CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Lace
Monday morning, I made myself get out of bed for school. Though the SAT had gone better than the last time I’d taken it, it hadn’t gone as well as I wanted. At least this time, I’d finished the math section.
I only felt confident about portions of that section of the test. Whereas I felt one hundred percent unsure about my decision to cut Bryan off at the beach.
Why had I thrown away the only time he’d seemed willing to cross the line of our friendship? Why had I chosen that moment to grow a conscience?
I knew why.
Because I loved him.
Beyond reason.
And well into madness.
Adding to my unsettled feelings, I ran into Chad by the school office. He wasn’t alone.
“See ya, sis,” Dizzy said. Sensing the vibe, he split, going off in the opposite direction, following the come-hither looks of a girl while I remained where I was, staring slack jawed at Chad with Missy.
What the hell?
“I’m driving you to and from school,” she said to him, her blue eyes flashing with icy heat. “And helping you as I see fit while here.”
“I can carry my own books.” Chad wore a scowl, along with his Southside High basketball T-shirt and jeans.
“You can’t, not with your crutches.” She tossed a long lock of her black hair over her shoulder. “Quit being an ass. Your dad’s paying me to do a job, and I’m going to do it.” With his backpack slung over her shoulder, she gave me a dark look and took off.
As soon as she turned away, I went to Chad, throwing my arms around his waist. “I missed you,” I said, noting he’d lost a lot of weight.
“Missed you too.” He eased back, watching Missy until she turned the corner and disappeared.
“Are you back at school now?” I asked, wondering why he hadn’t told me.
“Half days.” He nodded, seeming distracted.
“That’s good. Right?” I asked.
“It’s something,” he muttered.
“What do the doctors say?” I searched his gaze. “I thought you were on strict non-weight-bearing instructions through the end of the year.”
“I don’t want to talk about doctors,” he said bitterly. “Or their fucking prognosis.”
“Okay.” My eyes widened in response to his vehemence. “So, how about Missy? When did that happen? Is she your chauffeur?”
“Until I get the boot off.” He frowned. “She’s part of my deal with my dad. If I don’t follow doctor’s orders, she reports to him, and he rides my ass.”
“Sounds like that sucks.”
“You have no idea.” Chad shook his head. His blond hair was more unkempt than usual and longer. The ends swept his wide shoulders.
“I guess not. But if you’d return my calls, maybe I would.” I put my hands on my hips. “And maybe we could put our heads together, and I could help you.”
“Can you turn back time? Give me a perfectly healed tendon? A scholarship?” His eyes flashed. “Stay another year at school instead of graduating early and leaving me behind?”
“I have to graduate early.” My brows drew together. “You know how it is with my uncle.” But I felt guilty. I’d never considered how that decision might affect Chad.
“You’re so self-absorbed, Lace Lowell.” He spat out the accusation, and I winced. “You think the world revolves around you alone and your drama.”
“I don’t.” Yet as I denied it, I wondered if he was right. Maybe I was selfish. I certainly needed him desperately, and wished I could talk through with him what had happened on the beach with Bryan, along with my trepidations about the test.
“Your poor me, I have two guys sniffing around me act, three if you ever cared to notice me, has gotten old.”
“You don’t like me.” I narrowed my eyes. “Not like a boyfriend.”
“Not anymore.” He glanced in the direction Missy had gone. “Hey, I gotta go.”
“Okay, but can we talk later?” My stomach swirled as he turned back to me. I didn’t like his expression. It was so cold and distant. “Maybe at lunch?”
“I’m going back to my house after fourth period.”
“Maybe I could come over later after school,” I said softly, my voice small, like I suddenly felt with having to beg for scraps of his time.
“You get walked to school by your brother. Walked home by your boyfriend, or the one you deny is your boyfriend.” Chad’s lips had an ugly curl to them. “You gonna walk three miles all by yourself through La Rasa territory to come see me?”
“Maybe—”
“Listen.” Cutting me off, he put his hands on my shoulders, and I wanted to cry. “For a while, it worked well, you and me. But not now. Not with all I have going on.”
Again, he glanced away. Missy had returned. At the mouth of the hall, she folded her arms over her chest. He refocused on me, and I noted the crease between his brow was deeper.
“Face it, Lace. Your life is going one direction, and mine’s going another.”
“I need you.” My bottom lip trembled.
“You need to learn to help yourself.” His eyes as dark as my thoughts, he released me.
“Why?” I asked. “Why are you doing this? Acting like this? What have I done wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, exhaling heavily. “You haven’t done anything. Not really. Only open your eyes. See that you already have a best friend, and he’s not me.”
Chad turned away. His progress was slow on his crutches and cumbersome with the boot. Missy waited for him. She glared at me but was all smiles for him when he reached her. They turned the corner while I just stood there, feeling more alone now than ever, trying to process what had just happened.
• • •
My day didn’t get better. King didn’t sit with me at lunch. No one did. But I could see Bryan through the window. He was outside in the quadrangle, talking to the pretty redhead I’d once seen in a car with Missy. “Talking” being a euphemism for his tongue being down her throat.
