by James, Vicki
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed.
“Have you ever fallen for a girl before, Rhett?”
“Fallen?” I scowled.
“Yeah, fallen. Have you ever experienced something else with a woman? Has there ever been feelings attached to sex?”
My heart began to race wilder, the panic of being found out setting in. I’d been vulnerable with her all this time but being that vulnerable seemed a bridge too far.
“No,” I croaked. “Never.”
“Not even the first time?”
“Especially not the first time.” No guy was ever truly proud of their first performance, and I was no exception. It had been a job to get done. A box to check. A hurdle to overcome. I barely remembered the girl, only my desperate need to zip up, get gone, and tell Ollie I was no longer a virgin.
“Do you think…” Jules paused to concentrate on the way her fingers danced over my pounding heart. “Maybe that’s what could be wrong? That because you’ve written songs about me, you’re worried it means something else.”
“Don’t get this twisted, Jules. I’m not falling over here.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. But I do want to know if, when all this is over, it’s going to mean something—us.”
The mention of this all being over made me tense, and my body went rigid around her—my jaw, too. She felt it instantly. Her eyes navigated all of me, tracing of the hard lines that were soft only moments ago, before she looked back up into my eyes and held my gaze.
I stared right back, not breaking the moment, and not knowing what to say or what to think or what to do. That had to be enough. I had nothing else to give.
“Oh, Rhett,” she started with a sigh. “Listen, sometimes, we want something because we can’t have it. It’s forbidden. Thinking there are rules makes us want to break them. Holding in a secret makes you want to blurt it out. If something is free to take, we generally turn it away because it holds no value. If anyone can have it, it isn’t special. Sometimes, we see things we can’t afford to have in our lives, and we get lost between fantasy and reality. Things get… distorted. We think we need things we don’t really need. We think we feel things we don’t really feel. It’s all in our heads.” Her hand slid up to my neck, and she leaned even closer, candy lips hovering over me, intoxicating me with warm breaths I wanted to fall asleep in. “You said I wasn’t to get it twisted, and that’s fine. I won’t. I don’t want this to scare you. But don’t you get it twisted, either.”
I looked down at her mouth, feeling myself swallowing hard before I looked back up into her eyes.
“I won’t,” I said, knowing it was a lie. Feeling it was possibly one of the biggest lies I would ever set free. “I won’t get it twisted.”
“We both know what this is,” she went on, sounding far too calm compared to the storm I was holding within.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “Totally.”
“If we stay on the same page, this won’t get messy.”
“Right.”
She grinned far too brightly. How could she look so happy when she’d just delivered a speech that pretty much told me we were nothing but casual sex, no strings attached. That both of us only wanted this because it was forbidden.
It was more than that to me.
How could she not feel what I felt?
Coldness ran through my bloodstream, and my heart sank, retreating into its old space where I’d always kept it locked away.
“Now, tell me if you’ve ever written a song about another woman before.”
“No.” Fuck, I could barely speak.
“See. I am special.”
When she kissed me, I tried to give back to her what she had given to me, but even I could feel that it was half-hearted.
She dropped back down into the crook of my arm again, and it wasn’t long before Jules drifted to sleep, letting her sweet breaths wash over my tattooed chest without a care in the world.
I tried to stay with her, but after an hour of my heart racing out of control, I knew only a smoke would calm it down. A rage I’d never experienced before brewed in my body. I had no real clue what a panic attack felt like, or what anxiety really was, but I’d take a guess that it was similar to this feeling of being unable to breathe and the room kind of… spinning. My chest was heavier than ever before, the weight of her words crushing me until I wanted to fall to my knees and scream.
I’d never fallen for a woman before, and now that I had, the woman I needed to love me back wasn’t interested. I wasn’t good enough for her. I probably never had been, no matter what name I carried, what band I was in, or what things I’d achieved in my life.
Don’t get it twisted, Rhett.
Removing her wasn’t difficult when she was sleeping so soundly, and once I’d rolled her onto her side—a little mewl of contentment falling from her lips—I walked into the living area of the hotel suite, and I picked up my smokes. The curtains were open, and I was as naked as the day I was born. Thankfully, we were high up, but I didn’t give a shit who got a picture of me sitting in there in the early hours of the morning with only the end of a lit cigarette lighting up my world.
The moon became my only friend as I sat there chain-smoking, trying to make sense of my thoughts, but not even the moon could give me answers to questions I was too afraid to ask myself.
Eventually, I grabbed my phone from the coffee table, and I hit up the only other person I could guarantee would be awake at this ungodly hour.
Me: I wrote a song.
Presley: A song?
Me: Yeah. You know. One of those things I sing to an audience.
Presley: I know what a fucking song is, but you sent me a message saying ‘I wrote a song’ like it was this big thing and you’d never written one before.
Me: I haven’t. Not like this.
Presley: And your muse?
Me: No one important.
I tossed the phone on the sofa and threw myself back against the cushion. Presley responded a couple of times, the buzzing of my iPhone telling me so, but I didn’t look to see what he’d said.
