Braden
I felt so horrible that she got fired that I instantly went into fix-it mode, but I knew I couldn’t fix it. And I was part of the reason it’d happened to begin with, so all I could do was support her and help guide her along. In that moment, I realized that was exactly what she’d been doing for me. Guiding me, helping me figure things out. She’d been the rock I needed, the person who pushed me. She didn’t judge me, she prodded me regardless of how much I pushed back. So when I suggested she make a new vision board, I figured she’d push like I did.
Instead, she held out her hand and said, “Give me the glitter.”
“Roger.” I handed it to her and then tossed her the glue stick. “So, what’s first?” We had magazines all around us, books, newspaper clippings, crafts, letters. Basically, like a scrapbook store had shit itself on my favorite table. But it was for her, and I didn’t care.
She stared down at the board, and then I saw real fear, panic. I quickly squeezed her hand. “Hey, hey, this doesn’t mean you can’t change your board later. Maybe you just put down something you want to keep doing.”
“Helping.” She inhaled slowly. “I still want to help people.”
“Good. Maybe you write that in glitter to get started, and then we come back to it.”
“Okay.” She did exactly that, making my board look horrendous in comparison. And then she grabbed a little picture of a puppy that was in a magazine and glued it to the board.
“Um, should I be insulted that you put a puppy on there before my face?”
I was literally on the cover of Teen Beat sitting next to her.
“Rock star’s got an ego.”
“My face is next to your hand!” I pointed out.
She laughed and then eyed the magazine. “Yeah but it’s not the best picture of you. I mean, my vision board has to be pretty.”
I gasped. “Did you just call me ugly?”
She leveled me with a cool stare as she very slowly walked over to me and picked up a pink marker then straight up drew on my arm. “Sexy.”
“I may tattoo that,” I whispered. “Since it’s technically the only space I have left.”
“Ah, so people don’t walk up to you and go ‘I wonder if he’s good-looking or not. Oh thank God he wrote it down!’”
“Hilarious.”
“I thought so.” She tossed me the marker. “All right, so now what?”
I ran over to the window and looked outside in a panic.
She chased after me. “What? Is there going to be a waterspout?”
I slowly turned. “Do you even know what that is?”
“Yeah, like a water tornado!”
“Do you know where we are?” I said slowly.
She glared. “Why did you run?”
“Oh, that.” I smirked. “I was just seeing if pigs were flying. Alas, they’re not, so you really did just ask me for direction instead of giving orders.” I patted her on the head. “I’m so damn proud.”
She swatted my hand away. “Technically, I don’t work for you anymore.”
“Good.” I pushed her against the nearest wall and captured her mouth with mine. “Then you don’t have to feel guilty for enjoying this,” I murmured against her lips.
She pulled back with a coy smile. “Who says I’m enjoying this?”
I pressed my palm to her chest and found her rapidly beating heart. “This does.”
“Maybe I’m just excited about vision boards.”
“Maybe you’re a little liar,” I argued and then slid my hand up her shirt, feeling her bare skin and finding a nipple. I grinned. “Yup, she’s a liar.”
She let out a little moan, and then I was lifting up her shirt and sucking, swirling my tongue around my new favorite spot and wondering why we hadn’t already explored.
Guilt on my part?
Contracts on hers?
Hell, the heart wants what it wants. I’d always heard that from my mom, but I’d never understood it until now. I just wanted her.
Her head fell back, banging against the wall, and a picture crashed to the floor.
We broke apart. I laughed since I’d just been thinking about my mother. “It’s okay, it was just a picture of my mom, no big.”
“Oh no, really?”
“Yeah maybe just don’t mention that to her when you meet her. Like, ‘Oh yeah, he was totally sucking off my right tit and then bam, I nearly orgasmed, hit my head against the wall, and your picture just…died.’”
Her face flamed red like a tomato. “That’s…I would never!”
“You’re beautiful when you’re embarrassed and horrified because of me. It’s kind of a turn on, you know?”
She shoved playfully at my chest. “All right, so, we have the rest of the day, and you’re still not ready to go on tour. What are you ready to do? What’s going to get you prepared for the crowds, the noise, the stares?”
I tilted my head and really thought about it. “Maybe the dark?”
“The dark?” she repeated. “Like hiding out in the dark?”
“No. Like going to the movies dark. You can still see things, but you have to focus harder. It was really dark that night.” A tremor rippled along my spine until I started to shake a bit.
Warm palms settled against my cheeks as she cupped them gently, and I looked up.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” she pleaded softly.
“It’s a vicious cycle, you know, re-living that moment.”
“The news said you saved a lot of people,” she whispered in comfort.
