Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance (69 page)

He rethought everything. If he could convince her to make another go of it. If being with her meant the end of his career as he’d known it and the beginning of one not dependent on the whims of the public, was he ready for that? To never again feed from the frenzied energy of tens of thousands of fans before him? Did he need the adoration of a fickle public to feel significant? Or the adoration of one significant woman?

The neon light of a pastry shop down the street flickered on. Flipping her phone over, he hit the power button to check the time. Resigning himself to leaving within the next half hour before the rest of the world began to stir, he started to set the phone down and then hesitated.

He’d recognized the haunted expression on her face.

Guilt.

More Henni crap?

His thumb slid the unlock bar and the notifications icon blinked. After a glance to assure himself she was still sleeping, he brought up recent messages, noting the one dominating name. The same name lit her many missed calls.

Well fuck
.

 Across the shadows, he eyed the nightstand. Although it was too dark to see the necklace, he knew it was there. If he hadn’t been so distracted by her tits in his face, he might have realized what was really happening when she’d paused in the middle of sex to unclasp the dainty guitar necklace and toss it aside.

“It’s in the way,” she’d explained. But she hadn’t taken off the silver cross bumping against her breastbone and tapping at his chin.

Guilt. He’d called it all right.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck
.

T
he phone alarm woke her as usual. Exhausted, she let it bleep, knowing it would automatically go into snooze mode after a minute and wake her again in ten minutes. She burrowed her face into the comfort of the pillow.

It seemed an hour later when she was roused by a knock on the door, and she popped up in a panic. Her joints were stiff. Between her thighs was achy. Her skin seemed hypersensitive and she felt an inward smile spread its warmth through her body.

Gage came into focus and the warmth radiated into a tingle of happiness. “You’re still here.”

“Yeah. Cover up. I’m gonna get the door…”

“Room service.” The knock came again.

Leaping from the bed, she closed herself in the bathroom. While she was there, she jumped in and out of the shower. Cocooning in the one towel still hanging, she noticed it was already damp.

She found Gage at the table with a bagel in one hand and a speared chunk of pineapple in the other. He swallowed and forked the fruit into his mouth before setting the utensil down. “See. I can eat right. Even when you don’t text me.”

She poked her head through a tee shirt and rummaged for clean undies and shorts. Everything that had led to her not texting him menu choices the evening before had been more than worked out. Dressed, she sat across from him. “What time is it? It feels late. Don’t you have an interview?”

He pushed the bowl of fruit and a fork to her side of the table.

“Where’s my phone? I need to…” And suddenly checking the time took a backseat to the recollection of the call she needed to return. Logan.

He tipped his head to the windowsill and she reached, unplugging the cord so she wouldn’t forget to pack it. Before she could look at her phone screen, he stopped her with five words.

“Scar, we need to talk.”

She started to push the fruit away and then instead, determinedly took a bite as if her whole world wasn’t suspended on the thread of what he was about to say.

Last night had been about good closure. So why wasn’t he gone while it was still good?

“Just say it. Whatever it is.” She had no mercy on the remorse shadowing his features. “I’ve got to go out and find some more kava root for Landon.”

“Forget Landon.” He snapped and drained a cup of what looked like tea. And she wondered if it really was tea in lieu of the high caffeine coffee he refused to quit.

“I wish I could. But he’s my job on this tour.”

“I paid Logan to go out with you.”

The evolution from Landon to Logan took a moment in her mind, and then his words still made zero sense. “What?”

“After New Year’s Eve. When you were with that old boyfriend.”

“Derrick wasn’t a boyfriend.” The instant protest left her lips, but her thoughts were still rolling in slow-mo.

 “I couldn’t handle it. I thought there was still a chance for us, so I asked Logan to do it. To be your boyfriend so you’d be available when our chance came again.”

“Derrick’s the hookup I told you about. Sex. Nothing more.”

“God, Scarlette. Stop. I don’t want to hear this or think about him. I’m trying to tell you―”

“Well, I don’t want to hear this. Damn it! You’re ruining everything!” How could they even go back to brother and sister after this declaration? He’d crossed a line with his interference. A line that couldn’t be uncrossed. “It all makes complete sense now!” A flash of Logan pushing her away the night of her graduation tore at her gut. On cue, as if this little scene was part of an angsty movie, the phone buzzed her hand and Logan’s name painted the screen. She laid it face up on the table so he could see.

“I’m sorry. I am. But I wanted you back so much. I was trying to keep things from being complicated. It was wrong. But I did it and you need to know the truth so you won’t feel guilty about last night.”

Her eyes went to the window and the world beyond. To people scurrying on with their lives, unaware of a woman in a window looking on. The feeling of being duped by two people she had given a chunk of her heart to was dizzying. She had been one of those little people six stories below while some invisible eye in the sky watched.

She watched his reflection in the glass. “What if he’d been better than you?”

“Better? How?” Storm clouds gathered in his gaze. “The fuck are you talking about?”

 “Wouldn’t that have complicated your game?” Pushing to her feet, she stood with her arms folded. “If I fell for him?” Seeing the direction of his thoughts she couldn’t help her taunt. “If sex with Logan was the best I ever had. If it was like crack and I never wanted another―”

“That motherfuckin’ son of a bitch!” Gage shot to his feet. “He wasn’t supposed to―” When he looked at her face and halted what was surely about to become a tirade, she realized she was grinning. “The fuck, Scar. Did he? Were you… fucking?”

