Wild Harts: Rockstar Shifters Box Set

by Lily Cahill

  But he was going through the motions. He was a shell, his insides scooped out and replaced with doubt and dread. He knew the only thing that could fill him back up, and she was gone for good.

  Drew turned without a word, and strode on stage.

  The crowd roared. Playing the part, Drew only glanced at the darkened audience, only aware of the swell of movement and shouts of fans. He didn’t smile, just lifted his hand in a half-wave and picked up his bass guitar. In his mind, he was alone on a darkened stage, playing for no one.

  Chase counted off, and they drove headlong into the music. Lights strobed and swept in arcs as they played and played and played. Drew was drenched in sweat, his fingers aching, his throat dry. But he never stopped, never paused. The set list pounded loud and long, a mix of the driving beats of their first album and the more nuanced melodies of their follow-up. But it all worked seamlessly together, and the crowd seemed to dig the new sound even more than their old hits.

  Nine weeks into the tour, and it was obvious: This was it. They’d actually made it. They’d dropped a sophomore album that sang and was already charting. This was everything Drew and his brothers had worked toward for years.

  So why did Drew feel so empty, so … disappointed? He played with expert precision just like he always did, but the feeling of playing was gone. He felt numb, disconnected. He’d found success only to realize it left him wanting.

  After the encore, Drew strode off stage and straight for the dressing rooms. He already had headphones slung around his neck when he noticed Bret slipping out the back door with three women in tow.

  “Wait, Bret,” Drew said just as his brother was about to leave. Drew couldn’t stomach the idea of another night alone while Jax and Chase flaunted their happiness in his face. God, he hated that he felt like this. Jealousy was not an emotion that made him proud, but he couldn’t deny it and was afraid of lashing out.

  “Dude,” Bret said. “We’re in Atlanta. We just played to a sold-out arena. I’m not staying in.”

  Jax leaned back against a couch. “Tiff and I are going to grab a late dinner. Join us, Drew.”

  “That’s not … I don’t want ….”

  Bret nodded for the women to go on ahead, with a promise to meet them soon, then turned back to his brothers. “Jax, not even Dreary Drew wants to be your third wheel, man.”

  Drew wheeled around to Jax. “It’s not that.”

  Bret sniggered. “It’s exactly that. Jax and Chase are boring as fuck now that they’re tamed. And Drew is too uptight and stodgy to go score some women on his own, so he wants me to be miserable with him.”

  Every muscle in Drew went tight. “That’s enough, Bret,” he growled.

  Chase crossed his arms. “Look, Drew. I’m not saying I agree with Bret because he’s an asshole.”

  “Screw you, Chase,” Bret interjected.

  “But,” Chase said, as if Bret had never spoken. “Man, there’s something going on. You barely made it on stage in time opening night, and you’re just, like … gone. Maybe you do need to blow off some steam with a woman.”

  “I’m not doing that,” Drew bellowed. Anger boiled over, rushed through him like a wildfire. “Jesus Christ, will you stop trying to diagnose me. There is nothing wrong with me, there is no one … there’s no one.” Drew faltered back a step as the horrible realization hit him—really hit him. It was a physical punch to the gut.

  There was no one and there never would be. No one who would love him like Tiff and Emily loved Jax and Chase.

  Jax was suddenly there, and he yanked Drew into a hug, clapping him hard on the back.

  “It was Nina, wasn’t it? Tiff thought, but she didn’t want to push. Jesus, man. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Drew pulled away, his eyes on the ground. “After Kirsten? I’ve been dumped twice. I couldn’t stand to see the look in your eyes. I just couldn’t.”

  Chase spoke up. “But your mate, dude. That’s different. You can’t just give up, Drew. If I’ve learned anything about this whole mate thing, she’s probably feeling just as shitty as you.”

  Drew laughed ruefully and looked up at his brothers. Chase and Jax were concerned and standing close, but Bret was at the edge, his lip curled in a sneer.

  “Nina? I doubt it,” Drew said. “She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met.”

  Chase shook his head. “I wouldn’t expect anything different from your mate, Drew. Go after her. Don’t give up. I know she feels the same about you.”