I scowled. “Saved? Saved?”
“Braden—”
“Fuck them!” I roared. “It was because of my music that the dickhead was even there. As if I would somehow send a fan a secret message to kill all my other fans! He was psychotic! No, I didn’t save shit. Five people still died, at my concert, with my music playing, with me singing on stage. I got fucking shot in the leg. I didn’t save shit. I might as well have been holding the damn gun, pulling the fucking trigger myself.” I shook my head and stomped away, pissed at myself for blowing up, pissed that I was talking about it, just pissed.
I charged into my room and threw my fist against the wall.
Maybe I wasn’t scared.
Perhaps what I thought was fear was anger and rage. Not even directed toward the shooter but at myself because I should have seen. I should have known. I should have acted faster. The music had been too loud. I was too into the dance sequence going on around me, tuned in to the screams of my name, living it up without even knowing that people around me were dying…for one whole minute, I had kept singing.
And then a girl in front of me just…fell, blood all over her. I grabbed her and pulled her up onto the stage, and then kept grabbing people, as many people as I could. I shouted.
Nobody heard.
I slumped against the floor and held my face in my hands.
A knock sounded on the door, and then Piper was walking in my room, sitting down next to me and putting her head on my shoulder like I hadn’t just lost my shit all over her. As if it was her fault that I was messed up.
I sighed and then opened my mouth. “She was sixteen.”
Piper just listened.
“She had her whole life to look forward to. Had a shirt that said number one fan. Later on at the funeral, her parents handed me her poster. It said, Thank you for changing my life.” I felt the familiar tears welling in my eyes. “I changed it, all right. She’s dead because all she wanted for her sixteenth birthday was to see the great Braden Connor.”
Piper squeezed my arm. “Do you think that she was happy that night?”
I jerked my head toward her. “Happy to be shot?”
She gave a quick shake of her head. “Before everything happened. Do you think she was excited to be there? Do you think she wanted to be there? That she was inspired by you?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Okay then,” Piper said. “Braden, the world sucks, bad things happen all the time, and people are crazy. We know this. You didn’t write that song or any of your songs with some weird hidden agenda. You wrote them because you couldn’t not write them.”
My throat felt thick. “I have to get the words out. If I don’t, I feel like I’ll die too.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“See, people say that, but those deaths, they’re on me. And every time I perform, I just think, what if it happens again? I’m so paranoid. I’m stiff on stage, I can’t even entertain anymore. I feel broken.”
“Maybe that’s your answer.”
“Quitting?”
“No.” She cupped my face with her hands. “Using the brokenness to help everyone else heal along with you.”
I gulped. “How do I do that?”
She got up and went over to my bed, then grabbed the yellow notepad and tossed it to me with a pen. “You said you can’t not write. So write your pain. Write your truth and help the families heal with you. Help your fans heal. Because they need you now, more than ever.”
And then she left.
I burst into tears on my bedroom floor, sobs racking my body until every one of my muscles ached, the emptiness that gave my chest the hollow feeling sucking my body in on itself.
I wasn’t sure what time it was when I finally stopped crying and started writing, but I did end up finishing a song. With my guitar in one hand, and my notepad in the other, I walked barefoot into the living room, searching for Piper.
She was sitting on the couch, cheating on me by skipping ahead episodes on The Witcher. Still, she’d just saved my career, so I figured I’d forgive her just about anything in that moment.
I cleared my throat.
She paused the TV and turned, giving me a sheepish look. “Sorry?”
“No, you’re not.” I grinned. “Also, I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t mean to freak out. I just…thank you for sticking by me. For coming into my room when I was a grumpy bear ready to destroy everything in my path.”
“Tiger,” she corrected. “Bears have brown hair.”
I smiled at that. “Angry tiger then.”
“What’s up?” She hugged a pillow.
I was suddenly so nervous I wanted to puke. I cleared my throat and then did it again, then sat down so I could just get it all out. “I wrote a song.”
“Good!” She seemed genuinely excited, which gave me more courage.
“It’s kind of…sketchy because it’s new, but, wow, this feels really difficult for some reason. Would you listen to it?”
Her smile was so huge, I wanted to kiss her. “I want nothing more.”
“Okay.” The damn throat clearing was going to be the death of me as I sat my notepad down with all its scribbles, grabbed my pick, and started strumming the haunting melody. It was my first song using F-minor, but it worked. I didn’t know how the hell it did, but it just did.
I opened my mouth and started to sing. “It isn’t easy when you lose it all. When you see the ones you love fall. When destruction does its worst, while you’re trying so damn hard to do your best. But the world keeps turning, we keep fighting. In the end, that’s how we honor the dying. Forward not backwards, strong not weak, survivors are we, survivors we’ll be.”