“Listen to what you’re saying.” Her smile fell away, and she felt her face scrunch up with the feelings of animosity bubbling inside. “My ‘boyfriend’ you arranged for me wasn’t supposed to fuck me! You fixed things so that I didn’t have sex for almost six months! Did
you
go without for six months?” His face flushed, and she almost stopped her tirade at the shame she saw, but she was too wound up. “Not only that, I thought there was something
wrong
with me that he wouldn’t.”

“Why would you think that?” He sounded angry, but when his next words gentled into a sweet tease, she knew his anger was self-directed. “You have a mirror in your house, right?”

She wanted this conversation to dissolve. To have never happened. Especially because of the turn it had taken. And so she refrained from answering, and turned back to the fishbowl of a world beyond the glass.

“You know what you look like…” He argued as he walked, stopped at the door, turned and started across the room again. Dropping his voice to a rumbly almost whisper he added, “You know what you’re like. You’re so pretty. As much inside as out.”

Maybe he wanted to leave as much as she wanted to scream at him to go. But there was still something intangible hanging in the atmosphere.

“I’d lost a lot of weight. I was skin and bones. You saw me when I first came on tour. Besides, I thought he thought I was too pathetically in love with you still, and that’s why he wouldn’t touch me.”

“Were you? Still in love?”

Screw him for even asking. Somehow she refrained from cursing at him and instead glared her best ‘it’s-none-of-your-damn-business’ look.

His pacing stopped and he reached for her hand, coaxing her closer. “New question, then.
Are
you?” She pulled and he tugged back using the momentum to propel her into his arms. “I still love you, Scar Dar’. His thumb traced her lips. “Maybe one of these days we’ll figure us out.” Gently he brushed his lips to hers. “Thanks for the new memories.”

When the door closed behind him, she was left wondering if his exit was abrupt or overdue. And if his parting line had been sweet or ridiculous. Because whatever had been lingering in the air was still there. Unresolved.

The guitar found its way into her hands and she alternately picked and hummed a melody.

Bought a one-way ticket to sadness

Off the rails at badness

Riding the rockstar train to madness

Lame
. Why couldn’t she write poetic verses like Gage?

Gage.

The sudden loneliness was engulfing. Trading the guitar for her phone, she scrolled to her contacts and dialed.

“Ivy. Thank God.” She collapsed into the chair, almost crying in relief when her friend and not voicemail answered.

The unkempt bed taunted her. All but two pillows were strewn around. The spread was on the floor. One corner of the bottom sheet had become untucked.

After she spilled everything to her friend—her fake boyfriend, her night with Gage—Ivy was quiet. And then after telling Scarlette to hang on, she spoke quietly to someone on the other end of the phone. There was a click as if a door had closed and the background noise on her friend’s end went away.

“Scarlette? Are you wanting advice or a listen?”

“I don’t know.” She stabbed at the strawberries, watching the juice pool and joked. “Depends on what the advice is, I guess.”

“I know I’ve been anti-Gage since your breakup, because of the way it happened. And because I thought your time with him might be one relapse after another. But he’s been clean now for a year?”

“Yeah. But a year is not that long in rehab time.”

“But Gage wasn’t a longtime junkie. All I’m trying to say is, I think he’s a good guy. And everyone else who knows him has the same opinion. I realize at this point, the two of you are plugging along one day at a time. But don’t fight this thing between you two because you think he’s some degenerate like your mother’s boyfriends.”

“Maybe not. But he paid someone to go out with me. To take up my time!”

“That’s wrong and weird. I’ll give you that. But what it all boils down to is he wanted another chance with you. Because he loves you.”

“Why does this have to be so confusing? I should be mad at him.”

“But you’re not?”

“One second I am. And the next…”

“What you’re feeling in the next is what you need to work out.”

While on the phone with Ivy, call waiting flashed twice, both times Logan. She stabbed a blueberry and thanked Ivy for the talk.

“Oh, Scarlette… Way to go, girl.”

“For?”

“Your song.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Her session at Jewelstone’s seemed like forever ago and she’d never talked to Ivy about it afterward. Had Jax released the project? After hanging up, she tapped the email icon, but before the site came up, her screen lit up again with Logan’s ID. Enough was enough. She was angry with Gage and hadn’t decided how to feel about Logan’s part in this great pretense. Steeling herself for whatever emotional upheaval was about to hit, she pressed ‘answer.’

“Y
ou didn’t show.” Landon moved nothing except the muscles it took to form the accusation the moment Gage let himself into the room.

Feeling flippant about this morning’s missed Entertainment Vlog interview in the scheme of things his morning had wrought, Gage tossed his phone onto the bed. He’d already texted through the absentee bullshit with their pissed off tour manager. “Oh well. Always another one.”

“Sure.” Now Landon moved, reaching for the remote and flipping through channels. “Not like anyone cares whether you’re there or not.”

“Exactly.” Ignoring the jeer, Gage played into it.

“You stay the night with hot sister?”