Riot (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I
N A MOSTLY
empty bedroom, I tap my finger against my chin and point to a corner. “There.”

Shawn and Mike begin carrying my dresser to the spot I indicated, and I shake my head. “No, there.” I point to the other wall, and they huff and change direction.

“Tell me again why I have to get you a housewarming present when I just got you a going-away present?” Shawn asks, quickly adding, “
And
I just got you a housewarming present for your last place a few months ago?”

“That was a birthday present,” I scoff, ignoring the part about the housewarming present.

“Tell me again why
I
have to get you a housewarming present when I’m living here too?” Joel asks, and I smile and wrap my arms around his neck.

“Because you love me.”

He lowers his mouth to mine in a single kiss that makes my insides flutter, and then he pulls away and curses himself. “Damn it.”

I give him my sweetest smirk, someone behind us gags, and we all get back to moving my things into Joel’s bedroom.

Yesterday, after I burst into his place, threw a poster tube at his head, and agreed to be his girlfriend, I remembered that I was moving six hours away. Reality settled heavily in my stomach, and I told Joel it didn’t matter if we wanted to be together because someone new was already set to move into my apartment and I was in the process of moving back home. I told him about how wrong college was for me, how I was thinking about going to fashion school, how popular the T-shirts were getting, and most importantly, how I had to move back home because I had no other options. Rowan had already told her parents about her living with Adam, so even if I could find another apartment in town, we couldn’t keep lying about living together. I’d have to find a roommate, and I had no idea how long that would take.

“Move in with me,” Joel had said, interrupting me mid-rant.

The only response I could muster was, “Huh?”

“Stay here,” he answered.

“Joel—”

“If you think I’m letting you go again, you’re even crazier than I give you credit for,” he challenged, and I ignored the taunt since, for once, I didn’t feel like fighting.

“You don’t think it’s too fast?” I asked, and his voice softened.

“I think that all we do is fast. When we try to slow it down, we mess shit up.”

When we emerged from his apartment, after the hottest make-up quickie I’ve ever had, everyone from my birthday party was already gathered in the lobby anxiously waiting for me. Rowan, who was gnawing on a fingernail, lowered her gaze to our clasped hands, and her hand fell away from her mouth as a big smile lit her face.

“Shut up,” I warned, but I couldn’t stop smiling and she started laughing.

“Her stuff is already packed up?” Joel asked the guys.

“Yeah,” Shawn cautiously answered. “Why?”

When Joel announced I was moving in with him, Adam burst out laughing, Rowan’s jaw dropped, and Leti grinned like a goofball. From the expressions on everyone else’s faces, they thought we were batshit crazy. And maybe we are, but it’s either go crazy with him or go crazy without him, and that choice is finally easy for me to make.

This morning, I called my dad to let him know I was going to move in with Joel instead of moving back home.

“Are you there?” I asked in the long moment of silence that followed my announcement.

“Yeah . . . Give me a minute, I’m trying to figure out how to feel about this.” I gave him what felt like the full minute, and he finally said, “Is Joel with you?”

I cast a worried look at Joel, who was sitting next to me on his couch. “Yeah . . .”

“Put him on.”

“Why?”

“Because my little girl is moving in with him and we need to have a talk first.”

I worried my bottom lip. “Dad?”

“Dee.”

“There’s something you should know first . . .”

Another long moment of silence passed while I tried to work up the nerve to tell my dad I’d fallen in love, and he interrupted it by stating matter-of-factly, “You’re pregnant.”

“No!” I shouted into the line, my outburst making Joel flinch. “No! Oh my God, no! NO.”

An audible sigh of relief sounded from over three hundred miles away. “Thank God.”

“Jesus, Dad. What the heck?!”

“I think I just aged thirty years.”

“This is ME we’re talking about!”

“YOU are acting strange lately,” he argued. “Now what were you going to say?”

Joel leaned closer to try to hear more than one side of our conversation, and I rubbed a spot between my eyes as I confessed, “I love him. I just wanted you to know I love him.”

“Sweetheart,” my dad said, “I knew that at Easter.”

“How?” I breathed.

My dad chuckled into the phone. “Because I’m your dad. I know things.”

“So you’re okay with me living with him?” I asked.

“I didn’t say that. Now put him on the phone.”

I reluctantly handed Joel the phone, and he and my dad had a long talk during which he told my dad that he loves me and that he’d never do anything to hurt me. By the time he handed my phone back, all I wanted to do was hang up on my dad so I could kiss Joel senseless for saying all of those perfect things.

