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Lilith climbs onto the couch, past Muse and straight over to me, sliding her arms around my neck and pulling my head between her knees, curving her body around mine. Like I said, doesn't know me for shit. Gets me completely.
“I know they're ugly napkins,” she whispers, smelling like butter and garlic, “but we can make them work. I promise.”
A small laugh claws its way out of my throat as I reach up a hand and curl my fingers around one of hers, squeezing tight. Her warmth, her smell, her touch, it all takes me away from that edge, just like Paxton's embrace did this morning. Maybe I need to stop investing in one-night groupies and start investing in real relationships again? Because this is nice.
Nice.
Nice girl, nice napkins.
I lift up the white and purple cloth and tuck it into Lilith's fingers.
After Ran's breakdown, he clings to Lilith's side like they're a couple, but I don't much mind. When he gets like that, all sick in the face and far away, I want to crawl inside his hood and die right along with him. His grief is all consuming, like a wave. I can feel it in my chest.
“That dinner was fucking awesome,” I tell Lilith, glancing over at her in that shimmery red dress of hers, curled up between Ran and me. “Mac 'n' cheese BLTs. I didn't even know that was a thing.”
“It's a recipe I learned from one of my mom's friends. Cook up the mac, cool it in the fridge, fry it up, and voila, you've got yourself some seriously delicious fucking 'bread'. I mean, who doesn't like the idea of bacon, cheese and butter all squashed together like that?”
“Hey,” I ask as her fingers run through the dark brunette strands of Ransom's hair. “He asleep?”
Lilith pauses for a moment, leaning forward, her own red hair dangling in front of her face as she examines my friend.
“Yeah,” she says with a long a sigh. “Yeah, I think he is.”
I breathe out my own sigh of relief in the darkness, the bus dim and jostling as we drive toward Chicago, a movie flickering on the wall-mounted flat-screen to my left. It's situated just beneath the wall of windows that leads into the front of the bus where the driver sits. The curtains are drawn now, so nobody can see in here. Probably a good thing because I saw Octavia watching Lilith when she left the bus earlier today and damn, she's got it out for her.
Must be the Pax thing. Everybody knows Octavia's in love with him. Except for, you know, maybe Pax himself?
“Thank God,” I say as Lilith leans her head against my shoulder and I get this hot, achy thrill down my fucking arm. Damn. I like her just as much like this as I did when she was on her knees and sucking my cock last night. Maybe more.
I put an arm around her shoulders just to see if she'll let me do it.
She does.
I smile.
“Derek?” she asks and I shiver again. I love my nickname—Muse is a seriously cool name, right?—but I like hearing my real name pass her shiny pink lips, too. Not sure why. Muse is a way better fucking name than Derek, but something about the way she says it makes it sound special. “Why were you emancipated at fifteen?”
“Well,” I say as I tease a few silky strands of Lilith's hair with my bat covered fingers, “that's a very interesting story, but …” She turns her head to look up at me, meeting my hazel eyes with her green ones. Across from me, Pax sits in one of the leather chairs fucking with his phone and pretending not to be paying attention to us. Michael sits in the next one over, the only person in this room actually watching the movie. And Cope, of course, sits on the other side of Ransom reading another damn romance novel.
This one has four half-naked guys on the cover and one girl.
I think I kind of know where he's coming from with that one.
But I have no fucking clue what my friends are doing with this girl. Me, I actually like her. I have no idea how the rest of this tour will go, but if I feel anything like I do right now—like I want to know more, more, more about her—then I'm buying her a plane ticket and taking her to Dublin with me. If she wants to go, that is.
“It's not important,” I finish finally. Because it's not. My past is … I've let it go cold. I don't hold onto it like Ran and Pax and Michael do. I just … don't want to fucking think about it. Sweat starts to bead on my lower back and I know for damn sure that I'm lying to myself, but I can't help it. I just want to get as far away from all of that as I can. “Tell me something about you. Besides making homemade bread—which is a serious fucking feat by the way—what occupies your time? Are you a bookworm like Cope?”
