Fragile (Rock Stars & Romance Book 1)

by A. K. Evans

  I’d work, of course.

  But I’d gotten myself into a rhythm and routine over the last several weeks and knew that it wouldn’t take me more than two hours or so to get caught up with all of my work.

  I needed something else to do to take my mind off of my current reality.

  Before I could come up with any reasonable options, there was a knock at my door.

  Poor Sam. She had been so worried about me last night, it wouldn’t have surprised me if she showed up here this morning with a box of donuts and a shoulder to cry on.

  Lucky for her, I’d prove that no more crying would be happening.

  I set my mug down, made it to the front door, and swung it open. I did not see Sam standing there with a box of donuts to bury my misery in. Nope. Not at all.

  Instead, I saw Cash standing there, looking like he hadn’t slept in days. Even in his disheveled state, he could still send my heart racing with just a single glance.

  I did not like that.

  “You need to leave now,” I ordered.

  Cash didn’t remove his hand, which had been resting high up on the doorframe, and walk away like I had demanded. In fact, he completely ignored my request and stepped inside.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, my irritation evident. “You need to go. I don’t want you here.”

  “You need to let me speak,” he instructed.

  I shook my head. “Your chance to speak was… oh, I don’t know, sometime over the last two weeks when you were being miserable. Or, maybe you should have spoken to me sooner if this is where things were headed for you. Bottom line, if you wanted to talk, you should have done it before you cheated on me.”

  “I did not cheat on you, Demi.”

  I rolled my eyes and walked back away from him. “Okay, sure. And the grass is no longer green, am I right?” I shot back. “Do you honestly think I believe that?”

  “No, I don’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the truth,” he responded.

  I stopped walking and spun around. “Really, Cash? You had a woman who was half naked in your bed, answering your phone, while you were naked in the shower,” I reminded him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t trust a word that comes out of your mouth.”

  In a flash, Cash reached for my right hand and lifted it up between us. While one of his hands held my palm, his pointer finger from the opposite hand came to the inside of my wrist. “This, right here, is bullshit,” he declared.

  With a look of disgust, I replied, “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me,” he seethed. “Trust. You had the word trust tattooed on your wrist, and it’s nothing but bullshit.”

  How dare he?

  I’d gotten this tattoo years ago, after my father’s infidelity. It had a double meaning for me. The obvious was that it was there to remind me what’s most important to me in life and relationships with others. But the deeper meaning was that it was there to remind me to trust myself. To trust that I knew what was right for me and to always follow my gut instinct. For a long time, I had hesitated with making decisions. Once I got this tattoo, I no longer hesitated.

  But if Cash wanted to sit here and point out that he thought my tattoo was bullshit, I’d hand it right back to him.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “It’s bullshit that I thought I could trust you. I was wrong. I don’t trust you at all.”

  “That makes two of us then,” he spat. “Because I don’t trust you either.”

  I yanked my wrist from his hold. “Me?” I questioned him. “You don’t trust me? I can’t even begin to imagine how you could possibly say that when I woke up alone in my bed yesterday and every day before that. In fact, I woke up alone every single day since I got back from your home in Pennsylvania.”

  At my words, anguish marred his features.

  Good.

  He deserved to feel a little bit of pain, too.

  “You weren’t the only one waking up alone, Demi,” he insisted, now sounding like he was irritated with me. I couldn’t imagine why he thought he had a right to be irritated with me, especially after he claimed I was the one who was untrustworthy. “And infidelity isn’t the only way people lose their trust in others.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Oh yeah? So, enlighten me, Cash. Tell me how I made you lose your trust in me. This ought to be interesting.”

  “You cut me out,” he said, his voice just a touch over a whisper.

  Something in the way his voice sounded made me stop and really listen to what he was saying. I hadn’t ever heard his voice sounding so wounded and broken. It was… heartbreaking.

  When he realized he had my full attention, he continued, “You saw what you saw, made up your mind about what you saw, and never gave me the benefit of the doubt. You never gave me the chance to explain. I understood your initial shock. I’ll remember the look on your face when I opened that door in my towel for the rest of my life. But when I called you back to explain, you didn’t give me that chance. You turned your phone off, and all I could do was think about how all these weeks have gone by, and you haven’t even taken the time to get to know me.”

  I blinked in surprise.

  What was he talking about?

  Of course, I’d gotten to know him. We talked every single day. We shared stories with one another, and we talked about favorite movies and food. There had been so much.

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Cash,” I shared.

  “I’m saying that if you really knew me, or even better, what you mean to me, you would have known that what you thought you saw wasn’t even a possibility for me,” he explained.

  What I mean to him?

  “So, you’re telling me that you, the famous rock star who could have anyone he wants, expect me to believe that you didn’t fuck a woman who was wearing her bra in your bed, answering your phone, and telling me she spent the night there?”

  Cash didn’t hesitate to inform me, “That’s exactly what I expect you to believe.”

  Nodding my head, I replied, “Okay. I get it. You think I’m stupid.”

