Chapter Thirteen
Revel
The morning starts with some fucking bullshit.
Cece isn’t in bed.
I reach across the mattress, finding nothing but cold sheets where she’s supposed to be, and crack one eye open.
The fuck?
Just because it’s Sunday doesn’t mean she gets to skip out on her community service. I’m pretty sure keeping me satisfied was part of the court-ordered arrangement she made up to justify sleeping with me in the first place.
I roll onto my back and scrub a hand over my face.
Unbelievable.
She spends half the night wrapped around me, stealing my body heat, hogging my pillow and slowly taking over my side of the bed, then fucks off before I wake up.
Rude as shit.
Feels a lot like a dine-and-dash, and after the fucking five-star service I provided last night, I deserve better than this.
The lock clicks before I can decide how much shit I’m giving her for abandoning her civic duties.
Cece backs into the room carrying a drink tray and a paper bag against her hip. Her hair is twisted up in a messy knot, sunglasses pushed onto her head, and she’s wearing one of my shirts again like this has suddenly become a normal thing.
I sit up against the headboard and look her over. “Well, shit. Breakfast and my shirt? Careful, you’re getting dangerously domestic.”
She gives me a flat look as she sets everything down. “I got us breakfast because if I came back with one burrito, you’d eat half of mine and somehow convince yourself you were helping.”
“I would be helping. Portion control.”
“Touch my food and lose a finger.”
“See, this is why we work. Communication.”
She hands me my coffee, and I take a sip before looking over at her.
Exactly how I order it. Not surprising—Cece knows me.
We’ve been around each other long enough for that.
Still, there’s something about her walking back into the room wearing my shirt with breakfast and my coffee that hits different this morning.
“Fuck, Mama.” I settle back against the headboard, taking her in. “This is a hell of a way to wake up.”
“Because I brought you food?”
“Food, coffee, you walking around in my shirt.” I grin. “Whole fucking package.”
She looks down at herself. “It’s comfortable.”
“Never said it wasn’t. Looks real fucking comfortable from here.”
“Ay, cochino.” She grabs her burrito and climbs onto the bed. “Eat before I regret feeding you.”
I catch her around the waist as she passes and pull her down beside me, making her coffee slosh dangerously close to the lid.
“Revel, cono.” She elbows me in the stomach. “You almost made me spill it.”
“Relax. Saved it.”
“You caused the fucking problem.”
“And fixed it. Basically a hero.”
“You’re basically an idiot.”
“Your idiot?”
Her head turns slowly.
I grin around another sip of coffee. “Too soon?”
“Way too fucking soon.”
“Worth checking.”
She rolls her eyes, but when I lean over and kiss her, she meets me halfway without any of the hesitation she used to have. Her hand slides along my jaw, mouth lingering against mine for another second before she pulls back and reaches into the bag.
Yeah.
I fucking like this new development.
“You taste like coffee,” she mutters.
“You taste like me.”
Her eyes snap to mine.
I grin.
“Ay, fuck you.”
“Already did. Twice actually.”
She shoves my burrito against my chest. “Eat.”
I laugh and unwrap it while she settles into my side with hers. The TV is still muted from last night, some painfully cheerful Sunday morning shit playing across the screen, but Cece barely looks at it. She’s three bites into breakfast when her phone lights up.
Then again.
And again.
I glance toward it as another notification rolls across the screen.
“Jesus. The fuck did you do last night, Mama? Break Miami?”
She looks at me over the top of her phone. “My notifications have been fucking insane since last night. Every time I clear them, ten more show up.”
“Sounds like a good problem to have.”
“It is.” Her thumb keeps moving as she scrolls. “People are tagging me in videos from the set, my follower count jumped, there are comments everywhere. Someone posted the drop from the middle of my set and it’s already getting shared like crazy.”
I grin around another bite of breakfast. “Because you fucking killed it.”
“I know.” She says it without trying to downplay it this time, a little smile pulling at her mouth. “It’s just weird. I woke up and suddenly there are all these people who didn’t know who the fuck I was yesterday talking about me.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” She looks at the screen again, and her smile gets bigger. “Yeah, it fucking is.”
Another notification comes through before she can finish reading the last one.
“James has been texting me too. He said two promoters asked him for my contact info last night, and some guy from another festival followed me this morning.”
“Well, fuck, Mama.” I reach over and squeeze her thigh. “Look at you go.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised. I’m fucking impressed. There’s a difference.”
