Mistake’s Melody: Unquiet Mind Book Four

by Malcom, Anne

“You’re not my groupie, for fuck’s sake, you’re my woman,” he snapped.

  “I’m fucking not,” I snapped back.

  “You’re either admitting you miss me or that you’re mine before the end of this phone call,” he said.

  I frowned. “I’ll do neither, and you can’t stay on forever, you’ve got a show in...” I looked at my laptop. “Five minutes. I know Mark is probably already giving hand gestures at you.”

  He chuckled overtop of the chaos of voices that had been steady in the background of the call. “Oh, you’re not wrong about Mark, but you are wrong about me staying on forever. I’ll postpone the whole fucking show until you admit one of the two things.”

  I bit my lip. There was certainty in his voice, and I knew he wasn’t bluffing. But I wanted to call him on it. I wanted to be the reason why thousands of people didn’t get the man they were screaming for. It was so petty and horrible that it made me sick.

  But I still wanted it.

  “I’ll admit nothing and you’ll cave,” I challenged.

  “Oh, I will not.”

  Twenty Minutes Later...

  “Wyatt, now I can hear the crowd through the phone. Just go on,” I urged, hating that I was smiling with satisfaction.

  “Not until you admit it,” he said, smile in his own voice, though he was almost shouting through whatever chaos was going on in the background. And I knew it was chaos since I’d heard three different people cursing him out.

  No one in the band, of course.

  I’d gotten texts from all of them.

  Lexie: Okay, so you’re both trying to out stubborn each other, and I should be saying I disapprove since the fans are gonna hate us...but this is what I’ve been waiting for.

  Sam: I’ll give you $10,000 plus my Ferrari if you don’t give in. I want to see the vein in Mark’s head burst.

  Noah: Told you he loves you.

  “You could hang up on me if you cared about the show,” Wyatt said. “But you don’t give a fuck about that. You give a fuck about me.”

  “No, I just like to win,” I countered.

  “Emma, I’ve got you and our daughter, I’ve already won.”

  My heart jumped to my throat.

  “I’m not going anywhere, you’re not hanging up, so let’s chat.”

  I gaped at the computer screen I had up on Twitter, reading Tweets from all the people at the concert.

  “Chat?” I repeated. “Wyatt, you’ve got thousands of people waiting on you, a manager you’re probably going to put in an early grave and a job to do. We’re not chatting. Just hang up the fucking phone.”

  “That asshole with the hair gel called you?” he said by way of answer.

  I sighed because Wyatt had been there when Aaron had called me, I’d put my phone on speaker, unaware he’d gotten out of the shower. Wyatt had snatched my phone from my hand, hung up and decided I’d never be talking to him again.

  I’d yelled at him about a variety of things, mainly that this wasn’t the Dark Ages, and he had no authority over such things. Wyatt had yelled back. We’d eventually had sex on the kitchen counter.

  It was hard to say who won that.

  “It’s not your business if he has,” I said.

  “My cock’s been inside you most recently, and it will be the second I land in L.A. tonight, so yeah, it’s my business.”

  I forgot about being angry, about the fact we were holding up the show, about how I was meant to be keeping my distance from Wyatt. “Tonight?” I repeated. “You’re not supposed to be arriving until tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Cancelled the press. No one was disappointed. Chartered a jet to take me back as soon as the show’s over tonight.” He paused. “So the longer you delay, the later I’m gonna be back, and the longer you’re gonna have to wait for your next orgasm.”

  My panties were instantly wet. “I’ve got a vibrator,” I replied. “I don’t have to wait for my next orgasm, I’m in control of it.”

  I heard Wyatt’s harsh intake of breath through the chaos in the background. “Fuck, babe, you want me to go on stage with a hard-on? Better yet, I’ll cancel the whole show just to get there and fuck you better than any vibrator can.”

  I squirmed on the sofa. “You’re not canceling the show.”

  “Tell me you’re fuckin’ mine, or that you miss me then,” he demanded.

