Moxie (Rock-Hard Beautiful Book 3)

by C. M. Stunich

  “Are you okay?” Lilith asks me after a moment, pausing to stand next to the window seat where I'm perched with a book on my lap and a small gift hiding under my thigh. It's for her sister, just something silly I picked up at that bookstore near the British Museum.

  I glance up at her, dressed in a pair of black boots and one of the Beauty in Lies shirt-dresses she made on the bus. Her red hair cascades like rubies over one shoulder.

  So fucking beautiful, I think as I reach up and brush a few loose strands aside.

  “Why wouldn't I be?” I ask as Michael snorts and scowls, shoving first one foot and then the other into a pair of black motorcycle boots.

  “Because Pax is fucking fucker, that's why,” he replies for Lilith, and we both exchange a look.

  “Whatever he is, it's opened up a good point of discussion, don't you think?” Muse asks, checking his mohawk in the mirror, the entire thing ridged up into a wild crest. He's dressed up like he's going to a show—knee-high Converse on his feet, black skinny jeans covered in patches, a half-zipped red hoodie that shows off his shirtless upper body.

  “Don't you think a good point of discussion was opened up when you let Paxton fuck you and then freaked the hell out? What about that, Derek?”

  Muse goes strangely still, staring into his own hazel eyes in the mirror before he stands upright and ignores Michael's comment completely. I notice Lilith's hands curling into fists at her sides. I wish she knew the whole story. I know for fucking positive that Derek would just feel better if he told her.

  “Do you know where this ice cream place is?” he asks instead, the casual easygoing lilt of his voice almost harsh sounding against the backdrop of his silence. But it's his shit, I guess. If he doesn't want to talk about it, he doesn't have to. “Or should I pull up some directions on my phone?”

  “It's just a hop, skip, and a jump away,” Pax promises, almost unrecognizable in his jeans, the boots he borrowed from Michael, and a tight grey t-shirt with song lyrics scrawled in cursive across the front. My happy ending is rending my heart; I don't want it to end. Take me back, back, back to the beginning again.

  Hmm.

  As Lilith turns to look at Pax, I slip my gift into her pink leather purse with a smile, hoping she doesn't notice the extra weight. Fortunately, she doesn't seem to.

  I stand up and take her hand, Ransom shoring up the opposite side so that it almost looks like we're guards parading our princess through the ancient streets of a foreign city. We head down the elevator, through the lobby, and outside into the grey glare of the afternoon. Our feet are loud on the rough stones beneath them, echoing in the narrow streets and alleyways. These parts of the city are too narrow for cars, so people stream down them in crowds, various restaurant and cafés posting tables at the edges of the sidewalk, right on the stones of the old roads themselves.

  “This is so fucking cute,” Lilith says, smiling up at the red brick buildings, some graced with modern facades, others sporting storefronts that look original. It's a nice mix. There's a long pause before she asks, “that yellow bungalow we looked at last night, where's that located? What kind of neighborhood is it in?”

  I feel my lips cracking a small smile.

  “Queen Anne Hill,” I say, naming the Seattle neighborhood. “But it's nothing like this. It's quiet, suburban, steep as hell. The grade of the hills is too much for the city buses, so there's basically no public transportation.” I chuckle and dip my fingers into the pockets of my jeans. “Do you guys remember a few years back, when I was still driving that shitty '99 Honda Civic? We all managed to pile in it and headed for a party in North Queen Anne? I swear, I thought the car was going to slide all the way back down the incline.”

  “Fuck, I almost pissed my pants,” Ransom says with a small grin, making Lilith laugh as we approach the ornate green facade of the promised ice cream parlor. “You were sweating buckets and I remember thinking that your hands just looked slick as hell on that steering wheel. I was afraid you were going to lose your grip and crash us into something on the way down.”

  “I had faith,” Muse promises, lacing his hands together behind his head and doing his best to smile. The expression doesn't quite reach his eyes. I look at him, and then I look at Paxton and I try to imagine the two of them having sex. It just doesn't compute. I mean, I saw it with my own eyes and still …

  “Sounds treacherous,” Lilith says, “but if it is that hard to get to then it's probably pretty peaceful.”

