“Friend of Juaquin’s.”
“Ah, a friend recommendation is biased. So, basically, Sager is an unknown at this point.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but not for long. And neither is where we can go as a band if we play our cards right.” I filled him in about my talk with Kyle, except for the Lace part of the deal.
Looking impressed, Bryan nodded approvingly. He knew once I set my mind on a course of action, I’d see it through. I’d just have to make some modifications with Kyle, and soon. I didn’t need anything else ruining my chances with Lace.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lace
“Hey, Diz.” Emotion stung my eyes when I saw my brother lounging against my locker, waiting for me at the end of the day.
“Heard you gave it, and then some, to not just one but a couple of guys today.” He searched my gaze.
“Apparently, there’s not much going on at this school,” I grumbled, “if that’s the top news on the gossip chain.” I shooed him aside so I could open my locker.
“You’re the new girl. You’re pretty, and you’re not afraid to stand up for yourself. I don’t think they’re going to have any better entertainment for a while.” He suddenly seemed to zero in on one side of my face. “Did Belinda really hack off a hunk of your hair yesterday?”
“She did,” I said, exchanging the books I had for the ones I needed. “But it’s over and done. Not worth mentioning.”
“You should have told me.” The previous incredulousness of his tone changed to concern. “I don’t want anyone harassing you. I’ll have a firm word with one of her higher-ups.”
“Not necessary. I met someone who already did that.”
He tilted his head. “The guy you were sitting by at lunch today?”
“His name is King.”
He was one of the few highlights of the day. Talking to Bryan for those few moments was another. It had almost been like old times. Plus, giving it further thought, I had to admit that Chad was turning out to be a good friend, and then there was my brother. My heart warmed at the knowledge that Dizzy kept tabs on me during the day.
“King introduced me to his best friend. Sager likes to sketch, like me. They’re both coming by the house later, to try out for the band.”
“No one told me anything about a tryout.” Dizzy’s brow creased. “Who told you?”
“I did.”
Bryan moved across the hall toward us. Handsome as sin, he moved with smooth, effortless strides, like his fingers on the strings of his guitar.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dizzy gave Bryan a hurt look.
“I saw Lace after fifth period. War sent me to talk to her. Didn’t see you until now.” Bryan slid his cell from the front pocket of his jeans. “Here.” He handed it to my brother. “Put your cell number in there. Lace’s too.”
“All right.” Longish layers of Dizzy’s platinum-and-black hair slid across his brow, shadowing his gaze as he typed.
“You ready to go?” Bryan asked me, leaning against my locker, his muscular forearm propped above my head.
“Yeah.” I licked my dry lips. My heart raced with him so close, and my mind wandered. I wondered what that incredible scent of his was. It was cool and crisp, like freshly fallen snow in a pine forest.
“Ready to go where?” Dizzy shot Bryan a curious look as he returned his phone.
“I’m walking Lace home today,” Bryan said.
Watching him slide his cell into the front pocket of his well-fitting jeans, I had an additional reason for my fast heart rate.
“What’s going on with you two?” Dizzy glanced back and forth between Bryan and me. “I thought you were with War.”
“I’m not with anyone,” I said firmly, but I could see where my brother might be confused. “Bryan’s just walking me home so we can catch up.”
“Okay, I guess.” Dizzy’s head turned, his attention drifting to a curvy brunette and a blonde in the hallway.
“Hey, Diz.” The blonde giggled.
“Hey, you.” He jerked his chin up, then looked right through Bryan and me. “I’m gonna take off. See you guys later. At practice.”
When he jogged over to the girls, they separated from each other. He moved between them, slinging his arm around each one. Neither girl looked unhappy to share him.
“Hard to believe.” I shook my head, wondering how my brother could make a situation like that work.
“A lot of things are difficult to believe,” Bryan said.
“Huh?” Puzzled by his words, I turned to look at him. He was staring at me, the heat in his eyes palpable.
