“Wow,” he said when they finally caught their breath. “Should I apologize? I didn’t exactly take my time, there.”
“Don’t you dare,” she answered, nuzzling her face into his throat. “It’s not like I was lagging behind or anything.”
She felt him smile as he bent down to kiss the top of her head, but he didn’t say anything more. And neither did she, for the longest time.
But as seconds bled into minutes—and his phone continued to vibrate on the nightstand—she knew they couldn’t stay holed up like this forever, no matter how much she might want to right now. Not when there was so much going on around them.
And not when there was still so much unsaid between them.
“Can you tell me?” The words came out before she knew she was going to say them, but once she had, she didn’t want to take them back. Instead, she just rested quietly against him, stroking his chest and making sure not to look at him as she waited.
To his credit, Wyatt didn’t ask what she was talking about. But he did stiffen beneath her, his heart jolting hard in his chest before it started racing. “You don’t want to go there,” he finally said.
“I do,” she murmured, running her lips over his shoulder, his sleeves, any place she could reach. “I know there’s something there—I can see it in your eyes when you don’t think I’m looking. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s why you thought you needed to quit the band. I know it’s what made you go out and sit in that bar last night. It’s causing so much of this mess and I’m afraid if you don’t deal with it, you’ll—”
“Leave it alone, Poppy.”
“I can’t. It’d be easier it I could, but I can’t. It’s hurting you, Wyatt, and I can’t stand that. I want to help. I want to—”
“Stop it.” He rolled out from under her then, grabbed his jeans off the floor, and started tugging them on.
She was right behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing more kisses to his back, his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I’m not trying to hurt you. I just want to make things better—”
“You can’t make them better!” he said, and though he didn’t shrug her off, it felt like he had. It felt like, suddenly, he was a million miles away. “What do I need to say to convince you of that fact? Nothing can make this better.”
“That’s not true. Maybe I can’t help, but maybe a counselor could. Therapy—”
“Fuck therapy!” This time he did pull away, striding toward the bedroom door at a rate that had her scrambling to keep up. “You think I haven’t done the therapy thing? I’ve been in rehab three times. All they fucking do is talk to me, talk at me. It doesn’t fucking work.” He shoved his feet into his boots, bending down to tie the laces.
“Okay, not a counselor then. One of the guys from the band. Me—”
He didn’t look at her as he said, “I already told you. You don’t want to hear this shit.”
“I do, Wyatt.” She crouched next to him, rested her hands over his. “I do want to know.”
“Why?” he demanded, his beautiful blue eyes wild with a pain and torment so real she swore she could reach out and touch it. If only he’d let her. “We spent one fucking night together. Why is it so fucking important that you know all my secrets?”
She tried not to flinch at his description of what they’d done. He was angry, she reminded herself. In pain and lashing out. And she was the one pushing him. The one who had refused to drop it when he asked. “I just don’t want to see you hurt any more than you’ve already been—”
“Jesus, Poppy! Stop! Just stop.” He stood up so fast that she nearly lost her balance, nearly fell flat on her ass at his feet. “You can’t fix me. I know you want to, but you can’t. Some things that are broken can’t be repaired.”
“I never said you were broken.” She stood up, tried to touch him, but he shrugged her off. “You’re not broken.”
“I am. I am broken, and the sooner you accept that, the better we’ll both be.”
“I don’t believe that. I won’t believe it. Just talk to me, Wyatt. Just—”
“What the fuck do you want me to say? What the fuck do you think is going to make it better? You think my telling you how it felt to watch my father get pulled under the thresher at our farm is going to make it better? Do you think if I tell you how I’ll never forget the look on his face when it ran over him for the first time that it will somehow make me okay?”
She gasped at his words, tried to reach for him. But he was having none of it. The dam had broken and so, she was afraid, had Wyatt.
“Is it going to make me forget the fact that, even though he’d taught me two or three times how to turn it off, that I couldn’t remember how? That all I managed to do was turn the wheel so that it went in a circle and ran him over again and again and again until the fucking thing ran out of gas? Do you think it’s going to make me forget what he looked like lying there? Or my mother’s face when she found us in the field hours later, me still sitting on that goddamn tractor and him…him…”
Oh God. Oh God. Ohgodohgodohgod. All the things he’d said before made sense, as did so much of what she’d read. About his mom not cooking dinner after he was five or six, and him coming to Austin to live with his aunt when he was in eighth grade, and—
“Would talking about it somehow have made my mother forgive me? That’s how she died, you know. She couldn’t even look at me unless she was drunk. Couldn’t talk to me. Couldn’t be around me. And since she couldn’t get rid of me, she just kept drinking to make it better. Drank herself to death before she was forty. Before I was thirteen. You think talking to a counselor is going to make any of that better?”
His chest was heaving when he was done, loud strangled sobs coming from him even though his eyes were dry. She went to him then, because she couldn’t not go to him. Couldn’t not try to hold him. She didn’t know if he’d let her, but she had to try.
