Tangled Up In You (Rogue #1)

Chapter 25

25

SOPHIE

T he first thing Sophie noticed when she got home was the stillness. Her parents were due back from their latest excursion sometime that afternoon. The previous year, they’d sold their tech company for a small fortune and relocated permanently to this Malibu beach house. They had a non-compete clause with the sale of the business and had been enjoying their forced relaxation time by traveling extensively—this time to Namibia. The solitude this gave her was exactly what she needed after the whirlwind of the last forty-eight hours. God, had it only been forty-eight hours?

She had nearly lost her voice screaming for Rogue during their performance at the Weenie Roast. The intense energy from the crowd heightened hers, and she ended up having the time of her life.

The boys had performed aggressively, with crisp playing that popped in the electricity of the evening. Gavin was in good spirits and enjoying their set so much that it carried over to the audience. He was skilled at keeping a connection going with them, whether through guiding a call and response during their songs or with chatter between songs that went beyond the usual “thank you” most bandleaders automatically employed.

“The sun’s gone down,” Gavin said at one point and the crowd cheered blindly, apparently agreeing that it had gone dark. “So why the fuck is it still so hot?” He took off his black tee shirt and used it to wipe his face.

The screams at his show of skin were ear-piercing and Gavin laughed into the microphone. “You like what you see, yeah?” he asked playfully, and was rewarded with more cheers. “Scream a little louder, maybe you’ll get Conor to strip down.”

Conor raised his eyebrows as he looked at Gavin disapprovingly. When the crowd began to shout “Conor! Conor! Conor!” he responded by beginning the next song, whether his bandmates were ready or not.

“Sorry, ladies and gents,” Gavin said. He held his arms open wide for a moment, striking a pose. “You’ll have to settle for this.” He threw his sweaty tee shirt down by Shay’s drum kit and found his timing with the song.

After the show, they stayed on and watched the headliners. The first after-party took place at the venue and Sophie watched with increasing unease as Conor pursued—and was pursued by—various groupies. Seeing how comfortable he was with girls he just met, how quickly he progressed to pressing his body against theirs as he chatted them up, was a too-intimate view into what Gavin had very likely spent the last few years doing as well.

The party eventually moved back to the Chateau Marmont where a large group that included several young actors put on an impromptu ping-pong tournament in the courtyard. The hotly competitive, obnoxiously drunk group was still going when Sophie suggested she and Gavin leave at four in the morning. They spent the rest of the morning in bed together before James retrieved Gavin to prepare for an interview he and Conor would be doing with Rolling Stone magazine. Sophie and Gavin agreed to meet later that afternoon at the CBS studios in Los Angeles for Rogue’s taping of a performance on the Craig Kilborn Late Show. The free time meant she could go home to Malibu to clean up and get a change of clothes.

Now, she kicked off her sandals and padded across the gleaming hardwood floors of her parents’ house toward the marble and stainless-steel kitchen. She pulled a bottle of sparkling water from the Sub-Zero and took it with her through the wall of glass doors and out onto the deck.

The house was situated on the sand in exclusive Carbon Beach, an area that stretched a mile and a half from the Malibu Pier south toward Santa Monica. It was the least spectacular home in the wealthy enclave, but it was enviable nevertheless. Both of its stories had fourteen-foot ceilings and an abundance of windows to take advantage of the ocean views. Minimally but comfortably furnished, the style inside had a classic and clean feel, with sheer cream curtains at the windows that flowed with the salty breeze.

At times like this when there was no one else home, Sophie liked to settle onto one of the padded teak lounge chairs on the deck and let her mind drift. There was a thin layer of fog hugging the ocean, but the sun’s heat beat through it. She shaded her eyes with her hand against the glare, looking up and down the coastline, unsurprised to find the sand empty. Though all California beaches from the water line up to the high tide line are technically public land, the seventy-odd homeowners of this area had never been particularly inclined to provide access.

Closing her eyes, she let the sun warm her through. She was running on too little sleep, but it put her in a mellow, happy state rather than one of exhaustion. Being with Gavin these last two days was the happiest she had ever been, despite the fact that their time was running out. The band was scheduled to leave the day after next. They had five more music festivals, all scattered around the East coast. They then headed to New York City to attend MTV’s Video Music Awards show as both nominees and performers. After that they were scheduled to get back home to Dublin to start work on their second album even though Gavin had confessed they didn’t have any material for it. The band had toured the hell out of their first album, expending all their energy on the performances. They might have kept playing gigs had their label not insisted they start to make efforts toward new music.

Gavin was still in a state of semi-disbelief about the band’s success and current position of being under the gun to make a new album. It was, he’d admitted, both thrilling and terrifying. He confessed that he worried that the success of the first album could well be a fluke. Then what? Sophie had fallen into her old role of biggest supporter, assuring him that he only had to trust himself for it all to flow and watched as he nodded in agreement. He had been gratefully, willfully convinced.

They hadn’t discussed, however, any kind of future together. Sophie tried to steel herself against the inevitable heartache she would feel once he was gone from her life again. The conversation she’d had with her friend Felicity back in their school days came to mind. Felicity had known with an old soul’s confidence that this would be the typical scenario for anyone trying to date one of the boys from Rogue, and she had preemptively guarded against it. It had been smart, Sophie knew. But at the same time, she knew herself. She didn’t have that kind of strength and willpower when it came to matters of the heart. Especially not matters of the heart that involved Gavin.

She’d lost all self-control that moment in his hotel room when he’d declared he’d been heartbroken when she’d walked away from him. Because the unspoken implication was that she had repeated what his mother had done. From the moment she had her first real conversation with him back in school, she saw that a deep part of him was wounded. He did his best to hide the hurt with boisterous confidence and a preternatural drive toward music. He had only opened the door of his hurt a sliver with her at first. Then, in his own way, he had thrown it wide open and essentially begged her to enter. He didn’t want her to know him, he needed it.

In return, he’d worshiped at her feet and fulfilled the unrealistic romantic visions of love instilled in her by the princess movies she had grown up with.

They had fallen right back into the same dynamic in the last couple of days, Sophie realized. It was so easy being with him. They were simply good together. The love they’d found in school still existed.

Not that it mattered now, Sophie knew. She opened her eyes and with the brightness of the sun came the sting of tears. Gavin was soon moving on. To the next city. To the next girl. Just as he had told her at the Palladium gig.

If that was to be the case, she resolved to make the rest of their time as memorable as possible. She knew she would be feeding off the memories for years to come, after all.