Girl in Love

by Quinn, Caisey

  After calling Hannah and telling her to arrange his flight to the next tour stop, which Hannah informed her was in South Carolina, Kylie sat on her bed and began to read three hundred and fifty-odd pages of lies and bullshit. Twenty pages in, she seriously considered calling the publisher and suggesting they change the title.

  By chapter six, she’d lost count of the twisted mistruths. Darla detailed screaming fights where Kylie called her terrible names. They’d happened, but it had been her wicked stepmother calling the names.

  The passages reminded Kylie of some of the disgusting words she’d been called by Darla when her dad wasn’t around, long before she’d even known what they meant. She thought of how she’d feel if someone had called Lily or Rae those terrible things when they were that age. A sudden swell of sadness for her own preteen self washed over her.

  But that was nothing compared to the scathing fabrications Darla’s story contained about Kylie’s daddy.

  She’d called him an alcoholic, a liar, a cheater, and impotent—which really didn’t gel with the whole cheater thing—but clearly there was no one involved in publishing the monstrosity that actually gave a damn about fact-checking.

  So far it seemed Kylie’s lawyers couldn’t technically prove that Darla had broken the confines of the NDA she’d signed.

  The words on the page ran together. Tears pooled in her eyes as she read defamation after defamation.

  And she didn’t miss the fact that so many of them were eerily similar to things the media had published about Trace. The fact that she’d managed to pull this off without breaking the NDA even while referring to them indirectly, made Kylie wonder if whoever had helped a woman—who, as it so happened, couldn’t read and interpret the directions to make macaroni and cheese—write a book, maybe had a vendetta and had been purposely trying to draw a parallel.

  Trace’s name was never mentioned specifically—the nondisclosure agreement did made sure of that—but Kylie was accused of using her daddy issues as an excuse to sleep her way through Nashville repeatedly throughout the chapters she’d read so far.

  When she couldn’t take any more, she set the book aside and pulled her knees to her chest. Pulling her daddy’s faded blue button-up work shirt around her, she let her fingers follow the thread path of his name sewn into the front pocket.

  She didn’t have much to remember him by. A few old shirts, his truck, and her memories. Good memories. Memories of fishing and camping trips, ballgames, and learning to play guitar on the front porch after dinner.

  The falsehoods Darla spun were just that. False.

  He’d drunk a beer every now and then and he’d been tired a lot once he had a high-maintenance hag of a wife to deal with. But he was a good man. The best man Kylie had ever known.

  And no one would know. Because she’d put herself in the public eye, and Darla had found a way to exploit that for her own benefit. She wondered if there was any possible way she could’ve stopped this from being published. Bribed Darla. Or called a lawyer or sued the publisher or something. Anything to keep her daddy’s memory from being tainted in this repulsive way.

  But it was too late now. It was already out there—this bound book of lies about him and her both.

  A hard sob forced its way out of her throat and she threw the book across the room. It hit the wall with a dull thud and landed open on the floor.

  “Kylie Lou,” a soft voice called. She went completely still, briefly entertaining the ridiculous idea of hiding in a closet so she wouldn’t have to face him. She hurried to erase the evidence that she’d been crying. “You okay?” Trace stepped into her room and picked up the book she’d thrown.

  She lifted her chin in an attempt to appear perfectly fine. “What are you doing here? I thought everyone was staying at your place tonight.”

  She didn’t add that it stung like a dozen angry hornets that he’d invited everyone except her to his place for a home-cooked meal after the show. Not that she would’ve gone. But it stung nonetheless.

  “They are. I think the better question is, what are you doing here?”

  She gave him her best that’s-a-stupid-ass-question face. “Well, I wasn’t invited to the farm last I checked. So where else would I be?”

  “I didn’t ask why you were here. I asked what you were doing. I meant specifically.”

  She sighed loudly and closed her eyes for a moment. With a light shake of her head, she opened them and looked at him.

  “Trace, between your big productions tonight—you know, the one on stage and the one where you attacked Steven for no good reason—and then our argument outside where you decided to rehash painful memories just for fun, I’m kind of tired.”

  “You’re tired?” He eyed the book in his hands. “So you decided to read a book that you knew would keep you up all night?”

  An explanation came to mind, but she bit her tongue. She didn’t owe him anything.

  “What I read is none of your business.”

  “Fine. So why are you all alone on this bus reading that piece of garbage? Where’s Steven? I saw Mia and Lily leaving earlier and I could’ve sworn I saw him leaving with them. Care to tell me what the fuck is actually going on with the two of you before I make an even bigger ass of myself?”

  “Not that that’s any of your business either, but he left. He’s done with the tour. Congratulations. Mission accomplished. You can rest easy now.”

  Pushing off her mattress, she stood and placed a hand out for her book.

  He frowned and ignored her gesture. “I wasn’t trying to run him off. I just didn’t want to see you get—”

  “I swear to God, if you try to somehow spin this into you being some big damn hero, I am going to scream.” She shook her head and stepped back toward her bed. “And the idea of you protecting me from getting hurt is laughable.”

