Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tim
I BLINK AS KEANNEN flops into bed beside me, but I don’t dare speak. He shuffles under the covers like it’s no big deal. With my body aching and buzzing and humming in all the right ways, I don’t have the faculties to process this. Maybe it’s normal? No, I can’t be that much of an inexperienced idiot. Guys who hate you don’t stay to cuddle. Or stay to … do whatever Keannen is doing.
I roll over onto my back. We lie in bed like an old married couple after the spark is long dead, except the spark is very much alive and I have the post-nut glow to prove it. In fact, I’m drowsy and heavy with contentment, and if this moment wasn’t so weird, I’d probably be deep into a dark, dreamless sleep.
Apparently, Keannen feels the same. We lie there silently for a while, then I notice his breathing going deeper. When I look over, his face is more at peace than I’ve seen it in … well, in eight years, almost nine. That relaxed, contented expression sends me back to some of those moments in his car or under the bleachers, the moments after our lips parted when he was briefly unguarded. When Mom yanked me out of school, I never thought I’d see that look again.
I reach for the light, flicking it off. Then I lie on my side, watching Keannen sleep until the dark drags me down.
HE WAKES WITH A gasp. The sound rouses me as well. I remained on my side all night, but at some point I apparently shuffled closer to him, so close my hair brushes his bare shoulder.
At least until he sits up.
Keannen groans, rubbing at his face. “Shit, it’s morning.”
I force myself up beside him, pleased to discover an ache lingering in my body like a reminder of last night. That remnant leaves me wanting more, but Keannen is reaching over the side of the bed for his pants and pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“I stayed here all night,” he says as though revealing this fact to himself .
“It’s alright,” I say. “I don’t have a roommate, and Cameron is with Julian. No one will be looking for us. Back at the bar, they were all saying you probably left with some groupie.”
He raises one black eyebrow. “A groupie? How the hell would a groupie have gotten into a bar we bought out?”
“I dunno, but your bandmates didn’t seem surprised by it.” The reminder stings, but I try not to let it show. Keannen doesn’t want me getting attached. He’s made that quite clear. I’m lucky he’ll see me at all, at least while we’re on tour.
He regards me strangely, and my stomach twists. Am I being too obvious? Is that sting in my chest showing on my face?
“You alright?” he says. “I mean, with what happened last night and everything?”
“Oh!”
I have to blink the sleep from my eyes all over again. He isn’t asking if I’m heartbroken or something. He’s asking if I’m physically okay. I’m not sure I could be much more physically okay, though. I always expected pain with that experience, but Keannen was so devoutly thorough that I was more than ready for him, my body screaming for him by the time he finally got inside me.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m kinda great, actually.”
A ghost of a smile haunts his lips. “Good, I’m glad. I mean, it’s supposed to feel good. That’s kind of the point.”
“Right. Yeah.”
We lapse into a charged silence. Only the sheets cover us; Keannen’s as naked under the thin cotton as I am. My eyes trail down his chest, following the trickle of hair that disappears beneath the sheet and the tattoos wrapped around his arms and back. I now know there’s one on his leg as well, and I want nothing as much as I want to kiss my way up it and fill my mouth with him. We’re supposed to pack up and get on the road today, but maybe if we were fast…
“No,” Keannen says.
I jerk my eyes upward.
“No morning sex,” he says. “I shouldn’t have stayed here last night. I can’t be gone that long.”
He slips out of bed before I can protest, and I get one last glimpse of his ass before he throws on last night’s jeans and shirt and hoodie. Just like that, he’s cloaked in black, his body off-limits. Dread sinks into my belly as I realize how few opportunities I have left. The trip across the country comes with a timer that’s constantly ticking down in the back of my head. We’ll be on the bus a lot, and that isn’t going to afford us many chances to hook up. There’s a stop in South Dakota, but that might be it. Some motel on a flat, barren, empty stretch of I-90 might be the last chance I ever have with him.
Those thoughts send me hurtling out of bed. I throw on the briefs that ended up on the floor while Keannen is patting his pockets to make sure his wallet and phone are still there. I round the bed, not sure what I’m planning to do, only sure I need to get in his way before he sprints out of here.
“Hey, that was pretty cool last night,” I say. “I mean, like, I enjoyed it.”
His eyebrow quirks. “Good. You should enjoy it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
I don’t care about anyone else, I don’t say. I don’t care about anyone but him making me feel like that . It hasn’t even crossed my mind. I struggle to imagine getting back to Seattle and using my new experiences as a means to jump in bed with someone who isn’t him.
