Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance (11 page)

He leaned against the mantel and the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Yeah. He’s pretty happy. Doesn’t leave my side.” His dark eyes roamed from my face to my feet. “You look good.” And then he threw me when he added, “Happy.” Was he fishing?

I’m not
. I put on my brightest smile. “Thanks.” My gaze slid down from his face in my own appraisal, but I froze before reaching his waist when a pang pierced my heart. Lifting my eyes back to his, I wrung my hands unseen. “You look good too.” I didn’t say happy. Because that would be as much a lie as the word had been to describe me.

Although in prime physical form, his lean physique now filled out and cut, he bore shadows beneath his bedroom eyes and stress lines at the corners of his sexy lips.

“Where do we go from here?” He moved a few paces in the other direction and then turned back. “You said you needed to think about things. And we never talked about it after that.”

Swallowing the aching clump in my throat, I parted my lips, but speech didn’t come, and he continued.

“You avoided my calls. Didn’t return messages.”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“It was exactly like that. Until that day, in the barn, you replied to every text. Answered every time on the first ring. Afterward, I was lucky if you got back to me every other time. And you know what? You never reached out to me first, ever again.”

“
You
killed us. Not me.” When his face went ashen, I realized what I’d said. There was his answer. We were going nowhere from here.

“I can say it a thousand times, and you’ll still never know how sorry I am. How fucking much I regret being an idiot.” His words were almost a whisper.

Thinking about the senselessness of all that had happened was infuriating. We had withstood with superhero strength the aftermath of a viral sex video, and yet, my stupid selfie video had been our kryptonite.

“I know you’re sorry. But apologies don’t change the truth. It happened. You thought that shit of me. That I would be alone with Colt and God knows what else with him. That’s insulting but understandable given the shitty stuff we’ve both seen and lived through. But you broke it off. Without asking me to explain. Without
wanting
me to tell you the truth. And that right there… I can’t get past that. I can’t get over that.” My breath hitched dangerously. If I wasn’t careful, I’d be in tears in two seconds. “…that to you I was so easy to throw away…”

“You weren’t! Nothing about that—this—is easy!”

“You know what, Gage? If that had happened the other way around… If I’d seen a video of you and that girl at your rehab, and my mind got all twisted up, I would have asked you—begged you to tell me something other than what I was thinking. And then no matter how outlandish and no matter whether or not it was the truth, I would’ve believed you. That’s how much I loved you. And I thought you loved me back that much.”

Looking as if he might cry too, he moved in, reaching out.

In my haste to back up, I tripped. Nothing new. Emotions and motion were not compatible in my body.

He dropped to his knees beside me, tenderness and regret brimming in the brown of his eyes. When his fingers curled gently around my wrist, I snatched it back. “Go. Just go. Please!”

He was slow to rise, but when he did, he pulled me up with him and inclined his chin in a nod of acceptance. Drifting toward the door, he forked his fingers through his hair. His lips parted, his words barely audible. “That’s why I didn’t ask. Exactly what you said. I knew I would believe anything. And that scared the fuck outta me.” He looked as if he wanted to say more. But without a word, he twisted open the door, and disappeared into the hallway when he pulled it closed behind him.

R
andomly grabbing a guitar, he dropped onto the studio couch. But he didn’t play. The silence of the house pulsated inside his skull.

This was how it was supposed to be. He’d always known. Deep in the back of his brain. That he’d lose her. And even if he didn’t, he should. He wanted better for her than him. She had lived a life of mental adversity too. She deserved to fly through life from this point on with no checked baggage—i.e. his baggage.

But it hurt. Fuck, how it hurt.

Rascal climbed into the couch and propped his head across the hem of his jeans.

Without thinking, he strummed the Taylor, and eventually he hummed along with the chords of each mournful key.

A process of elimination. Mentally, he went through the possibilities. A chemical fix was out. Alcohol? No. Drinking while he was like this would only lead to a drunken binge, which would lead to God knew what else. So what? What would blur the sharp edges of pain?

A-minor, he switched, plucking out an even more somber tune, continuing to modulate the humming hurt from his throat to harmonize.

He shouldn’t have come home. Should have gone straight from Scar’s to… To where? Where did he have to go? He had been a loner so long that he had no one.

Along with chemicals, women had once filled this chasm in his soul, but he had no desire for companionship of the opposite sex—unless it was Scar.

The person besides Scar he was closest with? Colt, who had evolved into a brother from another mother. Except the new lineup of Fire Flight had changed everything between them. Colt was Fire Flight’s new frontman, just as he had threatened. Although he’d tried not to, he felt betrayed. In their few texts and calls, Colt had never mentioned the new guitarist. However, when he had searched this new addition to Fire Flight on the internet, the pictures he found that included Colt showed the two looking pretty chummy.

The night he’d perused these pics, he’d wanted to call Scarlette. But she’d already distanced herself at the time and he’d resisted the impulse. Just like now, as weird as it was, he wanted to lean on Scar for support of their own breakup! How fucked up was that?

Rascal began licking at his jeans. Intently, as if he’d spilled steak drippings on his knee. The action was so weird, his fingers tapered off. Only when the guitar went silent did he hear himself and immediately hushed his keening cries.

