One Kiss from the King of Rock (The One Book 2)

by Ainslie Paton

  Jay closed his eyes, brows jamming down tight. “Hurts to hear that.”

  “It all hurts. It’s inside me like a fever.” Making her alternatively cold and hot, angry and teary.

  “You have an insanely good voice and you loved to sing. It made sense to me that you’d want to use it. I thought you’d be huge. I thought I’d get to be with you while you went on that journey.”

  “I never wanted to be out front. The more Errol pushed, the less I wanted it and then when you left, I didn’t want anything to do with performing. I could have written but I shut down on it all.”

  He slipped across the seat till their thighs aligned. “Ah, Evie, I’m so fucking sorry.”

  “You broke up with me for nothing. I let you go for nothing.”

  He brushed her hair back from her face. “We were young.”

  “And dumb. And gaslit by my own dad.” She looked out towards the highway where the traffic roared passed. People making journeys to places known, with routes, schedules and arrival times, no matter how roughly planned out. She’d had a plan too and she liked where it had taken her, but it’d begun as a detour and she couldn’t help feel fresh outrage about that.

  “Errol has never forgiven me for not trying and now you resent me for that too.”

  “I don’t.” Jay leaned into her. She leaned back so they were holding each other up and he went on. “I tried,” he said. “I was bitter for a long time. I thought there should be some good come from giving you up, having you give me up, but that’s not how it works when you love someone.” He rubbed his thumb over the knuckles of her hand. “I never stopped loving you, even when I hated you.”

  Jay was a better person with a softer heart. “I basically hated you. For leaving me, for being so successful.” For hardening my heart to making my own music. It had never been fair to blame him for her decisions, but resentment was the oil she’d used to recreate herself, hating Jay the fire.

  “Do you still hate me?” he asked.

  It wasn’t going to be easy to do without those sources of power and the hurt was burned so deep it might always be part of her. But the night they’d spent together and the urge to wipe the concern from Jay’s face were clear indications that she was over hating him. That fire was smothered out. “I’m finding it harder to keep up with the ritual of despising you.”

  He brushed a finger over her cheekbone. “Isn’t that something? Do you sing at all?”

  “To goof off.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  Not a question she had a good answer to. She’d stuffed it so far down, remade herself without it maybe it was buried forever. “I’m too busy to think about it. And I do love my business.”

  “Have you written anything?”

  She grunted her dissent and rolled her eyes. “I don’t know if you realize how hard it is to write a song. They seem to come easily to you.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been lucky.”

  “No, Jay, you were always the most talented lyricist of all of us. You got a late start and had a lot more obstacles.”

  He looked at her in shock. “Abel is a better musician. Isaac is a better showman.”

  “Abel needs to work on his stage presence, Isaac is tired of it all and Oscar is one foul mood off an assault charge. You outgrew all of them.” He was so lacking in ego, she could shake him. “You really don’t see that?”

  “I see that I worked hard. Took chances. I see luck. Could’ve easily gone the other way. I was a dreamer. Had my head in the clouds way more than I had a handle on how I was supposed to get what I wanted. If that wasn’t the truth, I’d never have left you.”

  “You changed.”

  “I grew up. That’s not an achievement.”

  “You deserve your success.”

  He was going to deflect but stopped himself. “Thank you. I never wanted to hurt anyone. In my craziest dreams I never thought I’d hurt you, Evie.”

  Young and dumb but not malicious. “You didn’t have to come back. You didn’t have to do this for us. It’s a big deal.” It would give Lost Property the boost they needed. It would save the band from dissolving bit by bit.

  “There’s something we can continue to disagree about. If I could go back, I’d have stood up to Errol, stood up for us, never let you go.”

  “I’d have believed in you, fought for you with everything I had and never stopped.” Not let anger and disappointment flavor all of her decisions since.

  “We could hash this over forever and never answer all the questions.” Jay her hand. “Are we good?”

