by Lux, Vivian
"You think he's gonna do it?" Finn asked.
"Hope not," I murmured, keeping my voice low.
"Why not?"
"Really?"
He shrugged. "He seems happy with her."
"Yeah, I suppose." There was a twinge of something in my chest. Words came up and then died, and then tried to come up again only to die once more.
The Quiet One. That was what they called me. But it wasn't that I had nothing to say. It's that I had too much to say. It got jumbled in my head and only Finn seemed to get that. "You think she's a gold digger," he supplied.
I winced. It was a shitty thing to think and an even shittier thing to say, but Finn wasn't a 'hold your punches' kind of guy. "Who knows?" I shrugged, trying to smooth out the rough edges of his words. "Not me."
"Are you guys talking about Noelle?" Jonah tried to ask.
Finn ignored him. "But you don't like her anyway," he grilled me.
"And you do?"
"She's okay." He rolled his shoulders back. "Not my type."
"You're talking about Noelle," Jonah declared, sounding proud about his powers of deduction.
I was still looking at Finn, trying to figure out what I was feeling by testing my twin's feelings. "Not his type either, though."
"Why not? She's the only chick he's been with since forever."
"Only a year."
Finn seemed supremely casual, but he had a tell he didn't know about. When he was bothered by something, he stood on one leg. Like a fucking flamingo. Always had. Like he was too agitated to commit to having both feet on the ground. Like he needed the option to flee. "That's a long time," he said, shifting so that he stood on his right foot. He lifted his left leg.
He was bothered. He hated it too.
I took a deep breath. It was settled. "Yes," I finally said to Jonah. "We're talking about Noelle."
Jonah was still clueless. When it came to being a King Brother, he was an A student, but when it came to being an actual brother, he was kind of clueless. "What about her?" he wondered.
I swallowed. Once I put it into words, it made it real. That's another reason I preferred to keep quiet. "Gabe's gonna ask her to marry him," I said slowly. "He just ran off to get a ring."
Jonah looked like I'd poked him between the eyes. For a moment I wondered who he was actually angry with. Gabe or me.
Then he shook his head. "No. That can't happen."
"I know."
"How do we stop this?"
I tapped my fingers on my knee. I wished like hell I had the answers my brothers always imagined I had. But this one was beyond me. "I don't know."
Chapter Eight
Gabe
Finn. Beau.
Fucking Jonah.
My brothers' eyes all bored into me once I was returned to the hotel suite. I knew they wanted to hear where I had been, but I felt too much like shit to even try and explain. Instead I just craned my neck. "Where's Noelle?" I mumbled. It felt like the slim, rose-gold circle was burning a hole in my pocket.
Noelle loved rose-gold. It was her "signature," and so was glitter too, so I'd picked out the sparkliest ring I could find on such short notice.
Doing this now was imperative. Making her happy would make me happy. I knew that.
"Where's Noelle?" I repeated. I looked around for her familiar face.
But the only faces that glowered back at me were ones that all shared the same dimple as mine. "I have no idea," Beau finally said.
It was odd that he was the first one to talk, but I didn't have time to analyze the implications of what that meant. I had to find Noelle.
Fuck. Where was she? I brushed my hand down to my pocket, nervously tracing the outline of the ring from outside. I knew a box would have made it too obvious what I'd gone and done, and I didn't want anyone trying to talk me out of this. I was doing this. I was proposing to her.
I just had to find her.
"Wasn't she watching? Why hasn't she come back?" I asked.
Beau looked at Finn, the Jonah, then got up. "Here. You need to drink some water."
"I'll get it," Jonah broke in, leaping to his feet..
"You're like, always there," I grumbled. I didn't know where Noelle could have gone. My heart was starting to race.
"Someone's gotta watch out for you," Jonah was saying. "I promised mom - ."
"Oh shut up about mom," I snapped.
"Gabe," Beau piped up. "Cool it."
Jonah might have said something too. He probably did, since he always had something to say, but I wasn't about to hang around and listen to him. If I didn't ask Noelle to marry me right the fuck now I was going to lose my nerve. Hopefully she'd be too happy about getting to plan the perfect Instagram wedding to get pissed at me for a shitty, off-the-cuff proposal. But I had to do this. There had to be a next step here...
