by LJ Evans
Tonight, there was no live music. Instead, tonight was karaoke night.
Need I say more? Because karaoke, alcohol, and southern food are a combination made to be together, like chips and salsa. There were just a few things I was good at in life. The ones most people knew about were baking, reading, and being the serious girl. The one thing not many people knew about me was that I was also good at karaoke.
In college, our business fraternity had a monthly karaoke night, and there was no way in any universe that I was going to embarrass myself in front of Hayden. So, I’d done a lot of practicing. I’d even taken a choir class just so that I wouldn’t sound like an idiot.
In any event, all it took was one single alcoholic beverage and a karaoke machine, and I was all over it. Derek leaned back in his chair, long legs splayed out in front of him, hands behind his head, and grinned like he’d won the lottery as I sang Sandra Dee onstage. Because if you do karaoke, then Grease music is a must.
Owen and Mitch joined me with more drinks in hand, and we picked some crazier and crazier songs to sing. I was smiling again. Smiling like I hadn’t until this gorgeous man and his boys had entered my life only three days ago. Derek didn’t sing, which surprised me. But he watched. And the more he watched, the more I wanted to sing for him.
Eventually, the boys picked some hair band song that I knew I could not—would not do—so I made my way back to the table and sank down into the chair next to Derek. I gulped down some water, hoping that emotional Mia, who usually came out to play when I drank, would stay away. Honestly, the way Derek was smiling at me was daring her to come out. So, I put my head down on my arms on the table and closed my eyes. Suddenly, I was exhausted again.
Derek put a hand on my hair and ruffled it in a way Jake would do, but also in a way that wasn’t brotherly at all, and my eyes flashed opened again to meet his. “Miss Mia, you’re something else.” He stared at me for a long moment. “And you’re wiped. Let’s leave these boys here and head back.”
My stomach fell at the look in his eyes and his words that matched, but I just nodded.
“Hey assholes, we’re leaving,” he shouted at them over their raucous singing. “See you at nine tomorrow. Don’t be late, Phillips here doesn’t like it!”
They all just gave him a one-fingered wave from the stage. I grabbed my bag, and we headed out into the night air that had cooled ever so slightly but still managed to feel like a shower curtain was wrapped around you. Derek grabbed my hand, and we headed off. I was distracted by the hand holding, by the feeling of him so close as we walked, by the smell of him.
Finally, I looked up and saw scenery that I hadn’t seen before. “I think we went the wrong way.”
He frowned. “No.”
I pulled away to turn and look back the way we’d just come. “I think so. The hotel is that way.”
“Nah,” he said as he grabbed my hand again, and we kept walking even though I was ninety percent sure I was right. Pretty soon we hit a park by the river which had definitely not been on our way to the restaurant from the hotel.
I started laughing. “You don’t have a clue where we’re at.”
He looked like he wanted to deny it, but then he grinned and shrugged. “Seriously. No internal compass.”
“So, Blake teasing you about getting lost was true.”
“Hey, I’ve only gotten lost one time with him.”
I busted out laughing. He put his hand to his heart again. “You keep wounding me, Miss Mia.”
Then, he reached for me, wrapped his arm around my waist, and pulled me onto the grass off the sidewalk. We started dancing in the moonlight under the stars by the river. There was no music, but Derek seemed to hear his own in his head. And I swear I could hear Ed Sheeran in mine. Ed was telling me how he found a girl, beautiful and sweet. How he was dancing in the dark, with her between his arms, barefoot on the grass, listening to his favorite song, and how he thought she looked perfect tonight.
Derek twirled me and then pulled me up close to him. “What am I going to do with you, Miss Mia?”
It was the most romantic moment I’d ever had in my whole life. My body was softening into his while I waited for him to kiss me. I’d wanted him to kiss me for what felt like a century already.
I was pretty sure that if he kissed me now, with a couple drinks in me, I’d be in his bed like I’d been in Hayden’s bed after a few drinks. Without the willpower to say no. With normal Mia sleeping under the intoxication’s power.
