by Vivian Lux
How much I missed him.
How much I loved him. All this time.
That night, that band played the show as planned. And the reviews hailed it as one of the best they had ever done. I read through them later, taking note of all the mentions of the tightness of their set, the raucous energy of their playing. Because that was all lost on me in the moment. Because that night, I only had eyes for Keir.
Chapter 27
Keir
"Keir?"
"Hmm?"
I heard a laugh, then felt a hand brush down my shoulder, and suddenly I remembered everything.
"Keir?"
I opened my eyes, and there she was. Scarlett. In my bed. Her eyes shining, her lips still pink and bruised from my kisses.
My kisses.
Mine.
She was too beautiful for words. I felt myself smiling, just grinning like an idiot as I flashed back to what we did last night, what we said, what we promised...
"Keir," she said softly. "We really need to get up."
"No," I protested, reaching out and pulling her close. She giggled, then gave a little sigh of surrender, fitting her naked body against mine so that every square inch of our skin was touching. I brushed my lips against her shoulder and closed my eyes, ready to never let her go again.
"We should really get up," she repeated, her voice muffled by my elbow.
"I'm not getting up," I muttered into her shoulder.
"No? What about the tour?"
"Fuck the tour," I grunted.
"You are just going to stay here in bed?" she teased.
"Long as you're here with me, there's no place I'd rather be."
She turned her head and kissed my jaw at an awkward angle. "I don't think I want to leave, either," she mused. She stretched herself out to her full length, her legs stiff, arms overhead, and yawned. "I'm kind of afraid of leaving, to be honest."
I closed my eyes. Of all the mysteries that had been revisited by falling for Scarlett again, at least this I understood. She was afraid, just like I was, that if we got up from bed, the spell would be broken. Whatever truths we had come to would fall apart and we'd lose... It. This. The magnetic connection that held us together would slip its polarity and drive us apart once again.
"Then fuck it," I told her. "We'll order room service, reschedule the show in Charleston. It's not a big deal." I slid my hand down her torso to cup that wonderfully warm place between her legs. "This," I said, brushing my fingers into the soft folds, "this is a hell of a lot more important to me."
She moaned and arched into my hand, but as she did, her stomach let loose with a low, rumbling growl.
We both froze, me startled, her embarrassed.
Then she started to laugh.
"You're going to have to leave this bed eventually," she said. "Unless you plan on starving."
I was already sliding under the covers. "Well," I grinned up at her, spreading her legs, "at least I know what I want to eat."
She was giggling and gasping, her protests already dying away when the knock sounded at the door.
She stiffened and yanked the covers up to her chin, trapping me underneath. "If that's your brother..."
"Scar, I'm suffocating."
"Shit, sorry."
I struggled up to the head of the bed and shot a look over at the alarm clock on the bedside table. "I guarantee you it's not my brother. Rane hasn't seen this hour since high school, and honestly, he wasn't really awake even then."
The knock sounded again. "Fuck off!" I encouraged them.
"Mr. Wilder?"
I heaved a sigh.
"Who's that?" Scarlett yelped.
"Caleb?" I called.
"Yes, sir," came the reply.
Swearing and cursing profusely, I yanked the sheet off the squealing Scarlett and wrapped it around my waist. She scurried towards the bathroom. Then I opened the door to see my head of security smiling broadly. "This had better be good," I growled.
His eyes went briefly to the closing bathroom door. He smiled even wider.
"Sir," he said, barely suppressing his laughter. "Rick wanted me to let you know that we are changing up the order of the rotation today. Because of the hurricane warning, we had some guys working double. They need to be relieved."
"Sure, sure, fine," I said. I paused. Waited. "Is that all?"
"That's it," Caleb said, standing straighter.
Sneaky motherfucker. I bet he had a wager going with the rest of the security detail. There would be money changing hands as soon as he reported back.
Whatever. I didn't give a fuck. "Okay, thanks then. Oh, and Caleb?"