  She was shaky, lost and found and still angry, but not with Jay. “I don’t really have to work tonight. If your offer stands, I’d like to spend the rest of the day, the rest of the weekend with you?”

  “I can’t even fake being cool about that. Do I get your lips?”

  He smiled and she fell straight into the relief of it. “I want to kiss you. I do, but this is a lot to take in, and you’re a little ahead of me in working it all out.”

  “I get it. If we never kiss on the mouth again, Evie, I’ll regret it, but I understand. There’s a lot of smoke to settle and also,” he rubbed a finger over his front teeth, “they’re a little furry.”

  “We’re going to get sunburned if we stay out here any longer. We should go.”

  “One last thing.” He brought their still joined hands to his chest. “I’m proud of you.”

  “You don’t have to say that.” She understood why he was disappointed now. He’d lived the same lie as Errol, imagining her as someone else entirely.

  “You’re totally kicking arse with Tice Social and you knew how powerful a gig at the Grumpy Fiddler would be. Not all manipulation is a bad thing. Sometimes it saves the day.”

  Not all. Her whole business was about manipulating images, reputations and egos, but the kind of manipulation that distorted the truth and took someone’s decisions from them had unseen consequences. There was a black sludge inside her that stood in the way of forgiving Errol for building a castle of lies, and Jay for not seeing it for what it was.

  And herself for being a prisoner of it.

  A text message freed up her evening. There were no handsy shenanigans on the way into the city and a pit stop at her unit fueled her up with a change of clothing. They snuck into Jay’s hotel via the staff entrance, causing some excitement in the kitchen that Jay solved with some selfies.

  In his stunning hotel room, they were gawky again, all elbows and knees and getting in each other’s road. Possibly because the bed was so huge and so enticing. Jay talked too much and then fell silent in front of the TV. Evie spent too much time looking at the view over the harbor, beautiful though it was, thinking about the grim need to confront Errol.

  There were whys she and Jay never would get a satisfactory answer to, hurts that might never entirely scab over. But here they were, both of them working on what they loved, loving each other in old ways and new ways and ways they hadn’t tested yet.

  There were worse comebacks.

  FOURTEEN

  You’d think clearing the air between them would’ve have made it sunshine and popping rocks. Not so much. Back in his room, Evie was tense and silent and Jay didn’t know how to deal with that. He was having enough trouble getting his own head straight.

  Her tears, the way her whole body had shuddered with them, had wrecked him. Evie was more likely to punch something than cry. It was like a smack to the head to see her breakdown, left his sensing spinning. And it had been a tongue-biting exercise not to crap all over Errol for their troubles.

  Jay had spent a decade feeling like Evie had dumped him for no good reason and now that they’d hashed it out, he could see how much of the responsibility for what happened was his alone.

  He hadn’t been listening carefully enough to the things she wasn’t saying. How could he not have known Errol was pressuring her? And he’d never have guessed that it would end up in her astounding voice being silenced.

 
He was listening now. The way she wandered around the suite told him she might rather be anywhere else, though they were here at her suggestion. Her restlessness made him feel edgy. He tried to watch TV and spent more time flicking between channels than he did taking in anything on the screen.

  “Are you hungry? We could get some snacks in,” he called after her.

  She flitted back into view. “I’m not hungry but you go ahead.”

  What did it say about him that he was disappointed she didn’t come back with some crack about him being a bottomless food pit? This is about her, not you, dickhead.

  There was a big fruit bowl in the room and a bar full of snacks that cost five times what he could spend at the corner shop if leaving the hotel to make a trip to the corner shop wasn’t a recipe for a road closure and a police presence. He wasn’t hungry either, stomach felt too unsettled. Five McMuffins and a crap load of delayed realization worth of unsettled.

  “Evie.” The rest of the sentence was going to be another excuse to start a conversation she clearly didn’t want so he shut it. The carpet in here was so thick, he couldn’t hear her moving around in the other room and she didn’t answer. Changing the channel several more times didn’t make her materialize either.

