Jeez, of course I was happy but it felt tenuous and I had to hold something back in reserve because my gut told me there were tons of complications, mainly in the form of females. So I gave him a half smile, “Yeah, I’m happy.”
I was…to a point so I stored the thought for another time.
CHAPTER 3 - IN THE WOODS
Gibson
Interruptions were common place in my life, but Charlotte was pushing things to the extreme when she rang my hotel room as Chloe and I were starting to turn up the heat. My personal assistant had been told never to call me in the morning unless it was a life or death situation, so when my cell rang I tried to ignore it. When it rang again alongside the hotel room phone, I knew it wasn’t good news.
As I scowled and chewed Charlotte up for her untimely call, she halted me in my tracks when the conversation included Ruby, Chloe’s friend and the fact that Chloe’s apartment had been vandalized. Initially it was thought to be a random act but for the fact that whoever had done it had set Chloe’s college portfolio on fire.
Chloe was new to New York and only knew four people. Ruby her friend from college, a guy called Gavin who she met on the plane on the way to New York and his roommate, Eddie. I met Ruby, and the rest of them when I had pulled a stunt to meet Chloe by saying she had won a competition with automatic entry, after purchasing a new phone. The prize was to meet M3rCy with three friends. It never even occurred to me she’d bring two guys with her.
Ruby had gone to check on Chloe’s apartment and when she found that it had been trashed, she suspected Kace was involved. She had called Charlotte instead of Chloe because she knew that Chloe was delicate and she thought we were still in Rio. I think Ruby thought that I’d kept Chloe with me because of Chloe’s fear that Kace would come after her, but it was much more than that.
Charlotte convinced the police that she and Ruby would be dealing with things in Chloe’s absence as she was overseas with me. That was bending the truth we’d already landed back in the USA.
Ruby said the only people who were close to Chloe would know what her college work meant to her, and although there was no direct evidence to link him, she strongly suspected Kace. A local sheriff in Florida made a call to his place, but according to neighbors, Kace hadn’t been seen since the day the story broke about us.
Private investigators had done a fair job of helping Chloe to be more anonymous, but with the media all over her I had inadvertently led Kace right to her door.
It was most likely that Kace had been doing some investigating of his own. It wasn’t rocket science to figure out how to find her after that, because the media had been all over the hotel she was staying at when she came to see us. It wouldn’t have been hard if he’d been watching on T.V. to find out where she was staying and he could possibly have found a way to access the hotel’s computer system containing her home address.
Until I knew the full facts I wasn’t taking any chances by telling Chloe, no point until I knew exactly what had happened. Best place for us was to stay completely out of the picture until show time. We’d flown back from Rio to Chicago the day before and were due to play at All State Venue in the evening but without knowing where Kace was, anywhere that was obvious around Chicago had to be reconsidered again.
Jerry had been flown to New York during the night at Charlotte’s prompt to deal with the forensic team who were working at Chloe’s place. She asked the police to make Jerry the point of contact for her because she was often in meetings during the day.
It may have seemed like we’d gone to the extremes for a girl I had been with for a week, but I had compromised her safety in the first place, and because I had gone to the trouble of keeping Chloe with me at all times, the guy was a threat to me as well. No one had woke me because they are paid to do their job and keep me safe, and Charlotte saw finding out what happened at Chloe’s as part of that deal.
I knew I’d have to tell Chloe what was really going on at some point, and I had a day off the following day so I figured that I’d do it when I could spend time supporting her, because I suspected when I did it would make her feel scared. The last thing I wanted was to run off to some interview, or sit trying to be pleasant to a room full of strangers when my girl was feeling so insecure.
So I’d given Charlotte the nod to move Chloe and I to the cabin and I would commute from Michigan to Chicago. Years ago I had purchased one of the few little unassuming log cabins in a very secluded area in woods near Michigan City.