The noise in my own head was enough.
Instead, I just smoked as much as I could smoke, and I drank as much as I could find in the mini bar, before I passed out on the sofa, naked and alone.
Just like the Rhett of old would have done.
That guy never got it twisted.
Chapter Thirty-One
I woke with a start, only able to lift my head an inch from the sofa before it slammed back down again.
Julia was knelt beside me, her eyes soft as she ran a finger down my cheek.
My head was pounding, and I squinted against the bright daylight in the room before I threw an arm over my face.
“Should I be offended?” she asked quietly.
I peeked out from under my arm, cracking one eye open. She looked far too pretty, even in this new blurry, aching day I’d woken up in.
“You decided to have a party without me. Where’s the fun in that?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I grunted.
“You could have woken me up.”
“You were sleeping.”
“That’s not stopped you before.
“Don’t start, Jules.”
“I’m not...” Her smile faded.
“Sure as shit sounds like it.” It came out snappier than I intended, and I pushed myself up to sit on the edge of the sofa, feeling cold now the alcohol had worn off and the daylight had brought a certain clarity with it. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Bad dream or something?” she whispered.
“No, my dreams are perfect.” I laughed without humour. “It’s my reality that’s shit.”
There was some fancy faux fur throw over the arm, so I grabbed it and draped it over my lap, tucking it under my bum before I reached over for a cigarette and pressed it in between my lips. I brought the lighter to my mouth, stalling
before I lit it, and I turned to face her slowly.
“What?” I mumbled around my cig.
Her smile had gone, the corners of her eyes dipped down.
The ultimate sad puppy face.
It made my insides shrivel, and I pulled my smoke from my mouth, scrunched my face up, and let my arms hang limp. “Awe, Christ, Jules, don’t look at me like that.”
“How, exactly, am I looking at you?”
“Like you’re… you know…” I waved a hand in front of me, squinting hard. “Like this is business. Like you’re my fucking publicist again, and I’ve just done something to piss you off that’ll give me a load of earache I don’t need.”
“I am your publicist.” She rose to stand fully. “And you have just pissed me off.”
She turned on the heels of her white pumps, and I watched her walk away in those fucking jeans, and a black, strappy vest. The top of her toned, tanned back was on display, and all I could focus on before she disappeared around the corner was that delicate neck I liked to hold whenever I kissed her.
I glanced down at my unlit cigarette for only a few seconds before I tossed it on the coffee table and took off after her, wrapping the throw around my waist and tucking it in place like I was some kind of poor man’s fucking Tarzan.
“Jules.”
“What?” That was the thing with her. She didn’t have to shout. She didn’t have to raise her voice to scare the shit out of people. She just had to switch her tone, and I knew there and then that the tone she was using with me was that of a pissed off lover… not a pissed off publicist.
I’d upset her. That didn’t usually bother me with women. It bothered me now.
I turned the corner into the bedroom, watching as she sorted through her own clothes and plucked out a nude-coloured blazer. I stopped in the doorway, taking her in.
Fuck, she was beautiful. So petite. So strong. So fragile. A total contradiction.
“I’m sorry, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“For what?” she asked as she pushed her arms into the blazer and shrugged it into place. “For freaking out? Clamming up on me? Acting like a child? Not being able to handle your emotions? Talking to me like I’m just another one of your disposable hook-ups?”
I frowned. “That’s not what happened.”
“Come on.” She laughed sarcastically. “That’s exactly what happened. That’s why you went in there, drank yourself stupid, smoked like crazy, and then passed out on that sofa after our conversation in bed. I saw you. I saw the way your whole expression changed. I should have known this would happen.”
“You don’t know shit.” I stepped forward.
“I know you better than you know your damn self because you can’t ever be honest with yourself. I’ve watched you do this self-destructive thing for the last three years.”
“Will you just let me speak?”
“I’m surprised it’s taken you so long, actually. I told you not to get it twisted. I told you.”
“Wait a fucking minute. I haven’t got anything twisted. I just—”
She turned sharply, pointing a finger at me from across the room. “No, you fucking wait a minute. I’m not doing this. I’m not pandering to your every mood swing. I’m not going to stand here while you deny to yourself what made you go out there last night. Contrary to what you believe, I don’t get paid enough to take on extra work for this band, and there’s no amount of money that could make me put up with you flicking your switch off and on every two minutes just because you think we’re screwing enough now for you to treat me like shit.”
“What the hell?”
“We’re not. We’ll never be screwing enough for you to talk to me like that.”
“I haven’t done a damn thing apart from waking up in a bad mood.”
She took a step closer, pushing the longer lengths of her fringe out of her eyes. I fucking loved it when she did that, but maybe not when she was looking at me like she was a lion, and I was trying to steal her first cub.
“Just… don’t.” She growled.
I held my hands up in surrender. “Fine, I won’t. I won’t do the thing you’re telling me not to do if you can just clarify what the hell that’s supposed to be. I’m swimming out of my depth here, Jules. Help me out.”
