34. Chase
Because he felt the need to prove he wasn’t the worst son in the world, and because he was still sort of a pushover, Chase took his parents on a tour of the city the next day to check off the boxes on his mother’s list.
He had endured all of Zak’s smartass remarks about how the newest member of their band probably shouldn’t be the one taking a day off practice, but when he went back to his own room that night, she gave him a smile and told him to have fun.
Have fun, he did not. Obligation had been the main reason he’d set his grievances aside, but a na?ve part of him had hoped they would all reach a common ground with enough forced bonding. Instead, he got a day of sightseeing with a side of pacification from Richard and Holly, making it obvious their priority was to preserve the peace by preventing another psychotic episode from their son.
At least he got to hang out with Lydia, even if three-quarters of their conversations took place solely through eyebrow movements and lip-reading.
The day before filming, it was back to the studio until eight in the evening. By that time, Chase was ready to have the cameras out of his face and preferably Zak’s naked body in his face before a solid night of rest. Nothing sounded better than a soft mattress right now, but he had promised Lydia a night on the town without their fifty-eight-year-old chaperones.
“So, are they coming to the show?” Zak asked him as she leisurely put away her guitar.
A process that took Dallas the same amount of time as it took him to pound down a vodka shot, and took Edge a respectable five minutes, was a fifteen-minute affair for her. All she was missing was a lullaby and five guitar-shaped fleece onesies for her inanimate wooden infants.
“Absolutely not.” He chuckled. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Hey, I don’t know them.”
“Based on whatever you heard yesterday? You know enough, I promise.”
In fact, his parents’ flight home left an hour before Saint of Spades’ slotted showtime. Chase had known they were here to lecture him from the moment his father’s loafers poked out of the cab, but did they have to make it so obvious? If Richard and Holly handled grievances with their offspring with a fraction of the tact they reserved for strangers, he might have been able to delude himself into enjoying their visit.
Zak and Chase locked up the studio and left. The others were probably waiting at the bar already, but they could keep waiting for all he cared.
She tucked her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket. “Family’s complicated. But for whatever it’s worth, coming from a girl with no family, I think you handled it well.”
When they got outside, he counted the streetlights to gauge how long he’d have her to himself. However long, it wouldn’t be enough. They were strictly collaborators in the studio, strictly friends in front of anyone else, but in between, they were just themselves.
Her pace slowed, and he wondered if she was trying to prolong their time together, too.
“Were you spying on purpose?”
“Not entirely?” she answered. “I did leave early for the studio. I knew you were meeting Lydia, thought I’d stop in and say hi, but when I saw your parents there too, I decided to wait. In case you—I don’t know. In case you needed backup or something. I know how tense things have been for you with them, and trust me, all of us here have been on the receiving end of disapproving parents.”
Zak had mentioned only once, in passing, about her mother’s propensity for screaming and abuse, but ever since then, he’d wondered how often she had to endure it. How bad it got. Were there bruises back then that he hadn’t noticed? Did disapproval mean something more violent to her?
“For someone so reluctant to accept help, you dish it out pretty freely,” he said.
“Only for my people. Welcome to the band, Payton. For real, this time.”
“Glad you heard that part.”
“Oh, I heard most of it. I wish they had filmed the whole thing. That would have made for good television.” She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. “Then again, I’m glad they’re restricted from filming at the hotel.”
He hummed a laugh. “Am I really part of your inner circle? Or am I your dirty secret, Zak?”
“If you weren’t one of us, you’d never be a secret,” she said, low and promising. “I’d shout it from the rooftops. Embrace the jealousy of everyone who ever purchased a 1994 Kodiaks shirtless calendar—did you guys ever make one of those?”
“Would you?”
“Buy one? Of course not. If I wanted to see you shirtless, I’d just take it off.”
Chase felt the corner of his mouth quiver but wasn’t sure if it was from her joke, or from the erratic way she made his heart beat. “No. Would you shout it from the rooftops? Would you want more?”
