Exposed (VIP Book 4)

by Kristen Callihan

  The lump is back. “And if I don’t get better?”

  Fuck, that hurts. But there’s no guarantee that it won’t come back, especially since, if I keep playing bass the same way, I’ll be doing the same repetitive movements that got me here. Part of me is falling into an abyss; it’s fast and endless. If I weren’t sitting on the bench, I’d probably topple over.

  There are people with worse problems, worse pain. People fighting for their lives. In the scope of things, my issues are small. Doesn’t stop them from feeling big to me.

  “Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it,” Killian says firmly.

  “We deal with it together,” Whip adds.

  Blinking rapidly, I don’t say anything for a moment. “Shit.” A shuddering breath escapes me. “You guys are going to mess me up.”

  “There, there.” Jax reaches out and musses my hair. “They’re only feelings. You’ll get used to them.”

  “The fuck I will,” I mutter, moving out of his reach.

  “I’ve ordered pizza.” Scottie tucks his phone in his pants pocket and then removes his suit coat. “I assume you have beer.”

  “You assume correctly.”

  He nods and heads to the kitchen. “There’s a Supernatural marathon on. They’re starting from the pilot.”

  Killian groans loudly. “It’s like he’s a preteen.”

  Whip, on the other hand, is already jumping onto my couch and reaching for the remote. “Okay, the Star Trek thing is annoying but Supernatural, Kills? How can you hate on Dean and Sam?”

  Baffled, Killian looks to Jax and me as though seeking help.

  Maybe I’m the only one who remembers we offered to watch Supernatural with Scottie when he was falling apart over Sophie. It knocks me on my proverbial ass to realize he’s trying to return the favor. For a thick moment, I’m so damn grateful for my friends, I can’t speak.

  Holding up my hands, I affect a casual tone, like I’m not five seconds from bear-hugging all of them. “Hey, it’s Supernatural. Castiel is my boy.”

  I head for the couch as Killian gapes in outrage. Jax gives him a slap on the shoulder. “Guess that means you’re getting the door when the pizza arrives.” He jogs over and flops down next to me while Whip cues up the TV.

  Scottie comes in carrying a tray—a freaking tray—with a neat pile of napkins, plates, five pilsner glasses, and five bottles of beer. He sets it down and starts pouring the beer in glasses; I honestly didn’t know I had pilsner glasses.

  Killian snorts one last time. “Biggest rock band in the world and we’re sitting around drinking beers and watching paranormal melodrama.”

  “Yeah,” Whip says, accepting a beer. “Life’s pretty fucking grand, ain’t it?”

  In that moment, I feel as close to normal as I’ve been in months. There’s only one thing missing. And while we’re eating pizza and arguing whether Dean’s ’67 Impala is the best muscle car ever, I slip my hand into my pocket and curl my fingers around my phone. I don’t pull it out and text her.

  But I want to. I’m aching to. And that’s not good. She’s already dangerously close to becoming an addiction. Add all these tender, protective feelings she’s bringing to the surface, and I’m just asking to have my heart stomped on. I’m not going to become a shadow of my mother, always wanting someone who doesn’t want me in the same way. Not going to happen. I refuse to go down that road with Brenna.

  The fact that she’s considering leaving Kill John hit like a hammer to my chest, cracking it open in a way that’s far too exposed. If she leaves, nothing will be the same. And I have this ugly, twisting feeling that she will. That part of her wants to go.

  For my own good, I have to keep my distance. Somehow. Some way.

  Good luck with that, man. You’re already screwed, and you know it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Brenna

  “You’re visiting LA, aren’t you?” the woman in the seat next to me asks.

  If you fly enough, eventually you’ll be seated next to a talker who insists on engaging in conversation no matter how deep your nose is buried in an eBook.

  I set my e-reader down. The woman next to me appears to be in her early thirties and sports a tan that, short of using chemical sprays, I’ll never hope to achieve.

  “How’d you guess?” I ask.

