She glides her hands along my chest and abs. “You’re a man now. And you’re beautiful. I always knew you would be.”
“Not half as beautiful as you.” I gently kiss her on the lips.
Her breath is heavy. “I want you.” She wraps her hand around my dick and strokes, and I flinch in ecstasy. “I want this.”
I run one finger along her seam, rewarded with slick heat. I push two fingers inside of her and she moans. She’s drenched and ready, so I put a hand under each of her knees, lifting them as I place myself directly over her center. Then I slowly brush against her core with the tip of my cock and she gasps, her head rocking back into the pillow.
I push in farther, straining to keep from pounding in at full force. It’s exquisite, the pain and the pleasure all at once.
“God, Colin!” she cries out, tilting her hips up to meet mine.
I release her knees and lie on her, pushing in to the hilt. I stop and do nothing but feel her for a moment. “Shh. Don’t move,” I tell her. “Do you feel me? All of me?”
She swallows and manages to choke out, “Yes.”
“That’s for you. You’re fucking gorgeous. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. If you had any idea what you do to me…” I attack her mouth with mine as I start moving again, pumping in and out as hard as I can.
I put my hand on top of her head to keep it from knocking against the headboard, and I slam, faster and faster, until all I see are stars and all I hear is her voice saying my name as she pulses around me—hot, smooth, clenching joy that sends me over the edge and into oblivion.
AFTER DISPOSING of the condom, I come back to bed and pull Marsha into my arms, spooning her like I did last night, but naked this time—yeah, so much better.
I nuzzle her neck. “How you doing?”
“Mmm. Pretty good, I’d say,” she murmurs.
“Good. I’d be happy to make you even better. Give me a few minutes to recover.”
She laughs. “As much as I wish we could, I don’t want to fall asleep and have to explain things to Sean in the morning. I need to get back to my own room.”
I know she’s right, but damn, I don’t want her to leave. I pull her against me harder. “I’ll miss you,” I say honestly.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course. Anything.”
“The years we were apart—tell me about your life. What was it like? How did you end up a rock star?”
I haven’t said much to Marsha about the last decade of my life, and that was intentional. I’m not sure how to explain who I was, the things I did during that time. I’m really proud of some of it and not at all proud of the rest. I don’t want her to change her opinion of me based on things that don’t matter to me anymore.
“Wow. That’s a lot of ground to cover,” I answer.
“Give me the highlights.”
I hear the smile in her voice. I press my lips to the back of her neck, breathing in the scent of her skin and the honey smell of her hair.
“Okay. Well, you know we moved to Portland for my senior year. I met the band that year. They had just started messing around with music and wanted a bass player, so I auditioned and they took me. In all honesty, I think I was the only kid who auditioned.”
She laughs.
“Those three were a little”—I stop, searching for the right word—“worldlier than I was.”
She snorts. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“I was, uh, kind of lost. Believe me, I hadn’t gotten over you yet. Not even close, and for the first time ever, I was having a hard time adjusting to a new place. Looking back, I think it was the first time I realized that a person could be home instead of a place. You were my home when I was in Oklahoma. I couldn’t figure out Portland not because it wasn’t Oklahoma, but because it didn’t have you.”
She sniffs, removes my hand from where it was caressing her breast, and brings it to her mouth, kissing the knuckles.
“I spent a lot of time doing things I don’t understand now. I started getting high. Mostly pot, but I’d do other things if they were available. After high school we started playing clubs around Portland. We got a pretty devoted local following, and things started coming easy to us—drugs, girls, all the usual stuff.”
She tries to roll to face me, but I squeeze her tighter. She seems to get the message. “You doing drugs? That doesn’t seem like you.”
“Babe, you need to know. I spent years stoned. And I’m not kidding.”
“Really? So all those jokes about you aren’t just rumors?”
My chest constricts. I hate that shit. I hate that there’s a whole world out there that sees me as nothing more than a modern-day Spicoli. But the fact is that it’s part of my history and I can’t deny it.
