Faster We Burn (33 page)

“How about we start off with requests tonight for a change?” Stryker said, swiping his bow across the strings. “Anyone?”

“How about a duet,” Allan said, staring pointedly at me. “You two.” He pointed at us with his guitar pick. “Mads Langer, ‘Beauty of the Dark’, duet. You up for it?”

I looked at Stryker, but he didn’t look surprised.

“What a good idea, Allan. I’m mad I didn’t think of it myself.” Stryker turned slowly to face me, a grin on his face. Oh, he so planned this. He’d played the song for me a few days ago, and I’d loved it so much that I’d been listening to it ever since and humming it under my breath.

“You set me up,” I said, shoving him a little.

“Hey, anything to hear that gorgeous voice of yours.” I looked around and everyone else looked guilty.

I pointed at all of them. “You all suck, by the way.”

That response elicited laughter just as we heard footsteps on the stairs before Trish walked through the door with the blue-haired cousin/stepbrother from the funeral. I nearly choked when I saw that they were holding hands.

“Sorry we’re late,” she said, blushing. The guy, who was still nameless, gave us all a little two-fingered wave.

“Hey, that’s my bad. I’m Max.”

“Nice to finally meet you,
Max
,” Stryker said, and it wasn’t my imagination that he gripped his violin extra hard. Haha. Protective big brother strikes again.

“That’s my brother, Stryker. You can ignore him. I know I do,” Trish said, leading Max into the room and making the other introductions.

“This is Katie,” she said when she got to me. I stuck my hand out and he shook it, his eyes widening at the mention of my name.

“So this is Katie. You were right,” he said, turning toward Trish and putting his arm over her shoulder. “She does wear a lot of pink.” She shrugged and he gave her a kiss on the forehead.

I always thought Will was crazy for thinking about alien abductions or radiation poisoning, but I was beginning to suspect that Trish either had a concussion, or she’d swapped personalities with some other girl. That was the only plausible explanation for this behavior.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, watching Trish’s personality shift. Oh, she was going to dish later.

All of us had made an attempt to get her to spill about Max, but until now she wouldn’t even give us his name or speak about him in any way.

“I hope we’re not intruding. Just…keep doing what you were doing. We’ll be over here,” Max said after the introductions, taking a seat on the floor and pulling Trish down after him. She settled against him, and they shared a secret smile.

I gave Stryker a look, and he was giving Trish the Grant Glare. I usually only saw it on her face, but now he wore it like a favorite, well-worn t-shirt.

“Hey,” I said, poking him in the ribs. “Your overprotective is showing.”

He turned off the glare when he looked at me.

“I don’t like him,” he hissed at me. “He’s…got blue hair.”

“Yeah, you can never trust those blue-haired guys. As opposed to those guys who bleach their hair.”

He looked at me and I tried to do the eyebrow raise, but I didn’t think I got it quite right.

“Okay, okay.” Everyone else was sort of watching us and also watching Trish and Max, who were in their own little world.

“So, we ready to do our duet?” I was willing to go along with it if it would take some of the heat off Trish. I had to poke him in the chest to get him to focus. Damn. I’d never seen him like that. For all the fighting he and Trish did, I had no idea that he’d be like that when Trish finally found a guy. Yet another side of the mysterious Stryker Abraham Grant.

“Let’s rock it,” I said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. It took a second, but he set his violin under his chin as a hush fell over the room. Why had I agreed to do this again? I was about to stand up and say “never mind” when Stryker started playing, and I had no choice but to start singing.

Stryker came in with me and even without practicing, we followed each other’s lead and melded our voices together. It was like making love with him. In some ways it was just as intimate. Another way for us to have no space.

We finished and the room was silent. Then Allan started a slow clap that turned into a round of applause complete with whoops and whistles. I blushed and Stryker put down his violin so he could give me a steamy kiss. I had to pull away before it went any further. Even with a room full of people, I was ready to rip his clothes off and have my way with him.