Zak’s meandering gait came to a halt, and she looked at him with reluctant determination. If they weren’t standing twenty feet from the meeting place, that glint in her green eyes would have done him in. Instead, he stood before her. Itching to kiss away every last ounce of hesitation.
“I want…”
All of it? You and me? Everything I want?
She swallowed the rest of that sentence. “It doesn’t matter. You know why that can’t happen. We have a good thing going here.”
Whatever Chase might have said, it would have been too much for her to handle. He was grappling with feelings that had existed long before they slept together, and while that night may have been the beginning of something casual for Zak, it was the final nail in a coffin full of microscopic, repressed pangs over time that had warned him things could never be casual with her. The moment they weren’t nothing anymore, they were everything.
It was like jumping off a cliff into the ocean. Sure, they might be able to climb back up to the ledge, but they’d be sopping wet when they got to the top. Even once that water dried, the sticky, gritty feeling of salt left behind would make it impossible to forget where they had been. Chase tried to warn himself of that, but it was impossible to think of the uncomfortable crust of evaporated seawater when he was currently floating in the waves with the warm sun beating down on his skin.
“Yeah, I don’t know why I asked.” He had gone on with his life for five years assuming he would never see her again. Staying detached should be easy. He should be blissfully content. They had it all; the friendship, the mind-blowing sex, the dream. “We do have a good thing going. We have a good shot at winning this whole competition.”
Zak seemed relieved by the focus shift. “I don’t know about that. We still have three weeks left. Anything can happen.”
“Including that recording contract.”
They arrived at the club where everyone else was already waiting inside. The space felt smaller than it had appeared from the street. A narrow hallway fed them into an open room where people mingled at high-tops and placed orders from the brick bar. Splashes of color were everywhere, from the sconce-lit purple walls to the yellow and white checkerboard flooring, to the life-size splatter-painted zebra statue greeting Chase and Zak at the entrance. Their group of seven, between Saint of Spades, Chase’s sister, and Izzy—who continued to defy the studio’s no-fraternizing-with-the-enemy culture—took a wedge out of the back corner, sitting on the sectional sofa and cushioned stools.
Lydia jumped to her feet and held out a shot of something golden in color. “This is awesome. I can’t believe I’ve never been before. Work’s always busy sending me to freaking Omaha and Albuquerque, of all places.”
He held his hand up to rebuff her offer. “I have to get up early.”
“So set your alarm clock, loser.”
“You’re a sadist.”
“No, I’m fun,” Lydia asserted.
“I thought you said you were an accountant?” Dallas wrapped an arm around the back of the couch cushion.
Lydia held her chin up, refusing to look over her shoulder. “And I thought you said these guys were cool?”
“You wound me, Lady-Chase.” Dallas held a hand to his heart.
Chase hoped, for both his and his sister’s sake, that this wasn’t the start of a new painfully persistent nickname.
“So, you think we’re cool?” Alex had a parodying grin on his face as he drank from a beer bottle.
“I appreciate you making me seem very uncool,” Chase told his sister.
“I’m just the messenger.” Lydia finally caved and dumped the shot she had gotten for him into her cocktail. “You’re the one doing all the heavy lifting.”
“I like your sister,” Zak said. Unsurprisingly. “Play any instruments, Lydia?”
Lydia pressed a nail to her lower lip in thought. “Does the kazoo count?”
Laughter drifted from encapsulated little conversations around the table like bubbles. Zak took over the space between Izzy and Lydia, while Chase sat at the other end between Edge and Alex.
He wasn’t close enough to hear what any of the women were saying, but he could tell Izzy and his sister were volleying most of the words while Zak watched on in passive amusement.
At his end of the table, things weren’t quite so carefree.
Alex flipped around one of the cardboard coasters and stared at the line where both walls met. Edge pretended to listen to what the others were saying while he silently took sips from a fruity mocktail. They both appeared to be preoccupied with their own issues, presumably including the addict at the center of their small party—and Chase himself. Considering he had falsely made the news for planning to leave Saint of Spades, and then proceeded to sleep with their guitarist.