"Yes, Mr. Wilder?"
I gave a fuck about one thing, though. "If you so much as breathe a word about this to my brother, I'm firing your ass so hard you won't know what hit you."
"Tell your brother about what, sir?" he said with the biggest shit-eating grin I'd ever seen.
I rolled my eyes.
Caleb's visit broke the spell of the hotel room. I couldn't keep pretending the outside world and all its demands didn't exist. Craft services would be setting up the table in one of the private banquet rooms now. We'd be expected.
Scarlett had the brilliant idea of going down at separate times. "I'll just grab my workout clothes, try to make it look like I was going for a run something." She swiftly kissed my cheek. "See you soon," she said, smiling, then rushing down the hall.
I took a minute to appreciate her retreating form, then yanked my mind back to reality.
Heading down to the lobby, I tried to find something, anything, that would distract me from her.
Luckily, distraction came in the form of Twitch dressed in a red hoodie and a pair of gigantic, oversized women's sunglasses. They looked like something his sister would wear.
"Hey, man," he mumbled. Then he slouched over to the table that groaned with pastries and picked up a Danish, nibbled it, winced, then set it back down again.
My brother slumped over a mug of coffee like he was trying to read his fortune in the grounds. I punched him hello. "What happened to Twitch?" I asked. "Shades aren't usually his go-to look."
Rane sat back and rubbed his jaw, looking simultaneously sheepish and delighted. "You missed a hell of a party last night, little brother."
No, I didn't, I said to myself.
All at once, I knew Scarlett had come down, even though I couldn't see her yet. It was like all of the atoms in my body reorganized themselves to point in her direction.
She was trying to stay out of sight. She was probably afraid of the same thing I feared.
That we'd tear each other's clothes off the second we made eye contact.
How many times had we fucked last night? Fucked, had sex, made love--we did all three, over and over again. Every time I felt spent, I would look at her naked body entwined in the hotel sheets and get hard for her all over again.
Leaving that hotel room was the hardest thing I had ever done.
Acting like I was interested in Rane's story was the second. I widened my eyes and prayed that someone would hand me coffee soon.
"We ran out of liquor sometime around three," Rane explained as he grabbed a Danish and stuffed it in his mouth. "Twitch got the bright idea that the new bus driver, Steve, would share with us."
I shuddered. Steve had driven for all of the huge bands back in the 80s and 90s and wasn't one to suffer rock 'n' roll madness lightly. "Take it that didn't go very well?"
"Well, I wasn't there, but I sure as hell heard it. Twitch was hammering on his door, yelling like some kind of drunk-ass kindergartner for Steve to share." Rane's voice inched up about an octave. "Come on, man, open the door," he whined in a pretty good imitation of Twitch's drunken voice. "You gotta share, man. You gotta share!"
I caught a whiff of Scarlett's shampoo and struggled to keep focus. "I take it Steve didn't share?"
"When he finally opened the door, I don't think he said a fucking word. I didn't hear anything, anyway. Just heard the do
or creak and the sound of something going crunch."
I winced. "Twitch's face?"
"You got it. Hence the Marilyn-Monroe-shades indoors thing he's got going on."
I shot a look over my shoulder to Twitch, who sank lower in his chair and pulled his hoodie up over his head. Rane's laughter filled the banquet room, and I silently thanked our lanky drummer for his idiocy because Rane never once asked where I'd spent the night.
Chapter 28
Scarlett
As I sat in the wings of the stage that night in Charleston, I found myself hoping for the first time that they'd hurry up. As one encore became two, and then three, I fidgeted in my chair and checked my phone every thirty seconds or so, and I couldn't figure out why, until Keir, shirtless and glistening in the bright stage lights, finally glanced in my direction and shot me a smile.
I sat up straight and smiled back, blowing him a kiss that made him grin even wider.
He's mine. Even though he's performing for everyone else, he belongs to me.
