Braden
If I had to do art for a living, I would starve. That was my first thought as the tube of glitter spilled across my board and spread onto my coffee table.
The second thought?
Piper was ridiculously distracting when she wasn’t busy being so damn professional.
She watched my every move, and like an idiot, I wanted to impress her with my skills, not my lack of creativity. But it felt like I was back in school waiting for my teacher to either pass or fail me.
I held in my groan. Shit, I would have failed every class if that woman was my teacher, standing there all prim and proper with a black pencil skirt that she’d hike up the minute I grabbed her by the ass and set her on my desk, spreading her legs wide enough to—
“Braden? Are you even listening?”
“Yes,” I lied and then met Piper’s gorgeous blue eyes. “I was planning…in my head.”
“And this, this is what you were planning?” She pointed to the board. I’d tried to make a music note out of glue and then attempted to dump the glitter onto the board in an effort to up the cool factor.
Spoiler alert, the music note looked like a dick, and not a nice one. A small, sad dick that would never see any action. Ever.
I tilted my head.
She frowned. “Is that a—?”
“Note,” I interrupted. “The glue just didn’t stick right…”
“Stick,” she repeated and then covered her mouth to stifle a laugh.
I shot her a glare. “Are you making fun of my music note?”
“Are we really calling it that?”
“I’m not drawing random glitter dicks on my vision board!” I huffed. “The glue wasn’t sticky!”
“Poor guy.” She burst out laughing, and then I was on her. Well, not on her foot, but on her, tickling her sides as she laughed harder.
“Take it back!” I roared, “or I’m going to torture you even more.” Hell, I was the one being tortured as she moved beneath me.
This was either a horrible idea or the best I’d ever had.
She sobered at about the same time I stopped tickling her and moved my hands to her face, tilting her chin with my finger. “I like your laugh.”
Her eyes darted to my mouth. “Thanks.”
I was probably going to get kneed in the balls, but I couldn’t let this moment pass. I was sick and tired of moments passing, of not taking opportunities when they presented themselves. If the incident had taught me anything, it was that life’s short, so when a beautiful woman is smiling at you and staring at your mouth, you kiss the hell out of her and capture the moment. Because who knows if you’ll ever be given the opportunity again?
I leaned down, maybe an inch from her gorgeous, full mouth, only to hear the sound of knocking followed by my front door opening.
I brushed a soft kiss across her lips and whispered, “Damn shame.” And then I was up and ready to kill whoever had decided to invite themselves over.
I should have known it would be Zane, followed by Drew.
“Is that a glitter dick?” Zane asked, pointing at the vision board behind me—or lack of one since all I’d managed to do was glue a picture of the beach to the poster board along with a shot of my old guitar and a blue glitter note that looked like a penis.
“No, man,” Drew answered for me. “It’s a misshapen drumstick.”
“Is there a reason you’re both here?” I wondered out loud. “Don’t you have wives to annoy? Music to write? Birds to chase?”
“That was one time, and Drew was high,” Zane pointed out and then shot a look to Piper. “Don’t worry, he’s on the train now.”
“Thanks, man.” Drew rolled his eyes. “Anyways, I know you asked Ty to grab the script, probably because he’s the least annoying out of all of us—”
“Speak for yourself,” Zane interrupted, pulling a marshmallow out of his pocket and shoving it into his mouth.
I think it was the pregnant pause of silence that followed that had him flipping us all off.
“Anyways,” Drew said slowly. “Apparently date night was starting earlier than he thought, so he gave us the difficult task of walking into Safeway without getting mobbed. We wore disguises. You’re welcome.”
He tossed me the white bag full of pain pills and then smiled down at Piper. “Be honest, did he pee on you?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, he didn’t have to. But it did hurt like hell.”
“Hmmm.” Zane piped up. “Curious minds would like to know why you were out in the sand with Braden in the first place. You know he’s terrified of water, right?”
“Huh?” Piper shot me a look.
I just shook my head at Zane. “Correction, my mom’s afraid of water and didn’t want me going too far out into the ocean. So she told me we had killer squid on the Oregon coast to keep me from swimming. It worked, by the way. Haven’t gone in past my waist in years.”
“So sad, man.” Drew laughed. “You need therapy.”
He said it jokingly, but it felt like he’d just exposed the giant elephant in the room. Because duh, I’d been in therapy for months, that’s why Piper was here.
Last resort.
And I’d just kissed her.
Hit on her.
Great.
Please let her be cool about the fact that I genuinely liked her enough to explore more kissing, fewer clothes, bared skin.
“He’s an ass.” Zane finally said and then went over to the coffee table. “So why the art project? It almost looks like you’re making a—” He stopped, looked at Piper, then at me. “Please, God, tell me you’re forcing him to make a vision board.”
Piper grinned. “For the next two weeks, he has to add one new object or dream.”
“Isn’t that special?” Zane gave me a cheeky grin. “You know, I have a vision board at home. Wife won’t go near it because of the pony, but whatever.”
“Pony?” Piper asked.
“Nope.” Drew moved his hands. “It’s creepy as hell, and I’m still not over it, man. None of us are. Anyways,”—he jerked his head toward the door—“we should be going so you can get back to your…glitter penis.”