“Okay,” my dad said. “You have my seal of approval, but if he ever gets out of line, you tell him I have a gun.”

“But you don’t . . .”

“But he doesn’t need to know that.”

I laughed and told my dad I loved him, and when he finally let me off the phone, I beamed at Joel. Rowan and the guys showed up a short while later with the moving van, and I immediately got to work bossing people around, which I’m still doing when Shawn and Mike carry my dresser into the room.

Moving the furniture in is easy, but the little things are hard—like positioning my coffee mug next to Joel’s, or spreading my comforter on his bed. When I drop my purple toothbrush into a plastic cup next to his green one, my heart lashes against the walls of my chest and I have to take deep breaths to calm it. The little things feel like bungee jumping, like skydiving.

Like falling.

And there are moments when I want to back away from the ledge again, but when I remember how lonely that felt—how
bad—
I let myself fall. I cling to Joel on the way down—holding his gaze, brushing his fingers, and planting soft kisses on his lips as we unpack—and he falls with me.

Later that night, after the little things are done and I haven’t passed out even once, I change into a pair of teeny pajama shorts and one of Joel’s T-shirts.

“So your dad is really okay with this?” he asks me for the second time that day as I watch him tug his shirt over his head. God, that will never get old.

“My dad loves you,” I say, climbing into bed—under my crisp covers, on top of his firm mattress.
Our
bed. My heart pounds again, but this time it feels a little warmer, a little nicer.

Joel gives me a skeptical glance and climbs in next to me. “He didn’t sound like he loved me on the phone . . .”

“What did he say?”

“He said he wasn’t a fan of seeing his baby girl cry over a boy.” Joel slides closer, his hand coming to rest on the curve of my waist. His voice is soft, careful, when he says, “Did you cry?”

I fight the urge to deny it, to downplay the misery I felt. Instead, I admit, “I fell apart.”

“I thought you’d be relieved I was gone . . .”

I curl up against his chest so I don’t have to look him in the eyes, and he wraps his arms tight around me. “When you left, I lashed out at my dad. Then I went over to Rowan’s and cried my heart out. I got sloppy drunk and passed out, and my dad had to come get me.”

His firm fingers rub my back, and he says, “I’m sorry.”

I shake my head against his bare skin, closing my eyes and breathing his scent deep into my lungs. “I slept in the guest room that night and cried into the T-shirt you left behind. After I came back to school, I wore it to bed a few times just because I missed you so much.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. I still have it.”

Joel pulls away to lower his lips to mine, giving me a soft kiss that tells me he loves me more than words ever could.

“I love you,” I say anyway, getting better at saying it. My heart beats strong and steady.

“I love you too,” he says back, giving me another sweet kiss and asking, “Did you love me at Easter?”

“I loved you at the festival,” I confess. I snuggle against him again, knowing it’s true. “I just didn’t know it.”

“Same here,” Joel says. “I didn’t know it until you went home and didn’t text me.”

“I should have known it earlier. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

“Why?”

“I never wanted to fall in love. My mom . . .”

“You don’t have to tell me,” he offers when I trail off, and I take a steady breath. I’ve never talked about my mom to anyone but Rowan, and to some extent, to my dad. But I want Joel to know about her. I want him to know about me.

I need to stop hiding. I need to let him see me.

I pull away from him so I can lose myself in his blue eyes. “My mom had an affair,” I say, strengthened by the steady way he looks at me. “I have no idea how long it had been going on, but she left when I was eleven, and when she did, my dad was broken. I never wanted anyone to have that power over me.”

“You know I’d never do that to you, right?”

“How do you know?” I ask, and when he just stares at me like he’s not sure what I’m asking, I say, “The band is getting huge, Joel. You have girls throwing themselves at you every time you perform.”

“They aren’t you,” he says simply.

“What happens when you get tired of me?”

“Not going to happen.”

“But how do you
know
?”

He studies his fingers as they gently tuck my hair behind my ear, and I study his face as he touches me. “You’re the only girl I’ve ever wanted to draw,” he says, his gaze coming to settle on mine. “You’re the only girl I’ve ever wanted to date. To live with. You’re the only one with a dad I wanted to meet. You’re the only one I’ve wanted to fall asleep with and wake up next to. A lot of girls came before you, Dee . . . a
lot
of girls . . . but you’re the only one. I know it’ll always be you because it’s only ever
been
you.”

