WILDER: A Rockstar Romance (18 page)

"Not again, not fucking again!" I may have said that—I probably didn't—but it was what I needed to push through the seeming miles. Her door was closed. I slammed into it with all of my weight.

"Fuck!" My shoulder was dead, useless. The latch was engaged. We needed a keycard to get in. I couldn't hear anything over the noise of static in the room. "Scarlett!" I roared. "Scarlett!!"

The sound of static filled my head. I couldn't hear anything, but I suddenly felt it. A heavy thud, and then the handle moved, just a millimeter.

I grabbed it and pushed, helping her. The door slammed open then stopped, something heavy blocking its way. A high, piercing scream filled my ears, and I roared in response. I was an animal, a predator, a cornered, wounded beast. Scarlett's scream took a hold of me, leaving me blind with rage.

I started swinging.

Chapter 38

Scarlett

Kevin was too slow, more suited to pushing around girlfriends than all out brawling. Keir was lean, strong, not an ounce of extra weight left on him after sweating out his soul nightly on tour. It was never going to be an even match, except for one problem.

Kevin had a knife.

"Watch out!" I screamed, kicking my legs uselessly into the air. It wasn't enough to connect with Kevin's swinging arm, but it was enough to draw Keir's murderous gaze downward.

He saw me lying there, bleeding. Fear and anger blazed in his eyes.

He lunged to cover my body with his.

That was just enough to save him from Kevin's knife.

Keir slammed us both to the ground, punching the breath from my lungs before I could scream out another warning. Kevin lifted his knife again.

"Fuck you, Kevin!" I shouted over the noise of the radio. "No! Do you hear me? No!" I pulled myself clear of Keir, struggling backwards. I crab-walked to the bedside table and slammed my hand down on the snooze alarm.

Silence rang like a bell so that Kevin's shout was loud enough to be heard by everyone in the building.

"You cheating bitch, I'm going to kill you!"

Keir flipped from his stomach to his back, lashing out with his legs to sweep Kevin's out from under him. He fell heavily, the blade still arcing downward.

"No!" I rushed to catch his arm, to stop...to stop...

The noise that Keir made when the blade caught him was nothing more than a ragged whisper. In the silence, I swore I could hear the blood as it dripped...and then began to pour onto the tile floor.

Kevin lifted his head, his mouth frozen in a snarl.

"No," I told him.

He always hated to be told no.

"Yes," he said. "Right in front of your boyfriend." He stood up, grabbing his knife, and glanced at the blood that dripped from it, fascinated. "Don't scream or I'll make it hurt even more."

I opened my mouth to scream anyway. But the next voice that rang out was not mine.

Chapter 39

Keir

They say when you're about to die, your life flashes before your eyes.

I closed my eyes, and I saw Scarlett.

It was a sweltering afternoon in June, made worse by the fact that the garage door was closed. Her naked skin was slick against mine, slippery under my thumbs as I caressed the sensitive peaks of her breasts before curling my tongue around the tips.

She gasped and arched upward, her body meeting mine, and I slid inside of her easily.

"Keir..." I loved the way she said my name when I was inside of her. Sometimes it was the only thing she could say, especially when I reached down between her legs to brush my thumb over her clit before thrusting deep inside of her. "Keir! Keir!" She chanted my name like a prayer, my personal angelic chorus. She was so wet and so hot, clutching me so tightly that I got too wild. I wanted to be gentle, thought that's what she needed, but when she wrapped her legs around my waist and
pulled
me to her, clinging like a drowning person to a life raft, I let go of gentle and I
fucked
her. I fucked her so hard, the wet slap of our bodies the only sound in that steaming hot garage. I fucked her like I had never fucked her before, and it felt so good, so fucking good to be inside of her. It had never felt this good before, and I wanted more of her, so I fucked her heedlessly, mindlessly, so hard, so hard and...

"Fuck!" I shouted, right as she screamed my name. I felt her clutch me from the inside just as I exploded inside of her, and then—and only then—I came to my senses.

"Fuck," I repeated, pulling out of her, my heart already sinking. "Scar, honey, are you on the pill?"

Her eyelashes fluttered, and then those amazing eyes narrowed, then went wide. "Why?" she panted.

I pushed myself off of her and watched the condom slip uselessly off the tip of my cock and fall to the floor.

No wonder it had felt so good.

"Shit, Scar. Shit." My heart started to race. "You're on the pill, right, honey?" I was begging her now.

