Just Sing: An Enemies-to-Lovers Rock Star Romance (Just 5 Guys Book 1)

by Selena

  “How are you?” Blair asked, holding me at arm’s length to study my face. “You look thin.”

  “I’m—awful,” I admitted. Before I could stop myself, I burst into tears. Blair didn’t make her little comments this time. She pulled me into the living room and sat down on the couch and held me. And that was worse because that meant she knew it was over. She knew something that even I hadn’t let myself admit. I’d been holding on, denying everything that was right in front of me. Going along with it, hoping I’d wake up and the nightmare would be over.

  That evening, when I got back from a long ride through the brown fields, I came out of the stables to see a little red Corvette whipping around back to park on the pad behind the house, spraying gravel as it went.

  I took off running and came around the corner of the house to see a thin figure with a shock of long, bright red hair, as familiar as my own mother.

  “Piper,” I cried, throwing my arms around my cousin in a crushing embrace.

  “Oh, ew, you’re all sweaty and you smell like a horse,” Piper said, but she was laughing.

  After getting her settled in, I had to share her with the family for a few hours. We covered the usual topics—the weather, the health of all the relatives, church, football, college, and local gossip, excluding mine, of course, since I was there. Finally, I was able to convince my mother that it wouldn’t be rude if we took a short walk, and Piper and I set off on foot.

  “God, I miss this place,” Piper said, throwing her arms up into the chill afternoon. Even the sun felt cold, the rays short and pale compared to the long, lazy summer afternoons with the golden glow lingering over everything. Now, a wind whipped across them, singing through the brown grasses and bending them double, stinging our faces.

  “Me, too,” I said. I glanced sideways at Piper and picked a tall seed stalk from one of the grasses. “I might stay.”

  “For how long?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Does Brody know?”

  “No,” I admitted, chewing at the grass stem.

  “Well, you can come to New York and stay with me,” Piper said. But I knew I couldn’t do that, at least not for long. Piper had fashion school, and she lived in a tiny, cruddy apartment with a roommate. And I’d had enough of sitting around while someone else did their thing. Not that I didn’t want Brody to have fame and glory. But sometimes, it got boring making my life about someone else. I wanted to have my own life, too.

  “Maybe I’ll travel, like I planned to,” I said, though that seemed empty now, too. Now that I knew what it was like to be with a man I loved, the thought of traveling alone had lost the allure of escape that it had held while I’d been at school, thinking of the long breaks I could take from seeing Paul. Travel had been an excuse to escape a bad engagement that never should have taken place. But now, I knew I’d want Brody there with me, and he didn’t want to leave Uma.

  We turned down a little footpath that led to a dip in the land where my father had hired a crew to come in and dig a pond for the horses. We walked the winding, overgrown path in silence until we came out on the grassy bank of the pond.

  “I can’t believe we used to swim here,” I said. The water was murky, the edges filled with dead grasses, each blade fuzzed with pond gunk.

  “We probably drank so much horse pee,” Piper said, laughing. “My mom hated it when Blair let us swim here.”

  I wrinkled my nose at the thought. “I don’t blame her.”

  After a minute of silence, Piper said, “So are we going to talk about Brody? Or is that off limits?”

  “Nothing’s off limits,” I said with a sigh. “I’m just… I don’t know what to say anymore.”

  “He’s still hauling around the pregnant chick?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she hasn’t breathed a word about it?”

  “No. She doesn’t hang out with us in public. It gets more intense every day, though. People take pictures of us at Starbucks at five in the morning. It’s exhausting.”

  Piper gave me a sympathetic smile. “At least they’re not taking pictures of him with Uma.”

  “Yeah,” I said, tossing down my chewed grass stem.

  “And he’s still with you. He loves you. And he says there’s nothing going on, that it’s just about the baby. Do you believe him?”

  “I do,” I said, huddling into my jacket as another stream of icy wind raked across the fields, tugging at my hair.