  She shrugs, flipping a length of silky blond hair over her shoulder. “You’re all Sex and the City high fashion—love the boots, by the way.” She gives my knee-length floral print boots an appreciative glance. “Whereas if you were from LA, you’d be wearing couture loungewear and sneakers on the plane.”

  I can’t help but smile, given that she’s wearing pale pink couture loungewear and pristine Pumas. “I’ll have to go shopping for some good loungewear while I’m there.”

  “I have a boutique on Melrose.” She hands me a card that conveniently appears in her hand. “Stop by, and I’ll hook you up.”

  So, this is a sale. I tuck the card beneath the protective cover of my e-reader. “Thanks…” I move to read again, but she keeps talking.

  “You visiting someone? I’m Valerie, by the way.”

  “Brenna. I’m going for business.”

  Valerie sighs and takes a sip of a now-watery pink cocktail resting on her seat tray. “I went to New York to visit a guy. Thought he might be the one, you know? The sex was off-the-charts good.”

  I nod, not wanting to talk about sex but not knowing how to end this conversation without coming off as totally rude. It never fails to amaze me how some strangers will tell you anything about their lives.

  “We’ve been going back and forth, visiting each other for a couple of months. We started talking about maybe picking a coast and making it permanent. But when I got there this time, he was like a totally different person, all distant and cold. He insisted nothing was wrong, it was all good.”

  Her eyes go wide as if she’s imploring me to understand. And I do, because I’ve heard some version of this story before. I’m beginning to think almost every woman has lived it at least once.

  “Last day, he’s all, ‘hey baby, I’d love to cuddle, but I’m not feeling so good, you think you can run on down to the pharmacy and get me some aspirin?’”

  “He told you he had a headache?” I find myself asking in rising outrage.

  She nods, her nostrils flaring in remembered annoyance. “And like a sap, I was so sympathetic. Of course, I’d get it for him. Only the fucker insists that I have to go to this one pharmacy twenty blocks away.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Oh, and he wanted soup from a specific deli too.”

  I turn in my seat, leaning in so Valerie can speak her pain without being overheard. But she doesn’t seem to mind anyone else hearing. In fact, her voice rises. “Took me nearly two hours, and when I got back?” She pauses, lifting her hand as if to say she needs a moment. “That fucking fuckface was kissing some skank goodbye at the door.”

  “That was…” I struggle. “Fast. And…wow.”

  Valerie sits back with a huff and toys with the toggle on her hoodie. “He wanted to get caught. I swear, they all want to get caught. It’s the easy way out for them.”

  “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say. I’ve seen the wreckage of too many failed relationships, and nothing anyone says seems to take away the pain. This is why I avoid them. Why risk the hurt when the majority of people out there are total assholes?

  “I’m sorry I wasted money on these stupid trips,” Valerie mutters then snorts bitterly. “Long-distance never works. Never mind, I keep picking the man version of low-budget cling wrap—the ones who claim they’ll hold on tight but then slip and slide away the second you relax enough to let go.”

  I laugh, but a niggle of doubt creeps over my skin. Am I a female version of cheap cellophane? I never try to hold on to a lover. I always find an excuse to let go, get away: they weren’t right for me, fatally flawed in some way, I was too busy, I didn’t need them. Looking back on my various
attempts at relationships, I can’t say I missed anyone or regretted ending things. But it still bothers me. Because the fault can’t all have been with them. Part of the problem has to be with me.

  Doesn’t it?

  Why is it so hard for me to find someone I want to stick to?

  Unbidden, Rye’s face rises up in my mind. He’s full-on smirking, one brow quirked like he thinks I’m full of it. Annoyed, I bat the image away. It doesn’t silence his voice in my head, telling me that I can lie to myself all I want, but I’m still running.

  I’m not running this time. It’s a legitimate trip. A trip to see if I’ll take a job that moves me out of his life.

  Because Valerie is right; long distance never works. If I give up Kill John, I’ll have to give up…God, am I really thinking of quitting my boys? Quitting Rye? I can’t. I cannot.

  Crap. What I cannot do is think about this anymore. I won’t be able to function.

