Cam swatted her fine, fine ass. “You really do understand musicians.”
“Yes, I do. Enough to know not to ask how many times you’ve been up here, too.” The door slammed behind them. Kylie plucked her tank away from her body. “Ugh. I need a pop. Served over a bucket of ice. Do you want anything?”
“I’ll get it for you. I need to grab a T-shirt from the concession stand.”
“Really? You didn’t sweat that much.”
“Not for me. For Deondra.” Cam wasn’t sure if he was more embarrassed to admit how he’d spiraled Riptide into shit with Triangulation, or this. Good thing they were on the stairs and Kylie couldn’t give him one of those soulful looks. “I want her to feel like she’s still a part of Riptide, part of the tour. I’m sending her shirts from every club we play.”
“That’s…that’s really cool.” Her tone was overflowing with admiration. Like he’d offered to pay for Deondra to recuperate from surgery in a Caribbean villa. Cam had messed up enough with his team. He didn’t want a damn medal when he did something right.
“No big deal. Just a handful of cotton.”
“You’re a really good guy, Cam Watson.”
Nah. But the redhead in front of him was better than good. She made him feel more genuinely appreciated, more understood, than anyone had….well, ever. Aside from that whole leaving him blue-balled in the bus episode. But what she’d just done for him was way better than any blow job would’ve been. Cam needed to let her know. “You’re not so bad yourself, Kylie. I might have to write a song about you.”
She froze, mid-step. Cranked the upper half of her torso around to goggle at him. “Seriously? You’d write a song about me?”
“You’ve seen me naked. Made love with me. And a sheet of lyrics and notes is what puts this look of awe on your face?”
“Yes. For now.” She drilled her fingers playfully into his belly. “Maybe next time we do it, you’ll up your game.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Why are you talking to me from a bathroom?” asked Amanda from the screen of Kylie’s iPad. “Did you get food poisoning in Madison? Eat too many cheese curds? ’Cause even though I love you, if you’re about to hurl, please sign off first. I don’t need to see or hear that.”
Kylie swung her legs up on the sink. It didn’t make her perch comfortable, but at least she could lean back against the paper towel dispenser. “Uh, who held your hair back less than a month ago at the GreekFest Beach Blowout? After you violated the well-known rhyme ‘wine then liquor, never sicker’?”
“You’re a better person than me. But bathrooms are, well, icky.” Amanda pinched her nose shut and fanned the air. The air she in no way could smell from one hundred and fifty miles away. “Can’t you go somewhere else?”
If only. Kylie wasn’t exactly thrilled about the location herself. She was the one with a soap dispenser digging into her hip, for crying out loud! “There’s no privacy. Anywhere. Not when you live on a bus. This is the only way I can tell you all my secrets.”
“You’ve been gone a week. How do you have secrets already?”
Only a week? How come she felt like she’d known Cam for so much longer than that? As if she’d crammed more living into one week than in her entire four years at Northwestern? “Just one secret. But it’s a doozy.”
“You got to do shots with the guys in Riptide?” guessed Amanda.
“No.” Kylie thought back to the boot-shaped beer glasses they’d chugged back at Essen-Haus until closing after last night’s concert. “I mean, yes, but that’s not the secret.”
“How cool was that? Did they do shots of tequila, like all the fan websites claim? Or was it whiskey?”
A giggle popped out before Kylie could stifle it. “Cake batter-flavored vodka, actually.”
Amanda’s jaw dropped. “That’s so girlie!”
“They did it as a favor to me. I turned down all the hard stuff, but Jones insisted on finding a way to include me in a toast. They’re all really sweet. Hot, each a little crazy in their own way, but sweet.”
Flopping onto the coral futon that used to live in their dorm room, Amanda asked, “Who’s your favorite? Remember on pledge night when we ranked them in order that we wanted to sleep with them? Is Cam still number one for you?”
