Let it Burn: Sons of Sinners Part 2 (A Rock Star Romance)

by Grace James

  My smile faded as my thumb flew over the screen.

  Me: Why am I texting you?

  Blake: Want me to call you instead?

  Me: No. I mean why are we doing this?

  Blake: Texting?

  Me: Talking at all.

  Blake: Don’t know about you, but I’m doing it ‘cause I can’t stop.

  Me: You stopped before. You can do it again.

  When the phone started ringing in my hand a few seconds later, I wasn’t even surprised.

  “Hey,” I said quietly as I brought it to my ear.

  “Hey,” he replied, his deep, gravelly voice giving me shivers.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” I warned him. “It’s a bad idea.”

  “We’re just talking, Princess.”

  “There’s no such thing as ‘just talking’ when it comes to you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You have an agenda.”

  “I do?”

  “You know you do.”

  I heard him sigh down the line. “Okay, I do. My agenda is you.”

  “Sleeping with me,” I stated.

  “No, BEING with you.”

  Hope bubbled up in my chest, but I squashed it. Despite his kidding around before, Blake was good with words – but not so good with living up to them. My silly hope turned to lead in my limbs and it was my turn to sigh. “We really screwed each other up, didn’t we?” I murmured.

  He puffed out a grim laugh. “Yeah, Princess. Totally fucked each other over.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. He’d apologized to me a lot, both three years ago and since he came back, but I’d never said it back – until then. It felt good to finally say the words. I clarified, “For my side of things back then, I mean. Hurting you was the last thing I ever wanted to do, and I’m so sorry I did.”

  He was silent for a beat before he said quietly, “…thank you.”

  I didn’t say anything back. I knew I should be telling him that this was closure and that he shouldn’t call me anymore, but the words stuck in my throat.

  So I hung up instead.

  33

  Melancholy country riffs drifted under the door of my office. It was almost ten thirty on Sunday night, which meant that it was Anything Goes Night at The Academy. It was a similar set up to open mic night, only you had to register to play online first and you could play up to three songs either as a band or as a soloist. We made people register so that we could make sure we had an eclectic mix of genres every week. For example, if we were heavy on Metal applicants, we’d spread them out over a few weeks so that one single night wasn’t saturated with one genre.

  Normally, I would probably watch at least some of the acts – but that night I was sitting at my desk in my office, tapping away on my laptop, dealing with the influx of potential clients we’d had recently.

  My eyes were starting to get gritty from staring at the computer screen for so long, when Candice popped her head around the door. “Amy, you have a visitor.”

  “Who?” I asked absently, without looking up. When she didn’t say anything right away I paused in what I was doing to glance her way; she was watching me with a curious little smile on her face. “Candice?” I prompted.

  Her grin got wider as she said excitedly, “It’s Blake Maxwell! He’s out there drinking a beer right now!”

  My hands froze over my keyboard. “Blake’s here?”

  “Yeah! He’s got this hoodie pulled down low over his hair and he’s wearing sunglasses. At night. Inside. But I’m pretty sure it’s him.”

  My stomach filled with butterflies – crazy ones that would probably do great in an audition for Cirque de Soleil – as I followed Candice out into the main room and cut my way through the crowd.

  Blake was sitting alone in one of the booths at the back. He looked like little more than a hulking shadow in the darkest part of the venue, away from the lights of the stage and the bar. Like Candice said, most of his features were hidden – but I think I’d recognize him anywhere.

  Pausing at the bar, I bit my lip indecisively.

  I could feel him watching me. My skin was alive with the knowledge that his intoxicating blue eyes were fixed on me behind those dark glasses.

  I started to move towards him before I was even aware that I’d made a decision.

  When I reached his booth, I stood for a moment, looking down at him, unsure what to say. The moment seemed big somehow. Important. Though I wasn’t really sure why.

  “Hey,” I offered lamely.

  One side of his mouth kicked up into a small smile. “Hey.”

  I glanced away as I dragged a hand through my hair.

  God, why am I so nervous?

  The touch of Blake’s hand on my wrist brought my eyes back to him. My whole arm broke into goose pimples at the feel of his warm skin on mine.

  “You gonna sit down with me for a minute?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he tugged me towards him, gently but firmly, shuffling up a little so that I could slide into the booth next to him. When I was seated, he released my wrist and his hand immediately went to my neck. He pushed my hair aside, and then I felt the pad of his thumb skim over the mark he’d left on me, sending tingles down my spine. “Shit, Princess, I really made a mess of you.”

  Ha! More than you know.

  I looked at him, but I couldn’t see his eyes.

  Suddenly, I really needed to see his eyes.

  Hesitantly, I reached up and pulled his sunglasses off. He let me. His eyes were dark indigo in the low light, but the tenderness in them was unmistakable. He was staring at me with that look in his eyes that he used to get; the one that made me feel like I was the only thing in the world worth seeing.

  My body, my mind, every part of me, just lit up. He literally stole my breath. Overwhelmed, I looked away again.

  Blake’s hand flattened possessively on the nape of my neck, sending currents of heat through my body. “Hey, look at me.”