  Maybe they needed to work through this with sex.

  Said no one ever who genuinely thought that was a thing.

  It felt like a thing. The only thing that had worked for them. Had they grown so far apart as people that all they had left was animal attraction? That was a depressing thought. Straight-up physical need was great and all, but it was also like snack food, readily available and not necessarily the best thing for you.

  Evie is not a vegetable, man. Though it felt like she was, delicious, life sustaining, good for him.

  And messing with his guitars.

  “Hey,” he said, moving towards the sound, leaning on the doorjamb to find she held Suzi Q, his old acoustic by the neck.

  “You still have this?” Her smile was worth all the snack food, vegetable nonsense in his head. It was the whole supermarket, the whole glorious garden.

  “I learned to play ‘Wild Thing’ on that. I still compose on it. Of course I still have Suzie Q.” Did she remember what she’d done to it?

  She turned it over, using both hands, and smiled. “You left it there.”

  He could’ve had it polished out. Could’ve dumped this battered hunk of plywood that he’d bought second-hand for fifty bucks for something solid that had a better tone.

  And she could’ve had any other three chords tattooed on her fingers.

  Something new wouldn’t have had Evie’s graffiti on it. She’d carved a heart on the waist with Evie loves Jay Everyday written inside it, right where he’d see it when he played.

  “You were so mad with me,” she said. “I’d defaced your baby.”

  They’d had a memorable fight about it with Jay accusing Evie of being cavalier with other people’s belongings and Evie shouting at him for being precious and not having a romantic note in his range.

  “You had no respect,” he said.

  “If I remember right, you sexed respect into me. First time I’d ever had make-up sex.”

  It wasn’t easy keeping a grin off his face. “That only made you want to pick more fights with me.”

  “You never fell for that.”

  He’d fall for it now. Over and over and over.

  She put the guitar back on its stand, and when she turned to face him her expression had lost its glow. “I can’t believe you kept it.”

  “Closet thing I had to keeping you.”

  She frowned at him. Her distress harder to take than her angry tears, because it wasn’t a spontaneous expression of revelation and rage, it was what came after that shock. He knew it, because he felt it too. Worn and on edge and confused.

  “What are we doing, Jay?”

  Apocalyptic danger alert. “Hanging out.” That sounded disingenuous, so he added, “We can do friends and lovers, or just lovers,” and then he kept burbling, like he’d done about Grip’s fricking pants, “but eventually I will get hungry and we will need to eat and—”

  “You’ll go on the rest of the tour and we’ll go on with our separate lives.”

  Not a question. She said it like it was an instruction. Take two eggs and obliterate what they once were. It was a declaration of what she wanted. They’d be separate but not severed apart. It was a decent outcome. He should be happy with that.

  Fuuuck, decent.

  “I might actually watch your next Grammys performance.”

  She was faking feeling better. He could help with that. Fake it before you make it might well have been his brand. “You didn’t watch the others?” He smacked a hand over his chest. “I think a part of me just shriveled and died.”

  “Hope not my favorite part.”

  There was half a room and a bunch of designer furniture between them. It was better than oceans, but they were still in deep water. “Which is your favorite part?”

  Accompanied by a disgusted grunt she said, “Why would you ask that?”

  “I’m a sucker for your sarcasm.” Hurt me good, Evie.

  She advanced on him, taking the long way around a dining table. “You know my favorite part of you.”

  He stayed where he was, a fixed object for her orbit.

  “There are a few candidates,” she said.

  Why was it only now that he understood he needed to do that for her? Stop moving, let her find her way to back to him. Wait for as long as that took.

  Still half a room away, she looked straight at his cock, nothing fake about the intention. It made him quit thinking about what might’ve been and focus on what might happen right here and now.

  “You have many, many fine parts,” she said, trailing her hand over the back of a sofa as she came towards him.

