RUTHLESS: The Complete Rockstar Romance Series Boxed Set

by Vivian Lux

"I'm Caleb Hawkins," he said, stepping forward and reaching out his hand. "U.S. Army, retired."

  "Thank you for your service," I squeaked.

  Caleb laughed, showing a dimple and rows of straight white teeth. "If you can call it that. I spent my whole deployment in an air-conditioned bunker watching bombs fall on people hundreds of miles away. Kinda like a video game."

  "Oh," I said in a whisper.

  "My boss here thinks I fought hand-to-hand combat, so don't tell him otherwise, okay? It'll be our little secret."

  The corner of Rick's mouth twitched once.

  "Okay," I choked, looking back and forth between the two of them. Authority figures made me nervous.

  Rick stayed stony-faced for the entire duration, but Caleb suddenly burst out laughing. "I'm just playing with you. We just wanted to come over and see that you've got everything you need."

  "Well, I'm fine. You know, I'm just here to write a story about the band. Keir invited me..."

  Caleb held up his hand to ward off my frantic explanations. "We know. We already did your background check, Scarlett. You're cool."

  I let go of the breath I was holding. "Well, thank heavens." I smiled. "I would hate to find out that I've led a completely boring life for nothing."

  Caleb laughed again, and even Rick broke a smile.

  Just then, a shout came up from the front of the house. All three of us turned to see Rane tackle Keir, the two brothers toppling over backwards and slamming into the stage floor.

  "Is anyone going to stop them?" I asked, frantic.

  Both Rick and Caleb had their hands shoved in their pockets. "It's in our contracts to provide their safety from outsiders," Caleb drawled. "Never said nothing about keeping them safe from each other."

  "Don't worry about it, ma'am," Rick said in his clipped, no-nonsense speech. "Doubt they're really trying to hurt each other."

  But from my vantage point, that's exactly what it looked like they were doing. The two brothers, equally matched, grappled wildly, throwing punches that--to my eye, anyway--looked like they were designed to draw blood.

  Rick and Caleb watched impassively, as did the rest of the band. I tapped my foot anxiously, wondering when they were going to stop. I had seen Rane and Keir fight before, of that,there was no question. But it was always friendly grappling, the usual brotherly spars for dominance. This resembled an all-out brawl. And when Rane somehow managed to roll Keir over, straddling his chest and raising his fist high above his head, I screamed before I could stop myself.

  "Stop it!" I shouted across echoing arena. "Stop it, both of you!"

  Both turned their heads to stare at me. The sight of Keir's lip, split and bleeding, made me gasp in horror, and then I was angry.

  "Get over it!" I called, charging down the center aisle. "Whatever it is you guys are messing around about,just let it go." My voice sounded much stronger than I felt.

  I reached the gate that separated general admission from the stage and leaned over. A trickle of blood was oozing out of a split above Keir's eyebrow, and Rane wiped a smear of blood from his lip up his cheek.

  Then, to my eternal surprise, Rane grinned. "You're right, Scarlett," he called, louder than he needed to be. "What's done is done."

  Those were the first words he had spoken to me in five years, but for some reason, it felt like the continuation of a conversation we had only put a pause on.

  It felt right to pick it back up again.

  I smiled at him. He didn't smile back.

  But Keir's smile was wide enough for both of them. "You got it, Scarlett," he said, crawling out from under his brother and staggering upright.

  He planted his feet and smiled again. "Thanks for talking some sense into him."

  "You guys wouldn't know sense if it smacked you in the face," I scolded. "It's true, and you know it."

  "And you know it, too." He nodded. "No one knows more than you."

  I bit my lip and turned away from the look in his eyes. The look he used to give me from across the room. The one he used to let me know that he was focused only on me. I remembered that look. I loved that look. To have him give it to me now was bringing up something I wasn't expecting.

  I wasn't expecting to feel so relieved.

