He stares blankly at me for a moment and then shakes his head as if to pull himself out of a trance. “Fair enough. Once Again it is.”
I eye him suspiciously. “Have you?”
“No. I pulled it out because it didn’t look familiar. Now I know why.”
“Romantic comedy?” There’s laughter in my voice.
He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Looks like I’m doomed by my own stupidity.”
“I’m sure you’ll live through it. If not, there’s always more alcohol.” What is it with men and romantic comedies? Do they think watching two fictional people work out their issues for an hour and a half means some sort of commitment?
The movie starts and Seth sits a few feet from me on the couch, his mug in one hand and the Kahlúa in the other.
“Do you think you might need the whiskey?” I say, teasing him.
“Probably. But I’ll stick with this for now.”
A soulful, gut-wrenching melody fills the room with the opening credits. The scene flashes to a graveside service. Yikes. I thought he’d said this was a romantic comedy.
My phone vibrates on the side table where I’d dropped it. This should be good. Drunk Jax. She doesn’t drink often, but when she does, the entertainment is priceless. I know because since I’ve been away, every time she gets even a little tipsy she blows up my phone.
I’m about to hit Accept when I notice the caller. Cadan.
Chapter Six
Seth
Lucy stiffens as she stares at her phone. She seems paralyzed and worry lines crease her brow. It can’t be anything other than bad news with that look on her face.
I can’t help myself. I reach for the phone, intending to intercept whatever it is that’s waiting for her on the other end, but she grabs it at the last second and punches the Decline button, abruptly making the vibration stop.
“Sorry,” she says. “It was Cadan. I changed my number a month ago. He probably managed to steal Jax’s phone long enough to get it. No one else has it. Not even my mother.”
“Why not?” I can’t imagine a scenario in which I wouldn’t hand over my number to my own mother. Even in the horrific days after the accident, when I’d pushed everyone else away, I’d always taken Mom’s calls, if for no other reason than to keep her from worrying so much. She’d been hurting too, everyone had been, but I couldn’t stand to be the one to cause her more pain. The familiar ache throbs just below my breastbone and it takes me a moment to push past it. The therapist had said this would get easier. He’d lied.
Lucy lowers her gaze to the phone in her hand. “She’d just give it to Cadan the first time he called her.”
“Really?” I say incredulously. “Even if you ask her not to?”
“Yeah.” Her brilliant blue eyes are ablaze with anger when she looks up. “Mom is a firm believer in sticking with your fated one no matter what happens. Never mind if he’s a cheater and a thief. We’re soul mates. Therefore I should forgive anything, ’cause we’re meant to be.”
“Shit.” I run a hand through my hair and glance at the television, not sure what to say to that. Immense relief washes over me as I realize the funeral scene has ended. The movie has progressed to a year later, and the main character has stopped grieving. She’s out with her girlfriends for a Sunday brunch, drinking mimosas while her friends try to talk her into signing up for an Internet-dating site.
“Exactly,” Lucy says. She places her phone on the table and it immediately starts vibrating again. This time she doesn’t hesitate. With one quick glance, she declines the call and closes her eyes.
“Will he keep trying?” Because if he does, I’m going to have to go back to that bar and beat the shit out of her ex. Maybe break his dialing finger. That would be satisfying. Not only would he maybe get the message, but he’d also be unable to play that slick guitar of his for a few months.
“Probably.” She gets up and heads for the kitchen. “Does your sister have any food? I’m feeling a little nauseated.”
I’m surprised it’s taken this long, considering she’s had a variety of different kinds of booze. But she doesn’t really even appear to be tipsy anymore. Maybe it’s just her ex that’s upsetting her. That and the mom talk. I jump up. “I’m sure we can find something.”
Her phone buzzes again, but she doesn’t even look back. I glare at it and contemplate throwing it against the wall. But then Lucy would likely take out all that barely suppressed anger on me. And right now, I want to be the one who comforts her. Panic trickles into my brain. Careful, Seth. That sounds a lot like giving a shit.