I close my eyes to prevent the tears from falling, and Joel leans forward to plant a tender kiss against my brow.

“I mean it when I say I love you,” he says.

“I know.”

“How I feel isn’t going to change.” I open my eyes, and he brushes his thumb across the wet apple of my cheek.

“Do you promise?”

“I’m promising it every time I say those three words,” he says. A moment passes, and then he says them. “I love you, Dee.”

A soft smile touches my lips, and still lost in those deep blue eyes—which hold the secrets of my own heart—I make a promise back. “I love you too.”

Epilogue

Joel

O
NSTAGE, THERE A
RE
different levels of multitasking. There’s Adam, who belts out lyrics while working the crowd. There’s Mike, who pounds at the drums with his hands and the pedals with his feet. There are Shawn and Kit, who pretend to be focused on the performance instead of each other—whatever
that’s
about. And there’s me, trying to keep the beat while Dee is standing offstage in a tiny black skirt that I swear to God is riding higher and higher every time I look her way.

Between songs, I reach behind my guitar to shift myself inside my jeans, knowing it’s a lost cause. She gives me a little smirk, and my answering groan is lost to the screams of the crowd.

Mike’s drumsticks start the next song, and I turn my attention back to the pit. Adam has it fired up tonight, and the waves are rolling in a storm that makes my skin hum. Under the searing blue and green lights, my T-shirt is clinging to the sheen of sweat on my skin and my blood is boiling hot. My bass pours through Mayhem’s massive speakers, and my entire body bounces with the beat. The girls who aren’t focused on Adam or Shawn scream lyrics at me, reaching with braceleted arms and desperate fingers. A pair of panties flies in my direction, but I take a step back to let them fall to the stage. I turn a smile on Dee, who, with her arms crossed and a grin on her face, shakes her head at me.

I turn back toward the crowd, knocked completely off my game. My fingers play on auto even though what I’m really thinking about is why the hell Dee just stood there shaking her head instead of tossing her panties at me. For the past couple weeks, we’ve played a little game: if I catch her panties when she throws them, I get a reward. If I don’t, she gets one. Either way, I’m the luckiest fucking guy I know. Half the time, I’ve let them fall at my feet just so I have an excuse to taste her.

“Why didn’t you throw your panties onstage?” I ask in her ear as soon as our first “last song” ends. The crowd is chanting for “one more song” over and over again, but the guys are busy chugging down water and taking a much needed break from the lights. Dee tugs on my damp sleeve so she can answer in my ear.

“I’m not wearing any,” she says, and my hand instantly slides over the curve of her ass. No panty lines.
Christ
. Unable to keep my lips off her any longer, I kiss the salt on the curve her neck and begin dipping my fingers under the waistband of her skirt to check for the strap of a thong or a g-string in case she’s only teasing.

“Last song, man,” Shawn says, smacking me on the shoulder before taking the stage.

I press my mouth back against Dee’s ear, intending to warn her about all the things I’m going to do to her as soon as the set is over. But my brain is too fucking fried to even know
what
I’m going to do, so instead I curl my tongue behind her earlobe and nip at the soft skin. Her curled fingers tighten around my bicep, and a smirk touches my lips. I walk away from her and don’t look back.

When the song is over, I’m the first one off the stage. I unstrap my guitar from my neck, prop it against the first surface I find, and grab Dee’s hand. She makes a little noise and nearly trips behind me in those sexy stiletto heels she’s wearing, but she catches her footing and manages to fall into a quick step beside me. Next month, I’ll be leaving for a month-long tour to promote the album the band recorded this past week, but until then, I’m all hers.

“Where are we going?” she asks, but the fact that she’s following me instead of bitching me out for nearly tugging her off her feet tells me she already knows.

“Anywhere.” I push open the first door I find, relieved when it’s an empty office. I tow Dee inside, lock the knob behind us, and pin her against the heavy wooden door. My lips cover hers, and my hand sneaks under her skirt to see if she was telling the truth about not wearing any panties.

My calloused fingers brush over silky smooth skin, and when I find her bare little button and press, the gasp that tears from her lips makes me throb inside my jeans. Her hands are fumbling with my zipper a second later, and then I’m lifting her against the door and squeezing between her thighs. Her fingers scratch over the back of my T-shirt as I sink inside her, and I kiss the moan that sounds from her lips.

“I love you,” I say between thrusts. There was a time when the words made her stiffen, made her pull away from me. Now, she turns into putty in my hands. “I fucking love you,” I say again, and she melts against my skin.