  ****

  That night, I stood in the VIP section, watching with my mouth hanging open. All around, girls as young as twelve cheered next to women as old as fifty, every single one of them crying out for the man I had once called mine. The push-pull of jealousy, resentment, and old love that never really truly died made it difficult to concentrate on the words he was singing. But I watched. That's what I did. I watched Keir bring down the house, shimmying like Mick Jagger and then headbanging like David Lee Roth, creeping under the mic like Steven Tyler to growl like Eddie Vedder. He was everyone who had come before him made better.

  When the last throb of the encore passed through me, I shivered down to the soles of my feet. The beer I had guzzled to work up the nerve to watch him buzzed through my veins. I felt high. I felt alive. I felt like I needed to tell him how high and alive I felt.

  Caleb nodded to me and stepped aside, letting me backstage before I could think about what I was doing. I didn't know what I was doing. I just wanted to see him. He was this giant on stage, but I needed to remind myself that he was Keir. The Keir that used to be mine. I just wanted to touch him, feel him solid under my fingers.

  See if he felt the same.

  Chapter 17

  Keir

  There was no greater rush than the rush of performing. If you sat me down, put a gun to my head and told me to pick my poison...well, I'd choose Bourbon first. But it would be one hell of a choice.

  The rush of starting a tour, that was a different thing entirely. All of the work, all of the planning, all of the backups and contingencies and last-minute decisions seemed to come together in a perfect swirl of accomplishment. For a person like me, the kind that likes to see a plan come together, touring was like heroin.

  So that was my excuse. I was high as fuck.

  Scarlett came dancing up to me, eyes shining unnaturally bright. I grabbed a towel from Glenn, my tech, and wiped the sweat away from my face. When I pulled the towel away, she was close. So fucking close.

  "Keir!" She lifted her arms as if to hug me, catching herself at the very last moment and bringing them together in front of her chest in clumsy applause. "Keir, Oh my God, you guys are good. You guys are so fucking good!"

  "I'll tell you what's good," I growled.

  This was not how I wanted to do it. On the bus, I had been thinking of her, coming up with a plan, dreaming up ways to fix this and bring her back into my life again.

  This was most definitely not according to my plan.

  But kissing her, right here, right now, seemed like something that would kill me if I didn't do. Like an addict jonesing for the next high, I moved from the rush of performing to the rush of pressing my lips against hers.

  I was rough, too rough. The noise she made, maybe it was protest, but I'll say this--she did not pull away. Not as I moved my lips against hers, parting them with a rough stab of my tongue so that I could taste her, taste her as deeply as I had tasted her when we were young.

  She tasted exactly the same.

  That was the real high here. The high of having her, her body against mine. I swear it was muscle memory, kissing her, touching her, moving my lips down, down, down that long neck, licking and grazing the pulse point that beat rapidly under my lips. "Stop," she said, only once, and I did. I did what she asked, but then she undulated her body so that her breasts brushed my chest, and when I kissed her again, she didn't protest anymore.

  Maybe I would have kissed her forever. There in the subterranean warren of passages that ran under the stage, I would spend the rest of my life with Scarlett Sawyer backed up against a wall, held immobile by my hands while I poured out five long years of turmoil into kissing every inch of her exposed skin. I would have, I know this.

  But my bro
ther had impeccable fucking timing.

  It was Scarlett who noticed him first, placing her hand in the center of my chest to push me away from her. I pulled back, a little angry, then I saw where she was looking.

  "You know," Rane said, flicking his fingers casually like we were all just chilling, "I've had some pretty bad ideas in my life. But this?" He flicked his fingers again to point directly at Scarlett. "This is the worst idea I've ever seen."

  And then before we could respond, he turned on his heel and stomped down the hallway to the green room.

  "You shouldn't have done that," Scarlett hissed.

  "Well, you didn't exactly stop me," I shot back.

  "I did! I did say stop."

  "And then started kissing me again," I pointed out.

  Even in the low light of the hallway, I could still see the pink in her cheeks. She was pissed, really pissed. But I liked to think I knew her well enough that I could tell she was pissed at herself as much a she was at me.