  She expected him to say something back. But he just looked at her intently, as if she were a puzzle to piece together and he was struggling to make it all fit. Her patience ran out before he said anything else.

  “Can you just grab whatever you forgot and go on back to Macon? I’m really not in the mood for this right now.”

  “Okay. I’ll do that then.” Without warning, Trace leaned down and lifted her off the floor. Before she had time to say a single word in protest, she was upside down over his shoulder and they were bounding out of her room.

  “Pants,” she squealed. “Trace, I’m not wearing any pants!”

  “I know.” He gave her a firm smack on her ass, which was right next to his head. “Thank God for that. It was the only reason I could stand listening to all your whiny baby nonsense in there.”

  “Nonsense? Where the hell do you get off?”

  He sat her down in the kitchen. “Well, I used to get off inside of you. On a good day, anyways. Otherwise in the shower mostly.”

  “Something is seriously wrong with you.” Her mouth threatened to let a small smile creep out and she wanted to slap herself in the face.

  “Lots of things are wrong with me, darlin’. Surely you get that by now.” He looked at her as if she were the one acting like a crazed lunatic instead of the other way around. “But I can’t fucking sleep in my big empty bed knowing you’re here on this damn bus all alone. So get your shit and let’s go.”

  “I’m not going—”

  “Spare me the toddler fit, okay? It’s late. It’s been a long day, like you said. And I have something I want us to do before we head back to the farm.”

  “Oh no, Trace Corbin. If you think for one second that we’re going to—”

  “Going to what, Kylie Lou?” His face was the picture of innocence. She knew hers was likely glowing with embarrassment. “I see you have your mind in the gutter. Nice. I approve.”

  “I’m going back to bed.” She turned to storm back to her room, but he caught her by the arm before she’d made it out of reaching distance.

  “Oh no you don’t. Look, we can do this the easy way, where you throw on som
e pants and bring your ass on. Or I can carry you out of here kicking and screaming and tomorrow you’ll have to borrow something from Rae to wear.” He shrugged. “Come to think of it, doesn’t actually make much of a difference to me either way. Welp, up you go then.”

  He bent down to grab her again and she gave him a solid shove.

  “Okay, okay. I’m coming.”

  “Sure, we can make time for that too.” He reached for her again and she slapped him away.

  “Dammit, Trace. Can you stop acting like a fourteen-year-old for five damn minutes?” She could feel her blood pressure rising. “I can’t do this if I have to constantly think about everything I say being turned into innuendo.”

  “Doesn’t matter what you say. I’ll turn it all into innuendo regardless.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Great. And when will you be stopping that childish habit exactly?”

  He made a big show of appearing thoughtful. “When you admit that you still have feelings for me, you still think about me, and that you missed me terribly every second that we were apart.”

  “There’ll be figure skating competitions in hell before that happens.”

  He nodded as if it made no difference either way. “Well, then I hope you enjoy my little jokes. I got plenty.”

  She was getting a headache from all the glaring so she decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. “Actually, I do have a confession to make. It’s kind of embarrassing though.”

  He turned his head slightly. “And what’s that, darlin’?”

  She took a step toward him. “Do you remember that night on the bus, that one night when you told me to go back to my room and lock the door?”

  She watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he swallowed. “Vaguely. Why?”

  Steeling her own nerves so she could go through with her plan for getting him to back off, she reached out and ran a finger down the front of the tight gray T-shirt he was wearing.

  Lowering her voice enough to be seductive, she glanced up at him from under her eyelashes. “Well, sometimes…at night…and even sometimes during the day, I think about you and I…I touch myself.”

  His eyes went wide and then narrowed with suspicion. “You do?”

  “Yes. I do.” She paused to bite her bottom lip. His eyes dropped to her mouth and she grinned. “I rub my temples. Because you give me a migraine.”

  His mouth eased into a slow smile while she grinned triumphantly. He shook his head and touched her lightly under her chin. “You’re something else, pretty girl. You ready to go or you want me to see what I can do to take your mind off that migraine I cause you?”

  Locked in his gaze, all sense of having finally beaten him at his own little play on words game vanished. The truth was, she may have finally made it to equal ground where their careers were concerned, but where anything physical was involved, she knew he would win every time. He’d shown her many, many times the way he could rob her of every single ounce of self-control she had with just one touch.

  She took a deep breath and stepped out of his space—relenting because she knew he wasn’t going to.

  “Give me two minutes. I’m gonna go grab some pants.”

  “Don’t bother on my account. I prefer you without them,” he called out after her.

  She did everything in her power to ignore the way her heart raced. Flirting with him was a terrible idea—one she had no recollection of deciding on and wished she could take back.

  She lost control of herself around him, a control she’d worked so hard to keep her white-knuckled death grip on. Her heart was doing its best to try and warn her. It had taken it a year just to regain the ability to function normally.

  It definitely wasn’t strong enough for anymore of the Trace Corbin heartbreak special.

  HE HAD the fire started by the time she got off the bus. Giving her a quick glance over his shoulder, he saw she’d pulled her hair up into a messy bun and put on jeans that begged to be peeled right back off her.