Derek hadn’t batted an eye at letting me know he wanted me, and I suspected that I hadn’t been invited just to drive the Camaro. But I wasn’t sure I could handle sleeping with him yet. Even though, it felt like it was inevitable. Even though I wanted these three weeks of freedom and passion so badly I could taste it.
I wasn’t ready, yet, to sleep with him and have him regret it so much that he wanted to leave but couldn’t because I was tagging along with him and not the other way around. So, instead of waiting for him to kiss me, I pulled him back toward the street.
“Take me back to the hotel so I can get some rest, otherwise I’ll crash Jake’s car, and Daddy will never forgive me,” I told him.
“Except it’s my car now, and I’d forgive you anything.”
That hit me in the gut all over again, like he was so good at doing, because no one had ever said that to me. Ever. That they forgave me. Or would forgive me. How could they when I couldn’t even forgive myself?
Because this Dangerous Derek was already so good at reading me, he sensed my seriousness like he had multiple times already and backed off again. “Come on, Miss Mia. Let’s get you back to the hotel. I promise I won’t tell the boys you got us lost.”
I punched him on the shoulder, and we walked back the way we’d come.
Stop Two
LITTLE BIRD
“And I’ll owe it all to you.
My little bird.”
-Ed Sheeran
We weren’t on the road until nine-thirty. I guess the rest of the band wasn’t as punctual as Derek, and this seemed to drive him crazy while we waited for them in the lobby. While he paced, I had time to dart out and pick up Starbucks for us all after making Derek tell me their favorites.
The boys were happy as clams with the drinks and told Derek I was a keeper. Which made me flush and him grin like there was actually something going on between us more than heavy flirting and wishes that hadn’t become reality.
Sitting in the driver’s seat of the Camaro made me think of Jake again. It was easier when Derek drove to think of it as his car, but in the driver’s seat, it became Jake’s all over again.
I took a deep breath, put in the address of the hotel in Oklahoma City on my iPhone, and plugged it in to the stereo system that Daddy had had installed.
To get my mind off Jake, I teased Derek, “So, there’s this thing called Google Maps, and it’s surprisingly good at keeping you from getting lost. You don’t need an internal compass anymore. Just so you know.”
He grinned at me. “Smart-ass.”
He reached for my bag and started digging in it.
“Excuse me.” I said.
He looked up. “Yeah?”
“Um. What are you doing in my bag?”
“Is that a problem for you?” He grinned again once he realized that it was. “Sorry. Years with the boys. We don’t have any personal boundaries.”
He didn’t stop looking in my bag, however, until he came out with my copy of Pride and Prejudice and waved it at me. “My turn to read.”
It was surprising that I didn’t keel over dead right there, because this gorgeous man was going to read to me from my favorite book? In that sexy-as-sin voice? I guess fairytales do come true.
I had to turn my focus to the road and our journey so that I didn’t faint and crash. Thankfully, it was only going to be a couple hours to the next hotel as the band had a practice session that afternoon at The Criterion where they w
ere going to play the following night.
I’d done some research once I’d figured out their schedule. The Criterion was a Live Nation partner, and they had some pretty big bands come through. It made me realize, for the first time, that Derek and his band were really on the uptick. They’d been signed. I mean, I knew Blake had written the contract, but somehow it hadn’t really hit home to me that this group of almost adolescents was really going to be famous soon.
They were good. I’d heard them at the fundraiser, but again, I don’t know, it just hadn’t really penetrated my thick skull. Maybe it was because when he was hitting on little ol’ me, from a little town in the middle of nowhere with nothing but size E’s to show the world, it didn’t seem like it was something someone super famous would do.
In order to ignore all my doubts, I turned my brain back to Derek as he read from my favorite book.