I sat back and finally started enjoying the show, only moments before it ended.
The applause was thunderous. Keir waved to the crowd, then jogged off the stage, grabbed a towel from his tech and practically sprinted to my side.
I shivered as he brought his lips to my ear. The noise of the crowd made it impossible to speak normally, but he and I both knew the real reason he was murmuring in my ear. "You remember what happens now?"
I nodded, shivering again. He told me right before going onstage. My earlobe still burned where his lips had brushed it as he spoke.
The second I get off this stage tonight, I am taking you backstage and making you scream so loud they'll hear you in the parking lot. That's a promise.
"I keep my promises, don't I?
I swallowed. He didn't mean it like that, I tried to tell myself. He's not talking about the day you didn't keep yours. He's not thinking about how you weren't there that afternoon. Stop thinking about it.
But guilt fluttered in my belly all the same.
If I told him...anything...about why I did what I did, he'd want to fix it. That's who he was. That's what he did.
But the problem was, there was so much that was beyond fixing.
Maybe even me.
If I told him, if I so much as hinted at anything--Kevin, my job, or even our shared past--he would want to talk. He would make me talk, teasing all of my secrets out of me. He'd stare directly into my eyes, laying my soul bare with bursts of temper smoothed over with kind words.
And I would crumple and tell him. I knew I would, because the words, the pleas for his help and his understanding, were right there on my lips. They were right on the edge of being spoken every second I spent with him.
One moment of weakness would be all it took to shatter this brilliant bubble we were floating in, the one where we were different people, normal people, people who were just having fun.
So I said nothing about the guilt that coiled like a snake deep down in my gut. I didn't give in to the desperate urge to unburden myself and beg for his forgiveness.
Instead, I nodded and kissed him. "You always do keep your promises," I whispered.
Because it was true. He kept his promises. And he sure as fuck kept this one. In the dark of the winding halls backstage, he made me come with his fingers, rough and skilled. Then he made me come again with his tongue, the concrete wall scratching my back as I writhed and moaned. Then he made me come as he fucked me against the wall, pressed up against me so that he was the whole world, the only thing I could cling to, to keep from falling.
And when I screamed so loud it echoed, he said it again. "I always keep my promises, Scar. And I promise...I promise..."
His promise was strangled with a harsh cry as he came. He never said it out loud, but then he really didn't need to. I believed it anyway.
*****
"So, I stole this from backstage..."
I blinked rapidly, coming back down to earth from the most delicious daydream. If daydreams were possible in the dead of night.
We were in his hotel room, another luxurious night not spent on the bus, and I was intent on greedily occupying every square inch of his massive bed. Begrudgingly I sat up. "Wine?"
He nodded, a devilish glint in his eye. "If we don't drink it now, the band will make us share it." He looked down at the label. "Since, technically, I suppose it's theirs too. But fuck 'em. I'm thirsty and I feel like toasting something. What should it be?"
He looked so eager I had to smile, even though I was fighting sleep. "To...um...new beginnings."
"Yeah," he said softly. "I like that. To having fun too."
"To having fun." I nodded. Then waited. "Do you, um, have a corkscrew?"
"Actually? No."
"Should we call room service?"
He stood up. "Nah. I got this," he declared, busily wrapping the bottle in a towel. I stared at him as he flipped it with a practiced motion and gave a hard whack on the underside. My hands flew to my mouth as I pictured red wine all over the pristine bedspread, but he only grinned in triumph and pinched the end of the towel.
"Voilà," he said in anything but a French accent.
The cork was in one hand, the bottle in the other, and he wore a grin of such supreme triumph that I couldn't help but laugh out loud. "Bravo, bravo, bravissimo!" I applauded.
He bowed at the waist. "I don't have wine glasses either," he cautioned me.
"Let's do it like we did back on Wallace Street," I told him, gripping the bottle by the neck and knocking it back like it was a bottle of Boone's Farm.