  “Um, what’s this?” She gestured to the fire as he pulled out a plastic chair for her to sit in.

  “We’re having a bonfire. It is a campground after all.” Without any further explanation, he tossed the book he was holding into the flames.

  “I was reading that!”

  “Yeah, I know you were. That was the problem.” Trace handed her a stick. “You like s’mores, right?”

  Kylie gaped at him as he pulled the items he’d gotten at the gas station from the brown paper sack.

  “What are we doing?” she asked softly. The vulnerable plea softened the hardened wall he’d been holding up with all his might.

  He sighed loudly as he lowered himself into his own chair.

  “I’m trying here, Kylie Lou. I really am. But I don’t know what you want or need from me. And if the answer is that what you want and need from me is for me to stay the hell out of your life or pretend like I don’t give a damn, well…I don’t know if I can.”

  He turned and let his stare press into her gaze. For a brief moment, he felt as if he really could read her mind. Hope, fear, and honest to God pain flashed from the depths of her wide expressive eyes. Whatever she was feeling, he was right there with her.

  “Why not? I mean, why can’t you?”

  The glimpse at that girl, that same vulnerable heart-on-her-sleeve girl, caught him off guard, and he had to look away to keep from taking her face in his hands and claiming her mouth as his.

  “Hell if I know. I just know I can’t.”

  Never in his life had he been this invested in the life of any other woman he’d been with. And of all of them, she was the one who actually had her shit together and truly didn’t need him. Didn’t even seem to want him. Or she didn’t seem to want to want him, anyway.

  The song had been too much for her to handle. He saw that now and judging from the way she was looking at him—doe-eyed and held captive by something she was obviously terrified of—he was going to have to back it down a notch or she was going to bolt before he could blink.

  He cleared his throat and made a pathetic attempt at shrugging. “Maybe we could call a truce. Try being friends. You know. People who spend time together, work together, without any old vendettas or bad memories getting in the way? Clean slate?”

  Glancing out of the corner of his eye, he saw that she’d turned to face the fire and was staring intently into the flames. The pages of her stepmother’s book were turning to ash as the cover curled and wilted around them.

  Sparks and glowing embers floated into the night sky. Trace watched them go, vanishing into thin air, and wished he could figure out a way to do the same thing to the pain he’d caused her.

  “They weren’t all bad.” Her voice was so low he wondered if he’d imagined it. “The memories, I mean.”

  Her confession nearly gutted him. It took him a minute to recover the playful demeanor he was hell-bent on maintaining. She’d had enough stress for one day.

  “Well of course not. I’m awesome in the sack.” He turned and gave her his panty-dropping grin. The one she’d always been immune to.

  Apparently she still was.

  She rolled her eyes and reached for a marshmallow. He watched as she speared it on her stick and thrust it into the flames.

  “Last I checked, I wasn’t so bad myself.”

  It was his turn to lose himself staring at her as her full lips blew on her flaming glob of sugar before pulling it gently from the stick. He would’ve handed her a graham cracker or the chocolate bar he’d bought, but he was unable to move.

  Emotions he’d never felt before—well, before her—threatened to strangle him then and there as she worked to build her s’more.

  Damn straight she wasn’t so bad in bed. She was downright fucking amazing.

  His head swam with the memory of parting and filling her, holding her in his arms while she let out those breathy whimpers that sounded better than any song he’d ever played. Or ever even heard for that matter.<
br />
  His warm memories began to burn with the raging heat of jealousy, of knowing he hadn’t been the only one to have her that way. But the other guy had thrown in the towel and bailed on her. Just like everyone else.

  He still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It made him happy. It made him miserable. Knowing he was yet again responsible for something going wrong in her life twisted him into an incomprehensible mess of a man.

  “Hey,” he began, “I know this is more than you want to hear right now, but I...” Panic had him choking on his own words. He took a deep breath.

  Kylie regarded him warily once again. “What is it?”

  I love you. I can’t live without you. I need you to forgive me more than I need to breathe to survive.

  He couldn’t tell her any of that. Not yet. So he said the one thing he could.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help with the stepmom situation, you just say the word.” The look on her face, the one that said she was touched by his offer, compelled him to continue. “And, uh, for the record, there isn’t a limit to what I would do to keep from hurting you again.” He swallowed hard and watched the pain dance across her face. “I’m not perfect—you know that better than anyone. And I will screw up. But hand to God, if I can keep from hurting you or keep anyone else from hurting you, I will move mountains and hell itself if I have to.”

  Her mouth dropped open just enough that he knew he’d surprised her.

  “So…I just wanted you to know that.” The obstinate fist that constantly gripped his heart in her presence loosened. Breathing slightly easier, he leaned back and began to roast his own marshmallow.

  “I can’t go to Macon tonight,” she announced into the darkness without looking at him.

  Her words were soft but even. Firm.

  “Kylie, I know we—”

  “No, Trace. You just said you wouldn’t hurt me if you could help it. So I can’t go.” Her chest rose and fell with the weight of whatever she was about to tell him. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It hurts being there, in that place where we were…you know.”