“Coming?” Lucy asks from the other room.
“Yeah,” I choke out and follow her. Once in the kitchen, I pull open the fridge and scan the contents. “We’ve got leftover pizza, Chinese, an enchilada, or I can make pasta.” I open the cupboard and gesture to a row of ramen noodles.
“Pasta?” She shakes her head, her eyes full of mock pity. “Top Ramen is not pasta. That stuff has its place, especially when we’re talking hangovers, but don’t try to dress it up. It is what it is.”
Pleasure winds into that ache that never goes away. I freeze, staring at her with wonder, but thank God she’s too busy pulling plates out of one of the glass-front cabinets to notice. Not one person in the past two years has been able to even come close to affecting me this deeply. I’m both awed by her and undeniably resentful. That place was reserved for E. Not this wounded singer who would likely get back together with her ex given enough time. Most people, once they meet their soul mates, never find happiness with another. She’ll be no different. Someday that ass, Kinx, will come to his senses and she’ll forgive him.
“How long has your sister been away?” Lucy asks as she spies the chicken fried rice. “Or do her eating habits mirror those of a man who wouldn’t know a vegetable if it bit him in the ass?”
“My sister?” I ask before I can process what she’s said. Oh, right. “About a week or so. But I’ve been here off and on.” I grab the rice from her and point to a green onion. “There’s a vegetable.”
She leans over and eyes the onion. “How old is it?”
“A few days, I think.”
“You think? Are you willing to risk the certain vomit if it’s gone bad?”
“What are you talking about?” I make a show of sniffing the rice as I hold in laughter. I’d seen my parents have a version of this same conversation a dozen times before. “It’s fine.”
She purses her lips, then pulls out the other two containers of Chinese food. “All right, but if I lose it, you’re holding my hair back.”
Her dark glossy hair shimmers in the kitchen light, and I have to remind myself I don’t have the right to run my hands through it. No matter how much I want to right now.
“Deal?” she asks, turning around.
“Deal.” I lose the battle and brush a fallen lock of hair behind her ear. Her body jerks with a tiny shiver that elicits a response from deep inside me. The desire to lift her into my arms and carry her upstairs hits me hard in the gut.
Our eyes lock. I forget everything but the vulnerability shining back at me. Shit. What am I doing? This is not me. Not anymore. I don’t do relationships. And this? The undeniable protectiveness I seem to feel for this girl feels entirely too much like something more than a one-night stand. I drop my hand and take a step back. “Go on back to the den. I’ll heat this up and bring it in.”
She narrows her eyes at me and gives me a look that makes me think she sees right through me.
I shift under the uncomfortable scrutiny of her gaze.
Then she blinks and turns back to the fridge. She grabs a Diet Coke, the one Lillian, my sister, left among the regular ones. “See you in a few,” she says, heading back out of the kitchen.
Her hips sway and my eyes stay glued to her rising hemline. Christ. She’s intenti
onally trying to kill me. Damn that skirt.
Five minutes later with two steaming plates of Chinese food, I rejoin her in the den. She’s curled up on her end of the couch, fidgeting with her phone. It’s buzzing, but she makes no move to answer it.
I set the plates of food on the table and gently pull the phone from her fingers. “Are you expecting an important call?”
She shakes her head, sadness haunting her expression. Anger vibrates through me. Cadan Kinx. He’s the bastard who’s responsible for the look in her striking eyes. It takes every last bit of strength to not stalk over to the bar and pound my fist into his pansy-ass face. Fucking dick.
I power her phone down. “If you’re not going to answer, it’s probably better to just turn it off. No need to torture yourself.”
“But what about Jax? What if she needs us?” Her voice is small, as if she isn’t sure of anything in this moment.
I pull my phone from my back pocket and tap out a text to Jax, letting her know if she needs Lucy to call me. “Is this okay?”