  “Definitely,” I say, opening the door for her and reveling in that gorgeous smile of hers.

  Hm.

  And I was scared to have Lilith as a girlfriend? I freaked out over this? Damn. What an idiot. I'd forgotten how good it feels to be with someone I actually like, that I need just as much as she needs me. This isn't a one-sided relationship. Hell, it's not even two-sided. This is a six-sided configuration that I'm still trying to figure out. But it feels fucking awesome. And that smile? I'd do just about anything to see that smile.

  All I have to do now is introduce her to my mother …

  The interior of the ice cream parlor has that cluttered chic look. Stuff is piled everywhere, but it's all cute and purposeful looking, and the walls are striped with pink, the tables decorated with fresh flowers. The whole place smells like cream and sugar and coffee.

  Lilith sighs and lets her head fall back, red hair cascading down her back.

  “Yasmine would've loved this place,” she says, her eyes closed briefly. She drops her chin and heads over to the glass display case to look at the cakes. “She would've loved this town, this trip …”

  Lilith trails off for a moment as I step up behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist and holding her until her breathing evens out and her heart rate slows a little. She selects a chocolate cake with edible flowers around the rim, and then orders herself a scoop of strawberry on a cone.

  I'm not the only that's mesmerized by the sight of her tongue licking the sweet pink cream.

  “Try not to tent those expensive jeans of yours there, cowboy,” Pax says with a smirk. He flicks me in the shoulder and I shake my head at him, adjusting the white sweatbands at my wrists while the others take turns ordering.

  Surprisingly enough, this place also serves cream puffs. I grab a half-dozen box and carry them outside to the table, sitting beside Lilith as she takes in the scenery with keen interest, the ring Pax gave her last night sparkling on one of her long, pale fingers.

  Maybe I should be jealous … but I'm not. I don't really care who she marries or if she marries any of us. Doesn't matter. I'm happy just being with her.

  I open the white box and scoop some cream out of one of the pastries with my finger, licking it off.

  “Are your parents just going to … let you disappear after all that?” Lilith asks mildly, swirling her tongue across the surface of her dessert the same way she did to my cock yesterday. It's a hard metaphor to miss, even as I'm trying to sit there and be respectful.

  “Who the fuck cares?” Paxton asks, sipping a coffee with fingers dipped in ink. “I went there, told 'em off during a fancy dinner party, and managed to abscond with a family heirloom. In my book, it was a success.”

  “I suppose,” Lilith says skeptically, still using her tongue to tease her ice cream—and all of us who have to sit there and watch. I try not to grin. “I mean, I did manage to exchange contact info with Amelia. That's something, right? I think I just made another female friend.”

  “Overrated,” Michael says, getting more than a few curious looks from passersby in his leather jacket and eyeliner. Most of them are from women gazing his way with a sort of longing ache. For fuck's sake. He smirks at Lilith. “You have five friends sitting right here. What do you need any extras for?”

  “It's nice to have the counsel of people you trust, but that you're not actively fucking,” Lilith tells him, biting the edge of her cone in a coy sort of way. “It makes it easier to tell when the people you are fucking are acting like assholes
.”

  “Am I an asshole then?” Michael asks, clearly still flirting with her.

  “Definitely.”

  Lilith snaps off a huge piece of cone with her teeth and then takes it between her fingers so she can nibble at it. I'm still sitting there, drifting off in her orbit when she glances my way.

  As usual, I can't stop prose from flooding my head the same way blood is filling my … you know. See, I'm not as nice as I first appear, not by a long shot.

  I knew it. I fucking knew it. Those eyes, they see so much more than what's on the surface, digging deep, tearing me apart with each blink of those long lashes. They're not just windows to the soul, but doors, open and asking me to step inside, to see inside of her soul the same way she's seen into mine. Without knowing it, I lift my hand and sign my own soul away, promising myself to a woman I've known less than a month.

