by Roxie Noir
Always You
Roxie Noir
Copyright © 2017 by Roxie Noir
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover: Coverlüv
Photographer: Sara Eirew
Editor: Sennah Tate
Contents
Newsletter
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Eight Years Earlier
Chapter 46
Epilogue
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Logan and I are friends. That’s it. Just friends.
Sure, he’s really hot. Yeah, he’s got biceps I’d like to lick and a smile that makes me feel all fluttery inside. And yeah, even though he’s the strong, silent type, he still manages to make me snort-laugh at least once a day.
Particularly if I’ve had a couple of drinks.
I did drag him to this Halloween party, and we are getting drunk, but it’s no big deal. Nothing’s gonna happen. Because we’re just friends.
Best friends. The kind of friend I can’t risk losing over something dumb like a drunken kiss, no matter how bad I want to try it just once.
There will be no kissing. No bicep licking. No nothing.
Because we’re just friends.
Sign up now and Dirty Sweet is yours, free!
For Mr. Noir, who’s still my best friend.
Prologue
Trent
Darcy’s hand is freezing, so I fold mine around it.
This is dangerous, I think.
Dangerous because I don’t know if I can stop myself much longer. Dangerous because I don’t want to.
“You’re an ice cube,” I tell her.
“I’m not that cold,” she protests, but I can see goosebumps rise on her arms. We’ve been out here for hours, sitting on the hood of the car, talking, eating pie straight from the tin like savages.
“Bullshit,” I mutter.
I give in. I slide my hands up her arms, to her shoulders, and I pull her against me. I’ve wanted this for longer than I can remember, and being this close is fucking intoxicating, even if there are a million reasons I shouldn’t do it.
“If anything else happens to you, Gavin might murder me,” I tell her.
“So you’re warming me up to save your own skin,” she teases.
“If that’s what I say, will it work?”
“It’s in the sixties out here at least,” I point out. “I’m not gonna get hypothermia.”
Even as she says that, she leans her head into the hollow of my throat, her body pressing against mine. I close my eyes, my hands still careful on her shoulders, avoiding the bandages on her back so I don’t hurt her.
Don’t ruin this, I tell myself. You won’t forgive yourself if you do.
But Darcy slides her arms around me, holding me closer. I know it’s nothing, just a friendly hug, but Jesus it feels like it’s something, but maybe only because that’s what I want.
“Thanks for this,” I finally murmur.
I mean the afternoon. I mean her somehow knowing exactly what to do when my brother called with the news. I mean her being the closest thing I’ve ever had to a soulmate, even if it’s purely platonic.
But I also mean this. Standing here in my arms, just like this.
“I wish I knew how to really help,” she says.
“You did.”
She pulls back, looks up at me, her arms still around my waist.
“I thought this was dumb,” she teases.
“Throwing rocks as anger management is pretty dumb,” I say. “It’s also exactly what I needed.”
There’s something in her wide blue eyes I don’t recognize. Something I can’t name but that makes me want more from her yet again, and I let one hand drift down to her hip, always careful of the bandages.
Darcy doesn’t move, but her breathing gets faster. Every nerve in my body is singing, screaming not to do this, and I ignore them all. It feels inevitable, like everything’s been leading me to this point.
Then my fingers are in her hair, running along her cheekbone. Darcy swallows, still looking me dead in the eye, her lips slightly parted. I feel like I’m in a black hole, falling unstoppably toward her.
This isn’t what friends do.
This is fucking dangerous.
“Darcy,” I whisper, my face an inch from hers.
I know this is how I change everything, how I risk losing her, how I shift both our worlds in one second, but I can’t keep acting like it’s not what I want. I can’t keep acting like she isn’t what I want, like she isn’t what I’ve wanted all along.
I tilt my head toward hers, one last pause, one last moment like this.
She takes a deep, shaky breath.
“Don’t,” she whispers.
Chapter One
Trent
Ten Days Earlier
Darcy’s fucking nowhere to be found. We’re on in five minutes and she’s wandered off somewhere and left no discernible trace, at least not that I can find. Her phone’s going to voicemail. None of the small army of people wearing black and talking into earpieces has seen a dark-haired, blue-eyed girl in a vintage dress, ripped fishnets, and combat boots, so I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to find her.