Lucy takes the phone from my outstretched hand. “She’s going to think something’s going on.”
Neither of us says anything. There is something definitely going on, but would either of us act on it? “She’s a big girl,” I say. “Besides, she’s either too drunk to care or she’s already home asleep.”
“True.” Lucy leans back into the couch and closes her eyes. “I can’t believe how tired I am all of a sudden.”
I hit Send and sink into the couch, closer to her this time.
Her eyes fly open, clearly surprised I’ve invaded some of her personal space. If she isn’t careful, I’m going to invade a whole lot more of it. Given half the chance, I’ll do my best to get her mind off that douche mate of hers. At least for a few hours, anyway.
“Eat.” I hand her a plate and take the other for myself.
She smiles, and though she isn’t exactly the sassy, confident singer she’d been earlier in the night, the tension has drained from her face. Her muscles relax as if she’s settling in for the night. She looks comfortable.
I try to ignore how content the scene makes me. It’s temporary. She’s only relaxing because she has a safe haven for the night. Tomorrow she’ll be gone, and so will all the alcohol-induced feelings. Except I’m painfully aware I’m not all that drunk. And neither is she.
She picks up the remote and restarts the movie. She must have stopped and reset it because it starts up roughly where it was when we first left the room. We eat in silence as we watch the protagonist go on date after date, chronicling all her disasters on a blog. She has quite the following before Wes Chadwick calls her to do an interview for a national news outlet about dating after you’ve lost your soul mate.
I cringe and glance at Lucy, desperate to turn this shit off. Everyone knows it’s next to impossible to find a love match after you’ve met your mate. This movie only serves to torture us into thinking there’s a second chance at love. Right. No one can compare to E and everything she was, everything that we were. I take Lucy’s discarded plate and my own. “I’ll be right back.”
She picks up the remote and glances at me, her eyes too bright. This movie is the worst pick ever. But she chose it. “Do you want me to pause it?”
“No,” I say more sharply than I mean to. “It’s fine.” Once back in the kitchen, I take my time rinsing the plates and wiping down the counter, which isn’t even dirty. After twenty minutes go by, I have no choice but to return to the movie from hell. I search the fridge for another Diet Coke for Lucy and finally find one in the very back. How long had that been there? Months probably. That case of regular Coke was left over from the surprise birthday party Lillian had tried to throw eight weeks ago. That had ended in a shouting match between us and we haven’t spoken much since.
Damn her. Why hadn’t she just listened to me when I’d said no celebration? I’d ended up in a cheap bar in Leggett and had woken up next to that girl Cami, who’d already mentally moved to Mendocino. At some point she’d managed to extract my number from my cell phone while I’d been asleep. In the end, I’d had to change my number just to get rid of her. In my mind, the fiasco was all Lillian’s fault. I never would have left town if she’d just left everything well enough alone.
The house is really quiet as I move back to the den. There are no voices or background music filtering through the house. Has she paused the movie again? I tense. I cannot watch that crap any longer. I stride into the den, determined to stop the movie, but it’s already off.
Lucy stands and holds out a hand to me.
I place the Diet Coke on the table. “That’s for you.”
“Thanks,” she whispers and moves closer. Her fingers brush my arm and slide down to twine with my fingers. I want to pull away, but at the same time, I can’t force myself to do it. Her touch is too soft, too comforting, too everything.
“What happened to the movie?” Why did I ask that? I don’t give a shit about that movie. In fact, I’m going to smash the Blu-ray into little bits as soon as humanly possible.
She places her free hand on my cheek and trails her fingers across my jawline. “I don’t think either of us was enjoying it.”
I don’t respond. I’m too busy trying to breathe. Her touch is light, tantalizing, and I want her more than I’ve wanted anything… anyone… in the past eighteen months. The emotional turmoil spilling through me, the guilt, the want, the need, it’s all more than I can handle. I know I need to step away from this girl. Leave. Walk out of her life.
But then she rises up on her tiptoes. “Seth,” she says and presses her lips to mine.