“Difficult to believe you’re the same little girl who used to annoy the shit out of me with constant questions.” Bryan hooked his thumb in the direction everyone else had gone. “We’d better take off.”
“You didn’t have to answer them,” I said, moving along with him in the direction he’d pointed.
“I wanted to. You were annoying but cute. You asked good questions, and I liked you looking up to me. It was cool. Who would’ve thought,” he said low, placing his hand on the small of my back and steering me through the hall, “that cute would end up being as pretty as this?”
Holy shit. I stumbled from the compliment. Plus, with him touching me, there was enough electrical current buzzing inside me to light up the entire Southside power grid.
“Stupid ballet flats,” I muttered, feeling his eyes on me. “Got caught on a crack in the floor.”
“Oh, I didn’t see one.” His hand slid more firmly into position on my back. “But seen or unseen obstacles, I won’t let you fall. I’ve got you.”
I wasn’t going to argue with that. This was the boy I knew. Gentle, caring, teasing. But all that felt different now. Vastly different.
When we turned from the hall and entered the foyer, a few students were lingering by the office, and I noticed them tracking us.
“You seem to have developed a different style from when we were younger.” Removing his hand from my back, Bryan pushed open the door and held it open for me.
My hip brushed his as I scooted past. Heat jolted me, and my legs wobbled.
“Make the grades and look the part,” I said, being careful on my wobbly legs not to trip on the steps outside. “Plus, I have some income to make my own choices about what I wear.”
“Sexy and studious.” He returned his hand to my back, guiding me along the sidewalk in front of the school.
My body tingling, I didn’t protest his touch. I reveled in it.
“Not trying to be sexy,” I said as my brows drew together.
“You don’t have to try, Lace.”
The way he said my name made me warm, even though it was chilly outside.
“Hey, Bry.” A blonde with better curves than me and a cigarette dangling from her lips disengaged from the group she was in and waved at him from across the lawn.
“Hey, Janine.” He acknowledged her with a chin lift.
“See you tomorrow, Bry.” Another girl, this one with long inky dark hair and beautiful ice-blue eyes waved at him over her shoulder as she hurried past us.
“Who was that?” I asked, turning to him after scanning the girl. She was pretty, and her jeans were tighter and newer than mine.
“Missy Rivera,” he said after a long pause.
“Oh.” I stumbled again and he stabilized me, or he tried to. With him touching me, I didn’t feel steady at all.
Through the chain link fence, I tracked the girl who had given War a blow job. She climbed into the back seat of an old car with a bunch of guys. In the front passenger seat, another girl, a redhead, openly returned my stare.
“You okay?” Bryan asked.
“Yeah.” I looked back at him, but I wasn’t okay. Bryan wasn’t my Bryan anymore, but he certainly seemed to be for most of the girls at Southside High.
“All right.” He placed his hand on my lower back again.
We walked through the gate together, but soon I heard a car pulling up a
longside us, and I knew even before I looked that it was the car Missy had gotten into.
“You coming to Kyle’s later?” The redhead asked her question with more than half of her body hanging out the passenger window. To my dismay, she was prettier up close.
“Maybe,” Bryan said. “I’ll talk to War.”
“I’ll save you both something special.” Laughing, she ducked back inside the car.
Bryan lifted a finger in the air in response to her wave. The bald tires on the car squealed, burning rubber as it peeled away from the curb, leaving a trail of acrid smoke behind.
Maybe this walk wasn’t such a good idea. Not for me, at least. Not with so many of the girls in love with Bryan, and me so susceptible to him. I could far too easily become just another one.
“You have a lot of friends,” I said carefully as we walked along the perimeter of the school property that took up a city block.
“Some.” He gave me a sidelong look. “I’ve been at Southside High longer than you.”
“A lot of friends that are girls.”
“I guess I do,” he said, holding my gaze. “But none that mean anything.”
“I’ve heard that one before,” I muttered. “From War.”
