Viola jolted when it slammed closed a moment later, proving that no conversation between her and Jon would ever be powerful enough to change the dynamic of their failed relationship. The fact of the matter was, they had no relationship. Whatever once in a lifetime connection they’d shared on Flight 485 was as good as dead.
Because now he knew who she really was.
Or, at least, he thought he did.
Fourteen
“I like Jon.”
“Come again?”
“You heard me,” Viola said. “I like Jon. I like him a lot.”
Milo’s eyes danced back and forth in the windshield of their rental car as he guided it along the deserted road that led back to Salt Lake City. With less than a thousand miles on it, the car’s engine purred like a kitten, so quiet that the sound of Milo’s breathing picking up was loud enough to drown it out completely.
Viola studied his profile from the passenger’s seat—her eyebrows raised high. “I think we should tell him the truth.”
Milo threw his head back with a deep belly groan. “Fuuuck, Viola, please don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to me! Not now.”
“He’s a good guy, Milo. He has a pure heart, and I know he’d understand. And I really, really, really like him.” I’m losing my mind! I can’t take this anymore! You stole him from me!
“Everything’s about Jon.” He breathed out a laugh, and suddenly the car was moving ten miles faster like he was pressing the pedal to the floor.
“Everything’s not about Jon, but the fact remains that if it weren’t for him, Sleeping Beauty, I wouldn’t have seen my mother for Christmas at all. He didn’t have to drive three hours, you know, but he did. And he didn’t do it for me, either. He did it for you. Seems like a pretty great brother to me.”
“Guess this explains the disappointed ass look on your face when you saw me pull up and not him, huh?”
Viola sighed deeply as Milo hit the nail right on the head. Tears—actual tears—had stung her eyes earlier that morning when that rental car had pulled up to the curb of her mother’s house instead of Jon’s motorcycle. All morning long she’d been waiting to feel the unmistakable roar of the bike’s engine as it approached, so strong it would’ve made the floors shake from all the way inside the house. All morning she’d dreamed of the moment she climbed on the rear of that rumbling bike and felt his hard back pressing against her heaving chest. His taut abs under her clasped fingers. His heartbeat through his leather jacket. Proving it was beating just as strongly as hers—if not more so—no matter how hard he tried to hide it. She thought she’d hidden her disappointment well, behind a forced smile, upon seeing Milo instead, but apparently, she hadn’t.
“I was just expecting Jon, that’s all. He said he was going to be there, so I expected him to be there.”
“He was going to be there. Then I reminded him that you’re my girlfriend, not his.”
Viola nearly cussed him out. Instead, she glared at him over the console, letting her squinted eyes say every profane word that she couldn’t allow to leave her lips instead.
Milo pretended he didn’t see her until he came to a red light. Only when he’d brought the car to a complete stop did he cut a look at her from the corners of his eyes, probably because he could feel the heat of her gaze burning him down to his very soul. Upon seeing her pinched up face—he smirked and looked back toward the road.
“Getting grade school, middle school, and high school flashbacks all at once,” he said. “Hell, I’m getting my entire life in Utah flashbacks. Everyone likes Jon a lot, Viola—he’s a rock star. He’ll forget your name the second he leaves town. Your face will be a distant blur within the week. He’ll break your heart into a million little pieces today and then go get fucked up and have a threesome tomorrow. Unlike him, I’m the only one who’ll actually stick around long enough to piece you back together once he completely and utterly destroys you.”
“Milo, I’m a little confused, so perhaps you can enlighten me… are gay best friends allowed to be jealous when their female friends are attracted to a guy? Just checking.”
“You keep saying how attracted you are to him, but that doesn’t mean he feels the same way.”
“I’m not prone to delusion.”
He clenched his fingers around the steering wheel until his knuckles went pale, a soft squeak filling the air as his palms disagreed with the leather. Only after the light turned green and he blazed ahead, so fast it caused Viola to ricochet forward and then fly back into her seat, did he speak again, voice strained.
“So this is why he fought so hard to be the one to pick you up this morning, huh?”
