by Wynne Roman
Shit. The last thing I expected was that Paige thinks she ought to take some blame on herself. This is on me. My choices. My celebrity. My fuckups that caused all this.
Why doesn’t she see that?
“Well, maybe trusting Drake was a mistake,” I concede, “but how could you know?”
“I should have,” she insists. “I knew Drake wasn’t always a nice guy.”
“Maybe so, but people change.” I sure as hell have. “It wouldn’t have gotten all out of hand if it wasn’t for me and this fucked up thing I call a lifestyle. I—”
My phone thuds with its ringtone. It’s the bass and drumline from our latest release, Tonight. I love that damn song, and it’s proving to be our most popular yet. Right now, the interruption just irritates me.
I glance at the screen. “Baz,” I answer.
“Noah. We got London here with us.”
“Hey, London,” I say.
“Hi, Noah.”
“I’ve got you on speaker. Paige is listening.”
“Hi, Paige!” London sounds warm and friendly. Relief eases through me. Maybe that’ll help Paige, too.
“Nice to meet you, Paige,” adds Baz. “Sorry it’s like this.”
“Hi,” says Paige softly, but that’s it.
“Okay,” I say. Pleasantries out of the way, it’s time for the serious stuff. “What’ve we got?”
“We know who got to your friend—” starts Baz.
“He’s not my fucking friend!”
“Right. We know who got to Drake.” Baz pauses. “Shit, the article told us that much. We just don’t know if there’s anything more.”
Paige and I look at each other. Neither of us says it, but we’re both thinking it.
Marlie.
“Can you find out?” I ask.
“Trying,” admits Baz. “But you know how it is when things break like this. It takes a while to wade through the debris.”
“And I don’t know how much we can do about what’s already out there,” adds London.
“But it’s lies!” says Paige. She’s pissed, but she’s staring at me with wide, hurt eyes that give away her fear. Worse, I can’t do anything to fix it.
“All of it?” asks Baz.
I sigh. I know how the fucking game is played, even if Paige doesn’t.
“No, not all of it. Some of it is, some of it’s got an agenda. You know, a spin to it. Shit was left out, and . . . yeah, some of it’s true.”
“You know how this works, Noah,” London says softly. “We can go on record and tell our side, but that does two other things. Gives legitimacy to the story, and opens things up to whatever response this Drake wants to make. And since you were with him, Paige, and he did know you both in high school, I’m guessing he’s got more to say?”
He does. I know it, and Paige knows it. He’s got just enough ammunition to give details that could make it all the more shocking.
And he’s got access to Marlie.
I stare at Paige, send her a look that says, we have to be honest, and hope she gets it, because it’s true. I fucking own my choices and don’t give a shit what people know—or think they know. This new little rumor changes nothing for me. Hell, it even makes me more interesting and sensational in the rock world, and that’s a good thing!
But Paige? She didn’t ask for any of this shit, and if anybody’s gonna get caught up in it, get hurt by it, it’s her.
“Listen, sweetness.” I take her hands in mine. “Baz and London are the two people who can help us get through this shit. That means no surprises.”
She nods once, short and frustrated. Hating it, but giving me permission.
“There’s shit he knows,” I admit. “Or can guess at.”
“What?”
I glance at Paige, but she seems to be waiting for me to continue. “Paige and me running into each other the other night was pure coincidence. Thursday night football, it was a sports bar, that kind of thing. She was there to meet Drake, I said hi, and we heard him bragging about cheating on her.”
“Damn,” says London.
“The woman was there,” I continue. “Marlie Davis. The other woman in the tabloid picture.”
“Right.” I can almost see Baz taking notes.
“She’s also . . .” I pause, searching for the easiest way to say it.
“What?”
I can only glance my apology in Paige’s direction. I know goddamn good and well how she feels about this shit, and actually talking about it isn’t something she’d do if she had the choice.
I take a breath. “I had my first threesome for my eighteenth birthday. Marlie was one of the girls.”
There’s a moment of absolute silence, and then London asks carefully, “Who was the other?”
Paige offers a soft, “Me,” before I can say a word.
“Fuck,” mutters Baz.
Seconds tick by and we’re silent until finally London asks, “What can she say?”
“Enough.” How else do I answer that?
“What does that mean?” As always, Baz is relentless.
“What do you think it means?” snaps Paige. “She can say she made out with him while he fucked me. Or that I was left laying there, watching while he went down on her. Or—”
“Paige!” I shout to interrupt her, but she won’t be stopped.
“That I hated it.” Her voice is a vicious bite. “I hated every single. Fucking. Second of it.”
Chapter Thirteen
Paige
The words echo in the room, my head, my heart.
I hated it. I hated every single. Fucking. Second of it.
I never meant to say that, but there it is. Echoing louder than a siren, and there are witnesses. I didn’t just say the words to Noah, I said them to London and Baz, too.
I hate that, but I’m suddenly too raw to know how else to feel about it.
I can’t look at Noah, so I just stare straight ahead. I can see part of the Austin skyline through the oversized window, and so I concentrate on that.
“I think we have enough information for now,” says London softly, breaking the awkward silence. “Don’t you, Baz?”