“Call time was ten minutes ago,” Nigel is saying, as if telling me will magically make Darcy appear. “I told her this morning—”
“I know,” I say, cutting him off.
“Is she lost?” he says, his graying eyebrows knitting together with a level of concern only our manager can produce. “She hasn’t gone to the wrong stage, has she? She knows it’s at the main one?”
If I fucking knew I’d have found her by now, I think, but I manage not to say it out loud.
“I’m gonna go look for her again,” I say. “Text if you or Gavin find her.”
“I’ll check the loo!” he calls after me.
Backstage at Grizzly Fest is a throbbing mass of people. There’s the assistants and coordinators who make everything run, all wearing headsets and carrying clipboards. There are the festival-goers who somehow got backstage passes and then wandered out of the designated ‘backstage’ area so they could stare a
round, goggle-eyed, and get in everyone’s way.
There’s the ‘talent,’ half of whom are dressed more or less like me — shirt, jeans, shoes — and half of whom look like they’re from a Vegas show about Ziggy Stardust.
Darcy, our bass player, is somewhere in this shitshow when she’s supposed to be going on stage in less than five minutes, and since everyone knows we’re best friends, finding her is now my job.
I step out of the stream of humanity and into an alcove, just for a moment, letting some stagehands carry a huge upholstered pair of lips past. She’s obviously not here. One, I would have found her already, and two, despite having played arenas for a couple years now, she still gets nervous before every single show. She’s probably somewhere quiet, by herself, and lost track of time.
With that in mind, I head away from the zoo. I open a door, push through some curtains, go around some set pieces, and suddenly it’s quieter. I can still hear the hubbub — they can probably hear the hubbub two hours away in Seattle — but it’s a dull roar, not ear-piercing. I’ve got the feeling I’m closer.
I walk past a tiger painted on plywood, a cage with a stripper pole in it, a giant plastic cloud, and suddenly I hear her voice.
“The graduation ceremony from explosives school must really be something,” Darcy says.
There’s a pause. I duck around an enormous painting of a half-naked woman giving the finger, and there she fucking is, talking to some guy. He’s got his arms full with spent fireworks, and he looks like he might drop one at any moment.
“We didn’t really have a graduation ceremony?” the guy says, sounding kind of baffled. “We just, like, got the certificate and went home the last day.”
I don’t think he got the joke.
“Darce,” I say. “We’re on.”
The guy jumps a little, and Darcy turns toward me.
“Oh, shit,” she says. “Already?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” she says. “I already turned my phone off and I lost track of time.”
“Hey, wait!” the guy says, so excited he drops a cardboard tube that he’s holding.
Darcy flinches, and I look at the side of it. Definitely a spent firework, which you’re definitely not supposed to just fucking drop.
“Listen, I know you’re like, going on tour and stuff, but if you’re ever in Tallwood again and you want to hang out or something...”
He leans down, depositing the rest of the spent fireworks ungracefully on the floor. Darcy takes a step back, toward me, as he searches his pockets.
“Fireworks school didn’t teach you not to drop those?” I say.
I fucking know not to just throw those things around, and the extent of my education was lighting bottle rockets off in the desert until the cops showed up.
“Sorry,” he mutters, then rips a label off of one, then scribbles something on it against his leg, stands up, holds it out to Darcy.
“But, like, call me if you’re ever in town again?”
She takes the torn label. It’s got a phone number and a name: Phil.
Phil. Fucking Phil.
“C’mon,” I say to her, shooting him a glare. “We’ve got a show.”
“Um, thanks,” she says, folding the scrap of paper between two fingers. “Nice meeting you!”
Phil smiles hopefully as Darcy turns and ducks behind the naked lady painting, shoving the phone number into her pocket. I can hear Phil fumbling with the cardboard tubes as we walk away and I wish I could tear his fucking number up.
I’m not jealous, he’s just clearly a fucking idiot, so there’s obviously no reason for Darcy to bother keeping his number. That’s all.
Chapter Two
Darcy
“Nigel might skin you alive,” Trent says. “The poor man is having kittens right now.”
Shit.
“Sorry,” I say. “I went back there to chill for a few minutes, and then that guy was there and we were talking and I kinda just forgot what time it was.”
