Wait (Bleeding Stars #4)

by A. L. Jackson

  Knew it was difficult for him to give up on those days.

  I scowled at him, a little bit pissed off. “Why the hell do you keep looking at me like that?”

  Air puffed from his nose, and he let his grin go, his tone almost teasing. “So you and Edie Evans, huh?”

  I sighed, rubbed my forehead, knowing this conversation was getting ready to take a nosedive. I wasn’t sure I was ready to delve into those depths with him.

  Not when I didn’t know if the girl was mine or if she’d had enough of my bullshit.

  My entire being recoiled at the notion.

  He chuckled, accelerating from a red light. He tapped at the wheel, contemplating. “Funny…there were a bunch of times I would have sworn there was something going on between you two back when she was staying at the house up in the Hills. Tension thick as molasses every time the two of you were in the same room. But she was so damned shy, I thought better of it.”

  He looked over at me. “Guess I should have thought worse of it. I mean…what did I expect, leaving you to your own devices? All of us were wiser than that.”

  It was packed with innuendo.

  I shook my head. “Told Ash I didn’t sleep with her back then. Wasn’t lying.”

  Wanted to.

  God, I’d wanted to so damned bad my sight had gone crooked.

  “And molasses? For real, man, you turning country on me or what?”

  Laughter rolled from him, a grin pulling at his mouth. “Might have a girl or two who are rubbing off on me.”

  “Shea makes you happy, yeah?”

  “Crazy happy.”

  Truth of the matter? It made me crazy happy that she did. “Good for you, Baz. Hope you know that. Know it was a rough time when I left. But I need you to know I did it as much for you and Shea as I did it for myself.”

  “Didn’t at the time…but after a while, I did.”

  Silence stole between us. “Why’d you do it?” he finally asked.

  Do it?

  Start sneaking in her room?

  Slip up in front of Paul the first time?

  Set him up?

  Try to cover it up when he again started sniffing around?

  So many choices. Right or wrong, they’d all been made for one reason.

  I sank further into the seat, my voice tight. “Because I love her.”

  Because I wanted to protect her.

  To take care of her the way I was made to do.

  Dubious laughter rolled from him. “Loving someone will be one of the hardest things you ever do, little brother. It will twist you up and hang you out to dry. It’ll fill you with more worry than you think you can stand, then turn right around and fill you with the greatest joy. It’s a fucking battle, Austin. A battle because you’ll spend the rest of your life fighting to keep it. But if you know one thing? Know there’s no better mistake than one you make in the name of love.”

  I laughed, though it lacked any amusement at all. “But sometimes those mistakes cut too goddamned deep, Baz. They sever and they break. Pretty sure this cut might have gone all the way through and I don’t have the first clue how to piece it back together.”

  He blew out a breath between pursed lips. “Secrets will always come back around, Austin. Maybe you and I know that better than anyone else. Didn’t matter how far Edie ran from that one, it would have caught up to her. You or someone else.”

  My head shook. “Betrayed her, Baz. She asked one thing of me.”

  His phone went off and Shea’s face lit up the screen.

  My insides twisted, and my pulse rate spiked, my body inclining toward the phone like it might bring me closer to Edie.

  He grabbed it, pulled it to his ear. “Hey, baby.”

  I could hear the intonation of her voice, but I couldn’t hear what she said.

  “Okay…yeah…see you in a bit. Love you.”

  He ended the call and another bout of silence throbbed in the cab. Baz kneaded the wheel.

  “What’d she say?”

  Hesitation wrapped around him. Because that was Baz’s way. Always trying to protect me from what he didn’t think I could handle. “Not a kid anymore. No more of this bullshit…no more not saying what needs to be said.”

  A sigh filtered from his lungs. “Shea put Edie up at a hotel. Said she needs some time.”

  Pain crushed my chest. A million fucking tons.

  He seemed to war with what to say. “Why don’t you come to mine and Shea’s place? Plenty of room.”

