Chaos

by Jamie Shaw

  It’s like embracing the very ground that’s going to shatter you to pieces.

  A moan escapes from a locked-away place inside me when his hips press me into the bus and his fingers clasp with mine, lifting my hands higher and higher until my breasts are pressing against his chest and every chemical in my brain is rushing like white-water rapids. My hands are trapped against chilled metal, his to control, and my knees are barely holding me up.

  “Shawn,” I pant when I finally summon the strength to turn my head away from the kiss that’s making it impossible for me to breathe or move or think.

  His name on my breath sounds like a protest, it sounds like a plea for more.

  “I’m not finished,” he promises in my ear, his nose brushing my hair away so he can nip at the exposed lobe. When I squirm, he lowers those lips to my neck and closes them over a spot that floods a pool of heat in my belly. All I can do is tighten my knees, let him kiss me, and try not to moan his name. His tongue does things that send tingles racing from my head to my toes, and those lips trail lower, lower, peppering kisses against my skin until he’s exploiting the curve of my neck and I’m burning from the inside out.

  What we’re doing is wrong—the forbidden resurrection of a secret that’s been kept too many times. And it feels good, so fucking good—but I can smell the vodka on his lips.

  When I break away from him, it’s not pretty. It’s not clean. It’s messy, with my hands jerking out from under his and my body stumbling away from the cage of his arms. He looks at me with half-lidded eyes, and I’m sure I’m mirroring that look right back at him. I can feel it in the way my nipples are perking, the way my skin is blazing, the way I still can’t quite breathe evenly.

  “No,” I say, and Shawn steps forward before reconsidering and staying put.

  “Why?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  This is the night after our first performance all over again. I want him, but I can’t take another morning-after. I can’t take him regretting what he did, him choosing to forget it. I can’t be forgotten again.

  I walk away from him because it’s the only choice I have. If I stay . . .

  I can’t stay. Not with him looking at me like that. Not with every fiber of my body wanting to wrap itself around the softness of him, the hardness of him.

  “Kit,” he calls after me as I retreat toward the door to the venue. Every step I’m taking hurts, like I’m resisting the pull of something I belong to. The farther I get, the harder it is.

  I don’t turn around.

  “No, Shawn. I’m not doing this again.” What I’m not saying is that I can’t . . . I can’t. Every time we do this, I lose another piece of myself, and another.

  I hear his footsteps following me.

  “Kit,” his voice pleads before I swing the metal door wide open.

  “No. Talk to me when you’re sober.”

  I don’t look back. Shawn’s presence behind me tingles at the back of my neck, but the whole walk to the greenroom, I pretend he doesn’t exist.

  I’m not a toy. I’m not something he can just play with each time he gets bored and then forget about until he feels like it again.

  “Guys,” I say from the doorway, flinching when a heavy hand lands on my shoulder. I turn my head to glare at Shawn, sighing when I realize he’s simply leaning on me to steady himself, staring down at his feet like they’re about to jump out from under him. “Shawn is drunk as hell,” I finish. “Can someone help me get him to the bus?”

  A roadie walks over, clapping him on the shoulder so hard that Shawn is nearly knocked off his feet. The roadie laughs and dips his head under Shawn’s arm, holding him up while Adam attempts to crawl over the back of the couch, trips in the process, and proves he’s just as wasted as Shawn. Shawn starts giggling, and Adam lies on the floor laughing his ass off while I roll my eyes.

  Joel is the one with enough sense to stand and walk around the couch instead of scaling over it. He stares down at Adam with glassed-over blue eyes of his own. “Dude, you are so trashed.”

  When Adam holds up a hand for help, Joel is about to reach down and take it, but Mike jumps in instead to prevent both of them from ending up on their asses. “Alright, let’s go.”

  “Are we taking the party back to the bus?” Victoria suggests in that annoying daddy’s-girl voice of hers, and my mouth is quick to open before anyone else’s can.

  “Sorry, invitation only.” I shoot her an oversweet smile and wait for Mike to haul Adam off the ground.