Chase hadn’t talked one-on-one with any of the guys since that day in the dressing room, and he wasn’t sure if they were still waiting for a more complete explanation, or if the dynamics were strained on account of other factors. After all, stress only continued to mount with the competition coming to an end. The closer they got to winning the quarter-of-a-million-dollar contract, the more single-minded everyone became. Amped kept the band busy for now, but no matter the outcome, there was a lot of work left to be done once filming wrapped up.
Whether he was to blame for the tension or not, he felt terrible about the misunderstanding, and even worse about swooping in and monopolizing Zak’s time. Alex, Edge, and Dallas had quickly become his friends as well, but they probably felt like checkboxes on a game plan to get through to her.
Shit. He should say something, shouldn’t he? Now Chase wished he had taken the shot.
He nodded to Edge. “You and Zak have been friends a long time, huh?”
Edge’s lips pursed as he smiled. “You’ve been blond a long time, huh?”
Alex chuckled under his breath.
Great start, genius.
“I just wanted to make sure—you know you don’t have to worry about her, right? Not with me,” he said.
“I’m not worried about her. Zak’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself.” Edge laughed. “I’m worried about what’s going to happen to the rest of us when she breaks your heart.”
When she breaks it. Not if. Chase had those thoughts more than he’d like to admit, but it was easy to talk himself out of believing the worst without a second source to confirm his fears.
The other man went on. “It was hard enough to find a new lead singer when no one knew our sound. Now you are our sound. You and her. The rest of us don’t have a career without you. There are hundreds of guitarists and vocalists out there making their own way, but we’d be done if you called it quits.”
“Regardless of what happens,” Chase said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Edge’s stare turned into a challenge. “Prove it.”
Chase had temporarily forgotten about the soreness in his left ring finger until one of Zak’s chunky silver bracelets knocked against his hand in their rush to get ready between sets. He jerked it back and saw her examining the crimson symbol now inked there.
“I still can’t believe you did that.”
“My parents were right. You and your friends are a negative influence. It’s been what, four months? And I’ve already blacked out drunk and gotten a tattoo to prove my allegiance.”
“Fitting though, the King of Hearts,” she said as they joined the rest of their band in the dressing room for hair and makeup.
“Why’s that?”
“Come on, Chase.” Her laugh came out like a sigh. “You seriously expect me to believe that you don’t notice the effect you have on women?”
The one where they only found him attractive because they knew who he was?
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t pay attention to any other women.”
The small space was alive with talk and activity. They had just finished filming their seventh show and were on a clear winning streak. In confined quarters, no one would be able to hear their conversation. Not over the volume of Alex’s laugh, Edge’s animated Spanglish phone call, or Dallas shamelessly flirting with every woman on the studio’s payroll. Nevertheless, he kept his voice low. Mindful of his company, even where recording wasn’t allowed.
Zak’s sidelong glance reminded him that wasn’t the kind of thing he should be saying to a fuck-buddy, so he waited until her stylist departed to grab more clips for her thick, unruly head of hair before he leaned in closer. He combed a few silky locks over her shoulder with his knuckles, still warm from the clamp of the curling iron.
For once, he was grateful for how fitted his own jeans were as he spoke into her ear. Flooded by the smell of her perfume, the heat of her skin. Focused on the spot just below her ear that would make her gasp if he put his mouth to it. “How could I notice anyone else, when you’re always walking around here in those tight little dresses? Now that I know what you wear under them.”
She relaxed into his touch, and he wanted to feel the way she responded to something rougher and heavier. “You don’t have to worry about that right now. I’m not wearing anything under this dress.”
The first time they had been in this room together, Chase thought there could be nothing worse than the torture of the paper-thin divider she changed behind. The room had been loud then too, but still, he had heard the clip of her bra clasps, the whisper of the elastic straps against her bare arms. He would imagine the curves of her body as he caught a glimpse of lace in the gap at the bottom, when her panties hit the floor. Then feel like a creep for wanting her so desperately when she desperately wanted nothing to do with him.
