Chapter 8 Jesse
EIGHT
JESSE
I lean against the balcony rail, a clove cigarette burning between my fingers, the smoke curling up into the night.
Below me, the city sprawls in a scatter of glittering lights, endless and alive, but I can’t focus on anything but the echo of Luc’s mouth on mine, his body beneath me, the sounds he made as he came undone.
My chest still hums with it, like the aftershock of a song that won’t stop playing.
I drag in another breath of spice and smoke, let it fill my lungs, then exhale slowly.
I should feel satisfied. Instead, I feel restless.
I should’ve drawn it out longer, or something.
Thought ahead so he wouldn’t be in the bathroom right now trying to clean himself up. I could’ve done that for him.
With my mouth.
Behind me, the glass door slides open, and Luc steps onto the balcony. He looks damn near perfect again, not a hair out of place, except for the faint blush that hasn’t left his cheeks since he excused himself.
He glances at the cigarette in my hand and smells the air. “Clove?”
I nod.
“Makes sense.”
“Does it bother you?” I reach for the ashtray to put it out.
“No. I actually kind of like it. You sort of smell like Christmas.”
I laugh. My eyes fall to his pants. They’re the same ones he was wearing before and not the sweatpants I’d set on the counter for him. I lift an eyebrow.
“They were salvageable,” he mutters, clearly embarrassed. “Mostly.” I notice him tugging his sweater down a little in the front, and I am desperate to know what he’s hiding.
“Well, now I feel underdressed,” I tease. I changed into a pair of low-slung black sleep pants and left my shirt unbuttoned.
He shakes his head in amusement, but I don’t miss the way his eyes rake down my body. I stub out the clove in the ashtray, forcing my hand to steady, and bite my lip. “Hungry?”
Luc’s cheeks darken even more, and I’m pretty sure I hear the slightest intake of breath when I step forward. He doesn’t move an inch as I take the few steps to cross the balcony. My hand brushes over his waist as I pass him and walk into the suite.
Walking over to the small table set with our dinner, I wink and pull out a chair for Luc.
He shakes his head, either amused with himself or with me, and takes a seat.
I walk away for a moment to refresh our drinks, taking several breaths to calm my racing heart and libido.
I nearly trip over my feet as I’m walking back to him, though.
He’s so fucking gorgeous. The dark blue of his sweater makes his eyes look even deeper than I remember, and goddamn if it doesn’t fit him like it was made for him.
It makes me want to rub myself against him like a cat.
I’ve already done that, so I set the drinks down and lift the silver domes from our plates. Steam curls up from perfectly seared salmon with lemon-herb sauce, roasted potatoes, and sauteed green beans with heirloom carrots.
Luc looks surprised, or maybe a little confused. I let out a little huff of laughter, realizing that he probably thinks I have some hidden server or had someone in here while he was in the bathroom. It’s been nearly forty-five minutes since he arrived, and the food is still hot.
I tap the hidden warming tray beneath the plates. “I wanted to be sure everything stayed warm enough in case you were delayed or I had to talk you into not running for the hills.”
“It looks amazing.” He grins and digs in hungrily, which makes me feel a little guilty for distracting him earlier, but not guilty enough to stop wishing we were still tangled up on the couch.
“The chefs here are amazing,” I tell him. “Very accommodating, too. I told them my guest is an athlete who prefers to eat clean, and they took it from there.”
His face blanches.
“Don’t worry,” I add quickly. “They don’t know who my guest is. No one saw you except the pilot and my bodyguards. And the hotel staff sign strict NDAs. You’re safe here.”
That seems to help, but there’s still a shadow in his expression.
“You still look worried,” I point out.
He sets down his utensils, wipes his mouth with a napkin, and takes a sip of sparkling water. I can’t stop staring at his mouth. The way his tongue darts out to catch the bead of moisture on his lip, the way his Adam’s apple shifts as he swallows.
“How do you live the way you do?” he asks. His voice isn’t judgmental. He sounds genuinely curious. “How do you deal with being constantly on display, with people hounding you for every personal detail?”
I go with honesty. “For the most part, we’re used to it. But sometimes… yeah, it’s hard. Especially when something personal gets leaked. People judge fast. Sometimes it’s warranted. Sometimes it isn’t.”
“Like how?”
I take a breath. “Like when I made a personal decision not to attend my dad’s funeral, and the media spread wild stories about me going on a drunken rampage.”
“That’s awful.”
I huff a sardonic laugh. “I didn’t even know the guy. The idea of mourning his death around a bunch of people I don’t know made me uncomfortable. Not to mention the circus it would have caused at the funeral itself. No one needed that.”
Luc’s brows are furrowed, but he nods with understanding. “That makes sense to me.”
Shrugging, I take a long sip of my drink. “To be fair, I did go and get shitfaced the day I found out about it. There might have been an incident with a bathroom mirror.” When I blink down at my hands, I can still see the blood on my knuckles.
“It’s not fair that you didn’t get the privacy you needed to process that.
I can’t imagine if it had been like that when my mom passed away a couple of years ago.
All I had to deal with was a little speculation over why I’d missed a game.
If reporters and photographers had followed me home to her funeral, I would have been sick over it.
” The pain in his eyes reflects that he loved his mother very much.
I’m glad he was allowed to mourn her passing in peace.
“I’m sorry to hear about your mom,” I say, reaching out to lay my hand over his.
“Thanks. I’m sorry you went through all of that.”
“It was a weird time for me. I was already struggling with… stuff.” Now is not the time to detail my faults and failures.
