A Love Song for Dreamers (Rivals Book 3) Page 9

  “Get her a book on manipulating guys,” comes a familiar voice from behind me before the clerk can respond. “It must be some secret coming-of-age thing, because all chicks seem to know it by the time they’re twelve.”

  I turn toward Beck and grin, clapping him on the back. He looks every part the actor in jeans, boots, and a white T-shirt. His aviators are shoved back on his head.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” I say. “Tell me you haven’t burned down the apartment yet.”

  “Nah, but you might want to stay in it sometime.”

  I shake my head. The two-bedroom place we share is way bigger than the New York apartment we had until I left on tour and that Beck kept until graduation.

  “I’m heading out again in a couple of days. I made a deal to help Jax out with his new studio.” I huff out a breath as I scan the shelves for a gift for Sophie.

  “You’re supposed to be in your studio. Recording at your label,” he reminds me. “The one who pays your income, which covers half of our rent.”

  “Thank you for that lesson in pronouns. I have three weeks until my surgery so I’m taking a vacation.”

  I pick up a puzzle. Maybe Sophie’s into these. Something with fish or birds, exotic ones she wouldn’t see in Dallas.

  “A vacation with Annie Jamieson. I saw your post the other night. You might not’ve tagged her, but you’re so busted.”

  “Nothing to bust. We hung out.”

  But my abs clench under my shirt at the sound of her name.

  The purple dump truck on the shelf triggers my memory that Sophie’s into things with wheels. I lift it off the shelf as Beck grins. “I bet you did.”

  I cut him a look, but my retort dies on my lips. My roommate’s the one person other than Annie and Jax who can see through my bullshit.

  Still, I’m not about to tell him I lost control the moment she peered up at me with those doe eyes wanting to collect on what I owed her.

  Turned out I was on the receiving end of something priceless.

  I’m man enough to admit that the best moments of my life have been spent holding that woman.

  And yesterday, she was wild. From the second I found her under those tight shorts, soaked and squirming, it was a breakneck descent into madness.

  I wanted nothing more than to free my swollen cock and sink into her as far as I’d go, to see her beautiful body arch and writhe on that dark wood backdrop.

  But I spent the last two years knowing Annie and I ended because she got over me first.

  Still, the way she looked at me, the way she asked me for it…

  It took everything in me to remember we’re not together.

  Beck squeezes a stuffed toy hard enough it squeaks. “I’m relieved to hear it’s nothing serious. Because you were fucked up after it ended. You both were.”

  I round on him, boxing him in against the shelf. “Go on.”

  “She couldn’t go with you, and you couldn’t stay. Someone had to be the bad guy. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have moved on—not just from her, with your life.”

  Hearing it spelled out is bringing up old feelings.

  Not even the bitterness of leaving, but the things it’s taken me two years to appreciate.

  How fucking incredible she is.

  How much I loved her.

  How much she loved me.

  “You didn’t tell me she was seeing someone,” I say. “Did you think I’d be jealous?”

  “Did I think you’d look like you’re looking right now? Yes.”

  “But they broke up,” I say, pouncing.

  He frowns. “I heard. He’s some big producer type. And—please use this for good, and not evil—apparently he cheated on her. A casting couch situation with some actress.” Beck reads the disbelief on my face. “Fucking tool, yeah. You know our girl has always had some issues believing she was enough. With all she’s accomplished, I hope she sees it and never gives the guy another look.”

  I turn that over as I start toward the cash register, dump truck in tow.

  I hope to hell she didn’t fall for Ian because she thought she needed him. The fact that he hurt her makes me want to crush the only good fist I have left into his face.

  But thinking of the ex has a dark thought occurring to me.

  I liked the idea she wanted me yesterday, wanted another shot at how we’d ended things.

  Was he the reason she was questioning herself in the first place?

  I’m not stupid enough to think what happened between us was some kind of a sign—we’ve both moved on, I’ve got an album to make and she’s finishing a show—but fuck it, I need to know.

  “Tyler.” Zeke walks into my dressing room after sound check, and I shift back in my chair.

  The guys from the band are around me, talking amongst themselves, but when he enters, they nod deferentially before ducking out into the hall to make themselves scarce.

  The exec drops onto the arm of the couch. “You’ve been posting on social.”

  “You proud?” I drawl.

  “The venue you tagged is in Dallas.” He frowns. “There’s a strict competition clause in your contract. You can’t record for any other label.”

  “I was visiting an old friend. Remember, I’m on the first vacation I’ve had in two years. Once I get through this surgery, I’ll be back in the studio to finish the album.”

  “You know your career has nothing to do with your hand.”

  I shift back in my seat, a humorless smile pulling across my face. “You’re saying that day Jax and I went to your house senior year, if I hadn’t been able to play, you still would’ve offered me a deal.”

  He narrows his gaze. “Two hundred years ago, men figured out how to make music with machines. The player piano. The music box. Everyday people could have music when they wanted—accurate, predictable, perfect.

  “Being proficient in playing doesn’t make you a good musician. Being proficient in feeling—in believing what you’re doing so much it makes someone listening, someone watching, connect with it—that’s what it’s fucking about.

