29. Tom Cobalt
TOM COBALT
My neck feels like it’s sustained a five-hour sunburn by the time I shut the door behind us, and I expect Phoenix to make a comment on it. But he’s digging through his unzipped backpack.
“Here.” He tosses a bottle at me, and I fumble it in my hands. It hits the floor with a thud.
“So you’re not good at everything, nepo baby.”
“That’s so untrue. I am good at most everything, and I can catch. You just caught me off guard.” I pick the drink off the floor, and my brows furrow when I read the label. Pedialyte.
My heart hammers in my chest, and Phoenix holds up a couple bananas by the stem. “Second chance.” He barely gives me time before throwing the fruit underhanded at me, and I’m able to catch it in the crook of my elbow.
Gloating drowns under my confusion, and my pulse thumps loudly in my ears. “What is this?”
“Stuff for your hangover.” Nonchalantly, he sinks down on my bed like this is nothing. It’s not nothing. Not to me. Warner couldn’t be bothered to even bring me a cough drop when I had bronchitis for two weeks.
Obviously, I shouldn’t be making a big deal out of it since Phoenix is acting like he brought me a guitar pick. Maybe he does this for everyone in his life who drinks too much and makes an absolute fool of themselves.
I just don’t know if I deserve it.
Mister Feathers lets out a sudden high-pitched, “Come here! Come here!”
Phoenix tries not to appear unsettled, but the minute an incessant, metal tapping noise begins, he cringes. “That is creepy as fuck.”
“You’re thinking about the cockatoo all wrong.”
“Please explain.” He places his backpack on my bed.
“He’s drumming against the cage. He loves sound and loves the company of others. He’s basically—”
“You?”
“Ha-ha. I was going to say a performer.”
“So you,” he deadpans.
I give him a middle finger while I debate locking my bedroom door. Do I need to? No, no. If one of my brothers barges in here, it’s fine. I’m not hooking up with Phoenix.
Nothing can happen.
I made that very clear last night. To him and myself. My stomach is a pretzel as I walk away from the unlocked door.
Phoenix plugs in the charger to the outlet beside my bed and connects his phone.
He unties each boot, then pries them off before he brings his legs up to my black comforter.
I watch him shrug off his motorcycle jacket.
His very tight long-sleeved tee molds to the mountains and valleys of muscle along his arms.
Before he catches me staring, I untwist the cap to the Pedialyte. “Thanks,” I tell him and guzzle half the bottle before setting it on my nightstand with the bananas.
Phoenix’s eyes flit over me as he grabs his journal. “We should talk about last night.”
My lips vibrate under an explosive breath. Mortified heat expands through my chest. “Yeah. Yeah. Dude. Last night was not my best. I can admit I drank too much after I saw you kissing Big Red.”
Phoenix glares. “I want to appreciate the honesty, but the fuck—Big Red?”
“I’m not talking about his dick size.”
“No shit.”
“He was as tall as you,” I clarify. “Hey, that means you’re basically Big Bir—”
“Finish that sentence, and I will walk out of this room.” He closes his journal and rises to his feet to emphasize the threat.
I smile, but it fades fast when last night replays in my head. All jokes aside, the bitter jealousy still sours my stomach worse than the hangover.
Phoenix studies my expression. “You remember the part where I said I only kissed him because I was hurt, and it was a mistake on my part?”
“Yeah,” I nod, tensed.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Me too. I was also hurt, and texting RJ was a mistake on my part. So yeah, I’m really sorry for dragging you through a dramatic, drunken night.”
“I’ve dragged people through worse.” He doesn’t elaborate, and by the pain in his eyes, I don’t know if I want to pry right now. I’m assuming it has to do with his arrest.
I just nod again.
Phoenix pops a couple knuckles, then sets his intense gaze on me. “I’m going to be really honest with you at the risk of making this weird between us.”
I feel knocked out of breath.
“This is your chance to tell me to shut the fuck up,” Phoenix adds. “You want me to bury whatever, I will.” He rephrases fast, “I’ll try.”
I’m already tempted by his “whatever”—I crave to know what that entails. “Go ahead,” I say. “Be honest.”
He inhales strongly. “I want you beyond fucking reason. Beyond comprehension. But I can’t have you, and I know exactly why you’re not going there with me.
I respect how much you want to protect the band, but man, the idea of seeing you with someone else is making me go out of my fucking mind.
I spent most of last night wondering what that looks like and being sick to my stomach.
You’ll never hear me suggesting you hook up with another guy again.
It’ll be a miracle if I don’t shove RJ or whoever you’re with into a brick wall. ”
Oxygen thins around us. My chest heaves, and too many emotions barrel into me at once, some conflicting. Panic, relief, pure joy, raw fear.