“Yeah, I’m afraid a lot of it is true. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true.”
“What changed? Did you…did you go to rehab too?” she asks, referring to Walsh and his stint in rehab for alcoholism.
“No. Can you even go to rehab for pot?” I ask, genuinely curious.
She chuckles. “I have no idea.”
“Me either. No, what happened was that one morning a few weeks after the band split, I woke up, reached for the pipe, and couldn’t do it.”
“What do you mean you couldn’t do it?”
I roll onto my back, remembering that day like it was yesterday rather than close to a year ago. “I was in a hotel here in Hawaii. I’d been taking surfing lessons with Nick and kind of lying low. Spending a lot of time by myself, trying to figure out where we’d gone wrong with the band, what the hell I was going to do with my life next. But I’d been smoking as much as ever. Morning, noon, and night so to speak.”
I can’t see her face, but I can feel Marsha flinch.
“So that day I woke up and grabbed the pipe like I had every other morning for years, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t pack it, couldn’t light it, couldn’t put it to my mouth. Deep inside I knew I was done. Just like that. Done.”
She’s rolled so she’s facing me now, and I run my thumb along her lower lip. “I haven’t had anything more than a few beers since. And I won’t. I want you to know that. With me being around Sean and everything—I’ll never do more than have a drink again. I swear it. I was never an addict. I’m… I’m not sure why I did it. It made my life easier. It kept me from having to grow up and face shit. It kept me numb. But I don’t want to live like that ever again. It wasn’t worth it and it almost lost me my band and all the things I cared about most.”
“Almost lost you the band?”
“Yeah. We’re considering options. Maybe getting back together. I think Joss and I are on the same page, but we have to see what Walsh and Mike think.”
“Oh.” There’s strain in her voice.
“Hey.” I put my finger under her chin and force her gaze up. “Don’t go assuming you know what that means. All three of those guys are in serious relationships now. They aren’t going to do anything that leaves their girls at home for months at a time. Joss, he hates the big stadium shows and long world tours. Part of what we have to figure out is what Lush will look like if we put it back together. But one thing I know for sure is that it won’t look like it did before.”
She nods. “Okay.”
“Trust me? Please?”
“I do.” She kisses me sweetly on the cheek and my whole chest melts into a puddle. “So what was it like when you hit it big? What was it like with all that media attention?”
“It was overwhelming. We went from doing local clubs to opening for bigger acts. One minute we were all working at these suck-ass jobs—washing dishes, doing landscaping—and the next, we were opening for the Black Keys and traveling all over the world. We went to Japan, Germany, England, Australia. I can’t even remember all the places we were in those first few years. It was this blur of rehearsing, recording, and traveling.”
“Luckily, you like to travel,” she says, laying her head on my chest and rubbing little
circles around my nipple that drive me crazy.
“Yeah, but even I got worn out after a while. It’s exhausting and not something anyone should do long term. A few weeks maybe—a few years? No way.”
A door slams from somewhere on the floor and Marsha starts, waiting to hear if it’s Sean. Once everything is quiet again she relaxes.
“You need to go, huh?” I ask, hoping she’ll say no.
“I should.” She raises up on one arm and looks down at me.
My voice is husky. “The most important thing I want you to know about my past is that I was never in love. Not once. There were women, I can’t pretend there weren’t. But none of them ever lasted more than a few weeks, and there weren’t nearly as many as the tabloids would like you to think. They were fun girls, and girls to pass the time with, none of them meant anything to me.”
“It’s okay, Colin,” she says, her eyes cast down.
“No. Look at me. I mean this, and I want you to understand. No woman has ever touched me here”—I put my fist over my heart—“but you. It’s always been you.”
She sighs and kisses me, and I can feel her heart singing out to mine. It beats in response, and before I know it, we’re wrapped in one another again and I’m inside her, my soul singing with the joy of coming home.