“That’s the thing.” Even though she knew she was alone, Kylie’s gaze darted to the bathroom door. She’d been dying to tell the big news, but hadn’t been able to find the privacy to share. No way could she have had this conversation in her bunk with Cam just a curtain away. She propped the iPad against her knees and leaned in close, hands cupping her mouth. “I did it.”
“What? Re-ranked them?”
“No. I did Cam.”
The picture skewed sideways, followed by a muffled thud that Kylie interpreted as Amanda’s iPad falling to the floor. A moment later, Amanda followed it to the carpet. “Omigod. Omigod!” she screeched.
“Shhh. Keep it down. Remember, I’m in a bathroom. It’s echo-y.”
Propped on her elbows, Amanda scowled at the camera. “Don’t toy with me, Kylie. There’s no joking about something as awesome as sleeping with a celebrity.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Swear it on our sisterhood in Gamma Delta Phi.”
Kylie rolled her eyes. She enjoyed her time in the sorority, but was ready to move on. Getting Amanda to let go of all things pink and brown would probably be a bit tougher. “I think there’s probably a bylaw about not using the bonds of sisterhood for sex-swearing.”
“You really slept with a famous rocker?”
“Not because he’s famous.”
“Right.” Amanda snorted. Which was not at all cute with how close she was to the screen. “Cam Watson being rich, famous and the hottest hunk you’ve ever met in person had nothing to do with it.”
“The hotness was a factor,” she admitted. Impossible to deny the obvious. However, it was also like saying Kylie scored a 2150 on the SAT simply because she’d answered question number seventeen correctly. “But I didn’t set out to sleep with the first rich and famous rock star I could get my hands on. I did it with Cam. He’s the one that I wanted. With or without all that other stuff.”
“Omigod. Omigod! Are you guys dating? Have you fallen for him? Is it serious?”
Kylie put a finger to her lips. “Whoa. Seriously. This is all very secret. Super secret. The rest of his band can’t find out. Nobody can find out.”
“Why not? Cam Watson would be lucky to snare you.”
“Thanks. But he…” Kylie trailed off. Cam’s confession was beyond personal. She trusted Amanda with her life. She just couldn’t risk sharing Cam’s secret with her BFF. It was his story to tell, and his alone. “Some bad things went down with a woman he dated. Riptide as a whole got caught in the crossfire. Jake and Jones don’t want him mixing business with dating.”
“So you’re sneaking around? Having secret trysts?” Amanda fanned herself and blew out a long breath. “That’s super hot.”
“It kind of is.” Who was she kidding? Part of her adored the excitement. The danger. The utter wrongness of being with Cam. Of having to hide in a bathroom to even talk about how much she liked him. “And it kind of isn’t. Because this isn’t just a hookup. I like him.”
“How much?”
It was stupid. It’d never work out between them. Despite that, there was only one possible answer. Kylie sighed. “I’m really falling for him. You only know Cam the rock star. I’ve gotten to know Cam as this ultraresponsible guy. He’s racked with guilt over one mistake. Doing everything he can to make up for it.”
“A tortured rock star? That’s even hotter!”
True. But the sexy cliché was far from the total of why Kylie had fallen for him. “Cam pretends to be all laid-back, and yet somehow manages to be in charge of everything at once. To pay attention to everything at once. He is the driving force that powers Riptide, that keeps them going.” Not always in the right direction, but going forward nonethele
ss.
“He does sound amazing. So amazing, in fact, that now I’m forced to ask if I should keep apartment hunting for you.”
Kylie blinked against the harsh glare of the fluorescents. “Um, well…I mean…” It had only been a week. There was supposed to be an entire month of misbehaving and adventures before real life smacked her in the face again. An entire month of being with Cam. Then what? Her job would be over. There’d be no excuse to hang out with him, no way to explain an accidental meeting in someplace like Billings, Montana. Doing Cam—and doing the opposite of whatever was right—had a very final expiration date. “Yes, of course you should keep looking.”
It was the responsible answer. It was the right answer. Which made Kylie realize it was time for a one-eighty in her behavior.
“I want to make a bad decision,” Kylie announced.
