by Malcom, Anne
So he assumed correctly.
I technically had an office that I was expected to make an appearance in, but I was barely ever there. It was decorated tastefully, expensively and comfortable for all of the wealthy and well-bred people we dealt with.
I was neither wealthy—I was by my trailer park standards, but not by oil tycoon standards—nor well-bred so I did not feel comfortable inside the offices.
My boss put up with it because I was good at my job.
Also because we had some extremely wealthy not so well-bred clients who didn’t like such formal settings either. They did like buying a shitload of art. As long as I made an appearance—and a huge commission, I made my own hours.
“You can work from here, and look after Ava tomorrow,” Killian continued. “So she won’t get beaten up by her uncles.”
He smirked mentioning Mia’s little boys. They were only a few years older than their ‘niece’ and weren’t likely to beat her up since they were mini badasses and already protective as hell over the beautiful, dark-haired little girl that they doted on. But them not beating her up was pretty much the only certain thing about them. They started a small fire at their preschool the other day and still, no one knows how they did it.
“I can’t stay here and interrupt your life and all the wild sex you likely have while Ava’s napping,” I protested, though the thought of never having to leave their warm, loving home was tempting. Even if the pain of seeing them all intense and in love was a hot lance through my heart.
“You’ve seen Lexie’s life,” Killian replied. “Interruptions come part in parcel of it. Which you are not.” He kissed her neck. “And no way could you interrupt any wild sex, nothin’s gonna stop me from that.”
Red blossomed in Lexie’s cheeks and the pure sex in Killian’s tone. The woman was married to him, had a child with him and had known him since she was sixteen, but still he caused that reaction. Then again, that much intensity from a guy that hot would cause a reaction in a coma patient.
I was insanely jealous and insanely happy for my best friend at the same time.
“But—”
“You’re staying,” Lexie interrupted.
I sighed. “Okay, but you have to promise that you’re not going to let this affect your relationship with Wyatt,” I said to Lexie. “And that you won’t kill him.” I pointed at Killian.
“Impossible,” Killian said at the same time Lexie muttered, “Not happening.”
“He got you pregnant and then left you to deal with it on your own,” Lexie said. “He’s not getting away with that.”
“I got myself pregnant and chose to do this on my own,” I corrected. “This was not something we planned, and he has every right to act the way he did.”
“Like fuck,” Killian hissed.
“Seriously, you guys. This is going to be hard and awkward enough as it is, I don’t want to Yoko Ono the band.”
“Wyatt’s the Yoko Ono here,” Lexie said. “The band is a family and you’re just as much a part of it as he is.”
I raised my brow. “I can’t play bass.”
She scowled at me.
“Seriously,” I said. “Consider it your baby present to me, not killing the father of said baby. Or even mentioning all of this to him,” I said, motioning to my splotchy face.
Killian scowled. “Fine.” He kissed Lexie long and hard. “Gotta go to church, baby.”
His eyes were dark. There was something going on with the Sons of Templar. But then again, there was always something going on with the Sons. Drive-bys. Murders. Kidnappings. Explosions.
Lexie screwed up her face in worry. “Be careful.”
He cupped her chin. “Never. But I’ll come home to you. Always. That’s a promise. Love you, Freckles.”
“Love you, Kill,” she whispered, her voice breathy.
Killian kissed her again and strode toward me. He grabbed my neck. “You’re not alone. And you change your mind on the killing thing, offer stands.” He kissed my forehead and then walked out of the room.
Both Lexie and I watched him.
“I want to hate you both, but it’s impossible, even someone as cynical as me melts in the face of your stupid love connection,” I sighed.
Lexie grinned, dreamy and lazy. But then her eyes snapped back to me, full of worry. “Honestly, now he’s gone, and you don’t have to pretend to be a badass like you are with everyone with me...are you okay?”
I scowled. “I don’t pretend to be a badass. I am a badass.”
She nodded. “No arguments. But even badasses admit they’re not okay. Because being not okay is part of being human.”
I hated that her soft tone and genuine concern and weird hippy wisdom hit me enough to melt the grip I’d had on my façade, though it had been tenuous at best anyway.
“Those girls I used to make fun of, the ones who spent days in bed crying, losing their dignity over a man?” I whispered. “Yeah, I’m one of those now. Because I can’t control my fucking tear ducts.” I angrily wiped away more tears. “I want to break down every moment. I want to crawl away from the world and hide from everything. Because everything reminds me of him. Books. Movies. Fucking music, of course. Breathing reminds me of him. I can’t fucking escape it. The pain.”
I hated the way my voice sounded. Hated the truth to the words. Especially because I didn’t even have a proper relationship to mourn. I had one drunken night of sex and a collection of phone calls and platonic experiences over the years.
But had anything between Wyatt and I ever been platonic?
It seemed like it was harder to get over a relationship you never got to have instead of one that you did.
