reputation

by Dr. Rebecca Sharp

  With a glance at the door, I quickly cleaned myself up, watching Zach do the same before tucking his still-erect dick back into his jeans. I bit my lip. It was a challenge—one that I was looking forward to besting later tonight when I snuck back up to his room.

  “You should know by now that you’re already most of my inspiration,” I replied wryly. There was no point in hiding or lying about it now. He was the inspiration that had started it all.

  Picking my bra up from the floor, I rose back up to find him in front of me, his fingers tipping my chin up. “I don’t want to be most, Baby Blake. I want to be your all.”

  My breath caught.

  I loved Zach Parker.

  The thought hit me like a getaway car—fast and crazed, driving off furiously into the sunset with my stolen heart.

  The door handle jiggled and all my thoughts were wiped white with fear as I tried to swallow down the acid in my throat. Three sharp knocks followed and my heart held off on beating the entire time as I fumbled to get my bra on, Zach stepping around in front of me in case whoever it was decided to bust down the door.

  “B? You in there?”

  I breathed again when I heard Tay’s voice coming from the other side.

  “One sec!” I yelled, tugging my t-shirt on over my head in a flurry and rushing to the door.

  “Blay—” I ignored Zach’s voice as I pulled the door open.

  I plastered a smile on my face, breathing heavily as I met her hazel stare.

  “Hey, why was your door—” she broke off seeing Zach behind me. Her eyes did a shuffle between the two of us. “Oh. I see. I can come—”

  “What’s going on here?” Both of our wide eyes skidded to Ash who’d rounded the corner and placed his hand on the doorframe.

  “Nothing,” we both said in awkward unison.

  A perfectly arched eyebrow that matched my own rose as he looked between us and then peered into the room. His face shadowed as soon as he saw Zach. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I felt Zach’s presence as he came up behind me, resting one hand on the other side of the door frame. I coughed to hide my reaction when his other hand came to rest reassuringly on my back; he stood too close to me for Ash to be able to see that that hand was anywhere other than in the pocket of his jeans. I tried to keep my face blank as I slid my gaze up to his face that calmly met my brother’s accusing stare.

  “Just running through our duet for the night really quick,” he said casually. “These things seem to go better when we go at it at least once before the show.”

  Blood rushed from my head at his words. He was toying with me. I swayed back against his hand.

  “Yeah? What are you singing?” He was searching and the flush I felt deepening on my face wasn’t helping.

  “Umbrella.” I heard the small smile in his voice before I felt Zach look down at me. “Isn’t that right, Baby Blake?”

  Seriously? Rihanna? My thoughts were mirrored by my brother’s expression.

  “Yeah,” I answered, reserving my tight smile for Zach. “It was my night to pick. I guess I was thinking that we should try something a bit edgier.”

  Or several things.

  “Alright,” Zach continued before Ash had a chance to respond. “Gonna go let the guys know. See you out there.”

  He made sure to brush his hand over my ass as he moved through the doorway and nonchalantly strolled through our little pow-wow towards the other dressing rooms like there hadn’t been anything going on.

  He was good at this—making people believe what he needed them to so as not to hurt them.

  And that scared me a little.

  A second later, Ash gave up his witch hunt and with a nod to the two of us, jogged down the hall after his friend, leaving Tay and me to ourselves.

  She pressed her hands to my chest and pushed me back into the room, shutting the door behind me.

  “Are you serious, B?” she asked in an aggravated whisper, her hands flailing.

  “I know,” I groaned, burying my face in my hands.

  “Do you know what would have happened had it been him knocking on your door instead of me? If he had gotten here first?”

  Yeah, I did. It was why my heart was still racing.

  “I know but—”

  “No buts. I’m not joking. Either you tell Ash or you do a better job at not getting busted.”

  I pointed to the door as though my brother was still standing there. “He had no idea! He always looks at us like that. I’ll agree that we need to be more careful but I think we handled that pretty smoothly.”

