Chapter 20
TWENTY
Friday morning I find Blaise missing from our history class, and I can’t concentrate on a thing the cougar whore says because I don’t know where the fuck he is.
Harley notices me twitching and tells me Blaise has gone to an appointment in Haven, and I send the utter dickhead a pissy text about security and threats and murderous sociopaths stalking us all.
He ignores me.
After seething through the rest of my classes for the day, Ash tucks me under his arm as we follow Avery back up to our room.
She’s happy enough on her phone that she barely notices we’re there and it’s not Ash collapses on our couch with a sigh, throwing his bag down and ripping his shoes off, that her mood shifts in an instant and she’s snarling at him for messing shit up.
I head to the coffee machine. Caffeine is necessary for my survival.
Blaise arrives to family dinner half an hour later, covered in bandages and for a second my heart stops, then I see the easy grin on his face and I know he’s fine. He winks at me and I blush when Avery cackles at the stupefied look I give him.
“I told you, I’m filling in the rest of my canvas, Star,” he murmurs as he bundles me into his arms, kissing me chastely under Avery’s watchful glare.
“Are you going to tell me what you got?” I grumble, and he laughs at me.
“You’ll have to wait and see. Or bribe me, I’m easily bought. Flash me some pink, Wolf.”
I jab him in the stomach but his solid muscles only hurt my hand. Ash smirks at me and tugs me over to sit on his lap in front of the TV while we wait for dinner. Avery is on an Italian kick and refuses to let me help out now she’s making pasta by hand.
She’s the weirdest rich kid in the fucking building, but God do I love her.
“Stop giving my sister lustful looks, Mounty,” Ash snarks, and I elbow him.
“She’s my favorite, I hope you know that,” I snark back, and he slips his hand down my waist until he gets to the hem of my shorts. My eyes flare and then narrow at him.
“I’m your favorite,” he mumbles into the skin on my neck.
I shake my head, mostly to clear it. “Nope. Definitely Avery. You’re my second favorite Beaumont though, so don’t feel too bad about it.”
His eyes fucking sparkle at me with evil intent, and I gulp. I try to move out of his lap and his arms only tighten, trapping me.
“Don’t run off. I’m fucking hungry, Mounty.”
I blush. My heart stutters in my chest at the warm honey tone in his voice, something I’ve never heard from him before. Even when we had laid together in bed all those months ago in the Bay, his dirty talk had been whispered and decisive. Not this coaxing.
I can’t fucking handle Ash Beaumont seduction if it’s like this.
“Dinner’s ready!” Avery calls out, and Ash huffs.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to get my hands on you at this rate,” he grouses, and I kiss him sweetly because I’m just as fucking frustrated.
We all take our usual seats at the table, and Harley has already changed into his swim uniform to leave as soon as he’s eaten. The second I see it I remember the last time I saw him wearing it, and heat floods my body until I’m blushing like an idiot.
I stare at my plate like it’s the answer to all my damn problems because there’s no way Avery won’t notice the puddle I’ve turned into. Dammit, I’m drooling again.
Blaise unwraps one of his hands so he can use his fork, but I’m too busy trying not to ogle Harley to see the new ink.
“Did you get stars tattooed on you? You know that tattoos are the curse of relationships, the kiss of death,” Avery says in a haughty tone, spinning her long strands of fettuccine perfectly between her fork and spoon.
Blaise gives me a look and I smile at him. I don’t think tattoos are the kiss of death for fucking anything. I’m just not that superstitious.
His foot runs along mine under the table, and my smile turns into a grin. His eyes fucking sparkle at me and I flush, glancing back down at my food and refusing to look at him. Great. So only Ash is safe for now, because he’s snarling at his sister.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me Joey was coming to the Hannaford Family Dinner?”
Ugh. The stupid dinner all seniors have to attend, even if they’re emancipated orphans, to sit and discuss their bright futures with their teachers and families. Fucking yay.
I glance up and see him glaring at Avery, all fire and rage that I don’t usually see him aiming at his sister.
Oh fuck.
“You know as well as I do that Lips had Senior removed from the picture until graduation, so he’s sending Joey in his stead.
There’s nothing I could do to stop it, but why would I tell you about it any sooner than I have to?
Harley is already an insomniac, we don’t need two sleep-deprived, grumpy assholes in the family. ”
Ash scoffs and downs the rest of his bourbon in one gulp, completely irreverent to the fact he’s got track later. Avery isn’t and she cuts him off. By the time we’re done eating, I practically flee to the kitchen to get onto the dishes.
I finish up as Blaise shoos Avery out of the door for her ballet class and flicks the lock with a little flourish, turning back to me with a cheeky grin.
“Oh, look. I find myself alone with my Star. Whatever shall I do?”
I smirk and point at our textbooks. “Studying is what you shall do.”
He laughs at me and pulls his tie off, popping the first few buttons open on his shirt. Fuck. He’s worked out that little trick too, the one where my brain melts the second any of my guys start showing extra skin.
