“I own it?” I ask, using the big fluffy white towel I stole from the pool to dry my hair. “Not my stepmom?”
“This guy seems to think so,” Muse says, turning the music down with a swipe and then flipping the phone in my direction, so I can see the screen. Maybe I should be upset that Derek thinks he can grab my cell and dig through my notifications at his leisure, but I'm not. No, it doesn't feel like he's prying or being nosy, just like there's this sense of camaraderie developing between us, this closeness, this comfort.
I squint through the hot white steam drifting in the air and read the message.
Muse is right. According to the email, my father transferred ownership of the Goode Family Mausoleum to me before he died. Not to Susan, to me.
“Shit.”
“You okay there, Cutie?” he asks me, his voice missing some of its usual polished shine, that smooth surface that hides all the cracks underneath. Right now, there's not just one big crack in Muse's mask; there are thousands.
I stare into his hazel eyes for several long seconds as I ask myself that same question. Tears prick the edges of my own eyes as the reality hits me yet again. Dad is dead … and tomorrow is Yasmine's birthday.
The past is dark with thick grey clouds and the distant growl of thunder; the present is clearing up, the sky brightening to a vibrant, brilliant blue. I stand in the blustery wind and gentle sprinkle of rain that fills the space between them, and I try to appreciate the weather for what it is.
“Can you get my debit card from my purse and make the payment?”
“Sure,” Muse says carefully, watching me, using that empathy of his to feel out my mood. I'm glad he doesn't offer to pay for this for me. I want to use my own money to take care of Dad's final gift, the last thing I'll ever buy for him. Sniffles clog my nose and I suck them back with a deep breath.
No more buying ties for Father's Day or silly ornaments for Christmas. No more birthday gift gags to make him laugh or hollowed out and hand-painted eggs for Easter.
“Come 'ere, Cutie,” Muse says, pulling me onto his lap and holding me in arms banded with muscle. He presses a crown of kisses to my head as I bundle the towel in my own lap and use it to wipe away the faint shine of tears. “It's a process, not an event. Don't rush it. Nobody expects you to just magically get better because you spread some ashes at a graveyard.”
“That's how it feels,” I choke with a small laugh, realizing that there are big, fat salty tears draining in rivulets down my face. “I mean, not you guys. You don't make me feel that way; the world does.”
“The world is fucked,” he agrees, not with any sort of bitterness or anger in his tone, just simple matter-of-fact. Somehow that makes the statement seem harsher. This isn't someone who's whining about getting shortchanged at a drive-through or bitching about misplacing their car keys. Muse is speaking from real experience. “Do you know what you want it to say?” he asks after a moment. “The stone?”
“Just his name and the dates,” I reply as a knock sounds at the bathroom door.
The only person who'd even bother to do that is Cope.
“Come in,” I say, wiping my cheeks one last time and smiling as he slips into the room. He's all dressed up, making me realize with a start that we're having dinner with Paxton's parents. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. After all the trouble I went to with my hair and makeup, my outfit choice, I ended up washing it all away in the pool. “That's a new look for you,” I say to Copeland as I stand up off of Muse's lap and cringe at the giant wet spot I left on his crotch.
There are so many naughty ways to interpret that statement, aren't there?
“Well, I just figured why the hell not? I didn't think Michael, Ransom, or Muse over there would bother to dress for the occasion. I'm just trying to pick up the slack.”
Cope raises his brows at Muse's black cargo shorts and red band t-shirt. He, on the other hand, is all dolled up in a white button-up, the sleeves rolled to his elbows and the top three buttons undone. The shirt is starched and free of wrinkles, but he keeps it rockstar chic by hanging a loose black tie around his neck and letting a hint of his chest tattoo peek out at us. Black slacks and a pair of men's dress shoes with a few chains draped across each ankle complete the look.
