Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance (65 page)

“You play guitar in Landon’s band?”

Flicking his gaze to Rattler’s drummer, Gage found him still feasting like a starving infant on the boobs in his face. “Yeah. Guitar.”
In LANDON’S band
.

“You don’t look like the guitar player.” The brunette scowled at pictures on her phone’s browser.

“He’s a stand in.” Landon came up for air long enough to state.

“You’re hotter than the real one.” Brunette widened appreciative eyes between her phone and him in the flesh.

Deciding he was taking off, sleeping on the ground if he had to, he put one foot in the plastic foothold and reached for his bag.

“Are you really going to sleep?”

Ignoring her, he grabbed the pillow and blanket too and rolled them with his bag.

“At least let me give you a little something to sleep by.” She’d done the coke herself and now she used those pretty nails to pull his zipper down.

He froze, the one foot still propped. A blowjob sounded fuckin’ stellar. At least a dozen times a day he imagined Scar’s velvet tongue and her head bobbing. He’d run out of underwear a couple of days ago and so his hardened cock popped right out into her hand.

Another gaze to Landon found him on his back, the two women on him, one sucking his dick. What harm was there in a blowjob? It translated into stamina to withstand the seduction of Scar for at least through the show tomorrow.

And then it hit him. Where he’d been headed when he’d grabbed his things. To see if Scar would let him slumber party with her. He damn sure wasn’t climbing into this bunk after a blowjob and falling asleep to Landon’s fuck fest. And he double damn sure wasn’t going to Scar’s room with the saliva of another woman on his dick.

Dropping his things and tucking himself in, he descended to the floor and bent to her level long enough to pull her up straight and brush her hair from her face. “I gotta go. Got someone waiting on me. He swiped his tongue up her neck. “If I didn’t though, I’d eat you up, babe.” Straightening, he gave her a light push to the lower bed. “Go get you some of that.”

Feeling happy when he saw no hurt feelings or anger cross her features, he grabbed his things and quietly let himself out.

Three doors down, he slowed. The little window on Scarlette’s Flextel room was now dark.
Fiftieth fuck of the night
. Darting into the shadows between the two buildings, he sent a text to her.

The door opened, and at the sound, he rounded the corner to stand on her dark porch. With a nervous look around, he asked, “Can I come in?”

She eyed the pillow, blanket, and carryon bag. But she stepped back and then closed the door behind him. He blinked, adjusting his vision to the darkness. Her room would be identical to theirs and that meant only a couple of square feet of clear floor space. Carefully, he ventured a step toward the back wall where he knew the beds should be.

Suddenly the room filled with light, and she turned from the wall sconce. God, she was beautiful with her hair tousled around her face, and yes, even with the dark half-moon circles of exhaustion just above her cheekbones. The tee shirt she wore was so sheer it was practically see through, and it barely covered those sexy silky boxers she had always worn—if she’d worn anything to bed—when they’d been together. “Landon picked up some girls.”
And he’s gacked out on coke
. “Fuck. I’m so tired. Can I take your other bed?”

“Yeah. Sure.” With a generous wave of her hand, she indicated for him to make himself at home.

His lack of underwear denied him the liberty of stripping down to the comfort of his own boxers. He ducked in the tiny bathroom and had to stand in the shower stall to have room to change into a pair of shorts. The room was dark when he emerged except for the glow of the light sconce next to the top bunk.

She was in bed, facing the wall with her hair fanned behind her on the pillow and the sheet pulled to her shoulders. He couldn’t tell if she was asleep or awake. To be safe, he climbed extra stealthily into the bunk, arranged his pillows, cocooned in the blanket he’d brought, and turned off the light.

The last half hour invaded his mind, and he fought off the memory of female fingers curved around his junk and his imagining of them belonging to Scar.

“I can’t sleep.” The whisper drifted from below and sped up the pace of his heart.

“Why not?”

“It’s these things. Have you seen how they’re assembled?”

He thought of the tiny building they were lying in and knew it was delivered compressed accordion-style on a flatbed trailer. On site, a crane pulled it up and it was secured. “Yeah…”

“If it doesn’t hold, we’re squished Like bugs.”