Lexie moved across the kitchen, pulling me into her arms. “Honey, you’re not meant to escape it,” she said, speaking in that soft and kind tone she’d adopted for me and my fragile heart these past weeks. “It’s not something you can get away with. It’s something you have to accept. The fact that it’s going to hurt every second. Every moment. And once you do that, maybe it’ll only hurt every few seconds. Gradually it’ll be every minute. And then you’ll be able to breathe freely sometimes. It’s never going to stop hurting. Because that’s not the way it works.”
She glanced down to my stomach, which was still flat. “And soon you’re going to have a little human being who takes up your whole heart.”
Lexie had been right about one thing. Well, about all of it actually. I did hurt every second. And the little human being giving me heartburn, morning sickness and insomnia was something quickly taking up my mangled, fucked-up, and broken heart.
But I had to get about being someone that my kid could look up to.
I had to figure out how to be a badass with a broken heart.
And I would.
Wyatt
He was sitting alone in his living room when security called him. It was the first visitor he’d had in weeks.
The band was systematically ignoring him, apart from in rehearsals, when they spoke to him when needed but otherwise made it clear he was persona non-grata. Wyatt had to say that having his best friends in the entire world give him such cold looks cut him deep. They’d known each other almost a decade, had become inseparable that day they heard Lexie in the school auditorium. The day they made the band.
Catapulting into fame was what broke apart a lot of bands in the business, chiseled away at the bonds that made them famous in the first place. It was a machine, a monster, that liked to gnaw away at all the good and pure relationships. Wyatt had seen it first-hand. But not with them. Fame made their connection stronger. Though he and Sam jumped into the more traditional trappings of rock star life—the girls, the booze, the drugs, the cars—they had Noah and Lexie to keep them level.
Well, to keep him level.
Sam would never be level.
But he had his wife and kid to keep him as much as he could be.
Wyatt couldn’t remember a time when things had been this tense between them. It wasn’t l
ost on their managers, publicists, or assistants either. Mark had demanded he know what was going down, but everyone stayed tight-lipped.
Not out of respect for Wyatt—he’d lost that the second he’d walked away from a pregnant Emma. No, for her. Because they knew the second something like that got leaked, it’d ruin her life.
Their fans were crazy.
Mark was getting increasingly frustrated, especially with the US tour coming up. Wyatt wasn’t increasingly frustrated. He was fucking terrified. That he was losing the only family he ever cared about. The only family that cared about him.
And Emma.
The thought of losing her, of losing a family with her...that chilled his bones. A real man, in the face of that terror, would get his shit together, claim the woman who’d been a beautiful mystery to him all these years. Who was difficult and brilliant in a sea of easy and simple women.
But he didn’t.
Because he didn’t much feel like a real man. Instead he stayed at home. Sought solace in the bottom of a bottle.
Multiple bottles.
Loneliness pulsated from the walls of his ten-million-dollar mansion.
He was one of the most famous men in the world, he had countless invitations to parties every night, a phone filled with industry friends who he knew would turn up at his house in moments, make an epic party with.
He could fill his house with bodies and it’d still be fucking empty.
So when security rang and told him who was coming in, he was surprised. Secretly fucking elated. Because he didn’t think he could stand his own company for a second longer and he had been moments away from calling people who offered only empty company and shallow conversation.
He was waiting at the door by the time she knocked.
Her eyes went up and down him when he opened the door, taking in the jeans that hadn’t been washed, the mess of his hair, bags under his bloodshot eyes.
“Ah, good to see you’re dealing with all this in the healthy, adult way,” she said dryly, pushing past him into the foyer. “Oh my god, I’m getting contact drunk from the air in here!” she yelled, walking toward the living room.
He followed her because he didn’t know what else to do.
She was busy yanking at the curtains, letting light illuminate the pathetic situation of bottles and pizza boxes.
“You know, these open,” Mia said, pointing to the window. “They let in fresh air that circulates and might wash away the smell of your rock star life and bad decisions.”
Wyatt flopped on the sofa, embarrassed but also slightly buzzed, whisky for breakfast took the edge off.
“I know, I’m an asshole,” he muttered, reaching for the half-full bottle.
Mia was quicker, snatching it from his grasp. “You really think the answers lie in the bottle of this?” she asked, regarding the bottle in question. “And dude, you’re a billionaire rock star, if you’re gonna drink yourself into a stupor, then at least do it with the fancy stuff. Seriously.” She shook her head.
“Did Lexie send you?” he asked.
Lexie had barely spoken to him.
Lexie, who could talk for hours about different kinds of yoga, the best Die Hard movie and which coffee places were the best in L.A. didn’t have two words to spare him that weren’t to do with their music.
Mia regarded the sofa. “I’m not gonna get pregnant sitting on this, am I?” she asked instead. “I’ve already got two kids by a biker who are likely stealing nuclear codes right now and you’ve already got one woman knocked up.”
Though she said it as a joke, it hit Wyatt. He ached for more whisky, but she’d snatched it from his reach. He lit up a smoke instead. He’d been going through at least a pack a day.
“Really?” Mia regarded the cigarette. “You’re embracing all the stereotypes, aren’t you?”
Wyatt shrugged in answer.