  Victoria is in my personal bubble before I know it, turning her big hazel eyes on Shawn, who still has his hand on my shoulder. “Can I come, Shawn?”

  We’re both staring up at him, waiting for his response, when he starts chuckling again and challenges, “Were you invited?”

  I’m still too pissed off at him to appreciate the support, but I do grin at the way Victoria’s face twists from the rejection. I turn my back on her without another word, my heavy boots leading my hot mess of boys back to the bus. They’re loud, they’re obnoxious, and on the bus, I can hear them even through the walls of my running shower.

  Shawn’s kisses linger on my skin. His lips still tingle on my neck. His fingers are everywhere, and I brace my hands against the linoleum wall and let the water rush over the back of my head as I try to block them out.

  Kale warned me that joining the band was a bad idea, and I knew it would be hard . . . I just didn’t know it would be like this. I didn’t know I’d kiss him in Mayhem. I didn’t know he’d kiss me back.

  I lift my face into the water.

  This time, he kissed me. And just like that girl who would have followed him anywhere six years ago, I let him. I kissed him back. I knew I shouldn’t, but still, I couldn’t not kiss him back. He’s like an addiction that’s always coursing through my veins, waiting to flare at the slightest spark.

  It’s his lips. Those eyes. His scent. That touch.

  It’s the way he looks at me in the dark. The way he kisses me when my eyes are closed—the way he kisses me when my eyes are open.

  I don’t bother drying my hair. I tie it up in a knot on top of my head and emerge from the bathroom in an oversized band T-shirt that swallows up the silky pair of pajama shorts underneath. The guys are still trying to raise the dead in the kitchen, so I huff out a breath and make my way back there.

  “Seriously?” I say, my eyes scanning over the shot glasses and liquor bottles decorating the table they’re at.

  “I’m not drinking,” Shawn offers, but I ignore him and start rummaging through the cupboards.

  “What are you doing?” Joel asks from where he’s sitting on top of the table, a bottle of gin between his legs.

  “Making you something to eat.”

  “Oh!” Adam pushes Shawn’s head out of the way so he can see me better. “I want . . . cheesecake! Can you make cheesecake?”

  “Yeah, Adam, let me pull a cheesecake out of my ass for you.”

  As I root through a cabinet, there’s so much laughter from behind me, I can’t even tell who all it’s coming from. I wish I was one of them, drunk off my ass and laughing about shit that’s not even funny. Instead, I’m a model of sobriety to prevent myself from soaking Shawn’s sleeve with my tears and asking him why he can’t just want me when he’s sober.

  I pull every bready thing I can find out of the cabinet—crackers, cookies, pretzels—and trade them for the bottles on the table, stashing them away before threatening to murder anyone who dares wake me up. When I finally crawl under sheets that still carry the faint scent of Shawn’s cologne, I’m exhausted—from the long day, from the concert, from having to deal with Victoria Hess . . .

  From having to say no to Shawn Scarlett.

  SHAWN’S GREEN EYES are the last thing I think of before I fall asleep, and the first thing I see when I wake. The dark is just beginning to give way to light, a hazy glow begging entry through the closed blinds of the bus, while Shawn’s soft fingers brush my elbow. He’
s crouched next to my bed—his shirt, clean; his eyes, clear; and his breath, minty fresh when he orders, “Come with me.”

  Without waiting for me to argue, he disappears behind the heavy gray curtain leading to the kitchen, and I lie in bed until I’m sure I’m not dreaming. Joel is snoring, traffic outside is moving, and my heart is waking up without me, forcing my feet to free themselves from my covers and swing over the side of my bunk. The chill beneath the pads of my toes confirms that I’m awake as I slip silently between the bunks, careful not to wake anyone as I prepare myself for Shawn’s apology. He’ll say he’s sorry for kissing me, explain that he was drunk, and I’ll accept all the promises he’ll make that it will never happen again. It’ll be awkward, and we’ll agree to keep things professional, and that will be that. Simple and impossible.

  When I push back the curtain and slip inside the kitchen, he turns to face me, the glassy sheen from the night before gone from his eyes. “You said to talk to you when I was sober.”