  I shook my head. “Just…take me to the Sunder house.”

  The place where I’d found her and she’d found me. Where I felt closest to her.

  He gave me a short nod, and we drove the rest of the way in silence. He pulled to a stop in the drive.

  “Thanks, Baz,” I said as I opened the door and stepped out.

  “You going to be okay?” he asked, and I paused, halfway out when I looked back at him, my smile grim.

  “Loving her might be the best mistake I ever made.”

  His lips pressed together in a sympathetic twist. Like he got it. Figured if anyone could, it was Baz.

  I slung my bag over my shoulder and grabbed the guitar that now belonged to me. I trudged up the walk that made up so many memories, stepped into the darkened house that shouted back the loneliness.

  Slowly, I took the stairs, my breaths heaving from my lungs. I opened the door to my old room and switched on the light. It was exactly the same. The same furnishings and pictures. All my belongings in their rightful place.

  Exactly the way I’d left it.

  Crazy, because nothing about it felt right.

  I backed out, my head dropped while I stood in the long, quiet hall.

  Apprehensive.

  But not even that could stop me.

  Because I was drawn.

  I moved, my footsteps quieted. Same as they’d been years before.

  Subdued.

  Tempting fate.

  Sucking in a breath, I snapped the latch and entered her old room.

  I stood inside the darkness. The flowy, translucent drapes shimmered in the faint moonlight breaking through. The bed was made. The room clean. Ready for any guest who needed a place to sleep.

  Didn’t matter.

  It still felt like her.

  Smelled like her.

  I set the guitar on the floor and let my bag slide off my shoulder and drop free, kicked off my shoes, and fell face first onto the mattress.

  I breathed in the hurt, and I let the magnitude of the mistakes I’d made tumble through me like a wailing storm.

  I couldn’t even pinpoint where they’d started.

  Maybe it’d been tonight when I’d exposed her secret to Ash.

  Or when I’d lost myself on our birthday. When I’d been so fucking desperate for her to fill up the void the way only she could.

  Could have been not confessing right off the bat when she got the first text from Paul.

  Or possibly when I let her secret run away from my mouth the first time. Again fueled by my fury as I released her trust into the hands of the very person she was determined would never know.

  Maybe it was sneaking in here the first time.

  But I think there was a part of me that knew. Knew I could trace it all back to that day on the beach.

  The day I’d ripped the other half of my spirit away.

  My darkest day.

  It was the day I’d been set off-balance. My equilibrium shot. One side weighted by the ugliest, grimmest dark, the void on that side making it too hard to stand.

  It’d left me spinning in a downward spiral.

  Forever falling into the depths of an unending pit.

  I hugged a pillow. Buried my face in it.

  “What do I do, Julian? What the fuck do I do? When will it ever end?”

  I lay there in the darkness as the Santa Ana winds whipped through the city and pounded against the walls.

  The window panes rattled.

  And I prayed pray
ers I didn’t have the right to pray.

  “Please.”

  I drifted in and out of consciousness. Barely hanging on. My heart thundering in the well of my chest. This erratic boom, boom, boom I couldn’t calm.

  Energy shifted. Lifted and swelled.

  I sucked in a breath.

  The door creaked open and that power lit. A sliver of hazy light bled across the floor and onto the bed, and the tension bounded.

  Thick and profound.

  Suffocating.

  Her footfalls were light. Slow and cautious.

  I remained frozen as she silently crossed the room, my breath gone when her fingertips traced a path up the center of my back, tender as they brushed the skin of my neck and up under my hair.

  Shivers slicked down my spine, tightening every cell.

  I shifted, almost scared to look over my shoulder.

  But there was no chance I could look away.

  Because there was my girl standing over me.

  Hair like ethereal flames.

  A white halo around her head.

  Aqua eyes shimmered in the night.

  Diamonds.

  Angel. Light. Life.

  She said nothing, just climbed onto the bed. I rolled onto my back, and she straddled my waist.

