Eighteen
Leah
W e made our “getaway” in one of the black BMWs he’d taken. The windows were very tinted, but he still wore Harold’s trucker hat as he cut through traffic.
There was always something enormously sexy watching Carter drive. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was exactly. Maybe the concentrated look on his face. Or the way he dragged his teeth along his bottom lip that made me want his mouth on mine. Or that I had a perfect view of his protruding biceps, a classic indication of how strong he was.
It was probably a combination of all three, really.
“Where are we going?” I asked him.
“Anywhere you want,” he answered. “Somewhere discreet. You won’t like what happens if we’re discovered.”
“That bad?”
He nodded, frowning. “Oh, yeah.”
I couldn’t imagine. I mean, I’d seen the cameras in front of Marlena’s house back when they started to get huge, and that alone was overwhelming. Anything worse and I cringed to think.
He glanced at me. “Know any spots?”
“Um,” I thought for a moment. It wasn’t like I had a brain map of “hiding spots” to dig up. “Well, the only thing that pops up is our hiding place.”
It took him a few seconds before he understood, and he smiled widely at me. “The creek?”
I nodded, feeling my face warm. “If you want.”
“Absolutely.”
The drive there wasn’t long, but even after all these years, I’d never returned to the outskirts of town. I felt a little anxious, and my stomach sank when we passed the trailer park we grew up in. I didn’t turn my head to look at it, but I saw, in my peripheral, Carter’s head turn. He looked stone-faced, but I caught him gripping the steering wheel tighter.
“Pretty depressing,” he remarked quietly under his breath.
It was.
Moments later we approached the road we used to cross that cut into the nature reserve. He parked along the side of the road, and we stepped out. I ogled his shiny car before saying, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to leave this unattended. It’s sticking out like a sore thumb, and if anyone dodgy passes by, they might take a crack at it.”
“It’s just a rental,” he replied on a shrug. “If anyone fucks with it, I’ll pay up. I’m not going to bitch about money when we’re doing something like this together. For once, let’s let whatever happens, happen.”
I smiled at him. “Alright.”
I grabbed my bag in case it did get broken into. There was no way I was going to leave my wallet with all the money I had in the world in it. He stopped beside me, and we stared thoughtfully into the bush.
“I didn’t expect this,” he whispered, his expression tightening.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He looked back at me, his eyes warming as he took me in. “You’re here, Leah.”
My heart jumped as I tried to smile softly at him. Truth was, I wanted to cry because…here we were, the two us, and the world had fallen away.
When he offered me his hand, I stared at it for a beat, and then I took it.
*
Together, we walked back into the forest, out of the sunshine and under the shade of the large thick trees. It was different, but familiar all at once. I recognized the massive tree I used to hide behind when I stalked Carter in here, and when the creek came into view, I squeezed his hand excitedly.
“This is pretty cool,” I told him.
“Just like old times.”
I dropped my bag beside the fallen tree I used to sit on and watched the water move slowly over the rocks. It looked amazingly refreshing in the heat. As if reading my mind, Carter kicked off his shoes and socks and I did the same. Letting go of his hand, we slowly neared the edge of the creek, until the cool water ran over our feet inch by inch.
It felt good.
A nice break from the heat.
“Fuck, this is nice,” he said, glancing up and along the large trees bordering the creek. “I don’t get this level of quiet anymore.”
“Me neither,” I replied in a low voice. “Although, I imagine it’s worse for you. All those people.”
“ So many people,” he acknowledged, twisting his lips. “It’d be nice to move back out here one day. You know, away from the noise, from the city and the crowd. Just have a nice little plot of land, overlooking the mountains maybe, and a solid little house. No more interviews, no more cameras, just quiet and peace.”
I stared at him as he spoke. Yet again, he’d opened up a side of him he’d never shown me before. He didn’t seem guarded, or worried. He genuinely looked at peace, and it made me smile sadly. We’d have to go back eventually. Back to all that noise he loathed.
I wished we could freeze time, so that nothing existed outside of us.
“Maybe one day,” I told him wistfully. “When you’re done with being a rock star.”
He looked at me then, his want apparent when he responded gravely, “I can do it now. I can leave it all behind. Do you want that?”
I didn’t answer for a moment.
I looked down at the water as it moved past me, and I swallowed nervously. “You’re an amazing singer.”
“I don’t care.”
“You make people happy when you sing.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does,” I argued, shooting him a knowing glance. “I watched you sing, Carter.”
He looked at me strangely. “You watched me sing?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
My voice was a whisper. “I… I went to your concert the other night. You captivated an entire crowd, and I was speechless. Absolutely speechless. It’s what you were born to do, and watching you up there, I know you love it. I know it makes you feel alive. I know that because you made everyone else feel alive. It’s an incredible superpower, and I know you don’t want to stop.”
He didn’t answer, and I looked again at him. He was shocked, his eyes wide, his mouth half open. Then, he moved closer to me, and I turned my body to him as he stopped in front of me.
“You went to my concert?” he asked again.
“Of course I did.”
“I sort of figured you wouldn’t…”
I scoffed. “I bought a ticket every time you were coming into the city, but I never had the guts to go until the last one.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I thought I was done hurting. You know, three years isn’t supposed to feel like such a long time, but for some reason, it felt like an eternity—”
“I know,” he cut in with a heart-wrenching voice. “I know three years is a long time because I felt every single moment of it pass by. And I missed you every second of it.”
