13. Hayat
Chapter Thirteen
Hayat
I didn’t sleep all night. After texting with Abi for a while, unloading some of what had happened that evening, I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling until the sun began to rise.
Abi and I told each other everything, but I wasn’t ready to let her or anyone else have this piece of me. My first time had been nothing like I’d expected, in all the most insanely intense, amazing ways that other girls didn’t get to experience.
All I told her was that Havoc had been revealed, and I’d kissed Kyrie Renchford.
And that I liked it—liked him.
At some point, I realized Abi had fallen asleep when she stopped responding to my texts, so I rolled onto my back. Bits and pieces of my time at the band’s penthouse apartment kept replaying in my mind. Each moment I remembered made me squirm, an unexpected ache throbbing deep between my legs that had nothing to do with the abuse Jamie and Ky had put it through.
But that only made my guilt so much worse.
Maddie was my friend. My stepcousin. We were family.
Holden Renchford had tried to destroy her—and almost succeeded. He had been seventeen to her fifteen at the time, and their one and only time together had ended with Maddie pregnant. They didn’t go to the same schools, because Holden lived in Malibu and Maddie was in Beverly Hills, but we were all in the same circles. I was a freshman at the time, and I watched how everyone high-fived and laughed with the asshole.
He’d scored with Maddie Dawson. That was all the guys at school cared about.
Meanwhile, the girls at both schools ripped Maddie apart, calling her a whore, which was only the tamest of what they said about her. I ended up in countless fights with girls—and a few boys—after hearing them drag my friend down.
Maddie struggled with what to do for a long time after finding out she was pregnant. To have the baby. To keep her or give her up for adoption. In the end, my aunt Trinity and her husband, Maddie’s dad, adopted Avalyn.
But even that choice had fucked with Maddie’s head. Postpartum was a scary experience for anyone, but especially for a sixteen-year-old who had decided she didn’t want to be a mom, while living under the same roof with the child she’d birthed, seeing her every day, struggling with the guilt, the depression, the continued bullying at school.
Six months after Avalyn’s birth, Maddie swallowed a bottle of pills. If her brother, Banks, hadn’t been home when she’d done it, hadn’t heard her sobbing after she’d gulped them down, then she would have succeeded in her attempt to end her life.
Banks had shoved his finger down his sister’s throat, causing her to vomit up most of what she’d just swallowed, all while having 9-1-1 on the phone. Afterward, Maddie had spent a few weeks in an in-patient treatment program. Her road back to the old Maddie we loved so much was slow, and even now, I wasn’t convinced she was one hundred percent back to where she would have been if Holden Renchford hadn’t ruined her life.
I didn’t want to fuck up the progress she’d made with her mental health over the years. But Kyrie wasn’t Holden. I was pretty sure his family had treated him like crap growing up, but that was only me speculating. His family lived right beside Pop-Pop and Nana, which meant I’d seen Holden and Hannah enough times outside of school to know how they were when they weren’t with their friends. But I rarely saw Kyrie.
After he turned eighteen, he completely disappeared. Maybe he didn’t even know what his asshole of a brother had done to Maddie.
He shouldn’t have to carry the guilt of what his family had done to my stepcousin. I didn’t want to hold it against him.
But I was scared.
What if my being with Ky triggered Maddie? What if she hated me for our relationship?
There were so many what-ifs that I couldn’t think straight. I stayed in my room all day Friday and Saturday. I called Abi once, but Sparks and Jamie kept blowing up my phone during the thirty seconds we were chatting, and I ended the call quickly. Afterward, I avoided answering any other calls. An unknown caller popped up on my phone, and I almost answered it. Instead, it went to voice mail, and like every other message that day, I didn’t listen to it.
I should have answered that call.