I growled. “It’s a music note!”
Zane and Drew walked around the poster board as if they were inspecting it and then looked up at me.
Zane was the first to speak. “I’m actually shocked you’re a musician, man. Gotta be honest, that’s some shit work. You should really apply yourself to this whole thing, you know?”
I clenched my fists. “Out.”
“What?” Zane shrugged.
Drew shoved him toward the door and called back over his shoulder, “Don’t kill him, Piper. I want him for the tour!”
“I’ll let you know when I get tempted. Not if,” she called back.
“See? I like her!” Drew answered, and then the door clicked shut.
I opened the white paper bag. “Sorry my friends are idiots. All right, so it says you should take one to two every four hours.”
“Actually”—she licked her lips and suddenly paled—“I’m feeling a lot better right now.”
I frowned. “Less than an hour ago, you were crying. I’m not buying it.”
Her eyes seemed to fill with more unshed tears as she looked down at the blanket. “I um, I just don’t like pills.”
“Because you like being in pain?” I asked, trying to understand.
“No.” She gulped. “Look, it’s not a big deal. I just got out of a really bad relationship, and my ex abused pills a lot. He stole my pain meds last year when I had mouth surgery, and ever since, I just…I look at them and I think about his addiction. The way he always justified it like he could stop at any time. He was a lot of things, but he got a lot worse when it went from a pill here or there to stealing stashes and purchasing them from friends, you know?”
Stunned, I just stared at her. “I know you don’t know me or trust me, but I would never do that. You know that, right? The guys and I, we’re all clean. We have a no-drug policy. Hell, we don’t even smoke pot, and it’s legal.”
“Yeah, well.” She crossed her arms, and that’s when I noticed she was shaking.
Shit.
I grabbed the pills and sat down next to her, then put a hand on her thigh. “I know a little about trauma.” Shit, was I really going there? Apparently. “I also know that if you ignore it, it just gets worse. I mean, look at me. I literally ran off stage and took the first flight out because of supposed stage fright, when we all know the real reason I bailed. The real reason I couldn’t keep singing.”
The room fell silent.
She reached for my hand and squeezed it. “You don’t have to tell me, you know.”
“I know, which almost makes me want to tell you.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “The thing about trauma is that, during it, you’re just trying to survive. After, you have so much adrenaline pumping through your system that you don’t even realize you’re injured mentally or physically. And then when you start to heal, that’s when the real pain starts. It’s during the healing that you realize you aren’t okay. I will one hundred percent go dump these in the toilet if it makes you feel uncomfortable, but I also don’t think you should be afraid of something that’s supposed to make you feel better. When we’re sick, we take medicine, right? I don’t want you sitting here in pain all night when you could get some sleep and start to heal.”
“I get it. I know how ridiculous it sounds. I just… I think about swallowing a pill and then I think about him getting high,” she admitted.
“Well, then maybe you don’t swallow,” I offered and then smirked. “I meant the pill, by the way.”
She burst out laughing and squeezed my hand. “What did you have in mind?”
I shook my head and stared into her eyes. “You don’t want to know all the things on my mind right now.”
Her tongue peeked out to lick her lower lip. I wanted to capture that mouth and force it to surrender to my kiss.
Instead, I said, “I’ll crush up the pill and put it in peanut butter. That way you’re eating it, not just swallowing something bitter. You’re getting something nourishing, all right?”
She gave me a wary stare. “Maybe.”
I opened up the container and dumped the pills onto the table then counted them out loud. I reached for one of the craft markers and wrote on the outside the number fifteen.
“All right, I’m taking this one right here.” I held it up. “And since the kitchen is right there, you can watch my amazing doctor skills as I chef up this bad boy. Every time you take one, use the marker, take back that control. All right?”
I handed her the marker and stood.
We didn’t talk as I crushed her pill and added it to some peanut butter.
When I walked back over to the couch and sat, she looked up at me with moisture in her eyes. “If I take this, I want something in return.”
“Hmmm…wasn’t aware we were still negotiating.”
Her bright smile was going to inspire a ballad someday, I just knew it. “One trigger. Tell me one trigger on stage relating to the incident.”
“Oh, so something easy,” I joked.
She put her hand on mine and squeezed, so I spoke. “The people. The biggest trigger is the people. All the excited faces, paying to listen to me sing, paying for a good time. And then I see all the faces that aren’t with us anymore, all the people I failed because I didn’t provide a safe place for them. So, you see…” I handed her the spoonful of peanut butter. “That’s why I’m a little bit hopeless, even for you. They want me on tour, the record company wants me on tour, but a tour means people, and I can’t perform knowing I could let them down again. I can’t sing about love saving a soul when the very song inspired hatred. I just can’t. All it took was a light falling and a superfan waiting for me to mess me up again.”
She put the spoon into her mouth and took the peanut-buttered pill then said, “Sure you can. Just like I ate instead of swallowed. We need to find a way to look at those faces in the crowd and use it as inspiration, not see it as failure.”
I gulped. “I wish I knew how.”
“That’s why you have me,” she said softly.
I looked up into her blue eyes and sighed. “Promise?”
She nodded her head. “Promise.”