RUTHLESS: The Complete Rockstar Romance Series Boxed Set

by Vivian Lux

  As I wrote the address down, I could see her in the corner of my eye, nodding once. Another resident of the trailer park drove past us, headlights shining into the cab of my truck, revealing her pulse beating there at the base of her throat, fluttering like hummingbird wings.

  Suddenly I had another entry onto my growing list of her body parts I wanted to kiss.

  She took a deep breath and started directing me back towards LA. We swished silently through the streets, all the rich places I never set foot near. Finally, we ended up in front of a Spanish colonial, lit up like a Christmas tree, with one of those beautiful old red tile roofs, curved and sinuous.

  "Right here," she said softly.

  "Okay."

  "Can you let me out?"

  "Oh, sorry, it sticks." I hit the unlock button four times before the mechanism finally popped open. She pressed her lips together and went to slide out of the door.

  Something bubbled up in my chest. "Wait," I said, and my hand reached out of its own accord. Without thinking, I was brushing my fingers down the soft skin of her arm to rest on top of her hand. I wanted to touch her, wanted to kiss her, but this was the best I could do.

  She froze, but she didn't push me away.

  I had no idea what I wanted to say, but I wanted to say something. "Be careful," I told her. When she looked up at me with fire in her eyes, I grinned. "But if you don't want to be careful, look me up so I can be your backup, okay?"

  She looked down to where I was touching her, where my hand covered hers and I had no idea what the expression on her face meant, so I slowly pulled my hand back.

  As I drove away, I couldn't help but feel that something had shifted. Like the needle of my life that has been stuck in the groove for so long had finally been shaken free.

  Chapter Seven

  Piper

  I bought this place because of the front door.

  Or rather, doors.

  The venerable Spanish Colonial was in rough shape when I found it -- crumbling stucco and a tiled roof that resembled a prizefighter's smile. So many missing shingles.

  But the front door was wide enough to fit my piano through.

  So, I bought it.

  I shut the door on True's truck and walked through that wide front door and headed straight to the piano bench, running my fingers along the smooth, polished wood before sitting down.

  My music room was supposed to be some kind of grand atrium, with windows that ran from the floor to the ceiling. I left the floors bare because it made the acoustics better, and also because I loved the way the sun slid across the floor and then up the wall as it slipped below the horizon every night. If I timed it right, I could sit in a patch of sun that felt just like the warmth of a spotlight on my back.

  And on nights with a full moon, like this one, I could sit in the darkness and let the cool blue light hit the keys, making everything glow.

  It was the only time I liked having the spotlight shine on me.

  The timing was perfect. As I sat down, the moonlight settled over my shoulders like a cool embrace for my overheated body. Much better than being touched by a person, that was for sure.

  But what if it wasn't? True touched me, out there, and I hadn't recoiled. And the skin on my forearm still tingled with the memory.

  My body was humming the way the strings did when struck by the hammer. I played a G, and the vibration rang at the same frequency that coursed through my body.

  What the hell was this? I felt like my veins were singing.

  Closing my eyes, I let my fingers fall into position on the keys. The mellow grandeur of a baby grand piano was like a symphony rolled into one magnificent instrument. Electronic keyboards had their own charm, but nothing, nothing in the world was better than the rolling thunder of a real piano. When our first album went gold, the rest of the guys did things like buy houses and cars and leather jackets and shit.

  I bought myself a piano.

  My fingers twitched as the music coursed through them, hesitating for only a second before I struck the first notes. It was truer when I shut my brain off and let my fingers guide themselves, unencumbered by thought.

  As I played, I felt myself fall away. Or maybe my "self" was the wrong word. Because when I played the piano, something real came to the surface. The shell I'd wrapped around me -- the glass house I lived in where I watched the world, observing but never taking part, where I mimed feelings but never actually felt them -- that fell away when I made music. It was why music was as necessary as breathing. Because as I played, I finally could breathe.

