by Caisey Quinn
I can’t even fight it or try to hide it like I have been. Even if this didn’t work and he doesn’t feel what I do, or believe himself to be capable of feeling it, I can’t pretend anymore. Not after this.
“I love you, Gavin,” I whisper against his chest. His breathing remains even, but his arm tightens around me. Glancing up I see his thick eyelashes flutter. I can’t help but wonder what he’s dreaming of, if he’s ever dreamt of me. “With my whole heart,” I add before drifting off to sleep against him. “Always.”
Chapter 24
“WAKE UP, SLEEPY GIRL,” A LOW VOICE SAYS FROM ABOVE ME. “Time to go.”
I stretch my legs, feeling the soreness down to my toes, before I open my eyes.
“Morning, Bluebird,” Gavin says with a smug grin. “How are you feeling?”
“Sore,” I admit honestly, eliciting an even wider grin from his mouth. “You?”
“Proud of myself mostly. Especially when that’s the answer to how you’re feeling.”
“I can tell.” I sit up and pull my towel around my still-naked body. “Mostly?”
He shrugs and glances down at his phone. “I told him I crashed with a friend last night and that I would come wake you up.”
There’s no need to clarify who him is, so I don’t ask. “How much time do we have?”
His eyes widen before landing on my bare chest when I let my towel drop.
“Not enough,” he practically growls at me.
I bite back an intrigued grin. “I meant how much time do I have to get myself together before we hit the road. But if there’s time for—”
“There’s not. Get dressed.” He hands me a pair of jeans from my suitcase and a white sleeveless shirt with Adele’s face on it. It’s pretty much the last clean one I have left. “Dallas is downstairs waiting in the lobby.”
And that’s that. Last night was last night and now we’re back to business as usual. Doing my best to ignore the lethal claws digging a jagged pit into my stomach, I pull my clothes over my body and watch him lace up his boots. Glancing at the clock, I see that he’s right. It’s seven already. Dallas wanted to leave at six thirty.
But I can’t make myself button my jeans, or slip on my shoes. I can’t imagine walking out of this room and back into a world where he doesn’t touch me. Where I can’t kiss him when I want to. Where the sun will glare its uninvited light onto us. I want to stay here, in this cocoon where the room is bathed in the safe blue hues that protect our secrets.
Time passed too quickly and I’m not ready to let go. I’m not prepared to lock our memory away yet.
Walking over to Gavin feels like a funeral march. My legs are heavy, weighed down with our goodbye.
He finishes lacing his second boot and looks up at me. My waist is level with his face.
“Baby . . .”
My voice comes out as a whisper, as if I’m giving away my biggest secret even though he already knows them all. “I’ll tell him I had to take a shower.”
Those are the last words I say before my lips return to Gavin’s, where they belong. Last night, or in the early hours of this morning, he fucked me, had sex with me. Thoroughly and wonderfully. But this morning we make slow sweet love. Despite the time, we don’t hurry.
My clothes come off and end up on the floor along with his. He sits back down in the chair and I lower myself onto him without words. His hands welcome me like old friends wrapping me in their warmth as I move over him.
His mouth never leaves mine. There aren’t words, no banter, dirty or otherwise. No promises or declarations.
There is only us.
We’ll have to drive like hell since Dixie thought it was vital to wash her hair. If there’s traffic we’re screwed.” Dallas is still complaining about the delay I caused when we load into the van, but I’m still somewhere in the strange in-between where even he can’t touch me. But my brother has never been the type to just let it go.
“I mean, Christ, Dix. You think we can just show up when we feel like it? This is it, little sister. Our shot. This is it.”
“I’m sorry,” I answer, but I’m not really. I’m not sorry and I’m not really in this van on the way to Nashville. I’m still in a hotel room in Austin with Gavin.
Dallas slams on the horn when a maroon Acadia pulls out in front of us. “Damn it.”
“We’ll get there, D. I checked my GPS and it’s only—”
Dallas looks away from the windshield long enough to throw a pissed-off look of barely leashed fury at me.