He pauses to glance up at me and makes a face, but then his attention gets caught on Lilith and Ran and he smiles sadly. I wait until he refocuses back on the page. Even from here, I can very distinctly read the word cock about a thousand times. Hmm. So long as the word moist is absent from that page, maybe I could get into a romance novel or two?
I shake my head with a small smirk on my lips.
“Video games? Movies? Do you like building model airplanes?”
“Besides art,” Lilith starts, looking down at Ran when he stirs. I get tense when I think another nightmare's coming on, but he's just adjusting himself, curling around the girl in the red dress with a gentle sigh. Well, shit. Look at that. Barely a week in and she's taming Ransom's demons. “I don't know.” There's a long pause and she makes this sad, tight little smile. “I make a really good girlfriend,” she says, cringing a little. “I know that's not exactly a hobby, but it's true. I'm a damn good fucking partner. I clean shit, and I cook, and I run hot bubble baths. I pay bills and organize junk drawers and tile bathroom walls.”
She pauses and sighs again, this sad, weary sound that makes me wish I could pull her closer. But there's no way in hell that I'm disturbing Ransom, so I make myself be happy with what I've got, my arm wrapped around those beautiful shoulders of hers.
“I've been using all of that as an excuse not to learn anything about myself since I turned fifteen. That's why I wanted to know about your emancipation. Fifteen was when my mom died and I started dating this guy named Kevin Peregrine and I stopped caring what I liked or wanted or needed. I got over all of that grief by focusing on what Kevin wanted or needed. That, I'm damn good at it. I can tell what people need and get a sense of why.” She plays with Ran's hair again and I feel suddenly guilty. Is that what she's doing here? Babysitting us? I don't want that.
“At fifteen, I learned to shut my emotions off and read everyone else's. I learned to feel what they were feeling so I didn't have to accept what I was feeling. So I'm good at that stuff, too. Like you said, all the practical shit.”
“I noticed,” she says, looking back up at me and smiling. “I went to grab some Chap Stick from my purse and found five hundred bucks shoved in the side pocket.” There's a long pause. “I respect you and I'm not too proud, so I'm keeping it. But you didn't have to do that, you know. That's not why I bought this food or made this dinner. I just wanted to eat some good food with some good people and know that if my dad were watching me, that he'd be happy with what he saw.”
She pauses, smiles, grins a little.
“I just hope he wasn't watching me last night.” Her grin flickers, fades, that beautiful mouth settling into a sad, thin line. But I can tell it's not about the sex or the drinking or the wild dancing. She just misses him. A lot. And she hasn't processed it yet. I dragged her in here on this bus with the four of us and got her entangled in something that I'm sure neither of us understands yet.
As nice as this is, all this stuff that's happening between the five of us, it's still a clusterfuck.
See, practicality. That's my drug of choice. How can one girl be with four guys?
At some point, shit's going to come crashing down. That's why I'm thinking ahead. And right now, I'm thinking that I'd like her to be my girlfriend. But I'm also definitely not a hopeless romantic. I want to keep talking, hanging out, fucking, until we get to New York. Then I'll decide, ask her, see what she wants to do.
I tug a black afghan off the bac
k of the couch and toss it over us—me, Lilith, Ransom, Cope.
“You want some tea?” I ask and Lilith's smile flickers back across her mouth for a minute.
“That'd be great,” she says as I ease myself out from under her and she settles into the empty space, nestling her head on one of the decorative red pillows with the band's logo printed on them.
I move into the kitchen and start the teapot, cleaning up the dishes while I wait for the water to warm, scrubbing the counters until they gleam. At first I think Lilith's going to fall right asleep, but then she starts talking to me about all sorts of random things—her junior prom, her best friend from high school, the cat she left behind in Phoenix.
When I make our tea and squeeze back in beside her, she puts her head in my lap and we talk for hours.
By the time we fall asleep, drifting off with whispered memories still trailing from our lips, we're already in Chicago.