  “That must be hard.”

  “You’d think so,” I said. “But not really.”

  “So… I don’t get it. Did you want him to leave her on the streets?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What do you want him to do?”

  “I want him to go back in time and not fuck every fangirl who threw herself at him. Especially not her. And especially not without protection.”

  Piper huddled into her white down jacket, her red hair almost glowing against the coat and the dull backdrop. The sun seemed to spotlight my pretty cousin, and for the first time in years, I felt a stab of jealousy. Piper wasn’t just pretty, she was free. She’d made her own life in New York, uncomplicated by boys.

  “You can’t have that,” she said. “Try again.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the problem. I can’t ask him to kick her out. I don’t want to. I feel sorry for her. But I also feel like he can’t ask me to be okay with it.”

  “No,” Piper said. “You have to decide that for yourself.”

  We walked back across the field in silence.

  thirty-three

  Brody

  “Mother,” I said carefully, my fingers tense on Uma’s stiff spine. “This is Uma. I’ve told you about her. Uma, this is my mother, Virginia.”

  Uma bobbed her head. “’Sup.”

  “Well, hello, dear,” said Virginia, looking down her nose at Uma. “You can just call me Mrs. Villines.”

  I gritted my teeth and glared, but my mother pretended not to notice. Uma started to turn, but I flattened my hand against her back to keep her from bolting.

  “It’s good of Brody to bring you by to meet us,” Mom said. “I understand you have no reliable family of your own to spend the holidays with.”

  “They’re traveling.”

  “And on Christmas!” Mom said. “Imagine that. Some people have no sense of the value of tradition.”

  “Mother,” I warned, shooting her a meaningful look. “I think she’ll be fine here. I know how welcoming you are to guests.”

  “Of course. We can’t let you starve, what with your condition. There’s always room for one more plate at the table.” She smiled primly at me. “Will Laney be joining us, too?”

  “She’s having dinner with her family,” I said, knowing full well that my mother knew this. Any chance to bring up Laney, though. Mom had been doing it for years, since we broke up. Nettling me. And now she had a new victim.

  “Let me show you to your room,” I said, urging Uma forward with my palm still on her back.

  “We thought she’d rather stay in the downstairs guestroom,” my mother said. “So she won’t have to deal with the stairs. A lot of babies were lost that way in the past.”

  “Mom,” I said through clenched teeth. I knew the reason for keeping Uma downstairs had nothing to do with the risk of falling and everything to do with keeping her away from me. But I didn’t want to argue. For all I knew, Uma wanted to be as far away from me as possible.

  I led her down the back hallway to the downstairs guestroom, a cold and dark little room that was almost never used. Although clean, it had a dusty smell to it from sitting so long unused.

  “This place is insane,” Uma said, dropping her duffle onto the floor just inside the bedroom door. “How many rooms does it even have?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, by now used to Uma’s tendency to marvel at all things extravagant. She didn’t do it quite as often as when we’d first taken her aboard the tour bus, but now and
then, she’d still wonder aloud how much things cost, a habit that Laney found tasteless and embarrassing.

  Uma seemed to recover from her momentary slip into curiosity, and she fell back into her usual sullen state after a few seconds. “Your mom hates me.”

  “She doesn’t know you.”

  “You don’t know me,” she pointed out.

  “I know you’re having my baby.”

  “Do you hate me?”

  “What?” I asked, drawing back. “Of course I don’t hate you.”

  “Because I kind of came along and fucked up your relationship. Everything would be better if I’d never found you. Admit it.”

  I shifted, uncomfortable under her stormy gaze. Her violet eyes had gone dark as a bruise. “I don’t think that’s something you should be worrying about.”

  “Oh, no, don’t worry, it’s bad for the baby,” she said in a mocking voice. “Don’t drink coffee, Uma, it’s bad for the baby. No tea, either. Or soda. I can’t even eat a fucking ham sandwich.”