This was a new brand of intolerable. There was no way he was getting on that stage, knowing she wouldn”t be wearing anything beneath the tights hanging on the rack for their next performance—so thin he could probably taste her through them—without fucking her first.
In a future of infinite possibilities, thatwas no longer one of them.
“You think you’re sly? Making me think of all the things I want to do to you. All the ways I want to have you.”
Her grip tightened around the chrome bars of the armrests, her gaze trained straight ahead. He followed the path of her eyes in the mirror so she could see him take her in. From those beautiful pools of green to her flushed cheeks. Her lips, still stained from the red lipstick that had been removed. His eyes traced the diagonal lines of her tendons like an arrow to the generous cleavage spilling out of the deep V neckline of today’s first teasing outfit.
“How do you want to have me?” she whispered.
“Under me. Over me. In front of me. On your knees.” He inched forward, until his lips brushed the trail of stud earrings that ran from the arch of her ear to her lobe. “Now.”
She froze. “You don’t mean…”
“About this? I promise you. I always mean it.” He pushed up from the chair and spoke to her louder this time. “Lydia lost her ticket, I’m going to get her back through the gate. Wanna come with me?”
“Sure,” she answered breathlessly, the corner of her lips quirking up at the innuendo he’d snuck in.
If anyone had been paying attention, the sound of her voice would have shattered his flimsy excuse. Or if they knew Lydia at all, because his sister was not the type to lose anything, let alone a ticket required for re-entry. Her brain was one-third filled with obscure textbook knowledge, one-third dedicated to memorizing every tiny detail she ever noticed about anyone, and one-third automated planner and GPS tracker.
From out of one door, he spun Zak into the next—the wardrobe storage room. The door locked from the outside only, so he fumbled until he found a set of dressing stools beneath the lower hanger rod and flipped one upside down to wedge its wooden leg under the handle.
Thin bars of light leaked through the edges of the frame, reflecting off the mirrored back wall and making the clothes all appear shades of black, plum, and navy.
Chase dipped his head, crushing his lips to Zak’s and breathing in her satisfied sigh as he slipped his hands under the hem of that tight little dress to catch her in a lie. Only, it hadn’t been.
His fingertips grazed nothing but hot, naked skin all the way up to the perfect ass he’d been thinking about all day. It was hard not to, every time she bent over to pick up equipment, adjust knobs, and toy with the many buckles on the sky-high stilettos that worked every muscle in her legs as she strutted around on stage.
“You were telling the truth,” he muttered, bringing one hand forward and… fuck he would never get enough of feeling her wet, and so ready, and knowing she’d been thinking of him all day too.
The sound of her moan made his pulse race. “Always do.”
“Tell me another truth, then.”
He slowly pushed one finger inside, the heel of his palm nudging her clit. His tongue touched hers at the same time, as if more contact was the only way to soothe the ache that formed in his chest when her muscles clamped down on him.
“I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you,” she confessed, clinging to his shoulders as he brushed his other thumb over her nipple, hardened through the thick neoprene fabric.
Unable to help himself, he pulled at the neckline of her dress, ignoring the sound of seams ripping, and put his mouth over every square inch of exposed skin. Tugging, swirling his tongue, until her short nails sliced into his skin like blades.
“It’s like”—her breath hitched as his pace quickened—“I can never get enough of you. Like I’m empty without you inside me.”
If that alone wasn’t enough to make him lose control, she used his moment of weakness to shove him away, shimmy out of her dress, and pull down his jeans with enough force to secure her own spot in the NHL.
“You are—fuck, angel—”
She didn’t wait for him to finish that thought before she sank to her knees and took the tip of his cock in her mouth.
Starting a gentle pump with one fist, she swiped away the pre-cum with her tongue and hummed a pleased tone in the back of her throat.
“—you’re incredible.”
There was no show outside these walls, no confused stylists waiting to finish Zak’s hair and makeup or contemplate whether the color of his shirt should coordinate or contrast with what the other guys were wearing. There were no footsteps in the hall.