A knock at the front door wakes me up, but I ignore the sound, rolling onto my side and finding myself wrapped around a hard warm body. Kevin? I think because who else would be in my apartment at this hour? But then I remember that Kevin fucked anyone and everyone he could get his hands on and gave me a goddamn STD and I snap to with a sharp gasp, flicking my eyes open to the curved ceiling of Beauty in Lies' tour bus.
I assume at first that it's Ransom I'm sleeping with, but then I glance up and find Paxton's tattooed chest moving in a slow, easy rhythm. Rolling toward the door, I find Ransom in his hoodie padding toward it in bare feet.
“Octavia?” he asks with a yawn, stepping back to let his manager come up the steps. “You're up early. Did you want a cup of coffee?”
“No, thank you,” she says crisply as I wonder when and how I traded out Muse and Ransom for Paxton. Cope was here for a while, too. Come to think of it, Michael was still sitting in one of the swivel chairs when I passed out. Huh.
I lay there for a moment, enjoying the sound of Pax's heart beating beneath my ear. It's proof he really is human, even with his perfect suits and his sharp smiles. But then I think of him putting his arms around Ransom and I know he's not as big of an asshole as he pretends to be.
“I was actually hoping to speak with Paxton …” she says, trailing off as she spots me lying on his bare chest, his button-up undone and crumpled on either side of his sleeping body.
The look in Octavia's brown eyes is one of complete shock.
“Want me to wake him up?” I ask, forcing myself up into a sitting position between his legs, trying to put a little space between us. I glance down and find his grey eyes cracking open to stare at me.
“I'm awake,” Pax groans, but he doesn't bother to keep his eyes open. He closes them again and lays his arm across his face. “What is it?”
“I …” Octavia stutters and then just stops talking, like she has no idea what to make of me. I guess she was under the impression that I was here with … Muse? Cope, maybe? Ransom? I guess she just definitely didn't see me with Paxton.
And she doesn't like that. At fucking all.
“Are you free for breakfast?” she asks finally, puffing her chest up with courage and laying into me with a steely defiance that I meet with a sympathetic smile. She's in love with Pax; I'm fucking him. I'm not sure what there is to say in all of that.
“Breakfast? For what? Because I'm not doing that Parade for Paxton bullshit again.”
“No, the label's attorneys decided it was too big of a liability after the first night. We won't be doing that again.”
“Oh, great,” Pax says, dropping his arm off the side of his couch and opening his eyes again. He sits up and ruffles his hair with his fingers. “They decided it's too damn dangerous after I go and do it. Like I said, what a bunch of shite. It was a stupid idea anyway. What bloody twat came up with that one?”
“It was me,” Octavia says, her cheeks flushing bright. She covers up her embarrassment by reaching up and adjusting her ponytail. She's not wearing her usual black t-shirt and jeans. This morning, she's got on a cute little black wool peacoat buttoned to the throat, a red scarf, and a pair of black leggings tucked into boots.
Uh-oh.
I scramble up to my knees and peek out the window above the couch, shoving aside the black curtains and finding … snow.
It's snowing in Chicago.
And I have literally nothing appropriate to wear.
“Well, it was a dumb idea,” Pax says, completely unapologetic as he reaches over and drags me into his lap. I start to protest because this whole interaction with Octavia is making me feel slightly off, but then I glance at the gorgeous stormy grey of Pax's eyes and I'm completely done for. “If it's not for business, I'll have to pass on breakfast.”
“Okay,” Octavia says, but when I try to turn and look at her, Pax touches the side of my face and leans in to press his mouth to mine. “Don't forget that we have an early show tonight—doors open at six.”
Vaguely, I recognize the sound of her boots pounding down the metal steps, the front door closing, the lock flicking into place. But Paxton's slanting his mouth over mine, slicking his tongue between my lips, tasting me with heady, desperate want.
“Wait, wait,” I whisper, pulling away slightly and watching as a smirk crawls across his face. “Do you have a thing with Octavia?”
“Octavia?” he asks and then laughs—and not in a nice way. “That corporate lapdog? Fuck no.”
“I think she really likes you,” I say and Pax pauses like he's never even bothered to consider that. But then he just shrugs and leans over the arm of the couch to dig in the side table. Other than condoms and lubricant, I guess the band also keeps cigarettes in there. As far as I can tell, Cope's the only one that doesn't smoke at all.