  “You’re relentless.”

  “I will be when my dick’s inside you in a few hours,” he growled.

  I bit my lip harder, watching Twitter, grasping with my last shreds of willpower, of reasoning not to admit such things to Wyatt.

  “I miss you,” I whispered.

  There was a pause, and even the chaos in the background seemed to quiet.

  “You’ll be admitting you’re mine in no time and agreeing to marry me in no time,” Wyatt said, voice husky.

  “No I won’t,” I snapped, but I was speaking into dead air.

  The fucker hung up on me!

  Then again, he’d held up a sold-out show while waiting for me to tell him I missed him. I couldn’t be mad at him.

  Six Hours Later...

  “You hung up on me!” I hissed upon opening the door.

  It was past two in the morning and I hadn’t slept a wink.

  Wyatt grinned at me, taking in his tee that was stretching over my bump. He knelt down in front of me, on my doorstep, cradling the swell in my belly, yanking up the tee so he could lay his lips on my bare skin. I shivered at the contact.

  “I don’t think your mother could find an hour in the day not to be mad at me,” he murmured.

  I put my hand on my hip. “I doubt I could find a second.” My voice didn’t have the sharpness I wanted since I was too busy trying not to melt at Wyatt literally kneeling in front of me after having tens of thousands of people worship at his feet mere hours ago.

  Wyatt’s gaze hit mine, dark and full of sex. His hand moved down to the edge of my panties, his mouth moving with it. “I think I can find more than a few seconds where you’re not mad at me,” he muttered, moving his face so it was between my legs.

  “Wyatt,” I whispered. “We’re in the middle of my hallway.”

  He yanked down my panties and the cool air hit my core, he yanked at my leg so one of my knees was over his shoulder and I was utterly exposed to him. “You better come quick then,” he rasped against me. And then he was there. His mouth against me, bringing me to a beautiful climax, at my front door.

  I did come quick.

  And not for the last time either.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Two Weeks Later

  It was funny the way the world worked. The way it dredged up old feelings, forced me to reveal the decaying, rotting corpse of my past while preparing to bury another.

  I got the call as I was driving to the beach house.

  I didn’t even have a reason to be going there. Lexie was back in Amber for the weekend. She had invited me to stay. I told her I had too much work to get done before the baby arrived.

  It wasn’t exactly a lie. I did have a lot of work to get done before the baby arrived. Finalizing big projects, organizing someone who wasn’t a complete imbecile to deal with my clients, pick furniture for the baby’s room, figure out how to get a personality transplant in order to make me a suitable mother.

  That kind of thing.

  But I wasn’t doing any of it.

  I was driving out to the beach house on a flimsy excuse that I’d left a pair of sunglasses there. Fucking sunglasses. I may have just written in skywriting. I couldn’t go a day without seeing him.

  I’d been so eager, so certain about the fact he wasn’t moving in. But in the weeks since he’d played five shows and flown back to L.A. as soon as they were done just to see me, to give me orgasms and to leave me with his scent on my pillow and the ghost of his touch, I’d tortured myself about what it might feel like. What the air would smell like, how I’d relax into his energy coming home, knowing there was something awaiting me
other than bone crushing loneliness.

  It was dangerous. What I was doing. What I was feeling. Turning things with Wyatt into something more than they were meant to be. I was romanticizing the fact I was carrying his kid from the result of a one-night stand he didn’t even fucking remember.

  Because in the weeks since we’d started having sex, there were too many more memories to pile on top of the ugly ones. Disguise them so I could almost pretend they didn’t exist.

  I wished I could be the person to hold onto his actions on the day I told him I was pregnant. Hold onto the hurt that came from it and use it as a reason to never open my heart to him again.

  I’d considered myself one of those people who could ruthlessly shut down their feelings when the situation called for it. When survival called for it. That I’d be the female to thrive in the face of heartbreak, whip her hair and have enough confidence to know the man who walked away from here deserved to be in one place—her rear vision mirror, the book of cursory tails she told her single girlfriends.

