Wreck the Halls

“Wow. Good ones. Mine is McCartney.”

“You just had to one-up me with a Beatle.” She shook her head at him playfully while tapping one of the picture frames. “Who are the kids in this picture?”

The scotch took a wrong turn and settled uncomfortably in his stomach. “That was taken at summer camp. Those are my cabinmates.”

She straightened on a gasp and padded barefoot to the kitchen, mouthing a thank you when he nudged her glass of scotch in front of her. “You went to summer camp?”

He nodded once. “When I was thirteen, my father thought it would be good for me to get out of LA. Get some dirt under my fingernails and eat terrible food for a month.”

Melody sipped her drink experimentally. “Was it?”

When the prompt went right over his head, Beat realized how hard he was staring at the sheen of alcohol on her mouth. “Was what?”

“Were bad food and dirty fingernails good for you?”

“Sure were.” He forced a broad grin. The one he used with his friends. Everyone, really. “If I’m ever stranded in the woods, I’ll have a fire blazing within minutes. Two hours, tops.”

Why was she looking at him funny? Did she . . . actually see through his phony front?

“Was it really a good experience, Beat?” she asked, quieter this time.

“At first, it was, yeah.” God, his voice sounded hollow now. Unfamiliar. “Then the other guys slowly realized who I was. I think maybe they overheard some of the counselors talking. And then . . .” He tried to laugh, but it emerged flat. “Well, then . . .”

Melody’s hand fell away from her glass. “Oh, Beat,” she whispered. “They hated you.”

There was no comparison for the rush of gratitude he felt in that moment. He’d never experienced anything quite like it in his life. Not since the first time they met, at least. This woman sitting on the other side of his breakfast bar was the only person he knew who understood the weird shame that came along with being the offspring of a world-famous icon. It took every drop of his willpower not to reach across the marble countertop and drag her over the damn thing into his arms. “Yeah,” he said. “The first week was fine. Great, actually. Until my mother sent a care package containing smoked oysters, an engraved pepper mill, and Pellegrino. She meant well. She really did. But after the counselors revealed who the package was from, the cat was out of the bag. They started asking me questions about my life in LA and I had no choice but to be honest. At first, they seemed interested. They wanted every detail. But those details only served to make them resent me. There were still three weeks to go and . . .” He shrugged. “I went back every summer until I was sixteen, hoping it would be different. But it was the same every time. Let’s just say I slept out in the cold a lot.”

“What did they do? Lock you out?”

Locked him out. Sabotaged his campsite. Put dirt in his food. Every time, he sucked it up, too embarrassed to explain the situation to his parents. “Mel, it was good for me.”

Her nose wrinkled. “It . . . what?”

“Yeah.” He drained his scotch. “Everything came too easy. I didn’t even have to ask for new clothes or shoes or my own boat, Mel—they just appeared. Vacations, friends, even the press was so easy on me, compared to you. God, I hated that.” He closed his eyes briefly, until the memories of some of the meaner headlines faded again. “When I returned from camp, after weeks of having my food stolen and my survival skills ridiculed—and rightly so, I couldn’t light a fire for shit—everything went back to normal, but I . . . couldn’t stand the excessive comfort anymore. I just couldn’t stomach it.”

Melody watched him, not moving. “And now?”

“I still can’t.” Don’t say the rest. He needed to keep his mouth shut, but stemming the flow of his words was next to impossible when the one person who’d lived through a parallel existence was sitting right across from him, looking into his eyes like she could see clear through them into his thoughts. “But I have a way to manage it,” he said, voice like gravel.

His chest should have loosened with that confession, right? But it only grew oddly taut, like he’d swallowed a chicken bone. Melody seemed to sense the gravity of what he was saying, because she didn’t seem to be breathing. “How?”

“Mel.”

“How?”

He was already shaking his head. “Let’s get some sleep, all right?” Forcing a smile, he checked the time on the stove. “We only have six hours before that camera is back in our faces. And it sounds like we’re going to need some rest before we face Trina.”

“There isn’t enough rest in the world,” she said, absently, still scrutinizing his face. And he wanted to lay her down somewhere, press their heads together, and let her look, because no one would ever see him more accurately in his life. But that would invite more between them. More than he could afford or offer.

“Night, Mel.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she slid off the stool and crossed the living room, looking back at him once before disappearing into her bedroom. Her glass of scotch sat unfinished in front of him, but he could see the faint outline of her lips where she’d sipped. Without thinking, he picked up the glass and closed his mouth around the exact spot hers had been, gulping the clear liquid greedily, feeling a corresponding tug in his groin. He let the need bleed in . . .

And knew he was only about to make it worse.





Chapter Fourteen




Melody had been sitting on the edge of the guest room bed for twenty minutes, staring at the wall. Beat was right, they needed all the rest they could garner, because, to put it mildly, tomorrow was going to be a challenge and a half. But she couldn’t seem to make herself lie down and close her eyes. Not with Beat’s words lingering in her head.

But I have a way to manage it.

Pushing him once for a more detailed response had been overstepping. Hadn’t it? When they were alone, though, like they’d been in the kitchen, nothing felt off-limits. It was like they could finally let down their guards and just . . . be. A sort of magic she didn’t have with anyone else. But he’d stopped short of sharing his secret with her—and now she couldn’t stop picking up theories and discarding them. Not out of sheer curiosity, although there was some of that.

But more because she could sense the answer was a huge part of him that he held back.

Melody didn’t have a claim on all Beat’s secrets and intricacies, obviously. She only wanted him to know that he could lay them on her. That she would understand. That he didn’t have to shoulder something difficult alone.