Muse - Fighting Fate #1 (7 page)

Chapter 10

Jace

I left Mia’s room in a slight daze. I think I was still in shock that she’d asked me for a no strings attached relationship. I knew that was like every guy’s ultimate fantasy, but it wasn’t something I thought I’d ever go for. I’d never, ever been interested in having a girl more than once. If I was to be honest with myself, which I don’t think I really wanted to be, I only went for it because it was Mia.

I had no fucking idea what she was doing to me.
Not only had I agreed to her no-strings suggestion, I also agreed to keep it monogamous. What the fuck?!

The weird thing was that it wasn’t even my agreeance to her suggestion that
was fucking with my mind. It was the fact that she was the one to suggest the idea to begin with.
That
I couldn’t understand in the slightest. Yeah, I got that she couldn’t do crowds, but just wanting sex and nothing else? That just didn’t seem to fit with the Mia I’d seen so far.

What was even more disturbing was the realization that I wanted to figure out why she thought she couldn’t have a relationship. I’d wanted to push her more to tell me back in her room, but I could tell it was making her uncomfortable, so I let it slide.
I knew it couldn’t just be the crowd thing. I was as sure as shit confident that she’d be able to find someone who’d be happy to just be with her. Hell, most guys would probably be willing to ditch everyone they knew and go live in a cave just to be with her.

Taking advantage of the vacant bathroom, I grabbed a quick shower and threw on a clean pair of jeans and a shirt. By the time I made it out to the kitchen, Aiden was already up and making a
pot of coffee.

I looked over his rumpled clothes, hair all fucked up, and red eyes. “You look like shit
, man.”

“Fuck you,” he mumbled. “Why do you look so…” He gestured up and down my body
. “…not hung over…?”

I laughed,
choosing not to answer, and picked up the coffee pot instead.

“Who’d you fuck last night?”
he said suddenly.

I froze, waiting to see where he was going with it.

“You’ve got scratch marks on your neck,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee.

I shrugged, pouring in the milk and stirring. “Do names even matter?”

He laughed loudly and smacked his hand on my back. “Fuck no, they don’t.”

We made our way
outside and sat down on the step in the sun. I hated lying to my best friend. Having secrets in our situation wasn’t good. Things like that could easily break up the band. I felt like I was in a serious no-win situation. If I told Aiden what I was doing with Mia, he’d lose his shit and the band could be on the line, but if I didn’t, I knew it would eventually eat away at me and things would turn to shit anyway.

“You still thinking about that song?”

Aiden’s voice interrupted my internal battle. Of course I hadn’t been, but it was a good excuse to distract him from delving any more into my sex life. “Yeah. Wanna hear it?”

“Fuck, yeah.”

I set down my cup and went inside to grab a guitar. When I came back out, Aiden had shuffled over, making more room for me on the step. Slowly, I ran through the chords I’d gone over at home during the week. I thought I’d perfected it pretty well over the last few days, but what I was hearing in my head now was way more intense, more intricate in a way, and I knew it had everything to do with having just been with Mia.

I knew A
iden hadn’t heard any of it yet, so I concentrated on letting him hear the basic tune I’d mapped out before trying to bring in the rest. His gaze was all concentration while I played, and I knew he was totally hearing how he’d fit in with me. When I started experimenting with the sound that was in my head, he nodded.

He listened to me go through the whole verse a few times
then he started humming his part, and when I heard what he was thinking, I grinned. Matt and Dean stumbled outside bleary eyed, but grinning just the same. Matt pulled his sticks out of his back pocket – yeah, the fucker actually walked around with them in his back pocket – and tapped out a beat on the step. It was fucking perfect.

“Dean, go get your guitar. I want you in on the chorus,” I said.

He didn’t need to be asked twice. Dean loved learning new stuff. He ran off and returned in no time.

“Try it with a G and E minor then a C and A.”

He nodded and came in when we hit the chorus, and the effect was off the charts. I added a small riff in the middle and I knew we’d just created something worthwhile.

I looked up when the song ended and saw Mia sitting at the far end of the patio, watching me. There was a tiny smile on her lips and her eyes shone with
excitement.

“Have you written any lyrics yet?” Matt asked.

Aiden laughed. “Yeah, they’ll be about fucking girls with no names.”

Dean grinned but looked confused. “What?”

I shook my head, wanting them to stop before Mia got upset, but Aiden just kept on going. “Jace’s got a nice set on scratches on his neck that were put there by some girl he can’t be fucked remembering her name.”