  I did it. I couldn’t resist. “Stop staring at me like that,” I murmured.

  “Like what?”

  “…like I’m all you see.”

  “But you are. You always were.”

  I closed my eyes for a second. My carefully constructed walls were crumbling around me. “There are things I need to understand, Blake.”

  “I know.” He lightly kneaded the tight muscles at the base of my neck with his fingers and thumb. “I’ll answer any question you ask me. I swear, Princess, I’ll tell you anything you wanna know.”

  I studied his expression for a long moment. I could see some anxiety there, but I saw sincerity too. He’d tell me anything, even if he knew I wouldn’t like the answer. He’d always been that way.

  I raised my hand to his forearm and gently pulled his hand off me. “Okay, but not now.” I gestured over my shoulder towards the crowded room; the band were just finishing up and soon I’d need to help Candice and the others close the place down; there was no Harvey there that night. “I have to get back to work.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  34

  An hour later, Blake stood beside me as I locked the front doors of The Academy. After our talk, he’d stayed sitting out of the way in the dark booth until the last customer left – then he’d immediately set about helping out with the cleanup.

  Candice kept shooting me these amused looks every time he placed a stack of dirty glasses on the bar and Lola stared at him open mouthed when he went over to ask if she needed help with anything. I couldn’t blame her, it was probably a little surreal having one of the most famous rock stars in the world offer to put away the mic stands and roll up the stage leads for you.

  “Thanks for helping,” I said to him as we walked across the parking lot.

  He shrugged. “No problem. It’s nice sometimes, doing normal people shit.”

  I couldn’t help a snigger. “‘Normal people shit’? Wait, are musicians not normal people now?”

  “Fuck.” He winced. �
��I sound like a dick.”

  “At least you’re aware.”

  “I just meant that I can’t even remember the last time I plugged in my own mic, y’know?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen your minions.”

  “My ‘minions’?”

  “Yeah.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You know they have names, right?”

  “I’m sure they do.” I bit my lip to keep from grinning. “Name one.”

  “Huh?”

  We had reached his car. I turned to face him and crossed my arms over my chest. “Name the guy who plugged in your mic for the show last week,” I challenged.

  “Toby,” he answered immediately.

  I was shocked – and doubtful. “Liar.”

  “You know I don’t lie. Not to you.”

  “There’s no way you know all your minions’ names!”

  “Try me,” he said, mirroring my stance and crossing his own arms. I couldn’t help imagining his biceps bulging under the baggy fabric of his hoodie. Damn…

  FOCUS, Amy! Jeez.

  I snapped my eyes back to his face. “You’re serious,” I realized, seeing his indignation.

  “Damn right I’m serious. Those guys work for me, of course I know their fucking names.”

  “Okay, sorry,” I said, a little begrudgingly.

  Blake held my gaze quietly for a moment before he said, “You said you wanted to talk, right?”

  “…yes.”

  “Yeah, but it seems like you just wanna keep picking fights. Is that what you want? You wanna keep going ‘round like that?”

  When he put it that way, I felt like a huge brat. “No,” I said, contritely this time. “That’s not what I want.”

  He nodded once, slowly. “Then get in the car.”

  35

  “Where are we going?”

  “Wait and see.”

  “Blake, just tell me.”

  “Relax. I swear you’ll like it.”

  I sighed and looked out of the passenger side window of his Mustang, up at the glowing column of the Stratosphere as we sped by on the I-15, headed North East out of the city. “I don’t see why we can’t just go to a diner or something,” I muttered.

  “‘Cause you can walk out of a diner.”

  I whipped my head around. “You think I’m going to walk out?”

  Smirking, he said, “Not where we’re going.”

  “Okay, that’s it! Turn the car around.”

  He chuckled and looked back at the road. “No way.”

  “This just officially became kidnapping, you do know that, right?”

  “You’re being ridiculous, you do know that, right?” he mimicked.

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Okay.” He frowned in mock-confusion. “But I thought you wanted to talk?”

  He. Is. Infuriating.

  “If you don’t wanna talk, we could just go back to your place and get naked?” he offered.

  I shot him a look – even though my lady parts loved that idea.

  “No?”

  “Just keep driving.” Before I change my mind like the idiot I clearly am.

  He chuckled. “Anyone ever tell you you’re sort of fickle?” He put on a breathy, girly voice, obviously meant to be an imitation of me, “Stop the car! Keep driving. Don’t touch me! Oh God, fuck me!”

  “Oh, my God! What is wrong with you?!” I exclaimed, beyond embarrassed.

  He burst into loud laughter.

  I turned away, looking back out of my window, and ignored him.

  In silence, we left the city. As we drove, the ground started to rise. Behind us, the city lights spread out into the darkness like rhinestones scattered across coarse gravel.

  “Can we talk seriously now?” I asked eventually.

  He glanced across at me. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  I hesitated. I knew what I wanted – no, what I needed – to ask him, but I was nervous to hear his answer. I wrung my hands in my lap when I said, “Okay, then. If everything you’ve said since you came back is true, and you missed me and…um…thought about me so much, then why did it take you so long to come home?”