  “I’m asking for some champagne,” I say to Valerie. “Do you want one?”

  She perks up. “Sure. Why not?”

  By the time the plane lands, and I’m in the back of the town car I hired, I’m fairly buzzed and overly warm—because champagne is evil that way. My head aches, and I hate all the traffic.

  New York has horrible traffic. I’m fairly certain it makes most visitors cry in panic. But LA is a different kind of hell. In New York, you can bail and walk, take the subway. Here, you’re stuck in the car until you get where you need to go.

  The sun is too bright and hot. I have no idea how anyone would voluntarily want to walk down the overly exposed sidewalks. When the car begins to snake up Benedict Canyon, the movement making my stomach roil, I’m cursing LA and wishing I were back in New York.

  I swallow thickly, breathing through the pounding pain in my temples. My period is knocking on the door, and I am regretting the timing of this trip already. I should have waited.

  The car pulls up in front of a gate that must be twenty feet high, and the driver stops. “Is there someone to buzz you in, miss?”

  “I got it.” I’m already tapping the code into the app Rye sent me. The gate slides open, and the car makes its way up a long drive that hooks around a sharp bend. Mature olive trees with lacy little silver-green leaves flank the drive and provide both welcome shade and privacy.

  The house doesn’t appear until we round the bend. Low-slung and L-shaped, it’s a massive modern structure of steel, expansive windows, and honed wood.

  Finally, the car stops, which is a blessing. I’m not going to make it another minute. I grab my bags, wave the driver off, and head toward the house.

  The front door is fifteen feet high and made of wood stained a rich, warm brown. It opens with surprising ease, and I find myself inside the soaring space that’s both cool and light filled.

  Leaving my bags in the hall, I head toward the back where glimpses of a pool beckons. My heels echo in the silence. It’s a beautiful house if you like modern, but I don’t see what would cause that secretive little smile that I’d seen in Rye’s eyes when he spoke of it.

  All of the main rooms face the back of the house with expansive canyon views. It takes me a minute, but I finally figure out how to operate the window walls. They slide back without a sound, opening the house up to the outside courtyard and garden. As soon as I step out, a sweetly scented breeze lifts my hair and kisses my overheated skin.

  This is why people deal with the traffic and the ugly sidewalks that stretch for miles without succor. This lovely weather, the gentle rustle of palm trees, and the sweet scent of jasmine and chamomile dancing in the air. I breathe in deep and let it out slowly.

  The pool stretches along the side of the house and is flanked by an orderly row of loungers. A pavilion has groups of low-slung couches, a fire pit, and what appears to be an outdoor screening area. There are a few outbuildings, little guest houses if I had to guess. They’re well hidden, surrounded by more olive trees and potted lemon trees. Each house has a pretty patio set up.

  Again, though it’s beautiful, I don’t know why this excites Rye. It isn’t anything we haven’t seen before.

  Turning back into the house, I make my way past the living room. Each room is designed for comfort, with slouchy, deep couches and chairs, and inspiration in the form of art on the walls and objects of interest that I recognize from our various trips around the world. Rye is a collector. On our off days, he heads to the markets or small shops in whatever city we’re visiting.

  My fingers trail over a teak Danish-modern sideboard, drift past a Georgian marble bust of a young girl with one of Rye’s baseball caps resting jauntily on her head. And then I find it. Peppered around the lower wings of the L-shaped house are recording studios. Beautifully fitted and comfortable studios.

  Knowing my boys as well as I do, this place would be a dream to record in. There’s an upstairs and downstairs gourmet kitchen and several expansive bedroom suites. All the amenities of home, coupled with state-of-the-art facilities. One could entertain or hang out while not recording, swim in the pool, exercise in the gym, or sweat it out in the sauna.

  Every room, every view is soothing and serene. Inspiring.

  Smiling, I reach for my phone and dial.

  Rye answers on the second ring. “You get in okay?”

  “Just now, yes.” I sit in a gray, velvet club chair. “I’m in your house. Or should I call it a recording studio?”

  “Both, I guess. What do you think?”

