The Singles (46 page)

“What?” Heidi’s voice has dropped to the low, seductive purr she no doubt uses on her customers. “No PBR tonight?”

Cal’s lips jerk into a grin. “Fuck you, Heidi.”

“You were right.” When Nate glances back at his cousin, I swear Cal’s olive complexion goes scarlet. “She
is
fucking hot.” He dips his attention back down to me. “I’d tell you the same, but McCrae would fuck me up in the parking lot.”

Wyatt has mentioned me.
In a way, it makes Nate assume that we’re a couple.

Good God, what has been said about me?

I pull at the neck of my T-shirt, stretching out the tip of the sequin anchor on the nautical print. “Where’s your drummer?” I peek around the crowd in search of the bald man who was on stage up until a few minutes ago. As much as I hate to admit it, his skill is almost as mind-blowingly good as Sinjin’s.

Nate turns and scans the area before he finally points to the far corner of the bar. “Ben’s over there with Terra and Wyatt,” he says. Of course, hearing that Terra’s with Wyatt makes my stomach clench. Looking back at me, Nate mistakes my abrupt smile for something else—anticipation. “You wanna go over?”

I consider this for a moment, but then decide against it. There’s a nearly full bottle of Corona on my table—my fourth drink in the last hour—and I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve started to want to hug the bottles. “Maybe in a few.” I jab my index finger toward the small group of women who’ve edged their way up to Cal. One is glancing in Nate’s direction, tapping the cap end of a permanent marker against her hip. “I think you’re being summoned.” I want to advise him that he’s going to need more security soon, that there should already be more security since my guys are playing, but I stop before I say anything. I remind myself that I’m here as a music lover and not my brother’s assistant.

Nate flushes, racking up a few more good points with me because he obviously hasn’t let this world go to his head yet. “Looks like I am. See you in a little.”

When I shimmy back onto my seat, Heidi casts a sharp look in my direction.

“What?” I ask.

She runs her thumb around the neck of the bottle she’s been nursing for twenty minutes. “We’re going over there.”

I put my Corona to my lips and tip it back, drinking it entirely too fast. My nose is burning when I slap the empty bottle onto the wooden table.  “If you feed me that bullshit about claiming Wyatt, I’m probably going to—”

She cuts me off. “Hey, Kylie.” I press my lips together, waiting for her to continue. “You need to get your tipsy ass over there and claim Prince Albert.”

“He got rid of that,” I say through clenched teeth.

“Whatever. Point is, you’ve said it yourself, that this is it for you guys, that you’re done with the games once we go home. So, why the fuck are you just sitting around and wasting the time you have left?”

This is another reason why Heidi and I get along. I’m not close to many women because I’ve felt the bitter sting of disloyalty, and it’s left a foul taste in my mouth, but Heidi tells me like it is. She doesn’t hold anything back even when her thoughts are all over the place.

“I’m not tipsy,” I tell her.

She stands and adjusts her tight jeans. “And I’m not sober, Ky.” She grabs my hand, hauling me off in Wyatt’s general direction. As she passes Nate, Cal, and the women they’re mingling with, she skims her hand across the crotch of Cal’s jeans.

He stiffens and screws up signing the R at the beginning of his last name on the breasts in front of his face.

Wyatt’s eyes drink me in long before I step into his bubble. “Bluebird.” His hands touch the first thing he can grab, my forearm, and he brings me to his side. This is such an intimate gesture that my lips part slightly. Completely hypersensitive to my every move, his head bends a little. “You’re fucking me up again,” he says so softly that only I can hear him.

Right. And he’s not doing the same thing to me?
As his delicious scent of cologne mixed with sweat teases my nose, I dart my tongue across my lips. Before I can make a fool of myself, I glance away from him to Hazard Anthem’s drummer. “Your sound is incredible.”

Wyatt’s mouth moves against my ear, and I can feel his labret slide up against one of my earrings as he opens his mouth to say something. I go perfectly still because I know he’s about to say something that will result in him owning my panties by the end of the night.

Then, he pulls away, grinning suggestively. As he introduces me to the drummer, I realize he’s thinking of a hundred creative ways to fuck me in this bar, and it sends a thrill of pleasure through me.

“You’ve already met Terra, but this motherfucker is Ben Dillinger. Ben, this is Kylie and Heidi.” Wyatt jerks his head from me to my best friend, who’s standing a couple feet away, typing something into her phone.

