She looked like she belonged there.
SEVENTEEN
Everything that could go wrong at the technical rehearsal went wrong. Evie had only meant to stop by for some extra social content but as her brothers struggled to get it together and Errol’s frustration hit boiling point, she hung around for moral support.
At least she felt better. The headache that she’d tried to cure with a donut wasn’t fooled by sugar and made her miserable last night. Jay had tempted her with plain food she could stomach and put her to bed. Talk about bad timing. No one got any kisses that weren’t parental in nature and Jay was gone before she woke.
From backstage, she could hear World’s End having the same kinds of problems Lost Property had. It was all to do with a fault in the stage monitor system that allowed the band to hear themselves play.
She sat by the refreshment table and worked. She didn’t need to be here, but she was desperate for a chance to see Jay.
You’re pathetic when you’re in love.
There was no denying that’s what this was, all over again. After kisses came confession and then she’d see what the deep squishy inside of pathetic really looked like if Jay balked. From the way he looked at her, looked out for her, and everything he’d already said, that felt like the remotest possibility.
Cocky much.
She was happy too, not that she’d been screamingly unhappy, but she’d been restless, always moving, not thinking about anything outside work too hard and deliberately avoiding relationships that might ask anything of her. Probably wasn’t a good way to live long-term.
Since the Grumpy Fiddler, all she’d wanted was to know Jay was close by. That alone had been a weighted blanket over her restlessness and she had no other explanation for why she’d just scribbled lyrics on the lid of a coffee cup.
She was sliding the lid into her messenger bag when Jay appeared. He almost walked straight past her, following the other members of the band. He looked like he could do with a weighted blanket.
He caught sight of her and backtracked. Going to the fridge and taking out a coke.
“Hi,” she said, watching him throttle the bottle while screwing the cap off.
“Fucking foldback,” he said and pitched the cap against the wall, yanking his in-ear monitor out by the cord. “We shouldn’t be having that problem.”
“Fixable. Not the end of the world,” she said.
“You know how the band got its name?”
Jay’s expression was grim, his voice had a snap to it. She felt her smile become crooked, sliding towards her pierced ear. He’d said he might get tense. His expression said thunderstorm.
“It’s a comment on the state of, you know, the world,” she said.
“No,” he barked. “It’s how I felt when I lost you, that the world had ended.”
“Oh.” That shock came with a stab of pain in her chest that made her press her hand there.
Jay put the bottle down on the table with such force, the Coke fizzed. “So maybe don’t joke about my band’s fucking name.”
He’d named his band after the way he’d felt when they broke up. It took her breath away. If she kissed him now, would that help or make things worse?
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry. I—just—we shouldn’t be having these kinds of issues today. It’s not on you.”
“It’ll work out, Jay.” They would work out. They had to. That was a truth carved on her soul.
His jaw was tight, his shoulders up, his eyebrows threatening to crash over the bridge of his nose. “I don’t need you to blow hot air at me.”
He needed a release and she could reset things for him. “Come with me.”
“I don’t have time to—”
She took his hand, unfurled the fist he’d made and threaded their fingers together. “Do you trust me?”
He groaned but allowed her to tow him through the back-of-house area to one of the equipment storerooms. It had a door she could lock.
“What are doing, Evie?” he said at the sound of the click-clack.
“Take your pants off. I’m going to blow hot air on you.”
He rubbed his face. “Jesus, Evie, no.”
She stood with her back to the door. Jay bumped into a ladder. “You need something,” she said.
“I need my fucking crew to do their jobs,” he said, reaching for her.
She stepped in close and brushed her hand over his brow. “They will. Now let me do mine.”
This wasn’t a time to be soft and she didn’t want to kiss him for the first time when he was like this. He didn’t stop her opening his pants, but he said, “Not your mouth.” Hand job it was then.
“You want this?” She needed to check. She might want to undo him more than he wanted the release.
