The Complete Tempest World Box Set

by Mankin, Michelle

She looked nervous. I didn’t get it. So what if I was shirtless with my jeans half-buttoned? It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen me this way before. I wasn’t going to cover up for her.

  She licked her lips. “Nipple ring’s new,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah, nice of you to notice.” I got my legs going and moved toward her, motioning to the banquette. “Scoot over.”

  Holding the hem of the shirt in place over her ass and thighs, she slid toward the window to make room for me. I flopped down on the padded two-person bench seat and stared at her profile.

  “You get in last night?”

  “Yeah.” She shifted away from me, just a tad but enough that I noticed, twisting her hands so tightly together that her fingertips turned red.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” My tone was harsh and demanding, even though I was secretly glad to see her. I drank her in from her head to bare toes in a greedy gulp, cataloguing every line and curve.

  It had been too long. Two and a half years. My memories didn’t do her justice.

  “I thought you were with Martin now.”

  Lace had started up with him right before the band had signed our first record deal, and she couldn’t have chosen a more dangerous man. War had been apoplectic. Me, I’d hidden how I felt, just like I’d been doing for as long as I could remember. My friendship with War left me with no other choice.

  “He’d kick your ass if he knew you were here,” I said. “War’s too.”

  I’d been joking around, but when she turned her head, I sucked in a sharp breath, wishing I hadn’t been so flippant. The left side of her face was covered with a collage of faded purple and yellow bruises. It was obvious she’d been hit hard, multiple times.

  I gripped the side of the table with both hands, wishing I could squeeze Martin’s neck instead.

  I’m going to kill that motherfucker. I didn’t care that he was armed and had a bodyguard.

  A spark of defiance brightened Lace’s eyes, giving me a glimpse of the vibrant woman I remembered. “Yeah, well, as you can see, he already took care of that. I didn’t stick around to give him a chance to make both sides match.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  Her shoulders sagged, the momentary flash of sass disappearing quickly. She was quiet for so long that I didn’t think she planned to answer.

  Finally, she said, “It’s not important. Not anymore. It’s over between us.”

  Lace had that stubborn tilt to her jaw that I recognized. I wasn’t going to get any more information out of her than she wanted to give.

  I was overjoyed by that news, ecstatic, but . . . “Does Martin know it’s over?”

  “Oh yeah. I think his fists made that perfectly clear.”

  “You mean to tell me that he broke it off with you?” I couldn’t hide the disbelief in my tone. The guy was an idiot as well as an asshole. What man in his right mind would give up Lace if he had her?

  “Yes, he did. It was terrible. It had been bad for a long time, but I just chose to ignore it.” Her gaze dropped to her lap, her sexy lips pressing into a tight line. “I pawned the engagement ring he gave me for a bus ticket out here. What’s left over from that is all I have.”

  Most women I knew would have teared up after all this, but not Lace. She never cried. Strike that. She never cried anymore. When we’d been kids, she’d cried a hell of a lot. But the last time had been the night of the Metallica concert.

  “I’m sorry.” I reached over and covered her delicate hand with mine.

  “Don’t be,” she said, slowly pulling her hand away. “Martin was just another mistake in a long line of them.”

  Lace watched me for a moment through a gap in the curtain of her gold hair.

  “What about you, Bullet?” Her eyes took on a mischievous glint. “Or should I say,”—she paused and added an orgasmic-sounding breathless moan—“Oh, Bullet! Faster! Harder!”

  The corners of her mouth lifted with amusement at my expense, and I winced.

  Shit. She’d heard me in the back bedroom with the twins. I didn’t usually go for multiples. It was too much work, but after getting the brush-off from Avery Jones, the beautiful lead guitarist of Brutal Strength, I’d felt like I had something to prove.

  “You know me, Lace.” I watched her face carefully. “I don’t do relationships. I told you once why.” I got up and snagged a couple of bottled waters from the refrigerator.