Keir looked at me with a mixture of awe and disgust on his face. "You know, that bottle cost something like two hundred dollars or some shit."
I licked my lips. "Well, tastes like wine to me."
He looked at me oddly, cocking his head to the side, staring so long I started to squirm. "What?"
He spread his hands. "You. This. I can't believe you're here. I mean...with me, here. I've..." He sagged back onto the bed and hung his head. "I've wanted this for...for so long. When you left...fuck..."
"We don't need to talk about it. It's over, right? Like you said, I'm here."
Even as I said them, the words felt false. Keir closed his eyes, and for one second I thought he would ask me, and I knew that if he did, I would tell him. This would no longer be just us having fun, mutually agreeing to pretend the past never happened. If he asked, I would start talking. Tell him everything, all the horrible, terrible things I did, the damage I had done, confess my deepest and darkest sin. If he asked.
But he didn't. He kissed me, eyes still closed. "Let's get some rest," he said instead.
Chapter 29
Keir
Rane looked up from his ever-present phone. "Yo!" he called out from his back bunk as our bus rolled ever northward. "Keith is calling. Wants the whole band on. Five minutes."
Twitch groaned himself awake, and he and Pepper stumbled over to the built-in table we used for band meetings. Balzac came out of the bathroom, scratching his ass a few times before settling in as well. Rane set his phone in the center of the table and plopped down next to me.
"Any idea what this is about?" I asked him.
"Something about the hometown show." He shrugged.
Just then, the phone rang. Rane reached over and put it on speaker. Then he looked up and saw Scarlett hovering behind him.
Without a word, he grudgingly made room for her to sit down and listen.
I had to duck to hide my grin of triumph.
"Ladies and gentlemen, change of plans," Keith's tinny voice squawked from the small speaker. "We've got a request that just came in."
"We're listening," Rane said.
"Radio station that's sponsoring the Buffalo show, maybe you guys have heard of them, WGRX?"
I sat up straighter. "99 Rocks?" I asked. I couldn't help but look over at Scarlett, whose eyes were wide. She grinned at me and nodded excitedly.
WGRX was Buffalo's
oldest rock station. The music I grew up listening to, my dad grew up listening to, and hell, maybe even my grandpa might have taken a gander back in the day. It was a classic, an icon, the only pure rock station left in western New York. I used to dream about hearing my songs played on there. Now that they were, I would be lying if I said that thrill wasn't still there.
"They're doing some kind of giveaway, a hometown heroes thing for you guys. They wanted to know if you'd be down for a meet and greet the night of the first show."
I looked up, resisting the urge to shout hell yeah before we discussed it as a band.
But all around me I saw grinning faces and nodding heads. We all looked at Rane, who leaned forward and shouted into the speaker, "Hell yeah!"
There was a burst of static on the line, and then Keith was already talking. "... everything up then. This is going to earn you some big points, guys. Good move. Drinking with the fans is always a little dicey, but you guys have good security. I'll call Rick and let him know."
Rane stabbed the off button and sat back with an excited grin. "I say this calls for a toast," he announced.
"Hell yeah!" Twitch echoed. "I don't give a shit if you guys make fun of me for it. I still think it's fucking awesome that 99 Rocks plays our shit on their station. I mean, like, that's what I grew up listening to."
"Not me," Pepper sighed. "I was always more of an NPR girl."
"We know," Rane deadpanned. "We try not to hold it against you."
Pepper scowled and raised two long, elegant middle fingers. "You're all a bunch of uncultured swine."
"Yup, and you're one of us," Rane crowed, then leaned back and ostentatiously scratched his crotch.
I heard Scarlett giggling behind me and turned to look at her. "What?"
She spread her hands. "I couldn't write a better ending to my piece if I just made it up myself. It's practically writing itself now. Hometown heroes meeting up with the fans? Damn, you guys are making my job easy."
I don't know why I kept forgetting that Scarlett was here to write about us. But if it made her happy, it made me happy too.