“I know you’re a good man,” Mia said, jumping right in. “Which is why I’m all the more surprised you’re acting like a total rock star. I’ve been very proud of you all, for not letting this whole rock star thing go to your head.” She paused. “Well, except Sam, but he was always going to have trouble fitting his ego through doors with or without world fame.”
She started gathering up trash as she spoke.
“Apart from that, you haven’t turned into total assholes who treat human beings like they’re somehow less just because you’re more.” She turned and raised her eyebrow at Wyatt.
That eyebrow raise hit him in the fucking gut.
“Well, until now,” she said, turning back to where she was piling up pizza boxes. “I’m gonna have faith in you and think you’ve got some really flipping good reasons, or what you consider to be good reasons and not just because you don’t want to stop living your selfish, glitzy lifestyle.” She screwed up her nose at a stained tee stuck to a half-full tub of ice cream.
But she also kept talking. “Because I know you. I know you’re better than that, even when you’re not acting like it. I know that just because your dad didn’t give you bruises doesn’t mean he didn’t leave scars. But my parents were less than a picnic and I didn’t run away when I was pregnant with Lexie.”
She seemed to give up on the cleaning, stood and put her hands on her hips to give Wyatt her full attention.
He hated that. He didn’t need to see herself through Mia’s eyes, the one decent adult figure he’d had.
“I didn’t run away, mainly because I couldn’t. And you know what? Emma can’t either. She is terrified, not that she’ll admit it, even under threat of death or having to listen to Miley Cyrus songs for the rest of her life—her words not mine.” She paused. “I think Miley’s recent stuff is actually quite good. And ever since she got back with Liam she’s—” She shook herself from going on a tangent as she was known to do.
“Emma’s parents were bad to the bone,” she said, light-hearted tone disappearing. “They didn’t just leave scars. They took out chunks of Emma, chunks that’ll never grow back.”
Wyatt knew this, you couldn’t get close to Emma—as close as she’d let you get—without seeing it.
“She’s a remarkable person now, even without those pieces they took,” Mia said. “But she’s damaged. And she’s looking at a life where the man who she’s secretly crushed on for years gets her pregnant and throws her aside like some groupie.
“You’re a rock star, Wyatt. And never in your life have you done anything so rock star, like walk away from the woman carrying your baby. And that’s not a freaking compliment.”
She let her words puncture through his flesh like the knives they were. The truth always did damage, especially when delivered by someone you cared about, someone who was looking at you and finding you lacking.
He ran his hands through his hair, hating the words coming from Mia’s mouth, the look of disappointment on the woman’s face. “I didn’t ask for this.” The words were limp and fucking pathetic even to his ears.
She raised her brow. “Two things in life we don’t ask for. The most horrible of things, our greatest fears. And the most beautiful of things, our greatest hopes. Because most of our hopes somehow fill us with more dread than fear. Maybe they’re structured in disaster. I know your greatest fear isn’t male pattern baldness. It’s becoming your father. Which is why you didn’t want to be a father. But walking away from something like this? That’s walking right into your greatest fear. And away from something that I can promise you will be beautiful. Not easy, because, well, it’s Emma and she’s mother forking insane. But you’ll never be bored. And you’ll never be unhappy.”
She leaned forward and handed him the whisky.
He took it more out of habit than anything else.
“I’m not here to tell you what to do.” She paused. “Who am I kidding? I’m totally here to tell you what to do. I’m here to tell you to grow up and do the right thing. Not just because I care about Emma. But because I care about you. I want you to have a beautiful life. Look around, rock s
tar. Does this look beautiful to you?”
Her question and her words linger long after she was gone. Wyatt sat there contemplating them, and a half-empty bottle of whisky.
Or full, depending on your viewpoint.
Chapter Seven
Emma
It happened the next day.
The thing I’d been dreading and somehow yearning for.
Wyatt.
It was a surprise it didn’t happen sooner since I was living at Lexie’s and the band had a recording studio in the house from when Ava was a new-born and Lexie didn’t want to have to leave her long periods of time. As Ava grew, the band still used the space because this mansion on the hill in their hometown had a quietness about it that L.A. could never offer.
I knew that the band’s absence had been orchestrated for my benefit. Of course they had been around separately. Sam and Gina coming with apology cards. Yes, Sam had “Sorry my brother and ex best friend is a total dickhead” cards made. Complete with an illustration of Wyatt with a dick on his head.
It made me laugh.
Noah had come with a box set of our favorite TV show and set up on the sofa with me for two days.
But no Wyatt.
I think everyone expected it. For him to step up. For him to want me.
I knew better.
Until the knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” I yelled over my shoulder, Ava on my hip. “Do you think it’s Grandma with more stories of hemorrhoids and childbirth?” I asked her, tickling her stomach. She giggled and grinned. “We’re not allowed to call her grandma,” she said, deadpan. “I’m only allowed to eat candy for breakfast if I call her a GILF.”
I was giggling myself as I opened the door.
But I stopped when I was faced with Wyatt. All the pain I’d been pretending I wasn’t feeling hit me like a punch in the face.
“Uncle It!” Ava screamed, trying to launch herself from my arms.
Wyatt frowned at my arms, and then grinned wide and fake, and Ava, snatching her from me.