  As my fingers moved, I swayed a little, becoming a different version of me. A girl who could laugh and smile and enjoy her friends. A girl who could reach out and hold the hand of the man who caught her eye. A girl who could run her fingertip over his hardened callouses and maybe bring them to her lips.

  I closed my eyes tighter and the music started building.

  I played and as I did, the song took shape. It took the shape of his lips, curved upward, a rusty smile that reminded me of my own. He smiled like he wasn't sure how it should look in the end. I moved the key a step lower, to match the gravel in his voice, then added a few plinking top notes to shape the bubbles that popped in my chest when he teased me.

  I played the feelings because that was the only way they made sense to me. I had to put them out into music so they weren't inside of me anymore. I played faster to match my breathing as I imagined how his lips would feel against mine. The real me would never allow him to get so close, but the girl who lived inside the music, she was ready to feel wanted. She was ready to want.

  I gasped, leaning forward, and slammed my forehead on the keys. The crashing, discordant sound filled my ears and it sounded like the noise that my heart would make if it was attached to a speaker. Crazed and frantic and trapped.

  I stayed like that for a long, long time, trying and failing to hold on to the emotions I had brought to the surface. But they slipped away and once more I was left with only numbness.

  I wanted to cry.

  I wished I could cry.

  When I finally opened my eyes, the moon had set outside of my windows, and only a little streak of light remained at the highest peak of the ceiling. I blinked at the darkness and then stood back up again.

  I felt like I was waking from a dream, and as my thoughts wound their way back to reality, I remembered something.

  My brother's face as I had left the studio.

  With a low, sickening roll in my stomach, I went over to my purse and reached in.

  Text message notifications covered the screen of my phone completely, like a wallpaper of guilt. Lowell had been texting me every fifteen minutes for the past six hours.

  I took a deep breath, hovering my thumb over the keyboard, ready to write out my apology....

  When all of a sudden I hit the call button instead.

  "Pepper!" he answered on the very first ring, before the ring had even finished. "Pepper, Christ, are you okay?"

  My voice caught in my throat. "Lowell, I'm okay." I exhaled and looked up at the ceiling. "And... I'm sorry."

  Lowell still sounded completely panicked. "Sorry? Why are you sorry? What did you do? Jesus Christ, Pepper where the hell have you been?"

  "I'm sorry."

  "You keep saying that, what did you do?"

  "Nothing," I said as calmly as I could. "I didn't do anything, Lowell. I'm here in my house, I'm fine. There's nothing wrong."

  He exhaled and then went silent for so long I feared that the call had dropped. "Hello?"

  I heard a murmuring on the other line, a soothing, sleepy sounding female voice reassuring him, and then his own unintelligible reply. "You're okay?" he repeated. He sounded like he'd been crying.

  Guilt twisted in my belly like a knife. How could I have done this to him? How was it that I could be so selfish that I continually hurt the one man who'd always been there for me? "I'm okay," I said again. It was really the only thing I could say, and I knew that
I sounded like I was just trying to placate him but honestly? Right now?

  It was true.

  "Pep," my brother said, his voice heavy with worry.

  "What?"

  "You don't sound okay."

  "I don't?"

  "Well I mean, you don't sound... bad. I guess. But you sound... weird."

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I could still feel that place on my arm where True had touched me. I thought I'd had him all figured out, rushing in to save me to lay his claim, but he'd done nothing like that. He had literally done a one eighty on every single one of my expectations. Asking for nothing in return.

  The only man who'd ever been this selfless with me before was the one I was talking to right now. "It's been a weird night," I said.

  "Want me to come over?" my brother blurted.

  I heard that murmuring on the other end of the line again and suddenly realized that he was talking to me from his bed. "No," I said gently. "Take care of Zoe."

  "Are you sure? She doesn't mind. You know that."

  "No," I said, and my voice was more firm now. "I'm sorry I missed dinner tonight, but you stay with Zoe, okay? She needs you right now and I don't. Okay? That's not me being my usual bitchy self, it's the truth, Lowell. You take care of people, it's what you do. And you're really good at it." My voice caught in my throat before I could catch myself. "You're going to be a really great father, you know that?" I choked out. I was feeling something and it felt like breaking open.