Chapter Seven
Lucy
That damn movie. Why had I picked it again? Oh yeah. Wes Chadwick. However, not even Wes’s startling eyes and gorgeous body are compelling enough to keep me watching. People lose their soul mates all the time. Whoever wrote this movie clearly had been trying to explore some wish fulfillment. It doesn’t happen twice. Everyone knows that. The best you can hope for is some sort of contentment with a person you like well enough to hang out with on a regular basis.
But that all-encompassing love? You only get it once. Pretending it exists outside of the one is asking for disappointment.
I grab the remote and push buttons until the screen goes blank. There’s no way I’m going to continue to subject Seth to such an awful movie. The despair written all over his face as he left with the plates is too much to bear. My heart breaks for him. Jax told me he’d lost his girlfriend in a horrific accident. He hadn’t walked away like I did. Even though it was my choice, I’m still suffering. I don’t know what’s worse: feeling like half a person or losing myself completely in Cadan’s bullshit.
The longer Seth’s gone, the more I start to resent the movie for putting that look in his eyes. I’m oddly protective of this guy, and I don’t know why. Maybe because he’s been so kind to me. Maybe because he’s Jax’s friend. Or maybe it’s because of the way he made me melt when he had his hands all over me.
When Seth finally returns, his jaw is set with barely contained tension. I stand and hold out a hand to him as he sets down a Diet Coke, then I move closer and lace my fingers with his.
He notices the television and turns curious eyes on me. “What happened to the movie?”
Seeing him standing there, filling the space so completely, yet appearing vulnerable and unsure of what to do next, propels me into action. I run my fingertips over his jaw and give a vague response about neither of us enjoying the flick.
At my touch, the uncertainty in his eyes vanishes, replaced by molten desire.
I rise up on my tiptoes. “Seth…”
Our lips meet and it’s all heat and fire and raw passion. His hands slip into my hair and tighten, holding me to him in that incredibly sexy, gentle but possessive way.
God, I want him. More than I would’ve thou
ght possible. He tastes salty and sweet, and I can’t get enough. His faint, spicy, masculine scent wraps around me, entrancing me, inviting me closer. I press my chest against his and almost gasp at the rough caress of fabric against my hardened nipples. The halter-style dress wasn’t exactly made for bra wearing, so I’d skipped it altogether.
“Lucy,” Seth whispers between kisses, his voice rough, full of all the desire I crave.
“Hmm.” I moan back as he nips at my neck.
One arm wraps around my waist and he tugs me closer, pressing his groin into me. He’s already rock hard. The knowledge sends heat between my thighs. My fingers itch to free him from his jeans, to demand he take me right here and now. Instead, I curl my fists into his shirt and hold on as his mouth works its way from my neck to my exposed collarbone.
“You taste like vanilla frosting,” he murmurs against me and tilts my head farther to the side for better access. “It’s making me crazy.”
“Thank God,” I say, breathless.
He lifts his head, his eyes pinning me with their intensity, before he bends and presses his lips to the swell of my breast. The shock of his hot tongue against my exposed cleavage sends me whirling. I shift my hips against his, trying desperately to get closer. I want to feel every inch of him as he works his tongue lower.
“So fucking beautiful,” he murmurs and lifts his head. Holding my gaze, he glides his hands up over my arms to my shoulders and stops at the base of my neck, gently holding the tie of my halter. He watches me, silently asking for my permission.
I answer by slipping my hands under his black T-shirt. When my fingers touch the hard expanse of his warm chest, he sucks in a breath and slowly tugs. The tie comes undone easily. My halter slips down to my waist, exposing me to him. His eyes stay locked on mine for a truly tantalizing moment of self-torture. I bite my bottom lip and shift my gaze to my chest.
Look at me. Touch me, I mentally beg. If he doesn’t, I’m going to combust where I stand.
Rockers After Dark: 6 Book Bundle of Sexy Musicians Page 6