  Her arms crossed over her chest and she looked at me with amused eyes.

  “What?”

  “Your shirt’s on inside out, B.”

  Track 17: All I Need is You

  “The world is new.

  All I need is you, three chords,

  And a tune.”

  RECKLESS. DANGEROUS.

  Like skydiving without a second parachute.

  This love was treacherous.

  But nothing safe was worth the ride.

  “Even high in the mountains, Blake Tyler forms intimate bond with fans, bringing them further into Lovestruck romance!”

  I tried to listen to Tay’s warning. Zach and I even talked about it and agreed that we needed to keep the mind-blowing sex to nights when and where we knew it was safe. But then he would look at me on stage like I was the only star in his sky and before I knew it we were ducking out of dinners and conversations, meeting frantically in hallways or elevators or behind the band’s instrument cases. Touching. Kissing. Loving.

  What started out as a simple tune, quickly became a melody layered with walks on the beach, sneaking out late, and soul-stealing kisses that transformed it into our song.

  “I feel like I can still smell the weed,” I teased as we climbed the final flight of stairs towards the Red Rocks stage. We’d finished our show here at the Amphitheater a few hours earlier, the open venue echoing out into the red-glazed Colorado mountains. Zach had warned me—and he’d been right—about the heady marijuana scent that clung in the air. Thankfully, it was less now that the crowds were gone.

  We headed back to the hotel in Denver as planned, changed, and then Zach texted me to bring a light jacket and meet him in the lobby in ten minutes. Yoga pants, lace bralette, and a loose crop top were a quick and sexy choice, my whole body anxious to know what he had in store.

  Imagine my surprise when (after a thigh-squeezing make-out session in the car) we drove back out to the stage that we’d just left about an hour earlier.

  With the lights off, it almost—

  “Reminds you of home doesn’t it?” My head tipped back towards him as we strolled lazily through the open-air theatre, sparks flying through my body as he read my mind and his knowing eyes made my belly clench.

  “With the lights off, yeah,” I agreed with a sigh.

  It’s funny how some things look one way under the lights and feel completely different outside of them. Like two sides of the same coin.

  Like Zach and me.

  It was called Red Rocks for a reason; the stage was nestled among jutting red-orange sandstone formations, named Creation Rock, Ship Rock, and Stage Rock. (We’d gotten a brief tour of Red Rocks Park earlier before the show.) Even now, just with the moonlight, the entire place was still vibrant, still burning.

  This time, I walked along the seating area that was littered with screaming fans only a few hours ago. A few rows up from the stage, I turned to look at it, barely illuminated and only the shadows putting on a show.

  In the distance, I could see Denver sparkling on the horizon, buzzing and still alive. Even though we were only a few miles away, it felt like so much further because of the vast peacefulness of the park.

  The air was washed clean from the scent of weed with the freshness of the full moon. I breathed deeply, soaking it all in. This was a rare view for me: no fans, no lights, no camera—and looking at the stage instead of ou
t from it.

  “Why did you bring me back here?” My eyes were still locked on the empty platform as he trailed a finger along my shoulder and down the back of my arm.

  He climbed down to the next row of benches, heading for the stage. “Beautiful. Secluded,” he answered, pausing to look back at me. “Sometimes it’s a good reminder,” he nodded to the stage before hoisting himself up onto it, “that it’s just metal and wood.” He stomped on the platform. “That even though it can feel like a whole different world up here, it’s not. And you don’t need to try to be anything more than who you are or anyone besides yourself to step onto it.”

  My arms hugged my chest as his words soaked in. Over the past year before this leg of the tour, I’d been slowly losing myself. Step by step. Until that day when Tay told me that my reputation was tanking. It stopped me in my tracks and when I looked back, I couldn’t even see the path that I’d come from; I couldn’t see how to get back to myself.