‘Fret Bar’ was one of two cabin getaways I had, the other being in Breckenridge, Colorado. But Breckenridge was more like my personal space and this one we were going to was a retreat for the band. Ownership of ‘Fret Bar’ was held in Charlotte’s mother’s name and I had bought it in cash to maintain my confidentiality.
Flying time from Chicago to the cabin in Michigan took no time at all in the jet, so I knew we’d be there by lunch time at the latest. Once I had settled Chloe safely in her seat and took mine next to her and exhaled heavily, relieved that I had her somewhere that I knew no one could touch her.
“Am I that much of an effort?”
Twisting my body to face Chloe’s I stared into those incredible eyes of hers that I’d never been able to forget with a quizzical look. “What do you mean? You are not an effort, I told you that.”
Chloe’s concerned anxious stare anguish hurt my heart and I sensed she had no confidence in what we were doing. Her self-worth was so low that she only seemed to be able to process negative thoughts about herself.
That fact frustrated the fuck out of me because no matter what I said, her ex-boyfriend had beaten the trust and self-belief out of her and I was struggling to maintain a soft tone when I was so fucking over the lack of acknowledgement of the effort I was making for her.
“I know you are annoyed at me, Gibson. Hell, I’m annoyed at me. I never asked for any of this and I don’t want you to keep pretending you want me here if you don’t. It must be difficult for you when you are used to being around lots of women who fawn over you and you’re trying to deal with me.”
So there it was again, the ‘groupie’ reference without her actually calling them that. I never consciously did or said anything to give her the impression that I was using her, yet I got the feeling there was a gnawing thought chewing into her brain that reminded her constantly of my promiscuous past.
“Jesus, Chloe, will you ever let up with that? Tell me what is it that I have to do to convince you that it’s you I want here? What the fuck have I done since you have been with me to give you the impression I was, or still am, using you?” I knew I had a point and when she didn’t respond, I got pissed.
Unclipping my seat buckle and trying to temper my aggression, I heard it clunk noisily when it fell against the plane wall as I stood up. Placing my hand on the back of my head I raked my fingers through my hair then strode angrily toward the steward who was still sitting after take-off. The signal still hadn’t come from the cockpit that we were cleared to move around.
“Large vodka neat on the rocks.”
The steward couldn’t have been more than twenty one and looked intimidated by my presence. I watched as he shifted awkwardly in his seat, then he summoned the courage to say that Johnny hadn’t given clearance to remove our belts. He began advising me to sit back down and wait until it was safe to move around the cabin.
I Interrupted him, saying, “Fine, stay in your seat, I’ll get the fuckin’ drink myself.” Turning, I disappeared into the galley and began opening and closing the metal storage cupboards noisily, briefly considering offering Chloe a drink, but when I looked out the steward and her were exchanging nervous glances, which pissed me off even more. What the hell did they think I was going to do?
When I found the ice and miniature bottles of alcohol, I grabbed half a dozen, stuffing some bottles in my jeans pockets before striding purposefully back down the aisle to the last seats at the back and throwing myself down heavily in the one nearest the window.
When I had passed Chloe she was looking down at her hands and my heart almost cracked at how dejected she looked, but I was pissed and didn’t trust myself to speak for fear of making it worse.
Watching the back of her head I could just about see her profile and her head was still bowed down. I knew she was looking at her lap and felt so irritated that she hadn’t just shouted back at me or thrown something or… given me any reaction really.
My throat constricted tightly when I swallowed my frustration and my heart squeezed with emotion because I just couldn’t be the bigger person and sit back down next to her again. I was so fucking infuriated that the guy she had lived with had screwed with her to such an extent, that she was probably worried about what I would do because I was frustrated with how he’d made her react.
Johnny briefed me while we were at the airport. Apparently the guy who turned over Chloe’s place was almost certainly Kace. No CCTV had been installed in Chloe’s building but he’d been picked up on others in the vicinity. Unfortunately, there were too many gaps in the trail to track him down.