To her shock, he did. When she went to hug him, he grabbed on to her like she was a lifeline, his arms around her shoulders, his face buried against her neck.
She tried to think, tried to push through all the pain his words had brought forth in her, tried to think past the sorrow and the horror she felt for him—for the little boy who’d watched his father die and been unable to stop it, and for the man who had never been able to forgive himself for something that wasn’t his fault.
If she was piecing things together right—things he’d told her and things she’d read online—he must have been a baby when the tractor thing happened. Maybe five or six at the most. Old enough to remember. Definitely old enough to be traumatized by what had happened. But certainly, certainly not old enough to be responsible for it. To be blamed for it.
She prayed it wasn’t true, prayed his mother hadn’t taken out her sorrow over a tragic accident on her already traumatized son. But even as she prayed, she could see it in Wyatt’s eyes. Could read it in the torment on his face as she cupped his cheeks in her hands and pressed kisses to his cheeks, his chin, his lips—wherever she could reach.
“It’s not your fault,” she told him in between kisses. “None of what happened is your fault.”
He shook his head. “It is—”
“It’s not,” she told him fiercely. “Not one bit of it. You were a child—”
“That doesn’t matter. Children do a lot on farms, way more than they do in city households. He’d taught me how to work the gears. He’d showed me what to do and I panicked. I couldn’t—”
“You were five years old. No five-year-old could have been expected to stop that machine. And no five-year-old should have been blamed for it, especially not by his mother.”
“It wasn’t her fault—”
“It was her fault. Not your father’s death—that was nobody’s fault. That was a horrible, horrible, horrible accident, and I am so sorry you had to be there. So sorry you had to see it and live with it and carry it around with you—” Her voice broke, but s
he shoved the tears back down. She could cry later, deal with her own emotions when he was gone. Right now, she needed to make him understand. “But Wyatt, baby, what happened to him is not your fault. No one who wasn’t grieving or seriously disturbed would ever, ever blame you for what happened that day.”
“I blame me. I didn’t stop it. I didn’t—”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
He shook his head. “You don’t know—”
“I do. I do know.” She grabbed his hands, pulled them to her mouth. Kissed each one in turn. “It wasn’t your fault,” she told him again.
“Stop it,” he said, voice hoarse and shattered. “Just stop—”
“It wasn’t your fault. What happened to your father. What happened to your mother. You were a child—”
“I was awful. After my father died, I was always acting up in school. I started sneaking my mom’s whiskey when I was eleven. I didn’t make it easy for her. I—”
“You were a child. A traumatized, distraught child and it was her job to make things easy for you, not the other way around.”
“You don’t understand.” He shook his head, started to back away. But she was holding on to his hands and she wasn’t letting go.
“I do understand. I do. And I’m so sorry, Wyatt. I’m so, so—”
“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me! I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me. I told you so you’d understand what a fucking loser I am. What a fucking, fucking mistake I am—”
“You are not a loser.” She grabbed him then, wrapped her arms around his neck and dragged his mouth down to hers. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, wasn’t a tender kiss. It was fierce and angry and desperate and sorry and so many other things that she didn’t know how to put into words. So many other things that he wouldn’t let her say. “You are not a mistake. You are one of the strongest people I have ever met. I can’t imagine the nightmares you’ve gone through, but you’re here and you’re sober and somehow, despite everything, you’re such a good man.”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” she told him, her hands clenching on his biceps. “Ryder can see it. So can Quinn and Jared and Jamison. And me. I can see it, Wyatt. The way you’re always willing to sacrifice for your friends. The way you stand up for them. The fact that they all come to you for advice.” Tears were rolling down her cheeks now despite her best efforts, and she paused just long enough to wipe them away. “And the way you treat me. You’re always so gentle with me, so kind and careful, even though I’ve pretty much been nothing but a total pain in your ass since I got here. The way you got clean, when it had to have been so hard. So awful.
“You are a good man, Wyatt. The very best kind of man, and I’m so, so sorry that you’ve been hurt so badly. So, so sorry that you can’t see it. Because I can, and you’re beautiful. You’re so beautiful.”
“Stop,” he told her, even as he pulled her back into his arms. Even as he pressed desperate kisses to her mouth. Even as he held her tight, tight, tight against his chest. “Just stop. I hear what you’re saying, but I can’t take any more right now. I just can’t.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Okay.”
His phone buzzed yet again and he cursed under his breath. “I need to go. The guys have been blowing up my text messages all morning.”
“Do you want me to call them? Tell them you’re having a rough day—”
“No. That’s the last thing they need to hear right now.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead, then pulled away. “I’ll call them.”
“Are you sure? You don’t have to go.”
“I do…I do have to go. I need to think.”
“I know, but—” She stopped, not wanting it to sound like she was doubting him. Because she wasn’t, not really. But she was worried. Shit, after what he’d told her she wanted a drink and it wasn’t even her fucking story. She could only imagine how he felt right now.
His eyes clouded over. “I’m not going to use, Poppy.”
“I know that.” She made sure her voice rang with conviction.
“Do you?” he asked.