Her stomach fluttered. Jon had fought for her?
Milo’s voice rose. “All because he’s secretly putting the moves on my girlfriend behind my back? Carrying on a flirtation so obvious it’s left her with no doubt in her mind of his intentions?”
She faltered. “I’m not your girlfriend.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Not because she was reminiscing about the electric field of blinding sparks that constantly flew between her and Jon, but because it had just hit her how dangerous it was to inform Milo of the fact that those sparks existed at all. How bad it made Jon look. Though she still didn’t know what was going on between Milo and Jon, it was no secret that their relationship was perilously fragile. Could she really allow Milo to believe that Jon was flirting with her behind his back? That they’d actually shared a passionate kiss and were now grappling with the aftermath? And worst of all, lying to him about it?
The window for Jon to be honest with Milo about their kiss had long passed. Now it would just look like a lie and a betrayal. Even though Jon had threatened Viola with it many times, she knew he would never tell Milo. She was only realizing at that moment what Jon already knew. What he’d probably always known. That telling Milo the truth would only drive a deeper wedge between the two brothers. The pure sadness she’d seen in Jon’s eyes the night before when he’d opened up about his dismal relationship with his family, was still fresh in her mind. She never wanted to be the reason that sadness became even a single drop more potent by further fracturing his relationship with Milo. She never wanted to give Milo more ammunition to justify the villainous label he’d branded in the middle of Jon’s forehead. A wildly unfair label that was clearly eating Jon alive, bit by bit.
“Has he made a pass at you?” Milo demanded.
“No!” she cried, surrendering to the terrifying thought of the damage she was on the verge of doing. “No, he’s never done anything untoward. In fact… maybe you’re right. Maybe I am delusional. I guess I’ve been so ensconced in my one-sided love affair with him, as a White Keys fan, for so long that I’ve let myself to believe my feelings could actually be reciprocated. Hell, I even told him about the way I used to pretend the lampshade was my father as a kid.”
Milo winced. “You told him about Lampshade Dad? I thought we agreed to never tell anyone about Lampshade Dad, peanut?”
“Guess I’ll always see Jon as the poster hanging on my bedroom wall that always understood. That never judged me and always loved me back, regardless how unhinged my diatribes with Lampshade Dad got late into the night. Why the hell would the real Jon Baca be interested in a girl like me anyway, right? He could have any woman he wanted, after all. No reason to slum it with a girl who talks to inanimate objects…” She bit her tongue when she felt herself on the verge of overcorrecting in a way that would only make Milo suspicious.
Instead of suspicion, however, Milo exhaled, his fingers loosening on the steering wheel. Seeing the way every muscle in his body relaxed upon receiving confirmation that his brother hadn’t tried to move in on his pretend girlfriend proved to Viola that she’d made the right decision. Informing Milo of the attraction between her and Jon would’ve been a terrible miscalculation. Disastrous even. A calamity that would’ve ensured another twenty years passed before Jon came home for the holiday
s again, let alone ten.
“I just have to stay away from him,” Vila said. “Before my own fantasies embarrass me any further.”
“You’re safer with the fantasy than you’d ever be with the reality. I’ve witnessed it with my own two eyes. Even if he did feel the same way about you, you’d still be playing with fire. He doesn’t live in the same world we do. He doesn’t feel like we feel. He doesn’t think like we think. He’s selfish. He’d eat you for lunch, peanut.”
A peanut could only hope. “Like I said, I’m just gonna stay away from him. Just… get through the next three weeks and get back to New York in one piece.”
“Agreed.”
Viola’s stomach hit her feet because she knew, deep down, that even if she did make it back to New York in one piece, her heart would remain in Utah. Or, rather, her heart would remain with Jon. Sitting in his back pocket, on life support. Accompanying him long after he’d left Utah and resumed jet-setting all over the world—probably while forgetting her face and her name just like Milo had promised. Doing blow and screwing groupies all while her bleeding heart continued to deplete in his back pocket, until it no longer had a single drop left.