So I did what the old Gibson would have done and drowned my sorrows. Six miniature bottles of vodka later I wasn’t drunk but I was beginning to calm down. My judgment was a little impaired. This showed in my general coordination, and unfortunately, the alcohol had made me horny.
Rising out of the seat, I nodded to the steward and inclined my head in the direction of the cockpit. Without a word he entered it so that I could have some privacy to talk with Chloe. I’d been quietly watching her for about twenty minutes and the only movement she’d made was to turn her head to the side, apparently glued to watching the sky outside the small window.
When I reached her seat, I stepped over her slim legs on the foot rest and settled in the seat next to her. Chloe was now facing me, but tried to turn her head to look in the other direction and I wasn’t allowing that, not when I had come to tell her how I felt. Turning her head toward me by her chin, I gave her a half smile when I was scowling inside.
“Listen, I feel we need to clear the air once and for all. You are here because that’s what I want. Me: Gibson Barclay, the guy from the bar but without those other girls. Just the young dude who wanted to meet someone that he related to and wanted to be around. Only the boy I was then never knew that was possible. By spending some time with me, I kinda hoped you’d start to want this too.
“Chloe, this isn’t me being arrogant, just stating a fact if I’d only wanted to fuck you I’d have done that on the beach that first night. You wouldn’t have stood a chance once I got started. I know that sounds arrogant and this is going to sound shitty but it is what it is. I know all I need to know about how a woman ticks…how to turn her on…how to make her want me like I’m the only thing she wants.
“Trust me. I completely get how a woman’s body functions and how to use it for my own gain. Showing your hand on the beach by kissing me, Chloe, if I had wanted to, those jeans would have been stripped away, your panties stuffed in my pocket like some fucking trophy and my dick inside you in a heartbeat.” Watching Chloe’s mouth draw in her lips, I couldn’t tell if I had teased her and she was biting back a grin or stopping herself from arguing back.
Speaking to Chloe like that made me feel embarrassed for once, but I was stating a fact. When I took her to dinner as part of her prize we had both drunk a fair bit of wine. By the time I took her to the beach, Chloe’s eyes were heavy with desire and I had been so desperate to have her. Every bone in my body was rattling inside my skin, aching to get a hold of her, to taste her wonderful slender body and to place my parched lips over those pert, voluptuous little breasts.
After years of thinking about that one time I had touched her, I swear I could still feel the sensation of her hips on my fingertips from that night when I held her briefly at Beltz Bar. Such a stupidly insignificant event but it was the one time that I’d never been able to shake how a girl had looked at me.
“We’ve been together now for how long? A week?” I stared into Chloe’s vibrant blue eyes and wanted to climb inside of her. “Let me tell you something… I’ve never spent a week in any one woman’s company. Or had a girl in my bed for more than two nights in a row; and that was because she was as sick as a dog from alcohol and we were grounded during a snow storm in Denver.”
Chloe looked down at her lap again and I could hardly bear it. Crooking my finger under her chin, I lifted her head and those amazing eyes with the deep inky blue color very slowly rolled up my face until they locked into mine. “Chloe, I may be half way to being drunk, but what I feel in here…” Still holding the drink in my hand I tapped my chest with one finger and the melting ice made a dull clink against the glass. “And in here…and here.” I lifted the glass to my head and pointed at my forehead at my temple before I drew it down and pointed at my dick that was always at half-mast just by having her around.
“You do something to me and I don’t have the words to explain it. I don’t know what the fuck to do with these feelings and I don’t know how to help you to understand it when I don’t understand it myself. But get this…I don’t want you to go anywhere without me. For the first time in my life, when I walk out on stage, I fucking hate it. You know why? Because I can’t take you out there with me!”
Staring intensely at her, I knew it wasn’t lust with Chloe before I’d tasted her, what was happening was much more than that. I began searching her face for her reaction. Chloe licked her beautiful sweet lips and worked a swallow before bringing her soft hand to my face in a touchingly tender move with her slim fingers caressing my jawline at one side. One word slipped from her lips as she whispered softly, “Okay.”