Tears ran down Piper’s cheeks as I moved to the chorus.
“I never thought my feet would take me here, and yet all I have is fear. But we keep going, no choice to stay the course. And know the force of love is all we need, just the slow rhythm and beat of the heart inside, of the life we were given when others died. This is our anthem, our new song, repeat it over and over for the gone.”
I stopped playing and gazed back into Piper’s eyes.
Her beautiful face was streaked with tears, and then she launched herself across the couch, grabbed my face, and kissed me everywhere she could.
I dropped my guitar onto the carpet and kissed her back hard, as much as I could, trying to show her my gratitude. The love I felt budding in my chest, the way she made me feel when she had no reason to stay but did anyway.
I picked her up and set her in my lap.
And then she was pulling at my shirt.
I wondered how I’d ever lived without her hands touching my skin. My shirt went flying, followed by hers, and then I just went for it, unhooking her bra, cupping her perfectly full breasts in my hands. They were so sensitive I could feel every gasp, every moan as I kissed her again, while she went for the button of my jeans and gripped my length in her hand.
I hadn’t been lying when I’d said I didn’t do one-night stands. I’d had sex in high school then promptly stopped once I started getting famous because I had no idea if it was real or if I was just a celeb they wanted to screw.
So, it had been a few years.
I groaned, feeling myself harden in her hand to a painful degree as my body surged with adrenaline, need, and a greedy desire to bite and mark every inch of her skin.
“Damn, your hand feels good,” I muttered against her mouth.
“I bet I know what would feel better,” she teased.
And then I did it.
I gripped her by the ass and laid her across my coffee table, jerking off her sweats in the process, leaving her in nothing but a pair of pale pink underwear that I was going to rip off of her with my teeth. Okay ,maybe not. Be a gentleman, not a caveman. I pulled them down to her ankles and threw them next to the rest of our clothes. “I’m suddenly so thankful I missed dinner.”
“What—?” Her hips bucked off the table as I licked, exploring her like she was mine—because she was, no take backs. Ever. Her soft moans and breathless pants were like little instructions for where she wanted my tongue, where she wanted my hands as they freely roamed up her body. My fingers dug into her thighs, holding her in place as she went wild beneath my mouth. “You taste…” I wanted to roar. “Like dessert.” I looked up. “Apologies for calling you dinner.” And then I used one finger, then two, and felt the exact spot she needed me the most as her legs shook around me.
The minute my fingers touched, she was gone, and I finally heard what I’d been waiting for all my life—my girl screaming my name as she felt her release.
My girl.
The one made for me.
The one who didn’t care that I was broken and kissed me anyway.
I crawled up her body and kissed her, swirling my tongue around hers, tasting her, knowing she tasted herself on me. I got so ridiculously turned on that she did, I almost lost all control.
I gripped her wrists, pinning them over her head. “Tell me you’ll stay.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I think leaving right now would destroy me.”
“I need you,” I admitted. “But if you want to stop…”
“I need you too,” she confessed. “Have me. I’ve been yours since the minute you called me out on my missing buttons.”
With a laugh, I kissed her again then lowered my body over hers, enjoying the sensation of our skin meeting. It was like writing the perfect song, the way her body played for me. The little sounds she made that told me she was desperate for me and me alone.
Addicting.
I kissed her harder and then teased her entrance, only to have Piper, play-by-the-rules Piper, hook her ankles around me and pull me in all the way to the hilt.
I almost blacked out as sweat pooled at the small of my back. Before my body could take over, my mind caught up, and I froze.
“Uh, Piper…? I don’t do one-night stands, but we didn’t use any protec—”
She cut me off with a hard kiss and a whispered, “I’m on the pill.” And then she moved her hips, not me.
I loved it.
I loved that she created her own music with her body and didn’t give a damn that I was on top of her, that I was the guy. She knew herself, knew what she wanted. I would be her slave forever and ever if that’s what it took.
I angled myself higher and met her movements, gripping her ass with each deep thrust. Her muscles tightened around me as she squeezed; she was going to kill me before the night was over.
And I was okay with that because I suddenly realized that even if I had been spared for this moment, I would be thankful for it. Because I was happy. Just like the people at my concert. Happy. Fulfilled. Full.
I captured her mouth with my lips and pumped harder, pulling a thigh higher over my shoulder before feeling her contract around me and scratch her nails down my arms, her body shuddering beneath me.
Watching her climax was so much better than Netflix.
She opened her eyes.
And then I was gone because her eyes said so much more than her body ever could.
Her eyes said, “Mine” right back at me.
I knew my life would never be the same again.