Saturday night, I couldn’t take seeing Jamie’s or Sparks’s or Ky’s names popping up on my screen any longer. I wanted to hear their voices, ached to see them. Sitting around tormenting myself over all the what-ifs wasn’t doing anything but giving me a headache. On top of that, I couldn’t go out because the whole Havoc reveal had caused a bit of drama, and some of my followers were turning into creepers, so my parents wanted me to stay home or take security if I went anywhere.
I hadn’t slept in days, and all I wanted was for my guys to hold me, damn it.
After forcing my brother to cover for me so I didn’t have to deal with security following me, I took an Uber to Carver Towers. Showing up at their apartment seemed like a good idea until I got there and realized that I couldn’t simply go up to the penthouse. Or any apartment, for that matter. Security was tight, something I’d forgotten about with everything else I’d had going through my head over the past few days.
A man in a suit opened the door for me when I reached it, his eyes narrowed as he took in my shredded pink hoodie that displayed the neon-green sports bra I had on beneath it. My black sweats sat low on my hips, showing off my flat stomach and the small birthmark just above the right side of my pelvic bone. My white running shoes were from a company that sponsored Havoc’s videos.
He didn’t stop me as I walked into the lobby, but the man dressed in a similar suit standing behind a reception desk did. With a tight smile on his face, he greeted me. “Good evening, miss. How may I help you?”
“Oh…” I faltered. “I’m here to visit my…friends?” It came out as a question because what the fuck was I supposed to call them? We were bandmates now, but I wasn’t so sure the security of this place knew that the tenants residing in the penthouse were kick-ass rockers. Anonymity and all.
My question/answer only tightened the man’s face into an unreadable mask. “And which friends would that be, Miss…?”
“Cutter,” I muttered, reluctantly giving him my last name, only slightly surprised he didn’t know who I was. “Um, Ky Carver?”
Features unchanging, the security guard started typing away on a computer in front of him. “Apologies, Miss Cutter. But I don’t seem to have you down as an approved guest for any of the Mr. Carvers.”
That only irritated me—and hurt my feelings. They hadn’t added me to their guest list. What the fuck? Which pissed me off. I didn’t want to have feelings that could be hurt. I wasn’t soft like that. It took a lot to make me emotional in a way that left me with a sore heart.
Swiping my thumb over my phone’s screen, I typed out a quick text. I’d barely hit send before the phone on the man’s desk rang. Crossing my arms over my chest, I tapped my foot impatiently while he took his time picking up. “Carver Towers,” he answered before stumbling through a few quick, very hushed words and hung up, all while typing rapidly.
His throat hadn’t stopped bobbing when the elevator doors slid open, and Sparks stepped off. Dark eyes turned to melted chocolate when he saw me. My body had an instant reaction to the sight of him dressed in sweat-drenched workout clothes.
“Sorry, babe. I was in the gym.” Walking over to me, he bent his head the very slight distance to kiss my lips. “Fucking missed you, goddess.”
I kissed him back, but only for a second before stepping back and cocking a brow at the man behind the reception desk. “Am I on their list of approved guests now?”
Throat still bobbing, the guard nodded. “Yes, of course, Miss Cutter. There will be no further issues. My apologies.”
Turning my head, I glowered at Sparks. “Who is on the approved list?”
His lips tipped up with amusement. “As of right now, only you.”
I liked that answer, but I didn’t want to like it. Damn it. “How many before me?”
Sparks didn’t even blink. “None.”
Oddly enough, I believed him. “So I’m the first?”
He kissed me again. “First and only,” he murmured. With his hand on my hip, he turned me toward the bank of elevators, the one he’d just exited still open. My heart rate began to race as the doors slid closed when he punched in the code for his floor.
“I’ll text you the code,” he promised when we began ascending. Turning, he backed me into the corner of the metal box, his hips pressing into me, trapping me. “Fucking missed you.”