  Drew met Chase’s eyes. “How?”

  “Because of Em. Because she loves me just as fiercely as I love her.”

  Bret sniggered. “Jesus, this is pathetic. Do you guys even hear yourselves? We’re playing again tomorrow night, and the night after that, but you’re saying Drew should just take off. Screw the band for a chick, right?”

  “Bret, once you find your—”

  “Shut up,” Bret roared. “Just shut the fuck up about mates and love and all this other bullshit. We have a hit record, we’re playing to sold-out crowds, and you want to give it all up for what? A woman?” Bret strode close, his eyes bright with malice and his teeth bared. “I swear to God, if Drew leaves, I’m done. I’m out of the band.”

  “Bret,” Drew started.

  “Save it. I’m gonna have some fun and be a fucking rockstar. You can stay here and cry yourself to sleep.”

  The door slammed behind Bret and left behind a ringing silence. Drew pressed his fingers against his temples, but nothing would stave off the pounding headache forming behind his eyes.

  “I’m not going. She said no. I’m not going to force myself on her.”

  Chase and Jax shared a look, then nodded.

  “We’re here if you want to talk about it, man,” Chase said.

  “I don’t.”

  “Okay. Then we’re, you know … here,” Jax added.

  Drew couldn’t wait for them to leave. But when he finally convinced them to go be with their wives, he felt terribly, painfully alone. Despair tore at him with steely claws, left his soul ragged and bloody. When he felt like he was going to scream, Drew slammed his way through the back door and into the rental truck.

  He drove until the woods were thick, until the moon was blocked out and the night was dark. It was late March, but the humid air clung to his skin and dripped like Spanish moss. It felt like he was wading through the darkness, like the very air wanted to drag him under. Drew felt his body shifting, transforming, and it felt good to let go. Just before the bear overtook him completely, he tore away the blue thong of leather Kirsten had tied around his wrist long ago.

  She was gone. Nina was gone. He was alone, solitary. Just like he’d be for the rest of his life. Drew left the tattered string behind on the forest floor and ran until the sun rose.

  Chapter Nine

  Nina

  FOUR WEEKS. IT’D BEEN FOUR weeks since Nina had watched Drew declared his love for her, since he’d shouted for her from the street. Four weeks, since she’d run to the door, only to stop herself from going to him at the top of the stairs.

  She felt every day like a death. Nina had left behind plenty of men in her life, but none of them had affected her like this. She woke each day exhausted, and went to bed each night in tears. The smallest things could set her off, and she could barely keep food down.

  If this was heartbreak, Nina never wanted to love again.

  Nina leaned her forehead against the open freezer door. Out in the living room, Van and Amy were saying good-bye to their last baby shower guest, and Nina was at the knife’s edge of her emotions.

  It didn’t help that Drew was everywhere she looked—staring at her from the cover of magazines in the checkout at the grocery store and being played non-stop on the radio. She knew what it was like to hear those songs as that face looked into hers, pledging his love and devotion with every note. Every reminder sliced a little deeper.

  “Hey.”

  Nina whirled around and tried to smile, but too la
te. Van cocked her head and then smiled sadly.

  “Girl, I am taking you out. We need to get you drunk and make you forget about Drew Hart.”

  Nina grimaced. “The thought of alcohol makes me want to puke.”

  Van frowned then walked closer, pushed Nina’s riot of hair back, and held her hand against Nina’s forehead. Nina pulled away.

  “I’m not sick, Van. I have a stupid heart and it’s broken. God, I hate myself so much right now for saying that.”

  That just made Van’s frown deepen. “You have been really emotional lately.”

  “See: heart, comma, broken.”

  Van shook her head. She grabbed Nina’s hand and led her through the kitchen, down the hall, to the bathroom. “Don’t fight me on this, okay?” Then she dug in the medicine cabinet until she unearthed a pregnancy test.

  “Whoa,” Nina said, stumbling backward. “What is that for?”

  Van ignored Nina and opened the box, then started waving the little stick around. “Look, you haven’t been sleeping, you’ve been super emotional, and you told me that you puked at your office the other day.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Are your boobs sore?”