“You've picked it up, looped it, and tied yourself a new knot,” I say as I study him appreciatively, noticing that his arms are already opening up to give me a hug before I've even asked for one. I step inside that warm embrace with a small sound of relief. Cope makes me feel like one simple touch from him can spirit all my worries away. Honestly, being wrapped in his arms is as close as I think I'll ever get to being worry-free in this lifetime. “Let me get dressed real quick and dry my hair, and then maybe the three of us could look at houses online while we wait for Pax?”
“I'd love that,” Cope says, tilting my head back for a gentle kiss. Even a soft, comforting little press of lips like that gets his full attention, all those little details that he's picked up by observing women over the years. One hand rests lightly on my hip while the other trails fingertips across my jaw, sliding smoothly into my hair. Copeland's body naturally tilts forward at the hips, encouraging me to lean back and open up. His teeth, tongue, the silver ring through his lower lip, it all works together to melt my heart, moisten up the plush folds between my thighs. “Do we have a budget?” he asks finally, speaking against my delicately parted lips. They feel marked, even though I know he was being gentle, that he didn't leave any physical evidence that our mouths were just slanted together.
“Five hundred thousand,” Muse says, standing up from the divan and stretching his arms above his head. Clearly, he's thought about this already, done some math and checked some numbers.
“Um, that's a half million dollars,” I say and do a quick mental check in my own brain. “Wouldn't the mortgage on something like that be around eighteen hundred bucks? I can't afford that much in rent.”
“First of all,” Muse starts with a slight smirk as I grab my lingerie from earlier and start to get dressed, not at all ashamed or embarrassed about putting it on in front of the guys. Spending two weeks on that bus put us all in very close proximity—before sex, during sex, after sex—so we've all seen each other's most intimate parts many times over. I'm already used to it. Of course, that doesn't mean my nipples don't harden when they look at me, that my skin doesn't feel hot and flushed and tight, that my thighs don't clench with a sudden need to wrap around a rock-hard male body … “We'll each contribute our portion of the purchase price in cash thus no loan. No loan means no interest which means that overall, our house will cost a hell of a lot less in the long run. And second,” he begins, just as the door to the bedroom opens and Ransom slips inside, dressed in the same outfit he was wearing earlier. “In Seattle proper, it's pretty much impossible to find anything—land, a foreclosure, a teardown or otherwise—for less than two hundred and fifty thousand. And then at that range, the pickings are slim and mostly in need of serious repair.”
“I see,” I say, slipping my dress over my head and then letting Ran zip it up for me. I swear, every time one of these boys gets their hand on my zipper, I lose my shit. Hot fingertips sliding up my spine, warm breath at my ear, the comforting feel of their heartbeat when I lean back against their chest. “So we have no choice but to spend a half million?”
“You need somewhere to do your art,” Muse says, curling his fingers dramatically. “Someplace that still has some fucking character left in it.”
“And someplace that's big enough for us to all crash at,” Ransom adds.
“Assuming Lilith wants us to crash at her place,” Copeland says, drawing my attention back to him. As soon as our eyes meet, I feel the words inside my chest again. I love you. I just want to breathe them into the air and let them float between us like petals on the wind. I can't decide if that's because he's the last boy to hear them and I'm getting desperate, or if it's just Cope's special power, making me want to confess all my sins, my secrets, my pain.
“You mean if Michael wants couple time,” Ransom teases as the door opens and the man in question steps inside. Michael doesn't bother to ask what we're talking about, just levels a glare on Ran and then tosses an appreciative look over at me.
“Sorry. I'm not used to sharing my girlfriends.”
“I'm still getting used to having a girlfriend at all,” Cope says, but at least he's smiling when he says it.
“And I'm getting used to having five fucking boyfriends.” I raise my red brows and pull my hair over one shoulder, deciding to braid it instead of blow-dry it. That way, when I take it out later, it'll fall in gloriously exaggerated waves down my back. “We're all trying to figure things out.”
I finish the braid and tie it off with a band from inside my purse.
“Now, let's start looking at houses.” I step over to my duffel bag and pull out the laptop Michael gave me, powering it on and then climbing onto the king size bed with my heels still on. “I'm still not completely sold on the idea of you guys buying something for me; you're not made of money.”