I melted into him, kind of liking how sweaty he was. I wanted it on me, smeared across every inch of my body. Why I’d picked him to text to come fix the problem in the lobby, I wasn’t sure. His name hadn’t even been first on my list of recent callers. Ky and Jamie had rivaled each other in blowing up my phone in both calls and texts. Sparks had left me a few messages and voice mails, but nowhere close to the number the other two had bombarded me with.
“Sorry if I messed with your workout,” I told him.
“You didn’t, goddess. I’d been on the treadmill for over an hour already. Attempting to outrun the voice in my head to call you. Or track you down. Bring you back here. Tie you to my bed.” I shivered, not disliking any of those things. Apparently our moment together Thursday night had fried my circuits, and now I was ruined. And honestly, I didn’t think I cared.
“I’ve tried to give you the space you needed, but it’s been difficult.” He pressed his sweaty brow to mine. “For all of us.”
I traced my finger over a tattoo on his bicep. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t place the design. For a moment, I almost thought it was a gang tag, but I quickly pushed the thought away. Sparks lived in the penthouse of Carver Towers on Sunset Place. He was not in a gang.
Moments later, the doors opened onto the penthouse floor. Taking my hand, Sparks backed out of the elevator, guiding me to the door of the home he shared with Jamie and Ky. Placing his hand on a scanner, it took several seconds while it read his fingerprints before I heard the click of the locks releasing. But when Sparks put his hand on the door handle, I tensed.
“Are Jamie and Ky home?” I asked, not meeting his gaze.
“They went to dinner,” he said, stepping into the apartment. “I didn’t feel like going. Not sure when they’ll be back. Knowing those two, they might go to Malibu and stake out your house.”
A smile teased at my lips at that mental picture. I kind of wanted them to be doing that. Stalk me. Abi had turned into one over her professor. Which was unhinged in a sexy kind of way. But my emotions were in a jumble because I’d come there to be cuddled by all three of my men. Yet I was a little relieved that Jamie and Ky weren’t home. Jamie because he was so intense. Ky because, fuck, there were so many reasons that I wasn’t ready to wade through.
There was a part of me that was relieved and happy it was just Sparks and me. I wanted some alone time with him. With all of them, one-on-one. It felt right, but I wasn’t sure if that was allowed in a relationship like ours. If that was even what this was—a relationship. I wanted to be with all of them, but if I wanted time with only one of them for a little while, was that considered cheating on the other two?
Realizing I should have probably researched the rules of this type of relationship, I followed Sparks through the apartment to his room. He urged me to sit on his bed, before he pulled off his sweat-soaked shirt. Seeing his bare skin quickly pushed every other thought from my head. Without thinking, I reached out, tracing my fingers over his defined abs, the ink on his chest, the scar on his lower right abdomen.
“Appendix, when I was ten,” he explained in a raspy voice before gently taking hold of my wrist and guiding it down to wrap my fingers around his hard cock through his athletic shorts.
I stroked him once, twice, watching as his head fell back onto his shoulders while he groaned as if he were in pain.
“Let me shower, goddess,” he said, reluctantly pulling my hand away. “And then we can do whatever you want. Talk. Go to dinner. Watch a movie. Anything.”
“I came here because I missed you. All of you. But now I’m glad it’s just us.” I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the way his cock tented his shorts. “Is that wrong, Sparks? That I want to be with them, that I want there to be an us. All four of us. Together. But at the same time, I want to be alone with you. I want alone time with Jamie too. And Ky…” I shook my head in frustration. “I’m so confused.”
Sparks crouched down in front of me. “None of that is wrong. All we want is you. Your happiness, your pleasure, your…” He trailed off, giving me a grim smile. “Just you. We want to share everything with you, but we’re not going to get jealous if you want to be with just one of us for a little while. I know all of this is new to you. Honestly, we’re still wrapping our heads around this kind of relationship too. The past few times we tried it, we all stumbled. But that was because we weren’t with the right partner.”
“And you think I’m the right one?” Insecurity, something I wasn’t overly familiar with, laced my voice.
“I know you are, goddess.”