13. Rae
13
RAE
I t started with a picture.
One I posted of the beach when I was out walking Barney one morning.
Since then, I’ve posted on social nearly every day.
Sometimes with Barney, sometimes the scenery. One day I snapped a photo of Toro, his weathered profile smiling, when he came to work on the house, and we ended up talking for an hour about his daughter and the argument they had about her leaving Spain for a job in Australia with a boy she was dating at the time.
In between, I’ve reposted pictures from fans. For the first time, my following is growing, and it’s people saying they love my shows or my music or want to check out Debajo.
It doesn’t hurt that I’ve been scanning the feeds of some hashtags of local partiers to see what’s popular and, more importantly, what people are into but aren’t getting in the bright lights and theatrics of the biggest clubs.
It’s not Harrison’s pressure. It’s that I want to make Debajo great. It’s less about me, or even getting the money for Callie, and more about believing in a place and the people in it.
This morning, when I check my DMs, the name on top grabs my eye.
Beck, one of my classmates from arts school, who is in LA.
You keep making that party look so good I’m gonna crash it.
I grin. Don’t write checks you can’t cash.
My phone rings as I’m out for a run with Barney. Adrenaline is pumping through my veins as I slow to a walk and answer. After a moment for the video call connection to establish, a handsome grinning face appears.
“I read about you this week,” Beck informs me.
“Wow. I didn’t know you could read.”
His bark of laughter is warm and welcome. Beck’s outside too, his hair blowing in the breeze. “Just because I’m an actor doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
He’s not. My friend took an arts-school vlog and leveraged it into a TV deal after graduation. He stars as a psychic cop in one of the top shows on television.
“How’s the club gig?”
“I’m going to fill the place if it kills me.”
“Badass. I heard someone’s birthday’s coming up from Tyler and Annie. Which day is the party?”
I frown. I haven’t talked to Annie in a couple weeks except for the odd text. “There’s no party, Beck. My birthday’s not a day to remember.”
He cocks his head, surprised. “Clearly you need to replace it with better memories.”
“I’m trying. Tonight, I’m going to the biggest club on the island.”
When I woke up an hour ago, there was a note on my dresser in Harrison’s scrawl saying we were going to La Mer to scope it out.
Excitement bubbled through me when I stared at it, then the bottle of pills I had demoted to the dresser from my bedside table earlier in the week and replaced with a tiny vase of fresh flowers from Natalia’s garden.
“Sounds like fun.”
“It’s recon,” I say.
“Even better.”
* * *
Tonight, I dress for the occasion. A cropped white top. A skirt that shows off my legs. The platform wedges Harrison got me. I try my hair a few different ways before twisting it up into buns on my head.
I look like a warrior, and maybe I am one.
It doesn’t feel as if Harrison and I are on opposite sides since he went on the trip to clean up his clubs in person.
Tonight, we both want the same thing.
La Mer.
“Come on, Rae,” Ash hollers from the other side of my door.
“Bossy, considering I invited you,” I call back.
Harrison had frowned over his coffee when I informed him I’d called his brother, but he’ll get over it.
If I’m being honest, it feels safer to have Ash there.
The door opens without my permission, and Ash surveys me.
“Jesus,” the younger King says before I can protest.
I plant a hand on my hip. “Good Jesus or bad Jesus?”
“There’s one Jesus,” Ash says solemnly. “And he’s always good.”
I laugh as I follow him downstairs. “Wait. Where’s your brother?”
“He said he’d meet us there. And it’s a good thing because if he walked in on you looking like this, I’d be going to La Mer alone.”
I glance down at my outfit. It’s more skin than I’d normally show but nothing compared to some of the outfits that grace Ibiza’s clubs every night, including Debajo.
“It’s just me, Ash.”
“You don’t understand. When Harry sees something he wants, it’s game over. He’s trying to stay away, but the fact that he can’t have you is killing him.”
As thrilling as it feels to be the object of Harrison’s interest, we can’t pursue it. Giving in to him feels like giving in to something bigger. A man like that casts a long shadow, and it’s only beginning to feel as if I’m getting myself back after the hellish year I’ve had.
I won’t risk losing myself in him.
Even for a night I’ve found myself fantasizing about more than once.
“Do you think he’ll ever trust someone again?” I hear myself ask. “After Eva, I mean.”
“I hope so.”
Toro drives us to the club, checking on us from the front with eyes crinkling at the corners. When we pull up, the door opens from the outside, and a hand extends to take mine.
I shift out of the car and look up.
My heart stops.
Harrison King is breathtaking in chino shorts and a midnight-blue linen shirt, and I press my lips together as he surveys me.
“You dressed down,” I say.
“A necessary evil to be inconspicuous. You, on the other hand, barely dressed at all.”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“You wore this for me?” His eyes warm with hunger.
“That’s a big leap from ‘I thought you’d like it’.”
“It’s a logical inference. And I do like it. Very much.”
His attention pins me in place for a heartbeat, two, before the passing crowd makes me notice the doors of the club are around the corner.
“I asked Toro to drop you beyond where we might be spotted,” Harrison supplies, refocusing on our surroundings.
“And I told the guys from the club I’d meet them inside,” Ash adds.
“Why do you want this club so badly?” I ask Harrison as I take careful steps along the sidewalk, sneaking another look at him. I’ve seen him in a tux, a suit, and almost naked. The casual clothes might be my favorite.
“La Mer would be the crown jewel in my collection.”
I groan. “What is it with you Brits and your crown jewels?”
He ignores me. “Mischa wants it. I want to take it away from him.”