I grinned when I caught Mia’s blush. Dean laughed and Matt shrugged. “Who gives a fuck what their names are? It’s not like they give a shit about who we really are. They just want to boast to their friends that they
’ve fucked a musician.”

Dean groaned.
“Yeah, some of them are fucking bad. I mean that chick Lila slapped just stepped in between us and started rubbing up against me.”

“I can’t believe Lila bitch slapped someone. That’s some funny shit right there,” I said, laughing.

“It wasn’t so funny last night,” Lila said as she shuffled outside. “That bitch can go get her own musician. This one’s mine,” she said sitting down on Dean’s lap. Dean wrapped his arms around her and pressed his nose to her neck. “Have you been jamming?” she asked, eyeing the guitars.

“Just mucking around with Jace’s new song,” Dean said.

She nodded. “Cool. What are the lyrics about?”

I grinned. “Nameless bitches that fuck.”

She narrowed her eyes into a glare. “I don’t know why I even asked.”

Chapter 11

Mia

Everything was different, but nothing had changed.

I still
used the path outside to get to class. Still sat with Kaeli on the grass outside the square. Still avoided the crowds at all costs. Still pretended like Jace was nothing to me.

Yet I watched him whenever I could.
I couldn’t help it. He was in my every thought. Not surprising considering he’d crept into my room almost every night that week, lavishing my body with heavenly attention, leaving the scent of him lingering on my sheets, slowly making me more and more addicted to him. Damn him to hell.

What I hadn’t accounted for was the jealousy. That had come way out of left field, but there was nothing I could do. I just had to sit back and watch, and try like hell to calm my rising bitch meter every time some bimbo groupie touched him.

Kaeli sat through it all and watched with amusement and fury. Amusement because the girls all made fools of themselves, and fury on my behalf because she felt like Jace was still disrespecting me after taking my V card in Aspen.

No,
I hadn’t told her about the arrangement I’d made with Jace. I felt horrible for keeping it from her, but I knew what it would sound like to someone standing on the outside, and to me it was more than just sex. I felt like if I said it out loud, it would cheapen it somehow.

Every day at lunch, Jace would occasionally look over at me with this deeply intense gaze, and my skin would feel like he’d lit it on fire. I wasn’t sure when the next time we’d get together would be
. We hadn’t really discussed that part, but I hoped it was soon. I needed his touch like my sanity depended on it.

It wasn’t until
I was in the car with Aiden on Friday afternoon, that I found out I’d be seeing him that night.

“The guys are coming over for practice tonight,”
he said in passing as he navigated a corner.

“
Really?” That surprised me.

Even though they had sound rooms set up everywhere but Jace’s house
, they usually practiced at Dean’s.

Aiden shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Jace thought it’d be a nice change of scenery.”

So it was Jace’s idea. I struggled to keep the smile off my face. I liked knowing he was doing everything he could to see me. Well, I hoped it was for me, and not just because he wanted to practice in our dungeon. “Are they staying over?”

“Nah, we’re just going to go over the set we’ve got
planned for the gig next week. Dean wants to use the new song Jace wrote, but I don’t know if it’ll be ready. He still hasn’t finished the lyrics and won’t let Dean help him.”

He said the last bit like it pissed him off. “That’s fair,” I countered. “It obviously means something to him.”

He gave me a dry look. “This is Jace we’re talking about. He doesn’t have meaning in his life.”

“Neither do you.”

His expression softened. “I have you. You’re all the meaning I need.”

I had no retort to that.
It was the truth. We had a special bond that went beyond the twin thing. Growing up, we’d always known when the other one needed us. I remembered once when we were ten, I’d come out of my room and told Mom Aiden had hurt his arm. At the time, he’d been at a party, and as Mom was trying to make sense of what I was saying, the phone rang and she was told that Aiden had fallen off the trampoline and broken his arm.

Aiden of course didn’t need to be convinced that I’d known, because he’d experienced it once before when we were four, and every time since
then when I had an anxiety attack.

After that, when we were older
, and Aiden had started going to parties, Mom occasionally used our connection to ask me if Aiden was safe. Neither of us minded. We knew she just worried.

“Besides, he said if we do the song, he wants to sing it
,” Aiden continued.

That surprised me. Jace had never expressed any interest in singing lead before. “Wow. It must be important to him if he’s not willing to give up the words.”

Aiden snorted. “I don’t know what his deal is. He’s been acting weird the last couple of weeks. Well, since Aspen really – and that’s when he came up with the new song too.”

I swallowed. “Weird how?”

“I don’t know. Not weird really, just different. The girls seem to be pissing him off.”

I was momentarily stunned by Aiden’s words. Could it actually have been me that’
d affected him like that? I didn’t really think it was possible, but what else could it be?