  “Yeah, that’s not something I’m likely to forget,” she said softly, her voice sounding strained.

  Sensing the undercurrent of meaning just beneath the surface of the words we were saying to each other, I swung back around. But her eyes didn’t give anything away.

  “I’m sorry. I was just messing with you,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand that I didn’t buy. “What you do with your personal life is none of my business. No offense, okay?”

  “None taken,” I said, but I still felt uneasy.

  I handed her one of the bottles of water, and she took it before turning away to look out the window. Holding back a groan of relief, I grabbed the Tylenol bottle from the table and knocked back a couple of tablets while watching her.

  We were silent for a while, both lost in our own thoughts. Tension hung between us, but it was familiar and not entirely uncomfortable. I’d known Lace Lowell practically all my life.

  I’d never forget our first meeting at the apartment my family had lived in at the University House. I was seven and she was five . . .

  • • •

  Fourteen years ago

  “Get the door, Bry.”

  My mom was cooking in the open galley kitchen, but her voice carried easily across the small space separating it from the living room where I’d been sitting, playing my video game.

  “Sure, Mom.” The sizzle of cooking meat and the aroma of garlic and cheese from my favorite flavor of Hamburger Helper filled the apartment, making my stomach grumble.

  I dropped the game controller onto the soft throw my mom used to make the old couch from Goodwill look nicer, and stomped over to the door.

  “Who is it?” I asked before opening it, just like she’d taught me to do.

  “Dizzy Lowell,” was the muffled reply.

  I grinned. Dizzy was my new best friend, and yeah, that was his real name. He sat in the desk in front of me in Miss Harper’s second-grade class. We traded Pokémon cards at recess, and played this really fun game at lunch where we tried to gross each other out by mixing different items from our lunch trays. Today, Dizzy won. He’d stuffed his bread roll into his chocolate milk carton and added ketchup. I’d laughed so hard at the face he’d made that milk had spurted from my nose.

  “Hey,” he said when I opened the door. His long blond hair was all messed up. My mom wouldn’t have let me out of the apartment with my hair like that. But Dizzy looked like that all the time. His clothes were usually dirty too. “I had to bring my little sister with me. Is that okay?”

  “Sure.” I opened the door wider and watched a little girl follow him inside. Her hair and eyes were the same color as his, and her small hand was fisted in his worn-out shirt.

  Dizzy stopped in front of our TV, and his mouth dropped open. “You have Pokémon!”

  I nodded. “I told you. My mom says we can play until dinner is ready.”

  Dizzy spun around and squatted down in front of his sister to put his hands on her shoulders. Her bottom lip stuck out, and she looked like she wanted to cry.

  “Lace, don’t be afraid, okay? Bryan’s cool.” He tugged on one of her braids and helped her up on the couch. “Sit here, right next to me.”

  She watched me with her golden eyes, but she didn’t move or make a sound the entire time we played. That was weird, not at all like my younger sisters. When they were awake, they were a royal pain in the rear. They got into all my stuff, and they never shut up.

  “Bry,” my mom called out after we’d been playing for a while.

  Beside me, Lace squeaked and tr
ied to climb behind her brother’s back.

  Shoot. We were just getting to the good part.

  “Time to stop.”

  My mom came in, drying her hands on a kitchen towel, and Lace started shaking. Mom frowned as she looked at her.

  “I’m going to wake your sisters from their nap,” she said to me in a soft voice. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Why’s she so scared?” I whispered to Dizzy after my mom left the room.

  “Lace is afraid of grown-ups.” He turned around and touched her back. “Come on. Stop hiding. It’s time to go.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Maybe you can stay a little longer. Let me ask my mom.” When she returned to the living room, I gave her my best puppy-dog eyes. “Can we have five more minutes? Please? We’re almost done.”

  She leaned over the couch and ruffled my hair. I knew her answer before she said it. Puppy-dog eyes worked every time. “Dizzy,” she said, using a soft voice. “Would you and your sister like to stay and eat dinner with us?”