  Commence electric sting at strategic nerve endings. He watched her like she was an eclipse, half afraid to see what she did next, fearful of being blinded by her. He nearly gave off sparks when she stepped in front of him, put her hand to his hip and slipped it around to his arse, slapping it.

  “I seriously like what you’ve got tucked away in your pants. It’s all round and pert.” She brought her body to his, pressed herself against his highly engaged dick. “Then there’s this. It’s all soft and sweet until I need it and then it’s all veiny and the exactly the right amount of smooth and stiff.”

  It was now. Not that she’d needed it to do everything it could so far. Could he make her spark too? His bare toes met hers as he eased her closer. His hands were busy, traveling over her body, tracing butterflies where he knew they flew on her skin, shaping love hearts he wished were indelible.

  “Then there’s this.” She slapped a hand over his heart. “It’s a good one. Hardy. Shows potential.”

  She still had a hand on his arse, holding their bodies in alignment. “You seem to be having trouble choosing,” he said.

  “So much to choose from.” She walked fingers up his pec and neck and then rubbed her knuckle across his bottom lip. It was embarrassing how badly he wanted the kiss she was surely teasing. He stopped breathing, held super still. It was life and death.

  And then she took her finger away and stepped back. “Now I’m hungry,” she said, moving past him into the other room.

  What else could he do but try to keep his balance around her? He put his teeth into his lip to recapture the feeling of her touch. She was clearly trying to strangle him with sexual tension. It might work.

  “Jay,” she called from the bedroom.

  “You’re evil.” And smart to throttle their awkwardness with fever.

  “Come in here and tell me that.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Scared.”

  She laughed in a mission accomplished kind of way. “Of me?”

  “Fuck yeah.”

  The next laugh was classic horror movie chilling. She probably rubbed her hands togeth
er as she laid new traps for him to walk willingly into. “I’ve finished being weird and silent. I’m sorry you had to see me crying before. I hated that. I’m a little excited that you kept Suzy Q. My hunger will wait. I have taken my clothes off and I am dedicating myself to kissing all of my favorite parts of you.”

  Hope was a very hard dick. “My mouth.”

  “Don’t push your luck.”

  “Evie, you never have to feel bad for showing me how you feel.” If only he’d understood that better before now. “Are you really naked?”

  “You doubt me?”

  “I’m deeply into self-preservation.”

  “Have you ever had a vibe ring used on you?”

  He groaned. “You’re trying to fuck me up, aren’t you?”

  “It would be no fun it I didn’t at least try.”

  He walked into the other room, half expecting her to be holding the TV remote in one hand and the room service menu in the other, fully dressed and totally fucking with him. She was kneeling on the bed, utterly naked except for the pink ring, which she switched on.

  Jay loves Evie Everyday. Even when she was distrustful and resentful and weird and silent and jerking him around and disrespecting his property and making him want to beg for her mouth and her vagina.

  “How are you still dressed?” she said.

  Fair question. He took his shirt off and something shook loose in his head when her eyes lit up. Maybe they could do this. Be okay together again. “We’re not just sex?” It was a center but it wasn’t the whole.

  “Be careful how you use that word just.”

  Also fair, given the mood. He undid his belt. “Sex was a big deal for us but it wasn’t all we were.”

  She lifted her hands to her breasts squeezed them together, then played with the nipple cuff. “I can treat you to a history of the things we did that weren’t about sex or you can lose the pants and get with the program.”

  He didn’t need a lesson.

  He cherished their history. It was shared books and movies and Evie beating him at video games. He knew how to tell if a piano was out of tune and choose ace clothes because she taught him. She knew how to make Singapore noodles because he’d shown her. They’d daydreamed out loud and been comfortable in silence. He’d once known which tampons to buy for her. She’d once known which razors he liked best. He’d rubbed her back when it ached, she’d made him hot soothing drinks for a throat sung raw. She was the first person he’d turned to in confusion, in fear, in fun. He was her respite from family infighting. He’d once known what made her sad, what excited her and he craved to know those things again.