But the glazed, dumbfounded look she gave me told me what I already knew.

She was Catholic. And what's more, her mother, the one who should have taken her to get birth control, didn't know she was having sex. It was all on me and the condom that lay broken on the floor.

I started to laugh and I didn't know why.

"Keir?" She said my name again. "What's wrong?"

I leaned forward and kissed her. "Fuck it, you know? If we just made a baby, well, then we're having a fucking baby, Scar. That cool with you?"

She looked at me, then down to the ring that was already on her finger. "Are you serious?"

"Dead serious."

She shook her head. "Keir, I can't have a baby! My mother...my parents, they'll..."

"Kill you?" I said flippantly. I still remembered how quickly I dismissed her fear, how I glossed right over the terror in her eyes. "Well then, fuck 'em. We'll leave. Start our own life." I grabbed her hand. "Let's run away together, Scarlett. Come with me to New York. You can write, and I'll play music, and we'll love each other, and we'll have a little baby to love too." I ran my thumb along her jaw and tilted her lips to mine. "I hope he has your eyes."

"Oh, we're having a son?" She laughed.

"Yup." I nodded. I was sure of it already. "A little hellion, just like his father."

She took a deep breath then. I'll never forget it. A deep, hitching sigh that made her perfect breasts bob ever so slightly. I was a horny kid, barely twenty years old, so I was staring at her breasts when I should have been watching her eyes. Maybe if I had looked at them, I would have seen the wild panic, the absolute terror. Her eyes would have told me the truth, even as her lips spoke the lie.

"Okay, Keir," she said, and now I was watching the pulse at her neck, getting hard for her all over again. "Okay...sure."

*****

Thoughts travel faster than light, flickering like shadows on the wall. All the memories, they felt so real, more real than this hotel room, this madman with a knife...

I heard a thump. Once and then twice. Was it outside of me? Or inside?

I felt warm now. Strangely warm. My heart was thumping so strongly, and with each thump I felt more blood spill from the slash across my thigh.

There was another thump, louder this time. A shout too. This time, I knew it had to be outside of me.

Scarlett screamed, then there was an answering thump. Then a crash and a bang that could only be the sound of a door flying open.

"Fucking freeze or I'll blow your skull open."

It was a struggle to open my eyes, but I did it just in time to see my security detail burst through the door and the madman with the knife drop it to the floor.

I closed my eyes again, happy to leave this place and go back to my memories.

Chapter 40

Scarlett

The hours flew by as I talked and talked and talked some more. First to the police, giving my statement, giving the same information I had given to the officer in LA yesterday so that she could file the restraining order that never manifested. I repeated the words dully, mechanically. "Domestic violence....abuse...stalking. Yes, I want to press charges. Yes, for all of it."

Then I had to talk again. This time to the band. Rane looked like he wanted to finish the job that Kevin had started, but Pepper was oddly sympathetic. She took my hand in hers and gave me the first genuine smile I had ever seen on her face. "You did what a lot of us only dream of," she said, and I swear I saw a glint of angry pride in her normally narrowed eyes.

"What's that?"

"You fought back."

I swallowed hard. "Not hard enough. And not soon enough."

"No. The exact right time. When you were ready." Pepper blinked for a second, and I swore some kind of realization settled over her eyes. She pursed her lips. "Thanks for that," she finally said, as terse and flippant as always.

Then she walked away, pulling a cell phone from the back pocket of her tunic.

Twitch turned and watched her for a moment. "So, I'm gonna go see if my sister is okay..." he said hesitantly. Then bolted after her. 

Balzac looked from Rane, to me, back to Rane. "Yeeeahh," he drawled, and turned to follow Twitch.

I shoved my hands in my pockets and ducked my head, waiting. The moment stretched out so long that I finally dared to sneak a look at him.

"You love him?" he demanded.

Startled, I blurted out the only possible response. "Yes. Yes, I do."

"You gonna stick around this time?"

I lifted my chin defiantly. "Yeah. I am. You good with that?"

"Sure. What the fuck?" He shrugged. "Now go tell him all the shit you told us."

"But he's resting..."

"Bullshit. Tell him. Right now. You made him wait five years. Don't make him wait any longer."

"What happened to your little slogan?" I couldn't help but ask. "Let the past be the past, fuck it and move on and all that?"

He glowered at me. "If you want some kind of speech from me about the importance of shared memory and all that crap, well, then you're barking up the wrong tree."