Cam practically choked on his breakfast—okay, brunch, seeing as how it was almost noon on Monday—quesadilla. The last time she’d announced that, they’d had sex on a picnic bench at the edge of Lake Mendota. Time before that, she’d given him a blow job hidden in the velvet folds of a stage curtain. So, yeah. His dick had a Pavlovian reaction of immediately hardening when Cam heard those words.
Except this time they weren’t alone. This time they were on the other bus, chowing down with the entire Riptide crew. Was she trying to give him a heart attack? Finally had enough of sneaking around and wanted to out their relationship?
Jones slid a bottle of water down the table to him. “Come sit on my lap. Then we can discuss if you think it’s a bad decision or a good one.”
“You’re such a dirty flirt,” Kylie said approvingly. “But no, thanks. You see, I never regret sex. I want to do something far more questionable.”
Kyoko sniffed. Gave her a once-over. “You’re the poster child for straight-laced, well-bred goodness. Your bra probably matches your panties. What would a questionable choice be for you—crossing the street without looking both ways?”
Her doubt was understandable. Kylie, with all her sweetness, had quickly become part of the team. That included all of them teasing her. Kyoko wore only black leather. Winter, summer, didn’t matter. She had seven piercings—only four of which Cam had ever seen—innumerable tattoos and read obituaries to cheer herself up. Kylie couldn’t be more opposite from their driver.
Except when they were in bed. Or on a bench. Or tangled up in stage curtains. When they had sex, Kylie was game for everything Cam wanted to do. The dichotomy of her sweetness meshed with her willingness to get down and dirty turned him on more than ever before. He couldn’t get enough of her—naked or dressed.
“You don’t think I’ve got an edge.” There was a note of challenge in Kylie’s voice.
Grabbing the salsa, Kyoko dumped it liberally onto her quesadilla. “You’re about as edgy as a marble.”
“Then you won’t object to helping me?”
Jones dropped to his knees, put his hands together and looked up at the ceiling. “There is a God. And he has finally delivered girl-on-girl action straight to our tour bus. My prayers have been answered.”
“Damn it, Jones, one of these days you’re going to get us slapped with a lawsuit.” Jake bent at the waist in a half bow. “My apologies to the ladies. We’ve tried to train him. He knows what he says is wrong. He just doesn’t care.”
After thoroughly chewing and carefully swallowing, Cam cleared his throat. “Kylie, what did you have in mind?”
“I want a tattoo.”
Cam almost groaned. The perfect woman had just gone up one more notch in perfection. Tattoos were hot. God, he’d give just about anything to push their plates aside and take her right here on the table. Where would Kylie have it done? On the back of her neck? When he kissed her there, she shivered. He could imagine tracing dark ink with his tongue to make her tremble.
“That’s not wrong.” Kyoko lifted her mug of coffee in a toast. “And it’s only a bad decision if you get something lame like a bee on your ankle.”
“Don’t worry. It isn’t a bee. Also not a dragonfly, or a rose, or a rainbow, or anything else that would make you keep frowning at me like that.”
Kyoko morphed her scowl into a single arched eyebrow. “You’ve decided already?”
“I think so. I want this.” She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and laid it in the middle of the table. Everyone half-rose to lean over and take a look. Kyoko was the first to sit down, with a groan.
“A heart? Seriously? That’s worse than a bee.”
“It isn’t just a heart.” Cam traced the shape with his finger. The heart was formed by joining two musical symbols: one side a bass clef, the other a treble clef. Still, definitely on the girlie side, but clever. Just like Kylie.
“You can’t have music without love,” she explained. “Either you’re wishing for it, or regretting it, or remembering it. Love and music are enmeshed in each other.”
Her words resonated deep within him. Then they kick-started his creative juices like a roundhouse to his brain. Cam jumped up to move to the desk. As he started to scribble down exactly what Kylie’d said, Jake appeared at his side. “You got that?”
“Almost.” Yeah, they were always in sync when it came to lyrics. The two of them could fight for three days straight over one chord, but it was like they shared the same brain with lyrics.
