by Piper Lawson
Beck cuts a look past me, looking bemused. “Fascinating.”
“What is?”
“What’s gonna happen in five, four, three, two…”
Someone brushes my back, and Beck angles his head up, hands not moving from my body. “Hey, man.”
Tyler says something to his friend I can’t hear.
“Girl needed some mentoring, if you know what I mean.” Beck winks at me, and I laugh in response.
But Tyler’s back at his ear, and Beck’s smile dims.
Before I can react, Beck lifts my hand, presses his lips to the back in a move that’s somehow cheesy and earnest at once. “Thanks for the dance.”
A little tingle runs through me, and I bite my cheek as I watch him head back through the crowd.
“What did you say to him?” I demand, whirling to face Tyler.
“He’s not for you.” He’s a foot away, a muscle leaping in his jaw.
Everything from this week piles on top of itself until I’m feeling as if I’m in a different dimension than the carefree dancing people around me. “You don’t know that.”
“You’re already hanging with the brother of your stepmom’s best friend when you’re hiding out here. You’re gonna fuck him too?”
I blink up at him, trying to make sense of the meaning behind his frustrated words.
Beck. Serena’s Beck, the one she mentioned had gotten into Vanier…
“No.” They have different last names, but it’s too much of a coincidence.
His gaze narrows, and I know it’s true.
“Does he know who I am?” I manage.
“He hasn’t put it together. But he will. Who knows? Maybe if you hook up with him, he’ll keep your secret.”
Someone bumps me from behind, and I step forward. Tyler’s hands are there, catching me by the arm and the waist.
“You didn’t used to be such a prick,” I state, angry.
“You didn’t used to be such a flirt. He can’t make you happy.”
His words catch me off guard. “Why not?”
“Because you need someone who understands what makes you tick, like those music boxes you used to collect. Someone who knows you’re going to get into trouble, who has your back when you do.”
I could pull away, but there’s barely enough room to breathe. “And that’s you?”
Tyler bends closer, his lips near my ear so suddenly I can’t stop him. “It’s not him.”
The truth of those words hangs between us.
Since I moved here, it feels as if this new world is a dark, vast ocean dotted with sharks under the water.
Tyler is familiar—a beacon in its own treacherous tide but one I know.
All I want is a night to forget that I’m alone in this city, that people rise and fall in an instant, that the only boy I ever loved has moved on and so have I.
The song changes again, a sexy downtempo remix of “Pretty Young Thing.”
I turn but don’t step away. My shoulders bump his chest, my ass hitting his thighs. I roll my body once, twice. The friction of his clothes on my ass, the bare skin of my back, makes me bite my lip.
He doesn’t move.
Catching Tyler by surprise is reward enough, but I push my luck.
I reach up behind my head for his neck, brush the edge of his hair above his collar. My fingertips trail along his scalp.
Tyler responds so fast it makes my breath hitch.
He drags me closer with strong arms. His hand splays across my stomach, and when his thumb slips under the edge of my shirt, his pinkie under the top of my skirt, he hardens against my back.
Fuck. I wonder if I’m tall enough to ride this ride.
But I’m more than capable of handling Tyler Adams.
So, I lean my head back against his chest and close my eyes.
The bass in the club pulses through my heels. The pounding music drowns out everything between us, shakes loose the hurt and feelings until there’s no room for anything but this moment. Sweating, wanting, moving, living.
My fingers trace the hard forearm banding around my waist, the lines of ink. “You got a tattoo.”
Tyler’s face bends close to mine, and my breath hitches as his lips graze my temple. “More than one. You want to see them?”
The crowd presses in on us, and I sense Elle, Rae, Beck, and others. Friends and strangers. Celebration and oblivion.
I want to disappear into it.
“Yes,” I whisper.
The hair above the neck of his shirt is damp. Not quite long enough to tug. Some part of me wants to try anyway.
His lips graze my ear, and I tilt my chin back as they drag down my jaw. Heat streaks between my thighs, weaves a rope of need that joins us together, as I move against him in the dark.
He’s moving too, holding me, pressing against me.
We’re action, reaction. Like musicians who’ve never played together, attuned to each other because this melody we’re weaving depends on it.
There’s nothing outside this club. My beautiful boy, my twisted muse, my rebel prince is gone, but the man holding me is here.
He doesn’t give an inch, hands possessive on my hips, holding me against his hardness.
I have a sudden vision of Tyler dragging me into one of these dark corners, yanking up my skirt, and fucking me to the driving rhythm of the bass, our sounds swallowed up by the music around us.
I turn my face more to meet his gaze, and his expression hits me square in the gut.
His lashes are half-lowered, his jaw tight with restraint and hunger, those dangerous eyes filled with emotion I can’t read in the dark.
When Tyler speaks again, it’s a vibration against my hair.
“Seventy-eight.”
I focus on the warmth of his skin through his shirt, the steady echo of his heartbeat. “Seventy-eight what?”
“Seventy-eight times I wrote to you and didn’t send them. Once I even drove to Dallas to see you.”