I smiled at him. "Are you going to tell Keir about your change in slogan?"

"Tell him yourself." He gave me a gentle nudge towards the door of Keir's room. "Now."

I allowed him to lead me to the closed door. Inside, the man I loved was resting after getting seventy stitches and two liters of blood. He might even be asleep.

I almost hoped he was. Because suddenly, all the talking I had been doing caught up with me and I couldn't think of a single word to say to him.

I opened the door and saw him in the hospital bed. He wasn't asleep. He was sitting up in bed, spine straight as an arrow, but he didn't look at me as I walked in the door.

I went to him and planted myself directly in his line of sight. His head jerked like he wanted to keep staring off into the distance...

But I wanted him to see me.

Only me.

"Hey you," I said, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed. I took his hands into my hands, wanting to feel the warm reassurance of his fingers closing around mine.

But his hands stayed limp.

He didn't hold me back.

"Keir?"

His mouth worked. I waited, watching him collect his words. Whatever he was going to say, I deserved it, but I wasn't sure I wouldn't crumple beneath the anger in his eyes.

Of course he was mad. He just found out I was stupid enough to stay with an abusive asshole for four years. He was probably having second thoughts about running away with me.

I ducked my head, waiting for him to let me go.

"Five years," he finally said.

"What?" That was not what I was expecting.

He shifted in his chair, wincing slightly, then stretched his leg out straight. The bandage was clean, only a little dot of red bleeding through the layer of gauze. But it still made me nauseous to see it.

"Five. Years," he repeated. "That's how long I waited for you to come to your senses and come to me."

I slid my hand up his good leg. "I did. I did come back to you, Keir."

He shook his head. "Yeah, you almost had me fooled, Scarlett."

"What?" His voice was so low, so sad. I expected him to yell at me. I
wanted
him to yell at me. He just got fucking
stabbed
because of me. "Keir, what are you talking about?"

He shook his head. "I'm an idiot when it comes to you. Got a blind spot a mile wide. And I just keep getting broadsided."

"I'm so sorry Kevin hurt you..."

"I don't give a shit about that." He shook his head. "Here I was thinking we had turned over a new leaf. But now I see that you haven't let me in at all. Not even one inch. You opened the door a crack, and like an idiot, I thought I stepped all the way through."

I was sobbing now, great heaving, ugly sobs that made speech close to impossible. "I didn't… I didn't want to…"

Keir lunged forward and made to grab my arm, but I shrank away. A flicker of sadness crossed his face. "Don't you say it. Don't you say you didn't want to bother me. If you want me in your life, I'm all the way in your life. You know me. I don't do half measures."

"I was ready," I said angrily. "I was going to tell you everything, but you...you told me not to!"

He blinked and his eyes flashed angrily. "You should know me better than that!"

"That's not fair!'

He slumped backwards. "No. I guess it's not."

I exhaled. "I want to tell you. But I don't know where to start."

He blinked three times in rapid succession, then folded his arms.

"Why don't you start with the afternoon of August 18, 2011?"

I swallowed. "What about it?"

His eyes blazed. "What do you mean, what about it? Why weren't you there? Why didn't you meet me?"

"I tried to."

"Well? What the fuck happened?"

I opened my mouth and then shut it. I opened my mouth again and tried to speak, tried to form the words around the lump in my throat. There was no way to avoid saying the words anymore. They were real.

"I lost our baby, Keir."

He slumped like I punched him.

I knew. I knew
exactly
how much it would hurt him.

That's why I never said those words out loud.

Our baby. Keir's and mine. The one we made the day I turned eighteen.

"I didn't know you were..."

I felt the tears starting, and I knew that once I started to cry, the words would never come out. In a rush, in a race again my own sorrow, I told him. "I didn't know either. Until that morning, when the pain started. I was seven weeks along, but then I miscarried."

The noise that Keir made was like releasing the floodgates. I could no longer hold back the tears, and collapsed against his chest.

He held me. I could feel his questions, the tension rippling through his muscles like electricity. His uncertainty. Should he be angry? Should he be worried?

"Stop," Keir murmured into my hair. "I'm fine."

I looked up at him. He shook his head a fraction of an inch, a tiny shift. But that was all I needed. I knew that right now, what he was thinking didn't matter to him.

He was more concerned with me.

My fist closed around the tail of his T-shirt, gripping with all of my strength. I never thought about that day, never wanted to, but now it was coming over me in waves.