“Okay what?” My voice was a husky broken question. I had dragged my heart out of my throat and laid it in front of her and all she had to say was, okay?
“That’s it? Okay? O…fucking kay? I just told you how I felt and you hit me with that? Are you getting some kind of kick out of mind-fucking me Chloe? What the fuck does ‘okay ’ mean?” I couldn’t hide the frustrated angry tone any longer.
Chloe’s hand slipped from my chin around the back of my head and she leaned forward to kiss me softly on the lips, her eyes registered relief but never broke their intense inspection of mine. “Okay, I understand you feel something for me. I accept that it’s something that you want to explore, Gibson. I’m just protecting myself from becoming involved with this…huge rock star that everyone wants a piece of…that kind of adulation, I can’t compete with.” Chloe pulled the sleeve of her sweater down and clung tightly to it.
Of course, Chloe was right everyone did want a piece of me apart from her. That’s what had attracted me to talk to her on the phone in the first place. She was a stranger at that point and my anonymity meant she had treated me with the normalcy I craved in a world where everyone said yes to me.
Staring at the glass in my hand, I quickly brought it up to my mouth and tossed the rest of the clear liquid down my throat then dropped the glass on the floor. Taking her face in my hands, I held her in head still and gave her a solid stare, hoping my face conveyed everything the seriousness of my declaration warranted.
“Chloe, you don’t have to compete. I’ll say that again for you. You. Do. Not. Have. To. Compete. I am declaring you the winner. That may sound obnoxious, but if that’s what you need to hear or however you need to hear it, then I’m willing to say or do whatever it takes to stop this circular self-doubt you have going on.”
Gazing into my eyes with her innocent, unaffected beauty and vulnerability she made me breathless and I inhaled deeply and swallowed hard, but I was determined to finish this conversation once and for all.
“Chloe, there is no one I’d rather be with. No one compares…nothing compares to the feelings you give me when I’m with you. I want to take care of you. I’m not proud of my past, just as you are not proud of yours.” Chloe’s hurt eyes broke contact and I could have kicked my ass by bringing Kace into this.
“Doesn�
��t that give us a fighting chance? Whatever is going on in your head, please learn to ignore it. Despite what you think I am not going to walk away from you and I do not want any other girls. I want only you.”
Removing her warm hands from me, Chloe placed them back in her lap then began fiddling with a gold ring on the middle finger of her right hand before giving me a soul searching look with those huge wide eyes of hers. They ticked slowly over my face as if she was waiting for an answer to a question before she’d asked it. Taking a deep breath, she began shaking her head and speaking softly to me.
“Gibson, I refuse to be a victim any more. What Kace did to me…I never saw that coming. Not for a minute. I’m not sure exactly when it started and my mind is cloudy on the actual phases that started the whole thing off with him but what went on… I…I just don’t ever want to revisit those feelings in another relationship.”
My heart felt like Chloe was ripping it in two when I saw how tortured she was by what that- shit-excuse-for-a-man did to her. Sighing heavily, I pulled her into my chest, fighting the urge to get pissed and vent about how, what she had with him is nowhere near what is going on and that his past behavior is fucking up what is happening between us now. “Now we’re getting somewhere. You think I’m violent or abusive Chloe? You think I’d ever treat you like he did?”
When I saw her waver before she replied, I almost lost it. Between that and what had happened to her apartment I was feeling the pressure that if she decided not to be with me, how was I going to keep her safe? Everything pointed to Kace being on the prowl and from what Chloe had told me already, he sounded like he wasn’t the type of person that gave up easily.
“Well fuck, Chloe. Do I scare you? Do you feel threatened by me? Do you think I’m going to kick you to the curb? Come on, you’ve started to open up, get it out. I want to hear what you really think about what’s going on here.”
Trusting Gibson (Last Score Book 2) Page 3