Catch Me (34 page)

“Boom, motherfucker!” Shea shouts, getting up from the couch and tossing his controller.

“That’s fucked up,” Nick says with a chuckle. “Damn.”

Shea grabs both sides of my face and kisses my forehead as he brushes past me. “Stand by the stage,” he says.

I nod. “‘Kay, break a leg.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, smiling back as he walks away.

The women in the room begin to follow him out, but Darius stops them by putting his hands up. “Go to your seats. Maybe I’ll let you back in later.”

They don’t even respond to that as they walk away. At least they’re not disgusting and trashy looking, like some I’ve seen before.

Nick grabs my hand and pulls me out of the room, walking toward the stage to a couple of chairs set off to the side. Nick sits down in one, not caring whether or not they’re for us, and extends his legs before pulling me into his lap. Smiling, I position myself sideways so that my face is in his neck. He begins to brush strands of hair out of my face, tickling the side of my arm as he does it.

While the host is talking and getting people riled up to welcome Shea, I look around the venue. It’s intimate and dark with all black walls and huge glass chandeliers that drop over the stage and the crowd. I love The Fillmore, it’s actually one of the best sounding places in San Francisco. I used to frequent it often when I visited. Because of this place and the bands they host, I’ve been able to get a lot of great artists to sign under Harmon Records, so in a sense I feel like this is my music mecca. I’ve never seen Shea perform here before, which makes tonight that much more exciting and a little nerve-wracking. He left the room before us but he’s taking a long time to get up here. I have half a mind to go see what he’s up to. Anytime Shea takes too long to get onstage, he’s up to no good.

“So you’re coming home with me,” Nick murmurs against my head, distracting me from my thoughts.

I smile. “I guess so.”

I can feel him twirling the curl at the end of my hair. It makes me sigh and move my face further into his neck, burying my nose in it. I love the way he smells, like a beautiful concoction of nature and cologne.

“I should be happy about that,” he says, his flat voice making me frown against him. “But it took another man asking you to convince you.”

I almost roll my eyes at that. Almost. Until I put myself in his shoes and realize what he must think. Instead of arguing or explaining myself, I go another route, the only one that matters. “But you’re the one that I’ll be sleeping with.”

Nick leans away from me, making me lift my face to look at him. His eyes are blazing with intensity. “Damn right,” he growls before taking my mouth in his and kissing me senseless, leaving no space in my mouth unexplored with his tongue. He breaks the kiss as suddenly as he started it and looks at me again, chest heaving against mine. Shaking his head he lets out a breath that mingles with my own. Our mouths are so close to one another, both slightly parted.

“I won’t share you, Brooklyn,” he says, his voice sounding almost pained as he shimmies beneath me and readjusts himself.

I don’t have time to ask him what that means because I get distracted when Shea walks past us, not acknowledging either of us. My stomach sinks, knowing he must have seen us kissing. Knowing he saw me sitting on Nick with our arms wrapped around each other. Shea is the type of friend that is happy for me regardless of what I do, even if he doesn’t agree with it, as long as he
knows
what I’m doing. He’s always been what Ryan used to call “childish” in that sense, but it’s not childish. Shea obviously knows what I’m doing, but the fact that I’m sitting on top of his friend/producer’s lap and I never told him about Nick and I makes me feel horrible. I’m a fucking idiot. Maybe I should have Hendrix get me that on a travel mug for Christmas.

“Why do you only work with Shea?” I ask Nick as I watch Shea turning his neck side to side in a stretch.

“What do you mean?” Nick asks, bouncing me on his leg. I get the feeling he’s getting tired of carrying me so I make to stand, but he holds my hips so I can’t move.

I look at him. “I heard you tell your dad you’re only working with Shea. Why is that?”

Nick purses his lips in disapproval, I’m assuming for his father. “My dad’s an asshole, in case you didn’t notice.” He sighs. “He was … is … a good producer. He’s won a lot of Grammys and to him this is a ‘show me who you work with and I’ll tell you what you are’ sort of thing. Me working with Shea doesn’t bode well with him because he thinks Shea’s music is garbage. My dad’s more into jazz and classical. He worked with a lot of famous musicians, mainly Hispanic, back in the day. Anyway, he’s only heard Shea rap, so he doesn’t approve. He doesn’t understand the quality of music we’re recording.” Nick shrugs as if that’s all.