“Well, I don't much fancy her, I can tell you that,” Pax says as he lights up and I grab the black afghan, curving it around my shoulders and smiling at Ransom as he brings me a cup of coffee without my even having to ask.
“You've never slept with her?” I ask and Paxton laughs again, shaking his head like the idea's deplorable to him. “Why not? She's pretty enough.”
“You want me to shag her, Miss Lily?” Pax asks as I turn toward him and tuck my back against the arm of the couch. The way he looks at me before he stands up and goes into the kitchen for coffee is … hard to decipher.
“No,” I say because even though I'm fucking four of these guys, the thought of any of them with another girl makes me feel … oddly possessive.
“Guess we're in bloody agreement then, aren't we?” he jokes as he moves into the perfectly clean kitchen and pours himself a mug.
I feel terrible; I should never have let Muse clean up last night. Or at the very least, I should've helped him out a little. I wanted to honor Dad with a good meal, but I also wanted to take care of the boys for a night. I'm not the only who's suffered here, who's lived through some seriously messed up stuff. Just thinking of that look on Ransom's face when he found his mother's napkins makes me feel so sick inside that I want to start crying and never stop.
“Morning,” Michael says, stepping out of the hallway dressed in a pair of dark navy jeans tucked into thick black boots, and a long winter coat. Somebody's prepped and ready for the snow. “Vanessa wants some Chicago souvenirs and I need to get some sort of present anyway since she's meeting us in Atlanta—”
“She's meeting us in fucking Atlanta?!” Pax asks, whirling on his friend. “What the fuck, Mikey?”
“Yeah, her and Tim,” Michael says, and I'm completely lost in the conversation. I have no idea who Tim is. Vanessa's coming to Atlanta? Interesting. I guess I'll finally get to meet the girl that holds the heart to Beauty in Lies' lead guitarist.
“Tim is Michael's older brother,” Ran whispers in my ear before he sits down on the couch and takes my feet into his lap. “He raised Michael from age ten and up.”
“And you didn't think to say anything until now? Well, that's just lovely. I can't wait to see that bitch again,” Pax drawls in his sexy as hell
British accent, giving Michael this cold, hard glare that matches the weather outside.
“You don't have to see much of her; she's staying in a hotel.”
“Well thank the bloody gods for that. It's been, what, a year since you fucked anyone—including her? I don't even want to hear the repercussions of that mess.”
“Guess you wouldn't considering you'd never get over the gap in our skill levels. Once you'd seen me fuck, it'd be hard for you to ever kid yourself that women were actually pleased with what you have to offer.”
“Sure thing, you bollocking prick,” Pax says as he alternates between smoking and drinking his coffee. “Go on then, get out of here and go buy some Made in China t-shirt thats say Chicago on the front. Vanessa always did like cheap crap. She's dating you, isn't she?”
“Eat shit, Pax,” Michael says, but he smiles a truly excited smile and glances over at me. “I fucking doubt you were wearing snow boots and wool in Phoenix,” he says and I blink a few times in surprise as Michael comes over to stand next to me, smelling like that pomegranate spice shampoo I've been using from the boys' bathroom.
His violet eyes take me in with a completely different regard this morning than they did the last few days. I guess just knowing he'll get to see—and most definitely fuck—his girlfriend in a few days has improved his mood considerably.
“I want to apologize,” he says, but I can't quite figure out what he's apologizing for. “For being a dick to you. I know you're not out to get me. I'm just … a little wound up.”
“Try a lot wound up,” Pax murmurs and I stifle a laugh as Michael runs his tongue across his lower lip and throws a glare back in Paxton's direction.
When he looks back at me though, he makes himself smile again.
“I thought you might want to come with me to shop? It'd be nice to have a woman's opinion on this gift thing, and I thought maybe I could get you a coat and boots to make up for being a complete asshole.”
“That gift better not be a ring,” Pax says as he sets his coffee on the counter and disappears down the hallway, scooting out of the way to let Muse pass by.