“Oh, your GPS? Because your phone knows the traffic conditions on the interstate? Or it has an app for telling the future? That a new model? You get an upgrade I wasn’t aware of?”
I smirk at him in the rearview mirror, feeling bad that I put us behind. But if this is the price for my last time with Gavin, I’ll pay it happily.
“No,” I say, tucking my legs up on the bench seat beneath me. “I was just saying that—”
He huffs out an exasperated sigh. “Well don’t just say, okay? You saying we’ll get there on time doesn’t mean that we will.”
“Neither will your bitching about it,” Gavin breaks in, the fierce undercurrent of violence flowing in his words. “So give it a goddamn rest already.”
Dallas turns his attention to Gavin and I swallow the urge to smile. He’s always been the peacemaker, but he never takes sides. The look he’s pummeling my brother with says this time he has. And it’s mine.
“Easy,” Dallas warns, the tension in the confined cab of the van growing heavier among the three of us. But then my brother laughs. “Dude. I thought you got laid last night. No luck?”
Oh no. Every cell in my body goes on high alert. Dallas is grinning good-naturedly, but Gavin looks like he wants to jump out of the van and into oncoming traffic.
“None of your business, dude.”
“My bad.” My brother laughs as he weaves into the fast lane. “You said you were crashing with a friend, so I just assumed—”
“Lark, I’m dead serious. Shut it the fuck down.”
I swallow hard, pulling my arms around my knees and trying to pretend they’re talking about something else. Someone else.
“All right, all right. Shutting.” My brother shakes his head. “Guess this one actually meant something for a change. I’ve never seen you so worked up over a one-nighter. Any chance I’ll get to meet her? Or you too afraid she might actually have taste and ditch you for me?”
Holy disgusting incest, Batman. Shut up.
Despite my urge to plug them, my ears perk, both anxious and dreading Gavin’s response.
Gavin ignores him. “I’m taking a nap. Wake me up if you want me to drive.”
I can see from the space between the seat and the window that he’s shoving his duffel against the glass and using it as a pillow. My voice leaps into my throat to tell him we can switch places and he can sleep on the bench seat, but he’s practically radiating anger and frustration and I’m still too wound up and raw to risk being snapped at by him.
It doesn’t take long before I’m dozing in that murky area between sleep and reality. I’m vaguely aware when the boys change places somewhere between Little Rock and Memphis. They hand me a bag of drive-through food that gets cold before I eat it.
Somewhere in strange daylight hours that feel oddly bright for almost dinnertime, we’re stopped when I’m roused from restless napping and I see Dallas practically hurdling Gavin to switch seats with him once again.
Sitting up, I blink myself awake just in time to see a uniformed police officer walking to where Dallas is now sitting. I sit upright and try to look like a willing participant in the van instead of a kidnapped hostage. Pretty sure my bedhead in the middle of the day isn’t helping. The officer leaves with Dallas’s license and proof of insurance.
I glance out the windshield but all I can see is the highway and trees. “Where are we?”
“’Bout ten minutes outside of Nashville.” Dallas gives Gavin a strange look and
mumbles something under his breath that I can’t make out.
“No shit,” Gavin responds. My gaze travels over him. He’s shifting uncomfortably, drumming his thumbs on his right knee.
“Why the quick change? You got warrants out, Garrison?” I’m kidding, but when he glances over his shoulder at me his expression is wary.
“Something like that.”
I’m about to demand that they both tell me what the hell is going on when the cop returns.
Dallas gets a speeding ticket for going ten over the limit. Both the guys grumble about the guy being a dick as we pull back onto the highway.
“What do you mean, ‘something like that’?”
“Nothing,” Gavin says without looking at me.
“Nothing wouldn’t have sent the two of you sprawling across each other to switch seats.”
“Now’s not the time,” Dallas says, giving me a warning glance.
