Could he be? Could he be more than the two months he’d promised? More than this weekend that neither of us could define? Because after the weight of my realization at his parents’ earlier today, there was a piece of me that was imploring with myself to pin him down. To make him say the words I could so clearly read in his eyes.
With every step closer to him, emotion pulsed through my veins. But it was a new need unlike anything I’d felt before. As if all the fears and reservations and concerns I’d built up for years had suddenly been loosed and freed. Now they bounded forth like the spill of a waterfall, pouring, meshing, and uniting with the faith he’d created, breeding a flood of devotion that quickly rose to fill every crevice and hole.
Love. Love. Love.
“There you are,” he whispered as his big hand came out to grip me from behind my neck, to pull me forward and to kiss me as if he felt the magnitude of what swirled and tumbled through me.
“What’d you think?” he asked when he pulled away.
I clutched his sweaty shirt. “I think you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”
He laughed a cocky laugh, grin sly as his hand skidded down my arm to my hand where he weaved his tatted fingers through mine, like maybe we were writing our own story. “Know I’m all kinds of irresistible, but I meant about the show.”
A playful grin flitted around my mouth. “I do believe you’ve been hanging out with Ash too much. I think he might be a bad influence.”
Lyrik laughed, this deep, melodic sound. He lifted a dark, incredulous brow. “You think it’s Ash who’s the bad influence?”
His smile softened as my expression drifted into something tender. It was impossible to keep it out.
“You already know what I think about the music,” I told him.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah…about your voice. About the way you wrap me up when you play. The way I don’t feel so alone when I’m surrounded by the words that feel almost like you wrote them just for me.”
I lifted a self-deprecating smile, Red so far gone I no longer remembered who she was or who I’d been so frantically trying to be.
“Pretty sad, huh, being that girl sitting all alone in her apartment, pressing play again and again to the same song, pretending this untouchable rock star was there and everything didn’t seem so bad anymore.”
He brushed his fingers through my hair, making my head tilt back as he looked down at me. “Not alone, Blue. Not anymore. You don’t have to pretend anymore.”
Didn’t I? I wanted to beg him as that flood whooshed into a white-capped wave of insecurity.
“Come on,” he said. “Four of us have a little tradition after each show. Want you there.”
“And what kind of tradition would that be?”
“Shots.”
“Surprise, surprise,” I mumbled, tone dry.
A smirk played at that delicious mouth, and he turned on his heel and started zigzagging us through the backstage crowd. I clasped my free hand around his wrist, refusing to let him go as I tried to keep up with his long, purposed stride. He gave my hand a squeeze, a silent reassurance that he had me, that he knew where I was.
That maybe he knew who I was.
I hear you.
His voice trembled through my spirit.
People clapped him on the back as we passed, and I took in the whole scene with wide-eyed exuberance.
Balancing on the ledge.
Ready to take that last step over the edge.
To jump.
Straight into a free fall.
Would he be there to catch me at the bottom?
“Great show, man,” one of the guys from the opening band said to Lyrik, slowing our progression as he blocked our path in the cramped hallway.
Heat permeated the space, the air dank and dim and thick. In amused appraisal, the guy’s brown eyes slithered down to where Lyrik’s and my hands were clasped.
“Where’s the twin?” he asked with a suggestive twist of his brow.
I cringed.
Wow.
That hurt worse than I thought it would.
But it was no secret or surprise. That was Lyrik’s style. In almost every picture I’d seen of Lyrik with a girl, there was never any girl about it. It was a pattern in the images captured by the paparazzi, in those snapped by fans.
Lyrik West was always draped in multiple women.
In them, his posture almost suggested he didn’t register they were there except for the fact he was getting ready to ravage and annihilate.
Spoil and loot and desolate.
Once he used them up, I was sure there was nothing left behind.
All except for the one I’d found in that picture.
“Fuck off, Brinks.” That was Lyrik’s only response as he jerked me back into movement. My gaze turned in time to follow the guy’s shocked expression staring back at us as Lyrik wound me deeper into the darkened maze.
I guess I was a little shocked too.
And a whole lot relieved.
Lyrik said a few hellos as he walked into one of the reception rooms backstage that had been close to empty when we’d walked through it earlier this afternoon.
Tonight it was packed, overflowing with a crush of people plastered against every wall, some voices loud and raucous, the center of attention, others obviously ill at ease and having no clue what to do with themselves.