  “That’s what I saw in you that day. A quiet, gives-zero-shits kid who came alive the second he picked up a guitar.”

  His words are unsettling, though I’m saved examining them too closely when my phone buzzes with an incoming call from Annie.

  “Regardless of the outcome of your procedure, I expect you back in studio the next week or you’ll be paying for missed time out of your royalties,” Zeke tosses as he heads for the door.

  “Always a pleasure.”

  Zeke and I have always had a rocky relationship, but my relentless focus on being the best I can clashes with his “make money first” approach.”

  He disappears down the hall and I go back to my phone, hitting Accept.

  “Everything okay?” I answer, concerned.

  “Yes. Fine,” Annie says, a little breathless. “I just called to say good luck tonight.”

  I’m still on edge from Zeke’s threat, my hand tightening on the phone.

  I haven’t spoken to her since yesterday in the studio, and the sound of her voice has every part of me tightening as I remember the way she fell apart under my hands and my mouth.

  But despite my physical response to her now, I can’t help thinking of all the times she didn’t call to wish me good luck when I was on tour. The times I didn’t text her because I knew she was busy.

  She’s calling now.

  Which means nothing. Tell her goodnight. Get moving.

  “How was your day?” I ask instead, shifting out of the chair and leaning over the bureau, pressing my bad hand on the surface. The fingers won’t straighten all the way.

  “Less exciting than yours. Took Sophie to daycare. Met Pen for coffee before she headed back to New York. Worked on the musical. Went for a swim. With the bathing suit this time,” she adds lightly.

  I turn over my hand and inspect the tangle of black vines and thorns and roses, the white lines beneath. Layers upon layers of
ink and scars, like the layers of lies and feelings and decisions that litter our past.

  I should be hanging up, both to get on with my prep and because talking to her like this feels too good, too much like something I could look forward to.

  “I was listening to a demo Shay sent in the car today,” I hear myself say. “She’s good. I’d love to cut the punk loose and put Shay in the studio instead.”

  “Then do it.”

  Her direct reply takes me by surprise. “This isn’t my fight. It’s not my music.”

  “Diving into someone else’s mess can be the best way to get out of your own. Maybe you need something bigger than yourself to believe in.”

  My bassist sticks his head in the doorway, calling my name and jerking his head toward the stage.

  I take a last look in the mirror at my stage getup, the makeup, the hair—all done by professionals to craft a man who looks like me but isn’t quite.

  “Tell me yesterday wasn’t you trying to fuck your ex out of your head.”

  My blunt words have her pausing. But there’s a cord of strength in her voice when she responds. “I think I needed to feel alive in a way I haven’t felt in a long time. I wanted to feel in control, which I know is a weird way to think of what happened, but it’s true.”

  Maybe I haven’t been alive these past two years despite the crowds and the music and pressing past every challenge that’s been leveled at me.

  Maybe I didn’t feel in control until I had her heated skin under my lips, her hot breath on my hand, her tight body squeezing me when she broke apart.

  When I answered her call, I wanted to prove my heart doesn’t beat for her.

  But now, it’s hammering harder than ever.

  “You are the most alive person I’ve ever met,” I say. “I saw your show in New York four times. I couldn’t see opening night off-Broadway because we had a gig in Colorado. But the second night, I flew in. And your first night on Broadway. I even saw it once without you in it, because there was something I suspected but wanted to know for sure.”

  I block out the noises from the backstage crew, the chatter and footsteps in the hall, until all I hear is her soft breathing. “What’s that?”

  “It was better with you.”

  Everything’s better with you.

  11

  This morning, there’s no alarm to wake me to start working.

  There’s no screaming from downstairs, no sound of Sophie shrieking, no daycare.

  But I’m awake and warm and itchy.

  I’ve been at Dad and Haley’s for four days. The first couple of nights, I slept through without waking. Since Tyler left for LA, though, I’ve been restless and turned on.

  I still haven’t found the breakthrough I need with my final song, and I know Ian’s breathing down my neck. Soon Miranda will be, too.

  So, this morning, I give myself this one thing.

  I slide a hand down the front of my pajamas, where I’m already wet.

  It’s a bad idea to fantasize about a man you can’t have.

  I didn’t let myself do it when we were apart, save for a couple of times when I gave myself a pass on account of being too tipsy to regulate my fantasizing or having a really brutal day of rehearsing or, once, when he did a spread for this magazine where I swear he was looking right at me and seeing every dirty thought I’ve ever had about him—when we were together and since.

  A few sweaty minutes in the studio—no matter how earth-shattering—doesn’t change anything.

  What about you calling him before his show?

  I did it to prove that all the months he was on the road, I hadn’t held him at a distance because I wanted him out of my life.

  But it didn’t play out the way I expected.

  It was better with you.

  It sounded as if he didn’t only mean the show. I wanted him to mean that.

  But I can’t fall for Tyler Adams again.

  My heart wouldn’t survive it.

