AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Not unless you plan on starring in any.”
When she gawked, he chuckled. “No, no orgies. Ry’s not like that. He’s barely there anymore, actually. I’m not sure what he does with his time now. But we’ll mostly have the place to ourselves.”
“But you are?”
“Huh?”
Yeah, so she just couldn’t let the orgy thing go. “Ry’s not into orgies. Are you?”
“No. I’ve never even had a threesome. I tend to be a one-on-one kind of guy.”
“Hmm.”
He continued on as if she’d asked him how he liked his eggs. “And then in a week and a half, we have an awards show in Vegas.”
“Oh. That sounds cool.”
“Yeah. It is. We’re up for best new artist.” He lifted her hand and traced the valleys between her fingers. “I heard your mother say you had two weeks to decide. So before Vegas would probably be a good time to figure shit out, since we have to leave the Friday after this one. We’ll be there for a few days, then on to some place in the Midwest. Heading toward summer concert season.” The look he gave her held heavy subtext, she was almost sure, but damn if she could figure out exactly what.
She so wasn’t built for relationships. There was a reason she’d had so few, both romantic and personal. She just didn’t know how to deal with people, though somehow she was doing better with this one than most.
“What will everyone say when you bring me back on the bus? They thought this was my last stop. That I’d probably just dematerialize into the groupie ether like all the other girls you’ve brought with you.”
“What other girls?”
She circled her free hand. “You know the ones you take with you on sex sprees.”
“Sorry, babe, that’s just been you.” He laced their fingers together over her thigh. “I’m a one-on-one and one-and-done. I’ve never asked anyone for a repeat, never mind to ride to the next stop.”
Her pulse sped before settling into a dull, thudding beat in her ears. “You don’t have to lie,” she said quietly.
“Good, because I’m not. If you asked me a question I didn’t want to answer, I’d just avoid it. I wouldn’t make shit up. That’s not who I am, Lo.”
She gripped the compass charm hanging from the cord around his neck. That was a story too, one he hadn’t wanted to share the other day. Understandably. This was all so new.
They were virtual strangers, even if they felt like anything but.
“Like your family,” she said.
The corners of his mouth tipped up. “Yeah, like my family. I definitely don’t talk about them much.”
She didn’t expect him to say anything more and definitely didn’t intend to press. He would tell her what he wanted to on his own time.
But he wasn’t through.
“Let’s just say I split from my family’s trailer as fast as humanly possible. My dad was an alcoholic who couldn’t hold a job. My mom was his favorite punching bag, though it was mostly verbal. Definitely not any better. Only difference was those bruises didn’t show.”
“Oh, West,” she murmured, horrified. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to start you down this road.”
“Nah, you couldn’t know. And you didn’t start me down it. I came from it, born and bred.” He closed his fingers around hers on the compass charm. Inadvertently, she’d clutched it tighter as he spoke. “This was for Chloe, my little girl. So I would never get lost again. Would never forget what was important. My true north. Her and Raine. Just because I’m not with them all the time doesn’t mean they aren’t the center of everything.”
He lifted Lauren up as if she was weightless and carried her to the other side of the bed, sitting them down again closest to the nightstand. He reached for his wallet and thumbed it open to a small picture of a laughing, beautiful girl with long, wavy dark hair and sparkling green eyes. West’s eyes.
“My baby sister,” he explained. “We’re a little over a year apart. She’s almost through with school to become a high school art teacher. She loves kids too.” He rubbed his fingers over the little piece of plastic keeping Raine safe. “I stuck around the trailer longer than I would have if not for her. I didn’t go until she was ready to move out. She really made something of herself.”
“So did you.”
When he didn’t say anything, she grabbed his chin. “You’re kidding me, right? You think what you do isn’t important? You give people happiness for the price of a ticket. You take them out of their ordinary world and give them magic, West. Fucking magic.”