His forehead touched down on hers when she wrapped her fingers around him and felt him harden. “This is—oh fuck, yes, Evie.”
He had one hand on her hip and the other tangled in her hair. His responses at her touch was power, and all the fame she needed.
“I want your lips on mine,” he said.
“Tell me how badly.”
His hand tightened in her hair. “Fifty-thousand screaming fans screaming my name, badly.”
Jay’s voice had dropped into the crackle zone, his hips shifted, his eyelids lowered over pupils gone wide, eating the color of his eyes. Evie barely moved her hand. She was going to need to use her mouth, or Jay’s pre-cum, or stop and fish out her hand cream to get a glide going. Before she could do any of that there was knock at the door.
They both stilled.
The knock came again. “Anyone in there?” The handle turned but the door stayed closed. “Aw, hello. What’s going on in there?”
Evie stifled her laugh in Jay’s chest, a heartbeat later he started laughing quietly too, his body shaking.
“Quit fucking around, Dan. I need my phone. It’s on the counter.”
She shook her head when Jay pulled away and reached for the phone. They were going to lose this moment.
“Look, I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t urgent, but this is Jay freaking Endicott’s tour and I’m supposed to have my phone on me at all times and we fucked up the sound check and I don’t want to get sacked.”
The guy was going to get a shock when Jay freaking Endicott handed him his phone, but Jay probably didn’t need half the tour knowing he was fucking around in an equipment room during technical rehearsals gone bad. Evie took the phone from him and unlocked the door, opening it just enough to pass the handset out.
A hand grazed hers, took the phone and the man said, “Shit, sorry, Dan. Rock on.”
She leaned on the door to close it. Jay had zipped himself up but he was smiling, sitting on a workbench. “Jay Freaking Endicott. That could’ve been worse,” he said. “At least we made Dan a legend.”
“It could’ve been better.” She settled herself between his knees, looping her arms over his shoulders.
“The instant you took my hand I felt better.” He brushed the back of his knuckles over her cheek. “You and me. We’re not done when this leg of the tour is.”
“I don’t know how we’re going to be together again, but we need to work it out.”
“We’ll work it out together.”
He looked so pleased with himself. “You’re just angling for a kiss.”
He slapped both palms down on her arse and jerked her body up against his. “I’d better get one soon.”
Well not now, when he just about breathed expectation. Tonight, when he got back, she’d lavish him with kisses, so sweet and hot and full of longing and love he’d float through the next day’s rehearsals.
It was a good plan that went sideways. Jay stumbled into bed around 3 a.m., whispering apologies for waking her. He was asleep, his arm gone heavy over her hip in seconds and he was gone before she woke for the second morning. At this rate, he wasn’t going to get kissed before he went on stage. She lay in his big hotel bed, staring at the ceiling
and considered the merits of crashing the official pre-tour dinner he had that night, stealing him away early.
She went to see Teela instead. Unpacking their Vietnamese food, she said, “I wrote a song,” just blurted it out as she opened the lid on the curry puffs.
“How long has it been since you wrote a song?” Teela said, the container of fish cakes in her hand.
“A whole generation ago. Evie 1.0.”
“How did it feel?”
Like an out-of-body experience. “Amazing. Came from a part of me I didn’t know was still there.”
Teela nibbled a fish cake. “What does it mean that you’re writing again?”
Evie bit the corner of a curry puff and felt the rush of steam on her lips. “Not a lot. It’s a long way from lyrics scribbled on the back of an envelope to recording something people want to listen to.”
“I didn’t realize you knew what an envelope was.”
“I know what an envelope is. I’ve used a stamp.” She bit into the puff. “Once maybe.”
“But you’re in the biz. You could make it happen.”
“It’d still be a long shot.” More of a long shot than getting back with Jay.
They both turned towards the sound of Teela’s apartment door opening as a shaggy old dog trotted in, followed by Haydn Delany looking like a GQ magazine spread on how to succeed at not trying to look hot, rich and Hollywood bankable, but doing it anyway.
