by Tessa Bailey
The lead singer opened the door in a pair of gray boxer briefs, but Lita didn’t even blink. When you’ve lived on a tour bus with someone, modesty goes extinct with a quickness. Sarge’s hair was finger-raked and haphazard as usual, but Lita had a feeling it was Jasmine’s fingers that had been doing the raking. Lita’s theory was confirmed when Jasmine stumbled through the living room behind Sarge, wearing nothing but a white sheet.
“Hey, Jasmine,” Lita called, but her voice came out sounding thready, since she hadn’t spoken since…when? Since James left? “Sorry to have interrupted the sexing.”
Sarge grinned, displaying the reason his face ended up on countless magazine covers. “Ah, it’s fine. You’d be interrupting that no matter when you showed up.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Sargeant, but you’ve turned into a smug bastard.”
He threw a proud look over his shoulder, sending a smiling Jasmine snuggling into the couch cushions. “If a man wasn’t smug over landing that woman, he’d be an idiot.”
An ache formed so quickly in Lita’s chest, she sucked in a breath. “Yeah, well. I’m trying to make my own bastard look smug. You want to help me out with that?”
Sarge’s expression lost its humor. “I don’t know where James is, if that’s why you’re here.” He crossed his arms and leaned on the doorframe. “What happened between you two?”
Lita’s laugh sounded full of liquid. “I wouldn’t even tell you after a bottle of tequila.” She pushed past her bandmate into the house, heading straight for the kitchen. “Speaking of tequila, where is yours?”
“Cabinet above the toaster,” Jasmine said, her voice muffled.
“Thanks.”
Lita busied herself pouring the golden liquor into a coffee cup while Sarge went and put on a T-shirt. When he joined her in the kitchen, she’d already knocked back two shots. Sarge took a seat on a barstool, while watching her with obvious concern. “So it’s true. He’s stepping down as manager. I honestly thought he was screwing with me.”
“So you have talked to him.”
Sarge shook his head. “Voicemail. He doesn’t answer when I call back.”
Tears pressed behind Lita’s eyelids, pissing her off. Goddammit. She’d never cried this many days in a row, including the week she’d binged on Grey’s Anatomy while driving through Europe on the tour bus. “Do you know where his family lives?”
“I don’t even know if he has any family.”
Lita tossed back another two fingers of tequila. “How do we know exactly nothing about him after four years?”
Sarge scrubbed a hand over his face. “Maybe that’s how he wants it, Lita.”
“That’s not how I want it.” When her voice broke, she closed her eyes. “Please, you have to help me find his big, dumb face. I can fix this.”
Her bandmate reached out, setting his big hand atop her head. “You know we’ll do everything we can.”
“Thanks,” Lita mumbled, shrugging free of her friend’s comforting gesture. She didn’t want to be comforted or soothed. It would only be temporary until she found James and filled in the massive crater he’d left gaping in her middle.
Jasmine came into the kitchen, walking right into the crook of Sarge’s outstretched arm, as if they’d been apart way too long. “Don’t you have security guards who travel with Old News to shows?” The gorgeous ex-factory worker split a look between them. “A lot of those guys are ex-cops. Maybe they can help?”
For the first time in days, Lita felt the blessed spark of hope. “That might actually work. If someone else does that favor asking.” She plunked the empty coffee mug into the sink. “They all hate me because I’m always ordering the crowd to mosh for their lives. Doesn’t exactly make their job easy.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so,” Jasmine said, obviously fighting laughter. “I can help make the calls. James helped get me to Sarge when I almost lost him. I’d love to return the favor.”
After that, there was no one in the room but Sarge and Jasmine. The lead singer looked like he might organize a sacrifice of himself on an altar to the gods just to thank them for creating his girlfriend. Jasmine couldn’t stop staring at his mouth. And yeah…they were seconds from boning on the kitchen island, so Lita shoved the bottle of tequila into her purse and skirted past them toward the front door. “I’ll be down on the beach getting shit faced when you guys are done.”