“I’m not moving from this van until one of you tells me what is going on.” This combined with Gavin’s weird-out when the officer stopped to check on us on our way to Potter County has me convinced that what happened while I was in Houston was much more significant an event than the two of them have made it out to be.
My body feels like it’s made of wet cement anyhow. But whatever they’re hiding is big if they’ve kept it from me. My time in Houston has become a window of time that they’ve both turned into a black hole I know very little about.
I watch from behind as the two of them exchange a look. Gavin’s shoulders go stiff for a second before he angles around to look at me.
“I got into a little trouble after you left for school last year. Started screwing around with stuff I should not have been screwing around with and some unpleasant shit went down. It’s over with and I’m handling it.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Which is it? Is it over with or are you handling it?”
“We’re here,” my brother announces loudly, cutting off my inquisition.
Great. My eyelids are swollen and heavy and my mouth tastes like the inside of a Dumpster. Minus the blinding neon lights lighting up the street, it’s growing dark already. A day in a van will seriously mess with a girl’s concept of time.
Dallas continues on, giving our marching orders as he parks the van. “We have less than an hour to get cleaned up and get to the venue where the showcase is being held. Mandy booked us a room here at her hotel.”
Knowing that tonight I’ll be sharing a room with Gavin and my brother has my head spinning as I crack my neck. I stretch my legs and groan a little at the ache unfurling inside them.
Dallas gets out to start unloading our equipment and Gavin twists in his seat to glare at me.
“You have to stop that.”
My arms freeze mid-stretch and I glance down at my protruding chest. “Stretching?” I frown and lower my arms when he doesn’t answer. “I’m going to have to stretch every now and then.”
“Not that,” he says, his eyes darkening in a way that I feel down to my stomach. “The noises. Don’t make those fucking noises around me. Ever.”
A tiny snort of amusement escapes me before I rein it in. He looks like he might want to hurt someone. “Don’t call them fucking noises if you don’t want me to laugh.”
He shuts me out by closing his eyes. I reach a hand out and touch his jaw, which has hardened to granite with his anger. His eyes open and I am paralyzed by what I see in them. If I thought there was heat in his gaze before, I was wrong. Every look he has ever given me is like lukewarm bathwater compared to the molten white-hot lava burning into me now.
“I can still smell you, can still taste you. It’s fucking killing me, Bluebird.” My stomach twists at the obviously excruciating agony he’s experiencing trying to articulate our situation. “What we did, it’s not just something—”
Gavin doesn’t get to finish because Dallas yanks open the back doors.
“Let’s get moving. Time’s not exactly on our side right now.”
Jerking out of my reach, Gavin gets out the van without another word. I’m more than a little affected by what he’s told me and slightly frustrated that I didn’t get to say what I felt, too.
I can still feel you, Gavin. I can still taste you, too.
There’s a difference, though, the same difference that has always divided our feelings for one another.
“You’re the one person that’s supposed to be off-limits. I made a promise. One I intended to keep.”
His words from our conversation in a borrowed car repeat in my head. The truth is, I’m glad I still have part of him inside me. I’m savoring the taste of him for as long as I possibly can. But now there is something else inside me.
A sharp-edged fear that he regrets it—that he regrets me.
Mandy is waiting for us when we walk into the hotel. The second my perusal of the expansive lobby lands on her, she smiles a toothpaste-commercial smile at the three of us, stopping when she reaches me.
“Hi, guys,” she says, practically beaming at us. “You’re all checked in and here’s your key.” She passes the plastic card to Dallas before turning her attention to me. “There are some major players here tonight and I’ve been talking the band up to everyone who would listen.”
“That’s very . . . kind of you,” I say because I don’t know what else to say. We signed the preliminary contract Dallas had with him this morning, so she’s our manager now. But I honestly don’t feel like I even know her. She looks like she just stepped off the runway and I look like . . . like I just spent twelve hours in a van.
“It’s my job,” she says. “But Dixie, I could only get one room so I told your brother I’d be happy to let you room with me.”
