew Delaney was right. I had to try.

  So I called the DA’s office myself and asked them to extend the offer. Just the three of us, in a room. No cameras, no attorneys. Just them and me, and a thousand regrets between us.

  Travis looked like he was going to have a heart attack when I told him what I’d done, and even worse when I said they had accepted. Gavin just looked resigned. I was escorted to the meeting by a uniformed cop. Travis insisted on going with us, even if he wouldn’t be in the room. Gavin hung back, poring over my case file.

  I was nervous. Not because I didn’t know what to say. All I had was the truth. A truth that had weighed on me so heavily for so many years. I was nervous because I would be face-to-face with the pain I’d etched into the Branfords’ faces…I didn’t know if I’d ever recover from that.

  My boots thumped along the paved walkway to the prosecutor’s office. We were meeting in a nondescript conference room without two-way mirrors or intercom systems like there had been at the jail. The Branfords were waiting for me, both of them standing against the far wall, putting as much space between us as possible. Travis opened his mouth as if to voice once more his reluctance to leave me alone. I quelled it with one look, closing the door in his face with a decisive click. When I turned back, the Branfords hadn’t moved.

  I let out a shaky sigh, eyes darting around the room before settling back on their faces. It had been thirteen years since the accident. Mr. Branford had always been tall and athletic, and he still was. He studied me warily, as if he wasn’t quite sure this was a good idea. Mrs. Branford was heavier than I remembered, with a pinched look to her full face. Her expression was resolute; she wanted to hear what I had to say.

  My gait less than steady, I walked to the nearest chair and sat down, hoping they would do the same. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.” They each gave a small nod and I continued. “I’m not here to defend my actions, any of them. Not the accident, or leaving town. I wanted to see you, to offer you answers to all the questions I was too scared to give back then. And to apologize. Caleb was my best friend. My only friend. I loved him like a brother—”

  A low whimper escaped from Mrs. Branford, and her husband helped her into a chair. He sat down beside her, one hand on her back, their graying heads close together as he whispered softly, soothingly. Their heartbreak filled the room, rolling from their bent shoulders, crashing into me.

  Pain splintered my chest, prying it wide open and letting loose all the emotions and memories I’d kept trapped inside. I didn’t know whether to keep talking, but I did anyway. Words poured out of my throat until it was raw and scratchy. I talked about how it had felt to perform that night and the beer we’d thought we earned for playing our first real show. I told the truth about the accident, and why I left when I did. I talked about the scholarships I funded anonymously for kids with dyslexia, like Caleb had, and the wake-up call I’d had in jail that motivated me to give a significant portion of my earnings to causes Caleb would have supported. But mostly I talked to them about Caleb himself. The stories he told me about them, funny things he said, the hopes and dreams I knew he’d only shared with me. How he gave me the confidence to get on a stage when I could barely handle playing to a few friends in their garage.

  As the words poured out of me, a strange thing happened. Caleb came alive again. It was almost as if he were sitting in the room, in a corner just out of view. I could hear his voice in my ears, so clearly. I could see his face, that wide grin of his splitting it in two. The atmosphere changed, became lighter. Like it always did when Caleb was around.

  Caleb wasn’t like me. His whole life, he’d known only love. Family dinners, bedtime stories, cheers from the sidelines at every game. He was confident and kind. Not just to me, but to everyone. I was the misfit. Caleb was the kid everyone liked.

  One hour became two, and the Branfords didn’t utter a single word. When finally there wasn’t anything left to say, when every memory had been taken out, dusted off and given life, I scrubbed a palm over my face, readying myself for a verbal assault.

  But none came. I looked back and forth between their faces, searching for something to tell me whether to stay or go. Their tears had dried, and I’d caught a few smiles while I talked, even one or two soggy laughs. I wiped my hands on my jeans, feeling almost reluctant to leave. Not just because of the Branfords, but because in this room I’d felt a sliver of forgiveness. From Caleb.

  I stood up, feeling completely gutted, but lighter than I’d felt since the accident.

  I was halfway to the door when I heard Mr. Branford clear his throat. “Caleb looked up to you. He always said you would be famous one day. I guess he was right.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, but I turned, meeting his sad stare head-on. A deep sigh rattled from his lungs. “Thank you for coming here, for sharing your memories of our son, and for the good you’ve done these past years. Caleb would be proud.”

  Recalling my initial reluctance to reach out to the Branfords, I nearly choked on the shame rising in my throat. My head tipped forward in a dejected nod. I didn’t deserve their leniency, not when I should have made this effort years ago.

  But no matter what happened with my case, I resolved to spend the rest of my life proving him right.

  * * *

  “Let’s sit down. I want you to tell us everything.” Travis’s bullying tone grated on my nerves as we got back to the
house. The last thing I wanted to do was share anything about my conversation with the Branfords, let alone everything. But Gavin was there, too, and even Delaney was waiting in the dining room. Of all the people gathered in the room, she mattered the most. I walked to her, pulling her to my chest and leaning over to kiss her head, breathing in the citrus notes of her shampoo.

  “You were right,” I whispered to her. “I needed to do that. For them, and for me.”

  “Piper,” Travis suddenly boomed, pointing at her. “Turn up the TV!”

  We all swiveled to the flat-screen that had been set up on the buffet. Anxiety squeezed my chest as the local news cut to a shot of the Branfords in front of the brick office building where I had just met with them. They were no match for the horde of reporters pressing in on them as they walked to the parking lot. The police were so busy they couldn’t have bothered to escort Caleb’s parents to their car? Anger sizzled along the back of my neck as Piper pointed the remote control, increasing the volume to deafening levels.

  “What were you doing at the courthouse?”

  “Do you want Shane Hawthorne to spend the rest of his life in jail?”

  “Have you spoken with Shane?”

  “Do you blame Shane for the death of your son?”

  The Branfords flinched with each question, reporters dogging their steps. Caleb’s father stopped as he fished in his pocket for his keys. He unlocked the car, opening his wife’s door and helping her in before rounding the hood. Before opening his own door, he paused. “No. We don’t blame Sean for the accident. We weren’t sure what to think after he left, when he disappeared all those years ago. But after speaking with him just now, and after praying and searching our hearts for what Caleb would want, we’d like the district attorney to drop the charges.” His head hung low, voice thick with exhaustion and grief. “Now, please, leave us alone.”