“Get a room!” someone yelled, and we broke apart.

“Wanna do another?” he said, nibbling on his bottom lip.

“Sure. Can I pick this time?”

“As long as it’s not that Beaver kid.”

We all laughed.

“Nope. How about ‘Stay’?” It was a song that he’d gotten from my collection. I wasn’t the only one who needed a musical education. I’d widened his range as well, and that was one of the songs I’d caught him playing more than once. It was also a real duet, with me taking the Rihanna part and him taking the Mikky Ekko parts. Stryker’s and my voices were completely different from Rihanna’s and Mikky’s, but no one seemed to care.

We got another round of applause, and shared another sexy kiss.

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Allan said, throwing an empty can at us. “Time for some real music instead of singing intercourse.” Everyone else took up their instruments and started playing a new song, and I sat back and watched Stryker do his thing again, but kept one eye on Trish and Max. She caught me watching and gave me a wink. Oh, we were soooo going to have a little chat.

They played a few songs and then it was time for a smoke break and I nabbed Trish before she could escape. Max gave me a kind of scared look and stuttered something about enjoying secondhand smoke and scurried away.

“You have some serious explaining to do, Trishella.” Instead of slapping me for using her real name like she probably would have a few weeks ago, she just watched Max walk away.

“What?” she said, tearing her eyes away from his back to finally pay attention to me. The girl was completely gone on him.

I snapped my fingers in front of her face.

“I said that you have some serious explaining to do. When and how being the most pressing questions in my mind right now.” She motioned me into the kitchen so we could have some privacy. Stryker had gone out with the smokers to get some secondhand. He was still having trouble quitting, but he’d get there. Plus, he’d probably seen that Max had gone outside and was interrogating him. He was probably about to start the waterboarding any moment.

Trish leaned against the counter and looked down, a little smile on her face.

“Honestly, I don’t know. It just…happened. I was so upset at the funeral and he came over and made some stupid comment that made me want to punch him, and then I just started crying again and he hugged me. Out of the blue. And I let him, and it felt nice. He started talking about how he’d lost his best friend when they were kids and he knew what it was like. And I don’t know…I just started talking and he talked and we’ve been talking ever since.” She shrugged.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone about him?”

“For the same reason you kept the whole Stryker thing in the dark, Miss Kettle.” Oh yeah. I had done that. “I just didn’t want a big deal made out of it, which is exactly what happened anyway, but at least I got to give Max some warning ahead of time.”

Half of the smoking crowd came back, loud and boisterous, but Stryker and Max weren’t a part of the group.

Trish looked concerned. “God, I hope Stryker isn’t trying to beat the shit out of him. Max is a third degree black belt in Tai Kwan Do, so I’m pretty sure my brother would be shit out of luck.”

“I don’t know. Never underestimate a brother trying to protect his little sister.”

“He always does that,” she said, tossing an empty cup into the trash. “But it’s like he doesn’t want me to do anything. Even when he’s screwing things up, he refuses to let me do the exact same things he’s doing himself.”

“He doesn’t want you to make the same mistakes he has. My sister’s the same way.” Kayla always used to catch me sneaking out of the house, usually when she was doing the exact same thing. She might have been my parents’ golden child, but that didn’t mean she had been absolutely perfect. She just hadn’t gotten caught.

“There they are,” she said as Stryker and Max came back inside. Neither of them had a black eye, and they were talking at a normal volume.

“Everything looks okay,” I said.

“I’d better check,” she pushed herself away from the counter and went over to Max, putting her arm around his waist. His arm went around her automatically, like he wasn’t even thinking about it. As if it was natural.

Stryker said something and then shook his head, and I saw that he was smiling. He shook Max’s hand and looked around the room, stopping when he saw me.

Max and Trish went to go sit on the floor again and Stryker came over to me.

“Please don’t say you threatened him,” I said.

He pretended to be appalled, putting his hand to his chest.

“I am shocked that you think I would do such a thing.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Yeah, okay, Stryker. What did you say to him?” He came over and put his arms around me.