  My lips curve into a smile. The character in my book might've signed literally signed his soul away to a demon, but I can't judge him for it. If Lilith were one, and she'd offered me a contract, I probably would've scrawled Copeland Carter Park in blood before I could stop myself. From that first night on the bus, I wished she could be mine. When I extracted myself from her sleeping body, her tears still wet on my chest, and headed into the bus' living room, I felt like I was tearing myself in half.

  That should've been a sign right there.

  “I got you a present,” I say and then pause, feeling my mouth curve into a smile. “It's in your purse.”

  Her own smiles brightens up her face for a moment, and then she's digging in the bag and coming up with—surprise, surprise—a book. But not just any book.

  “It's a historical romance novel based loosely around the legends surrounding the Book of Kells,” I say, trying not to feel stupidly lame with my bandmates watching our interaction. Normally, I don't much care what they think. For some reason, I do right now. “I don't know much about your sister, so I didn't know what else I could get her. I figured this encompassed a little bit of her and a little bit of me at the same time.”

  Lilith cracks the cover and turns to the front page, reading a few sentences in a soft, aching voice. I notice a single tear track its way down her cheek, plopping a small wet stain on the print. Oh, Lily.

  “Standing outside in the snow, her face turned up toward the imposing stone walls before her, the woman knew that inside lay her destiny. Beyond the guards and the turrets and the heavy wooden gate, the book she'd been seeking for so long—and the man whose careful fingers illustrated its pages—waited for her. Those ink stained hands, capable of creating such beauty in the world, capable of creating such beauty in her, called out a simple song of destiny. There was no doubt in her mind: they were meant to be together.”

  Both Paxton and Michael snort.

  “And this is why I hate romance novels.”

  “God, that's awful. Who wrote that? Your mum?” Pax smirks and lights up a cigarette, ignoring Michael's angry glare.

  I ignore them both. Assholes.

  “It's beautiful,” Lilith says, sniffling and dashing at another tear on her face. She closes the cover of the book to glance up at me. “Can we take a walk?” she asks and I nod. “Be right back,” she tells the boys, setting my gift carefully down on the table and leaving it behind along with her purse.

  I pick at the sweatbands on my wrists as we walk. I have no idea where we're going, but it doesn't seem to matter; this entire neighborhood is adorable as fuck. It's like an old-timey village or something.

  Lilith plays with the necklaces at her throat, her charm bracelet tinkling with the motion.

  “Do you think it's weird that I celebrate a dead person's birthday?”

  “No,” I tell her honestly, because I don't. Not at all. Every year on the anniversary of my grandma's death, my mom makes her favorite recipes, a whole table full of them and then sits there and cries while she picks tiny bites of each. Everyone grieves in a different way.

  I tuck my hands into the pockets of my jeans, thinking about Cara. About Lilith.

  “Do you remember when I said I liked you more than any girl since Cara?”

  “Surprisingly, yes. It felt like a loaded statement, so I tucked it away up here for later.” Lil taps the side of her head with a finger. I look away from her, toward a green metal street sign with the names York's Sweet Story and Castle Area etched in gold letters. We make an unspoken agreement to turn right down Barley Hall.

  I smile wryly, playing with my lip ring.

  “More than any girl I've met since Cara or …” Lilith repeats, getting my words exactly right.

  “Wow. You really do remember,” I say with a small chuckle. We walk for a while and then decide to take this narrow as fuck brick alley that looks like it might lead us back to the street with the ice cream parlor. I take a deep breath and try to steel my nerves. “Do you know why I said that?”

  “No clue,” she says as we squeeze past a few bikes, parked along one side of the alley. That leaves barely enough room for us to scoot past, that's how narrow it is in here. “But you should totally tell me.”

  I follow behind Lilith past a small restaurant courtyard that opens up on one side of us, and then under a stone archway into an even narrower space, dark with shadows and protected from both the diners on one side and the people walking past on the other.

  That's when I grab her arm gently, encourage her to turn around and look at me. She's crying again, so I reach up to brush a tear away with my thumb.

