Lovely Madness: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players, Book 4)

by Jaine Diamond

  “You felt safe there,” I ventured.

  “Yeah. I felt safe.”

  “Because you make music there?”

  “I guess so. I had control there.”

  Yeah. That made sense.

  I never really thought of it that way, but now… it became clear.

  He was a master at music. The studio was filled with things he’d mastered. Musical instruments. The sound board in the control room.

  Maybe anything beyond that space was uncharted territory. Even his own bedroom.

  “You used to bring women up here?”

  He hesitated, and I knew he was afraid of saying anything to make things worse. But it was just a simple question about his past, and it wasn’t a crime to have had a life before he met me. I’d never held that against him. I just wanted to know.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  I considered that. I was getting warm in my puffer jacket, so I slipped it off and set it on a chair. “I always wondered why you didn’t bring me up here.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and I could read his remorse all over him. “It wasn’t personal.”

  “I actually thought you didn’t want me enough. That you pushed me away because you didn’t want me. But then I remembered how you told me you loved me. And I believed you.”

  “It was the truth,” he said, his voice scratching.

  I wandered over and stood in front of him, looking deep in his eyes. “Is it still the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  I held his gaze for a long moment, just letting that sink in. I could feel the truth of it warming my bones.

  Then I leaned in, slowly, and brushed my lips to his. He kissed me back, just as slowly. We kissed and kissed, our lips brushing over one another’s as the heat rose between us and our bodies met.

  “You make me feel like I’m whole,” he breathed, pressing his forehead to mine. His whole body was pressed to mine now. “Like I’m whole again.”

  “You are whole, Cary.”

  “I need you, though.”

  “I need you, too.”

  Then our lips collided and we didn’t speak again.

  We undressed each other with a gentle, hurried desperation. Once we were naked, he laid me on the bed. He kissed me, slowly, all over my body until I was more than ready to take him. I was hungry, aching, drowning in my desire.

  My cries as he swept his tongue over my pussy sounded like music in his sumptuous bedroom.

  I wanted him to fuck me fast and hard. Possess me. Use me.

  I wanted him to hold me down, so I could feel the ferocity of his desire.

  I wanted him to take like he used to.

  But when he thrust into me, a strange thing happened.

  He seemed to abandon his control and everything just… flowed. Every touch. Every kiss. Every breath. It was like a perfect, rolling tide. Like silk rippling on water. Everywhere I ended and he began, every caress I reciprocated, every moan he echoed back to me.

  We became one pulsing, living entity as we entwined.

  Like it was always meant to be this way.

  It was always meant to be us.

  Together.

  We moved together. We breathed together. We rolled together.

  We even peaked together.

  The intensity of everything I was feeling was only heightened knowing he was feeling the same thing. We held tight as the pleasure destroyed us both. As it stripped us down, tore us apart, and fused us back together, naked and new. The pleasure and release and trust in each other’s arms was our promise.

  A new beginning. A clearing of the slate.

  I’d forgive him anything if he’d just hold me like this forever.

  He’d never shut me out again if I’d just keep him safe, deep inside me.

  We gripped each other and whispered sweet words against one another’s skin, kissing and holding each other long after we were both spent. He didn’t even pull out.

  We couldn’t stand to let each other go.

  Why did he ever let me go?

  “I’m lost without you,” he whispered against my neck.

  “You were lost when I found you,” I told him.

  “Yeah. But this is a different kind of lost.” He shifted his hips, finally pulling out. He looked into my eyes, settling on the pillow next to me with a deep sigh. “If I could never make music again, I’d be so fucking lost, I don’t know if I’d ever find my way out of the dark again. I feel lost like that when you’re gone, Taylor. I need you like I need the music.”

  I blew out a breath, trying to relax into this shift between us. We were together again, at least for now. We were talking. I was in his bed.

  I’d wanted this moment, so bad. But now that it was here and he was saying the things I so needed him to say… I was still angry. I was still scared. I was still hurt.

  “Then why did you send me away?” I asked him.

  “Because I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “You are such an idiot.”

  He choked out a laugh. “Truer words have never been spoken.”

  “What did you really think would happen?” I propped myself up on my elbow, looking him in the eye. “I’d go merrily on my way like we never met? Like you’d never seared yourself right into my heart and possessed my soul? Like my whole world didn’t rip right open when we fucked? Like I didn’t love you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, at a loss. “I thought… I was keeping you out of harm’s way.”

  “Out of your way?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what did you think was going to happen next? You know, when I got over you, like, Fuck that guy anyway, and moved on?” I was joking, but he wasn’t amused.

  “I really didn’t want to think about that.”

  “But you did. Didn’t you? I move on without you, and then, what? I meet some other guy who treats me like crap? Pretends to be a nice guy, but then deceives me? I’ve been there before, and I can tell you, it harmed me.”

  He shook his head. Clearly, he didn’t like hearing about that, but too fucking bad. It was true.

