I’m not fooling anyone, not even myself, which means I’m probably doing a pretty piss poor job of keeping Billie on the right side of the walls I’ve built up over the years.
I need to get a handle on this, and I need to do it now.
“That was incredible, Mase. Seriously, I love it.”
I nod, but otherwise ignore the compliment. I’ve never been good with those.
She flashes me a confused expression as I sit my guitar back on the stand before taking hers and laying it on the floor.
I rake my hand down my face and then through my hair.
I don’t know how to say this, or why I feel so fucking sick over it, but I know for sure that it has to be done.
“Do you remember when I told you that I couldn’t give you anything but sex, sugar? Do you remember that?”
She nods, her fingers crossing and uncrossing in her lap. “I remember.”
“I just ah…” I drag my hand through my hair again. “Shit, I don’t know, I just wanted to make sure that you were still good with that.”
Hurt flashes through her eyes, but it’s gone as quickly as it came.
“I’m not trying to be an asshole, I just… Chuck wanted to make sure we were sticking to the plan,” I lie.
She studies me carefully, her gaze so intense I have to look away.
She gets to her feet, and it takes everything in me not to stand with her.
I know I’ve just hurt her – badly – after what we just did, the music we just made together, the bond we shared – for me to then go and cut it off at the knees might just be the most ruthless thing I’ve ever done in my life.
“Yeah, of course we’re good,” she answers brightly – too fucking brightly. “We’re totally fine. Tell Chuck not to worry. I know what’s at stake.”
She takes a few steps towards the door and my hand aches to reach out and stop her, but I don’t. I’m frozen.
“I’ve gotta go meet Avery. I need to go.” The words are weighted, calculated.
Fucking hell. What have I done?
This feels like goodbye.
“Are you coming back?” I ask, calling her on her bullshit reassurances, and hating the spike in my heartrate as I wait to hear her reply.
“Honestly?” she whispers.
I nod.
“I’m not sure.”
I don’t even get a chance to reply before she’s gone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Billie
I will not cry.
I will not cry.
I will not cry.
I repeat the words over and over to myself like a mantra as I drive over to Avery’s – my – apartment.
I shouldn’t be surprised that Masen served me a reality check, he can probably see by taking one look at me that I’m in too deep.
I should have been able to see that it was totally one sided.
I should have believed him when he told me that this thing between us would be sex and nothing more, but like a fool, I hoped.
The streets fly by in a blur and before I know it, I’m turning into my usual parking space and killing the engine of my piece-of-shit car.
I managed to slip out without Eric seeing, so for the first time in the past month or two, I actually got to drive myself somewhere without supervision.
I’m out of the car and up the stairs, my feet echoing against the metal with every step.
Giggling fills the air as I open the door and I hear Josh’s booming voice teasing Avery about something.
I stop for a minute, leaning my back against the door after I close it quietly. I just want to listen to the two of them for a minute.
It might not be anything serious yet, but when I see them together, laughing and joking, touching and kissing, it makes me jealous.
“B?” Avery calls out when she hears my keys drop onto the bench.
“Just me.”
“What are you doing here?”
I follow their voices into her bedroom and find the two of them, each half-dressed, a poker game laid out on the bed between them.
I lean against the door frame and laugh at Josh’s wolfish grin.
“Strip poker, you two? Really?”
Josh waggles his brows suggestively. “You wanna join us, FG?”
Avery smacks his arm, grinning. “Don’t even try it. Masen will kick your ass.”
My smile falls at the mention of his name and it doesn’t go unnoticed by my best friend.
“Uh oh.”
“What?” I ask, plastering a fake smile on my lips.
“Oh no, that pained-looking face doesn’t fool me, I saw it. Trouble in fake paradise?”
I bounce my eyes between Josh and Avery before settling on the floor.
“Shit,” Avery hisses.
“What?” Josh asks, his tone hushed.
“Your boy fucked up somehow, that’s what,” she replies, her tone accusing, as though Josh is somehow partly to blame.
I look up to see the pair of them climbing off her bed.
Josh shrugs his shirt over his head and approaches me slowly, his expression unreadable.
“What’d he do, FG?”
I drop my chin, but he doesn’t allow it, cupping my jaw in his big hand, forcing me to look at him.
“Nothing,” I breathe.
“FG,” he warns, and I’m sucked in by his tone and big blue eyes.
He’s a sweet guy. A part of me wishes it could be him that I loved – loving Josh wouldn’t be easy, but it wouldn’t be this hard either.
“He just… we were singing together and then… I dunno… it was nothing,” I ramble and Josh frowns, stooping to get level with me, pinning me with his stare.
“You sang together?”
I nod.
“That’s, wow, that’s new.”
I feel a flicker of hope at his shock, but it’s short-lived when I think about Masen breaking my heart right afterwards.
“Then what happened?”