  Blake kept his eyes dead ahead; he was quiet for so long that I could almost believe he hadn’t heard me. He remained silent as he pulled the Mustang off the interstate onto the highway. A few minutes later he abandoned that too, in favor of a dirt road which climbed up into the foothills. The headlights were our only source of light now as he wound his way through the darkness, following the unmarked track until he pulled off of it and brought the car to a stop near to the base of a huge pylon.

  We were in kind of a makeshift lookout point, although I doubt it appears in any tourist guides. Not too far away, in the glow of the Mustang’s headlights, there was a burnt-out campfire and some car tires strewn around the place.

  But the view of Las Vegas was breathtaking.

  The city looked vast and sprawling, exciting and dangerous, the kind of place you could get lost in…or lose yourself in.

  I gazed out across the expanse of neon and waited. Now that the rumble of the engine had stopped, the silence stretched, pulling my nerves along with it until I felt like I couldn’t stand it a moment longer. “Are you going to answer me?”

  Blake let go of the steering wheel and dropped his hands into his lap, a heavy exhale escaping his mouth. “I used to love this city,” he said, his voice quiet. “A lot of people hate it, especially if they grew up in the same neighborhood I did – but not me. Even after what happened to my mom, and all the shit that went down with my dad, I never thought about leaving. Maybe it was just ‘cause I’d never really been anywhere else. Pretty much my entire life, ‘til I was twenty-four, I spent there.” He held his hands up, spread about two feet apart, with his palms facing one another, boxing in the view in front of us. Then he dropped his hands back to his lap and glanced across at me. “Until we went on our first real tour, I’d barely even been out of the state. Did you know I didn’t even get on a fucking plane for the first time until after I moved to LA?”

  I shook my head ‘no’, I hadn’t known that.

  “Figured I’d always live in Vegas, but after…” he trailed off as his eyes slid back to the mass of light, and I could see him struggling to find the words. Or maybe he was just struggling to say the words.

  I waited.

  “…this city’s full of ghosts,” he murmured.

  I knew without him telling me, which ghosts he saw. His mother. Probably his father – not truly gone but dead to him all the same. But above all, it was Connor.

  A familiar sadness settled over me. As always, it was tinged with thoughts of how pointless Connor’s death had been; how stupid and tragic and horrible.

  “I saw him everywhere,” Blake continued quietly. “My house. My car. Your place. Every-fucking-where. Even sometimes when I looked at you…”

  “You thought of him,” I finished the statement for him.

  He winced and looked down, but he didn’t contradict me.

  A sick feeling of dread started to settle over me – and it shocked the shit out of me. How could I dread him telling me this thing couldn’t happen between us when that was what I’d been telling him all along?

  Looking back now, that was the turning point.

  That was the moment I realized how far past my defenses Blake had already gotten. It was the moment I realized that if he left again, it was already going to hurt like hell.

  It was when I realized how totally screwed I really was.

  “And…now?” I asked hesitantly. “Do you still see me and think of him?”

  He shook his head slightly. “It’s not like it was.”

  “I get it,” I told him, making his head shoot up and his eyes flick sharply to mine. “You said something the other day that sounded just like something Connor would’ve said, but we used to spend so much time all together that it’s probably only natural those memories get triggered.”

  Blake looked down again, silently stari
ng at his hands in his lap. Eventually, he said, “The only explanation I can really give for not coming back for you sooner is that it was easier to forget he was gone if I wasn’t here…if I just shut it out. And so much shit went down between you and me, y’know? The whole thing was a clusterfuck and my head just…” He let out a sigh of frustration before he looked up at me again. “It’s hard to explain how fucked up I was, Princess. I couldn’t handle it. It took me too long to get my shit together, and when I finally did it was too late.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, confused. If he thought it was too late, why was he even back at all?

  “I almost came for you a hundred times before this. ‘Bout eighteen months ago I even went to LAX and bought a ticket back here.”

  “…and then what?” I prompted when he didn’t offer anything else. “You changed your mind?”

  “No. You changed it for me.”

  That made zero sense. “What are you talking about?”

  “The weekend I almost came back here, you were in New York.”

  “New York?” That threw me. I had only ever been to New York a handful of times…oh, but then it started to click into place…

  Almost a year and a half before, my sister Joanne – who lived out there – had married a defense lawyer called Joseph whom she met while she was at law school. And, yeah, they were Jo and Joe – or JoJoe as I called them, because it was too funny not to.

  Blake obviously saw the dawning realization on my face because he said, “That’s right. You remember who was with you that weekend, Princess?”

  “Finn,” I said, referring to my ex, who I had started dating a couple of months before Jo’s wedding and who had gone with me as my date. “But something tells me you already knew that.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted gruffly, his eyes glinting in the low light. “While I was waiting for the flight to board I was killing time on my phone and I checked out your Instagram and your Facebook. I used to do that all the time and you hardly ever posted anything. How fucking ironic is it that that day you were tagged in a bunch of pictures with that pussy all over you?”

  A giggle burst out of me then. I slapped my hands over my mouth to stop it, but it was too late.