I clear my throat to find air. “You said this is the longest you’ve gone without sex. You could just be so blue-balled that it’s messing with your head while you’re around me. Which I would get. I am unquestionably the most attractive man you’ve ever laid eyes on.”
“Wow, I take it all back.”
“Don’t take it all back,” I tell him. “Take like none of it back.”
Phoenix arches his brows at my forming smirk. “You are so, so arrogant.” He looks like he wants to throttle me.
“Guilty as charged.” I hold up my fists together like I’m prepared for the handcuffs.
His nose flares. “Put your hands down.”
“Or what?”
“Tom,” he growls. “I’m five short seconds away from slamming you against the wall. Please. Listen to me.” He clasps his palms together in prayer formation. “Put. Your. Hands. Down.”
Blood descends, my pulse raging, and all I want to do is contest him. Push against whatever barriers were erected between us. It turns me on too much, and I guess this is the problem. I am the problem. Because I’m not switching on a green light for him. He’s sitting at a red light.
I lower my hands to my side.
“Thank you,” he exhales a relieved breath, then makes a tense trek to the bed. Phoenix sits on the edge, bent forward and rubbing his face.
Tension is so thick, I’m back to barely breathing. So I try to convince myself nothing much has changed. We were wading in neck-high attraction before Phoenix tried to kiss me. We can go back to that place, right?
Or is he saying he can’t…?
My brain thumps from a migraine, so I snatch the banana off the nightstand and sit beside him.
Phoenix doesn’t move over to give me space, and his thigh presses up against mine. Neither of us shifts away. I unpeel the banana in the strained silence.
He’s breathing hard through his nose and staring at the closet door. Finally, he says, “I don’t think you’re understanding me.”
“I think I do.” I take a large bite of banana. His eyes dip toward my mouth as I chew the fruit.
He works his jaw as he skims the angles of my face, and he tells me, “Then you know I’m not going to get off and get over you.”
I swallow the banana, grateful I don’t fucking choke.
Phoenix holds my gaze. “I care about you, Tom.”
I’m lightheaded, drifting away from him, until he pushes my jaw with two fingers, forcing my eyes back on his, and now I’m struggling. To keep my hands to myself. To not turn on the green light.
I have the banana peel. It’s gross. Banana hands. He wouldn’t want those on him.
It’s my only defense against body-crashing into Phoenix.
“I know you care,” I manage to say. “I felt it…” I feel it right now.
Maybe it’s deeper than just caring, but I’m too afraid to name it.
So I just tell him, “I care about you too, and I don’t know if I can handle you with…
with another guy. Really, I haven’t pictured it much at all.
Not while I’m hungover. I might end up hugging a toilet.
” I take a breath. “So I feel the same about you. I mean, I don’t know about pushing Big Red into a wall, but I could bite the shit out of him. ”
He shakes his head. A ragged breath parts his lips. “No.”
“No? I could draw blood, dude.”
“No, I don’t like the idea of you putting your mouth on any guy.
” His brown-blue eyes redden considerably.
“Do you understand? I am that fucked up right now. That the idea of you biting another man completely wrecks me. I don’t get like this, Tom.
” He fists his journal, but his eyes don’t break from mine.
My throat swells under his gaze. We’re both being blasted by a megaton load of jealousy, but where does this leave us if I’m still not ready to take a gamble?
I throw the banana peel toward my trash bin.
Then I collapse backward on the bed and reach for a pillow.
Smothering my face beneath it and groaning in absolute, total frustration.
Why am I like this? Why can’t I just give in fully to him and not feel like I’m destroying everything I’ve worked for? Why is this so fucking hard for me?
Phoenix pries the pillow off. He chucks it aside. He’s propped on his forearm, staring down at me. “Can we agree on something?” he asks, breaking my thought spiral.
“I agree.”
His lips twitch, and he pushes his dark hair out of his face. “You have no fucking idea what I’m going to say.”
“Dude, it has to be better than the self-flagellation in my brain.”
“Don’t do that,” he says harshly.
“Trying. Trying.” I turn my head on the bed, looking up at him. “What is it?”
“Let’s get through this album without fucking other people. That’s what we’ve been doing so far anyway.”
I sit up on my elbows, more winded. Our deadline to finish the album is at the end of this month, and it’s still the first week of March.
“You’re hesitating?” Phoenix frowns.
“Yeah, not because of me.” I put a hand to my chest. “I can do no sex for another month. Hell, I could probably go without it for a while. It doesn’t bother me. You were strung out last night, dude.”