  Every inch of my body hardened.

  I stared up at her. The girl a vision. “Edie,” I murmured.

  She said nothing, only lifted the dream catcher above me. The hoop twisted and spun where it was suspended over my head, the feathers cast in a slow wave.

  I clutched her by the hips. The lump was so thick in my throat. Because I had no idea which direction this was going to go.

  Her voice was wispy when she finally spoke, almost faraway. “The first night you came to me I was so lost. I was terrified to live, Austin. Terrified to feel. But you broke through all those barriers. You made me remember what it felt like to hope. What it felt like to believe.”

  I sat up, bringing us face to face. Her body burned against mine, her heart a constant pound, pound, pound.

  I could barely get out the admission. “The first time I touched you was the first time I breathed.”

  Not since I’d been a little boy.

  She cast her gaze down. “That’s the way it’s always been with us. Something brilliant and beautiful pitted against something ugly and dark. The two always at war.”

  She looked up at me beneath her lashes. That sea of blue toiled with emotion, staring straight at me. Into me. She was always the one who could see it all. “How will we ever win if we can’t stop fighting it?”

  I attempted to swallow, fumbling around inside for a way around the obstacles that continued to block our paths. The ones that always led us back to the other.

  Gently, I cupped her sweet, trusting face. “Because I don’t ever want to stop fighting for you.”

  Tears leaked out at the corner of her eyes, and her chin trembled, my girl chewing at her lip as she tried to keep it contained. “I’m so scared of this, Austin. Scared of us. Scared to be free with you because that might mean letting her go. I’m afraid of the way you fill up the emptiness. I’m terrified that one day…one day she’ll walk right by me and I won’t recognize her.”

  My thumb brushed her cheek. “And I am terrified that one day…one day I won’t feel him anymore. That if I don’t ache, maybe I will no longer remember. That if I fill up the void, I’ll forget.”

  I stared at her.

  My reflection.

  My mirror.

  Fingers caressed my forehead and across my brows. Tender and soothing, comforting me, in the midst of all her pain. “What happened the other night…on the beach. I know it didn’t happen because you didn’t care if you were careful with me. I know you do, Austin. I know you care. I know it. Feel it. But it felt like I was losing the choice. That I was out of control, and I don’t know how to handle feeling that way.”

  The shake of her head was slow. “And you stopped…stopped when I asked you to. But that’s what scared me most. That I let myself get lost in you.”

  She blinked, her words emphatic as she offered them into the night. “I want to be her, Austin. I want to be the one you can touch. Without reservations because you know I’m yours because I’ve given myself to you. I want to be the one that you know will always be there for you. Always. In whatever capacity you need me. That I belong to you the same way you belong to me. I want to be free.”

  I framed her face in my hands. “I’m going to mess up, Edie. I’m going to make mistakes. Do things I wish I didn’t. But you will always—always—be free in me. With me. I will always be there to support you in whatever choice you make. And I fucking hate it that I lost that control. But I promise you…I’d never hurt you on purpose. It kills me that I did.”

  Tears kept coming, like streamers of glinting light rolling down her cheeks. “I never thought I’d trust someone enough to put myself in the position where I might have that choice to make again.”

  She set a palm on her stomach, her expression haunted and brimming with hope. “But when I came here, I made the decision I don’t want to be scared anymore.”

  Rasping out a relieved breath, I hugged her close and buried my face in her chest. Right over her heart. I just needed to hear it beat. “Can’t tell you how sorry I am about Paul. About letting it get out in front of your brother.”

  I could feel her head shaking. “I was upset. Hurt. But I knew, Austin. Sitting alone in the hotel room, I knew every single choice you’d made was for me. That all along, you’ve done everything you could to protect me.”

  We stayed like that. Rocking slow. The girl on her knees. Curled around and hovering over me.

  My angel.

