Chapter 21 Mabel
MABEL
I raise my hand to knock, hold it there for a few seconds, then drop it back to my side.
I wait, staring at the door as if I can see through the wood, but I can’t. When my vision starts to go unfocused, I blink and cast my gaze to the ceiling.
This is a bad idea.
I should leave her alone for a while. For her sake but also for mine. My heart hasn’t stopped racing since she left my bedroom two hours ago. Her flushed face and wide hazel-green eyes have stayed at the forefront of my mind.
The way she looks at me. The way she makes me feel...
No one has ever looked at me that way. No one has ever had this kind of effect on me before. Not even Kat, and we dated for years. I thought Kat was my forever, but she never once made me feel the way I do when I’m with Aurora. Needy and needed. Valuable and worthy. Wild and fearless.
I know how dangerous this is.
I know how stupid I’m being.
I don’t need complications. I don’t need mess, and nothing but mess would come from acting on whatever emotions are barreling through my body right now.
I should keep my distance. I know this. I know it.
I know it, but I knock anyway, and the moment Aurora opens the door, all the warning signals silence.
“Hey. What’s up?”
Just seeing her makes me smile. Her hair is wet like she’s showered, and she’s changed clothes. I recognize the outfit from her shopping bags in Adelaide.
“Nothing. Just saying hi.”
“Oh.” Her lips curl into a soft smile that makes my skin heat. “Well. Hi.”
“Have you settled in?”
“Yeah, mostly. Jones brought my suitcases up. I was just checking out our little terrace thing.”
I tilt my head to the side. “Our?”
“Oh. Yeah. Have you not seen it? Since our rooms are side by side, I think we share the terrace. I saw another set of doors when I was out there just now.”
“The terrace connects our rooms?”
“I think so, yeah. Come look.”
Well, shit.
She swings the door wide and gestures into her room, so I follow her to the open French doors that lead to the terrace.
I have an identical set of doors in my room, but I haven’t opened them to explore yet.
I was too busy fixating on the conversation we’d had when she admitted to not enjoying sex and probably never having a real orgasm with a man.
The boyfriend gets a pass because it was high school, but I’m certain her husband is a fucking loser. The guy is a full ass adult and can’t make his wife come? Huge fucking loser.
I almost searched him up on social media to see what he looks like, but I stopped myself. I don’t know if I want to know. I don’t know if I want him to be real yet, and that’s another thing that makes this situation dangerous.
I force the thought from my head and step out onto the terrace after Aurora. Sure enough, when I peer into the other pair of French doors, I can see right into my room.
Goddamn it.
I realize the terrace is basically just an outside hallway, but something about it feels different. It feels intimate and secretive. Romantic. Sexy, even. I almost groan.
Dangerous. This is all so very dangerous.
“See? That’s your room, right?”
I force a smile and nod. “Yep, it sure is.”
“Well, we have a great view, right?”
I turn and look over the glass half wall.
Directly below is an infinity pool with a swim-up bar and a hot tub.
Past that is a sliver of yard full of bright green grass, a deck with modern lounge furniture, and a firepit.
Then, just beyond that, down a small hill, the grass gives way to a sandy beach that leads to the ocean.
This house backs up directly to the beach, and it’s beautiful.
“Wow.”
I scan the horizon, then close my eyes and inhale, the briny air filling my lungs as the ocean waves create the most relaxing background music.
How lucky am I that this is my life now?
Last week, I was in a luxury hilltop lodge in Adelaide.
This week it’s an oceanfront mansion in Sydney.
And in a few days, I’ll be playing another sold-out show for thousands of people who love my band.
They’ll dance and sing along to music I helped create, and I’ll leave that stage feeling alive and loved and immeasurably happy.
It’s almost perfect.
As close to perfect as I could get, anyway, and not for the first time, I wonder how it would have been different if I’d not been left at that fire station.
The question has been occurring more frequently since learning about my birth mom.
It’s been so persistent that it’s in my dreams, as if even my subconscious needs to weigh the pros and cons of meeting her.
What would it change? Nothing? Everything? I don’t know which outcome I fear more.
Who would I be if she’d kept me? Would Mabel Rossi even exist? Would The Hometown Heartless? Would I have ever learned to play drums or met Sav and the guys? It’s hard to imagine myself without the music. Without my band. My family.
Family.
If my birth mother had kept me, I might not have gone through all those foster homes.