  “We can’t.” Dizzy stuck his hands in his pockets and stared down at his dirty sneakers. “My mom wants us in our apartment by six.”

  “Maybe Saturday for lunch then?”

  “Sure.” Dizzy gave her a big smile before asking to use the restroom. He went to the back and my mom returned to the kitchen.

  I sneaked a peek at Lace. She’d pulled her legs up under her chin and wrapped her arms around them.

  I was the man of the house, and my mom told me my job was to take care of the girls. It made me sad to see Lace looking so scared.

  Wanting to make her smile, I scooted closer to her. She put her cheek on her knee and watched me. When I stuck my tongue out at her and rolled my eyes, her lips twitched. I put my hand under my armpit and made the farting sound a couple of times.

  Lace giggled.

  Yes! I slid right beside her, happy when she didn’t move away.

  “I like your eyes,” I said in a soft voice like my mom had used. “They’re pretty.”

  Lace gave me a smile so big, I could see that her top two front teeth were missing. “Are you Printh Charming?” she asked me with a lisp.

  “Huh-uh.” As if.

  Dizzy came back in the room and grinned at me as he flopped back on the sofa. He must have heard that last bit.

  “I’m going to marry you someday,” Lace said, nodding like it was a done deal. “When I’m all growed up and pretty like Cinderella.”

  I started to laugh, but choked it back when I saw how serious she looked. It seemed so important to her that I found myself agreeing. Even though I knew Dizzy would never let me hear the end of it.

  • • •

  Present day

  Here we were, all these years later, and Lace Lowell still had the ability to tie me up in knots. I still wanted to protect and please her, but I was powerless to do either.

  Some fucked-up fairy tale I’m living.

  She stared out the one-way windows of the bus. There was nothing to see. It was dark, and we were parked between two buildings with only an occasional flicker of white from blowing snow to break up the monotony of the view.

  “What’s Avery Jones like?” Lace asked quietly, turning to face me.

  Tense, I gave that some thought, choosing my words carefully. “She’s a hell of a guitarist.”

  Lace swallowed. “And?”

  “And nothing.” I shrugged. “She’s back with Marcus Anthony now, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Sorry. I saw some pictures of you two.” There was an edge to her voice that hadn’t been there before. “It seemed like she might be important to you.”

  I was seriously contemplating telling Lace right then and there that she was the only woman who had ever been important to me, when I heard the door to the bus’s sleeping compartment slide open behind us.

  “Guys, it’s four fucking a.m.” His voice gruff with disapproval, War brought our intimate predawn reunion to an end. Looking wan and strung out, the lead singer of Tempest shuffled into view, wearing only a pair of red boxers and scratching his bare chest. “Come on back to bed, babe.”

  Shooting me an irritated glance, he held out his hand to her. She patted my knee, and I took the cue to scoot out of the booth ahead of her so she could exit.

  War threw a proprietary arm around her shoulders as soon as her bare feet hit the floor, then grinned at me. “Night, loser.”

  “Night, asshole.”

  He gave me the middle finger before he closed the door.

  I stared at the door for a long time.

  Nothing had fucking changed. I had twenty thousand people screaming my name during my guitar solo at Madison Square Garden, plus twins in my bed afterward, but none of that mattered to me.

  Not when my best friend had the woman I’d always wanted.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Lace

  My mind remembered how badly Bryan Jackson had hurt me, but my traitorous body wanted me to forget. It wanted me to go back to the front lounge, wrap my legs around that washboard waist of his, curl my fingers into his tattooed biceps, fuse my mouth to his, and beg him to make me moan instead of those twins.

  Fortunately for me, my mind overruled, and the nail prints in my palms were the only casualty I sustained after this particular run-in with Bryan.

  I followed War past the triple stack of bunks where my brother and the other band members slept. The dotted line of emergency lighting on the floor our guide, War ducked his head to enter the small, dark bedroom in the back of the tour bus.