“I just said that it was about time my sister trusted someone enough to let them get past her incredibly thick and high walls and I hoped he was worthy of it, even though I doubted it. But I said I’d be watching him.”

I smacked him in the chest.

“If you didn’t say the last part, the first part would be a lot sweeter. Look at her,” I said, turning both of us so we could see Max and Trish together. He’d pushed some of her hair back and she smiled as she told him something.

“She’s happy.”

“I just hope she stays that way,” he said, pulling me close. “I don’t want her to have a hard time. I want life to be better for her, you know?”

“Yeah, I do,” I said, pushing myself up to give him a kiss. “You’re a good brother, Stryker Grant.”

“You’re a good girlfriend, Katherine Ann Hallman. And a good kisser, and a good singer, and you’re
really
good at giving—”

I put my hand on his mouth, because I knew what else he was going to say I was good at, and I didn’t want anyone else to overhear.

“That’s not for you to advertise, or else I’ll never do it again.” I removed my hand and gave him a glare for good measure. The threat was enough to get him to press his lips together as if he was sealing them.

“Are we gonna play now?” Allan called as he tried to sit next to Zoey, and she pushed him away with disgust.

“Coming,” he said, letting go of me. “Which is what you’ll be doing later tonight after everyone leaves. Over and over again,” he whispered before walking back to the couch.

Damn him. He played dirty.

It took me a second to get my legs to work so I could get back to the couch and it was a relief to sit down, even though sitting next to Stryker made me really uncomfortable in certain areas. It was torture for the rest of the session, but the sweetest kind.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Stryker

“So I think I should pick a major,” she said as she lay naked in my bed and I drew a sunburst in the middle of her back. I’d kept my promise from earlier, and she’d reciprocated, so we were both worn out physically. “Don’t you think?”

I shrugged one shoulder and looked up from my drawing to meet her eyes.

“Do you want to pick one because you want to, or because there’s all this pressure from other people to?”

She thought about it for a second.

“I think it’s both. I just…I want to know…what I want.”

I laughed a little.

She smacked my shoulder. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not laughing at you. I’m just laughing because that’s the human condition. Nobody really knows what they want. They just know what they think they want and then they get it and they realize they don’t want it anymore.”

“Like what?”

“Money, power, prestige. Mostly money.”

“I don’t care about money that much.”

“I know. That’s one of the things I love about you. I don’t really care about it either, except that it’d be nice to have enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about paying the electric bill.”

She yawned. “I should probably get a job now. Mom and Dad mostly footed the bill for everything, and I’ve been living on my summer babysitting money, but that’s almost gone. I don’t want to take more money from Mom, because she needs it more than I do. I’ve thought about dropping out,” she said, which made me look up at her again.

“To save money?”

“Yeah, and to take care of her. She’s all alone.” Katie spent every weekend at home, and it was taking its toll on her. She always came back reluctantly, and it took a day for her to recover emotionally. Kayla had gone back to Africa, and had decided to postpone her wedding for a better time.

I stroked my fingers down her spine.

“Is that what you want?”

She sighed heavily.

“It’s not about what I want.”

“Fine, then what do you think your dad would want?”

“He’d want me to finish school.”

“Then I think you should do that.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to tell me what to do.”

“I’m not. Just suggesting.” I’d said the same thing when I’d told her not to go see Zack.

“Okay, then. If I’m staying, I have to pick a major.” I had an idea. If she wanted to pick a major, we were going to pick her a fucking major.

“Stay right there,” I said, standing up to get my laptop.

She pushed herself up. “Where are you going?”

“Just a sec.” I grabbed it from the kitchen, booting it up on the way back to my bedroom. I went to the DU website scrolled down until I found the list of majors the university offered.

“Okay, how do you feel about accounting?”

“What?” She rolled over and saw me holding my laptop.

“Accounting, yes or no?” I sat down and she moved closer to me.

“Um, no. Not big on math.” I went down to the next option.