  “It’s beautiful. I wish we’d had places like this to use with earlier records.” Technically, I never need to be at any of those sessions, but it seems that where Kill John goes, I go. I am utterly enfolded in their world.

  “That was the idea,” he says. “I’m planning to lend it out to friends when we’re not using it.”

  “Not rent it? You’d make a killing.”

  He chuckles, and the warm sound rolls over me in a hazy wave. I close my eyes and sink into the chair.

  “I’ve been thinking I could produce more, Bren. Make music that way.”

  His hands.

  A lump rises in my throat. “You’d be great at it.”

  No one knows music the way Rye does. He’s already produced more than half of Kill John’s albums, and I honestly don’t know why he doesn’t do all of them, because the ones he handles are the most popular.

  We’ve been quiet for too long, and Rye clears his throat.

  “Thanks.” The tentative tone makes me wonder if I’ve surprised him with the compliment. Then again, I haven’t given him very many over the years. Regret lies heavy on my shoulders.

  “I mean it, Rye. You have a way with music that’s transcendent. Killian and Jax might write the lyrics, but you polish everything up and breathe life into them.”

  Why hadn’t I ever told him? Because we’d always been focused on hating each other.

  His breath hitches, and I know I’ve affected him.

  “Thank you,” he says with a rasp. Then pauses. “The guys stopped by. They…ah…well, they knew something was up and wouldn’t go away until they got it out of me.”

  “The fiends,” I tease softly, like I’m not quietly aching for him. He’d been so alone, when he didn’t have to be.

  He hums, a bit self-deprecating, before forging on. “I told them about…everything.”

  I know this. Scottie had texted. But the quiet, almost shy pleasure and relief Rye can’t quite hide in his voice pokes at my tenderized heart. He’d needed his guys’ support but didn’t know how to ask for it. “I’m glad, Rye.”

  “Yeah, me too. We’re working things out.”

  “Good.”

  Emotion shouldn’t be able to reach through a phone and wrap around a person’s heart. But it does. I’m not certain either of us knows how to handle it.

  Rye clears his throat, and when he speaks, he’s back to his old, playful self. “You meeting with Mr. Taco today or tomorrow?”

  I roll my eyes. “Mr. Taco is the worst name ever.
It’s not even clever.”

  “It’ll grow on you,” he insists in a teasing tone. “By the time you meet him, that’s all you’ll be able to picture.”

  “Are you trying to sabotage me?” I ask lightly, because I know he isn’t really.

  But he answers with quiet seriousness. “No, Berry. Never that. I’d wish you luck right now, but you don’t need it. And, admittedly, I don’t know if I can wish you luck.”

  “Why?” I whisper, feeling the need to follow his hushed tone.

  “Because I don’t want you to go.”

  My breath hitches, the fluttery feeling in my heart threatening to make me say things I shouldn’t. “Rye.”

  “But I will,” he says quickly. “Let you go. You deserve to be where you’re happy.”

  He’ll let me go. Because I’m not really his. And he’s not really mine. I stare blankly at the wall and wonder why everything aches.

  “I understand,” he says steadily. “And the guys will too.”

  Right. He wasn’t talking about us, but about me and my role with Kill John. My period is definitely knocking on the door, because I’m on the verge of weeping for no particular reason. It occurs to me that the last time I had my period was the first time Rye kissed me. Has it been a month? Before I know it, our time will be over and done, and I have the feeling it will all seem like a strange dream.

  I need to get off the phone with him. I’m maudlin and weak-willed right now.

  “I’ve got to go,” I say. “The flight wore me out.”

  “Take the bedroom on the second floor at the end of the hall. I called ahead and had the service make it up for you.”

  Tears threaten again, damn it.

  “Oh, and the house is stocked with food and drinks, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

  I pull in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I’m the one who takes care of things for others. And I take care of myself. Always have. I don’t know how to handle this type of simple kindness. All I know is if I don’t get off the phone now, I’ll be begging him to join me.

  My will is my strength. I can’t crumble.

  “Thanks, Ryland.”