She’s moaning, her ankles crossed tight behind my legs when someone jiggles the doorknob.

Her eyes get wide, and I stop moving for only a second. “Just a minute.”

“This is my fucking office!” the person outside yells.

I move Dee to another wall and go back to fucking the hell out of her. “Be. Right. Out!”

I can see the anxiety and desire warring in her eyes, but when I kiss her, the battle is easily won.

The person outside doesn’t stop jiggling or knocking, and I thrust into Dee until her moans in my ear are all I hear. When I finish giving her all I’ve got, my forehead resting heavily on her shoulder, she taps her fingers against my hands and I lower her feet back to the ground. She cleans up with some tissues from the desk, tosses them in a wastebasket, and takes my hand. I give the owner of Mayhem an exhausted, apologetic smile as we leave his office, and he mutters something about me being an asshole as we pass.

“You’re going to get in trouble one of these days,” Dee warns.

“Worth it,” I counter, and her giggle makes it that much more true.

On the bus, she and Peach talk about Dee starting fashion school next week, and even though Dee just blushes and tells me to shut up, I make sure to tell everyone how proud I am of her. She applied, she got in, and I know she’s going to be amazing. The shirts are great, but her designs are what she’s passionate about, and if she can learn to see in herself what everyone else sees in her, there will be nothing to hold her back.

At home, I give her a much more satisfying version of what happened in the office, and afterward, she lies snuggled against my side with her purple fingernail tracing invisible patterns on my chest. I watch her, breathing slow so I don’t bring her back from wherever she is. She’s so damn gorgeous, especially in moments when she’s lost in thought and showing me she loves me without even realizing that’s what she’s doing.

Her almond eyes slowly lift to catch mine staring, and I kiss the top of her head. She lets out a contented sigh and snuggles closer against me. “Why do you love me?”

With her silky brown hair spilling through my fingers, I tease, “That’d be like me asking why you love ice cream.”

“Because it tastes good,” she argues, and I contain a chuckle.

“
You
taste good.”

“Oh, you’re such a—”

I cut her off by digging my fingers into her sides, and she laughs hysterically while wiggling out of my reach. When she stops laughing and shoots a glare at me, I plant a surprise kiss on her lips and wrap her back up in my arms. She growls but lets me do it, and I smile because I can’t help it.

“I love you because I can’t
not
love you,” I say, and her fingers curl around my ribs to hug me close.

The night I almost killed Cody was the night I realized just how much she meant to me—more than any girl ever has or ever will. I don’t think I loved her yet, not like I do now, but it was the start of something, and I couldn’t have stopped it even if I tried. I spent the next few weeks falling—fast and hard, just like she and I do everything. I fell at the festival, at my birthday, during quiet nights at her apartment. I fell every time she smiled at me, every time she let me hold her.

“Do you think we’ll last?” she asks, her words a quiet whisper floating across my chest.

I keep her close, not answering because I don’t know. Loving Dee is like loving fire. The night I first told her I loved her, when she told me to go home, it broke my heart in a way that it had never been broken before. I ended up drinking myself sick with my mom, toasting the girl who burned me and hating everyone who wasn’t as miserable as I was. Then Dee showed up, giving me hope and taking it away again, and I drove back to town that day vowing to forget her.

“Do you?” I counter. I don’t know if we’ll last—I only know that I hope so. The more time passed after what happened between us in the roped-off bathroom at Mayhem, the more girls I used to try to forget her face, but every night, I found myself drawing her with the pencils she gave me for my birthday. There was no forgetting her, and it took her chucking a poster tube at my head and screaming that she loved me at the top of her lungs to make me realize I’d never want to. Things between us will probably never be easy, but the best things never are. What matters is that every day, I promise to love her forever, and every day, she promises it back.

“I hope so,” she says, and I smile when she echoes my thoughts.

Brushing her silky hair through my fingers, I say, “Me too.”

We lie like that until there’s nothing between us but her heartbeat and my heartbeat and a future we both want—until I quietly say, “I wished for this.” When Dee lifts her gaze to mine, I explain, “On my birthday. When you had me blow out the candles, this is what I wished for.”

“You wished for me?” she asks, and I give her a smile.

That night, with her face illuminated behind soft flames, I wished for the only thing I’d ever really wanted. I wished to be happy.

“Yeah,” I say, lifting her fingers to my lips and planting a soft kiss against her palm. “I wished for you.”

The End