Chapter 4
Chapter Four
JC
Breakfast ends on a high note, literally. Brady’s “guy” scored some weed, and once the text comes through, he and Tai lope off to get stoned. Not that I mind alone time with Gia. The past six months, something’s shifted. I feel more like my old self.
And it has everything to do with her.
“So, Terminator.” I ruffle her hair, teasing a legitimate excuse to touch her.
“What?” Gia swats away my hand. “Like you haven’t done anything you regret?”
A muscle around my mouth twitches. I quickly rearrange my face so she doesn’t notice. But Gia has good radar, and something in my expression has blipped onto her screen.
“Sorry,” she says, softer. “Kinda felt like they ganged up on me. Spilling secrets.”
“You struck back hard. Didn’t exactly make the upcoming tour more palatable for them.”
Gia searches my face. I see her lashes flutter, quick and uncertain. “And you’re cool with my request?”
If I weren’t buried in deep, painful lust, then, yes, I could survive. Otherwise…
“Do I have a choice?”
She looks away, and her silence speaks volumes. Like I don’t know this is her retaliation for the chaperone news.
“If I don’t drive the bus,” she says, “everything gets derailed. I want, need, this tour to be fire.”
“It will be,” I reassure her, stopping shy of offering to clear whatever debt she owes her parents. Not handling her own responsibilities will send Gia flying off the rails. Making it on her terms is the only way. “You’ve put in the work. I’m impressed.”
A smile flickers on her face. “Thanks. That means a lot, coming from you.”
Every so often, we land here—her bravado peeled back, letting me in. I crave these moments like the dirtiest sound screaming from my fuzz pedal. Before I can say more, our waitress swings by with the bill. I snatch it from her hand despite Gia’s howl of protest.
“Not a chance,” I say. “I’m paying.”
Gia lunges for the bill, and my body flames, hers pressed hard against mine. My hands aren’t even on her, but it doesn’t matter. I feel an overwhelming need to hold the paper high above my head all afternoon.
“This was my treat,” she insists.
I skim the bill, keeping it well out of Gia’s sightline. The waitress scrawled her phone number across the top as if all her heated gazes weren’t clues enough.
I crumple the bill and stuff it into my pocket. “Buy me a coffee in Europe, and we’re even.”
It’s so not her style to let someone else run the show, as this morning proved.
I’m only half-surprised when Gia practically sits on me, legs bracketing my hips.
Her hair tumbles forward, grazing the swell of her breasts.
I desperately need to think about something else.
It’s not the four cups of coffee spiraling through my system making me edgy and nervous.
Imagine crushing a Sweethearts candy, and that burst of powdery sweetness hits the back of your throat. Gia smells like that. Like a delicious possibility.
Sex and candy.
“You’re not paying because of what my mother said?” she asks, an edge of accusation in her voice.
“No,” I lie. “It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”
Gia locks eyes with me. It feels like the moment in a song where the bridge changes key. A tonal shift, space clearing where I can ask.
I clear my throat. “What are you up to for the rest of the day?”
“Doing everything to avoid my mother. Why?”
“Wanna hang at my place for a bit? You can tour my studio. The legendary sound chamber where all the magic happens.”
Those sooty lashes of hers flick up, and I see all sorts of trouble in her smile. “I asked for a tour weeks ago, so, duh… The answer is yes.”
“I’m parked down the street. Let’s rock.”
Gia scrambles off me, and it scares me shitless how badly I wanted her to say yes.
I fish out my wallet to leave five twenties on the table.
The waitress attempts to catch my eye as we exit, but I've mastered the zombie walk—straight ahead, no glances.
Even the slightest flicker of attention can be mistaken for interest. Admittedly, sometimes there is.
But not these days.
Not with Gia in my orbit.
It feels like I’ve been hard since August.
Outside, we hover beneath the awning. The rain hasn’t let up, and it drenches us in the thirty-second dash for my car.
Just enough time to feel the nerves in my stomach.
Gia in my home isn’t about bragging rights; it’s something else entirely.
Something that makes me unsteady because I can’t unsee her sitting on my couch.
I open the passenger door so she can slide in, then join her from the driver’s side. The windows immediately steam up, and I crank the engine to fire on the blowers. In my peripheral vision, I clock Gia fiddling with her lower lip, squeezing it between her scarlet-tipped fingers.
Jesus fuck.
Too many nights I’ve tossed and turned, hot with Gia fever.
When does it break?
Fat raindrops splatter against the windshield, falling faster and heavier. I flick on the wipers and shoulder-check before easing into traffic. Take it slow to calm my rushing mind.
“You drive like my Nonna,” Gia observes. “Why own a hot car and not pin it?”
“Because every cop likes to pull over a guy in a sports car,” I explain. “And I lost my license once from too many speeding tickets.”
She throws me a half glance. “Once bitten, twice shy?”
I laugh, even though it feels anything but funny. Story of my life right there.
“No complaints, seriously.” She traces a finger along the caramel leather dash, the whipstitching. “This beats public transit any day of the week. Not that you would know.”
I give her a little smile, mock offended. “I took the bus. Once. When I was twelve.”
“On the one day your chauffeur had off?”
“My childhood wasn’t that over the top.”
Of course it was. Why lie, because any Google search spits up pages of the flashy excess my parents threw around? After clawing his way to the pinnacle of the entertainment industry, damn if Dad didn’t flaunt his nouveau riche status.