So what if I’d shut him down? Apparently, the so-called unfinished business with me didn’t mean very much to him. Maybe he had unfinished business with a lot of girls. And Chad wanted me to think Bryan was my best friend?
Not hardly.
After lunch, the day dragged on even worse than before. I got called on in history class. I wasn’t prepared, and the teacher dressed me down in front of everyone.
“You’re a top student, Lace,” Mrs. Leticia said disapprovingly. “I expect you to set the bar for excellence in my class, not lower it.”
After class, I was dragging my feet and feeling sorry for myself when War jogged up alongside me in the crowded hall.
“Hey, babe. Why are you frowning?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Long day.” I couldn’t talk to him about it. Not with Chad, Bryan, or anyone else, really.
“Heard Phillips was back at school? Did you see him?”
“I saw him,” I said dully.
A guy with unruly black hair stepped into pace on my other side. “He and Missy are a thing,” he said, seeming to think he was part of my conversation with War.
I gave him a questioning look. In return, he gave me a long head-to-toe scan with eyes the color of smoke. Offhandedly, I noted the headphones hanging around his neck had a roach clip with a blunt attached.
“Missy’s his chauffeur.” My frown deepened as I wondered who this guy was and how he came by his information. “With his injury, he can’t drive.” I gave the guy a look that I hoped would silence him and make him go away.
“He can drive, all right.” The guy waggled his brows. “His dick into Missy’s cunt.”
“Kyle, c’mon,” War said. “Lace doesn’t need to hear that shit.”
Kyle nodded. “Got it. She’s your lily-white rose and all. Well, until after you bring her to my place. Party there after prom, right?” Cackling a high-pitched stoner laugh, he said, “See you later, Lace
.”
“What’s he talking about?” I asked, watching Kyle veer off at the juncture in the hall.
Not receiving an answer, I turned to War, only to discover that he was no longer beside me. He was hemmed in at the lockers, a half circle of nearly a dozen girls in front of him. The redhead who had been with Bryan in the quadrangle was one of them.
“Heard Tempest has a record deal,” she said, placing her hand on the center of War’s chest.
I saw red, not red-hair red but angry, fire-engine red. War and I had a standing agreement made a year ago, post-Missy. No touching by the opposite sex allowed. That agreement was more important than ever with the band’s popularity rising and girls flocking to him. Not just at the clubs Tempest played at, but at school now too.
“I heard more than one label wants him,” another girl said. “I want you too. What do you say, baby?” Pressing her large boobs into War’s arm, she looked up at him through her heavily mascaraed lashes.
“Not signed with anyone yet.” War glanced at me, his brow creased beneath his rolled red bandanna. The accessory he used to mostly wear onstage now seemed permanent.
“Rumors are usually based on facts.” The redhead moved closer. “Are you gonna sing at prom?”
“No, Scarlett.” He pried her hand away from his chest. “I’m gonna take my woman to prom. And you need to keep your hands to yourself and move your posse along so I can ask her properly.”
“You’re no fun anymore, War,” Scarlett said, sticking her nose in the air. “C’mon girls. Let’s go find Bullet.”
I glared at her as she walked away, and asked War as he put his arms around me, “Who’s Bullet?”
“Never mind.” War moved one of his hands to my face, turning my head. “Can you focus on me, babe? I’m trying to ask you something.”
“Huh?” I said, blinking at him distractedly. I spotted Bryan at the end of the hall, just as Scarlett and her crew circled him.
Was Bryan “Bullet”? Why would they call him that? What did it mean?
“Will you be my date for prom?” War asked me.
“You’re my boyfriend.”
“Yeah, but I don’t take you for granted. Or at least I try not to.” His brow creased. “So, will you go to prom with me?”
“Yes.” I went up on my toes and pressed my lips to his. “I’d love to.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
War
“How’s Lace?” Looking concerned, King glanced over his big shoulder toward the house.
“She’s still pretty shook up,” I said, though I didn’t get it. Not really, beyond her being blindsided by the news.
“She inside the house?” Sager asked, looking more serious than usual.
“No. She went to the cemetery with Diz and Bry.”
“Thought you’d talked her out of doing that,” King said. The overhead lights in the garage casting shadows on his full face, he studied me closely.
“I thought I had too.”
Lace’s old lady was dead. Overdosed, unsurprisingly. But gone was gone. Good riddance, in my opinion, with a mother like that. Why visit her grave?
“But you know Lace. Stubborn as shit.” I shrugged as if it weren’t a big deal her going and Bryan tagging along, even after I’d strongly advised against it.
“They gonna be back in time for practice?” King asked.
“Not likely.” And that was another reason I was pissed.
“Why are we here then?” Sager asked, and he and King exchanged a look.
“I wanted to talk to both of you.”
“About what?” King planted his tree-trunk legs and crossed his thick arms over his wide chest.
“The band,” I said. “And the offers we’ve been getting.”
“We know about them. Everyone’s talking about it at school. Has something changed?” Sager’s dark brown brows knitted together. “Must be something that you don’t want the others to know, apparently.”