“I’m not your mother.”
“Well, no.” I smirked, unable to control it. “That would be weird.”
Jules narrowed her eyes on me, frozen in place, and it was only then that I saw the slight tremor of her pointed finger. Jules never shook.
“You can’t do this to me, Rhett.”
“Do what?” I whispered quietly, any humour sliding right off my face.
“Freak out.”
“Me, freak out?” I asked, pressing a hand to my chest and raising both brows. “I… babe… I’m not the one looking at the other like they’re about to tear them apart with their bare teeth.”
Her hand fell, slapping against her thigh as she stared at me. “And you can’t keep calling me babe. Or baby. It’s personal. Too personal. We can’t…” She shook her head, cutting herself off. I saw her swallow hard, and that heart of mine guided me towards her when I once would have wanted to run. I took a step. Then another. And another. She looked up at me through hooded eyes, her perfect jawline tense and her nostrils flared. The closer I got to her anger, the more I became wrapped up in my own comfort.
She was freaking out, too.
This wasn’t just about me now.
We were both feeling things that made us uncomfortable. Things that scared us.
We’d both got this twisted.
“Okay, Jules.” I stopped a few feet in front of her, my hands still in the air. “We’re just fucking here. I won’t call you babe. It’s too personal.”
Her chest bounced as her breathing spiked. I took another step closer, watching as her eyes drifted down my chest, down my abs, before they settled on that V she loved to lick at night.
“I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do. The two of us are going to go to work today,” I told her quietly as I closed the gap, carefully reaching down to hold her chin between my finger and thumb, “and we’re going to pretend like we hate each other again. We’re going to stand in that room together, and we’re going to keep the lines straight and clear. No kinks. No blurs. No twisting. I’m just some guy you secretly like to ride at night. Your dirty little secret. Nobody will ever know the sounds you make when I bury myself inside of you, because outside of this room, I’m nothing to you, right? And you’re nothing to me. We’re just work colleagues who screw.”
I lowered my head, my lips now only an inch from hers as I stared into her eyes.
She was panting, and I could read her body well enough to know that if I pressed my hand between her legs, there’d be heat there waiting for me. If I unfastened her jeans and slid my hand down her underwear, she’d be wet. If I nudged her blazer to the side, her nipples would be standing proud.
I pressed my lips to hers and closed my eyes, gifting her with the softest, most sincere kiss I could. I barely moved. I just held her there, a delicate piece of artwork propped between my fingers, while I stole her breath and handed over something neither one of us could see in return—only feel.
When I opened my eyes again, she was frozen in place. Her eyes closed, lips parted, and her skin flushed.
She stayed that way for a long moment, and I’d remember that look of hers for a lifetime, no matter what happened next between us.
“I’ll get things back to how they should be right away. I wouldn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”
Her eyes flickered open, and a look of worry flashed over her perfect, porcelain face. I smiled tightly, knowing it wasn’t quite reaching my eyes, as I tucked her hair behind one ear and trailed my fingers down her neck.
“I get it,” I whispered. “There’s no room in this industry for a silly little twisted thing like love.”
Somehow, I walked away and disappeared into the bathroom, letting the door close behind me.
If she wanted to play, we were going to play.
I knew who was going to crumble first.
Over my dead body would it be me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“You look like shit,” Dicky said, not so much as glancing at me as he leaned forward and tapped away on his phone. He was sitting on one of the sofas in the rehearsal studio while Hawk plucked some strings behind us, and the rest of the guys huddled in a corner, talking over some issues with the key they wanted me to sing in. I slumped back beside Dicky, my head thrown back, and my hand on my forehead.
“Rough night?”
“Nothing too wild,” I answered.
Julia walked past us both, glancing my way with a look on her face I couldn’t decipher before she lifted her chin and made her way to the others. I closed my eyes and groaned.
“What’s that about?” Dicky nudged my leg, forcing me to roll my head his way. He nodded to Julia.
“Fuck knows. She’s been pissy with me all morning.”
“What did you do this time?”
“Breathed?”
“She’s been different since she came back. Come to think of it, you’ve been different, too.”
I laughed softly, my chest barely bouncing. “Yeah, that’s because we’ve been secretly fucking behind everyone’s back. You dumb fucks just haven’t been paying enough attention to see what’s right in front of you. Self-involved bastards,” I whispered sarcastically.
Dicky’s silence forced me to peek an eye open and take him in. His face had dropped completely.
“Don’t you dare…”
I smirked right at him. “Are you forbidding me to fuck Julia? You know what happens when people tell me I can’t do something.”
There was an uncomfortable moment between us before he shook his head and turned back to his phone, mumbling under his breath about what a pain in the arse I was, and how Julia was way out of my league anyway. I glanced her way, watching her smiling and laughing with Pres, Hawk, Coops, and Big D, while each one took it in turns to hold her attention. Normally, I’d have argued with Dicky that she wasn’t out of my league, but now…