Chapter Ten #2
Remi patted West’s rumpled and stretched shirt. “Sorry. Sorry.”
A shaky, nervous energy coursed through him. He ran his hands through his hair, yanked on the roots, fucking up what he’d spent thirty minutes perfecting. His eyes darted to each of his bandmates’ concerned faces. He took a deep breath and exhaled it out.
Skye wouldn’t have to do a single thing to ruin his life.
Remi was already well on his way to doing it himself by fixating on everything she did and wedging a stake between him and his friends.
“I’m sorry, West,” he said. His hands were trembling, so he squeezed them under his armpits to hide it.
“It’s okay,” West said, patting his back. “We’re all under a lot of pressure, Rem. We all feel it, but no matter what happens. If this tour goes up in flames and we lose every penny, we’ll still have each other, okay?”
Remi nodded, releasing an unsteady breath.
Liam and Ollie gave him small smiles, forgiving him for his transgressions just like that. They really were the best friends he could have ever asked for.
“Come on, have a drink. Relax, yeah?” Liam clapped him on the shoulder and steered him to one of the chairs that was in the shade. He slid his drink across the table in front of Remi.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, wiping his palms on his thighs, releasing the pent-up energy swirling through him. His nerves felt like they’d been sheared and frayed to ragged ends. “You’re right. It’s just the pressure getting to me.”
The sliding glass door opened behind him, and Liam jumped up, running over to help Skye with the oversized tray she was carrying.
“Waffles!” Skye said. Liam set the tray of waffles and toppings in the middle of the table. Bright-red strawberries were stacked next to thin circles of banana slices and several serving bowls of options for drizzling. Dark chocolate, peanut butter, jelly.
A chorus of thank-yous bounced around, and Remi grudgingly joined in.
Skye presented a new mimosa to Liam.
Remi tensed. She’d seen the whole thing. Seen Remi flip out. Knew Liam would need a new drink.
She was probably gleeful at the trouble she was stirring between them. He glanced up at her, but Skye wasn’t staring at any of them. Her gaze was fixed on some point off in the distance. She rolled her lips together in contemplation.
A wave of uncertainty began building in the back of Remi’s head. Maybe he was a lunatic. Maybe Skye had been telling the truth about the bargain breaking down, and she wasn’t planning anything nefarious.
There hadn’t been a single bad thing that had happened since she’d moved in.
The night of their gig at the Whisky, she’d fixed the sound equipment, solved their website going down, and convinced Liam sex tapes with random women weren’t good for his personal brand.
Which Liam probably wouldn’t have cared about, except Skye explained that if his personal brand was cheapened, he’d be less likely to be asked by hot, famous women to do sex tapes with them—and that made complete sense to him.
Skye hadn’t even spoken to Remi since that night. She ignored him completely. To the point that she didn’t even look at him. She acted like he didn’t exist.
He should have been happy with that, but he couldn’t shake the anxiety that she was about to do something terrible. It was worse than if she were touching and flirting with him.
He was tiptoeing around the house, looking around the corners, tense and ready for the next thing to blow up.
Remi was being an asshole. Childish and immature. Skye didn’t make him do that. He’d done that all himself. He was the one who grabbed West. He was the one who was obsessing over her. He was the problem.
He stared down at his hands in his lap. Jesus. What is wrong with me?
The guys started digging into the waffles, but Remi didn’t have an appetite. He sipped his mimosa, the dry bite of champagne barely noticeable under the sweet orange juice.
“Think I’m going for a swim,” Skye said and padded over to the pool stairs. She slipped off the wrap around her hips and laid it on the lounge chair.
Ollie dropped his fork, and it clanged against his plate. All of their eyes widened as they focused on the half-naked woman a few feet from them.
Remi knew what Skye looked like naked. He’d seen her in his dreams, but it was nothing like the reality of her in the flesh.
Her plump ass barely covered by her string bikini, and fucking hell, those long, shapely legs.
She had something tattooed on her left thigh.
That had not been in his dreams. It made his dick twitch.
He wanted to hold her down and trace the outline of it.
Memorize the shapes she’d had drawn on her skin.
Skye grabbed the hem of her shirt and lifted it over her head. She shook out her hair, and it tumbled around her shoulders. The sunlight gleamed off her horseshoe septum piercing. It all happened in slow motion for Remi.
“Holy shit,” Liam murmured under his breath. The jelly on his knife that he’d been about to put on his waffle dripped onto Remi’s hand, but Remi didn’t move to wipe it off.
The tattoo on Skye’s left thigh curled up and under the strings of her swimsuit, bursting outward to the center of her back.
She turned, and the two little triangles that made up her swimsuit top did absolutely nothing to cover her breasts. She might as well have been naked. Remi tried to unstick his tongue from the top of his mouth.
She gracefully walked down the stairs into the pool and swam out into the middle.
“Dibs,” Liam said, low enough only they could hear.
“Oi,” Ollie said and elbowed him. “I want dibs.”
“Neither of you can call dibs. No one is fucking her,” Remi hissed. He still hadn’t been able to peel his eyes away.
“That’s not fair,” Liam said. “You already got to shoot your shot. Give me and Ollie a chance.”
“Gotta agree with Remi on this one,” West said. “She’s our band manager. There’ll be plenty of people for you guys to sleep with on tour.”
Liam heaved a long, dramatic sigh. “Fine,” he grumbled.
Ollie just shrugged.
They all looked away as she swam closer, pretending they hadn’t been ogling her. Remi couldn’t do the same.
Skye disappeared under the water and popped back up with her wet hair slicked back. Water sluiced down her face. Her eyelashes looked darker, her brown eyes molten.
The corner of her lip quirked up. She locked eyes with Remi for the first time in two weeks. The contact jolted him, and the lightning heat of lust curled down his spine, settling in his groin.
A malicious smile spread across her face. His heart beat faster. She winked at him, and then disappeared under the water again.
Remi gritted his teeth.
She knew exactly what she was doing, stripping off her clothes in front of them. She’d been messing with him by not messing with him.
Skye would fuck all of them and turn them against one another. Destroy his band. Take his friends.
Remi flung a square of butter on his waffle and tried to take his eyes off the demon who haunted his dreams and ruined his life, but he couldn’t, so he resigned himself to glaring at her from the patio table.
This was the way she wanted to play it? Fine. If she was going to fuck with him, then he’d fuck with her right back. He couldn’t sit around and wait for her next attack. He had to be proactive. He wasn’t going to let her get away with her mind games.
This is war.