"I'm going to find Noelle," I announced, turning to leave the room. My feet were still unsteady and I swayed dangerously, but righted myself and lunged for the door, already shouting for her.
"Noelle!" I called. My throat was all raspy from whiskey and nightly singing, so I barely had any voice left. Calling out hurt too much, so I just started walking down the fire stairs.
Bennett's room was on the next level down, one of a series of four suites. The tour was taking up all four of them and I wasn't sure which one was his, but I had my all-access card and was ready to start checking. He was our manager yes, but he was her manager too. It was his job to know where the fuck she was.
I slid the card into the first door lock and swung it open to an empty suite. The hurricane like mess of cards and empty cans of craft beer told me I'd wandered in to the suite shared by our technical staff. I shut it in a hurry before I woke anyone up.
"Being with you makes me happy," I rehearsed, mumbling to myself. "And it would make me even happier to have you wear my ring. Yeah, perfect." I stumbled into the wall, one foot crossing too far over the other. "Fuck," I grunted.
"Gabe."
I turned to see that my brothers had followed me without me realizing. I couldn't believe it, but I also believed every bit of it. There was no place I could be me. "Leave me alone!" I grumbled, knowing they wouldn't listen. "I just have to..."
For a second I forgot why I was down here, then I brushed my hand past my pocket and remembered again. "What are you doing, Gabe?" Beau asked, but it sounded like he already knew.
I slid my card in the lock and pushed open the next door.
And my whole world slid sideways.
What I was seeing didn't make sense. I was definitely drunk. I was definitely high.
But I wasn't fucking hallucinating. This was real. The sight of my girlfriend on her knees, her pretty hand closed around Bennett's cock was definitely real.
And everything happened at once.
She cried out my name at the same time Bennett smiled and yanked up his pants at the same time that Jonah growled out a long string of curses. In the next nanosecond, Finn darted forward to start kicking Bennett's ass while Beau tried to hold him back.
But the whole while I just stood there with the ring outstretched.
Noelle's pretty eyes finally slid from my face to my hand. Her expression softened and an eager gleam shone in her eyes even as Bennett was still zipping up. She rose to her feet. "Is that for me?" she prompted, her giggle returning.
I let the ring drop to the floor where it landed without a sound. I looked around me.
And something....
Broke.
"I quit," I said, and the second I said it my voice grew stronger, so the next time I said it I was able to say it even louder. "I quit," I repeated, louder still until I finally was shouting at the top of my lungs. "I quit! I quit, I fucking quit!"
Chapter Nine
Jonah
Gabe didn't cry. Not ever.
I don't think I knew how far he had fallen until he started crying right there.
Beau, with his finely tuned senses, was the first to grab him, yanking
his arm so that he was out of the room, tugging him into the hallway and motioning for Finn to shut the door. It was a measure of how fucked up the situation was that Finn just listened to him instead of arguing or trying to fight Bennett.
"I quit," Gabe said again. It seemed like the only set of words he was able to say and every time he said them it was like a knife to the heart.
"Get him upstairs," Beau instructed. I nodded and looped my arm under Gabe, nodding to Finn as he grabbed Gabe's other arm. We half dragged, half carried our brother back to the fire stairs before Beau stopped. "Hang on."
"What are you doing?" I grunted. Gabe was heavier than the last time I'd tried to carry him. When we were kids.
"One sec." He ran back down the hallway and stood there in front of Bennett's door for a moment with his head down. I could hear Noelle's voice now, shouting and sobbing, and wondered if Beau was going to confront her. It would be totally out of character for him, but also totally justified.
But after a moment he crouched and plucked something off the carpet. "Got it," he declared as he ran back to us.
Holding the ring.
I nodded, impressed. "She doesn't get to keep this," Beau said, more to himself than anyone else. He slipped it into his pocket. "Okay, Gabe? Can you put one foot in front of the other for me please? Let's get you upstairs."
"I quit," Gabe repeated as we hustled him back to the suite.
Once the door was shut behind us, I leaned back and let my head fall for a second. "I quit," Gabe said, louder now.