Once outside, she took a fortifying breath and slipped the cell phone from her back pocket. She couldn’t sit still and wait for other people to help her anymore. Something had to be done now before she went crazy. Maybe just then, buzzed on tequila and emotionally drained wasn’t a good time to start owning up to her mistakes and acting like an adult, but time kept passing, passing, passing without James, and that felt like a horrible travesty. A waste of valuable minutes.
It was time to take control of her own life. Her own fate. No one was responsible for Lita’s happiness but her.
She went down to the beach and started making calls.
* * * *
James sat outside the hospital, hands clasped between his splayed legs. He’d left his cell phone back at his roadside motel in an effort to allay temptation. For so long, he’d had the device holstered like a six-shooter, ready to draw if someone needed him. No, not just someone. Lita. He felt naked without news of her right at his fingertips. Several times since driving back to his hometown of Modesto, he’d checked the gossip websites and police blotters, praying nothing about Lita would show. His habits were firmly ingrained and he couldn’t trust himself yet to stay away should she land in hot water.
So far, there had been nothing, apart from news agencies following up on her recent arrest and subsequent release from jail. She hadn’t called or e-mailed, telling him he’d finally succeeded in scaring her off.
Good. He’d always known she was smart.
James breathed through the horror of having scared the one person he’d dedicated his life to saving from pain. Relief would come eventually, along with the conviction he’d done what was right. If it didn’t, at least he’d know Lita was happy. Somewhere without him.
A shadow filled the sunlit walkway in front of the bench where he sat, temporarily lifting him from mental torture. He lifted his head to find his mother running a Kleenex beneath her eyes. “How is he?”
“Better,” she responded with a sigh. “Still no movement on the right side of his body, but he’s communicating with the white board and marker. He won’t try speaking just yet…I think because it feels so unnatural with only half his mouth.”
James gave a tight nod. “Still no desire to see me, I assume?”
His mother’s sympathetic look was unbearable, so James stood and paced away. He’d been home for six days, following the phone call from his mother informing James that his father had a stroke. Over a decade had passed since the last time he’d been face to face with the man—frankly, he’d been content to remain in contact with his mother only, when there was an occasion or major holiday. Unfortunately, the family landscaping business didn’t run without his father, so his mother had begged James—their only child—to step in until the company’s manager returned from a family reunion trip overseas. Regardless of James’s non-relationship with his father, there’d been some solace in being needed after relinquishing his title as manager to Old News. As protector to Lita.
Working with his hands had given James some place to direct the restless energy, so he’d taken a labor role in addition to the managerial responsibilities. The last six mornings, he’d spent digging trenches, planting trees, hauling rubble. And six afternoons in a row, he’d been refused entry to his father’s hospital room.
The sidewalk outside the hospital had begun to fill up, presumably with a shift change, if the amount of personnel was any indication. People rushed up the walkway to take advantage of the final hour of visiting time before the dinner break. An unnamable tug of consciousness pointed out an anomaly among the moving mass of people. A flash of life,
of static, that didn’t belong with the rest. Sort of like déjà vu that wouldn’t stop, just looping back and around, keeping him edgy.
Holding up a finger for his mother to pause in the vocal listing of medication the doctor had administered to her husband, James turned in a circle, the pulses in his wrists hammering. When his gaze lit on the cause of his body’s visceral reaction, it took James a moment to believe what his eyes were telling him.
Lita marched up the hospital walkway, all out war written on her beautiful face. The way she sometimes looked during a drum solo. Concentrated brilliance. Jesus God, how? How had he made it this long without a glimpse of her? James took an involuntary step in Lita’s direction, his body obeying instinct. And instinct said, I need to go get mine. There was nothing but bone-melting fulfillment upon his first eyeful of the girl who ruled him. Always would—no denying that fact. But when his brain registered the entire picture, his mission stalled out, giving way to an avalanche of other. Lust, denial, anger. They whipped around him like a whirlpool, sucking him down into an ocean of chaos.