  There are many excuses for how I got there: trying to please everyone (which is immeasurably harder when ‘everyone’ includes millions of fans), seeing the world as I wanted it and not as it was… and then believing I could will that world into existence. Not so unlike my sixteen-year-old self who thought she could trick the boy who’d grown up with her into thinking she was someone else, the self that thought a song would change his mind.

  Excuses.

  The reason I was lost was because I was trying to find him.

  My gorgeous god.

  From his rejection, I’d developed the bad habit of needing to please even at my own expense. From his memory, I searched for him in every guy that I met. I looked for forever in guys that were clearly only about the moment—and their moment in the spotlight. And from his presence, I was finding my way back.

  I still didn’t feel right going out on stage and fooling the crowd with something that was real. Not that they would ever know.

  But I would.

  And I was the type of girl who sang her heart on her sleeve because it wasn’t right to hold those kinds of things in. Through everything, it was my fans that had kept me going. Their love. Their encouragement. Their support. As the world tried to tear me down, they stood around me and in return? I lied to them.

  And that needed to change. Which meant I needed to talk to my brother.

  But not tonight.

  I made my way towards the stage, watching Zach as he slowly spun, looking up at the stars that turned the night into an endless diamond sky. His head tipped down to me just as I wrapped my arms around his waist.

  I still felt a pinch of anxiety every time that I was the first to initiate any intimacy, afraid that he was going to pull back and push me away. But he didn’t. The instinctive thought barely formed before his hands cupped my face, tilting it to the side so that his lips could kiss along my cheek.

  I mewled like a content kitten, sighing into the embrace. “It’s a beautiful night out. All the stars… that’s what reminds me of home.”

  He stared at me—the intensity hitching my breath. “Of all the stars in the sky, Blakebaby, you’re the only one I’ve ever wished for,” he whispered.

  My heart felt like it was performing a drumroll in my chest, ‘Introducing the most perfect man of all time…’ it announced.

  My mouth parted, but no words came out. How could there? How could there be any response that would be enough?

  I caught his grin just before he kissed me softly, his tongue slipping between my lips, grazing too quickly over the edges of my teeth and meeting the tip of my tongue before it was gone. “Will you sing for me?” he murmured, sucking gently on my lower lip.

  I moaned and tightened myself against him, needing to be flush against his hardness. “You know I can’t stop myself,” I said breathlessly. “My body only knows how to sing for you.” I rolled my hips against his and shuddered, feeling his long, hard length against my stomach; it had been there since our lusty kiss in the car and still it grew thicker as I stayed pressed against him, trying to ease the ball of tension that rolled through every inch of my sex.

  He smiled against my mouth. Actually, he laughed a little and I pulled back, my eyebrows scrunching up at him.

  “I know that, babe,” he rasped, dropping a kiss on my nose. “I want you to sing for me though. With these lips.” He kissed my mouth quickly.

  My face flushed, realizing he hadn’t been implying anything sexual; he actually wanted me to sing for him.

  Amused by my expression, his chest rumbled against my heavy breasts. I tried to pull back, embarrassed, but his arms locked around my back, caging me to him.

  “Don’t worry,” he promised, “I’ll let your other lips sing for me soon.” The red in my face deepened as the glint in his eyes shimmered devilishly. “I’ll even let them use my dick as their microphone.”

  I choked on my breath as warmth rushed into my panties. At this rate, I wasn’t going to be able to find my voice to sing for him.

  “I can’t believe—” I began to sputter before his mouth covered mine in a hard kiss, silencing me.

  “Sing for me.” It wasn’t a question this time.

  “I sang for you earlier when we were on stage,” I insisted, my words losing steam. My breath backfired sharply into my lungs when one of his hands slid up underneath my shirt to cup my breast. My eyes drifted shut as he toyed with its hard peak through the lace.

  The echo of my moan was the applause he deserved for the way he played with my breasts. I could write an album—maybe two—on all the things his touch on my nipples did to my body. I wouldn’t though. God only knew what that would do to my reputation.