  “This isn't because of you,” she promises, taking a deep breath. “It just … you know, the pain creeps up on me at random.” Lilith gestures with her hand, and I reach out to take it, pulling her close. It feels like we're the only people in the world right now, like nobody could find us if they tried.

  “I understand,” I tell her because there are nights that I wake up thinking I hear my grandpa sneaking into the house, thinking I hear my grandma screaming as she tries to fight him off. Trauma and pain, they don't get erased overnight but they do get better. I'll help Lilith past hers if she'll let me; she's already helping me get past mine. I can actually think the name Cara without having a small panic attack now.

  “So why did you say that?” she asks, looking up at me with a long, deep breath caught on her lips. The pale pink shirt-dress shifts as she moves, revealing a black slip underneath. I can see the lace edges of it through the massive armholes on the dress.

  “Because what I was trying to say but didn't quite have the balls to get out …”

  Lilith chuckles and I smile.

  “Was that I like you more than any girl since Cara … or before Cara. More than Cara. I mean, I loved her, but in a different way. Sometimes, I didn't like her at all.”

  Lil goes quiet for a moment, reaching her fingers out to play with some of the necklaces draped around my throat. They hang over the white t-shirt I'm wearing in a cluster of black cord and metal shapes, most of them molded to look like instruments: a guitar, a pair of drumsticks, a microphone.

  “Copeland,” she starts and I get this tightness in my chest. I don't want to say I've been, like, waiting for this … but as soon as she told Paxton she loved him on the jet, I wanted it. Then, you know, Muse had to pop into my room with his big mouth and tell me I was the only one she hadn't said it to. Shouldn't matter, I know. It's kind of a stupid, silly ritual, the whole I love you thing.

  But I'm also kind of a romantic. I read romance novels, remember?

  It wasn't so much that he cared about the words themselves. No, she could tell a hundred other men that she loved them, but that wouldn't matter. The only thing that did matter was that when she touched her fingers to his chest, lifted her chin and looked him in the eye, she meant the words she spoke to him with every beat of her youthful vibrant heart.

  Yep, I have a literary reference for pretty much everything.

  The thing is … my ideal book girlfriend, she's standing right here in front of me.

  “Crap, this feels
forced, doesn't it?” she asks, blushing slightly and trying to take a step back. I pull her back toward me with gentle fingers on her wrists.

  “No, it doesn't. Keep going.”

  “I can't,” Lilith says and then she laughs. At least she's not crying anymore right. “You already know what I'm trying to say anyway, don't you?”

  “It's not the same thing,” I assure her as I stare into those gorgeous green eyes of hers, the color almost too saturated to be real. But I guess I've heard the same thing about my own eyes. “The moment's totally natural and perfectly relaxed.”

  I close my eyes and try not to smile stupidly.

  “There. I'm not even looking.”

  “Cope,” she says, trying to draw her hands away from me; I won't let her go. Unless it's what she really wants in her heart of hearts, I never will. I mean, I'm almost thirty years old, so I know how fucking naïve that sounds but … like I said, serious romantic over here. I just … love falling in love. Why poke it to death? “Are you in love with me?” she asks instead, voice going quiet.

  I open my eyes up, looking at her through the hazy shadows in the little alley tunnel. Nobody's passed by us yet, but … that doesn't mean they won't.

  “I …” I chuckle then and put a hand up to my face, covering one of my eyes. I watch Lilith grin at me from the other. “This is harder than it first seems, isn't it?”

  “Just a little,” she tells me coyly, “much more difficult than pretending to lose a wallet so the cute boy at the gas station will give you some money.”

  “Really? I've never asked a cute boy for money at a gas station. I'll have to take your word for it.”

  She scrunches her face up at me, still smiling, still looking adorable as hell.

  “You were checking me out unashamedly; you wanted to give me that money. You were enthralled.”

  “I guess I couldn't keep my eyes off these freckles,” I say, tracing a finger across her cheeks, over the bridge of her nose. I can barely see them in this light, but I know they're there. I'm on my way to memorizing the pattern.