“Ah, right.” Releasing me, Bryan withdrew a package of cigarettes from his front jeans pocket. “He’s seriously into you,” he mumbled with the unlit cigarette bobbing between his firm lips.
“War, you mean?”
“Yeah.” His mouth tipped up at the edges. “Though I could see why you’d need me to be more specific.” Finding a lighter in his pocket, he flicked the flame on and lit his cigarette. “You’ve made an impression on a lot of guys around here in a very short amount of time.”
“You too. With all those girls.”
His eyes narrowed above the twin trails of smoke he exhaled through his nostrils.
“What happened after you moved away?” I asked, tilting my head.
“How do you mean?” Beneath his tousled brown hair, his brow creased.
“You’re different. Harder,” I said, giving it to him real. “I used to know you so well. Now you’re difficult for me to read.”
“I’m still the same.”
He shrugged, and I got lost in the play of his muscles moving beneath the black T-shirt that clung to his chiseled chest.
“I don’t think that’s true,” I said.
Sure, some of the same basic ingredients remained. Bryan was gentle with me. He loved music, and was protective and loyal. But he was loyal to War, not to Dizzy and me.
“Why are you friends with War, Bryan? You don’t seem at all alike.”
“He’s a good guy, Lace.”
I snorted. “Good wouldn’t be a word I’d choose to describe War.”
“He’s confrontational. Has a temper. Doesn’t let people push him around, but that doesn’t make him a bad person.” Bryan glanced at me. “He’s never let me down. He’s a good friend.”
“Okay, if you say so.” I frowned. Not at him or his explanation, really, but at myself. Was I jealous of his friendship with War?
“You just don’t know him the way I do.” Bryan stopped suddenly, and not expecting it, I tripped on a heave in the concrete sidewalk. “Whoa there.” He flicked his cigarette aside and caught me.
“Thank you.” My hands landed on his chest, and my heart raced.
Bryan held me steady. His strong fingers circled my upper arms, his sure grip branding my skin. He was so close, his body hot, his chest hard. My breaths short, I tasted the smoke from his cigarette. And him.
Time seemed to slow. The air charged with our aligned expectations, a supercell thundercloud about to unleash a storm.
“Lace,” he said softly. Framing my face in his hands, he gazed at me as if he’d never seen anything as wondrous, or at least that was how I felt looking at him. He was so much more handsome, so much more of everything than I could ever have imagined.
He drew closer, lowering his head, and I lifted mine. When his lips almost touched mine, I started to close my eyes.
“No,” he said. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” He released me and took a big step back.
“What are you apologizing for?” Watching his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, I pretended not to know, pretended not to have wanted him to kiss me.
“I need to apologize for War. He made a mistake last night. He feels terrible,” Bryan said, his voice much deeper now than it had been only a moment before.
Had I only imagined that he’d been about to kiss me?
“If he truly feels terrible,” I said bitterly, “then why isn’t he here telling me that, instead of you?”
“He didn’t think you’d listen to him. Also, he had a commitment today after school.” Bryan’s eyes searched mine.
“I’ll just bet he does.”
“Not like that. With the choir teacher. Mr. Garrett insisted.”
His lids lowering, Bryan’s gaze dipped to my mouth, and my breaths quickened. I gulped in a lungful of air scented with smoke and pine. If War was a deep forest, then Bryan was the alpine meadow high above it.
“The principal?” My mind spun as I watched Bryan’s tongue dart out to moisten his lips.
“Yeah,” he said, easing back another inch, then two.
Did he need space to clear his mind of unmet expectations too?
“Let War talk to you, Lace. Give him another chance.”
“So, this walk is all about War. You didn’t really want to catch up with me after all. My bad.” I moved away from him, the chilled air icier after all his heat.
“Not true.” Bryan jogged to catch up to me, and I ducked beneath the curtain of my hair to hide my disappointment. “I do want us to be friends again. I missed talking to you. War and his bossy shit gets old after a while. Stop, Lace. Please listen.”