  Nina grimaced, but fear gripped the back of her neck and wouldn’t let go. Her boobs had been sore the last couple weeks. And her period was late. She’d assumed it was the stress and the aforementioned heartbreak, but …. No, she wouldn’t believe it.

  “There’s no way,” she insisted.

  Van smirked. “No way?”

  “You know me. I’m always careful. We always used a condom …,” she trailed off. They hadn’t. On the beach, she’d been so carried away in the passion of the moment. Nina groaned inwardly. She couldn’t believe she’d been so careless. But she still wasn’t ready to believe it. A couple signs of … pregnancy didn’t mean this was actually happening.

  Nina cocked a hip and glared at Van. “What are you, the pregnancy police?”

  Van rolled her eyes. “Amy and I went through three rounds of insemination. I’m basically an encyclopedia of pregnancy signs.” Van softened and put her hands on Nina’s shoulders. “It’s fine if you’re scared, but don’t you at least want to know?”

  Nina collapsed onto the toilet seat and pushed her fingers into her hair. “What the hell do I do if I am pregnant? Call up the dude I had a fling with? That’d go super well. ‘So hey! I know you’re a touring musician. But you want to give all that up to come be my baby daddy?’”

  But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Drew had said he loved her; he’d asked her to come with him on tour, build a life with him. At least, he’d said all that before they’d blown up into a fight about shifters.

  If Nina really was pregnant, that meant a little shifter could be growing inside of her right now. The thought nearly made Nina cry with panic.

  Van kneeled before Nina. “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. I’m probably just recognizing the symptoms because I’ve got babies on the brain. But take the test, okay? It’ll only take a minute, then you’ll know.”

  She was right. It was no use pretending otherwise. Nina nodded and took the test out of Van’s hand. Van stood and then stooped to pull Nina into a giant hug.

  “I’ll be right outside the door, okay?”

  With shaking hands, Nina took the test then set the stick on the counter. She cracked the door for Van to come back in, and they stared at the test together. Nina’s heart was in her throat, her knees jelly. She sat heavily onto the edge of the tub and waited.

  What was she going to do if it was positive? How in the hell was she going to tell Drew? Was she going to tell Drew?

  Standing above her, Van suddenly gasped and spun to Nina. Nina bolted to stand, then nearly collapsed again.

  It was positive. She was pregnant. Holy crap, she was pregnant.

  “So about that bridge,” Van whispered. “Nina, what do you want to do?”

  Shaking badly, Nina looked at her best friend. “I have no fucking clue.”

  Nina added more creamer to her decaf coffee and tried to find a comfortable position. She sat at a little corner table in a sunlight-filled coffee shop a few blocks from her loft. All around, impossibly hip people clacked away on their laptops and sipped Americanos. Nina grimaced at her decaf—damn, she missed caffeine—and tried to concentrate on her screen.

  She’d picked up an assignment covering a debut girl group and was trying to find three hundred words of the piece to cut to make her editor happy. But it was a slog. Hell, everything about the last eleven weeks had been a slog.

  She felt like she was dealing with a twin loss—losing Drew eleven weeks ago; realizing she was going to be a single mother seven weeks ago. She still missed Drew like a physical ache, but it’d been subsumed into the larger aches. Some emotional, some physical.

  Nina shifted again in her seat and groaned. Okay, a lot physical. Her body was changing, growing. The morning sickness had subsided in the last week, but her boobs still twinged with pain if she accidentally hit them too hard. And the exhaustion. God, she’d never felt more tired in her life. When Amy was in her first trimester, she’d seem to glow from within, her smiles beatific, her eyes bright. Nina felt dull, scratchy, uncomfortable in her own body like she hadn’t been in years.

  Nina shook her head, pushed her glasses back up her nose, and tried to get back to work. There was no use focusing on the misery. She had a job to do. She wanted to make as much money as she could in the next twenty-eight weeks to provide for her child and leave LA.

  Without realizing, Nina found herself resting a hand on her tummy, sending love through her skin toward her baby. For all the aches and pains and crying, she was overwhelmed with how much she loved this little nugget already. Under her hand, her belly was still small—undetectable to most people—but growing hard as the baby grew. She would officially start her second trimester tomorrow. She, Van, Amy, and their infant daughter, Willow, had planned a nice dinner to celebrate.

