Now everything makes sense. Since she didn’t pay for the privilege to meet us, she can’t visit the bandmember she really wants to visit. It’s for the best. Marcus has no issues with the ladies, but he’s very particular about whom he allows to warm his sheets. Nothing against this blonde bombshell, but she doesn’t seem like Marcus’s type. She’s too wild for him. He likes them tame and meek—somewhat submissive.
I scribble my name along the stick in a black permanent marker before handing it back to her. “Thanks.” She smiles a beaming grin while stuffing it into her oversized handbag. “My friend can add it to the collection of sticks she already has from you.”
“So your friend is a fan of vanilla?”
She pulls a face like she just vomited. “She’s as vanilla as they come, and I mean that in more ways than one.”
When she jingles her phone in the air, I move to the other side of my table to take a quick selfie with her. My pulse spikes as high as my brow when her hand gets friendly with my backside. “How the hell did she ever give that up?”
After taking over a dozen photos, she scrolls through them, explaining to me that she wants to ensure she got at least one decent picture before she leaves my table. “The last thing I want to do is wrangle those bunch of crazies again. She nudges her head to two giggling brunettes waiting to meet me next.
“We good?”
She purses her lips. “Yeah, I think so.”
Just as I’m about to walk back to my seat, I catch one of her photos in the corner of my eye. It doesn’t just halt my retreat, it freezes my heart as well.
No way. That couldn’t be her.
“Scroll back.” I plaster my body to the blonde’s back so I can peer over her shoulder. I don’t even care if she can feel my raging heart. Maybe if she feels the urgency of my request, she’ll hurry the fuck up.
“You look great. Me, on the other hand…”
Her words trail off when I flick through the thousands of photos in her album at the speed of a bullet being dislodged from a gun. She’s taking too long, and my patience is stretched thin.
“Holy fuck.”
The blonde peers at me curiously at the same time my heart stops beating. The person I thought I saw is right. It’s her—Kylie. I haven’t seen her in years, but I’d never forget her face. Not only is it burned into my retinas, but I memorized every tiny freckle that adorns her beautiful nose.
When the blonde notices my shocked expression, she rolls her eyes. “I said you knew my friend.”
She did, but I thought she meant afriendfriend, like a groupie friend, a casual hook up. Not the girl I used to love—the one who stole my heart and never returned it.
“She caught your stick but asked me to get it signed for her—”
My eyes snap to the blonde so fast, my head gets a rush of dizziness. “She’s here?!” Kylie lives on the other side of the country, so it’s highly doubtful she’s in Seattle.
I’m proven wrong when Kylie’s friend nods. “Yep.” The “p” pops from her red-painted lips. “She’s right over there.”
When she points to the other side of the room, my head flings to the side so fast I give myself whiplash. It’s got nothing on the dead hum my heart tries to break out when my eyes land on Kylie for the first time in nearly two years.
She was the only girl I ever loved.
The only girl I would have risked everything for.
And the only girl who broke my heart into a million pieces.
Maybe we weren’t meant to last forever, but it shouldn’t have ended how it did, either.
Chapter Two
Kylie
When Slater’s eyes skim down my body, a tingling sensation builds between my legs. It’s the same buzz that made me feel alive years ago, a teasing, familiar vibration that reveals I’m once again falling under his spell.
The noose is wrapped halfway around my neck when the eyes that were staring at me in wonderment only seconds ago narrow into thin slits. Slater glares at me, his greeting less than welcoming. His response is unwanted but understandable.
Nearly two years have passed since we last saw each other, yet guilt still eats away my insides. The horrid, black slosh swishing in my stomach is the reason I fought Melanie tooth and nail not to come to tonight’s concert. I knew the instant I saw Slater again, guilt would resurface, not to mention the feelings I try to deny every day.