Ben, who’s short and muscular with a shaved head, lifts his chin a little, acknowledging us. “Good to meet you,” he says to Heidi as she slides her phone into her bag.

She takes his outstretched hand and gushes over how much she loved the set. Then, she excuses herself and struts away, her mission to find Cal obvious.

Ben turns to me. “Been wanting to meet you since this shithead joined up with us in Albuquerque last year.”

This catches me off-guard, and I’m unable to keep a frown from making a momentary appearance across my face.
When did Wyatt go to Albuquerque? For that matter,
why
did Wyatt go to Albuquerque?
I dart my eyes up to him quickly, but he’s focused on something else.
Typical dick move, Wyatt.

Because I can feel Terra’s enormous green eyes burning into me, I steer the subject in a slightly different direction. “You’re playing there in two nights, right?”

As Ben bobs his head, a tiny pierced woman with a shock of platinum and jet-black hair slips between us. She murmurs, “Excuse me,” and then slides a shot glass into Ben’s hand. After he downs the amber-colored liquid, he gives her one of those looks that makes me melt. It’s the look that’s not only full of desire but also that chaos-free kind of love that I crave.

“Thanks, babe,” he says.

She grins and wipes her fingers down the front of her ripped jeans before holding out a hand to me. “I’m Ivy, Ben’s girl.”

I grasp her hand, surprised at how firm her grip is. “Kylie Wolfe. Good to meet you.”

I can’t help but like Ivy because instead of mentioning my connection with Lucas, she immediately replies, “You play pool?”

“I’ve played.” And I have, just not well.

She inclines her blonde-and-black head to the opposite corner of the bar where a tall woman dragging on a cigarette ducks into a dimly lit room. “Play with me?” She jerks her thumb from Ben to Wyatt. “You and me against them.”

“Ky always loses,” Wyatt tells her. He bites the corner of his lip when I glare up at him. “But, fuck yeah, you’re on. You in, Bluebird?”

I glance around the bar in search of my best friend, but she’s nowhere to be found, and neither is Cal. I lift my shoulders. “Guess I am.”

I quickly learn that Ivy’s a bit of a pool shark and a whole lot competitive. She easily makes up for everything that I lack in the game, which is a lot unfortunately. She sinks billiard ball after ball into the table pockets. Each time, she rubs our winning streak in Wyatt and Ben’s faces while pumping her fist to the raunchy anthem about getting drunk and waking up naked that’s blasting from outside the poolroom. I’m ecstatic when I manage to knock one, the red 3, into the hole.

Between games, Wyatt has disappeared to get himself a drink, and Ben is talking to some of the band’s fans, the three women who stalked Cal and his cousin for signatures a little earlier.

“You going to Albuquerque with them?” I ask her.

Ivy downs her Jagerbomb and shudders from the aftereffect. She rubs her hand back and forth over her mouth, bothering the hoop at the end of her nose, before she shakes her head. “No, I live in Katy, half an hour from here, so I can’t go.” She stares longingly at the empty shot glass and sighs. “Plus, I’ve got work in the morning. Guess I should’ve thought about work before I dived into the Red Bull, huh?”

“Nah. I mean, just drink a few more, and you should be good.” I lean against the pool table, sliding my bottom up to the edge. Cocking my head to the side, I take in the women crowding around her boyfriend. “How long have y’all been together?”

“Four long-ass years.” She glances over at Ben, who’s signing right above one of the girl’s lower back tattoos. “Wonder if she realizes how long it takes to get Sharpie off?”

If watching other women fawn all over Ben fazes Ivy, she doesn’t show it. She seems entirely at ease with the multiple sets of breasts being shoved in his face, and I find myself studying the obvious trust she has for him, asking myself how the hell she does it. 

Even though Wyatt and I have promised not to lie to each other—and there have been those times when he’s been so brutally honest that my chest aches for days—I’ve always hated the doubt that comes along with what he does for a living.

My thoughts are still conflicted when Ben and Ivy drop out of the next game, and Terra and Nate take their place.

“Wyatt says you sing,” Nate says shortly after the new game begins. “Here, like this.” He comes around the pool table and leans over me to reposition my grip on the pool stick. He’s careful not to touch the intimate parts of my body, keeping his crotch several inches from my ass, as he guides my arm forward. “You wanna get up there with us during the next show?”

“Yeah, I sing...in the shower.” I glance back into his teasing wide-set eyes. “And I’d ruin your show, babe.”