Her eyes flick up to mine, and for a second that confident little smile softens.
Then she ruins it.
“As you should be.”
I laugh.
“What? You’ve been telling me I’m hot shit all weekend. I’m finally agreeing with you.”
“About fucking time.”
She bumps her foot against my leg and goes back to scrolling, stopping every few seconds to answer something or show me a video somebody posted.
One catches her halfway through a transition, the crowd fucking losing it when the beat hits, and watching her face light up while she watches herself is almost better than seeing it happen from backstage.
Then another message appears and her entire expression changes.
“Aww, my baby.”
I don’t even have to ask which baby.
She turns the phone toward me.
Guac is sprawled across her couch back home, wrapped in one of her blankets with his wrinkly little head poking out, staring directly at the camera like he’s been abandoned for several years instead of a weekend.
“Jesus Christ.” I take the phone for a closer look. “He looks pissed at you.”
“That’s his sad face.”
“That naked little fuck has one face.”
She snatches her phone back. “Don’t talk about my son like that.”
“Your son would sell you for a bag of treats.”
“He can be emotionally complex and food motivated, cabrón.”
I laugh as she zooms in on the picture like there’s anything more to see besides seventeen pounds of offended wrinkle tucked into a blanket.
By the time we finish eating, her phone is still going off, and she’s bouncing between answering messages and packing.
The excitement has finally won out over the nerves from yesterday, and every few minutes she’ll stop what she’s doing to tell me about another tag, another comment, another person asking when she’s playing next.
By eleven, most of our shit is packed.
Mine takes about five minutes.
Cece, meanwhile, has checked the bathroom twice, opened every drawer she swears she never used, looked under the bed, checked every outlet for chargers, and is currently standing in the middle of the room staring around like we’re evacuating a fucking crime scene.
We get everything downstairs and loaded into the Civic, and for once, leaving actually looks like it might be simple.
That should have been the warning.
Cece slides into the driver’s seat, pushes the key into the ignition, and turns it.
The car makes a horrible grinding cough, shudders once, then dies.
She freezes.
I slowly turn my head toward her.
She keeps staring straight ahead. “Whatever face you’re making, stop.”
“I’m not making a face.”
“You are. I can feel it.”
She tries again.
The Civic makes the same sound, only angrier this time.
I wince. “Yeah. That’s new.”
Her head snaps toward me. “Fix it.”
I laugh and climb out before she decides murder is easier.
The Florida heat hits hard the second I pop the hood. Cece is beside me almost immediately, arms folded, watching over my shoulder while I check everything I can without an actual set of tools.
It doesn’t take long to realize this isn’t another battery problem.
I straighten and wipe my hands on my shorts.
She sees my face and groans. “No. Absolutely not. You fixed it last time.”
“Last time it was a battery. This isn’t.”
“So what is it?”
“I don’t know yet. I need tools and somewhere I can actually get under it.”
She gestures vaguely toward the engine bay. “You know engines you said. This is an engine. Figure it out.”
I turn and stare at her. “That’s not how mechanics work, Mama. I’m standing in a hotel parking lot with sunglasses, a phone charger, and breakfast still digesting. I’m not rebuilding your Civic by hand because you’re glaring at it aggressively.”
Her mouth twitches even though she’s trying not to let it. “So you’re useless.”
“Currently under-equipped.”
“Same thing.”
I lean back over the engine just to double-check, but nothing here is going to magically become fixable because she’s impatient.
“We need a shop.”
The little bit of humor drops right out of her face.
“No. We need to go home.”
“I agree.”
“So fix it.”
I laugh once and look over at her. “You really think if you say it with more attitude, a wrench is gonna appear in my hand?”
“It’s worth trying.”
“Unfortunately, no.”
She blows out a breath and presses both hands to her forehead.
There it is.
Not sass anymore.
Actual stress.
I pull out my phone and call for a tow before she can start threatening the car directly.
The wait is about forty-five minutes, and Cece spends most of it pacing the edge of the parking lot while I sit on the curb.
Every few minutes she comes back, checks the hood like maybe the Civic has reconsidered, then starts listing everything she needs to do once we get home.
“I have work. Guac is probably emotionally filing for emancipation, and my laundry is sitting in the machine from before we left.”
I look up at her. “You left laundry in the machine?”
“No, cabrón. I moved it. That is not the point.”
“Good, because that would’ve been a real emergency.”
She glares at me. “You are enjoying this too much.”