  Was he sure he wanted me to sing for him? Because I wasn’t going to be able to do it like this…

  “I want you to sing the song.”

  My eyes flew open. The fire in my skin now felt like I was being raked over the coals. I shifted uncomfortably, pulling back from him.

  No. No, no, no, my mind unwilling to relive the pain of the past insisted.

  “My song,” he insisted. Meanwhile, my traitorous body screamed yes as his fingers rubbed and tugged the fabric of my bra over my painfully aroused nipple, turning the undergarment from tempting into torture device in the beat of a quarter-note.

  I moaned, my head falling forward onto his shoulder. Dammit. I’d do anything he said if he said it with his hands.

  And then his touch was gone, the night chill washing over me.

  “Zach!” I gasped at the loss.

  He grinned roguishly at me, dropping a kiss on my nose before stepping back just a few feet from me and sitting on the floor of the stage, unrelenting eyes staring up at me and the stars.

  “Sing it for me, Baby Blake. Just one more time…”

  “Why?” I sounded desperate, begging him to retract his request.

  Even with how we felt about each other… with what we now were… I still knew that the song from graduation would open so many old wounds that I’d rather just forget.

  He stared at me for a long moment, heavy emotions rolling through his eyes and washing over me. Desire. Need. Regret. Love.

  We hadn’t said it to each other, but like any great melody, love wasn’t something that needed words, love was something that hums its way into your heart and gets stuck there, playing mesmerizingly over and over again because you just can’t get it out of your mind… body… or soul. And you don’t want to.

  “I want to hear you sing it for me again. Now. So I can finally listen to it without having to hide how it makes me feel.” His voice broke and I realized how important this was to him; I realized how important making that day up to me was for him. “I want you to sing it for me so I can give you the response I should have nine years ago—the one that came from my heart.”

  I swallowed, my arms holding my stomach so that I didn’t rush over to him, fall onto my knees, and blurt out just how much I loved him. (Also, so that I didn’t vomit from nervousness.) For a second, I panicked, thinking that I’d for
gotten the words.

  A thought almost as foolish as the one about how I was over my feelings for him.

  And then my mouth opened and, for the second time in my life, I sang like my heart depended on it.

  “In your eyes, I am the sunrise.

  Always there and taken for granted.”

  The first lines wavered. No mic. No sound system. Not even Marty to strum along with me.

  “In your eyes, I am the sunrise.

  Easily ignored, too familiar to be enchanting.”

  All acoustic. All authentic.

  “Here I am, day after day.

  My heart, it rises for you.”

  All my heart. All my soul.

  “So, don’t walk away,

  My heart, it rises for you.”

  All of me.

  His stare was glued to me as he stood and stepped towards me. My voice wavered but I kept singing as he got closer, his face ragged with emotion.

  “Don’t turn me away.

  My heart, it rises for you.”

  It’s amazing how a song… a lyric… that melody… can take you back to a moment in time. The specific moment when the crowd of family and friends disappeared from my vision. When I could feel each ray of the summer sun beating on my skin, highlighting the racing of my heart as my gaze locked with his.

  It didn’t matter that his beautiful eyes were the most familiar sight of my entire life; they were the only future that I wanted to look into. They grounded me and made me feel like I was flying all at the same time.

  “Don’t turn me into a sad little story:

  And leave the mess of my heart

  That had the nerve to adore you.”

  The last came out as a throaty, raw plea that would have made Adele proud.

  Pure and utterly frightening silence surrounded us again. Heavy breaths the only reminder that time was still moving around us even if our love stood still.

  “Beautiful.” His hands gently cupped my face, thumbs swiping lightly over my cheeks, wiping away the overflow of my emotions.

  Sometimes words are enough. Sometimes words set to music are enough. But other times, what you feel for someone can’t be written or sung. This was one of those other times; the syllables and songs were nothing but drops in the emotional ocean, lost in the powerful waves that swallowed them whole.