  But I wasn’t that girl. That woman. Or maybe I was. With everyone else but the man who mattered.

  The man who could destroy me.

  Who was destroying me.

  And I was driving over to his place in order to retrieve my sunglasses and resume ruining my fucking life.

  The baby kicked halfway through the trip. So violently, so unexpected that I swerved into the wrong lane, narrowly missing a Prius. They honked at me. I flipped the bird, half sorry that I hadn’t hit them. It was a fucking Prius.

  But it wouldn’t do well to crash right now, not with the human growing inside me making herself known. It was a strange feeling to be alone in the car and experience the evidence that I was not alone. I would never be alone again, no matter what happened with Wyatt, I’d have the little person kicking at my bladder, giving me heartburn and making me puke up my oatmeal.

  After she was done doing all that, she’d be a real person, helpless and vulnerable, someone who would rely on me for everything.

  It was comforting as well as terrifying.

  So that was when I got the call, as I was taking the exit to Malibu, one hand on the wheel, one hand on my stomach, reveling and shaking in the realization I’d never be alone again.

  I didn’t speak many words, nor did the person on the other end of the line. It was a cold and brutal phone call, chasing away the warmth of the moment. But that was my life, the ebb and flow of joy to make room for a constant and comforting kind of misery.

  I was supposed to feel misery after the call, I guessed. But I couldn’t muster it up. It probably made me a bad person.

  I could’ve turned around, fled to my apartment to deal with the news just spat at me through a crackling connection moments after my child had kicked inside me. Surely it was the smarter choice, to get ahold of myself to make sure Wyatt couldn’t catch any of my broken pieces.

  It wasn’t smart giving him more of me. Buying into this stupid fantasy he’d created for whatever reason.

  I didn’t turn around.

  Because I wasn’t one to make the smarter choice. That might save my heart—whatever was left of it. So I ended up at the beach house.

  I entered the living room on autopilot, glancing at Wyatt and Sam standing in the middle of the room, inspecting what looked to be a hideously expensive crib. I was pretty sure there were speakers in it.

  “I know, I know,” Wyatt said, holding his hands up in surrender when he saw me. He spotted me the second I stepped foot in the room since he seemed to have some kind of sixth sense when it came to me now. “I’m not allowed to buy things for the baby without your approval, especially since you’ll look up how much this costs and yell at me for not including you in the decisions—”

  “It’s fine,” I interrupted.

  Wyatt blinked.

  Sam’s neck snapped up from where he’d been fiddling with the remote attached, and he gaped at me. Then at Wyatt. Then back to me. “You didn’t yell at him,” he said. “The only reason I stayed was to watch you yell at him. It’s better than cable. You come up with curse words even I haven’t heard of. And I’m a drool-worthy, badass motherfucking rock star.”

  “Dude, you’re not a badass when you call yourself a badass,” Wyatt muttered. “Or drool-worthy.”

  Sam flipped him the bird. “My wife will tell you different on both scores.”

  “She won’t,” Wyatt said. “Since Gina has never uttered the words ‘drool-worthy’ in her life.”

  Sam glared at him then at me. “Are you seriously not going to yell at this fucker?”

  “It’s not that big of a deal, it’s a crib.” I shrugged.

  Wyatt’s attention went back to me, but it was Sam who spoke. “Not a big deal? I’ve never heard you utter that in regard to Wyatt, especially when he buys things like a five-thousand-dollar crib.” He waited for my reaction as he enunciated the cost, and I didn’t have one. “Okay, this is getting creepy,” he said. “Who died?”

  “My dad,” I replied, voice flat.

  Wyatt’s body stiffened and he immediately punched Sam in the arm hard enough for him to go flying into a bookshelf. Sam righted himself before he could tumble to the ground, but he was stunned enough not to punch Wyatt back or even swear at him.

  In fact, his face had paled, grin wiped off his normally carefree face.

  Then Wyatt was in front of me, he’d crossed the distance between us in less than two strides. “Babe,” he murmured, hand on my neck. “I’m sorry.”