“But it holds.”

“As far as we know.”

“We’re living in the age of the internet. If someone had been squished like a bug, we’d know it.”

“I guess.” A rustle of bedding and a minute went by, and then her voice floated into the darkness again. “How tired are you?”

Again, his heartbeat slammed against his ribs. Did she even remember the times she’d used that same phrase—as a seduction? Was this the moment he’d been waiting for?
Never too tired to fuck you
. The echo of his answer from times gone by suspended on the tip of his tongue. Instead, he managed one word. “Why?”

Cotton whispered together again, and he felt before he heard the thump of something hard against the plastic of his bed.

“Can you play something for me?”

Reaching, his fingers closed around the guitar neck, and he dragged it into his bed, positioning it on his stomach. “Anything special?” Spontaneously, his fingers had already begun to play on the strings. His ears attuned to the plinking, and he wondered when she didn’t answer if she had her headphones plugged into the portable amp as she always did on the bus in the bunk above him.

Closing his eyes, he plucked out a melody he’d been working on recently, eventually dwindling.

“Why’d you stop?” She whispered.

“That’s all there is right now.”

“Oh. What’s it called? Or is it named yet?”

The Make Up Song
. Just this very second named. But he didn’t dare say it. Instead, he denied it had a name, and let the moments quietly tick by. “I’ve heard you playing on the bus.” Was she falling asleep? “You’ve got good chops, Scar. Really good.” That much he’d assessed even while hearing the un-amped versions of her licks, riffs, and covers.

“Thanks.”

“Play something for
me
?”

“No.”

“Why?” He could feel her thoughts churning, and suddenly he knew. It wasn’t because she was on the verge of sleep. It was because her music was personal to her. Intimately so. As intimate as sex.
It’s so… intimate…
The memory of those whispered words and everything that had happened afterward had him hot and achy. “Please?” He dangled the guitar over the edge and didn’t release until he felt it safe in her grasp.

With the first chord, he realized she’d unplugged the headphones and had the amp twisted low. She strummed out a few more chords, jumping around on the scale, and he realized why when she settled into a melody. The very same one he’d just played for her—only with enough disparities that he knew she wasn’t remembering it exact. When she came to his stopping point, she blazed beyond, taking him by surprise and working the melody into a crescendo and then back again like a crashing wave.

And then she stopped. Before he came out of the music fugue and found his tongue, she apologized. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I didn’t mean to. I swear. It just happened. And if it gets into your head and fucks up where you meant the tune to go…”

“It’s fine. It was straight-up sick. Beyond amazing. Maybe that’s where it was meant to go.”

“I doubt that. You’ll make something way better with it.”

“Play it again so I can record it.” He fumbled for his phone and realized it was still in his jacket, which was somewhere—likely still in the bathroom.

Her firm answer stopped his intent to fetch it. “No. Really. It’s your song. Do whatever you were going to with it.”

“That’s what I want to do with it. But if you don’t want me to record it…”

“I don’t. Okay?”

 “You don’t want to write together.” He heard the way his realization came out. Flat. A fucked up truth he’d just been slapped in the face with. As numbing as the day hate crime charges had been filed against him, or the day the PI he’d hired had shown him the video of his wife with another man.

“It’s not that.” Her denial was hurried. In his opinion, way too quickly voiced.

“No?” Sarcasm coated the word, and he wished he could take it back and replace it with an unemotional answer.

“It’s something I’d need to think about.”

“Look. I get it, dammit. I can be stubborn when it comes to shit I want. But I get it. Finally.” His feet hit the floor, and he shoved them sockless into his shoes.”

“What are you doing?” His eyes had adjusted enough to see her gray shadow rise up against the white wall as her question rang out. When he didn’t answer, she persisted. “Is that your shoes? Are you leaving? Gage, what the fuck? I said I’d need to think about it. I didn’t say… Fuck will you stop?”