My fingers freeze in shock on his neck, and my hips stop swaying under his hands.
Tyler came to see me?
Emotions blur together in my chest, my stomach, each one colliding with the next—grief, sadness, love, gratitude.
I blink back the sudden stinging.
He doesn’t get to say that as if it can make everything better.
He can’t take back that he left. We can’t go back to a time when we were innocent and wanting. I’ll never again be that earnest girl, and he won’t be that guarded boy.
In the DJ booth, I see Rae watching the crowd. At the bar, Elle’s talking with Beck, their gazes flicking to us, then away.
Once more, I start to move to the music.
I cover Tyler’s hands with my smaller ones, threading my fingers in the spaces between his and squeezing them. I pull one hand off me and bring it to my lips, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to his palm.
I feel his reluctant groan against my back.
I do the same with the other palm, rubbing my ass against him at the same time.
This time, his teeth capture my earlobe, making me shiver. “You’re teasing me.”
“Then ask me to stop.” I turn my profile toward him, rewarded by his hot mouth on my cheek, trailing dangerously close to the corner of my lips.
“No.” His breath mingles with mine. “I want you.”
I take a moment to feel those words settle into my body. My arousal swells, throbbing like the music around us.
I want him too.
But that’s not what this is about, and wanting was never our problem.
I turn to face him, pulling out of his hold.
His tortured expression is full of desire and something more meaningful. It’s that something that calls to me, that has me second-guessing my plan.
I ignore it and lift my chin, my heart still hammering in my chest as I take a steadying breath. “Good. Now you know what it feels like.”
It takes every bit of self-control in me to turn and walk away witho
ut looking back.
8
I knew going home for the weekend would be a minefield, but it’s even more treacherous than I imagined. All my dad’s friends are in one house to celebrate his award, and the table is full of friends bursting with well-intentioned and dangerous curiosity.
“How’re classes?” Nina, my dad’s former tour manager, asks me over dinner Saturday night.
“Hard, but at least they’re interesting,” I say. “I have two essays and a project due before midterms.” So far, so good. I take a congratulatory bite of fettucine, cooked to perfection by the chef Dad and Haley hired when Sophie hit two and Haley started working again full-time.
“How’s Pen?” Haley asks.
My stomach untwists a little. “Already planning her platform for student government. And shopping like crazy.”
“You’re rooming with your friend?” Nina asks, and I take a slow breath.
“Er… no. My roommate’s kind of different,” I tell them. “I think she sees me as competition.”
Uncle Ryan cocks his head. “Didn’t figure an undergraduate degree was so ruthless.”
Every pair of eyes turns to me, including my dad’s from the head of the table.
“Everything’s a competition, Uncle Ry.” I drain my water glass before reaching for the bottle of bourbon at the center of the table.
My dad narrows his eyes as I pour into the empty glass.
“Enough,” he says when there’s half an inch inside.
I roll my eyes. “I’m an adult.”
“You’re still my kid.”
The conversation turns to the lifetime achievement award my dad won, and I’m both relieved the pressure is off and fascinated by the discussion.
Across the table, Sophie plays with her pink plastic spoon, her dark hair in pigtails and her eyes bright with enthusiasm for everything. Her bow mouth lifts in an incandescent smile, and I can’t resist grinning back.
It sounds trite, but she’s seriously growing up so fast. She walks and babbles and tries to make sense of the world around her.
Good luck with that, Soph.
I decided on the plane home I’d use this weekend to warm Dad up to the idea of Vanier, but I haven’t decided how that will work.
After dinner, I catch Dad in his office talking with Ryan. I creep up to the half-open door to hear them speaking in hushed tones.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Ryan clears his throat. “Nothing. Good to see you, kid.” He drops a kiss on top of my head like I’m still ten years old before heading out the door.
“Well?” I ask again once Ryan’s gone, squaring my shoulders.
“It’s shop talk.” Dad goes to the fireplace, kneels before it, and stacks logs inside.
Now’s my chance to talk to him.
I drop to my knees at his side. “You can talk business in front of me. If I’m old enough to drink at home, I’m old enough for that.”
He adjusts the logs, adding kindling from the bin nearby. “It’s about our catalogue. Wicked has the rights to some of our early tracks and is planning to record them with new artists. I’m trying to go through lawyers to get them back, but so far nothing.”
I grab a newspaper from the stack and wad up a sheet, encouraged by his admission. “So, write new songs.”
He shakes his head as he tucks the sheets I pass him around the edges of the kindling. “It’s not that easy, Annie. I’ve been out of the business a long time.”
He rises to get a match from the box on the mantel and lights the edges of the paper in the fireplace. The flames lick at them, trying to find their way.
I rise too. On a surge of bravado, I reach into my pocket and pull out a sheet of paper I was scribbling on the plane. “I want you to look at something.”
“What is this?”
I shift on my feet. “A poem. Or a song.”
He reads it again while I hold my breath.
I’ve imagined this moment so many times. I’ve imagined his response—surprise, admiration, pride.
“You spend all day reading and writing essays for school, and when you’re done you want to do this?”