  Slowly, I sat back, pulled her arms out in front of her, unwound the catcher she had clutched in her hand. I held it up. My attention darted between her and the hoop. My confession came on a ragged whisper. “Promised you this catcher would always hold your dreams. Chase away the bad ones and keep the good ones safe.” I swallowed around the jagged rocks lodged in my throat. “But I never told you mine.”

  Aqua eyes flashed. “Tell me.”

  Softly, I spoke. “I dream about a life with you, Edie. One I live for you. With you.”

  I threaded our fingers together, brought her hand to my mouth, kissed across the knuckle of her ring finger. “Dream about putting a ring on this finger. About calling you my wife.”

  I laced the words with caution. Because I knew I was pushing through the last of the barriers that remained between us. My fingers brushed back the hair matted to her damp cheeks. “Dream about a little girl with your eyes…maybe one who has my smile. Someday, Edie, someday…I want all those things. I want them with you. Whether it’s tomorrow or years from now…I want all of it with you.”

  If what happened on the beach the other day brought it sooner, I’d be there. With her. For her.

  Together.

  Just like I’d promised.

  “I want it, Austin. Someday, I want it. With you. I want it all.”

  I hugged her to me, my face going back to her chest.

  She weaved her fingers through my hair, her voice a whispered confession. “I saw you on stage.”

  Those old dreams flared. I swallowed hard, while her voice went soft as a song. “You were beautiful, Austin. Powerful. Mesmerizing. You were right where you belonged.”

  “I…I came here thinking that was the best way to get close to Paul. Hurt him more. Getting him as close to the band as I could. But being up there…it felt like…Edie, it felt like I was where I belonged. But bigger than that is the fact I belong with you.”

  She pulled back, her smile sincere and so, so sweet. “This…this is where we belong. I don’t want to run, Austin. Not anymore.”

  Exhaling the weight, I pulled her arm to my face, kissed the inside of her wrist, the inside of her elbow, the cap of her shoulder.

  “Firelight.”

  My confession.

  My world.r />
  The light.

  Edie gripped me by both sides of the face. Her hold strong. Sure. “Make love to me, Austin. Make love to me forever. Never leave my heart. Don’t ever let me go. I choose you.”

  Morning light spilled into the room. A room so familiar. The boy wrapped around me from behind so right.

  His skin burned hot against mine, his heart rate steady.

  Strong.

  Slowly, I untangled myself from his arms and legs, smiling down at where he slept.

  The boy who made me believe.

  The one who made me see I didn’t have to be ashamed.

  Careful not to wake him, I slipped into my clothes that Austin had left a messy pile on the floor the night before, and quietly tiptoed out the door. I edged down the stairs to the slumbering house below, everything so quiet.

  I headed across the living space that looked out to the city shimmering with the sun. I pushed the double swinging doors open that led to the kitchen.

  I froze just inside when I saw I wasn’t alone.

  A rustle of anxiety rushed through my nerves. I pushed them down.

  You don’t have to be ashamed. You don’t have to be ashamed.

  My brother stood at the counter facing away, wearing only a pair of worn jeans, feet and chest bare, blond hair a disaster on top of his head.

  “Ash,” I managed, my word lame and useless, but I had no idea how to broach all that had transpired under Ash’s nose. “You’re up early.”

  He chuckled but there was no true laughter behind it. Missing was the casual ease he typically wore. He shrugged a single shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep. But I guess no one could blame me, could they?”

  I cringed, stayed quiet while he poured a cup of coffee. He waved the carafe my way. “You want one?”

  I moved to the island, my entire body ill-at-ease as I leaned up against it. “No…thank you.”

  He spun, leaned back against the opposite counter, eyed me over the top of the mug. His voice was rough. “Didn’t know you were here this morning.”

  I let my eyes dart up. A silent indication of the boy who’d drawn me here in the middle of the night.

  Because I hadn’t been able to sleep, either. I had only tossed and turned and fumbled through my emotions until I came to the most important one.