The strangled syllables of her last question paused his maniacal dance in the dark while gathering his things. Light filled the room, and reflexively, intent on shielding any emotion that might show on his face, he turned his back to her while zipping his bag.

“I thought about it. I’ll work with you.” There was desperation in her tone.

His shoulders shook, and he actually swiped a hand down his face to assess whether he was laughing or crying. “Forget it.”

“What do you mean ‘forget it?’”

“I mean For. Get. It.
I
don’t wanna work with
you
.”

“You said you did!”

“Because I did. And now I don’t.”

The moment his hand touched the door latch, she screamed. “Dammit, Gage. Don’t you dare open that door! Tell me what the hell is going on!”

“What’s going on is I think you have incredible talent, and I wanted to tap into it. To see what we came up with together. Then you made it into something it wasn’t. Twisting it all around like I was trying to tap your juicy ass!”

Behind him, her silence was probably due to shock. Never in their most intimate dialogues had he used the word juicy in reference to her. That word in his mind had always been reserved in reference to groupie sluts. Despite the twinge of shame, he didn’t apologize—or shut up. “Maybe I hadn’t fully accepted it before. But after this shit right here. I get it. Finally. You never meant to be with a musician and are making damn sure you don’t repeat the mistake. I know you think your reasoning on that is good, and I’ve tried to respect your feelings even though it’s hard to always think with my head when you’re around.” Satisfied he’d calmed enough that his face was stone, he turned, finding her huddled on the bed. Those beautiful blues were fixed on him, and they were brimming. Tears of anguish or anger, he couldn’t distinguish. “And that’s fine. Logically, I know if I ever want to get my career back, I’ve got to make sure I don’t revive the scandals I’ve created or make more. You and me together as a couple is a publicity fiasco waiting to happen worse than that video ever was.”

“Where are you going?”

His fingers curled, gripping the door latch, willing himself to give it a twist. To pull open the door and step out into the night and leave this part of his life behind. To leave behind the woman he loved and to meet up with his sister for breakfast. “Back to my room. You know. The one I’m stuck in with the drummer of an ‘on the rise’ band.”

“And back to the girls.” Her matter of fact words were choked as if she were forcing them through a closed windpipe.

Like the song they’d spontaneously created, tonight together had begun gently, crested and crashed, and now the thundering wave had shattered apart. The new mood descended with the softness of surf being drawn gently back into the ocean.

“No.” Dropping his bag, he took the two steps to sit beside her. “Landon will have to kick ’em out if they’re still there. Because fuck it all, I need some sleep.”
As if sleeping would be possible after the shit that had just gone down with Scar
. But he needed to try. He stroked a hand down her hair. “You need sleep too.”

Her head tipped into his palm, and her chest heaved a relaxed sigh, drawing his eyes of course to that thin excuse for a shirt and the curves beneath it. “Gage?”

“Hmm?” He jerked his guilty gaze above her neck.

“Lay the fuck down, and let’s get that sleep.” When she tugged, he let himself go down.

His head hit the pillow next to hers and when she turned, reaching up to flip the light off, she remained facing the wall when she relaxed. Using his toes, he slipped first one shoe and then the other off and they each hit the floor with a thump.

“Can you grab the covers?”

Feeling around, he snagged the edge of the sheet and blanket and drew it over them. He lay for a quarter of an hour, wondering if she too was wide-awake. And then he fell into the deepest sleep he’d had in more than a year.

Scar apparently rested just as well, sleeping through the wakeup call from the tour manager when it rang his phone. He dug the phone from the pocket of his shorts and sent a confirming text. Next, he borrowed her shower, dressed, and when she still hadn’t woken, he climbed back into bed to steal a last few minutes with her.

He was playing with her hair when her eyes opened, and he enjoyed the lethargic disorientation in her gaze. Her eyes were relaxed and untroubled, her gaze roving intimately down his face before invisible shields shot up.

He mimicked, buffering his own expression and curving a deceptive smile. “Morning, Sis.” Bounding up from the bed, he dragged his bag to the corner next to hers and left it for pickup, knowing the next time he saw his things he would be in a new city and a new room.