Trent just grunts. He’s not particularly talkative at the best of times — last year, Rolling Stone actually called him ‘broody and mysterious,’ and while I don’t think he’s exactly either, I can see where they get it — but he usually does better than grunt.
We don’t say anything else as we walk to meet Gavin and Eddie, the rest of the band, both waiting just off-stage in the wings. I’m nervous, because I always get nervous, cracking my knuckles and repeating the set list to myself in my head.
Tidal, Charcoal Teeth, Cage Rattler...
When we get to the side of the stage, he’s standing there, both his hands stuck in his pockets, staring out at the crowd. All day he’s been walking around tensely, nitpicking roadies and backstage managers over this or that because it turns out that when he’s not high all the time, he can be a little uptight. That, and he’s just nervous.
Eddie’s doing jump squats in his flip-flops, and every time he lands, before he squats again he shakes all his limbs out like he’s a dog.
It’s... interesting.
Eddie, in general, is interesting.
And there’s the shadow, of course. The shadow that hangs over everything that we do as a band, the shadow that’s gotten lighter every day since it very nearly suffocated us over a year ago, but I don’t think it’ll ever go away, not completely.
The shadow’s named Liam, and he’s why Eddie is our new drummer, why we still think of him that way even though it’s been something like fourteen months. Liam’s not dead, just gone, very gone, the sort of gone that no one talks to or interacts with.
At least, I think he’s not dead. But I’ve got zero proof.
We all look at each other. Eddie shakes his head side-to-side and his cheeks flap while he says “HUMMMNGNGN,” and we all look at him and then look at each other one more time, trying not to laugh.
“You lot ready?” Gavin asks.
“How many people?” Trent asks.
“Dammit, Trent,” I say.
He looks down at me, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. Eddie peeks out.
“There’s, like—”
“Eddie, don’t,” Trent says. “I was just messing with Darcy.”
“Oh,” Eddie says.
“So that’s a yes to being ready, or would you like to keep fucking around?” says Gavin.
I roll my eyes at him.
“Who made you the fun patrol?” I tease.
“Oh, fucking come on, it’s the first massive show with the new songs, I’ve got every right to be a little—”
“Guys,” Trent says. “Can we say kumbaya or whatever, hug it out, and go play some rock and roll?”
“Kumbaya,” Eddie responds instantly.
“There. Now you, Darcy,” he says, that smile at the corner of his mouth again, and I can’t help but smile back because Trent always somehow knows the right thing to say to me.
“Okay,” I say, refusing to say kumbaya because that’s just fucking silly. “We gonna go do this?”
Eddie pumps one fist in the air and hollers, because of course he does. Gavin reaches one hand out to me, and when I take it, pulls me in for a quick hug, then does the same to Trent.
Trent puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me against his big, warm body, and for just a split second I close my eyes because this is nice. So nice.
Then it’s done. The lights on stage go down. The crowd starts cheering and the noise escalates to a fever pitch, a roar, and then they’re stomping on the muddy ground and my heart is beating in time with the stomping and we walk onto the stage.
Madness. Cacophony. Pandemonium in the crowd and it’s like I’m floating across the stage, my feet not touching the floor because there’s nothing like this in the world, nothing at all.
My bass is on a stand already, and I pick it up, slinging it over my shoulder, silently sliding my fingers along its thick strings and suddenly I feel right at home because this is what I do best, this is what I know and I l
ove, and now the rest of the night is on smooth autopilot and I get to enjoy myself.
Trent and I look at each other from across the stage. Gavin glances from me to him and then finally to Eddie, who nods.
He counts off, and then we all come down on that first note at the same time, the crowd screaming as it washes over them and we launch into the first song.
And it’s pretty much the fucking best.
Chapter Three
Trent
If there’s a heaven, it probably feels a little like this, playing in perfect time with three other people while thousands more cheer for you. Suddenly everything that we went through to get here is worth it: ironing out guitar and bass licks in the studio at three in the morning, heading home as the sun rose. Arguing over a chord progression for three hours, practicing the tricky parts until I got blisters.
We end the first song and slide into the second without even stopping for a beat, just like we practiced. Darcy’s bass swoops low and then rises, the only sound for a couple of bars, and I look over at her.