“Hey,” he said, making his way to Teela, pulling her into gently into his arms and kissing her lips in a display that was every Valentine’s Day card in the world rolled into one sweet, possessive lip smack. It made Evie’s heart double tap. She wanted kisses like that and if she didn’t fuck things up, she could have them.
She gestured with a satay stick. “Does he just let himself in to your place now?”
Teela pulled out of the kiss. “He does.”
Evie nearly stabbed herself in the eye with the stick. “He moved in with you?” How did she miss that critical news update?
“Only while his place—”
“Our place,” Hayden said.
“Is being renovated,” Teela finished.
“I’m interrupting,” Haydn said, eyeing the food. “How are you, Evie?”
“I’m killing it,” she said. They had a place. “Not interrupting.” She’d bought plenty. She wanted to hear about the moving-in decision.
“Yes,” Teela said, handing Haydn a satay stick. “You’re interrupting.”
“I’m not at all confused,” Haydn said. He took a bite of the chicken and hummed his approval in a rich, hot, bankable way.
Evie let the dog, another of Haydn’s rescues, this one called Jimmy, sniff her boots while Teela got plates out, forks and serving spoons, and said to Haydn, “If you were Evie and you could be a famous singer, would you go for it?”
“Songwriter, not singer,” Evie corrected.
“Singer songwriter,” Teela said. “You should hear her voice.”
“Ah,” Evie said, ready to stick a skewer in that idea again.
“I didn’t ask you,” Teela said, handing her a helping of their favorite spicy beef, Crying Tiger, on a plate.
“I think Evie knows the answer to that,” Haydn said. He really was growing on her.
“No, she does not.” Teela said. “Her family are a lot and she’s got a huge talent and so far she’s chosen not to use it.”
“Teela.” Evie said. “That’s not fair.” Could I have one, just one person completely on my side.
“You don’t. Seriously. You had so many options but then you got your heart broken and gave making music up.”
Haydn spooned fragrant jasmine rice onto their plates. “Do you still have a broken heart?”
“It’s all good now.” Healed with barely a trace of the scar. She needed to walk around in the fresh-made skin of that for a while and see if it itched. And she need to go kiss a man till they both forgot they’d ever damaged each other.
She ate her Crying Tiger while Jimmy licked his balls and Haydn and Teela mind-melded or some crap, looking at each other as if they’d found a way to narrate stories without language and fall further in love with each blink.
It made her feel homesick and home was with Jay. “I have to go.” She wanted to be at the hotel when he got back.
“So soon,” Teela said. “We haven’t finished interrogating you.”
“Precisely.” She grabbed for her bag and helmet and looked at Haydn. “You move in with her when you could’ve lived anywhere in the world with anyone you chose.”
Haydn’s, “Precisely,” chased her out the door, made her whoop in happiness for her best friend and ride through city traffic without once getting irritated at red lights.
At the hotel, she had time for a sheet mask and a soak in the bath before she could expect Jay. He’d only messaged once earlier in the day to tell her their sound check problems had resolved.
She was answering emails when he walked in.
Her man was wearing a charcoal gray suit with a crisp white shirt open-collared shirt. It was so unexpected, she almost dropped her laptop. Jay was a jeans and tee man. Off stage and on. Seeing him in a suit was like looking at a whole new person. GQ, you got owned.
“You look—” she couldn’t finish that thought because it struck her how on edge he was. A place between exhausted and wired. “I feel underdressed,” she said, looking down at her robe.
He shrugged the coat off. “I missed you,” he said, tossing it over a chair. “It’s been a long day and I’m.” He looked around as if checking for a way out. “I’m all talked out. Not going to be good company.”
“What if I use my mouth for something else?” They could pick up where they’d been interrupted. “You won’t have to say a word.”
He slipped off his shoes and started working on the buttons of his shirt. “I’ve got a better idea.”