An all-too-familiar thrift shop outfit covered Lita’s body, cheap material hugging her swaying hips, the crop top’s leather fringe ending at her belly button. The outfit she’d worn the night they met.
When Lita’s Converse scuffed to a stop on the sidewalk in front of him, James’s fists were shaking with the need to get hands around some part of her and keep. A roar escaped him instead. “What are you doing here?” He barely registered his mother’s startled gasp beside him. “What kind of game are you playing?”
“Game?” Green eyes blazing, she turned around to execute a stiff karate-type kick in the air before facing him again with her shirt’s fringe still swinging. “How dare you call this a game when I’ve spent six days and four bus transfers tracking you down.”
An invisible hand squeezed his neck. “Why?”
“Why.” Shaking her head, she looked downright disgusted with him. “I’m so mad at you, James, my mad grew a second head and ate the first one.”
James realized two things at once. One, he’d always classified his feelings for Lita as sheer obsession, but the fact was, he was achingly, irrevocably in love with her. Which meant letting her go would be infinitely harder than his fool self had thought. And two, blood soaked clear through the back of her favorite Converse, so much that it left droplets in her wake on the concrete sidewalk. “Why…” He had to take a moment to formulate the question, the sight of injury on her person was so abhorrent to his peace of mind. Can’t breathe. “Why the fuck are you bleeding?”
“Is this your mother or something? It is, isn’t it? We’re arguing in front of your mother.” Lita threw up her hands and sagged at the same time. “So be it, James. Your family will think I’m crazy and that’s too bad. I am crazy. If you want to get rid of me, you better start working on a restraining order.” A passing group of nurses were staring at Lita, bottled drinks in their hands. “Hey. Yeah. I know. The crazy has arrived. Why don’t you just…drink your stupid lemonade, huh?”
Only half of her words had penetrated the graying haze surrounding James, his sole focus on her right ankle. “I can’t have this conversation when you’re bleeding.”
“I’m always bleeding when you’re standing in front of me,” she said, chin lifting. “You just can’t see it.”
His hurt lurched. “Lita…”
She stomped the injured foot, nearly spiraling him into a heart attack. “Yeah, I know. I say things like that now. Get used to it.”
The whole situation was getting out of hand. James didn’t know what her goals were in traveling three hundred miles, but she’d wasted her time. He’d finally found the strength to direct his brand of destruction away from Lita and seeing her, hearing her, smelling her, nearly touching her, was fucking with his resolve in a catastrophic way. “Why are you wearing that?” James gritted out.
She glanced down at her attire, as if riding four buses with both thighs completely exposed was a mere afterthought. When she looked up at him again, those teeth were busy chewing away at her bottom lip, stirring his neglected male flesh. It didn’t help matters when Lita stepped closer, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I don’t think I should answer that in front of your mother, James.” She let out a shaky exhale. “Anyway, you…you’re wearing jeans.”
God, how could she make a statement of fact sound like those final strained words before an orgasm? His cock wasn’t handling the public sidewalk seduction well at all, thickening inside the restrictive denim, his balls weighed down in a hot rush. On top of his aroused state, Lita’s injury demanded his attention. Now.
“Mother, I will call you later.”
James stepped forward and scooped Lita up against his chest. Something he’d done on more than one occasion when shows got too rowdy, but it felt very different now. Instead of her protector, he was a predator carrying her away from the light. Away from normalcy, where she belonged.
“How is your father?”
He felt her breath against his neck clear down to his toes. “Awake. Alive.”
“Okay.” She laid her lips against his pulse. “Do you want to talk about why you weren’t inside when I pulled up?”
“No.” He jerked away when every instinct screamed to lean in, absorb the touch. Tell her everything. “How did you find me?”
Lita laid her head on his shoulder, running him through with an invisible sword. “I had a little help from our security team.”
