Kyle: The Hottest Guys You'll Love to Love (Best of the Bad Boys Book 4)

by Jessie Cooke

  KYLE

  We were playing an outdoor venue in upstate New York. It’s the first time I’ve been back since the day after I left Rosie at the zoo…six months ago.

  The more I thought about my behavior that day, the more I realized that she had every right to be pissed at me. Well, in all honesty, I have to give Skye credit for that too. I’d gone home that day and the first thing I did was find Skye. I knew that Mick was in Vegas with his mom. She was having some medical issues and like the slime ball that I am…I thought I’d sneak in some time with his girl while he was out of town. I spoke to her on the phone a lot, and I’d told her about Rose. She was the only person I’d talked to about her. Skye’s advice to me had been to “go for it.” I loved the way she was so down to earth. Rosie reminded me a lot of her. I found her at her grandfathers that day.

  “Hello Mr. Winnemucca. I’m looking for Skye.” He had the darkest, meanest eyes of anyone I’ve ever known. It was funny because when I was a kid, he was one of the people who helped me out a lot and encouraged me to stay on the straight path. I’d never noticed how black his eyes were back then…it was only after I’d done the unforgiveable in his eyes that they changed.

  “She’s not here.” He was blocking the doorway but I heard Skye’s voice from inside.

  “Yes I am. Grandfather, you’re being ridiculous.”

  He grunted and moved back. When he looked at Skye, I saw a hint of the man I used to know. His eyes and his face visibly softened. Then I saw her and every feeling I ever had about her came rushing back in that one second. “Hi beautiful.” Jonathan Winnemucca was putting a curse on me with those black eyes. Especially in the next instant when Skye threw her arms around me and gave me a hug.

  “Welcome back!”

  “Thanks. I missed you.” Grandfather was still there.

  “I missed you too.” She looked at her grandfather and said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “Don’t go far,” her grandfather said. Skye stood on her tiptoes and kissed his weathered cheek.

  “I won’t be long,” she told him. I felt his eyes boring into the back of my head until we’d made it past the house and onto the long path that wound up into the hills. “So, what’s wrong?” she said then.

  “What? Nothing’s wrong. I missed you.”

  “You look sad.”

  “I’m not sad. I’m happy to see you.” I put my arm around her and she let me. We walked in silence for a while, stopping when we got to the little creek that wound from one end of the reservation to the other. That was when I almost made my fatal mistake. I took her shoulders in my hands and turned her to face me and said, “I’m in love with you, Skye.”

  She looked like she might cry. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad until she brought her hand up and rested it on the side of my face and said, “No Kyle, you’re not. You and I are linked together by our heritage…by my grandfather…by secrets we shared with each other, but you don’t love me. At least, you’re not in love with me.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  She smiled. “No, you’re falling in love with your Rose and you don’t want to do that for some reason. You’re trying to find a way out of how you feel about her. You’re projecting that onto me.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not true. I felt this way about you before I met Rose.”

  “Okay then, how do you feel about her?”

  I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. She scares me. She’s everything I want and everything I don’t all rolled up into one.”

  “So, I would be the safer choice…that is until Mick found out and killed you.”

  I laughed, but she was right. That big son of a bitch would kill me, easily. “I’m so fucking confused.”

  “That’s what love does to you.”

  “I’m not in love with her. I barely know her.”

  “Then get to know her.”

  “I tried. I went to the zoo of all places and met her there with her son. She sent me away.”

  “Why? What did you do?”

  “Why do you assume I did anything?”

  She laughed and said, “Because I know you.” I told her the truth about the day. She listened without interrupting me and when I finished she said,

  “You’re an idiot and she’s right, you are a narcissist.”

  “It wasn’t about her. I planned to spend the day with her. It was just a picture and a few autographs.”

  “You’re so wrapped up in being Kyle Case the rock star that sometimes you can’t see past that. This woman wanted to feel like she was special to you. You just the same as told her that she wasn’t. Kyle Case and Stone Mother’s fans were more important than a woman who took a huge risk and let you meet her son.”