“Yeah. I’ll . . . uh, be in touch later, Noah. Let you know . . . anything.”
It takes a few seconds for Noah to answer. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, man.”
He ends the call and tosses his phone onto the coffee table. I can see the movement from my peripheral vision, but I don’t turn to watch. My body feels like I can’t move, can’t think, can only sit and stare.
Did I shock myself into losing all mobility and comprehension?
“You never told me that before.” Noah’s voice is careful.
“I know.”
“Is it true?”
“Yes.” The word is almost vicious, but I can’t help it.
“I knew you didn’t really . . . like it. You didn’t want to do it again. But I thought . . .”
His voice dies, and we’re both quiet. “Maybe I didn’t think about it enough.”
I lift a shoulder. What response is there? He didn’t think. Okay, so maybe I should have said something, but it shouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out that I hated having another woman involved with our lovemaking.
Don’t try to pretty it up, snaps a relentless voice inside my head. It was fucking and nothing more.
No way to argue that.
“Does it . . . do you—feel better? Now that you’ve said it?” Noah asks after another minute.
Those questions prod something within me, and I start to think again. “No.”
“Sweetness . . .”
He reaches for me; I can sense the movement. I don’t think, just jerk my arm back and scoot away.
“Don’t.” The word is hard. “Just . . . don’t.”
My new position puts Noah right in front of me, and I see the pain that flashes over his expression. He blinks, finds a blankness to hide behind, but it doesn’t matter. I saw it and know the truth.
; His truth. My truth is that I didn’t react that way to hurt him. It was a response based totally on my needs, just like the ménage with Marlie was entirely for him. Thinking about myself first is something I haven’t done enough over the years. Now that I have, even knowing I hurt him doesn’t move me. It doesn’t satisfy like I’d once thought saying the words would, but it produces no sympathy, either.
There’s . . . nothing.
That night between Noah, Marlie, and me is all on him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, sounding contrite enough, I suppose, but I can’t say that I’m convinced. “You know that, right?”
I frown and shoot him a sharp gaze. “How would I know that? You never apologized.”
“I . . .” He shakes his head, and the cross earring that captivates me swings with the movement. “I didn’t?”
“No. You know you didn’t.”
He blinks, and I can almost see his attention go inward, as though he’s trying to remember.
“We didn’t talk about it much,” I prompt him. “When we did, you only said that Marlie didn’t mean anything to you.”
“She doesn’t.” He answers quickly. “She never did.”
“She mattered enough that you wanted to fuck her.” I wish I had even uglier words to use.
“I didn’t fuck her! I never fucked her!” His voice raises an octave.
I narrow my eyes. “She—”
“Yeah, she was there with us. I touched her and I kissed her. I went down on her—you saw that. But I never fucked her. Yours was the only pussy my dick was in that night.”
“That night.” I pounce on the words.
“Or any other night.”
He’s getting agitated, and I don’t care. Buried in the depths of my soul or not, I’ve been upset about this for years. He can just deal with it for a change.
“Not according to Marlie.”
“She’s a lying bitch, and you know it.”
He has a point. Something in my expression must acknowledge it, because he leans forward.
“I told you. I never fucked her. Never. I . . .”
He pauses, but only for a second. He shrugs like he’s made a decision. “There was one other time when she caught me at a party. I didn’t fuck her, but she wanted to suck me off and I let it happen.”
My stomach bottoms out like I’m on a roller coaster. A part of me isn’t surprised, because I know exactly what party he’s talking about. I probably even suspected it at the time, but I had other, awful things on my mind and let it go.
So why am I so devastated now? How can I hate so much hearing those words come from his mouth?
“It was Drake’s party, wasn’t it? When we were still together.”
His gaze traps mine. “Yes.”
I nod, because it’s all I can do. Tears prickle behind my eyelids and choke me, and I try to swallow them back. It doesn’t work very well, and a flash of panic races through me.
Jesus, I can’t sit here and cry in front of Noah. Not after all these years. Not when we haven’t been a couple in so long.
Why is this so much harder than knowing that Drake cheated on me with Marlie?
“I . . .” I swallow hard. “Excuse me.”
I shoot off the couch, circle around, and race into the bathroom without another thought. I don’t look back, and I definitely can’t speak. I can only cry.
Noah
Five Years Earlier
This party’s lame.
Drake Johnson’s parents’ house is tight, huge and fancy, but this party sucks.
Or maybe it’s my shitty mood.
Paige and I have been fighting all week. She’s pissed about that goddamn threesome we had with Marlie, and I don’t know why. She just looks at me with this fuck-you expression when I ask about it, but goddamn it. She wanted it, too. I didn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to.
Besides, I only fucked Paige.
Yeah, I kissed Marlie, went down on her, let her give me a blow job, but I didn’t put my dick inside her pussy. That was only for Paige. And she was there the whole damn time. So what the fuck’s wrong with her?
“Hey, Dexter.” A guy I barely know, Mike Richards, sidles up next to me with a shit eating grin.
“Hey.”
“Hear you had a little fun last weekend.”