  My heart sinks when he confirms that he remembers—the way he touched me, the way I let him. He was drunk enough to come on to me, but not drunk enough to forget it.

  I kissed him back. I wasn’t the one who was drunk, but I kissed him back.

  Shawn steps closer, my breath catching in my lungs when both of his hands tunnel into my hair—still damp from my shower last night. Without my boots, I’m tilting my chin high to stare up at him.

  “I’m sober,” he says.

  “What?”

  “You said to talk to you when I’m sober,” he explains.

  And then, he kisses me.

  My eyes are already closed by the time his lips press against mine, and that furious addiction in my veins boils until I’m kissing him back, until I’m breathing him in. I fist my hands in the slack of his T-shirt, and he spins us around and begins walking me backward.

  He’s sober. The way he looked at me, the way he’s touching me—strong, deliberate, steady.

  The kitchen counter gets in my way, and then Shawn’s hands are gripping my ass and lifting me onto it. The stubble on his jaw prickles my palms, my cheek, my neck, my chin—until every part of me, seen and unseen, is marked as his.

  I want him, but not just for a moment. I want him, but not just this once.

  I break my lips away and hold his shoulders at a distance when he tries to reclaim them. The smoldering look in his eyes is shaking my resolve when I warn, “You can’t regret this, Shawn.”

  Whether he’s sober or not, I can’t lose another piece of myself. I can’t just throw it away.

  He pulls me to the edge of the counter so that my thighs are snug around his hips and the firm press of him is hard between my legs. His eyes are full of promises when he says, “I won’t.”

  His lips crush mine again, and the squeeze of my knees draws him even closer. Shawn’s hands slide down to my ass, and when he rocks me against him, my moan mingles with his, a low, quiet, breathy sound that makes my insides coil tight.

  I’m ready to give him whatever he wants when his lips suddenly part from mine, brushing across my skin until they’re pressing hard against my temple. His words are at my ear and his shoulders are trembling under my hands when he says, “You can’t regret this either.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Mean it.” His voice is uneven, his hands unsteady—like it’s taking everything he has to keep them from taking me.

  “I promise,” I say, and he pulls away to see the truth in my eyes a moment before he kisses me.

  He kisses me like he plays the guitar—a mix of passion and technique that makes me feel like a sundae he’s determined to savor, like my tongue is the ripened cherry on top. And I kiss him back until I’m melting under his lips, his tongue, his touch. My skin ignites when his lips drop lower, and lower. They explore my neck and the exposed parts of my chest, finding my hot spots and exploiting them until I’m biting my lip between my teeth to keep from waking the entire bus. My tiny whimpers only encourage him as he pushes a hand under my shirt and palms the swell of my breast, greedy and massaging and . . . fuck, I’m throbbing between my legs, and the way he’s moving against me isn’t helping—not with my pajama shorts as silky as they are, and my panties getting as wet as they are.

  With his hips between my thighs and his hand under my shirt, my fingers detach themselves from the shoulders of his T-shirt in a rush, diving to the button of his jeans instead. I’m fumbling with the denim, desperate to feel him inside me, when Joel groans from his bunk behind the curtain, “Shaaawn, make me a coffee.”

  Shawn and I freeze—me with my hands ready to tear apart his jeans, and him with one hand on my breast and the other under my ass. He slowly straightens back up, my fingers not moving from his button and his eyes not straying from my mouth. We wait and wait and nothing. In the silence, he nips softly at my lips, and in the silence, I kiss him back.

  “Do you think he went back to sleep?” I ask in a whisper.

  “No.” Shawn’s searing lips catch mine again in a soft yet dominant caress, but then something heavy drops to the ground, and in a second, his hands are out of my shirt, mine are off his jeans, and he’s taking a hasty step back.

  Joel bursts through the curtain a second later, a hungover mess as he walks right past Shawn to get to the coffeemaker. He loads a filter into the machine, oblivious to the way my heart is pounding out of control, the way my lips are a bright kiss-swollen red, and the way Shawn is staring at me like he’s seriously contemplating finishing what he started regardless of who is or isn’t watching.