  He shook his head. “No. But I think you’re so damn scared of what you feel for me that you’re just looking for anything you can right now to end this.”

  “I didn’t have to look very far, did I?” I shot back, completely ignoring his comment about how I felt about him.

  “Jesus, Demi, would you listen to yourself for a minute?” he huffed. “Or better yet, would you listen to me?”

  “Why do I feel like you’re trying to blame me for what you did?” I asked.

  “I didn’t do anything!” he shouted. “Fuck, you’re so set on believing that every man out there is going to be like your father, you won’t open your eyes and see what’s in front of you. God, it doesn’t matter how much I fucking love you, if you’re never going to let go of what he did and give yourself the chance to truly be happy, I’m wasting my time.”

  He loved me?

  I stood there staring at him, unable to respond.

  Why was he saying he loved me?

  If he did, he wouldn’t have cheated on me.

  Tears filled my eyes and rolled down my cheeks as I stared at the man who’d stolen my heart and turned my world upside down.

  “I know you’re hurt, Demi,” Cash said, his voice now as gentle as ever. “I’m sorry you saw what you did, but I didn’t do anything with that woman.”

  “Why was she in your room?” I rasped.

  “Killian, Roscoe, and I were in a three-bedroom suite,” he began. “After the show the night before you called, the guys brought a couple of women back to the room. Three women came back. We all hung in the common room for a few minutes before Killian took the woman he was talking to back to his room. Roscoe took the other two women to his. I went to my own room and crashed.”

  Cash paused, allowing me some time to digest all that he’d just shared.

  When he’d given me enough time to do that, he continued, “I woke up yesterday morning, knew you’d be
calling me, and decided to take a shower before your call came in. You called earlier than usual, which is beside the point. When I heard a knock at the door, I had just assumed it was Killian or Roscoe. I was just as surprised to find that woman, who had been one of the two women that disappeared into Roscoe’s room the night before, standing there in her underwear with my phone in her hand.”

  He didn’t cheat.

  Cash didn’t sleep with that woman.

  I tried to let that news penetrate into my brain when Cash went on, “Demi, I saw the horrified look on your face, and it haunts me to know that you think I could do that to you. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am about what happened yesterday morning. After I kicked that woman out of my room, I tried to call you back, and when you didn’t answer, I knew you gave up on me. You gave up on us.”

  Tears continued to stream down my face.

  Could I trust that he was telling me the truth?

  If I chose to believe him and he was lying, I’d look like a fool when something like this happened again. But if he was telling the truth and I doubted him and sent him on his way, I’d lose the very best thing that had ever happened to me.

  “You’re supposed to be in Florida,” I murmured.

  Cash shook his head. “I’m supposed to be here, with you,” he corrected me. “I’m not going to Florida until I know we’ve worked this out. I’ve already told them to cancel tonight’s show.”

  My eyes widened.

  Holy crap.

  He canceled a show on his tour to come and work this out with me?

  “Why would you do that?” I asked.

  “Because I made a promise to you,” he answered. “I told you that I wasn’t going to allow you to feel like you had risked it all for it to not be worth it. I promised to be patient with you while you learned to trust and have faith in me. And because I made a promise to myself to protect your fragile heart.”

  Oh my God.

  I didn’t think there was any hope of me being able to withstand all that.

  He couldn’t be making this level of emotion up. If he really didn’t care about me, he wouldn’t have come here now to try to fix this.

  Maybe he was right.

  Maybe I refused to give him the chance to explain what happened yesterday morning because I was terrified of the way I felt for him.

  “Do you really love me?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How much?” I pressed.

  “Pardon?”

  “Earlier, before, you said it didn’t matter how much you loved me if I wasn’t willing to let go of what my father did and give myself the chance to be happy. So, I’m asking you… how much do you love me?”

  For the first time since I yanked my wrist out of his hand, Cash touched me. He brought his hand up to the side of my face and used his thumb to wipe away the tears that had fallen.

  After he allowed his eyes to roam over my face, they settled on my gaze. Then he whispered, “Enough to give up everything I’ve worked for my whole life.”

  My lips parted in shock. “What?” I rasped.

  “Demi, I’ve been so out of sorts the last few weeks because I can’t cope with how much I miss you,” he shared, his voice strained. “About two weeks ago, there were talks of scheduling another tour. For now, it seems everyone in the band is on board with it, but I’m not. I want time off because I don’t want our entire relationship to be phone calls and video chats. I don’t want to just sit in my hotel room writing songs about you while I wait for your call. I want to take you on dates. I want to wake up with you in my arms every morning. I want to make love to you before we go to sleep every night. I want to feed you breakfast. I just want you. And I didn’t want to disappoint the rest of the band, so I was struggling with what to do.”

  “You’ve been writing songs about me?”

  “Either about you or inspired by you,” he told me without an ounce of hesitation.

  That’s what he’d been working on that day at his house. He was writing a song about me. I didn’t even know what to do with that information. I didn’t know what to say in response to that. But what I did know was how it made me feel.