“All because of what happened with your parents?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Ash says at the same time, glancing over his shoulder. “Don’t pretend it didn’t start sooner.” His gaze drops to Harrison’s chest so fast I almost miss it.
“Mischa has a reputation,” Harrison says. “People who disagree with him get silenced.”
“So, you’re the good guy.”
He frowns. “Let’s say it’s good you called me out on my club’s security and not Mischa’s, or we wouldn’t be here talking.”
The idea of a person more fucked up than Harrison, someone who’d stop at nothing to get what he wants, is enough to make me shiver.
We approach the end of the huge line, and I reach for my wallet. “I have Christian’s card.”
Harrison tucks it back in my bag, tugging me by the elbow toward a back door. “We’re not letting Christian know we’re here.”
At the door, Harrison shakes hands with a security guy who lets us inside. Ash leading the way, Harrison at my side with his hand on my back, we head through a dark tunnel, only the music at the other end guiding us.
“So did you fuck your hand to my new song after Debajo last night?” I ask conversationally.
His arm flexes around my waist. “Did you lie awake all night thinking about it?”
I catch a toe on the ground and nearly trip.
The idea of Harrison King thinking of me while he unfastens his dress pants and shoves down the zipper is insanely sexy. His heavy breathing, roughened with pleasure and anticipation as he stroked the hard length of his cock. The flex of his muscles, the way he’d seek out his own brutal pulls as he cursed me.
I wonder how it would feel to wrap my hand around him and watch his eyes narrow to slits. To reduce him to curses, then no words at all.
Too soon, we’re in the open-air club, and the impossible tension slips a few notches.
I’m awestruck by my surroundings. It’s an ode to the stars. A spectacular amphitheater built for revellers.
The crowd is young and beautiful and ready for the release this place promises.
“If you buy it, you’ll need the best DJs,” I comment, breathless.
“I’m not concerned. It’s not only the crowd that lines up for this place.”
“I’ve wanted to play here forever,” I admit, soaking it all in. “To hear my songs, to feel them through the ground, like they’re moving the earth.” I cut him a teasing look. “If you buy it, you’ll let me play, right?”
“La Mer is the biggest stage in the world.” His brows lift, and I feel my smile fade.
Hurt slices at me, cutting deeper than I thought this man could cut me.
“And you don’t think I’m good enough.”
He was by my side as I breathed new life into his club, and despite his sparse praise, it felt as if he was cheering me on. That we were in this journey together.
Harrison shakes his head as if I’m being unreasonable. “I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, you did.” I twist away from his grip and slip into the throng of people.
Watching the booth, envy settles into my gut like a throbbing mass. The man spinning tonight is Maxx, a DJ I met at Coachella. He has a reputation for being a dick to new talent, especially women.
The thing is he’s not alone. Of Billboard’s top one hundred DJs in the world, only a handful are women. None of the top ten.
I want to make that list, not only because that list determines who gets booked and who makes bank.
Women have always been involved in music, but when it comes to recognition and compensation, it’s still a man’s world.
I try to forget the hurt and dance with Ash and his friends while Harrison’s off doing whatever he has planned.
A guy from Ash’s crew brushes up behind me. He’s fit and attractive, but when he moves closer, reaching out to draw me against him, I pull back. “I can’t.”
He shrugs and returns to dancing.
I’m in the middle of the biggest club in the world, crushed because a rich, entitled man I have no reason to care for doesn’t believe in me.
It’s not possible to hate someone and like them at the same time.
Is it?
The next time the song transitions, everything changes.
The first chords are familiar.
I feel them in my body before I hear them.
I spin and latch onto Ash, who’s dancing with a few other guys, by the front of his shirt.
“Was this you?” I demand, but Ash shakes his head.
I stumble back, searching for Harrison. Pushing through the crowd, I scan the sea of faces and bodies. It’s an impossible throng, but I wade through anyway, tripping over my shoes until strong arms grab me at the edge of the dance floor.
I look up to find Harrison King looming over me, cool and breathtakingly beautiful.
“It’s my song,” I shout, my heart thudding against my ribs.
I squeeze my eyes closed, imagining me playing this song from the stage.
As much as I’ve grown to care about Debajo, mixing at La Mer would make my career. Hearing my song in the place cements the possibility that it can happen.
That it will .
When I blink my eyes open again, he’s closer than before. He smells like man and the ocean.
His hands find my waist when I threaten to tip over from the giddiness.
I straighten with his help, his face inches from mine.
Those eyes are hot, his mouth parted.
I’m at the world’s biggest party, and all I see is Harrison, filling my vision.
“This was you,” I accuse. My fingertips dig into his corded biceps, the tense muscles holding me up.
“You fucking?—”
He shuts me up with his mouth.
His lips claim mine, rough and impatient and a little bit desperate.
He’s warm and hard, delicious and sharp. His heat and scent wrap around me.
It’s less like kissing than an attack, but an unplanned one by a skilled fighter.
The feel of him has me tingling, every nerve ending alive and throbbing. His hard body is pressed to mine, his heart hammering faster than the beat surrounding us—the one I made myself.
The hardness grinding against my stomach would steal my breath if his kiss hadn’t already.
The music pulses around us, the crowd throbbing.
I’m throbbing.
What he says about power is true—I feel his, and it’s pure temptation even before his touch strokes up my thighs, his hand gripping my ass to fit me against him.
My spinning head can’t tell if it’s seconds or minutes later when he pulls back an inch, eyes dark as the sky.
“You’re welcome,” he whispers against my mouth.