“Impossible. You make their life hell.”
“Yes, I know. They might have mentioned it a few hundred times.” She exhaled, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck. The best feeling he’d had in six goddamn days. “Old News is playing two bat mitzvahs and one wedding this summer. For free. I haven’t met our new manager yet, but I doubt that will earn me a spot as teacher’s pet.”
Despite the situation with his father and knowing this moment with Lita couldn’t last, James almost laughed. “Only you.”
When they reached his Mustang, he noticed her ankle was dripping onto the sidewalk and didn’t manage to swallow the gruff sound that left him. “How could you let it get so bad?”
It took her a moment to release his shoulders when he set her down on the passenger seat. “I think…I thought if I hurt enough, you would feel it and come back. I wanted to punish you, too. For leaving.” She crossed her arms over her middle. “The only way I could do that was to punish myself.”
His hand curled into a fist on the car’s roof. “Can’t you see how wrong that is?”
“Yes. We were both a little wrong.” She held his gaze from below. “But I’m going to make it right.”
Chapter Four
Lita knew her plan was a gamble. And she used the word plan loosely.
For all she knew, it could make things worse between her and James. If such a thing were possible. The ride to the motel had been silent, his huge hands flexing on the steering wheel as they always did when Lita rode shotgun. Upon arrival, he’d ordered her to stay put in the passenger seat and for once, she’d put up no argument. The tension in him was a living thing as he rounded the Mustang’s bumper to jerk her door open. Then she was back in his capable arms, being carried across the twilight-draped parking lot.
“So. I think things went well with your mom.”
James said nothing, gaze glued to the motel as they approached.
“On the way here, the bus stopped at a Dairy Queen and someone thought I was Carly Rae Jepsen. Again.”
The man wasn’t amused. “You still haven’t explained what you’re wearing.”
“Be patient. I’m getting there.” Lita took a deep breath, hoping to stall until they were inside the room and he couldn’t bar her entry. She played with the collar of his T-shirt, her belly flipping at the dark chest hair peeking out. In four years, she’d never seen him shirtless and hoped that wouldn’t be the case much longer. When James set her down gently in front of a rusted, teal door and dug for the room key in hi
s pocket, she watched the denim stretch across the bulge at his lap, the waistband dipping low. “I want to say something profound here, but I can only think of terrible pickup lines.”
“Please don’t say them.”
“Were those jeans on sale?” She pointed at the closed door. “Because I know where we can get them one hundred percent off.”
“Jesus.” He turned the key in the lock and shoved open the door. “I’m glad you’re getting a kick out of this.”
She gasped when he picked her up again, but recovered quickly and glanced around the basic, no frills room. “Maybe I’m just nervous.”
His stride broke just inside the door, the dark stillness enfolding them. “You’re… nervous with me.”
Lita threw her arms around his neck and held. “That’s not what I meant. Or maybe it is. But not in the way you’re thinking.”
He continued his stalk toward the bathroom, throwing on the fluorescent light and setting Lita down on the sink. “Explain.”
Now or never. Lita opened her mouth to relay her thoughts, but James chose that moment to remove her right shoe, sending pain slicing up her calf. “Ohh, God.”
James dropped into a crouch to inspect the damage, alarm written across his chiseled features. It was bad. She knew the way his skin paled, the way his voice emerged strangled. “If you were trying to punish me, Lita, it fucking worked.”
Shit. She was losing him. To anyone else, he would have appeared closed off since her arrival in town, but she knew him better than that. He’d been on the brink of finally talking to her. So she had to work fast before he retreated, risk be damned. “I wore this outfit because…I know you feel guilty about what happened that first night. So we’re going to go back and do it right.” She curled her fingers into the cotton T-shirt covering his broad shoulders, tugging, until he finally stood, watching her with a hooded expression. “Show me how you would do it differently, James.”
His gray eyes darkened, the sink groaning beneath his grip. “It won’t fix what’s wrong with me.”