I was honest about rehab and being sober, but the last thing I want to do is give him another reason not to trust me by going into the details of my spiral.
“I didn’t know him, and he certainly didn’t know me.
He called me after he saw me on TV, playing at the Grammy’s for the first time.
He didn’t even know I was a musician,” I snort.
I’d called my mom and scolded her for giving that deadbeat credit for the guitar I’d been given for my tenth birthday.
I pretty much assumed every gift with his name on it had really just been her.
Which hurt even more, because I know she must have worked overtime just to afford it.
It wasn’t super expensive, just a used and beat up old acoustic she’d found at a pawnshop, but every dollar was stretched in those days.
“How long had it been since you talked to him before that night?”
“A few years,” I answer. “When I was a kid, I used to call on his birthday and Father’s Day, but then when I got into my teens I realized how one-sided it was.
As an experiment, I stopped reaching out, and I didn’t hear from him for years.
And all he had to say was some snide comment about how it looked like I was wearing a skirt.
Which I was, and I didn’t give a fuck about his opinion on it, either.
I remember looking down at the phone to make sure the call was still connected because he’d gone so quiet, and then laughing and saying, ‘It was nice to hear from you, Dad. We should check in again in another four years or so, yeah?’ and hung up on him. That was the last time we talked.”
My throat feels tight. “When he died, the media made it into this huge thing about me being a hateful, ungrateful son for not going to his funeral. Some tabloids even claimed I showed up and wrecked it, the way we supposedly wreck hotel rooms. Which, by the way, is also not true. But really? He’d already been dead to me for years.
I’d already grieved. When I cried, I didn’t even know why. Why cry over a stranger?”
When I glance up, I catch a flicker of recognition in Luc’s eyes. I smile faintly. “Wait a second–you said you didn’t listen to our music.”
His lips twitch. “I might have looked you up when we were invited to the concert. And I’ve maybe listened to a few songs since. Once I knew it was you.”
I gape at him. “That’s not one of our popular tracks. It’s practically obscure. Luc, are you a fan?” I clutch my chest and fake a swoon.
He scoffs. “You wish.”
We laugh, and then he asks quietly, “Did writing that song help you process?”
“Yeah,” I admit. “That and being shit-faced all the time.”
His head tilts curiously. “Is that why you wrote Remember My Name?”
I freeze. Somehow, after all this time, it never occurred to me that I’d have to answer for those lyrics.
“It’s about that night, isn’t it? The bonfire, and… after.”
For once, I’m not sure how to answer. How much can I divulge without sounding totally obsessive?
“I wrote the hook on a napkin at a diner the morning after,” I admit finally. “Finished the rest on the plane. After our first meeting in New York, Naz found me passed out with a vodka bottle and a notebook open to the lyrics. He suggested we use it for the debut EP.”
“Wow. Who would have thought?”
My throat tightens. “It’s not the only song about you on that album.”
“What other songs?” His curiosity is too sharp to ignore.
“Make Me Real. The Tide. Take It Back. Pieces. Haunted.” I don’t tell him that nearly every filthy lyric I’ve ever written came from thinking about him.
He mouths the word Haunted, looking unsure. Maybe it’s not familiar to him, because he pulls out his phone, types, and scrolls. His lips move as he reads silently, then he reads aloud:
You’ve haunted me since that night
One touch and I came alive
I’m still burning, I can’t make it right
Possess me, bury me, take me
From the silence where you left me behind
Luc frowns. “Left you behind?”
I lift my shoulders and make a pitiful cringe face. “Artistic license. The guys thought the song sounded better this way, and I wasn’t ready to admit just how pathetic I was.”
“So they don’t know where the songs came from?”
I shake my head. “Naz does now. I told him after I saw you on TV. He said they’d all assumed I’d been through something that I didn’t want to talk about and didn’t press.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, then clears his throat.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this, but it’s funny, actually.
I heard Remember My Name on the radio or something.
It must have been when it first came out because it wasn’t too long after…
And well, it reminded me of that night. I hated it at first, but then I kept listening.
And the more I listened, the lighter I felt.
Like someone else knew my pain.” He chuckles and rubs a hand over his face, pushing his hair back.
“Who would have ever thought it was the song he wrote to get over it.”
“It didn’t work.”
His brow furrows. “What?”
“I never got over it. That night. You. I could show you notebooks full of lyrics and thoughts that never became songs.”
He swallows. “I’d kind of like to see that.”
“Yeah, no. It would ruin the illusion.”
“What illusion?”
“That I’m suave and charming.”
He laughs, warm and rumbly, like distant thunder. “Do I really think that?”
“Come on. I brought you here in a helicopter and impressed you with my dry-humping skills. You’re practically in love with me already.”
He cracks up, shaking his head. Damn if that laugh isn’t the most beautiful sound.
I grin and nudge his leg with my bare foot. “Let’s go sit on the couch. I’ll get dessert.”
Luc perks up. “There’s dessert?”
“Of course. Looks healthy as hell, but the chefs here are magicians.”
He carries our drinks to the sofa, deliberately sitting on the opposite end from where we were tangled up earlier. Maybe intentional, maybe not. I grab a plate of mini fruit tarts from the fridge and set it between us.
“These are almost too pretty to eat,” I exclaim, pulling off the label card. “Made with almond flour and no added sugar.” What the hell kind of dessert did they set me up with?
“They look delicious.”
“If they taste like cardboard, I’m demanding sundaes.”
“You’re ridiculous. Hand me one.”
I hold out the plate, and he takes one, biting in. “Oh, damn. That’s really good.”
“Damn it.”