  “I didn’t think of it like that. I just see it as doing my job.”

  “Think about who you’re talking to here. You can’t bullshit me, okay. I know how much you crave the attention and I know how afraid you are of losing it someday. You need to figure out if you want a relationship with a decent woman…one woman, Kyle…or the adoration of millions who leave after a concert or a quickie or a blow job and go on with their lives.”

  “I don’t know if I can give it up, Skye…the lifestyle. It’s the only addiction I have left.”

  “Then maybe you should treat it like one. Addictions aren’t healthy. But you know that and you know that you can change the way you do things…you’ve done it already, if you really want this woman, you can do it again.”

  She wasn’t saying anything that I hadn’t already thought myself. I loved singing and performing…I didn’t love the lifestyle I led, but I didn’t know how to live without it. I felt thoroughly fucked. “So where do I start?”

  “Ease into it. Start by telling your manager you don’t want groupies and after parties. Start by turning down a show or two so that when Rose forgives you, you’ll have time for her. Start slowly with her too. Tell her how you really feel. Don’t be that asshole lead singer of Stone Mother…be Kyle, my friend who happens to be a great guy.”

  “Will you tell the Chief that?”

  She laughed. “I’ve tried. He’s not buying it.”

  “Are you going to tell Mick that I told you I love you?”

  She put her arm around me as we started walking again and said, “No. Your face is way too pretty. I shudder to think of what he’d do to it.” I laughed again, but I did too.

  I didn’t make any changes right away. In the spirit of “easing into it,” I tried to maintain and not hook up with too many girls, but I was no saint. I thought of it as “weaning.” By the time six months had passed I was almost ready to let it all go…except for the music. Music was like air to me, I had to have that. After the concert in Albany was over, my manager did what he always does and brought a group of girls, fans from the audience backstage for the “after party.” The norm is that we hook up, pair off and if we really like them…like the night I met Rose and Lynn, we invite them back to the party at the hotel, or in this case the new bus. When the girls all got there that night I was sitting on the couch, strumming my guitar, and seriously contemplating how good a swig of whiskey would taste. I was close to convincing myself that I could handle just a taste when I looked over and saw Guy on the recliner across from me. He had a girl on top of him that looked about eighteen. I hope our manager, Jerry had checked I.D. Anyways, she was sucking his face and grinding into him. Her skirt was up around her waist and I could see the line of her black thong down her ass crack. My first thought was that Rosie would never do that. It was a weird thought and I wasn’t even sure if I was thinking it was a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe I was just stating a fact. Another fact was that I was a little sickened by it myself. I was a little sick of it all.

  “Hey,” I looked up and Jimmy, a new guy we’d added to the band recently, was standing there with a girl on each arm. One of them was a Hispanic girl and all but her nipples were hanging out of the front of her dress. The other was a blonde with a dress on that was
so short if her clit got hard it would hang out underneath. “The girls wanted to meet you,” he said.

  I looked from one to the other and said, “Ladies.” I was playing fast and loose with the term.

  They giggled and Jimmy said, “We’re going next door to the party room. Come with us?”

  “Nah, I think I’m going to just sit here for a while and cool down.” That was partly true. The venue had been outside and it was fucking hot for Colorado. What I really wanted was a shower. I was ready to head for the bus. The Hispanic girl whispered something to Jimmy. He whispered something back to her and then he took the blonde and headed for the door. The girl in front of me slipped down to her knees in front of me. Looking down at her now I could see her nipples. Her skin was the color of light mocha and her nipples were big and dark. For a second, I imagined what they would feel like on my tongue…and then I thought about Rose. The little nymph between my legs reached for my fly. I put my hand over hers and said, “Not tonight darlin’.”

  She stuck out her bottom lip. It was a pretty lip, but my cock didn’t even twitch at the thought of having that one or the other wrapped around it. “Don’t you think I’m pretty?” she said.