  Unless Cash was writing a song about how he screwed up with the girl who got away, which I didn’t think was the case, there was no way he cheated on me.

  So, in that moment of clarity, I acted on what I was feeling.

  I lifted one of my hands to the side of Cash’s face, stroked my thumb over his cheek several times, and slid my fingers back into his hair. I was acutely aware of the fact that Cash had stopped breathing while I did this.

  When my hand landed at the back of his head, I pressed up on my toes, leaned my body into his, and kissed him.

  I could feel the relief sweep through Cash as he wrapped his arms around me and deepened the kiss.

  And it was then that I started to feel the pieces of my broken heart mend themselves back into place.

  Twenty-three

  Cash

  Nobody had ever made me feel the way Demi did.

  Yesterday had been the worst day of my life, bar none. All day long, I had been caught between feeling anger and panic. I didn’t know which was worse.

  Because the anger was so consuming, I lost control in those moments after Demi disconnected the call. And the panic left me feeling hopelessness and despair as I scrambled to find a way to get back here to New Hampshire so I could make things right with her.

  Losing Demi was not an option.

  I wouldn’t survive that.

  Luckily, I got on a plane and made it here.

  Luckily, she opened the door.

  Luckily, she didn’t kick me out.

  Luckily, she listened.

  And luckiest of all, she believed me.

  I knew the last had to be true because she was now in my arms, kissing me. I’ve never felt more relieved in my life than I did at this moment.

  Feeling her pressed close, taking in the light, feminine scent of her, and hearing her moan while we kissed was what I’d needed for weeks now.

  God, I had missed her so much.

  Demi started backing up, taking me with her. I followed, not wanting to lose that connection to her mouth.

  Before I knew it, she was pushing me down onto the couch. The moment I was seated, she climbed on top and straddled me.

  Demi didn’t wait for me to take action. She lifted her shirt over her head and tossed it to the side. She hadn’t been wearing a bra, so I immediately captured her breasts in my hands and dropped my mouth to one.

  As I tasted and teased her on one side, she rolled her hips with such need and desperation over me. My cock was rock hard, and with the way she was moving, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to last until I was inside her.

  There was no doubt this was going to be quick. It had been far too long for the both of us.

  “Baby,” she breathed. “I need more. I need you.”

  “Take off your bottoms,” I urged. “Do you have condoms?”

  Her eyes widened as she froze. “Shit. Shit, no.”

  “It’s entirely up to you,” I started. “If you’re covered for birth control, you’d be safe with just me. Even though I’ve never not worn protection, I still get myself tested regularly. I did that not long after I met you, and I haven’t been with anyone but you since.”

  “I’m covered with birth control,” she confirmed as she stood and pushed her pants down her legs and shimmied out of her panties.

  While she did that, I kept my eyes focused on her and stripped out of my own clothes.

  A moment later, I could barely contain the emotion building inside me at the feel of her soft skin against mine.

  It had definitely been way too long.

  “Demi, I’m not going to last long,” I warned her before I was even inside her.

  She smiled and shared, “Neither am I.”

  I slipped my fingers down between her legs, touched her there, and found she was already wet.

 
I played only for a few seconds before she lifted her hips away, curled her fingers around my cock, and positioned herself over me. The next thing I knew she slammed herself down on my erection.

  “Damn, firecracker, you feel amazing,” I said.

  “I missed you, Cash,” she replied. “I missed having this with you.”

  Demi didn’t give me a chance to respond.

  She went to work and rode me hard. There was no hesitation.

  I was mesmerized by her.

  Her tits were bouncing, her eyes were intense, and her lips were parted.

  She was extraordinary.

  “Fuck me harder,” I urged her, my fingers pressing in deeper on one of her hips.

  She did precisely as I asked, and I couldn’t get enough of her. I reached up with one hand, squeezed her breast, and watched as her head fell back. I leaned forward, ran my tongue along her collarbone, and up along the front of her exposed throat before I nipped at the skin there.

  “Cash,” she whimpered.

  That’s when I knew she was close and decided to help her out. I moved both hands back to her hips and encouraged her movements, making them a bit faster and much more frantic.

  Seconds passed, I felt myself ready to explode, and demanded, “Come with me, Demi.”

  She didn’t need the instruction because she was already there. As I shot inside her, Demi moaned through her orgasm as her legs trembled wildly on either side of my body.

  I loved that, too.

  I loved knowing that I was able to make her body quiver like that.

  When we both made it to the other side, Demi’s body slumped forward. Wanting her to be a bit more comfortable, I managed to hold her in place while I swung my legs up to one side of the couch and lowered my back to the opposite side.

  I closed my eyes and simply relished the feel of having her like this.

  Naked, spent, and sated.

  For a long time, we stayed like that, just enjoying having it again. Quite frankly, I didn’t feel any need to talk. I wasn’t opposed to it, but I’d said all I needed to say. Even though it was early in the morning, I was completely content to fall asleep right where I was.