I shrug, take a healthy swig from my red Solo cup. The beer’s shitty, just whatever Drake’s got in the keg. He’s got two of ‘em, one by the pool and one out on another patio. Both kegs are the same, so it’ll have to do. None of us is old enough to score the good stuff.
“It was okay,” I finally answer.
He laughs again, an annoying-as-fuck giggle that sounds like it ought to come from a ten year old girl. “That’s not what I heard.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Paige, man. And Marlie!”
Fuck. How does he know? But I only ask, “What about ‘em?”
“You know. It’s all over school. You fucked ‘em both. At the same time!” He giggles again.
I drain my glass, step close, and glare down at him. I’m seven or eight inches taller than him, and I want him to become real fucking aware of it. “What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Talking. About?”
“Uh . . .” He swallows, the nasty grin fades, and he shuffles back. “Nothing. Sorry, man. Just . . . uh, something I heard.”
I stare at him, that same pissed-off expression hard on my face. I know it; I can feel it.
“Take my advice.” I crumple the plastic cup and throw it to the floor. “Forget what you heard. It’s none of your fucking business.”
“Sure, dude. Whatever you want.”
I give him one more look of fury, then push past him, knocking him back with my shoulder as I head for the keg. Shitty or not, I need another beer.
And to find Paige.
She’s—well, I don’t know where the hell she is. She took off the minute we got here, talking to some girlfriend of hers. Tiffany, I think. I look for her as I stalk through the house but don’t spot her. Figuring she might be on the back patio, I try there. It’s totally empty. The keg rests in a tub of ice, so I grab a clean glass and angle it under the spigot for the best pour.
Shit. Now where?
“Hey, lover.”
A hand snakes around my belly, angling down over my crotch, and I know it isn’t Paige. First, she’d never do anything like that, not in public. Second, the scent is all wrong—too much like a musky rose for Paige, who always smells clean and fresh and flowery. Third, the voice is too coarse, scratchy sounding, and, last, it just feels different from when Paige touches me.
Wrong.
I still have to turn and face her. When I do, I pull away from her touch.
“Marlie.”
“Been looking for you.”
“Yeah?” I take a healthy drink from my clean cup.
“Yeah.” She smiles. Her mouth is too big, but maybe that’s supposed to be good for blow jobs. She does suck a mean cock. “I thought maybe we could . . .” She shrugs. “You know.”
“Fuck?”
Her gaze darkens. “Yeah.”
Paige didn’t like it much. I know that. But is it because of Marlie or the threesome itself? Would she like it better if there was some girl-on-girl action, too?
“Not doing anything without Paige.” I’m staying firm on that.
“Oh, c’mon, Noah. She was with us before. Don’t you think she knows the score now? She—”
“Not fucking you without Paige being there.”
She blows out a sharp breath of disappointment, but she doesn’t push it. Maybe it’s the flat, don’t-fuck-with-me look I’m sending out, or the way my voice cuts through the night air. It’s only loud enough for her to hear me over the sound of the country music Drake has blaring.
Lovin’ You is Fun by Easton Corbin.
How fucking ironic. Nothing about love has seemed fun lately.
I take another drink of beer. Search the shadows fo
r Paige, but she isn’t out here. This is the patio with the fireplace. It’s quiet, with just a bunch of chairs and maybe a few places to sneak off to for some serious foreplay.
And a little fucking?
I thought Paige might pick it because it isn’t as rowdy as inside or by the pool. I frown. I guessed wrong, and that just pisses me off. Both because I can’t find her and because I keep getting it wrong where she’s concerned.
I just don’t know why.
And that brings me right back to the same crap as earlier. I know the threesome fucked things up. I just don’t understand where it all went wrong.
I didn’t cheat on her. She knew what we were doing ahead of time. She agreed to be part of it! Plus, she was there for everything. I fucked her before we did anything else, my dick never got anywhere close to Marlie’s pussy, so why’s Paige so pissed at me now?
Maybe she just didn’t like it, asshole, a voice whispers in my ear. It’s a mean, snotty tone I remember from the days before I lived in Austin with my grandparents. Back when I saw more than I should have, did things I probably shouldn’t have, and learned shit no ten-year-old boy should know.
But . . . fuck! It’s too late to think about that now when I’ve got one pissed-off girlfriend to find.
“C’mon, baby.” Marlie’s hand curls over the slight bulge in my jeans and squeezes. I wasn’t hard before, just the usual size of my junk, but her hands on me get my cock to start swelling.
“I told you. Not fucking you without Paige being there.”
“Who said anything about fucking?”
She grins, tugs at my hand, and pulls me around back of the big stone fireplace. Part of me knows I should stop her, but I’m curious. What’s she up to? Nothing’s back here except a bunch of landscaping. Not even any yard lights reach this far, and Marlie takes advantage of it. She sinks to her knees in front of me, works at my pants until my dick is in her hand.
“Marlie—”
“Let me take care of you, baby. Take the edge off, you know.”
Her lips close over my cock, and my hips flex all on their own. The moist heat of her mouth feels so fucking good, and my head drops back. She makes quick work of sucking me down her throat.
All the way. Nobody has done that before.