Chapter Sixteen
Marsha
THE REST of our trip to Hawaii is a blur of sun, sand, and—as soon as Sean’s asleep every night—sex. Colin is everything I remember—funny, considerate, and attentive. When he’s around the other musicians it’s clear they all respect him. He doesn’t play the glamorous instrument, but he’s very good at what he does, and I can tell all the other guys enjoy playing with him.
The morning after we get back to Texas I’m at Leanne’s, preparing for yet another Women’s Auxiliary Club meeting.
“Well, aren’t you glowing?” Leanne teases as she opens the door, grinning.
“Oh, hush. You can’t tell that from two seconds of looking at me.”
“The hell I can’t,” she argues, ushering me inside. “It’s written all over you. You look like a new woman.”
“Well”—I get closer—“I feel like one, truth be told.”
She laughs and grabs two cups of coffee before she sits at the table. I follow and clutch the steaming cup of heaven. Leanne claims that when you run a ranch staffed by recovering alcoholics you’d better know how to make a good cup of coffee or there’s likely to be a mutiny.
“So, everything went well?”
I know I’m blushing. My face is so hot that it’s like I have a fire on my cheeks. But I can’t keep from smiling as I hide behind my cup. “It did go pretty well.”
“All right, out with it. You have to spill. There’s a rule about anyone who goes off on a vacation with a hot rock star. It’s your obligation to share with the rest of us mere mortals.”
I blow the steam off the top of my cup, and I hear cows low from outside right before the cowboys start whooping and hollering. “So you’re telling me Jenny came over here and gave you all the dirty details every time she and Mike went out of town?”
Leanne cringes. “She came over, but no, she did not share the dirty details, and honestly, this is Mike Owens we’re talking about. Those details are probably way dirtier than a plain old ranch wife like me can handle.” She fans herself and looks simultaneously intrigued and appalled.
I can’t help but laugh. Mike is a handful. I’m not sure how Jenny deals with him, but she seems to relish it, so more power to her.
“Okay, I’ll tell you this much—Colin and I are dating and he’s been really wonderful to me and to Sean. It’s just…” I pause, trying to find the right words. “It’s almost unreal. I sort of can’t believe it’s happening to me.”
Leanne lays her hand on mine on the table. “Sweetheart, it is happening to you, and no one I know deserves it more. You have to stop thinking of yourself as being unworthy. You’re not that poor, beleaguered woman who showed up here with Jeff all those years ago. You’re strong and smart, a hard worker, and a fantastic mother. Even before I got to know you this last year I saw that.”
I smile at Leanne, a tiny portion of what she said seeping into my heart and planting a seed of hope there. “I’m so scared some days. So scared that it won’t last and that I’ll have gotten used to all of it. It’s been a week and already he’s all I can think about. What will I do when he gets tired of me or decides that this little Podunk town isn’t where he wants to be?”
Leanne sighs. “What if, what if? Don’t you think we’re all plagued by what-ifs when we start a relationship? There are no guarantees in life, but I’ve seen the way he looks at you. That boy’s not going to ride out of your life on a whim. He’s crazy about you. Even when he was angry he was crazy about you. Trust me. He’s not going anywhere.”
“I hope you’re right.” I have a sip of the coffee. “Sean loves him.”
Leanne nods. “Kids and animals. Colin has the magic. You should see him when he works here. The dogs follow him around, the hens come out of their coops to greet him, and the horses all hang over the fences to get his attention. I’ll bet Sean’s the same way.”
I can’t help but laugh, picturing Colin as some sort of Pied Piper for the farm animals. “You’re right. Sean’s drawn to him, and Colin understands him so well. You’d never know he didn’t have kids of his own.” As soon as I say it, I have a pang of regret. Colin deserves to have children of his own. I give myself a little shake to clear the pain from my heart.
Luckily, Leanne doesn’t seem to notice my momentary lapse. “He’ll make a great dad someday,” she says, looking at me shrewdly. “Probably a real good stepdad too.”