  I met his eyes, mostly because of the pressure he exerted which made me lift my head. “Don’t be. I hated my father.”

  He jerked in what I guessed was surprise. I’d told him some of the more sordid details of my childhood, enough for him to realize my parents were scum. But obviously not enough to make him realize that the death of the man whose sperm were responsible for my existence wasn’t something I was going to shed a tear about.

  “But I should probably go to the funeral,” I continued. “If only to spit on his grave.”

  Wyatt recovered quickly, hand tightening on my neck. “Well, then I’ll come too. Piss on it for good measure.”

  And in the midst of a moment I didn’t think it was possible to do so, I smiled.

  And I didn’t argue with Wyatt, for once.

  * * *

  I always had this fantasy that my mother wasn’t actually a bad person. That she actually wanted me, and that my father was somehow the villain who corrupted her with ugly words and violence when she was young and impressionable. I toyed with the idea that he was the villain in this piece, he made her hate me.

  As a kid, I thought—I hoped—maybe if he left us one day, running away from the ‘two women who ruined his life’ that maybe we’d turn into a fucked-up version of Lexie and Mia.

  It was a fantasy that I grew out of, but one that somehow returned when we pulled up at the funeral home on a cold and drizzly Washington day. We were in some fancy SUV with tinted windows, even though we’d managed to avoid the paparazzi at the airport by taking a private jet. And the trip was thrown together in a matter of hours since I was only informed of my father’s death by some old school friend who’d seen it on Facebook. I didn’t know how she’d gotten my number, or why she’d called me however long ago it was, but without her call, I wouldn’t have even known. She was “sorry to hear of my loss.”

  A loss would’ve meant I gained something from him when he was alive.

  But still, my mother not calling me to tell me my father died was shitty. Not that I was surprised. She hadn’t so much as texted since I moved out nine years ago. I was dead to her, for all intents and purposes. I doubted she would’ve come to my funeral if I actually did die, and if she did, it would’ve been to see what she got in my will.

  I was likely far too young to have a will. But I did. My parents got nothing. Everything that meant something to me went to Lexie. All the worthless stuff like money went to where it could make a difference, to children
’s homes in the Washington area.

  Wyatt hadn’t probed about my parents, asked for any more of the details of why I was dry-eyed and blank-faced about the whole thing. Though he knew what I’d shot at him when he’d tried to open up to me that day at the beach house.

  Though that was only scratching the surface.

  He barely spoke at all. He somehow sensed I didn’t have the brainpower to conjure such things as conversations. So instead of speaking, he held my hand. On the ride to the airport in L.A. On the flight over. And now, sitting in this SUV outside a funeral home.

  Lexie had called me. So had Mia. Both had offered to fly up in a moment. Because that’s the kind of people they were. The kind of family. I’d refused because no way would I let my real family be polluted with the joke of biology that was my mother.

  “I’m not gonna ask if you’re okay, because even if you aren’t, you’ll lie,” Wyatt said, glancing to the dreary building and then to me. “Nor am I gonna ask if you’re sure you want to do this, because I know the second you put your mind to something, you’ll do it. But I will say the second things start to get rough in there, I’m taking you home. Because you’d rather carve out your own eyes than admit to being in pain, I, unfortunately, know that from experience.” He lifted my hand to his mouth and laid a kiss on my palm. “It just so happens I’d rather carve out my own heart than watch you hurt. So I’ll weather the yelling or cursing I’ll be treated to for telling you what to do rather than have to watch you go through something I can take you out of.” His hand rested on my stomach for a moment. “Agreed?”

  Normally, I would’ve argued passionately about him making such assumptions and decisions for me. Right now, it was the only thing keeping me level. “Agreed,” I whispered, leaning into the warmth of his palm on my stomach. I’d forgotten to tell him about the baby kicking through all of this. I should’ve told him now. I didn’t. I just let him rest his hand there, let that warmth of his touch spread through me.