With his shirt unbuttoned and freed from his pants, he scooped her up from the couch and carried her into the bedroom, tumbling them onto the bed and crawling over her. He pushed her robe from her shoulders, pushed her shoulders to the bed and then told her all about his stressful day and how wound up he was by kissing across her chest from nipple to nipple, and then down her center and into the secret places of her body that were made for pleasure.
He licked that pleasure out of her, rubbed and sucked and nipped and wasn’t satisfied until he’d made her sing a virtual aria. When she was drifting between the song lines, he fell asleep half-dressed and that was pleasure too, to have him snoring lightly beside her, the distress creasing his face smoothed away. She’d have kissed his lips then for the secret joy of it if she could’ve been sure it wouldn’t wake him, but his day was going to be hectic and started early with breakfast radio, and since she intended to wake beside him for forever, she was satisfied to fall asleep on that promise.
EIGHTEEN
Jay hadn’t seen Evie since early that morning, when she was a tousled head bundled under the quilt snoring lightly in his bed. He almost woke her. Almost put his nose to her wayward tresses and rolled her over to claim sleepy warm kisses.
It was way past time to be able to love her completely. But he’d had forty-five minutes to be in front of a breakfast radio mic and was already feeling the burn of anxiety with a day to go.
Between final sound checks and interviews and a fan meet and greet, the day leaked away. His usual pre-show tension was worse than usual, not better like he’d hoped because he had Evie to wake up next to. He was tense because he always got tense before a show and because this was the first show of a global tour, and it was home and the audience would be critical, so it mattered that the show was flawless. And he was tense because this was Evie’s first World’s End concert and he wanted things to be great for her.
Better than great.
She stood at the side of the stage, protective headphones on, watching her brothers killing their last rehearsal. She was so rapt, he was able to stand alongside her
and feel the energy coursing through her for a few minutes before she noticed him. And when she did, smiling so broadly, excitement lighting her eyes, making her seem to glow, every anxious thought he had fled from his brain cavity.
He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Evie. He’d known that in his blood and guts and the sugar of his soul the very first time they kissed. She was it for him. The one. The only. The owner of his dreams and intentions. No success he had mattered more than being with Evie. He’d gotten lucky enough to have a second chance to make that stick and he wasn’t going to blow it.
He put his fingertips to her hip, ready to slide her into his arms and ask permission to finally take her mouth when Oscar lurched into view, shouting, his guitar in two pieces, his feet tangled in sound cable. Oh shit.
Evie turned towards Oscar as techs and roadies descended. Jay’s fingers slipping from her body as she stepped away, taking his chance to land a kiss with her. Jesus, his timing was off. But over the final fractured chords of Lost Property’s last number, she faced back around, looked up at him and mouthed the words I love you.
He exhaled from the bottom of his lungs, feeling a rush of calm that slapped him hard enough to make him sway on his feet. Her lips around those words were the best kiss he could have gotten.
He might’ve levitated all the way to his position on stage for World’s End’s last sound check. And for all of five minutes forgot how gut-sick he was with nerves. Then he blanked on his stage patter and fucked up the opening bars of their first number, and fear and bile and tension flooded his system again. It took everything he had to lock it all down and focus, to get through the set, and when it was his turn to stumble off stage, he felt like he was broken in two and tripping on his own feet.
He was hot, sticky and edgy. He needed food, water, a massage and sleep. He needed to touch Evie, hear her voice. He had five thousand other things to do before any of that could happen and ten people jabbering at him.
“I need to borrow Jay.”
He heard Evie, but he couldn’t see her until the cluster of band members, management, and techs around him parted to let her through. She held her hand out. No one stopped him taking it or going with her to his dressing room. Amazing, the show didn’t fall down when he didn’t answer everyone’s questions in an instant. No one stopped her closing the door, locking the world out. Making a new one that was simply theirs.
One Kiss from the King of Rock (The One Book 2) Page 14