  “I think you’re gorgeous,” I told her, honestly. “I just think you deserve better.”

  Being able to say no to the girls was like flushing the drugs and pouring out the bottles the night I left for rehab so when I came home, they wouldn’t be staring me in the face. It was another step. I walked outside and sent Rosie a text. It simply said,

  “I’m in Albany. Thinking about you.” It was my thirty-fourth one since I’d last seen her. She never answered any of them, and I know it was strange to keep sending them…but it felt like a connection to her in a strange way.

  Then I called Jerry and said, “I need to meet with you tomorrow. I want to make some changes to the way we do things. I need everyone there.” We set up a time and then I headed out to the bus to chill out while the guys had their party. I’d just opened a bottle of water and was heading for the shower when there was a knock on the door of the bus. I opened it and one of our security officers was standing there holding onto Lynn by one arm. Her right eye was swollen and the corner of her mouth was bleeding.

  “Lynn, what the hell happened to you?”

  “You know her?” the security officer asked me.

  “Yes, what happened?”

  “I found her sitting up against the building. She looks and smells wasted. I was going to call the cops, but she said she knows you.”

  “Lynn, look at me. What happened to you?”

  She started crying and fell towards me. I caught her in my arms and she said, “I was here with a guy…I don’t know what happened. I woke up out here, like this…”

  I looked at the officer and said, “Call the police.”

  “No! No Kyle please. My family will be so humiliated. There will be publicity because of you and they’ll find out. Please don’t call the cops.” She was hysterical and sobbing. I pulled her into me and put my hand on the back of her head…trying to calm her down. She had her face turned to the right…facing the camera as it went off in our faces. The guy who took the picture ran and my security officer chased him. The guy running was small and he vaulted a little fence and then I heard the scream of tires and the roar of a V-8. Fuck! Lynn’s hope to keep this from her family was shot. That picture would be on every tabloid cover in America by tomorrow morning.

  11

  Rose

  Is it too much to ask to have a relaxing Saturday? Kyle has been blowing up my phone all day. He’s not just texting me, he’s calling now too. All he keeps saying is, “Call me, Rosie…please.” It’s been six months…what could we possibly have to say to each other? I ignored him while I got Carlo ready to go to his best friend’s birthday party and then while I walked him over and dropped him off and then while I cleaned the house. Just about the time I thought that he’d given up, the phone rang again. I glanced at it because Carlo wasn’t home and I always worry. This time it wasn’t Kyle…it was Lynn.

  I knew she’d gone out with a new guy on Friday night. She took him to Kyle’s concert that I refused to go to. I thought about not picking it up, but with Lynn, you just never knew what mischief she may have gotten herself into. With a big sister heavy sigh, I picked up.

  “Hey Lynn! What’s up?”

  “Rosie, it’s Kyle…don’t hang up!”

  “What the fuck? Where’s my sister?”

  “She’s here…Rosie I need you to listen to me, please.”

  Hmm, Lynn’s with Kyle, imagine that. “So you ambush me?”

  “I called you twenty-two times from my own number, you won’t answer it.”

  “Great, so my sister loans you her phone. With family like that…”

  “Rosie, baby…please listen to me…” Baby? Really? Damn those involuntary tingles in my core!

  “Stop calling me Rosie, and do not call me baby!”

  He sighed, heavily. “Okay, but please just listen to me.”

  “You have five minutes and then I want my sister on this phone so I can tell her how I’m going to kill her.”

  “Rosi…Rose, Lynn showed up at my concert last night. I didn’t see her at the concert…but she was found by security afterwards, slumped up against the building and passed out.”

  Jesus Mother Mary! My sister is going to be the death of me yet. “Oh shit! Is she okay?”

  “I think she needs to go to the hospital, but she won’t go. She slept on the bus last night but she’s been puking all morning and she looks like shit. I’m pretty sure she’s dehydrated but she can’t keep anything down.”

  “Oh no! Let me talk to her, Kyle.”