“Bullshit,” Wyatt says from across the table. When I lift my head, I flinch at how hard his eyes are despite the laughter in his deep voice. “She’s goddamn amazing—everything about her is—but she’s even better on the guitar.”

“You play?” Nate asks, standing upright.

During the tour that changed everything for us eight years ago, Wyatt showed me how to play on Lucas’s old Gibson. I’ve always been a quick study, so I picked it up easily. I’m not horrible, but I don’t think I’m
goddamn amazing
either. Besides, I haven’t played in well over a year.

“She’s better than Lucas’s ass,” Wyatt answers for me, his tone a little mocking.

Jamming the bottom of my cue stick to the floor, I straighten my back and narrow my eyes at him. Other than with my ex-husband, this is the first time in years when Wyatt’s played the jealous card around me. Because his intentions are obviously not to get me into his bed, Nate doesn’t notice Wyatt’s sudden mood change, but Terra does. She’s standing on the far left corner of the table, taking in the exchange, as she slides the tip of her tongue back and forth between her lips.

“Actually, I haven’t played in so long that I think I’ve forgotten how,” I say.

Wyatt glides his pool stick forward, managing to knock the cue ball into a red stripe ball. It stops a few mere inches from the pocket. He straightens and glowers across the table at me. “You forgot?”

My shirt has crept up on my waist, so I pull it back down before I focus my gaze on Wyatt. I nod, slowly and deliberately. “Yeah, I did.”

Our eyes never waver away from each other even as Nate and then Terra take their respective shots. By the time it’s his turn again, Wyatt slams his cue stick into the rack by the wall, and then he turns to me and jerks his head toward the door leading to the bar.

“Be right back,” I tell Nate.

Terra answers quickly, beaming at both Wyatt and me with her megawatt smile, “We’ll be here.”

Wyatt’s fingers close around my wrist, and as soon as we’re out of earshot, he mutters, “There’s no way in hell you’re going anywhere tonight other than my bed, Kylie.”

Yeah, we’ll see about that.

Ivy stops me halfway across the bar. She’s already wearing a jacket, and she yawns as she wraps a fringed scarf around her delicate neck. “I’ve got to go, but friend me, okay?”

After I get her last name and tell her that I will, I follow Wyatt into a quiet nook located in the other corner of the bar. It looks like it used to be a spot for pay phones, but now, there’s only a dirty ashtray and a crumpled Winston Lights package.

“You trying to drive me crazy?” Wyatt bends his head, leaning in close to me, with his nostrils flared. When his short wheat-blonde hair brushes the top of my forehead, I automatically reach up to touch it. “You trying to see what kind of rise you can get out of me?”

I jerk my hand away from his hair. “By what? Playing a game of pool? Abso-fucking-lutely not.”

He stares at me for a long time before shaking his head. “I’m taking you back to my room, and then I’m fucking you until the only thing you can think about is me.”

It’s not necessarily his jealousy that makes me want to strangle him. It’s the fact that he’s already the only thing I think about, and he doesn’t realize it. “I’m going to find Heidi.” I start to walk around him, but he swings me back around.

“Heidi and Cal are long gone. It’s just me and you, just like it’s always been. Why the fuck don’t you get that, beautiful?”

His words snip a nerve—and believe me, it’s sharp and just a little excruciating—but I grab his forearm and stand my ground. “If you don’t let go of me, I will headbutt you in your perfect teeth, McCrae.”

He doesn’t seem to care because his lips come down hard on mine, and his tongue is just as rough. Almost effortlessly, he shrugs out of my grip, and his hands travel to the sides of my back and slide into my jeans, pushing down my flimsy panties, so his skin is against my skin. “I hate this.”

“Touching me?” I demand breathlessly. “Because, trust me, you don’t have to.”

“No, wanting to fuck-up every man who touches you. It’s—”

“I don’t know whether to be flattered or freaked out that you’re so jealous,” I taunt.

He releases a sound and rests his chin on top of my head, but I’m so heated that I can’t bring myself to return his embrace.

“Come back to the hotel with me.”

“Why? So, you can beat up the front desk clerk when he looks at me for longer than ten seconds?” I start to ask him if he’s planning to challenge my gynecologist to a parking lot duel, but I stop as his hands travel from their spot on my ass to the inside of the front of my red jeans. Despite how tight my pants are, he manages to maneuver his fingers between my legs. I gasp, tightening my thighs, but it’s no use.