He snorts, smirking at me, then cups my cheek and draws me to his lips. It isn’t like the hot, greedy, passionate kisses last night. Those were bruises; this is a balm. He lingers against my mouth, warm, soft even, his hand cupping my cheek. When he pulls away, he thumbs over my cheek like he’s collecting my freckles to take with him.
My heart flutters despite my very best intentions.
“Last night was fun,” Keannen says.
I’m a little shaky when I respond. “Yeah, it was.”
Keannen’s smile isn’t a knife, and I’m not afraid of cutting myself against it the way I should be. He’s giving me just enough space for hope. Maybe some of the resentment has faded. Maybe he’s seen that things are different now, that we’re different. What happened in the past can stay there if we choose to leave it there.
“What happens now?” I ask.
Keannen shrugs. “We move on.”
Ice floods my chest. His smile is softer, his hand is on my cheek, yet somehow nothing has changed.
“It was fun, right?” he says. “Doesn’t need to be more than that. Maybe we’ll get another chance at our last stop, if you’re up for it.”
Somehow, I manage to say, “I am.”
Keannen smirks. “That’s my good little slut-in-training. Of course you are.”
The joke should sting, but my chest has no space for such a toothless barb. It’s too busy aching over how casually he’s dismissing this. Maybe it’s my inexperience, but I thought last night might have, I dunno, meant something. I thought doing something like that might have meant more than a blowie in a bathroom stall, especially when he stayed the night. But it seems Keannen can do even that while keeping up the wall that stands between us.
He slides his hand off my face and makes for the door of the hotel room. I chase after him, but when he opens the door, I can’t find the words that might make him stay. Whatever this is, it’s weird. It’s really weird. It’s a whole big tangled mess of memories and emotions and sex, and I have no idea where to begin smoothing it out.
When he slips into the hall, I let him go, just like I let him go when we were kids. He waves once and saunters down the hall with his hands in his pockets, casual as anything. As I stand there with my heart crumbling to dust in my chest, I wonder if this is how Keannen felt when my mom took me out of Baltimore. I’ll see him again now, but back then, I didn’t send him so much as a DM. Suddenly all of his resentment makes a lot more sense to me. Sure, I had my reasons, but Keannen didn’t know that. He had to watch me leave without a word.
Just as he’s leaving now.
I’ll have one more chance. I never thought I’d be excited to be in South Dakota, but suddenly, I can’t wait for the bus to rumble onto that barren strip of nowhere.
I BARELY HAVE TIME to shower and pack before I need to get downstairs with my bags. I have about ten minutes left to snag whatever is left over from the hotel breakfast spread, then everyone has to get ourselves and all our equipment on the bus. As high as everyone was flying last night, the exhaustion of a six-week tour pummels us today. We pack up quietly, everyone going to their separate corners when we make it onto the bus.
I place myself beside a window and watch Chicago roll away beyond the glass. The buildings shrink, bustling cityscape giving way to flat, open Midwest landmass with shocking speed. All the lights and stages and screaming crowds disappear at our backs as the bus trundles onto the highway to take us back to real life.
Right now, that “real life” lies shrouded in fog. It should be simple. We’ve got another album to make when we get home. But what about the rest of my life? Before now, I didn’t care about being alone. I didn’t even care that much about being a virgin. I’d settled into my life, and it wasn’t a bad life by any means. Keannen has rearranged my existence into something I barely recognize, however, and I don’t know what that means for what I once considered “normal.”
“Hey.”
I look up to find Cameron sitting beside me. There’s a question in his gaze, the same worried question he’s been asking me this entire tour, but I have no more answers today than I did the first time Keannen cornered me and upended my life.
“I’m good,” I say before he can ask. “Just end of the tour blues.”
He nods. It’s a plausible enough explanation. As much as we’re all exhausted, we’ll also all miss this. It’s an experience very few people get to have. We’re fortunate beyond our wildest dreams, and it’s always a little hard leaving the flashy shows and adoring fans behind.
“Alright,” Cameron says. “Just so you know, we have a long ride ahead. We can talk if you want. Not much else to do.”
I smile. Cameron’s not a talker, so the offer means a little more coming from him than it would coming from most people.
“I know,” I say. “I appreciate it.”
He nods and leaves it that. Somewhere behind me, Kelsey is napping, and Erin is working on lyrics for the songs we’ll record back home. These three people have gotten me through so much, they’ve changed my life in ways they don’t even realize, but none of them can help me with this one. Whatever Keannen means for my life, whatever I’m feeling about our connection, it’s a challenge I’ll have to tackle without my bandmates.
I never thought I’d dread getting home at the end of all this, but suddenly all my hopes hinge on a motel in the middle of South Dakota.