“So that’s where the name Shadow comes in,” I say, my voice drifting off in wonderment.

“Exactly,” Nick responds, kissing me on the tip of my nose. “We pretty much live our lives trying to outdo each other now. It’s stupid, really, since he has me beat by a long shot.”

I shrug. “Who cares? Besides, you have a long career ahead of you,” I say with a smile.

Nick smiles back and opens his mouth to say something, but we’re cut off by the cheering of the crowd. I stand up, clapping along with them and smiling at Shea when he looks at me over his shoulder and smirks at me. He turns back around as the lights turn off completely and the tempo of one of his songs starts. Shea runs onto the stage and stands in the middle right when a purple spotlight shines on him. He begins to sing, his voice wrapping around every note perfectly. This song is a slow ballad about heartache and the one that got away. It’s one of my favorites from his last CD, and I sing along with him as if I was the one performing.

As I stand there, swaying my hips slowly to the beat and singing, Nick stands beside me with his arms crossed in front of his chest, nodding his head along. Shea performs another song right after and then takes a break, taking a swig of the Hennessy bottle they placed in an ice bucket onstage. I cringe at the sight; I’ve never understood how he could do that. His white T-shirt is already clinging to him from his sweat, but I know he won’t take it off. He’d rather come to the side of the stage and change into another one than take it off. His old manager used to encourage him to take off his shirt. Shea always turned that down, saying he wanted to be taken seriously as a musician and not seen only as a sex symbol. Now he has both, so sometimes he concedes and takes off the damn shirt when he’s hot. That’s probably the women’s favorite part of the show. It’s so stupid, really. The man puts on a hell of a show with his clothes on, so it makes me mad when I hear young girls or women discussing how the best part of the show was when he took his shirt off.

“Hello, San Francisco!” Shea yells into the microphone, making everybody scream. He smiles. “How you all doing out here tonight?” He pauses, letting them cheer. “This is a special city for me, one that brings a lot of memories. Some good, some bad, but no matter what’s happened here, I’m always glad to be back with you all!”

There are hoots and hollers and women screaming they love him. He eats it all up. Nick chuckles beside me, knowing Shea is enjoying the hell out of all of it. I roll my eyes but laugh along as I watch the spectacle. I keep enjoying myself until Shea turns and looks right at me. Even with the blinding lights illuminating over him, he finds me, the way he does when he wants to prove a point. This knowledge makes my heart stop beating.

“This next song … isn’t mine …” he starts and chuckles when someone shouts for him to perform a specific song of his. “But I keep listening to it. It reminds me of someone in my life that I keep striking out with.”

He turns his body then and looks straight into my eyes as the familiar beat of Drake’s song, Connect, starts playing in the background. The bass builds up slowly with the tempo of the song, dropping in perfect synch with the hi-hat of the drums Leo is playing. Shea does a little sensual dance along with it, moving his pelvis slowly. He doesn’t even acknowledge the catcalls of the women in the audience; he’s completely in the zone watching me. He begins to rap the first verse, smirking as he does it, and I can feel is the adrenaline beginning to bubble through my body. The only thing I can hear is my heart pounding loudly in my ears as heat creeps up in my face, and I’m thankful for the darkness in the building.

I don’t have to turn my head to look at Nick’s pissed off face. I can see his jaw clenching and his fists balling from my peripheral vision as he glares at Shea. I feel jealousy swirling in the air, wrapping its little claws around each one of our necks and gripping, taking each of our breaths slowly away from us. The crowd is oblivious to it all. And the worst part is, there’s not much I can do to ease the palpable tension. I feel like I’m rooted to the ground, unable to move from here.