“He just reminded me of our arrangement. You know, sex without strings…”
Josh’s head falls forward and he mutters something under his breath.
I’m really going to miss being his friend if this is all over.
“It’s fine. I’m fine with it, I just… wanted to come and hang out with Avery for a bit. Everything is fine.”
“I think the fact that you just said fine three times, is a pretty good indicator that nothing is fine,” Avery pipes up.
“Just… don’t give up on him yet, FG, okay?” he pleads.
I shrug my shoulders. I’m not sure how to respond to that.
“I gotta go, babe,” Josh says, stepping away from me, talking to Avery. “Let you two have some girl time, alright?”
They exchange a kiss that makes my heart ache, and then he’s gone.
***
“Sit. Talk. I’ll make coffee,” she instructs.
I flop onto the couch, dragging a big squishy cushion into my lap.
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start with how you fell in love with a guy who only ever scowls,” she yells from the kitchen.
“I’m not in love with him,” I snap.
Lie. Total lie.
“Whatever, just start at our weekend away, what the hell happened there? One minute he’s got some chick in his lap and the next he’s carrying you off to his bedroom to have his way with you.”
I grin and sink my teeth into my bottom lip to try and control it. I shouldn’t be smiling, certainly not about the other girl, but I can’t help it. It was the first time I felt brave enough to really tell him what I wanted, and when you’re dealing with someone like Masen Lennox, that’s no small thing.
“I’m sure we’ve already been over this.”
“Humour me,” she insists as she appears in the doorway with two steaming cups of coffee. “You tried telling me about it, but every time we got going, Mr. Tall, Dark and Broody appeared.
“I finally grew some balls and told
him I wasn’t going to do this with him if he was just going to run all over town sleeping with whoever he felt like.”
She sits, passing me my cup.
“Okay, so you had sex, right?”
I want to correct her, tell her that the simple phrase is in no way sufficient to explain what it was like when the two of us finally came together, but I just nod in agreement.
“And then?”
“And then today he reminds me that it’s just sex, no strings – like he told me in the beginning, and I’m just the fool who’s feeling things when she was warned not to.”
Her eyes fill with sadness.
“Have you been sleeping together since we got back?”
“Every night.” I shrug.
“Wow,” she whispers.
My eyes rise from my cup to meet hers. “What?”
She shrugs. “Nothing.”
I pin her with my stare.
“Fine, it was just something Josh told me about Masen and his… activities.”
I cringe. I don’t know why – I’m well aware that Masen has been with women before me, probably more women than I’d like to think about.
“Just say it.”
She shoots me a sympathetic look. “Josh said that Masen has never screwed the same girl twice.”
I frown. “Like two nights in a row?”
She shakes her head. “Like ever.”
“But… I…” I stutter. “I don’t get it.”
She looks at me knowingly. “He doesn’t go back for seconds, B, it’s just sex and then it’s done, and he moves on with his life. He never lets women stay the night in a hotel, let alone in his home.”
“He told me it was just sex too, those were his words.”
“But that’s not what he’s shown you.”
“This is a unique situation,” I argue, unwilling to believe that I could possibly be the exception for him when he just so brutally shut me down.
“Yeah, because of you… you know what Josh thinks?”
I clasp my cup, trying to warm my suddenly chilly hands. “I wouldn’t dare try to figure out what goes on in that boy’s head.”
She smiles softly and I see it, she’s falling – hard. “He thinks Masen has feelings for you.”
“And what do you think?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know what to make of that man. He confuses me. He’s harsh and cold, but sometimes when he looks at you, I think I see another side of him.”
“He’s different sometimes. I’ve seen a part of him that I never would have believed was there. Last night at the premiere, I don’t know, Avery, it was so easy to believe he loved me back.”
“I told you that you loved him.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine, okay, you were right, I’m in love with him. I’m fucking obsessed.”
She giggles, but there’s a wariness in her eyes.
“He was sweet, considerate, charming.”
“What if it was all an act, B?”
I release a deep breath. I’ve worried about the same thing.
“But what if it wasn’t? What if that was the real him?”
I could go back and forth like this all day. My head is a mess.
She shrugs again – neither of us have any answers.
“I have to try.”
“I’m just worried he’s going to break your heart.”
He’s already cracked it, but it’s not completely broken – not yet.
I’m worried too, but I get the feeling that I’m too far in to care – getting your heart stomped on by Masen would be soul destroying, but at the same time, so, so worth it if it meant getting to be close to him for even a moment longer.
“Me too, but you know what the saddest thing is? I’m not sure I care. I went into this thing with my eyes wide open.”
“That doesn’t mean that you could see everything that was coming.”
My protest dies on my lips. She’s right, I couldn’t see it coming, but I’m here now and I can’t change that.
“Just be careful, Billie, I love you and I don’t want to see him break you.”
I reach out and squeeze her hand.