  “She’s out again, Rose. But listen…there’s something else. When security brought her to the door, she collapsed into me. I was just trying to comfort her, I swear. Some little paparazzi piece of shit took a picture that’s going to look bad. Nothing happened, Rose. All I wanted to do is help her.”

  Why does he care so much what I think about him and Lynn? I’m under no delusion that this freaking melt your panties off rock star has been celibate for the past six months. I felt sick to my stomach, and not about who Kyle was sleeping with. Lynn is twenty-two years old, when is she going to grow up?

  “Where are you?”

  “You believe me, right?”

  “Jesus Kyle, this isn’t about you. Get over yourself. Where is my sister?”

  “We’re still in Albany. We’re supposed to be heading out to Jersey but my manager is having a conniption over Lynn being on the bus…”

  “I can be there in three hours. Can you wait? Can she? Maybe you should just send her to a hospital by ambulance and go on about your way…”

  “I called an ambulance a few hours ago. She pitched a fit and wouldn’t go.”

  “Jesus! What the hell is wrong with her?”

  He sighed again. “Rose, I hate to tell you this, but I think she’s using something…”

  “Using what?”

  “I don’t know, but it looks like she’s in opiate withdrawals to me.”

  “Oh my God!” I had to tell myself to calm down and breathe. “Okay so what should I do?”

  “Come and get her. I’ll get a room at the hotel here at the convention center and stay with her. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen opiate withdrawals, but my manager is right not to want her on the bus. It’s ugly. I don’t have a show until tomorrow night. I have time, even if I have to fly to Jersey in the morning. I’ll stay with her until you get here.”

  “Fuck! Okay. I’m on my way, text me the hotel and room number.”

  “Okay, be safe.”

  I suddenly remembered my manners. This guy is a rock star…a famous one at that. He didn’t have to give two shits about my sister.

  “Kyle…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you for being there for her. I’m sorry for all of this.”

  His voice sounded relieved as he sai
d, “You didn’t do anything, Rosie. Please don’t apologize. But, you’re welcome. I’ll see you soon.”

  My hands were shaking as I called my brother. I knew that Lynn was going to be pissed at me for telling Tommy, but too fucking bad. Tommy answered on the first ring.

  “Hey sis, what’s up?”

  “I need your help. Are you working today?”

  “At three, why?”

  “Um, apparently our little sister showed up at Stone Mother’s concert in Albany last night completely out of her mind wasted. Kyle let her sleep on the bus but he says she’s really sick and she looks like she’s having withdrawals from something.”

  “Fuck! Is she in the hospital?”

  “No. He tried but she won’t go. I guess she pitched a fit when the ambulance got there. I’m going to go get her. I was hoping you were off today…”

  “I can be. Give me a few minutes. A friend of mine owes me a shift…”

  “It’s okay Tommy.”

  “Rosie! You can’t save the world single-handedly, okay? Let me help you.”

  “Okay, I’ll wait for you.”

  It took Tommy less than half an hour to cover his shift and make it over to pick me up. I hate riding in the car with him. He drives like a cop…which is fine when he was in a patrol car. In his GMC, he scares the crap out of me. I usually insist on taking my own car when we go somewhere together, but today I think we probably need his speed. He didn’t say much until we got onto I-87, then he said,

  “Do you think this is a one-time thing?” He didn’t have to say so for me to know that he’s talking about the drugs.

  “No.” I don’t want to tell him that I’ve had my suspicions she was using something. She’s lost a lot of weight and she’s always either way up or way down. I asked her about it and she denied it and got all teary eyed…so I let it go. Maybe this breakdown is partly my fault.

  “Care to expound a bit?”

  Not really, but in this fucking family that’s just too damned bad. “I don’t think it’s a one-time thing. I think she’s probably been using something for a while. I asked her and of course she denied it…but we have to look at the facts here. She can’t keep a job, she parties all the time, she’s always with a different man…she never has any money no matter how much she cons Pop out of…”