He stepped in front of me, and I had to stop. Sliding my hair from the front to the back, he removed my curtain, and I forced myself to look at him.
“Sure, let’s be friends again.” I gave him a fake smile. “That would be great.”
“Thank you,” Bryan said, apparently buying the fakery.
We resumed walking, but it wasn’t as comfortable as it had been before. Not for me. Probably not ever for me with him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
War
“You talk to her?” I asked Bryan, my hands draped over the mic as I glanced at Lace. Sitting behind her keyboard, she avoided my gaze like she’d been avoiding me since I arrived at practice.
“I talked,” he said, turning his head to follow the direction of my gaze. “Not sure she listened.”
Fuck. That didn’t sound promising, and unfortunately, I had to table trying to fix things with her until after band practice.
“You losers ready to play?” I asked, hurling my question at the two newcomers.
“Born ready, ese.” King drummed a beat on his snare.
Sager Reed just gave me a chin lift. He was a quiet guy.
I’d talked to him some, gotten him to open up a little, enough that I now understood why there were shadows in his eyes. He’d been through rough stuff, but this was Southside. We all had.
King had lost a brother. Bryan and I had asshole fathers. I knew from the hint my best friend had dropped that there was darkness in Dizzy and Lace’s past too. We were all a bunch of sad fucks that life had shit on. What we needed was to harness that bad energy and release it into the only thing that reliably made sense—music.
“Lace?” I turned to look at her again. “You ready?”
She lifted her chin. Glittering gold with flecks of fire, her eyes met mine, and she nodded. I might have messed things up with her, but she wasn’t unresponsive to me. I could work with that. I had to work with that.
“What song we doing first?” Dizzy asked.
“A couple of covers to get warmed up,” I said. “Then we’ll play around with that riff I heard you playing when I first came in.”
“Cool.” He grinned.
“First up, ‘Nothing Else Matters.’”
A sharp inhale came from Lace. I could practically feel her presence behind me, I was so focused on her. I knew Bryan loved Metallica. Maybe she did too, or this song had some other significance for her, like it did for me. Another plus was that it began slow and would give the band a chance to feel each other out musically.
Dizzy and Bryan strummed the intro, playing off each other. I pivoted slightly, so I could watch Lace.
She smiled, and it rocked me hard. She was pretty, but her smile made her pretty spectacular.
What my guitarists were doing was spectacular too. But I could do better, and I wanted her to witness it.
Unclipping my mic, I turned to her. As King crashed on his drums, I sang the lyrics, ones about being yourself and that being enough. Did she get it? What I was trying to say by choosing this song and singing those words to her?
Everyone came together on the chorus. Our harmony was so seamless, chill bumps broke out on my arms. Bryan wailed on a guitar solo, and Lace added in a few twinkling complementary notes on her keyboard. Inspired, I elevated my voice, doing a little operatic improv on the remaining lyrics. When we reached the end of the song, it was just my two guitarists playing off each other again.
As the final notes faded, I stared at Lace. She looked thunderstruck, and I was as well. A glance around revealed everyone else was too.
Now it was time to fix things with her.
I clipped my mic into the pole and crossed to her. “I’m sorry.” I wondered if the words sounded as alien to her hearing them as they felt to me speaking them. “I made a mistake. Can you give me another chance?”
She stared at me, and I held my breath. The garage went completely silent as everyone else watched us.
When she glanced at Bryan, that pissed me off, but I didn’t let it show. I counted one slowing beat of my heart, then two, and her gaze met mine again. Her eyes still flickered with flames, but the fire didn’t feel as hot.
“Yeah. I can do that.” She nodded, and I pulled in an easier breath.
“Great. I’d like to go for a walk with you after we’re through with practice. Talk some. Let you in on some things about me most people don’t know. Would you be up for that?”
The Complete Tempest World Box Set Page 10