  “It’s only two more months.”

  She plopped into the leather chair in the corner as ungracefully as possible, her legs splayed, her face shadowed by a belligerent glare. “I thought you were going to tell me not to get worked up, it’s bad for the baby.”

  That day at the clinic, when she’d gone for her first appointment with me, things had gone fine. I’d vetoed the DNA test, saying that even if it turned out to be someone else’s, I was going to take care of her until she had it. I didn’t want to risk giving her a miscarriage with the test, which had to go into her amniotic sac and extract DNA. Uma had been grateful then, saying I was a good guy. I’d been wondering ever since that day what had gone wrong.

  We’d seen the baby in the ultrasound. Uma had just stared at it, not making her usual smartass comments or calling it an alien. After the ultrasound technician had left us alone, Uma had burst into big ugly-cry sobs. I’d sat on the table and held her until she finished, which felt like forever, but was actually less than five minutes. She’d been withdrawn afterwards, but was back to her usual self by the next day.

  We’d talked about the possibility of getting her an apartment in Seattle, since we were still traveling. But I didn’t want her disappearing on me, and Nash had suddenly changed his tune, sure that she’d spread the story all over the internet if I left her alone. Uma had seemed amenable enough to the idea of sticking with us, saying she’d always wanted to travel. But she’d grown more and more hostile to Laney and me as the weeks passed. I kept telling myself it was just the pregnancy hormones.

  After Christmas Eve dinner, Uma immediately disappeared back to her room again.

  “She’s really something,” Virginia said, arching one manicured eyebrow at me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “She definitely is.”

  Virginia’s eyes narrowed. “How is Laney taking all this? You traveling with her and your mistress? I’d never have imagined her the sort to put up with that.”

  “Mom, please don’t call her that. She’s not my mistress. It was a one-time mistake.”

  “I should hope so,” Virginia said, pointing her nose in the air. “That’s not the kind of girl I expect you to settle down with.”

  “I’m not going to marry her.”

  “Then what are you going to do with her?”

  The sound of the door slamming caught my attention, and the arch smile on his mother’s face said that she’d known Uma was there even when I hadn’t. She really could be horrible.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to go chasing after her?”

  I shook my head and left the room, but I went to make sure, anyway. Uma’s room stood empty, her coat crumpled on the floor at the foot of the leather chair. I gathered it up and went to retrieve my own coat before going in search of her.

  I found her on a footpath through the gardens out back, combing her fingers through one of my mother’s purple moorgrasses, its blades golden as a head of tawny hair. She didn’t turn at my approach, so I cleared my throat.

  “Hey.”

  “This is crazy,” she said. “I can’t believe you live like this. I can’t believe anyone lives like this while people are literally dying of starvation, and lack of medical care, and freezing to death. I feel like I’ve stepped into some alternative reality. I can’t seem to wrap my head around it.”

  “Are you pissed about what I said?”

  “It’s weird though,” she went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “I got used to it on the bus so fast. But that’s one tiny vehicle. I mean, it’s a big vehicle, but it’s easy to feel like you’re just riding around in this tiny sliver of luxury, but you can still be part of the world. You step outside, and it’s all still there. This place…”

  “Uma.”

  “Yeah?” she asked, her head snapping around, as if she were waking from a dream.

  “You left your coat.” I held it out, and she slipped her arms into the sleeves of the garish orange faux fur she’d chosen when she went shopping. Without Laney and I, of course. Nash didn’t want me to be photographed with a pregnant woman if possible, and Laney always had to be there if we went somewhere together, in case it set off rumors.

  “This can’t be real,” Uma said, gesturing to the manicured gardens circling the “natural” pool, where water trickled from a tiny stream all year round. Of course, it was powered by a pump at the start, but my mother didn’t like to mention that to guests when they came to walk the garden with her. Unlike Laney’s mother, she took no part in the gardening, unless taking credit counted.