Bringing myself back to Aiden,
I said, “What girls?”

He shrugged. “Oh there’s just been a lot more girls hanging around than normal – you know, the kind that ju
st want to hang around cause we might get famous…”

“You mean groupies?”

He smiled. “Yeah. Groupies.”

“You love the groupies.”

“I definitely love the groupies.”

I shook my head, but we both laughed as Aiden pulled into the drive. “When are the guys coming over?”

“Around five. We want to run through the whole set and that’s going to take a while.”

“Okay,” I said climbing out of the car. “Let me know if you want anything brought down
.”

He slammed his door shut and pressed the fob to lock the car. “What? You’re volunteering to be my personal slave?”

I grinned. “No, just your adoring little sister.”

I left him shaking his head at me and ran off to my room. Mom wasn’t home from work yet, so I thought I’d run through one of my favorite yoga videos in the living room until she arrived. Throwing o
n a pair of dark grey yoga shorts with a pink waist band, and a matching pink crop top, I scooped my hair into a high pony and bounced off to get a good workout.

I was almost through my routine
, and in the middle of doing a forearm headstand, when I heard Aiden come back in. “Jesus, Mia, you’re like a fucking pretzel.”

I giggled, watching him
from upside down while he rolled his eyes with a grin. To show off, I flattened my palms against the floor and pushed up into a handstand, then when I made sure I had my balance, I slowly arched over into a handstand scorpion, touching my feet to the top of my head.

Aiden narrowed his eyes and softly shook his head. Pushing myself back up to a straight handstand, I then moved my legs out into a splits position before lowering
my butt slowly towards the ground. I giggled again when I saw Aiden, who was now leaning up against the wall with his arms crossed, as I held both my legs and butt a few inches off the floor while I balanced myself with my hands. “Are you impressed?” I asked.

He shot me a cocky grin. “No, but they probably are
.” He jerked his head towards the other side of the room, and I turned to see Jace, Dean, and Matt standing there watching me.

My jaw dropped and I threw Aiden an incredulous look. “What the hell
, Aiden! You could’ve told me!”

“Fuck
, Mia, every other time I interrupt you while you’re doing yoga, you nearly rip my head off, saying I’m throwing you off your balanced state of mind or some shit.”

I flicked off the TV and threw the remote down on the coffee table. “Whatever. You’re a dick.”

I went to storm past him but he was too quick and grabbed me around the waist, pulling me in. I really wasn’t in the mood. I was seriously embarrassed, but he wouldn’t take the hint and I got mad. Using the self-defense moves I’d learned last summer, I hooked my leg around his and threw my body weight, flipping him over until he landed on the floor on his back. Taking advantage of the strength in my legs, I wrapped them around him to hold him in place while I got him in a choker hold.

Bursts of laughter erupted on the other side of the
room, but I was too intent on making my twin pay. He was laughing too and it just made me crankier.

“Fuck I pity the poor guy you end up with
, Mia. You’re going to kill him with that death grip you’ve got going on with your thighs.”

His words shocked me and I loosened my grip. Before I knew it, he’d thrown me off and flipped our positions, straddling me and pinning my arms beside my head. “I swear to god
, Aiden. If you tickle me I’m going to lose my shit.”

“Say uncle.”

“I’m not saying shit to you.” I bucked and twisted, managing to get my hands free, and I reached up and grabbed handfuls of his hair. Aiden reached for my stomach and tickled so I pulled his hair harder, bringing his head down closer to mine. “I’ll bite you.”

“Fuck, that hurts.”

“Good. Now get off me.”

He looked at me, laughter in his eyes. “Truce?”

Tears stung the backs of my eyes. I knew what he was doing. I should’ve seen it coming. Sometimes it felt like he knew me better than I knew myself, but he’d always been able to feel when things were becoming too much for me. When that happened, he always did something to help me get it out of my system. Usually it was running – we’d just run and run until my legs couldn’t take any more, but sometimes he improvised.

I let my head fall back on the ground and looked up at the ceiling. My life really sucked sometimes, but I had the most beautiful brother in the world.

Aiden climbed off me and sat on the floor by my side. I turned my head to look at him, thankfully away from the guys, my eyes shining.

“Don’t cry
, baby girl,” he said softly.

I nodded, letting him know I was on board with that
, and he stood, reaching out his hand to help me up. I went willingly, and when I was on my feet, he pulled me into one of his big reassuring hugs. I let him hold me, because I knew he needed it just as much as I did.

When I pulled away, I gave him a gentle smile to let him know I was good, and left to go back to my room.