Hurt lodges in my throat. “It doesn’t have to be a hobby. I could do this for real. Like you did.”
He folds his arms. “Annie, I went into the industry because an offer came and I was too young and desperate to turn it down.” He retrieves his bourbon from the desk. “You’ve seen the brightness of the music industry but never the dark. If you had any idea how many threats, how many lawsuits, how many people wanted to use me... I’m grateful my career brought me my family, my friends, the ability to make something that affects people—it’s not a question of that. But that kind of life has a cost, and I would never want that for you.”
“Given how you grew up, I would’ve thought you’d want me to have the choice you didn’t. And I do have that choice.”
His gaze narrows. “I don’t want you to pay it without understanding what you’re signing up for.”
Frustration flows through me. “But don’t you think I pay it anyway being your kid? I never got to choose that part.”
The words hang between us until he holds the paper out for me. “Tell Haley and the others I’ll be out in a few minutes. I need to return a call.”
I take the sheet from him, then he grabs me in a quick one-armed hug before turning back to his desk.
He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t see how it could be.
And tonight, there’s nothing I can do to change his mind.
I ball up the sheet of lyrics and toss it into the fire before heading for the door.
“I know you spent the entire weekend lying to your family,” Elle whispers as we take our seats in our entertainment class Monday.
The pen I’m retrieving from my bag falls from my fingers and rolls toward her desk. “What?”
She picks it up, cocking her head. “You pretended to be present when you were really mentally jerking off to Tyler Adams.”
Warmth floods me as I take the pen back.
“You did have some hot chemistry before you walked away from him Friday morning,” she presses. “Stone cold.”
“Seventy-eight times I wrote to you.”
In my mind, Tyler Adams had walked away and never looked back. If that wasn’t true…
I keep telling myself that changes nothing, but it means he cared. Even when he was going through whatever he was going through, he thought of me.
When I walked away, I didn’t mean to be petty, but I wanted him to feel a tiny, momentary slice of the hell he’d put me through.
“Whatever your plan was,” Elle continues, “the guy looked seriously bummed you were gone. He didn’t dance with another girl all night.”
Her words leave my body tingling. Tyler still brings up a ton of emotions in me, and it’s not only about who he was. Judging from what I heard at Leo’s last week, he’s even more talented than he was a year ago. He’s more confident too, more grown up.
We both are.
But just because he had a harder time leaving me than I thought doesn’t change anything for us now.
It can’t.
My gaze pulls to the door when Rae enters, scanning for a seat. The only remaining one is next to us, and she drops into it.
The instructor starts her lecture, and I try to tune into the discussion in class about how to set yourself apart while building a brand.
“So, this family weekend,” Elle says to me at the end of class. “It was big?”
“Ten people, plus my dad and stepmom and little sister. Food and booze and sugar comas.” I tuck my notebook away in my bag.
“My weekend was here, watching movies and living on noodles. Your life sounds like heaven.”
The image of my dad reading my words and handing them back to me floods my mind—him tossing them into the fire, watching them dissolve.
“Not even close.” I shoulder my bag and start for the door.
“I know you have iss
ues with your dad,” Elle says, “but if he’s breathing? He shows up? Sounds like an epic father figure.”
Before I can respond, she takes off down the hall, leaving me with my mouth hanging open.
Rae’s appearance at my side makes me jump. “You going to her set tomorrow? She’s got twenty minutes at Comedy Palace.”
I shake my head in surprise. I’d figured Elle would’ve told me about something like that.
Rae starts to take off, but I grab her bag first.
“Hey,” I say on impulse as she turns, raising a brow. “I know I’m not your favorite person. I know all you want is for me to be gone so you can have a single room. And your voodoo might even work—”
Her black-rimmed eyes round. “My what?”
Shit. “The dolls. On your headboard.”
“You think they’re voodoo dolls?” Her face slackens in disbelief. “They’re for Etsy. I sell them.”
“Oh. Fuck. I’m sorry.” I flush with embarrassment. “Anyway, maybe we could go to this show together. To support Elle.”
Rae flips me off, and my stomach sinks.
Three paces away, she turns to call over her shoulder, “You know where I live. You can pick me up at eight.”
I follow Rae up the stairs from the subway later that night. “You got into the DJ booth at the club on Friday night. How’d you even do that?”
We fall into step together on the sidewalk. “Trade secrets,” she says, but her voice turns wistful. “I’m gonna set the world on fire. You’re not making music, you’re making a vibe. It’s all about mood and energy and tempo. Your tracks have an energy; your people have an energy. They’re like atoms. Every combination of people has its own sense, its own chaos. It’s all about finding those three people.”
“Three people?” I’m intrigued. Those are the most words I’ve heard my roommate string together in my presence, and now that she’s talking, I don’t want her to stop.
“Three people who set the tone for everyone else. You can always find three people in a crowd. No one will admit they’re watching them or even knows consciously. But they are. If you’re spinning, you gotta get to know them. Live inside them. You move them, they move the room.”
Before I can ask more, we’re outside the doors of the venue.