I’m fucking doomed.
“You have three assignments due next week,” I croak, so fucking ready to cave, and he smirks at me.
“I’m just getting comfortable. Didn’t you want to see my new tattoos?”
Right. Tattoos. Yes.
I nod and he peels the bandages, tape, and plastic away from the puffy, raw skin of his hands and neck. Avery was right, he’s now covered in stars. There’s even a little one inked behind his ear, right where he usually kisses me.
“You’ll have to tape me up again. My hands are killing me,” he grumbles, and I go to rummage around in the bathroom for the first aid kit. I’m especially good at taping hands back together with all of the practice I now get with Blaise and Harley’s boxing, and Ash’s fight club matches.
Once he’s looking more bandaged than a mummy I try to get him to study but he’s too damn jittery.
“I’d concentrate better if you were naked,” he drawls, running a thumb over the swell of my chest. I bat his hand away.
“No you fucking wouldn’t. If you fail this test, I’ll be so pissed.”
He shrugs. “I won’t. I’ve been studying at night before bed too. I’m going to pass these classes and then we’ll go on tour together before you run off to college to become a doctor or an astrophysicist or… whatever the fuck geniuses become.”
I smile at him and close the textbook. “Why would I go on tour with you? Do you need a groupie on hand at all times or something?”
He leans back on the cushions, smug and relaxed. I bite my lip at the sight of him, all bandaged up, secretly marked with me. Maybe I hate my name a little less.
“I like the idea of you being there for my every need, but no. I meant because you’re going to be singing with me. Our song is going on the album, remember? Well, if I ever fucking release it.” He sighs and rubs his eyes.
“Why haven’t you? I know you’re still fussing with our song, but the rest have been done for months.”
Fuck it, I climb into his lap. He groans in frustration when he can barely hold me, and I do my best to avoid pressing on any raw patches.
“I’m thinking about leaving my label. Don’t tell anyone that, not even Ash.
He’ll have a fucking aneurysm at me over it.
But they keep interfering and I’m just… I write and play to get shit out of my head.
Because I love that I can turn that darkness and mess into something that’s my design, that I can hand off to someone else.
The band’s agent wants me to clean up the lyrics and go more mainstream.
He didn’t like the new songs, he said they’re too raw. ”
I frown at him and say, “Fuck him. The entire album is amazing. They’re the best songs you’ve written so far. I should know; I’ve heard them all.”
He quirks an eyebrow at me, playful again. “You haven’t though, have you? You never did open my present.”
Fuck. I hadn’t.
I shake my head and he smiles at me. He cups my face gently, pushing my hair away from my face and kissing me sweetly.
“I was so pissed that day. I’d put my fucking heart in that box and you wouldn’t open it.
I can’t blame you, I’d been such a fucking dick to you, but I had put myself out there and hoped you’d see it…
see me. It doesn’t matter, Star, I have you now.
My little muse. My sweet nightingale, pretty and sings so sweet. ”
He starts to ramble, my crush only getting worse as he begins to describe all of his favorite parts of me, most of them naked body parts, but some of them immensely more intimate, like the scar from the bullet of Diarmuid’s gun, and the soft patch of skin on my shoulder they all seem to be obsessed with.
I wait until Avery heads to ballet the next afternoon before I dig out the package Blaise sent me last year, untouched and hidden in my duffle bag stashed under my bed.
I’d been tempted so many times over the summer break but it was like Schrodinger’s box.
What if I opened it and it was just candy, something small and meaningless?
Or, more terrifyingly, what if it wasn’t?
Now I know it’s his heart, I have to see what it is.
I use my knife to slice the tape open and my hands shake as I lift the lid. I find a notebook and an iPod older than the one we now share.
I grab the notebook first and find poems, lyrics, stories, etchings in the margins and gold ink accents everywhere.
The lyrics are all of his new songs, things he’s written in the last two years, but they’re all just a little different from the polished versions he’s given me to listen to.
I read the entire notebook, cover to cover, in disbelief.
It’s about me.
The whole thing is a love story about me.
The drawings are of my hands, the scars on my leg, the dark shadows of my eyelashes on my cheeks.
The plump curve of my lips.
The songs have my name in them, over and over again, the longing and worship on Harley’s face is reflected in the melodies of Blaise’s songs. I can’t breathe to read them, my lungs squeezing tight until I feel dizzy.
Thank fuck I didn’t open it last year.
I would have had a stroke and died.
When I finally move away from the notebook, every word and image seared into my brain for all of time, I turn the iPod on to find it full of every single Vanth Falling song, even the covers Blaise recorded and released before he was famous.
There are songs I hadn’t ever heard him sing so I know they’ve never been made public because I followed his every move online back when I lived in the Bay.
Fuck.
It’s every little piece of him I’ve always wanted, and I’ve been hiding it under my bed for months.