  “It’s a different world here,” I admitted. “I was pretty sheltered growing up. But that’s not a bad thing for a kid.”

  “I keep thinking I’ll wake up,” Uma said, turning back to the grass and combing its wide, arching blades with her fingers. “I’m waiting for it. I’ve been waiting since last June, when I found out. Like any day my real life will kick back in. And this is just another weird part of the nightmare, like one of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. This is the opposite side of the coin from sneaking into my bandmates’ cars when they were asleep so I didn’t have to sleep on the street and get raped. It’s less plausible, but here we are. The pretty side of Wonderland.”

  I looked around, hunching into my jacket when a particularly nasty gust of wind stung across my face. “Are you pissed about what I said to my mom?” I asked again. “You don’t want to…? Do you?”

  “No,” Uma said dully.

  I tilted my head, studying her. Was that why she’d gotten so surly lately? Maybe she had thought about getting married. Laney had said it would happen, that it was impossible to think otherwise. And though I did think otherwise, maybe I was wrong. I’d never learned how to read women. I’d never had to. With the exception of Laney, I’d never pursued anyone. They came to me, their intentions clear.

  I’d been too nice to her. If I was an asshole, standoffish and rude, she’d get the picture. It was hard, though, while she had that baby inside her, to be a dick to her. In a moment of weakness, I’d even called Quincy for advice, because of all the members of Just 5 Guys, Quincy loved women the most. But he’d just laughed at my dilemma and said, “Hell yeah, dude. You got yourself a harem.”

  Uma put a hand on her belly, a flicker of pain crossing her face. “The thing about Wonderland,” she said. “There’s always a dark side. It might look all magical and shit, but around the next corner, there’s a queen waiting to chop off your head.”

  “What was that?”

  “The queen?” Uma asked, giving me a funny look.

  “No, that,” I said, gesturing to her hand, still on her little mound of a belly. “You made a face. Is something wrong? Does it hurt? Are you having contractions?”

  “Calm down, Daddy, I’ve still got two months,” she said. “Although I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up with that woman standing over me with a knife, ready to rip it out so she can get rid of me.”

  “She’s not that bad,” I said.

  “I�
�ll take your word for it. But I figure it’s better to have no mother than a bad mother.”

  “She’s not a bad mother,” I said. “She’s a good person. She has her ways, but she’d never hurt a fly. Or you.”

  Uma rolled her eyes and kicked some of the smooth, decorative gravel my mother had trucked in to cover the garden paths. “Yeah, because it might hurt her precious grandbaby. I thought Southern women were supposed to be shrinking violet, seen-and-not-heard types.”

  I laughed. “You obviously have never been to the South before.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I wasn’t missing much. I think I’d take a shrinking violet over an evil queen.”

  “You’ll get used to her.”

  Uma grimaced. “I hope not.”

  “Stop avoiding the question. Why’d you grab your stomach like that?”

  She looked ready to argue, but then she shrugged and turned back to walk along the path to the small arbor with a narrow bench under it, big enough for two lovebirds to sit cozily under the wisteria drooping from it in early summer.

  “It’s just moving around a lot. It seems to like the cold air,” Uma said, looking out at the stream twinkling in the cold winter sunlight as it wove its way gently into the small pool lined with mossy stones.

  I squeezed in beside her, and she sighed and scooted over to allow this invasion, though she looked ready to make one of her cutting remarks. I swallowed, trying to work up the nerve to ask the next question, the one I’d wanted to ask a dozen times now. But every time I started talking about the baby, she got pissed and turned away or went in the bedroom to be alone. I never got this far.

  “Can I… Do you think you’d let me touch it sometime?” I asked at last. “It doesn’t have to be now. But maybe sometime before it’s born?” The thought of that, the birth, always made something inside me turn into a sentimental cornball, like I might actually cry.

  Uma sighed. “That would be weird.”