Once we got close to Oklahoma City, Google Maps did a marvelous job navigating us through the maze of streets, even though Derek kept telling the voice that she was sending us on a wild goose chase. I was smiling by the time we reached the hotel. When he went to put my book back in my bag, a scrap of paper fell out. I saw it with a patter of my heart that wiped my smile away.
Derek, being the no-privacy guy I had found him to be, read it aloud. “I’m sorry we weren’t what you imagined us to be. But I want to say thank you. Because you still care when it seems like no one else does, you comfort when it’s needed most, and you love even when it hurts.” He stared at it for a moment. “What’s this?”
I shrugged because I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t sure I could still drive into the parking garage.
“Is this a book quote?”
I shook my head ever so slightly, but I couldn’t answer. I was frozen on the inside. Those words had been all that had held my shredded heart together for a long time. It was Hayden’s apology note. The one he wrote when I said I loved him, and he chose Marcie instead. It was the note he wrote after I sent him a pile of love letters, and he continued to call because he said he needed a friend. It was the note that made me hold on so tightly to the possibility of him coming back to me. Like Jake and Cam had always found their way back to each other. But he hadn’t come back.
I pulled the car into a slot in the parking lot of the hotel. We didn’t get out. We sat there as Derek continued to look down at the paper.
“Did some guy write this for you?” he asked, and it was obvious that a guy had. Hayden’s handwriting was such a typical male scribble.
The question really was, did just some guy write me that? Some guy? Was that all he was? Just some guy I’d loved? Just some guy I’d lost my virginity to? Just some guy who couldn’t love me enough to choose me first? Just some guy who’d left my already guilt-knotted heart with a new ice-picked hole in it?
“What kind of asshole would write something like that?” Derek asked, bringing me back to him and away from Hayden.
“He’s not…” I started to defend him, protective of my first love.
“Mia, you don’t encourage someone to love you when you know you’re going to hurt them. That’s not love, that’s some egotistical jerk playing games.” Somewhere deep inside me, a tiny voice spoke up asking if maybe Derek was right. Because Hayden had known how I felt and hadn’t stopped calling me. Hadn’t stopped even though he was with someone else.
God, it stung. All the words coming from this beautiful man’s mouth. The one who should, in all rights, be breaking hearts just like that. A jerk playing a game. But Derek hadn’t done that. Not yet. So far, he’d only been up front, and real, and honest.
“It wasn’t like that,” I still protested and tried to grab the paper from his hand, but he didn’t let me. Instead, he tore it up into little shreds that made my heart feel like shards of glass being pounded by manic feet.
I should have been furious, watching as Derek shredded the words I’d carried around for almost a year and a half. Somehow, I wasn’t. Because that tiny voice was still beating out a tune about it maybe being true. That all this time I’d been thinking that Hayden just needed someone to stick around and believe in him, when really, maybe he just got off on the fact that I was always waiting in his shadow.
It made me realize that I’d been weak. And stupid. It was embarrassing beyond belief that I would have been that naïve. That needy. That I had been following him around like a stupid puppy following its master.
“Mia?”
I couldn’t look at him. I knew I’d turned a thousand shades of red. He tried to grab my chin and turn it to him, but I couldn’t let him. I just held on tight to the steering wheel and parked in the lot at the Renaissance Hotel as my stupidity and emotions overwhelmed me. I didn’t want to see what he was feeling in those expressive eyes. Pity? Shock at my inanity? Disgust? God, please don’t let it be disgust.
“Little Bird, please look at me.”
This new nickname hit my stomach like a tornado hits a barn, but I still couldn’t look at him. I pushed his hand away as he tried to undo mine from the steering wheel.
“I think it’s beautiful that you gave your heart to him,” he said quietly. My throat closed up. A sound came out that was a clog of emotion and tears. I wouldn’t cry, though. I was good at not crying.
Somehow, I choked out, “Stupid, not beautiful.”
“It’s not stupid to love someone.”
“It is when you know they’ll never reciprocate it.”