I scoff. “Well, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”
“Oh, dear, you keep sailing on that river De Nile.” She laughs. “In the meantime, I’ll say this—I’d better be a bridesmaid, because my ranch has found wives for more celebrities than the last four seasons of The Bachelor combined. Ronny says he’s going to start advertising us in the Hollywood Reporter—The Ranch Where The Rich and Famous Find Love.”
I can’t help but laugh, and inside, a piece of my worry melts away, making me think there might be a chance Colin and I can make a real go of it. Maybe you do get second chances. Maybe I’m getting mine.
I’VE BEEN at work for an hour or so when Carson saunters in, all cowboy thug and slimy trail in his wake. He makes his way straight to the bar, where I’m filling a drink order while I wait for the kitchen to get the basket of fries my four-top ordered.
“Well, lookie here,” he oozes.
“Carson. What can I get you?” I try to keep my eyes down and my voice impassive, but my heartbeat picks up, and not in a good way. The hair on my arms is standing up, and warning bells are chiming like crazy.
He sits on the barstool in front of me, indicating that he’s settling in for a while. I try to look around surreptitiously for Jimmy, hoping he’ll come in from dealing with the delivery truck soon.
“I think I’ll have some of your best whiskey—neat, sweet thing. I’m celebrating tonight.”
“Okay. One neat Glenlivet coming up.” I grab the bottle on the shelf.
“Don’t you want to know what I’m celebrating?” he asks.
I still for a moment then continue to fix his drink, polishing the tumbler before measuring the amber liquid I pour into it.
I look back at him and set the glass on the bar top. “You running a tab or will that be it?”
He leans forward, his eyes glittering and a malicious smile curling his lips. “Jeff got parole. Two weeks from today, he’ll be out. And he’ll be wanting to spend some quality time with his wife and son.”
My stomach lurches as my nails dig into the varnished wood of the bar. I swallow back the bile and squeeze my eyes shut to block out the chaos that’s swirling in front of me. Lights, people, Jeff’s cruel smile.
I know I shouldn’t let him see me react to this. I know he’ll use it a
gainst me whatever way he can, but I’m so terrified, so panicked, that I can’t control it. I school my features as fast as possible, but the damage has been done.
He chuckles. “If I were you, I’d dump the boyfriend fast. Jeff’s not going to be so happy to see another guy sniffing around what’s his.”
Anger flares inside me and I forget to be afraid. I also forget to wonder how in the world Carson knows about Colin. “How dare you,” I snarl. “Jeff isn’t my husband, he doesn’t have any rights to me or Sean, and if either one of you ever threaten me again, I’ll get a restraining order against the both of you. Now get the hell out of my bar.”
He smirks and shakes his head. “Oh, there she is. The innocent one. You think you can scare me off with a pussy rock star and a restraining order? Sweet thing, I know all about you and the asshole from Lush. Every. Thing. I wonder what life would be like for you around here if everyone else knew you murdered his baby all those years ago.”
If the world froze for a moment with the proclamation that Jeff is getting parole, it grinds to a permanent halt now. I blink, so stunned I can’t even draw breath to form words. I smell alcohol and hear the background noises of people talking and music playing. I touch the slick surface of the bar top and sense the dampness that’s seeping into my hip where I’m leaning against the wet sink under the counter. But it’s like all of it is on a tiny screen that I’m staring at across miles. I’m a statue, trapped in my own body, unable to act.
Somewhere inside me a voice is screaming that this can’t be happening. That I have to wake up. Wake the hell up. There’s no way Carson and Jeff know this. There’s no way they’d use it to blackmail me. There’s no way that my life has been reduced to this.
And beyond that voice there is an ache. An ache for Sean. For what he’ll think of me if he finds out. What people will say to him and how he’ll be treated. And then that little seed of hope that sprang up over the last week, that tiny piece of my heart that was ready to dream and love and start over, shrivels and dies.
I’m still standing there, stiff and terrified, when I hear Colin’s voice through the fog.
A Lush Reunion Page 15