  He was tall, a half inch taller than Bryan, and his lean frame dwarfed the full-size bed as he crawled into it and held the covers out for me. Knee to the mattress, I slid underneath the covers with him and shimmied close. An errant light brown strand tickled my nose as I laid my cheek against his smooth chest, right over his solid-black heart tattoo.

  I tried to make myself relax while he stroked my hair. But relaxing after being around Bryan wasn’t easy. In fact, I knew from experience that it was nearly an impossible task.

  “You okay, babe?” War’s deep voice rumbled near my ear. It was dark, but I imagined his brown eyes were probably crinkled at the corners with concern.

  “Yeah,” I lied. “I’m okay.” The truth was too depressing for anybody to want to hear.

  “Why were you up?” he asked.

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Need another hit?”

  “No.”

  Drugs didn’t work anymore. No matter how much shit I did, my mind still raced around in pointless circles.

  In the wreckage of my life, there were no easy answers. I’d gotten myself so far off course that I didn’t see any way to make it right. It seemed like I’d suddenly woken up one day to find myself here, but the reality was that by making one poor decision after another, I’d slid further and further away from my goals and the person I wanted to be.

  War shifted, the sheets rustling softly as he turned on his side, facing away from me. Being alone in the dark with my thoughts was something I’d grown accustomed to. He fell asleep quickly, the sound of his breathing evening out. As the lonely minutes of the night ticked slowly toward morning, I remained awake.

  My thoughts drifted to Bryan, as they often did, even while I’d been with Martin.

  If possible, Bryan had gotten even better-looking since I’d seen him last. His light brown hair was trimmed short into a faux hawk. Long on top, short on the sides, it was the perfect style to set off his gorgeous gray-green eyes and that shadowed square jaw of his. It was disheartening to discover that the years apart hadn’t lessened the hold he had over me.

  Why couldn’t I accept the way things were? Bryan was never going to be mine, no matter how much I wished things were different.

  My mind drifted to the past.

  I remembered when Bryan, his mom, and his younger sisters had moved into the apartment below ours. I’d been five, and he was seven. Bryan, Dizzy, and I had become the best of friends, an ins
eparable trio, using our imagination to escape the harsh reality around us.

  Our favorite game had been pretending we were rich-and-famous rock stars. When I was in charge, I was Britney Spears, and the boys were my roadies. When it was their turn, Guns N’ Roses or Metallica was the band, which left me with only one choice . . . to be the band manager, of course.

  I’d idolized Bryan Jackson for as long as I could remember. He treated me with the same respect he did his own sisters, and I loved him for that. He and my brother were the only protectors I had in a neighborhood where drug deals and drive-by shootings were commonplace, in a world where even my own apartment wasn’t safe.

  • • •

  Eight years ago

  “Hi, Lace.” Mrs. Jackson looked up at me as I entered the apartment with the key she’d given Dizzy and me to use years before. She wanted to be sure we had somewhere safe to go whenever our mom was strung out.

  “Bryan ready?” I asked, wondering where he was.

  “He’s in the shower. He should be out any minute.” She laid aside the pants she’d been mending, an old pair of mine. She’d been adding material to the cuffs so I could wear them longer. “I can’t believe he won Metallica tickets. Are you as excited as he is about going?”

  I nodded.

  “Come and sit with me.” Mrs. Jackson patted the cushion beside her.

  Though it had a new slipcover, it was the same old couch I’d buried my head in the first time I met Bryan, the time I told him I was going to marry him someday. That was still my plan. Only now I was eleven, I was mature enough that I didn’t speak every thought out loud.

  I took a seat next to my future mother-in-law and plucked at the loose threads in the knees of my frayed jeans. Grown-ups still made me nervous.

  She touched my hand and gave me a smile just like his that made her eyes sparkle. His mom was really nice, nothing at all like mine. Bryan’s mom was always doing things to help Dizzy and me out without making it seem like charity.

  “How’s school?” she asked.