“Yeah, Sage.” I nodded at him. He was way too smart. “The Black Cat rep got wind of my friendship with Kyle, et cetera, and got a stick up her ass about it.”
King frowned. “Weren’t you paying attention when Vanessa mentioned a drug test being a requirement before Black Cat would give us an advance?”
I glared at him. “What I put in my body isn’t anyone’s business but my own.”
“If it gets out of hand, it’s band business, ese.” King glared back at me.
“Fuck Black Cat.” Why was everybody disrespecting my authority today? It was my band. I needed to rein in the subordinates. “It’s either Zenith or RCA now.”
“Two’s not bad,” Sager said.
“It’s trickier.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Only two to play off each other.” Plus, Vanessa might not have wanted Lace in the band, but she liked her. The remaining two, on the other hand, weren’t ambivalent about Lace. They were directly opposed.
“I can see where that might be more difficult.” King stroked his whiskery chin.
“They’re both in the two fifty range. Probably won’t go much higher until we have a recorded album to negotiate with. RCA is flying us down to LA to have a chat. Zenith too. Both are paying for our expenses.”
“Field trip. LA and San Fran.” Sage nodded approvingly.
“Órale!” King pumped a fist in the air. “When?”
“Soon,” I said. “We’ll have to be out of school a couple of days. That work for you two?”
King nodded. “Yeah, we’re in. But what about Lace? School’s important to her.”
“She’s not coming,” I said. “Tests and all.”
Truthfully, the labels hadn’t invited Lace. Her tests being the week we were scheduled to go made for a convenient excuse.
I wasn’t ready to tell her or the guys that all the offers unanimously excluded her. Selfishly, I wanted to wait until after prom to break the news. I didn’t want anything interfering with making her mine.
• • •
“No, War,” Lace said firmly later that night at Footit’s.
“C’mon, Lacey.” I backed her against the dressing room wall. I’d sent away the others, leaving just the two of us.
“I’m too emotional.” Tears brimmed in her amber eyes, but she blinked quickly to clear them.
“I told you not to go to the cemetery. What the fuck did you hope to accomplish?”
Stubbornly, she lifted her chin. “I needed the closure.”
“Yeah, like a kick to the head, maybe.” I frowned, seeing the strain in her features. “You should’ve listened to me.”
“I have a mind of my own, Warren.”
“Sure, but you were wrong about that. All it did was upset you, and you’re wrong about this.”
“Don’t push me right now. I’ll consider doing a solo, just not tonight.”
“The rep from RCA is here.” It had to be tonight. Last-ditch effort by me. Maybe if I put Lace at center stage, I could change the rep’s mind about her.
“I haven’t even practiced that number yet.”
“How about if we do it together? Like we did the first time we sang in the garage.”
“That’s a good memory.” She smiled softly, and I pressed my advantage.
“You were so beautiful.” I lowered my voice and my head, warming her soft skin with my breath before I touched my lips to it.
“Were?” she whispered, forgetting to argue as she twisted her neck so more of it was exposed.
I traced her taut tendon with the tip of my tongue.
“Oh, War.” Shuddering, she moaned, and I felt it in my dick. “That feels so good.”
“You taste so good.” Like everything I ever wanted, only dipped in vanilla.
She slathered herself in lotion with that scent, smudged it on the sound equipment. One whiff while moving an amp tonight had made me hard. Her tits to my chest, her taste on my tongue, I was fully extended now.
A knock on the door made her jump.
; Opening it, Bryan stuck his head inside. He frowned, seeming to disapprove of how close we were standing to each other. “Rep from RCA’s asking for you, man.”
“Fuck.” I pecked Lace’s lips, then narrowed my gaze at her. “Later. You are singing at center mic.”
“Okay.” She sighed, surrendering, and I had the thought that it was easier negotiating with A&R agents than it was talking her into doing what I wanted.
Even when what I wanted was for her own fucking good.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Lace
I let my fingers drift over the keys of the piano at my uncle’s place. The tinkling notes were light at first, then as I pounded, somber and more intense, the way I felt lately.
Since my mom’s death, since War had put me on the spot in front of the RCA rep.
The guy didn’t even like me, and his opinion hadn’t improved after I’d sung a ballad with War. He thought the guys should rage rock, and nothing else. I disagreed. I thought music should be more about putting into melodies and lyrics those things you didn’t know how to express or were too afraid to say.
But then again, what the hell did I know?
I was questioning everything.
My mother’s death was a big part of it. I hadn’t loved her, or so I told myself. But it hurt that she was gone. War didn’t understand. He hated his mother. But Bryan understood my conflicted emotions, and him being beside me at her grave and listening to me meant a lot. He got that all my life, I’d wanted to prove to her that I was worth something. That it was my fuel for my dream.
With that motivation yanked away, I felt untethered and unsure, and War had forced me onstage in that frame of mind. Weeks later, the rift it had created between us persisted, making me feel like I had to guard myself even more around him.
“Hey, that’s a pretty piece.” Bryan stepped inside the living room, my brother right behind him. “What is it?”
“Just me playing around.” I dropped my chin, and he slipped onto the piano bench beside me.
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