“What’s going on?” asked Kylie as she joined them.
“We’re writing a song.” With her words down on paper, new ones were flowing from him as fast as he could scrawl them out.
Some people wish for love. Some people hide from it.
Some remember it with a smile,
Some regret how it all went to shit.
“That’s it.” Jake high-fived him. “That’s the chorus.”
“I’ll go get your guitar from the other bus, Cam.” Jones was out the door in a flash. Jake grabbed his keyboard off the couch and pulled a chair alongside the desk. With a long-suffering sigh, Kyoko cleared the table of their still-half-full plates. She knew the drill.
Tapping her nails on the desk, Kylie said, “You’re doing this right now? In the middle of brunch?” Her cute little nose wrinkled in disapproval. “What about my tattoo?”
Cam had to remind himself not to be irritated at the frustration in her tone. This was Kylie’s first road experience. She might understand music, might think she understood what drove musicians, but she’d never lived in the creative cauldron that was a tour bus. When inspiration struck, everything else took a backseat.
He’d give her a pass, this one time. So Cam patted her hand. Shot her a grateful smile. “Because of your tattoo. How you just described it to us.”
“It’s the core,” Jake added, fingers already moving restlessly across the keys. Must have a melody coming together inside him. “We can build a whole song around it.” He gave her an approving nod.
“Really?” Kylie lit up, like a firecracker had gone off in her heart. Her cheeks got as red as the tank top she wore. The one that didn’t hide at all the way her nipples puckered right through her bra. The salsa on his quesadilla hadn’t been the only thing hot at the breakfast table.
“Definitely.” More than anything, Cam wanted to pull her onto his lap. Kiss her senseless to thank her for being his muse. God, it was as hard to keep his hands off of her as it was to stop writing. Instead, all he could do was offer up a lame compliment. “You were the perfect inspiration.”
“Then my work here is done.”
A clatter as the rest of the dishes got piled in the sink. “I’m out of here. I don’t need to listen to you guys bang out notes that don’t fit for three hours. Text if you need me.” Kyoko slammed her way out of the bus. She had zero patience for anything but the finished product. And they had zero patience for her sighs and groans at the often discordant sounds that it took to write a song. Better for everyone that she hit the movies.
“Is it okay if I stay and watch?” Kylie had perched on the edge of the couch,
hands tucked beneath her thighs as if it was the only way to keep from reaching out. Cam knew the feeling. “I’d love to see your process firsthand. I’ll be quiet, I promise.”
“You can stay,” announced Jones as he re-entered, carrying an acoustic guitar in one hand and an electric guitar in the other. “If they get stuck, they might need your brilliance around to flesh it out.”
“Especially since Cam’s been known to show questionable taste in new songs.”
Jake’s dig was about as subtle as a wrecking ball to the head. All three of them loved the new music. But Jake kept taking shots at him about Triangulation. It was getting old. On the other hand, everything about the way he’d handled that album rolled up into the worst decision-making of his life, so it wasn’t like he had a leg to stand on.
Cam shoved a sheet of paper at Jake and started on a second one. He was in a groove now. They wouldn’t need any help finishing it. But, yeah, he did want Kylie to stay. In fact, he was starting to think he wanted her to stay with them for a whole lot longer.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Kylie stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. Rolled a shoulder beneath the ruffled strap of her black tank. Flashed the inside of her wrist. Looked down at her bare ankle, sporting six new mosquito bites. She’d known Minnesota was famous for big and voracious mosquitos, but it was also known for cheese curds, and she’d take cheese over bugs any day. Turning sideways, Kylie tugged down the waist of her shorts to reveal her hip bone.
“If you’re trying to decide which part of you is the sexiest, do I get a vote?” Cam’s voice curled around her a moment before his hands bracketed her against the sink.
“No.” She reconsidered, scratched her itchy ankle and then clarified. “No, that’s not what I’m deciding, but I would like to hear your thoughts.”
The Opposite Of Right (Bad Decisions Trilogy #1) Page 6