  When he comes back later today, there’ll be no more longing looks, no more flirty winks, and definitely no more thinking about how the only thing terrible about having his tongue in me was that it wasn’t his cock.

  As a consolation prize, I give myself the best solo orgasm I’ve had in years.

  The release seems to shake loose a few ideas, and when I get out of the shower, I jot down half a page of notes in the notebook on my desk.

  Then I dress and go downstairs to grab coffee with Haley, who’s sitting on a chair with her feet on another.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “Fine. Your dad was hoping to talk to you. He’s staining the gazebo. I swear he went out and made millions of dollars so he could live like he had his own home reno show.”

  “You love it.”

  She grins. “Yeah, I do.”

  I turn that over as I go to find him.

  I weave through the manicured lawns on the other side of the house, around a grove of trees.

  Sophie’s playing with her trucks in the grass a dozen feet away from the gazebo my dad built for Haley with his band’s help.

  “Annie! Play trucks with me. This one’s Boom. And that’s Mice.”

  “Mouse?” I ask.

  “Mice.”

  “She named it after Mace,” Dad weighs in from where he’s painting one of the beams, sweat dripping down his face.

  “Annie, you’d be a red truck.”

  “Perfect.” My gaze drifts back to my dad. “Haley could use some love.” My dad cocks a brow, and I shudder. “Not like that. Just… whatever, you do you.”

  I take in the gazebo, its graceful beams and arches. “Didn’t you just build that five years ago?”

  “People think building things takes effort. But maintaining them is harder.” He takes a seat on the top step, balancing the brush on the edge. “When something’s in my care, I keep it a certain way. Maybe it’s the right way, and maybe it’s not. But I can’t apologize for doing things the best I know how.”

  “Can you apologize for hurting the people you love?”

  He doesn’t answer, but I see the strain in the tight lines of his face.

  “There’s something I need to say to you,” he goes on at last, and I hold my breath.

  This is it. An apology.

  “The scholarship you got at Vanier that covered the rest of your tuition and living expenses through graduation. That was me.”

  I stiffen. “What are you talking about? I told you I didn’t need your help.”

  “And I didn’t accept that.”

  My mouth works. “All you had to do was say you were wrong. Instead you had to control the situation again and manipulate me into taking your money.”

  He leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “That’s not what it was.”

  “No?”

  His groan has Sophie looking up over her trucks, her curious gaze cutting between us.

  “I don’t want your money. I mean, it helped,” I concede, shoving a hand through my hair. “I can’t pretend it didn’t. But all I ever wanted was for you to respect me. To see me as an equal.”

  “You’re not equal to anything. You’re my child. You will always mean more to me than anything in this world has a right to mean.”

  My throat swells at the emotion in his words. “I just want you to know that I can handle myself. That you’d bet on me if I wasn’t your child. I want you to think I’ve grown into the kind of person you’d believe in.”

  I hold out a hand for the paint brush. “Go hang with Haley. I’ll finish it.”

  His gaze finds mine, surprised. “And watch your sister?”

  I lower my voice. “I’ve pulled together changes from a whole host of writers. I can handle a four-year-old and a paint brush.”

  My dad looks as if he’s about to say something, but in the end, he hands me the brush.

  After finishing up at the gazebo, I scrounge some lunch for me and Sophie before taking a call with Miranda while my sister plays.
>
  We talk about the work, catch up on Ian. I let her know he’s pushing me.

  “I emailed and told him I’d send him what we have next week.”

  “What did he say?”

  I huff out a breath. “Nothing, yet. But I have to go,” I say to my writing partner as I look up to see Sophie climbing on the windowsill and jumping on the seat.

  “I know you’re dealing with family issues, but we need to finish that song.”

  “I will.”

  If my voice has an edge, it’s in response to the urgency in hers. “I have a version, Miranda. And it’s good. But it’s not right.”

  “You have good instincts. If there’s something more you can get from it, I trust you to try.”

  “Thank you. I know it’s your dream to co-write a show from the beginning. We’ll make it work.”

  What happened with Ian was my mistake, not hers, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt us.

  After hanging up, I get Sophie off the windowsill.

  “I want to swim,” she decides, peering up at me.

  “Okay. But after, we need some quiet play time so I can work.”

  I get her changed, and she insists on bringing the trucks with her.

  My gaze cuts toward the hedges and the parking lot beyond.

  “That’s Tyler’s car,” Sophie informs me.

  “Yes, it is.” His flight was supposed to get back from LA around noon, and I chastise myself for being so obvious a toddler could figure it out as I usher her toward the pool.

  “Why’re you so into trucks?” I ask as she’s clinging to the ladder, her water wings keeping her afloat.

  “They get things done. Like Mommy.”

  I laugh. “Not Daddy?”

  She wrinkles her nose. “No. Daddy makes messes. Mommy cleans them up.”

  “That’s true.”

  I coax her off the ladder, stabilizing her with my hands as she kicks wildly.

  “Where’s your Mommy?” she pants.

  Her question catches me off-guard, and I stare at her freckled little face. Apparently Dad and Haley have had this conversation with her—or at least part of it. “Um. I’m not sure.”

  “Why not?”