“Oh the idea is fun,” Shea sings. I find my lips moving, singing along, even though I’m glaring at him, hot tears forming in the back of my eyes. “Oh the idea is so fun every time, at least we try for homerun every time. Swinging. Eyes closed just swinging …”

He continues to sing, turning to the audience with a bop in his step and waving his arms in a dance as the tempo switches, and then turns back to face me. He walks over to me slowly until he’s standing directly in front of me, his eyes narrowing as he sings, “She just wanna run around the city and make memories that she can barely remember. And I allow her. Talk about pussy power. She just wanna run over my feelings like she’s drinking and driving in an eighteen wheeler. And I’d allow her. Talk about pussy power …”

Tears begin to trickle down my face as Shea continues to sing to me, planting little bombs inside my chest with each look and detonating them with each word. When he sings that he’s just trying to connect with something, he turns around and keeps dancing, performing for the crowd now, getting them riled up. I continue to watch him in a daze. When he finishes the song, he looks at me again, his mouth curling into a wicked smile that makes me want to run up to the stage and slap it off. Blinking away my tears in disbelief, not understanding how he could be so downright mean to me, how he could see that he’s hurting me and smile at it, I turn around and begin to run toward the dressing room.

The more steps I pound into the ground, the harder my heart pounds in my chest, matching the steps chasing me from behind. Wiping my face, I make sure that there are no tears left on it, even though I refuse to look back now. I know he’s running toward me but I can’t look at him. I just want to get away, but he doesn’t let me. Nick’s arms wrap around me and he lifts me up, carrying me like a baby as he cradles me to his chest and continues to walk me outside of the building. The wind hits us as we step into the alley. Nick tells one of the drivers to take us back to the hotel, carrying me into the car and leaving me on his lap as we drive. I don’t cry. I don’t lose it like I expected to when I’m comforted. I hold everything in, unwilling to let myself crumble in front of him over this, even though I feel hurt. I shake my head against Nick’s chest out of confusion, unable to understand why Shea would do that to me.

Deep down I understand why he did it and I think that bothers me more. He’s been there for me to see me through things I didn’t think I could survive, and he wants it to stay that way. He doesn’t know how to accept that I can’t wait until he decides that he can give me what I need, and what’s worse is that I don’t want him anymore. I don’t want him to fill the void I thought I needed him to fill all those years ago. I want to be happy in my life the way I see fit, but I want Shea to be part of it. I’m scared to let go of him because he’s the only thing I have left of my old self, and I’m not willing to let that girl go completely. No matter how tortured she was, she’s still part of me.

The drive back to the hotel is quiet. Nick doesn’t say a word to me; he just runs his fingers through my hair and down my back soothingly with his lips pressed against my forehead. I’m grateful for the peace he gives me when he’s near. More than anything, I’m thankful that he doesn’t question me or act like he’s angry with me for being hurt. That’s what Shea would do: get angry with me for letting other people’s actions get to me. When we pull up to the front of the hotel, Nick shifts me to the seat and hops out of the SUV before helping me out, holding my hand all the way up to our room.

Stepping in, I let out a shaky breath and close my eyes.

“I can’t believe he did that,” I whisper at nobody in particular. Nick, who’s standing behind me, lets out a breath of his own.

“I can,” he says.

I nod, blinking my eyes rapidly, the tears now leaking from my eyes. I walk toward the bathroom so that I can get myself together, and thankfully Nick gives me space. When I come back out, feeling much better and composed, he’s sitting on the couch with earphones on, working on Shea’s music, I’m sure. Nick takes off the earphones when he sees me and lays the computer down on the table in front of him, standing up and striding over to me with a sympathetic look in his eyes. I’ve heard Nina say in the past that she hates when people look at her with sympathy when she’s down, but as Nick walks toward me, I can’t imagine why. I’ve never had anyone look at me like this. People usually kick me when I’m already down, either expecting me to get right back up or not caring if I walk at all.

Nick cups my face in his hands, his thumbs caressing my cheeks softly as he looks at me with the most caring expression on his face. I have to swallow hard to dislodge the lump forming in my throat. His eyes question me, asking if I’m okay. I nod, beginning to feel overwhelmed with emotion. Before I get a chance to blink my tears away again, his lips are desperately moving against mine. I can’t tell who’s taking and who’s giving as our tongues twirl around the other in harmony. The way he kisses me, like he needs me more than he wants me, takes my breath away every time. He runs his hands down my body, palming my butt before lifting me up and circling my legs around his waist. His mouth leaves mine and trails down my neck, kissing and sucking as I grab on to his shoulders and throw my head back, letting him bathe me with his lips.