She slammed her eyes closed when the Britney Spears Christmas song continued to flow through the car’s speakers on low volume. A song about a woman telling Saint Nick what a good girl she’d been all year, and that her only wish was to find the love of her life waiting for her under the mistletoe at the stroke of Christmas.
Viola had been a good girl all year too. She gotten good grades, paid her taxes, and was currently in the middle of doing her best friend a favor that was slowly destroying her life. So why wasn’t good old Saint Nick rewarding her the same way he’d rewarded Britney?
Or perhaps he hadn’t rewarded Britney at all. Perhaps Britney’s Christmas song had really ended in tragedy, waiting patiently beside the Christmas tree for a love that would never come. A desperate wish, unfulfilled. The same way Viola’s deepest wish would go unfulfilled that Christmas too.
“Please turn this off before I kill myself,” she grumbled, sinking deep into her seat with her arms crossed tight.
“I gotta drive, I gotta control the radio… You just sit there and get comfortable, okay? Nah, don’t lift a finger, Princess. I’m here to worship you and tend to your every precious whim.”
“Bow down, bitch.” It’s the least you could do, evil minion. You’re the reason I’m going to die alone at Christmas, after all.
With a soft hiss, Milo turned the knob of the radio and killed the music, drowning the car in silence.
Fifteen
Even though Milo had killed the Christmas music in the car, Britney’s voice remained in Viola’s head well into the night. Long after they’d arrived back at the Moore house and turned in for the evening. Long after she’d snuggled under the covers and all the lights had dimmed, leaving nothing but the moonlight to kiss the dark walls of the quiet guest bedroom. Long after the ceiling fan spinning overhead had been reduced to a dull blur, making her dizzier and dizzier the longer she tried to follow it with her eyes.
Right alongside the stomach-churning music that had refused to leave her head was the memory of Jon in the family’s living room earlier that night. How he’d made the sacrifice of laying on the hard floor so the rest of the family, including her, could cuddle up on the couch during family movie night. How he’d had on a pair of red pajama bottoms and nothing more, ensuring that Viola was more entranced by the deep, taut muscles that ebbed and shifted against his bare back than she would ever be with the movie. Ensuring her thoughts ventured into territory so wanton it had no business sharing a room with his puritanical family or the G-rated Christmas tale that’d been playing on the big screen. The only thing more tortuous than the memory of Britney’s crooning voice in her head was the memory of his incredible body.
Knowing that very body laid just a few doors down—just a few tiptoes along the hallway—sent a shot of heat blazing through her body. She threw the sheets and blankets off herself with a gasp when the heat became overwhelming—worried she was moments from falling into a hot sweat.
She had to get out of that house. Get some fresh air before her unrequited perversions took her over the edge. Her breathing remained labored as she left the guest bedroom and tiptoed down to the first level of the house, careful not to make too much noise on the old, creaky staircase.
She didn’t click on any lights as she made her way into the kitchen, afraid she might wake someone, but the lights on the microwave clock helped her see where she was going.
2:49 a.m.
She ignored the glowing green lights that confirmed how little sleep she’d be getting as long as she was sharing a house with Jon, moving toward the kitchen cabinets. She opened the cabinet that she’d learned contained Mary’s delicious homemade trail mix and dug her hand into the bag, swooping out a healthy handful. Her eyes fell to the bottle of Jack Daniel’s that sat unscrewed on the cabinet as she threw her head back and poured some of the trail mix into her mouth, unable to stop herself from grabbing the bottle, pressing the nozzle to her lips, and washing down the sweet and salty flavor of the trail mix in a few heavy swallows.
The bitter flavor burned her throat and sent a violent chill through her body, one after the other, as she slammed the bottle back down on the counter. Scooping another handful of trail mix, she frowned against the burn of the liquid as it continued past her heart and into her stomach, feeling like it only grew hotter with every inch of her body it traveled. Still, even as the whiskey seemed on a mission to terminate her every vital organ as it made its way through her, it was still no match for the burn that lit her up every time Jon’s face entered her mind. Which, if her calculations were correct, was about every two to three seconds. It was a miracle she was still breathing.