“Right,” Gia says, heavy on the sarcasm. “Living in a castle in the ritziest part of town with hot and cold running servants. Like your entire upbringing didn’t scream white privilege.”
“Fair,” I concede. “But that’s not how I choose to live.”
“You scrub your own toilets?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
She serves up a damning look. “So … servants.”
“She prefers the term Cleaning Associate.”
A nod. Like that’s all Gia needed to hear. “And does she flounce around in a French maid’s outfit?”
“Is that the impression I give?”
I hold her gaze until she turns away with a soft, “Maybe.”
In the spreading silence, I can feel the car interior filling with my discomfort. Now it makes sense. Her hesitation with me, us, neatly summarized in one word.
Do I blame her?
Over the past decade, every few months like clockwork, a new photograph of me pops online. Me on a date in Hollywood or Vancouver, ducking the camera flash.
But what you see isn’t the whole picture.
Yes, flirting comes naturally to me. Yes, my burn rate sucks. Call it self-preservation. I end every relationship before it becomes serious. I don’t allow anything more than a scratch against my armor. My personal badge of honor is keeping that shit locked up tight.
A hotshot guitarist addled with deep-rooted trauma.
Now there’s a winning combination.
I reach for the stereo and flick it on. Nirvana’s “Lounge Act” never sounds more timeless. A friend who makes me feel.
“This time next year,” I circle back to where we left off, “when you’re rolling in the dough and have a place of your own, you can flip the script. Hire a hot stud to polish your condo.”
Gia shoots me a long look. “Is that the impression I give?”
I paddle-shift into third, opening it up to burn across the Georgia Street viaduct. Gia’s question reverberates in my mind, like the anticipation that thrummed through me a year ago.
Crammed stage left at The Troubadour in LA.
Pop My Cherry was the opener, although the packed house at eight p.m. screamed headliner. The buzz on Gia had scorched through the industry like wildfire. A once-a-decade talent like Janis, Madonna, and Beyoncé, writing her own songs and delivering them with the vocal power of a cannonball.
I slipped in solo, trying for incognito with my fedora pulled low. There’s a world where you can be invisible if you don’t draw attention to yourself.
Gia, however, made the word “invisible” obsolete.
She stood in the beam of spotlight like a prophet conjured from earth’s molten core, rattling my rib cage with sheer thrill and awe. She glowed like an ancient power I was half afraid to touch.
And now look how close we are.
Closer still, entwined with her music—music that makes me want to crawl inside of her.
“You’re a giant slayer, Gia,” I finally say. “That’s all the impression you need.”
“If everyone keeps telling me that, it might go to my head.”
“Shit. And here I thought you already hit peak insufferable.”
She laughs, smacking me on the arm. “For the hired help, you’re pretty sassy, Jameson.”
“Well, Regina, someone needs to keep you humble. We’re outnumbered. Three dudes and a diva.”
Gia relaxes into her seat, offering up a smile. “Now, that’s a song title.”
We’re both quiet for the rest of the drive, and I like how even our silences are companionable.
Half the time, my words seem to come out all wrong around her.
But you try thinking straight with her pale thighs peeking out from a barely-there romper and screaming touch me.
Hard enough to sit through breakfast with the hottest woman in the world making every forkful of scrambled eggs wobble on my fork.
I sneak a look at her profile, feeling something powerful well up in me. She must feel my stare because she snaps her eyes to mine, holding our eye contact as she asks, “Will you ever write again? Or is the itch gone forever?”
I’m too stunned to keep my face under control. I search for the wrong answer and tell the truth instead. “Actually, I came up with a decent hook a few weeks ago. Felt the flow for the first time in forever.”
“Really?” Her voice curls higher. “Sounds like I need to take full credit for being your muse.”
I bite back a smile. “Why does that not surprise me?”
Gia swivels in her seat to face me, eyes blazing coal black. Penetrating, brilliant, and scary. “Listen, I need to squawk twice as loud to be half heard as a woman in this business. You try being female, twenty, and barely five feet tall.”
“You’re preaching to the converted,” I insist. “I’m on your side a hundred percent.”
Her fire cools, gaze sweeping over mine. She hadn’t expected me to agree with her so quickly, but I understand the shit women face in this industry more than I’d like to. And what fool can overlook the brilliance of Gia’s music while it blasts them in the face?
“I wanna hear your song.” She states this. Doesn’t ask. Assumes in her gentle bulldozer way that the sea will part just for her. “You need to play it for me.”
I turn off Georgia Street into Coal Harbour’s maze of green-glassed skyscrapers.
Ease down the ramp leading to many levels of underground parking beneath my building, riffling through my options.
I could say no and let her beat it out of me, except that almost sounds appealing.
Shit. Will the lyrics be a dead giveaway? Gia’s no slouch.
“Not sure I should be sharing my best ideas with you,” I joke.
“Yes, you should,” she insists. “Because we’re musicians. And if we can’t trust each other, then we’re fucked.”
She holds up her fist, and I bump back. The gleam in her eyes, that pure, unbridled passion …
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t an absolute turn-on.
The boys might be pissed about the bus rule, but the less competition sniffing around Gia, the better.
Turns out, being nominated to chaperone her is like a free pass I didn’t know I needed.