Everything was dull and underwater, an unwanted distraction from the warm, wet slide of filling her mouth. Hitting the very back of her throat as she palmed his balls and made the sexiest sounds he’d ever heard against his dick. It felt like his heart had stopped beating. He could hardly breathe as he watched her head move back and forth.
He gathered her hair in one fist just to have something to grab onto while she drove him insane. It was his consciousness fading, it was her owning him without having a damned clue he belonged to her.
“Fuck my face, Chase.” She paused to lick him from base to tip, her eyes glittering with sin. “Fuck my mouth like you’re going to fuck my pussy.”
This was first-degree murder. She was trying to kill him.
He took one of her hands in his own and sat it on his thigh, every muscle twitching with restraint. “Slap me if it’s too much, ‘kay? As hard as you want.”
“It won’t be.”
She took him in her mouth again, every inch gliding over her tongue as she pulled him closer with both hands gripping his ass.
He lost it.
As if entirely by her command, his hips slammed forward. Again, again. Euphoric as it was, he still wished he could kiss her, could bury the groans that swelled from deep within his chest against her lips or her neck.
Her eyes watered as she took each rough thrust, but she pulled him closer by his thighs as he pulled her in by her hair.
“God, look at you.” He wiped the moisture from her cheeks as he slowed the pace. He tilted his chin in the direction of the mirror where, from an outside perspective, worship and sex conflated. “You look so pretty with my cock in your mouth.”
Her eyes flitted to the mirror, but he doubted that she saw the same thing he did. All he saw was the luckiest man in the world getting sucked off by the woman he’d never deserve—no one deserved—though he would never stop trying.
He saw his equal match, his perfect opposite. Inky tresses and ivory skin against his sandy blond and tan. The confidence and unpredictability to his caution and rigor, but with that same passionate, competitive, crazed spirit underlying it all.
He saw her gag, moan, and claw for more of him before she pulled away to tease him slowly again, watching his every response in their reflection.
Chase pulled her to her feet and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck to kissher like he was going to fuck her, too. Her lips were wet with spit and tears, her mouth open and inviting now that it was empty of him. “Wanna see how pretty you look when you come all over me?”
He slid the other stool to the center and bent her over it, her breasts spilling over the rounded edge like they spilled out of his hands. Her heels made seductive clicks against the floor as she spread her legs, trembling in anticipation, to either side of his body.
There was one part of her he hadn’t gotten to appreciate like this before, the line of her spine and the way it curved from the narrowest part of her waist to the luscious contours of her hips.
He bowed over her, giving the barest unintentional nudge between her thighs as he swooped her hair to the side and pressed a kiss between her shoulder blades. Breathing her in and letting out unfiltered rambling about how beautiful she was as he exhaled.
When he had her like this, it was like having every part of her. All the pieces he wanted and couldn’t have. As good as fast felt, it meant that feeling would be gone sooner. So he pushed in slowly. Agonizingly slow. Until he was buried so deep in her that he forgot all the reasons why it was a terrible idea to keep things casual. Hell, he forgot his own name and clung to hers like a leaden anchor.
Her eyes snapped forward as he started to move, her muscles clenching him like a vice. Then they cycled between drifting shut as she said his name, and opening again to watch his next stroke with bated breath.
“Mm, you take me so good. Damn.”
Chase had never believed in soulmates. He didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see or feel, really, but right now it felt an awful lot like they were made for each other.
“I could take more.”
Her hips lifted beneath his fingertips as she pushed back onto him, sinking impossibly deeper, and there, he caught her arm tucked below. Touching herself. He leaned forward to feel her, to intertwine his fingers with her own and take over in lazy circles as he kissed and sucked on her neck. His other hand found her chest to make the same motion over her nipple.
She cursed and grinded on him. Whimpered and sighed as she hooked one heel behind his knee to keep herself steady.
“Hot as it is to watch you touch yourself,” he breathed. “I wanna be the one right now to make you feel good. You make me feel so good, you know that?”
Her knuckles went white around the edge of the stool. Her eyes closed again with the intensity of being aligned from head to toe.