I wouldn’t have found Ms. Mabel’s lifeless body.
Wouldn’t have run away at fifteen, been recruited into Oscar’s gang of lost kids, and become a busking pickpocket.
There are so many difficult, painful memories from the last thirty years of my life that I could do without.
That I likely wouldn’t have had to endure had my mother kept me.
But if I’d not endured them, would I still be me?
“I think it’s called Whale Beach.”
Aurora’s voice pulls me from my thoughts, and when I look at her, she’s studying the GPS on her phone.
“And apparently there’s a rock pool”—she glances up and points into the distance—"that way down the beach.”
“A rock pool?”
“Yeah. As far as I can tell, it’s like a pool carved out of the rock that sits just off the ocean. Here.”
She hands her phone to me, the screen full of images of Sydney rock pools. I click on the first one to enlarge it, but before the photo can load, her phone rings, and the screen fills with a video chat request from Brady.
My eyes dart to Aurora, and what I see fills me with anger.
The color has leeched from her cheeks, and she’s staring wide-eyed at the phone. She is the picture of dread, and I can feel her fear in my gut. It spikes my adrenalin so my fingers tremble. I fist my hand and try to stay calm.
“I can leave so you can talk if you want?”
Her attention jumps to my face, and she shakes her head. “No. Stay. Stay.”
I nod and hand her the phone. I watch her take two deep inhales and exhales before plastering on a fake smile and answering.
I hate his voice immediately.
“Hey, Br—”
“Oh, so you can answer the phone.”
She flinches. “I told you I was flying.”
“Your location says you’ve been in Sydney for almost three hours.”
“Yeah, but I’ve been unpacking. I took a shower. I’m sor—”
“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t in some club doing God knows what.”
“Brady, it’s eleven in the morning.”
The asshole on the other end sighs, and I watch as Aurora chews on the inside of her cheek.
If she weren’t holding the phone, I bet she’d be wringing her hands right now.
Instead, she’s clutching the pendant on her necklace like a life preserver, and she’s holding the phone so tightly that her knuckles are turning white.
I’ve never wanted to hit a man so much in my life. And that’s saying something, considering I’m on tour with the Caveat boys, and I had to put up with Jonah in his pre-sobriety era.
“How am I supposed to know what those depraved rock stars have you doing? It seems like getting drunk at all hours of the day and blowing all your money is standard these days.”
Aurora drops her voice lower and her shoulders slump. She visibly shrinks into herself, and I get the distinct feeling she’s trying to hide.
From him? From me?
Maybe I should leave and give her some privacy. This is a personal conversation between spouses, and maybe it’s disrespectful for me to witness it.
But fuck that man.
I don’t owe him respect, and I’m not leaving her right now. I do, however, turn my attention to the ocean and hope that it makes her feel a little less uncomfortable. I’m a calming presence, not a gawker. I’ll just be here if she needs me.
“It was only thirty dollars. One drink. We talked about this.”
“Thirty dollars at a bar. One hundred dollars at some bullshit store in Melbourne. You’re being irresponsible, Aurora.”
This fucking bastard. Now the separate account makes sense. She’s here working, getting paid to be Brynn’s tutor, and he’s flipping out over one hundred and thirty dollars? I hate him.
“I already apologized for that. You don’t have to keep bringing it up.”
“You don’t belong there. You need to come home.”
I whip my head around, and I’m sure my anger is apparent on my face. Aurora flicks her eyes quickly to me, then back to the phone, but I don’t miss the slight shake of her head warning me not to interfere.
I grit my teeth and fist my hands, but I don’t turn back around. I glare at that phone and hope that he can feel it. He should be ashamed of himself.
“The tour isn’t over yet, Brady. I’m supposed to be—”
“You’re supposed to be home. You’ve got responsibilities as my wife that you’re neglecting, and now that you’re not answering my calls—”
“I was on a pla—"
“Do not interrupt me!”
That’s it. I’ve heard enough. My feet launch me forward with zero thoughts in my head except to put a stop to this conversation.
Aurora gapes at me, her lips parting on a small gasp, but the fuckhead on the other end doesn’t notice.
He just keeps going, spewing verbal abuse like it’s as natural as breathing.
Speaking to her like this is a common occurrence. It all makes fucking sense now.
“For fuck’s sake, Aurora, I have no idea what those assholes in The Hometown Heartless are doing to you, but you need to—”
“Hey there!”