You couldn’t hear words like that without feeling like your heart wasn’t going to explode. I couldn’t speak, and my eyes were misting. He ran his finger along the side of my face and then he pulled away, taking my hand with him.
We turned back and sat down on the hard ground, his back against the fallen tree, and me between his legs. It was such a natural position; I didn’t think twice about it. My back rested against his front, and I didn’t care for a single moment that I was meant to have let him go, that touching him at all was wrong.
This was yet again our bubble.
Our time revisiting the past, and it felt right.
I couldn’t resist.
He squeezed my hand, and we silently watched the stream for a while. I’d never felt this kind of peace in a long time.
“Tell me about your life,” I then said, wanting to fill the space with his voice.
“Nothing much to tell,” he replied softly, his other hand moving to my shoulder where he squeezed the knots out gently. “It’s just been music and people, and not much else.”
“What about when you tour? Is it really all groupies and crazy sex?”
He chuckled dryly. “It can get pretty wild.”
“Yeah?” I tried to sound casual, but the image of him in some groupie orgy pierced my chest, making my blood run hot.
“Jared and Leo are the party animals,” he explained. “Rome’s usually got someone temporary, like Alyssa.”
“And…you?”
“Me? Well, I’ve been using my hand an awful lot lately.”
I froze, confused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I have nobody.”
I couldn’t help roll my eyes. “You don’t need to pretend, Carter. You’re the one the girls go crazy about. I’m sure you’ve had a fair share of them. A guy like you doesn’t use his hand .”
“If you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine. I’m not lying. I don’t have a reason to lie, Leah. I’m wary of the girls, and I tend to keep to myself. Plus, I’m fucking shattered after a concert.”
I mulled his words over in thought. “But…you’ve always been like that, Carter. You just said yourself last night that girls like Molly are fun and—”
“Yeah, they’re fun to pass the time when the alternative is drowning in the loneliness.”
“You, lonely?” I looked at him doubtfully. How could a rockstar be lonely?
His eyes looked raw as he nodded once, telling me, “Yeah, Leah, lonely.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment as I gazed at him.
He looked away and let out a slow breath, telling me slowly, “My point about Molly was that we had a… fling. Hardly anything happened, really, and that’s usually what it is for me. When I get lonely, I like to have a girl, someone I’m familiar with to keep me company. It’s not sexual, Leah. I can’t describe it…I itch for familiarity. I…long for…” His throat bobbed as another emotion flickered through his eyes. “To put it simply, I don’t take strangers to bed.”
“Never?” I prodded gently.
“Nope. Not since Pomposa, but even then I kind of knew her.”
Despite the tender moment, I burst out laughing. “Stupid Pomposa.”
His mouth came to my ear, and my body seized when his hot breaths hit the side of my face. “You can call her stupid all you want, but without her riling you up and making you question what it feels like to kiss, we’d probably never have had our first kiss.”
I bit my lip on a smile. “That’s true.”
“Was it a good kiss? I always wanted to ask you that.”
I turned my head to him, and we were hardly inches apart. “It was the best, Carter.”
Even though there was that edge of melancholy, his face brightened. “You drove me crazy back then. Fucked with my head every single day.”
“You never showed it.”
“I know. I was always trying to hide everything from you. You were my friend, and I didn’t want to ruin that.”
Friend.
“I hate that word,” I admit quietly, looking back at the stream. “I can hear it come out of a stranger’s mouth and it still fucks me up…”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I shook my head. “I don’t want you to be.”
“Leah—”
“Let’s be happy right here and now. Like we’re those kids again.”
I felt him nod, his voice tight. “Okay.”
I swallowed back my emotion, but I was feeling weak everywhere. His touch was feeding that craving within me; it was so easy to relapse when you knew how good something felt.
“So,” he finally said on with a sigh, “tell me something you’ve done I don’t know about in the last three years.”
I thought about that for a moment. “I went paintballing for the first time about a year ago.”
“Paintballing?”
“Yeah, and I got shot ten thousand times. They have zero mercy on women. The guy I was with was meant to protect me. He said he would, anyway.”
“And he didn’t.”
“No, he was, in your own words, a poodle protecting his owner from an attack.”
He laughed. “Is that right?”
“Yeah, I haven’t met a wolf like you yet.”
He pulled me into him tightly. “That’s good. Leah?”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t meet a wolf.”
I looked at his solemn face, and I nearly fell into him again, right then and there. The armour around my heart weakened a little more as I nodded. “Okay. Carter?”
“Hmm?”
“Since we’re here and all, maybe you should sing.”
He shot me a heart-stopping half-smile that made me strangely nervous. “What do you want me to sing?”
I didn’t even have to think about it.
The first song I ever heard coming out of his mouth came to mind in a flash of a second. “‘Thank You’ by Led Zeppelin.”
His body went rigid, and a fleeting look of pain washed over his features before he let out a slow breath. “Okay, Angel. I can do that.”
I relaxed back into his hold, and he rested his chin on the top of my head and tenderly sang the song that drew me to him almost twelve years ago.