  "Pep..."

  "I love you," I blurted, before the feeling could melt away. Before the numb returned.

  I heard the sound he made, even as he was trying to suppress it. The gasp, half of shock, half of delight. "I love you too, Sis. See you tomorrow?"

  "See you tomorrow." I hung up the phone and fell back on the couch, completely and utterly exhausted.

  Chapter Eight

  True

  I could've sworn I was up and about, walking around the trailer in my boxer briefs, getting breakfast ready for someone who was still lying in my bed. The same dream for three nights running. A hum of nervous excitement was making me move faster than normal, hurrying to get her breakfast together, surprise her before she woke up fully. I gathered everything together and set it on the cutting board -- because even in dreams I don't have fancy shit like trays -- and I carried it into the bedroom to the girl that was waiting there.

  Her dark lashes seemed heavy as she blinked her eyes open. "Hey," she smiled, rolling over onto her back. The sheet pulled away from her tits, exposing the perfect pearly nipples I'd spent so much time kissing last night. I leaned forward to plant a kiss on the tip of her turned-up nose.

  And then light exploded in my eyeballs and something heavy landed on my chest.

  "Wake up, Daddy!" Rory shouted in my face.

  I groaned and rolled over, trying to hold on to my dream, but the last shreds of it fell away as my daughter's knee caught me in the gut. "Oof!" I grunted. "Don't jump on me!" I rolled over and shielded my eyes. "And turn off the light please!"

  "But it's time to wake up!" she argued. But she scrambled off the bed anyway and hit the light switch, plunging the room back into blessed darkness.

  Darkness.

  I rolled to look at the window. The streetlight was still on outside.

  I groaned. "Just, for once in your life, can you please stay in bed until the sun comes up?" I begged, rolling over and flattening the pillow over my head.

  Rory giggled and jumped under the covers. "It's cold," she squealed. "Feel how cold it is, Daddy!"

  "Oh my God! Get your freezing feet off me," I yelled, thrashing myself free of the covers and jumping away. Rory laughed and fell backward on the bed, splaying out spread-eagled with a smug grin. I shook my head, realizing I'd fallen for her trick. I was out of bed now and she was taking up the whole thing for herself. I shook my head and grumbled. "You are..."

  But I held my tongue. What she was, was not a word I could actually say in polite company. Or around her. She knew enough colorful swear words from hanging around at the garage, watching me and her Uncle Conway going at each other all day long. I wasn't about to teach her more curses.

  At least not until she was ten.

  "Well," I said. "I'm up. You got your wish. What do you want for breakfast?"

  "Pancakes?" she asked with a hopeful grin.

  My heart sank. "Dang, I'm sorry baby, I forgot to pick some up."

  Rory's face fell. "Daddy," she whined. "You should always have pancakes."

  "I can try to make them?" I said, wincing and hoping she wouldn't take me up on the offer.

  But her big stormy eyes, the ones that marked her so clearly as my little girl, widened in wonder. "You can?" She looked hopeful.

  I nodded, trying to mask my panic. Rory was still at the age where she thought her daddy hung the moon and the stars, and I didn't want to disappoint her. Not at least until it was inevitable. Surely pancakes couldn't be too hard to make, right? If I could overhaul a motor I could make a batch of fucking pancakes, dammit.

  A dozen eggs and a small kitchen fire later, Rory grinned at me happily. "These are better than the ones from the freezer," she announced with a smile. "You did good."

  I smiled at her, I then exhaled. "Good, because I am exhausted now. You wore me out and I haven't even gone to work yet."

  "Do you have to go to work?" Rory whined. "I haven't seen you in daaaaaays."