Still gripping a handful of uneaten mix, she trudged out of the kitchen to the front door. A cool breeze encased her the moment she opened the door, but not cold enough to call for a jacket over her plaid pajama pants and top. She wiggled her bare feet into Milo’s black Uggs, which he’d left next to the door, and made her way outside.
Before she knew it, she was walking, breathing in the fresh scent of the leaves, bark, and dewy water that permeated the forest surrounding the house. The sound of the trickling stream she’d yet to visit, drew her as she made her way deeper into the expanse, along with the chirp of crickets and other mysterious sounds of the forest at night. Her boots crunched on the forest floor as she went. Her eyes rose to stars winking down from the black sky as her breathing came easier and easier the farther she got away from that house.
Away from him.
Wisps of moonlight filtered down through the branches of the tall trees swaying overhead. Like a spotlight beaming directly at her. When she cleared the expanse, however, and found herself suddenly drawn in by the unmistakable sound of a strumming guitar, she realized that spotlight hadn’t been meant for her, after all.
Just like every other spotlight on the planet, naturally, it had to be beaming only for him. For the very man she thought she’d been running from. The very man she thought she’d escaped. She froze in mid-step at the sight of Jon—still wearing the same red pajama pants he’d had on earlier—perched on a large black rock that sat on the edge of the small stream before him. He’d thrown a long-sleeved black t-shirt on over the bare chest that had been torturing her all night. The product he used in his hair had lost its power several hours ago, causing soft wisps of it to fall into his closed eyes as his fingers trickled over the strings of the guitar he held in his lap. The beautiful music rising from the instrument was enough to reach Viola and freeze her right where she stood. She couldn’t decide which was more beautiful. The melody, or him.
A brilliant orange blaze kissed the tip of the tightly rolled joint that hung from his lips, soft billows of smoke curling up from it and dancing through the air. Eyes still closed, fingers still strumming, he hugged his full pink lips around the stick. The orang
e tip grew fire red as he inhaled.
The scent of the leaves burning beyond the paper reached Viola in a matter of seconds, leaving her unable to hold back a cough as the unbearable scent infiltrated her lungs.
Jon’s eyes flew toward her, then widened. His fingers froze on the strings, and his mouth popped open. Miraculously, the joint held onto his bottom lip. Probably just as desperate to be touching that plump lip as she was to have it in her mouth. Between her legs. Wherever he’d like to put it actually.
As soon as the stunned look was in his eyes, however, it was gone. He looked away from her with a smirk, took one more drag, and then seized the joint from his lips, throwing it into the stream before him. The bustling water took hold of it and began carrying it away immediately, letting it bounce over several slippery black rocks before it finally disappeared below the bubbling surface.
“You stalking me?” he asked, staring ahead, teeth clenched as he continued holding the smoke in his lungs.
Taking that as an invitation, Viola began to make her way closer, suddenly finding the unstable forest floor nearly impossible to navigate. Was it the uneven piles of leaves and debris that were leaving her so off balance, or her trembling knees? She couldn’t decide. Probably her knees, though. Her body had been completely betraying her since the moment she’d met him, after all.
“I wouldn’t call it stalking,” she said.
He cut a look at her, smirking as a heavy billow of white smoke filtered through his nostrils before looking away with a soft shake of his head.
“Basically impossible not to be lured in by your playing.” She came to a stop a few feet away, for fear of scaring him away, like he was some skittish forest creature that could flee at any moment.
He stood and leaned the guitar against the rock, probably ready to confirm her worries and flee. Instead, he faced her head on while shoving his hands in the pockets of his pajama bottoms, his combat boots crunching on the ground as he took a few hesitant steps toward her. Viola held his eyes the closer he grew, always amazed at how tall, wide, and strong he was. His muscular arms like chiseled marble—always pulled tightly enough to appear seconds from breaking.
Refrain (Stereo Hearts Book 3) Page 17