Although the Blackwells certainly seem to be …
“We've got more than we need,” Muse assures me, joining me up by the pillows and settling in like he owns the place. “But if you need some convincing …” He traces a finger across my lower lip as Cope takes my other side, Ransom sitting next to him and Michael draping himself across the foot of the bed.
“It'll take more than just sex to convince me,” I tell him, but I can't keep the flirtatious lilt out of my voice, “although I'm not opposed to letting you try. Just … show me some real estate first, okay? I don't want to meet Paxton's parents with my hair in disarray, my makeup smeared, and my panties torn off.”
“What if I promise to remove them slowly, drag the lace down your thighs, over your knees, off your feet …” Cope starts, stealing the show from Muse. The look on his face right now is decidedly not the boy next door's. Maybe that suit is corrupting his sweet nature? “I think we could probably go start to finish without messing your hair or makeup, too.”
“With the four of you together? No flipping way.” I open a browser and start with the Seattle Craigslist to look at rentals. But inside my chest, my heart is pounding, sending blood rushing to my nipples, my clit, the molten heat between my thighs.
I almost lose that aroused buzz when I see the rental prices.
Seattle … is not Phoenix. Looks like the average rent there is about … double? Dear God.
“Told you,” Muse whispers, reaching over and sliding his finger across the mousepad. He moves the cursor to the search bar, types in Seattle homes for sale, and clicks on a link. “You said it had to be a good investment. Trust me, Seattle is a hotspot and it's only getting hotter. No matter what you pick, it'll be money well spent.”
My pride tells me to keep protesting, but inside, I burn a little brighter.
My own place.
Fuck.
Even with the boys' names on the deed, it'll still feel like mine, I know it will.
A house of my own.
If this actually happens … I'm painting every wall a different color.
We end up looking at houses until I realize that Muse, Michael, and Ransom are all asleep. And then only because I notice that my own lids are getting heavy, drooping and obscuring the little yellow bungalow I was perusing via an online tour.
We've been looking through houses for almost three hours now and still, no sign of Paxton.
“Do you think I should go look for him?” I ask Cope on the end of a yawn, watching as his long fingers curl around the lid of the laptop and push it closed. He drags the computer off my lap and reaches over Ran to put it on the nightstand.
“Probably not,” he says honestly, managing to find his way off the bed without disturbing any of the other boys. He moves over to the window and grabs the curtains, pulling them closed and cutting off the sunshine that's still streaming into the room. Personally, I'm so fucking tired right now that it feels like it should be dark outside, the night sky filled with stars, the pregnant moon gazing down at us with her full, round belly of silver light.
I guess the time change, plus the jet lag and the brutal pace of the tour, is finally getting to me. Michael makes this dark, masculine sound in his sleep that lifts the fine hairs on the back of my neck. Okay, us. Fatigue is definitely settling in on the whole band.
“What time is it anyway?” I ask, but Cope just smiles softly at me, looping his tie over his head and draping it on the edge of a fancy baroque chair. He takes his shirt off, too, slowly moving his fingers down each button, popping them through the starched fabric as I sit there mesmerized by the motion.
The way I'm looking at him reminds me of the way Muse and Cope stared at me when I started to put on my bra and panties. But this … it's so much better because Copeland's taking his clothes off.
“What are you doing?” I whisper, enthralled by the slow, nonchalant way that he's moving, like he doesn't have a damn clue how sensual the play of his fingers against the starched fabric is to me.
“I don't want to wrinkle my shirt,” is what he says. If he were anyone but Cope, I probably wouldn't believe him. Hell, I probably shouldn't believe him anyway, but that face … he looks so goddamn trustworthy with those blue-green eyes, that mussy russet colored hair. “Why?” he asks as he finally slides the fabric over his shoulders, flashing me the sculpted perfection of his upper body, toned and beautiful from his art. “Something wrong?” This time when he speaks, his mouth twitches.