  “Or maybe I meet a guy who does treat me well. Like gold. But guess what? He’s not you. He doesn’t understand my weird questions about mermaid sex or think it’s cute that I have a hole in my sock or think I’m worthy of being his music studio manager even though I’m woefully underqualified. He’s. Not. You.” My eyes sparked with hot tears. “And that means he could never be right enough for me. Because he doesn’t love me like you do. Is that what you want for me?”

  His eyes gleamed with tears, too. “No.”

  “You really think you can trust some random jerk to love me like you do?”

  “No.”

  “Then what the hell were you thinking all that time we were apart?”

  He shook his head again. “I just… I kept thinking of you out there meeting other guys, and I fucking hated it. That wasn’t what I wanted, Taylor. But I knew it was my fault. I pushed you away. I kept thinking about all the time we spent together, how you made me laugh when I’d totally forgotten how. I was falling in love with you, early on, and I knew it. It terrified me. And I kept thinking about that. About how I felt when I was with you, before I fucked things up. So scared and so fucking happy. I actually tried to convince myself I’d done the right thing even though it felt so wrong. I knew I was wrong. You just wanted me to enjoy life, and I pushed you away. You made my life so much better than it was before I met you, I can’t even tell you. But I swore to myself I was doing the right thing. I was protecting you.”

  I knew, when he said it—with such conviction and such pain, and such regretful, bleeding sorrow in his voice—that he meant it with impossible conviction. He’d really convinced himself that he was protecting me—from himself.

  “But you weren’t protecting me, Cary. You were hurting me.”

  “Can you ever forgive me for that?”

&nb
sp; “Yes.” I kissed his temple, his cheekbone, his lips. “Just please don’t ever do it again.”

  He took a deep breath, looked me in the eye and promised me, “I won’t. I swear to you, Taylor. I won’t.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Cary

  Brother

  When Courteney opened the door and saw Taylor, a surprised smile lit up her face.

  “Taylor! I didn’t know you were coming.” My sister’s gaze dropped to our hands—mine and Taylor’s, interconnected. Then she looked up at me.

  “Hey, CC. I, uh, brought a friend.”

  “I see that.”

  “If it’s not okay…” Taylor started.

  “Of course it’s okay.” Courteney opened her door wide for us. “Come in.”

  We stepped into the condo she shared with Xander and she shut the door.

  “Taylor’s here for moral support,” I told her, taking off my hat. “You know, interviews make me nervous.”

  “I’m glad you’re both here.”

  “I don’t want to get in the way…” Taylor said.

  “You’re not in the way,” Courteney assured her.

  She directed us into the living room, where she’d set out two glasses of water on the coffee table, with a box of Kleenex.

  Shit. We were really doing this.

  I looked around as we took off our coats. The condo was modern and clean, everything in shades of white, a little slate gray. Xander had owned this place for a few years, but I’d only been here for the first time about a month ago. It was as freakishly neat tonight as it was then, which I knew was Xander’s style.

  “Where’s Xander?” I asked her.

  “He’s out. He won’t be back. I asked him to make himself scarce while we do this.”

  “Right.”

  I sat down on the couch with Taylor as Courteney went to pour a third glass of water. She set it on the coffee table for Taylor, then hovered. “Do you guys want a beer or anything? Coffee? Something to eat?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. I was just hoping she wasn’t gonna be too nervous about this, because it was gonna make me nervous.

  “I’m good,” Taylor said.

  Finally Courteney sat down, in a chair facing me. “Should we get started? Or do you want to have some warm-up chat first?”

  “I’m not very good at small talk. So we can get started. I want to get this over with.” I was looking around the apartment again, but then met her eyes. “Sorry. You know what I mean.”

  “I understand.” My sister gave me a supportive smile. “I’m going to record this, so I get everything you say exactly right.” And just like that, she seemed to switch into professional mode. Kinda like when Taylor walked into the studio. She was in her element. I watched her set her iPhone carefully on the coffee table between us.

  “Did I tell you I’m proud of you?” I asked her.

  My sister actually looked startled. “Um, no. Not lately.”

  “I read the book. It’s great.”

  “Thank you.” She seemed unsure. “Do you really think so?”

  “I do. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, even if you are my sister.”

  “I kinda figured that.”

  “I’d be proud of anything you put your heart into, Court. But where Gabe is involved… I’m pretty selective on who I’ll talk to about him.”

  “I know that. I just want to pay tribute to him. I want to make sure people remember him and they know why his life was important. And I can’t have that full story without hearing what he meant to you, in your words.”

  I nodded, trying to swallow the emotion that rose up. I didn’t want to get too emotional about this. I’d always had a hard time with emotions. Rampant emotions were the gateway to Anxiety Land, and I was pretty fucking determined not to have a panic attack in the middle of this conversation, in front of the only two women I truly loved.

  “Sure.”

  Breathe.