“That’s just my point. How were you to know that he would never love you back when he said this kind of shit to you?”
“Actions speak louder than words,” I said. Didn’t I know that? Hadn’t I seen it my whole life with Cam and Jake? Jake may have denied loving her when they were younger, but it was obvious every time they were together and he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. She drew him. He drew her. They were fireflies colliding in a night sky. Beautiful and brilliant. I didn’t think Hayden had ever looked at me like that. Why hadn’t I seen it before?
“I hate that saying,” he said to me. “It isn’t true. Sometimes words have a much more lasting impact on you than anything anyone ever does.”
I was shocked. Because words had been my life, and I couldn’t believe there was anyone else out there besides Harry Winston who could ever believe that words could change you. That they could change you for the good or the bad.
We sat there in silence.
“Little Bird, please look at me.” This time when he tugged gently at my chin, I let him turn my face to his, but I was still not brave enough to look up. To meet those eyes which had to be saying “this chick is lame” even as he was trying to comfort me.
I could feel him taking in every inch of my face, and he moved his thumb so that it ran along the very edge of my lip, and my body instantly went into honey butter mode. He leaned toward me and whispered quietly, “He didn’t deserve someone as loving and loyal as you.”
Finally, I risked looking up at him and couldn’t suppress the intake of breath at what I saw in his eyes. It was admiration at a minimum. Maybe something more. Something I was a little terrified to name.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he told me as his lips inched toward mine. It was as if he was afraid I’d fly away if he did it without warning me. That I really would be that little bird.
When I didn’t pull away or protest, he closed the tiny space that was left between us and touched his lips to mine in a kiss that was so light and so reverent that it started to break my walls, leaving behind solitary blocks and tiny little crumbs that would not likely be able to be put back together again anytime soon.
It wasn’t that there wasn’t passion in that kiss, because purple biscuits, my toes were curling in my flip flops again. But this kiss wasn’t about sex. He was trying to send me a message. A message that I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear yet. About me and wishes and fairytales.
Just as the kiss started to turn into something that had me twisting my fingers i
nto his soft t-shirt and pulling him toward me, there was a knock on the glass.
We both jumped back and looked up to see Lonnie grinning like a crazy lumberjack at us. “Hello little children, am I interrupting?”
“You’re such an idiot,” Derek said, shoving the door open so quick and hard that the handle hit Lonnie in the crotch and he doubled over, groaning. Derek jumped out of the car, still ranting about him being a dumbass and a big baby.
I brushed my fingers over my lips before getting out as well, and when I turned, Derek was watching me over the roof of the car with his gray eyes still storm clouds that I wanted to lose myself in. He was waiting for me to fly away. But I didn’t want to fly anywhere. Rather, I wanted to go around the car and ease myself into his side and take his hand in mine. I couldn’t, though. My brain wouldn’t let me. My walls that were becoming pieces were still there, preventing me from making a physical step like that.
Instead, I opened the trunk and took my bag out. Derek came over and insisted on grabbing it, even though he had his own, and we walked into the lobby of the hotel to check in.
We had adjoining rooms again. It was strange. Like Derek and his manager had specifically asked for them. It made my heart pitter-patter in that way that was very hazardous to my health while I struggled to be sensible. To keep my imagination from leaping places it shouldn’t go.
When the knock on the adjoining door came a few minutes later, I answered it with equal amounts of trepidation and hope. Derek was leaning against the doorframe, ever present jeans and t-shirt angled tight against his body. He wasn’t smiling, though. He was serious.
Good job, Mia, my brain pounded out, see what happens when you let your heart take over? Cheerful men become serious zombies.
“I have to get over to the venue to rehearse. We’re already later than we expected, and George is going nuts,” Derek said as if it was an apology. I wasn’t sure what for. His manager had already called a dozen times while we were on the road.
“Are you going to get lost? Maybe I should Google it for you,” I tried to tease. He didn’t bite.