  Nina smiled to herself, then went back to work.

  Except, she still couldn’t concentrate. Something felt … off. Frowning, Nina peered around the coffee shop. She felt eyes on her. Call it her seer sense, or maybe she was just paranoid, but someone was watching her. It made the hair on her arms stand and her toes curl.

  But everyone inside the coffee shop was consumed within their own lives. No one looked at her, or even glanced at her. She scanned the sidewalk outside the giant windows, her gaze flitting over shoppers, surfers, women pushing strollers. Beyond them, across the street … she felt the eyes on her grow more intense. There was hatred in that stare. Nina hissed in frustration and squinted. Somewhere in the shadows between two buildings across the sunny street, she could feel the presence.

  A flash of white light, a glint of sun off a lens, and she saw it. Saw him.

  Gavin Rorbach lurked between the buildings, his camera trained on Nina. Nina jerked back and yelped as she recognized her co-worker, and now a hundred more eyes landed on her inside the coffee shop. Nina jumped to her feet, her eyes never leaving Gavin. In the murk, she watched as his own eyes went wide as he apparently realized he was caught. He shoved his camera into his bag and scurried away like a rat.

  Shaking, Nina collapsed back into her chair. Gavin was spying on her. No, it wasn’t that. Gavin Rorbach was stalking her. She could feel it in the malice emanating from him. With trembling fingers, Nina yanked her phone out of her bag, her fingers hovering over the screen. She punched in the first three numbers of Drew’s number, then stopped.

  No. He wasn’t a part of her life anymore. It was just her and this little nugget growing inside of her, and she wasn’t going to let scum like Gavin intimidate them. Nina shoved her laptop into her bag and strode from the coffee shop. She went straight to the LA office of her editor, Rick Wagner.

  Rick frowned as Nina strode into his office. It was a small place—more of a workspace for Rick and the few music journalists on staff based in LA. Nina usually traveled to
New York to meet with the magazine’s managing editors twice a year to talk about longer term projects, but Rick was the editor she’d worked with for years.

  She paced, her hand on her forehead.

  “Nina?”

  Nina spun and faced Rick. He was in his early fifties, but had the trim frame of a man who still surfed at least three times a week. He was wearing a faded Radiohead T-shirt now as he leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow at Nina.

  “Gavin is losing it,” Nina finally blurted.

  Rick’s other eyebrow crawled upward.

  “Rick, he was just across the street from where I was working. He was photographing me. I’m telling you, Rick. The guy is taking a break from reality. I think … I think he wants to hurt me.”

  Rick blew a long breath out of his nose and sat forward, leaning heavily on his elbows. “Is there enough to go to the police? Are you legitimately concerned for your safety?”

  Nina stopped pacing and fell into a seat across from Rick. “I don’t know. He’s always had this weird competition with me.”

  Rick nodded.

  “But this is beyond normal workplace sparring. This is … Rick, it’s unnerving to see a guy with a long-lens pointed at you.”

  Rick steepled his fingers. “Okay, I’ll talk to Gavin. He’s supposed to come in to talk about his progress on a new piece.”

  Nina sighed and realized just how much she was shaking. “Thank you,” she said to Rick.

  “About assignments, though. How’s that profile on Grrlz coming? Layout wants to add a quarter-page sidebar, so you’ll need to cut back by another hundred words.”

  Nina growled. “At this rate, the thing is going to be a hundred words total.”

  Rick paused, took his time surveying Nina. Usually, being under a hard gaze made her sit taller, throw her shoulders back. Now, she wilted.

  “Nina, I won’t bring this up again, but is your heart still in this? You’ve seemed ready to leave for months now. But the last few weeks, it seems like you’ve got one foot out the door and your mind long gone. I don’t know what’s going on, but let me say this: Don’t feel guilty if you’re ready to go. It’s not giving up to change priorities. It just means you’re ready to move on to something new. And knowing you, it’ll be just as epic as your time here.”