  “Why the hell didn’t anyone make coffee?” Joel complains, and I bite my bottom lip between my teeth.

  Shawn takes a little step toward me, and I subtly shake my head. He hesitates, then nods toward the curtain, silently asking me to leave the bus with him. For once, he’s asking, and for once, I can think.

  A satisfied smile touches my lips, and I shake my head again.

  I’ve always made things too easy for him. Too quick. Too forgettable.

  “Don’t make me any,” I tell Joel as I hop down from the counter, determined to make myself memorable. “I think I’m going to try to get some more sleep.”

  I smile at Shawn as I walk past, my fingers brushing his in a move that makes my heart pound even harder than it did while I was on the counter. His fingers curl with mine before letting them go, and that morning, I fall asleep not minding the scent stuck in the fibers of my pillowcase. I turn my face into it and smile, because those green eyes were sober this time and they were honest and they still wanted me. I smile because he said he wouldn’t regret it. I smile because I believe him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THERE ARE A few things most people don’t know about being on tour. One is how things change.

  The first week, the big shiny bus smells like excitement and fresh leather, but by the fourth week, it smells like exhaustion and boys’ gym shorts. The kitchen loses its shine, the road loses its magic, and the towns all start to look the same. Each night is the best night of your life, and each morning is déjà vu.

  The first week, saying good-bye to friends and family is easy. Hugs, kisses, waves from windows. But by the fourth week, saying good-bye—even over the phone—feels like cutting an invisible tether that’s tying you to home. Sometimes, it feels like you’ll never see home again . . . because how can you when home is so, so, so far away?

  Adam gets restless, taking late-night walks and filling notebook after notebook with lyrics for our next songs—anything to distract himself from how much he misses Rowan. Joel develops an unhealthy attachment to his phone, sleeping with it right next to his pillow and constantly whining about how much he misses Dee’s ass, her legs, her mouth—anything to disguise how much he really just wants to wrap her in his arms and never let her go again.

  Mike complains about missing his house, his entertainment center, his studio.

  But Shawn and I . . . Shawn and I don’t complain. Because how can we when each new
morning, each new city, brings quiet kisses behind the kitchen curtain?

  Sure, I miss Kale. I miss Leti. I miss the rest of my brothers and my mom and dad. I miss Rowan and Dee, and even my old-lady landlord. I miss my own bed and having more than just a few pairs of clothes to wear. I miss primetime TV and watching Sunday night football on my parents’ couch. But I don’t miss not being kissed by Shawn or not being touched by him. I don’t miss wondering what being wanted by him would feel like.

  For me, the tour becomes a different life, one of toe-curling kisses and secret smiles. Shawn and I keep whatever is going on between us a secret from everyone else, because I don’t think either of us knows what it actually is . . .

  It’s waking up early to giggle against his lips in the kitchen. It’s sneaking away from crowds to moan against his lips in the dark.

  This morning, I opened my eyes to find him smiling at me from across the aisle, and I hid the goofy grin that consumed my face deep in my pillow. When I peeked over at him again, he winked at me, and it took everything I had to not wake the rest of the boys up with a stupid girly giggle. Shawn pointed toward the kitchen, and I shook my head. He pointed again, and I gave him another troublemaker smile and shake of my head. He gave me a devilish smile and picked up his phone.

  Shower?

  As I read his text, I bit my lip between my teeth, forgetting that he could see me. When I looked his way, I was pretty sure he was going to pick me up and carry me there whether I wanted him to or not.

  More sleep. :P

  Then I’m crawling in bed with you.

  You wouldn’t.

  My head whipped in his direction when I heard him start to slip out of his covers, but I slid into the aisle before he could beat me to it. And in the kitchen, he swept me into his arms and punished me for my teasing—with scorching kisses that left me breathless and soft touches that drove me insane. He treated my body like a toy he was learning, and I was happy to let him play. He took his time teaching me my lesson—too long, because the bus started, the boys woke up, and Shawn and I nearly got caught with our hands buried under each other’s clothes. For what seemed like the hundredth time.