He took her chin in his hand and made her meet his eyes in their shadowy mirrored image. He couldn’t speak his truths, but maybe she would see them there. Or maybe she would only see the raw, erotic picture they were, and that was fine too.
“Told you, I want you to see how you look when I make you come.”
And she did.
It was a matter of seconds, his hips moving in memory of the mind-bending way she’d blown him, his hands moving in memory of that very first night. Watching her, feeling her touching herself.
Her one leg, wrapped around him, locked him in place. Her body stiffened, chest heaving, and instead of squeezing her eyes shut, this time they went wide as her brows knitted together and her beautiful lips screwed up into an expression between joy and anguish.
Then, instead of coming down from the high with him, Zak did exactly what she always did—something he would never expect—and got back down on her knees facing him. Lapping away her own wetness with her tongue before finishing him off with her mouth.
The room was no longer dark, it was a million pinpricks of swirling color as he staggered back against the stool. Hoping to god he could hold off on blacking out long enough to finish watching her look up at him as she swallowed.
Her throat bobbed, her lips still wrapped around his cock until he lost his balance entirely and met her on the floor, on his knees.
No one had prepared him for this particular scenario during physical therapy.
He kissed her forehead, his lips sliding on her skin as he spoke. “What in the hell did you just do to me?”
“I owed you one, from that first time.” She sat back, feeling around for her dress with a limp arm. “You didn’t let me.”
“Good thing I didn’t. I built that night up in my head for so long. If you hit me with that right out of the gate, I might’ve asked you to marry me.”
She chuckled. “Good thing you didn’t then. ‘Cause that would have been a mistake.”
For which one of them, he wondered, because he could think of worse things than being tied to her forever. At the moment, he couldn’t think of anything that sounded better.
Even though she’d be zipped into something new as soon as they got back, he helped her fix her dress and kissed her for as long as he could. As long as she would let him, which still didn’t feel like enough by the time they finally, cautiously exited the room.
There was no space left for reasonable doubt about Chase’s cover story when they returned. Zak’s hair was a mess, black streaks of makeup ran down from her eyes, and in his haste, Chase had somehow remembered to zip and button his pants low on his hips, but not to redo his belt buckle.
Chase wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to how intertwined their lives all were. Everyone in the band knew everything about everyone else, but he had been brought up to speak politely and appropriately. Never step on toes, never stir up problems, and apologize profusely for every mistake. He’d been lucky enough to be raised in a stable, doting, two-parent household, but he wouldn’t be able to recite the story of either of his parents’ first kisses, first loves, or first heartbreaks if he were asked at gunpoint.
By contrast, Zak’s closest friends were all staring him down like they had caught him tearing into a chocolate cake while on his old athlete’s diet.
“We’re on in thirty.” Edge regarded them, for the first time, with amusement instead of skepticism. “Plenty of time to finish pulling your pants up, buddy. Not sure about that hair, though, Z. Un desastre total, chica.”
“Y eres un pendejo, chico.” Zak said in choppy Spanish.
“Solo estoy bromeando.” Edge smiled at her. “Sabes… no creo que te haya visto tan feliz antes.”
She blushed. “Estoy feliz todo el tiempo.”
Edge tsked. “Mentirosa.”
Chase watched the two of them exchange a few more words, brows lifted as he tried to understand what they were saying even though it was a lost cause. “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”
“I can’t give away all my secrets at once.” She directed her attention to combing out her tangled hair before the stylists got back and saw what he did to it.
“I taught her in exchange for helping me with my English when we first met,” Edge explained. “Which backfired, because now she just uses it to cuss me out bilingually.”
“And because they both use it to have secret conversations in front of the rest of us.” Alex blew on his drying nail polish.
“Don’t lump me in there, I’m from Texas,” Dallas said. “I know what pendejomeans.”
“I don’t understand why you bothered changing your name to Dallas if you still plan on reminding us you’re from Texas all the time,” Alex fired back. “Seems redundant, don’t you think?”
Dallas took a swig from the water—or maybe not-water—bottle on his dressing table. “Pendejo.”