"Clark was the one who found me that morning," I told him. "My brother, you only met him once. But he was my nice brother, the one person in my family who liked me for who I was." Keir held me incrementally tighter as the words came out in a flood. "He’d moved out five months before—when he and Dayna, his college girlfriend, had a baby—and had come over to grab more of his things out of the attic." The fact that he came in the middle of the day, when my parents were certain not to be home, didn't strike me as odd back then. In hindsight, I realized he was avoiding them.

"Then what happened?"

I swallowed. "To his credit, he didn't say a word. I was on the toilet, naked from the waist down and bleeding hard, but he didn't..." I took a deep breath. "He didn't embarrass me about it." I felt Keir wince. "But he knew immediately what needed to be done." I looked up at Keir's cheek. A single tear was tracking through the dark stubble. "He needed to get me the hell away from our mother."

I sat up, cradling my belly, the phantom pains of memory as real as anything. "I had packed my bag already. Because...you know. We were leaving that night. I had everything I needed to start my life over again." I turned back to him. "I never thanked you for that."

"No problem," he said gruffly.

"So it only took a matter of moments to get me cleaned up and bundled into his truck. He had this ugly green Ford pickup. The seats were an awful burgundy color. I was happy about that. It's bad enough bleeding in your brother's truck, much less actually leaving a stain."

I took another deep breath. "Clark took me to his house and bundled me into my niece's bedroom to lie down while he 'sorted this shit.' That's what he called it. That's all he said. But I saw it. The fear in his eyes, fear for me."

I spent the rest of the afternoon splayed on his daughter's floor, wracked with guilt and grief in equal measure. Losing the baby. That had to be a punishment. My mother's voice was terrible in my head, raining hellfire and accusations down on me. And I believed every one of them.

"He took me to his friend's mom's house," I told Keir, pulling back and dabbing my eyes. "A woman named Maryann." I smiled a little. Keir cocked his head, the whiteness of his knuckles the only betrayal of how he was really feeling. "She took care of me and never asked for a single thing in return. She...she was the first real mother I ever had, and I lived with her for only three weeks."

He winced. "Three weeks?"

I swallowed, wanting to lie. But that time had passed. "Yeah, Keir." I grimaced.

"You didn't call."

"Clark told me not to. So did Maryann."

"Why?"

"To keep you safe."

"I didn't need to be safe, I needed to be with you!" he exploded in a hoarse, angry shout. "I would have waited for you. I
did
wait for you. I put everything on hold, and when you didn't come, I went looking for you."

I swallowed, trying to keep the note of pleading out of my voice. "My mother hated you. She would have blamed you, tried to get the cops involved. I was eighteen, we made sure of that." I slid my hand over his. "But that wouldn't have mattered to her. She would have ruined your life, Keir, don't you see that? I couldn't be responsible for that. She would have done everything in her power to derail your life, and I loved you too much to let that happen. She's poison, Keir. She would have poisoned you just like she poisoned me."

His jaw worked, a muscle jumping at his temple. I waited, watching him carefully as every emotion rippled across his face. Until he finally, carefully asked, "You got pregnant the first time we had sex?"

"The very first time I
ever
had sex," I pointed out.

Keir made a small, amused sound. "So, you're like, super fertile, huh?" He looked a little worried.

I laughed into the wet patch on his T-shirt that I had made with my tears. "Only with you, apparently."

A proud smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "That shouldn't make me feel good, and yet…"

This time, I laughed out loud. "You always wanted kids. I thought you'd be upset.”

"I am."

"Oh."

"I've been upset for five fucking years."

I looked down. "I know."

"But now..."

"What?"

"Now I understand."

I looked up. "You do?"

"You were a kid, Scarlett. I keep forgetting that. You didn't know anything except your parents' house. And your parents' fucked up ways. The condom broke, but I barely thought about it. I was too excited about running away. I should have never put all that on you."

"I wanted it on me," I told him. It was the truth. "But then..."

"Then it was too much."

"It was."

"That's..." He exhaled, and it was like watching something unspool. Coils of tension I hadn't even noticed he was wrapped in suddenly unraveled. "I've been carrying this a while," he finally said. Even his voice sounded looser. "I'm going to need..."

"Yeah." I bounced to my feet. "I get it. I'll give you space."

"No." He reached out and yanked me back down. "You didn't let me finish. I'm going to need you to stick close and help me figure it out. No running away again, okay?