She’s right to be concerned, this is nothing but a mess that’s bound to end in heartbreak, but she doesn’t see what I see when I look at him – she only sees the broken pieces of him, but I see the way they’re begging to be put back together.
Now I just have to figure out if I’m strong enough to try and be his glue.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Masen
I strum the guitar that I bought for her in my hands. I didn’t even tell her that it was hers.
I didn’t tell her anything that wasn’t total bullshit.
I lift the instrument, my fingers twitching to throw it across the room, but I don’t – not this. Any other object in this room would be sailing through the air by now, crashing against the wall and smashing into a million pieces, but I can’t bring myself to destroy another piece of her.
“What’s up, asshole?”
I startle, spinning in my chair to look at Josh. Can’t believe I didn’t hear the big bastard coming.
“Who would have fucking believed that you could be quiet when you wanted to.”
He drops onto the couch, his arms splaying wide, his eyes not giving me a moment’s reprieve from the glare he’s sporting.
I pick at the strings, waiting him out.
I only get halfway through the second verse when he pipes up.
“I was just with Avery.”
I nod, not looking up. That means he’s seen Billie.
I hear him blow out a breath. “Look, man…”
My hands still and my eyes slowly rise. I might not like what he’s about to say, but I owe him the respect of looking in his eyes while he says it.
“You know I think of you like a brother… but that girl? She’s something special, and the way you’re treating her? It’s not okay.” He pauses for a beat. “She’s hurting, bro, and you clearly are too.”
Fuck.
A pained expression crosses my face. I never wanted to hurt her, that’s the whole point of this fucking arrangement – so she doesn’t get hurt.
He continues, either oblivious to the weight settling on my chest as I start to get crushed, bit by bit, or just not giving a fuck. “As much as I can see she loves you, you need to let her go – she’s too good for this version of you.”
“She doesn’t love me,” I growl.
She can’t. She might feel something for me, but not love – it can’t be love.
“She’s not here selling fucking girl scout cookies,” he snaps, exasperated.
I level him with a stare. “She does not love me,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Fuck’s sake, Masen, she loves you so much it’s hard to watch.” He runs his hand through his blond hair. “I’m not going to argue with you about it, but if you can’t love her back, then you need to let her go – money, reputation, career be damned, she deserves to have someone love her.”
“Someone like you?” I sneer, my jealously finally rearing its ugly head.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that.”
“Why?” I demand, pushing myself from asshole into complete-and-utter-prick territory. “You were into her the moment you laid eyes on her.”
He laughs humourlessly, his jaw ticking. “You know what’s funny? You think you see so much – everything – but you can’t even see that you’re crazy about her. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so god damn tragic.”
I don’t have a reply for that, instead I reach into my pocket, pull out a cigarette and light it up, right here in my studio.
He gets to his feet, his disappointment evident. “I’m out.”
“What would you know about love anyway?” I ask his back.
“I know more about it than you’d think.”
I huff out a breath. He doesn’t know shit about love. Sure, he has parents, a family that love him and he loves back �
�� but the love he’s talking about – falling in love… He doesn’t know fuck all about that.
“You take some chick out on a few dates and suddenly you’re in love?” I push.
“She’s not just some chick. I’m going to marry that girl, mark my words. I’m a changed man.” He turns, a serene smile on his face that guts me more than his disappointment in me.
He believes everything he’s saying, and for a split second, I wish I could feel the same way.
“I don’t know what goes on in that head of yours, Masen, but you’re your own worst enemy.” He sighs.
I nod in agreement as he leaves, and the moment he’s gone, I grab my guitar and snap it over my thigh, the wood splintering and cracking – a pretty fucking accurate representation of my cold, black heart right now.
Fuck.
***
My hand hovers over the bottle of scotch, my head warring with me.
I know I shouldn’t do it, fuck – I know it, but she was my fix, and I fucked it all up.
Nothing new there.
That’s why I need the drink – not because she’s my fix, but because she’s gone, and I have no idea if she’s ever coming back.
That’s on my shoulders. I did that.
I made her come here in one breath and then in another I forced her to leave.
I uncap the bottle and lift it slowly to my nose so I can breathe in the all-too-familiar scent.
My mouth waters as the sweet scent fills my nose.
“I’ll drink you down, you’d burn so good.”
A line from my new song floats through my mind and I slam the bottle down.
I can’t do it. No matter how badly I might want to.
My hands shake as I carry it to the sink and empty it – the one and only remaining bottle of alcohol in this entire house, a ten-thousand-dollar bottle of scotch – literally down the drain.
I can’t get out of my ensuite bathroom and back into my bedroom fast enough.
“Jesus Christ.” I drop my face into my hands – shaken by how damn close I just came to screwing it all up all over again.
“Good choice.” Her soft voice comes from behind me and I spin around – caught off guard for the second time today. She’s watching my every move.
Mr. October: A Rock Star Romance (Calendar Boys Book 10) Page 12