  I turned to the cupboard and knelt behind the door so she wouldn't see me wincing. The first week of split custody had been hard as hell for my little girl. And on me too. After a long, lonely weekend running the on-call for the garage's towing service, I was beyond thrilled to pick her up from the bus stop and hear her happy chatter at the dinner table. But Rory had been quiet and withdrawn the whole meal and had even gone to bed without much of a fight. I'd been up half the night, sick with worry over what I'd done to her without even meaning to.

  But this morning she was her usual feisty little self. I needed this just as much as she did, but there was no getting around child support. "I can't, baby," I sighed, standing back up again. "I gotta go to work so I can take care of you and Mama." I went over to her and kissed the top of her head in the place where she smelled most strongly of her own, sweet, natural self. "That's my job." I knelt down, took her hand and looked up into her stormy, furious face. "And your job is to go to school and listen to your teachers."

  "I don't wanna go to school!" she shouted, scrunching up her face. Two spots of bright red flared high on her cheeks. "School is stupid!" She made to jump up and run away, but I was in her way. She tripped over my knee. Reacting on instinct, I shot my hand out to catch her before she fell and hit her head on the linoleum.

  "Hey now." I caught her up in my arms and leaned back against the cabinet. The trailer was so narrow that my splayed-out legs nearly touched the opposite wall. I'd sat like this several hundred times when she was a baby, sitting out here in the dark so that Lizzy could get some sleep. It almost felt right to cradle her like this again. "Tell me what's goin' on."

  "I hate school!" Rory shouted so close to my face that my ears rang.

  "You told me that already," I said, as calmly as I could. "Now, could you tell me why?"

  Lizzy hated when I did this. It was one of the major things that had driven a wedge between us. One of the many major things. Whenever I tried to talk with Rory like she was a fucking person with feelings, Lizzy would get all huffy. "Stop indulging her, True!" she'd hiss from the living room. "You're just giving in to her bad mood."

  "I do the same for you, don't I?" I'd hiss back.

  She never had a response to that.

  Rory's face unscrunched a little as she thought about her grievance. "You told me not to fight," she said accusingly. "But sometimes there's nothing else you can do."

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing. Her face was so serious and I would never want to belittle her while she was baring her soul. I wanted her to always kno
w she could talk to me.

  But holy crap, where did this kid come up with this stuff? "You might have a point there," I said, as neutrally as I could. "Did you get in a fight, Roar?" I took her little hand in mine and ran my thumb in slow circles over the top of her palm.

  She ducked her head and looked away, refusing to meet my eyes.

  "Did you hit someone?"

  "Yes," she mumbled.

  I took a deep breath. The school hadn't called with any sort of incident report. But it would be just like my smart, formidable little girl to kick someone's ass without putting herself in danger of getting caught. "Hey," I said, shaking her hand. "Tell me what happened," I repeated, more sternly now.

  "I don't want to," she said sulkily.

  "Why not?"

  "Because," she said, lifting her chin. "You're going to get mad."

  I inhaled sharply. "I'm only going to get mad if you lie to me, Rory."

  "I hit Caleb Hutchins."

  I counted back from ten to hide my reaction. The Hutchins kid was a snot-nosed little punk, just like his father. Money couldn't buy class, that was for sure. "Did he hit you first?" I wondered. It would totally be like that little piece of shit to beat on a girl half his size.

  But Rory shook her head, long hair swinging. God, she looks so much like her mother sometimes. "I hit him. In the head. His ear got all red too, and he told me I was a piece of trash."

  Red rage thudded in my head. In my mind's eye, my tires were already squealing as I hurtled towards Jaime Hutchins' house. I could already see his front door opening and my fist connecting with his smug face, laying him out flat in front of his fat wife and their piece of shit kids, and telling him in no uncertain terms that he oughta know by now that Cash Truman doesn't deal well with bullies.

  But there was no time for my stupid revenge fantasy. Not when my daughter was still so upset. "Rory," I said, as gently as I could. "You're not going to get in trouble. I just want to know why you hit him. I'm not going to get mad. I'll never be angry at you for telling me the truth." I squeezed her hand a little tighter. "You can always tell me the truth."