  "Keir..." she began.

  I stepped back further. "Spare me the lecture."

  "We should just... Let's be smart, okay?"

  I had to laugh. "Honey, whatever it is we are to each other, it is definitely not smart."

  Chapter 18

  Scarlett

  Old feelings. The kind that stick around, building up in your muscles like lactic acid after a run. What was left of the love I once had was still there.

  That's why I kissed him.

  That's what I was telling myself.

  He shouldn't have kissed me.

  I was telling myself that too.

  From Phoenix,we rolled out, on the road again. When I moved out to the West Coast, it was by air, the great expanse of land underneath me like a carpet. Back then, I was like a giant striding across the earth, taking no notice of my surroundings. Now, I was down at ground level, and every little feature and change in the landscape fascinated me.

  So I stared out the window, watching the desert, instead of feeling the old feelings that still remained.

  And I was doing a pretty good job of things until Keir came up to the front of the bus and sat down.

  "Are we going to talk about what happened last night?"

  I looked at him. "I hadn't planned on it, no."

  "Are we going to talk at all?" he asked.

  "What do you want to talk about?" I hedged.

  He exhaled. "I had a question for you."

  My body stiffened and turned to stone while my mind flailed about like a drowning person. "Okay," I squeaked.

  He sat back in the captain's chair, completely at ease. "Where's your laptop?"

  "What?"

  He gestured to the notebook in my hand. It was filled with my odd shorthand, scribbles and drafts. "Every interviewer I've ever encountered has had a laptop in front of them constantly. I swear, some of them I couldn't even tell you what they looked like because their whole face was just this bright green reflection."

  I felt myself start smiling. "No, not me." I shook my head. "Do you remember Mrs. Soule? From the library?"

  He cocked his head in confusion. "Scar, the only time I ever went to the library was with you."

  I smiled. "So you remember her, then. She gave the research workshops I did after school after my mom took me off the track team."

  His eyes went wide. "That ancient lady?" he asked.

  I nodded. "I have her to thank for teaching me shorthand."

  "And here I hated her for wasting my precious girlfriend time," he mused.

  I shook my head vehemently. "She was amazing. She knew that writers wouldn't always have their crutches available. You need to be able to get down your thoughts, fast and accurately, without relying on technology. It's not like you can drag a laptop out on a battlefield, or on location in a warehouse. Plus, I like to be able to look at my subject's face instead of at my screen."

  Keir leaned forward. "And how do you feel about looking at my face?"

  I opened my mouth, and a little sound came out, and then I closed it, pressing my lips together. "I'm supposed to be the one asking the questions, aren't I? Isn't that why I'm here?"

  "Quid pro quo?" he asked. "One of mine, for one of yours?"

  "Like Silence of the Lambs?"

  He narrowed his eyes. "Quid pro quo, Clarice," he said in a dead-on Hannibal Lector impression.

  "That movie terrified me!" I cried.

  "I only showed it to you so that you would bury your face in my shoulder," he confessed.

  I felt myself blush. "I know. I only agreed to watch it so I could bury my face in your shoulder."

  His eyes flashed. "Tell me more."

  I closed my hand tightly around my pen. "Did you expect success to come so quickly?" I said crisply, pen poised.

  The light left his eyes and he sat back. "Depends on your definition of success," he said, steepling his fingers under his chin.

  I bit my lip. I had this feeling of being drawn in to him, like a powerful current. I could fight it, or I could give up and float. "How do you define success?" I asked. Because he wanted me to.

  "Love," he said. "A wife, some kids."

  My heart hammered so loudly in my ears that I nearly missed the rest of what he was saying. My pen stopped moving, dragging a long, jagged line across the page.

  Keir was still talking, almost dreamily. His eyes were closed, the heavy black line of his lashes casting a shadow on the curve of his cheekbones. He looked tired. "Time to make music, if I wanted, and the ability to walk away from it all if that's what I wanted instead. If something was important enough to me."