I dragged my hand down my face. "Look, I get it," I finally found the words to say. "That was - ."
But I trailed back off again. There were no words to describe what we had just seen so I didn't try to say them. I also caught myself before I told Gabe we'd all suspected Noelle didn't love him the way he loved her, that we had literally been discussing that fact a short while ago. That we all figured Noelle was just in it for the fame, riding the coattails of the King brother who most needed the ego-boost of a pretty girlfriend.
I don't think I had ever hated anything more than I hated her right now.
But that wasn't the important thing. "We'll take some time off," I encouraged. "I'll rearrange some dates."
Gabe, who up to this point had been just a crumpled wreck suddenly straightened back up again. "Did you not hear me?"
I blinked. "I did but - ."
"I said, I quit."
I tried to swallow but my throat was dry. "You don't mean it though. You're upset."
"Jonah." He was looking me full in the eye without blinking. "I quit."
I looked at Beau and Finn. "Guys? You wanna maybe jump in here?"
Finn shrugged. He stepped closer to Gabe and put his hand briefly on his shoulder. "Sounds fine to me," he said. "I never wanted this in the first place. I was just going along with the rest of you."
Panic clawed at my throat. This couldn't be happening. "Beau?" I demanded. "Come on now."
I looked at my younger brother. I'd never begged anyone for anything. We'd gotten to where we were by hard work. High standards. Sleepless nights.
And we'd done it. We were living our dreams every single day. Were they really ready to throw it all away so easily?
"Beau," I started, but stopped as my throat tightened and my voice caught. "Beau. Please."
His face clouded and in that moment I knew I had lost him. "It's not working any more, JoJo," he said with a shrug, following his twin's lead and putting his hand on Gabe. "It hasn't been for a while now."
I felt something pop behind my eye, and had the sensation of falling off a cliff. "It has too been working!" I shouted. "It's been working because I'm working!" I turned away and started pacing but the room was too damn small. Like a cage. Panic was making me angry, making me lash out. "I've been carrying you all on my back from the moment we signed on," I spat. "'King Brothers,' what a joke!" Hysterical laughter bubbled at my lips. "It was always the Jonah King show and his shitty back up band!"
I stood and glared at them, ready. I expected arguments. I expected punches. I expected them to jump in to defend themselves. I hadn't meant a word of it, I just wanted them to fight for what we'd built together.
But there was no fight coming. Finn, who could always be counted on to get riled up at the slightest thing, just closed his eyes.
And that was when I knew it was all lost, when not even Finn was ready to fight. "You're right, it's not the four of us. It hasn't been for a long time."
I blinked at them. Three against one. We always pretended this was a democracy, even when I was clearly running the show.
And now they were taking the show away from me.
"Jonah," Beau said. "Gabe needs rehab. I need a break. And Finn - ."
Finn laughed. "Finn needs to sit on his ass and fish for a summer. Finn needs to get the fuck out away from all these people."
I clenched my fists. "And what about what I need?" I hissed through my teeth.
"You need the limelight," Beau started. "I get it."
But Gabe broke in. His voice was steady even as the tear tracks still marked his cheeks. He seemed at peace, and that was terrifying. I wasn't falling off the cliff. He was throwing me over the side.
"You say it's the Jonah King show?" Gabe asked. He gestured to the door. "Well go make that show." Gabe looked at the twins. "But leave us out of it."
I could have said something, but instead I went to the door. That's what I'll always remember. That in the end, I did what they asked.
But I wasn't the one who was walking away. They were.
"Jonah?" Beau called.
I froze, a tiny frission of hope raising the hairs on my neck.
"Thanks," he said, sounding choked up. "You're a Prince,"
I squeezed the door handle until my knuckles were bloodless but I still couldn't make myself say the words I was supposed to.
"Fuck you," I said instead, and walked out into the next stage of my life. Alone for the first time.
What the hell were we going to do now?
THE END
except not really.
Thank you!
Thank you for reading LOUD ROWDY HEARTS, the free prequel to the KINGS OF CROWN CREEK series. I hope you loved meeting the King Brothers and are ready to find out what happens next in
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