Well that’s . . . unexpected.
“That’s a great idea,” my brother announces before I can say anything. “Especially since we all need to get changed and to the Palace.”
She turns to me and I give her the best look of gratitude I can muster. I’m having an out-of-body experience, watching myself being herded like cattle into the elevator.
I resemble a fish out of water, gaping between her and Dallas as they detail the plans for the next few hours. We’ll get ready, our van will be driven to the venue by Mandy’s assistant Randall, we’ll take a town car with Mandy to the Palace, meet and greet the executives in attendance, then perform. I focus on the last word. I need to play, need to work out the craziness of the last week and get off the emotional roller coaster I’ve been on for the last few days. Mandy tells us that there will be record label execs and Grammy-winning producers, along with promoters, music publishers, and booking agents, oh my!
Every word she says lands on my brother like a precious gift. They feel heavy to me. Like pressure. Expectations. The possibility of screwing up and letting him down or damaging our chances at obtaining a record deal.
“You okay?” Gavin whispers from beside me.
I nod because I can’t open my mouth for fear the truth would fall out. Or the drive-through dinner we had somewhere between Memphis and Nashville.
“This is you, boys,” Mandy says when the door opens on the eighth floor. “See you downstairs in twenty.”
As soon as they’re gone and the doors close, she turns her attention to me. Either I’m really wiped from the past week and hallucinating, or she has multiple personality disorder. My vote is on the second one. Her once bright, gleaming eyes that greeted us in the lobby are now dark and menacing.
“Now, Daisy May, what are we going to do with you?”
“Um, hopefully not murder me and pay someone to toss my body in a Dumpster.” I smirk, despite feeling a little afraid and a whole lot intimidated by her but refusing to let it show. “And it’s Dixie Leigh. Not Daisy May.”
She laughs, cackles actually, which I didn’t know was a real thing until this moment. It’s dawning on me that perhaps my initial assumptions weren’t all that far off after all.
“Oh, I’m just teasing. I’m super-excited to see w
hat you’re going to play on your little fiddle tonight.”
I arch a brow because one: no one calls Oz my little fiddle. And two: she may have my brother and Gavin convinced, but I’m not buying it. Clearly she isn’t even trying to sell it to me anyway now that we’re alone. A sickening truth settles onto my shoulders. Afton was right.
“I ran across a friend of yours in Austin.”
She purses her lips as the elevator comes to a stop on the twelfth floor. “Oh yeah? Who might that be?”
“Afton Tate,” I say, gesturing for her to step out of the elevator before me. I have no clue where our room is anyway.
“And what did Afton have to say?” I can see her fighting the urge to roll her eyes.
“He suggested we continue exploring our options. Any idea why that might be?”
We reach a room and I glance at the number for future reference. Eight twenty-nine. She opens the door and we step inside a luxury suite that I’m guessing is a lot nicer than what Gavin and Dallas have.
“Well, to be honest, Afton was still really young and new to the business when our paths crossed.” She opens her closet while I set my bag down. “He couldn’t see the big picture, couldn’t grasp that not everyone plays fair.”
“I didn’t realize it was a game,” I mumble under my breath.
“Everything is a game, Dixie.” Suddenly she whirls on me, her expression inscrutable. “In every aspect of life, there are players and moves to be made. There are winners and there are losers.”
“That’s an interesting way to look at it, I suppose.” I open my suitcase, underwhelmed at the wrinkled mess I find inside.
“It’s the only way to look at it,” she says haughtily. “Speaking of looking at things, some of the men here are going to make their decisions about Leaving Amarillo based on how much they enjoy looking at you. So let’s make sure you’re worth looking at, shall we?”
“Excuse me?”
“Here,” she says, thrusting two dresses at me, one a black one with silver embellishments that looks as if it would barely fit my left leg and the other a champagne-colored sequined bodice top with a short ruffled, belted skirt that would be fine if it were four inches longer. “Try these on. Either look will work for tonight.”