  I couldn't get a deep enough breath. The current was pulling me closer and closer to the jagged shoreline. I would break if I didn't start swimming right now.

  "Were you worried you wouldn't be able to replicate the success of the first album?" I practically barked at him.

  Keir's eyes fluttered open like I had woken him from a sweet dream. He cleared his throat. "Rane wasn't. I was."

  "You are the worrier." I nodded, scribbling in the margins of the page.

  "I guess so. I worry about the things I love."

  "And that hasn't changed now that you have nothing to worry about?"

  "Who said I had nothing to worry about?"

  "You answered a question with a question."

  "You've asked me like fifty billion in the last five minutes. I haven't asked you a single one yet."

  "Okay, fine, ask me something easy," I said lightly, chewing mindlessly on my pen cap.

  He leaned forward. "When I kissed you, did you like it?"

  I stopped chewing and gaped at him.

  His mouth curved into a crooked smile. "Simple yes or no question."

  My tongue twisted in my mouth, nearly choking me. I hated my hesitation. I hated my hedging, my constant second-guessing. I hated how afraid I was, how rigid and imperious I was when there was no need to be. I didn't want to be this person anymore.

  "Yes," I whispered.

  The eager light in his eyes frightened me because it reflected my own emotions exactly. The hesitation, the wary fright I dismissed only a second ago, came back with a vengeance. "But we can't do it again!" I scolded. His face fell, making me spiral back down into apologies. "I'm sorry, it's just that I'm getting out of a bad thing right now and I'm not looking to start something new."

  He stood up suddenly. "It wouldn't be something new, Scarlett. It would be with me."

  Chapter 19

  Keir

  America is a big fucking country. You know this, on some subatomic level. But once you get out on the road, putting mile after mile behind you, then you truly see how massive it is.

  Massive and ever-changing. Phoenix was five hours from Los Angeles, but a whole different planet. The rains that had followed us out of California had caught up overnight, soaking the desert and unleashing the smell of creosote.

  Even the diesel assault of the truck stop couldn't hide that strange smell that hung in the air. When I had
packed up my belongings into two duffel bags and hit the road from Buffalo to LA, that smell was what really impressed the hugeness of this country upon me. I'd never smelled anything like it before. The strange smells, the alien colors of the desert, all browns and tans, completely foreign to my East Coast eyes. The earth, normally cracked and solidified from lack of water, seemed to radiate the smell from its very essence. Fresh, clean, earthy--it smelled like rain... It smelled like life, it smelled like a new fucking start for a twenty-one-year-old who had just gathered up the pieces of his broken heart.

  Later on, as I browsed around, Googling, trying to figure out what that alien smell was, I found out the Spanish explorers had named the creosote bush "Hediondilla," which literally meant "little stinker." I guess it didn't mean the same thing to everyone.

  I inhaled deeply as I strode around the rest stop, smelling the smell of new beginnings even as I licked old wounds. That talk with Scarlett had me all jumbled, and I didn't want to think about it anymore. Breaking out into a stupid little jog, I tried to focus on the landscape around me. The whole reason we chose to make this tour by bus was to see the fucking country, and here I was, barely conscious of where I was.

  Here on the side of the highway, inhaling the scent of starting over. I resolved to do now what I couldn't do back then. Start over again for real. Holding on to the past was hurting Scarlett just as much as it was hurting me. Whatever expectations I had were clearly wrong. She was a new person, and I had a new life; how did I think we'd fit together again?

  It was pathetic, really.

  I could be civil. I could be a gentleman. I could let it all go.

  As I watched our driver for this leg fill the tanks on the tour bus, I made a solemn resolution. I was going to leave Scarlett alone. That was the only way I could fix this.

  Once I came up with a plan, I never failed to put it into action. I wondered if Scarlett or my brother noticed the change in me as I slid into the rhythm of touring like a well-worn pair of blue jeans. Tearing the roof off of stadiums and arenas every evening, then falling asleep to the gentle sway of the bus as it transported us to the next night.