“I do, Wyatt. I trust you.”
He shook his head, laughed a little bitterly. “I don’t know why.”
“Because you deserve it.”
“I don’t. I—” His phone buzzed again and this time he pulled it out and fired off a text before shoving it back in his pocket.
“You could just put them out of their misery and tell them you aren’t quitting the band. They’d probably leave you alone then.” He raised his brows at her and she just shrugged, grinned sheepishly. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
“I guess not.” He didn’t sound impressed.
“Look, I know you have a lot to think about. I know I forced you to talk about things you’d rather just forget. But this band thing—you need to understand how important you are to Shaken Dirty. Jared might be the leader of the band, Quinn might be the heart, and Ryder might be the soul, but you, Wyatt, you are the backbone of this band. You give them their shape, their sound, you hold all of them together. If you break, they all break.”
When she finished, he didn’t say anything, didn’t respond at all. Just stared at her as the seconds slowly ticked by.
She let the silence stretch out as long as she could, but it was dark and brooding and awkward, and she wanted to make it stop. She wanted to make all of his pain stop.
“Wyatt, please—” She reached a hand out to him, but he didn’t take it.
“I have to go.” He started for the door.
She followed him. “Like that? You don’t even have a shirt on.”
He shrugged, kept walking. “I’ve gone out in less.”
She could only imagine. Rock stars, man. Rock stars. “Still, here. Take this.” She pulled off his shirt, held it out to him.
He froze, his eyes darkening to nearly black as they swept over her now naked body from head to toe and back again. Then he was grabbing her, pulling her full against him as his mouth devoured hers.
Seconds passed, minutes, decades maybe, as he kissed her like she’d never been kissed before. Kissed her like she was the only woman in the world. Kissed her like she was the only thing that stood between him and utter destruction. It was desperate and devastating, sexy and sensual, a full-on sensory assault that she barely knew how to deal with. Barely knew how to control even after everything that had happened between them.
So she didn’t try. Instead, she gave herself up to it—to him—her hands clinging to his shoulders, her body wrapped around his like a vine, her soul and heart and mind yielding to him in a way they never had for anyone else. And still he took and took and took, and gave and gave and gave, until they were both breathless. Exposed. Broken wide open.
That’s when he pulled away, staring at her with eyes as wild and devastating as the storm-tossed Pacific. She waited for him to speak, waited for him to pull her into his arms and make love to her right there in the middle of the living room.
He didn’t do that, though. In fact, he didn’t touch her at all. Instead, he yanked the shirt over his head and all but ran from the apartment. And she was left standing there, watching him flee and wondering at the panicked, fluttery, desperate feeling deep inside of her.
Love or lust? she wondered, more than a little terrified.
Infatuation or something deeper, something more real?
As the door slammed behind him, Poppy lifted a trembling hand to her mouth and prayed it was just infatuation. Because if it was love…if it was love, then she was totally fucked.
Chapter Seventeen
Wyatt slammed out of Poppy’s apartment then slammed down the fifteen flights of stairs to the lobby because the idea of being trapped in an elevator right now made him feel like his head was going to blow apart. Well, that and he’d been hoping the extended time in the stairwell would help him get his raging hard-on under control. Turned out hope wasn’t the only thing that sprung eternal, at least when he was arou
nd Poppy.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
What the hell was he doing? With her, with the band, with his whole fucking life? He didn’t have a clue and he was damn sick of flying blind. Damn sick of giving control of his life over to something or somebody else. For too long, that thing had been heroin. And now, now he was letting Bill Germaine pull his strings like the man was some kind of evil puppet master.
There were a few people in the lobby—getting mail, talking to the doorman, waiting for the elevator—so he shoved his hands in his pockets and kept his head bowed as he made his way to the door. The last thing he needed right now was to be recognized. He loved Shaken Dirty’s fans, loved that people listened to their music, but after what Poppy had pulled out of him upstairs, he felt like if he had to stop for pictures and autographs he would probably lose his shit right there. Add in the fact that he was still packing a semi, and being recognized just wasn’t an option.
He slunk toward the main doors of the apartment building, his keys already in his hands. This was downtown Austin—a notorious music city, and Shaken Dirty’s home town. It was still early and people were walking to work, which meant traversing the block and a half to where he’d parked his car was going to be more complicated than he anticipated.
Still, he was determined, so he kept his head down and his shoulders hunched. He wanted a cigarette, desperately, but when he reached into his pocket all he found were more of Poppy’s damn lollipops. She must have put them in there when he was still asleep.
Despite the turmoil churning up his insides, he couldn’t help smiling a little at her persistence. At her utter determination to save him—even from himself. It felt strange to have someone who cared so much, someone who wanted what was best for him just because he mattered. It made his skin itch a little, but it also felt…good. Damn good. Too bad she was only assigned to the band for a little while.
Then again, that was probably for the best. She could see the good in him now because she didn’t know him well. The longer she stuck around, the more likely it was that he’d disappoint her. That she’d end up seeing him how he really was instead of how she wanted to see him.