What an ass.
“So you are doing it on purpose?” I ask as he kicks off his shoes and moves over to the bed, a smile lighting his lips, his face, turning his eyes to the color of the sea under the sun.
“Maybe.”
Copeland slides onto the bed next to me, cupping the side of my face with a gentle hand. When he kisses me, I taste mint and strawberries. Not sure where the latter came from, but the flavor matches the wild brightness of his mouth.
I lay a palm on his chest, right over the pair of heart tattoos. My other hand slides around to the back of his neck, fingertips gliding gently over the patch of healing skin from our shared tattoo.
“Does that hurt?” I ask, my voice low and husky, doing my best not to wake the others.
“Not at all,” he whispers, taking my hand and turning it over so he can play his thumb across my wrist. The skin is shiny and pink, making good progress on its path to healing. It's a powerful metaphor, I think, as I watch Cope tease one of the bass clefs with a gentle touch. Our tattoos are healing much like the wounds in our hearts. First, the pain is etched into the soul like ink. It bleeds and scabs over, then the old dead skin sloughs off, leaving something new and shiny and fresh. After a while, the tattoo becomes a part of the flesh, a mark, a reminder of a time past. That's what I'm hoping will happen to my pain, the boys' pain. We'll never forget it; we'll always have those reminders etched into our skin, but they won't hurt anymore. They won't bleed.
“How are you doing?” I ask as Cope lifts my hand and presses his mouth to the center of the tattoo, kissing me with a soft brush of lips. “With, you know … me.”
“With you?” he asks, giving me a gentle smile. The full pinkness of his lower lip is toughened up by the piercing stuck through the center of it, shiny and silver. I take my hand off his chest to touch it.
“With having a girlfriend,” I clarify and see his mouth twitch at the corner.
“So far it's going pretty good,” he says, glancing over at the passed out rocker boys on the bed, “but I think that's only because the chick I'm going out with is seriously fucking cool.”
/> He looks up at me, blinking bright blue eyes, letting his smile get a little wider.
“Do you miss it?” I ask, trailing a single fingertip down the piercing in his lip, over his chin, his throat, along the line between his pecs and ab muscles. “Having a new girl to take care of every night?”
“Honestly?” he asks me, raising his brows and making my heart speed up. “Not at all.”
I breathe out a sigh of relief and Copeland chuckles.
“I liked feeling needed, and I liked tricking myself into thinking that I was helping them somehow, as if one night with me could've changed anything, helped anyone …” Cope trails off, tapping his long fingers on my hip in thought.
“Even if you only spent one night with someone, that doesn't mean you didn't help them,” I say, thinking of the money he gave me at the gas station, the hug backstage, the careful way he held me as I cried after we made love that first night. “If Muse hadn't overstepped his bounds and had the bus take off with me in it, you still would've left an impression on me.”
I hear a small grumble from my other side, Muse's black painted fingernail poking me in the shoulder.
“What I'm trying to say is, while I don't think one-night stands are exactly the best way to help girls in need …” Cope groans and lies back into the pillows, putting both his hands over his face. He's wearing bracelets again today, a big black leather cuff with a broken heart on it and a whole bunch of etched silver bands around it. They clack together as he covers his expression, and I reach out to pry his hands away. “That doesn't mean your intentions weren't good.”
“I'm scared,” he admits after a minute, speaking against his palms. When he pulls his hands away to look at me, I can see it etched all over his face. “And I didn't have to be scared with those girls, you know? And it's not just the Cara thing, it's …” Cope chews his lower lip for a second, the tropical sea in his eyes swirling with a distant storm. “I'm afraid of what you're going to do when you meet my mom.”
My smile gets a little lopsided, and I lean forward to brush my lips against Cope's, feeling his hands find my hips. He pulls me on top of him so we can get a better angle to slant our mouths together, tangle our tongues. I love the way he kisses, like his whole universe has narrowed and I'm the only thing in it.
Moxie (Rock-Hard Beautiful Book 3) Page 10