  Four in. Hold four. Four out…

  “Are you sure you want me to be here?” Taylor asked quietly, and I met her eyes. “I can go. Or wait in the other room, if it’s better for you.”

  “If you want to,” I said, and I took her hand. “But I want you to stay.”

  She glanced at Courteney, then looked at me again and nodded. “Okay. I’m here.”

  “Maybe you can start by telling me about Gabe when you guys were young,” my sister said. “What was he like as a best friend?”

  I drew one more deep breath and took a moment finding the right words. “He was like a brother to me,” I said. And as soon as I started talking about it, the words just started to flow. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Maybe because I had the right audience. “I guess… I was like that for him, too, because he had no siblings. You weren’t even born until I was fourteen, and I really couldn’t take a baby on the back of my mountain bike or anything. So I was pretty much an only child growing up. By the time you could even play with me, so to speak, I was eighteen. I grew up with Gabe more than I grew up with you, which is too bad, in a way. I would’ve liked to have hung out with you more.”

  “You were a great big brother,” Courteney said.

  “I could’ve been around more.”

  “You always made time for me. You always made me feel special.”

  “You are special,” I said simply.

  She cocked her head a little, and I could see how she softened at that. My little sister loved me. I knew she did. She looked up to me, too.

  You’re doing the right thing.

  Just get through it.

  “Thank you,” she said. “But this isn’t about me, so I hope charming me with compliments isn’t your play to get out of talking about Gabe.”

  I smiled a little. “No. We can talk about Gabe.”

  “So tell me more about growing up with him.”

  “We were pretty inseparable. We met when we were nine. He’d moved into the neighborhood, just a few blocks away. We met at the skateboarding park.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “He was new in the neighborhood, but already making friends. He was there with some older guys, skateboarding. And there I was, sitting on the sidelines, just watching. He said hi to me and asked me if I wanted to use his skateboard. I didn’t like doing things like that in front of so many people, so I said no.”

  “You had social anxiety, even back then?”

  “I think so. I thought I was just shy. That was what all the adults said about me. They said I’d grow out of it. I remember I always felt like a freak, though. I didn’t like speaking up in school or playing sports. I didn’t like people looking at me. It made me anxious. I knew I was different, that I wasn’t normal. But I didn’t know why. I didn’t make friends easily because of it. I’d be invited to a birthday party or something and I’d feel sick and have to go home, or I wouldn’t even make it there. I don’t even know why Gabe hung out with me. I guess I was lucky I was the only kid his age at the park that day. Maybe that was why he gravitated toward me. But he didn’t seem to notice that I was weird. Or it just didn’t bother him.”

  “You guys had chemistry.”

  “Yeah. We were friends from that day on. It was summer, and when we found out he wasn’t even registered in the same school as me that fall, we petitioned his parents to move him to my school, and they did it. They were always cool like that.”

  “I’m sure. They still are.”

  “Gabe loved his parents. That was one thing that always stood out to me. I mean, he really liked them. They hung out together all the time, listened to music, joked around, and it was just a totally different vibe than it was at our house.”

  “I can imagine,” my sister said.

  I studied her for a minute. I could see the pain and disappointment there, the resentment she felt toward Mom and Dad. I felt it, too. It was the one thing I regretted the most from the years after I’d left home—that I wasn’t there to help her navigate the emotional minefield
that was living in our parents’ house.

  But I had to get out of there, for my own mental health. I knew that already at eighteen.

  “You know, the thing you have to understand about Mom and Dad,” I told her, “is that they care about us and they think they know what’s best for our family. But their priorities are just different from mine and yours. They always have been. Mom has struggled so much with her anxiety and she found her own way to cope. I don’t think it was easy for her living with Dad. He had expectations of her she couldn’t meet, and things were much harder for her when I was little. He used to leave for days at a time because he was pissed off at her.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Courteney said quietly.

  “They probably didn’t want you to know. They didn’t want anyone to know. You know how they are. They’re more concerned about what the neighbors will think than anything else. Mom used to have these debilitating panic attacks, and it was so fucking tense in the house all the time. She wouldn’t even leave the house for long stretches, and I’d be left to take care of her because Dad didn’t want anything to do with it. Things were way worse before you were born.”

  “I’m sure they were,” she said softly. “I always got that sense. And I’m sure that affected you.”

  “Yeah. But for Mom, things changed with medication. Drugs were the only thing that seemed to work for her. That’s how she copes. And Dad… he was just never able to accept that I had some of the same issues that she did. He just wanted to go on with life and pretend everything was fine. He wanted to travel, so Mom had to be medicated so they could travel. It was that simple to them. When I went off my meds because I felt like they were doing more harm than good, they were so devastated. It was like they thought I’d given up or something. They thought I was suicidal because I didn’t want to be on medication. They could never seem to understand the bad association I had with pills, because of what I’d been through.”

  “Because of Gabe.”

  “Yeah. Because of Gabe.”

  “Is it okay if I put all that in the book?”