Bringing a hand up, he was startled to find his face wet. In a panic, he wiped at his eyes and cheeks.
Crying?
He was fuckin’ crying. And wailing aloud!
Un-fucking acceptable
.

Leaping up, he traded the acoustic for an electric and powered up a laptop. Work was the only thing that would get him through the night. No matter that for the first time since he was a teenager he had no band. He’d block that part out of his head and create.

Once the night was over, he would figure something out to get him through the day.

“S
carlette! Hey, beautiful, how are you today?” The greetings rang out around me, and I slowed my pace to smile, taking in a few familiar faces behind camera snouts. “Who’s with you today? Can you comment on the video?”

The last question snapped my last nerve, but I held my smiling countenance until I was safe behind the tinted windows of my ride. As I powered the engine to life, the passenger door closed and Derrick turned astounded eyes to me.

“Damn. That’s crazy. Is it like that everywhere you go?”

“Just the usual paparazzi hangouts.”
And my hangouts once they figure them out. And my house if they’re bored
. Keeping my inner replies silent, I curved a smile. “And LAX is one of those hangouts.”

“I could have taken a cab.”

“It would have been a fortune. Besides, I couldn’t wait to see you.” When he remained contemplative, I asked, “What?”

“It’s just weird. Seeing you like this. I still can’t believe you never told any of us. Who you are.”

“You know who I am.
That
, making nice for the cameras is who they want me to be.”

“So where are you taking me first?”

“You know those lobster tacos we were addicted to back home?” The moment I said home, it felt weird on my tongue. My mother still lived in Belize. But it was no longer home. Even now that Gage and I were apart, L.A. felt like home. “Wait until you taste the fish tacos here.”

“I like your priorities,” he mumbled between bites a half hour later. “You’re totally right about these tacos!”

Wadding up the empty paper wrap now that my last taco was digesting, I fisted it as I thought of the last time Gage and I had been to this food truck. There had been no contact with him for almost two months, and it had been the longest two months of my life.

When Derrick had hinted about spending fall break in L.A., I had considered the idea for a week before finally agreeing. Now I studied him with a slant of my eyes behind shades while keeping my face to the ocean. Could I go through with this? I hadn’t been with anyone sexually since that day with Gage in a barn.

Derrick chattered about acquaintances we had in Belize. He had me laughing with some of the funnier stories. We walked the beach, and it seemed natural when he grabbed my hand. It felt good. But I casually pulled away and tried not to be obvious when looking uneasily around for phones pointed at me or paparazzi snouts.

We were sitting in the sand and the sun was beginning a steady sink into the ocean when my phone buzzed. Pulling it from my pocket, I read the text, and then stretched as I got to my feet.

“Ready?”

“Whenever.” He shrugged his agreement.

“I’ve got a paper due when break is over. A guy I know is bringing me by some notes. He had the class last semester.”

“What made you decide not to go to Bastyr?”

Now I was the one to shrug. It had been impossible to seek admission at the last minute. With things already going bad between me and Gage, I’d considered going back to Belize. In the end, I had stayed here, in the first place I’d ever felt at home.

In the grand scheme of things, I had decided I wanted to apply my allopathic studies to chemical detoxification in a private rehab setting. Looking through the materials from Shady Oasis had made up my mind.

Chemical detoxification had an eighty percent relapse rate. But, facilities like the one Gage was in, which used allopathic means to rid the impurities stored in fatty tissues, such as the method I’d already used on Gage, had only a thirty percent relapse rate.

“I’m not sure.” Looking up I saw he hadn’t taken my shrug for an answer. “A lot of things, I guess.”

“A relationship?”

We had come to my car and I jolted to a stop, looking over the top of it as he rounded to the passenger side. “You mean…? No. Logan’s a friend. Only. Believe me.” I unlocked the door and we both settled in.

“You sound almost hostile about that.”

Checking my mirror, I pulled into traffic and then took a second to look over his teasing grin. “He’s Gage's' P.A.”

“Oh.” Derrick clamped his lips closed and his brows drew together. “Enough said.”

I couldn’t help but giggle, and he ran the tips of his fingers over the evening shadow on his jaw. “What happened with him, Scarla? Were you two…?”

He knew about the sex clip. Even before I had mentioned it to him, word had gotten around in our circles. In the course of several conversations, a lot of what had happened since I’d arrived in L.A. had come out. But I’d always just grazed the subject of Gage.

“Yeah.” Turning on my blinker, I eased into the exit nearest my home. “We were. I thought I loved him. But he’s a damn rock star. And he lives the life.” Was that fair to say now that he was out of rehab and onto a better tack? Maybe not. Only time would tell. But it was what was easiest to believe. Different worlds didn’t smack so much of rejection.

We grew quiet while he D.J.’d from my playlist. I made the left from the boulevard into my subdivision, and another left onto my road. Here I groaned as I took my foot from the brake and let the car coast.

He looked up from the songs in queue, silently questioning the outburst. I pointed to the white Accord I was very aware of these days. While I explained, he frowned.

“Why does he seem familiar? Who is that?”

“He’s nobody. A paps who won’t leave me alone for some reason.” I flipped my visor down when the paps guy straightened his squatty frame from his slouch against his car and pointed a camera at the windshield.