Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance (35 page)

Clutching my liquid celebratory gift by the box handle, I made my way to the door as Gage said his goodbyes and shook Ben’s hand with a grateful smile.

“Should we have left together?” I worried as we traversed the hall toward the elevator.

G
age restrained his fingers from massaging the worried furrow between her brows. “If Ben even gave it a second thought, I’m sure he assumes I’m walking you to the lobby to meet your car.” They stopped, and he reached for the button that would summon the elevator. “Do you still think about it a lot? What others will think? Besides Rattler. I know they’re douches.”

Swinging the weight of the champagne box, she considered. “I don’t think so. But Gage…” She looked up at him, and his breath stopped when he read the solemn seriousness of her features. “I don’t want to make a decision while we are on tour. This is like a different world. Almost a non-reality. I want to wait to think about everything when we’re back in our world. The one we have to live in.”

‘Decision about
us
. Think about
us
.’ He mentally filled in the ‘us’ she was careful not to say. He could accept that. At least she was no longer shaking her head an emphatic no any time a hint of the subject of the two of them was broached.

The elevator waited, and they stepped in. He slid the card into the security slot, and brushed a thumb along her bottom lip when the doors had safely closed.

When the doors slid open on Fire Flight’s floor, he paused, checking the room numbers, and then indicated a hallway with his chin. Jimal trailed a respectful distance behind. Gage took advantage of the empty hall and reached for her hand, but immediately dropped it when raised voices carried down the passageway.

“I don’t care anymore!” The woman’s screech bounced around the corner.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Colt. That was definitely Colt.

Gage exchanged a look with Scarlette, and their steps slowed, unwilling to intrude on whatever was going on down the hallway that bisected this main one.

“Yeah, you do. You’re playing dumb. You always have. It’s easier for you that way.” The woman again, and when Scarlette’s chin popped up, her eyes meeting his again, he knew she had recognized that voice too. Caroline.

The panel eyelevel on the wall indicated their room number was in the line of fire. He stopped before the intersection of the hallways, and when Scar silently did too, he knew she comprehended the dilemma.

“Caro, I haven’t ever… You and me, we’ve never…”

“You know what I’ve never? I’ve never told you there
wasn’t
anyone when there
was
! Which is what you did
that
night. When that
clearly
wasn’t the case!”

“What night is she talking about?” A third voice piped up.

Scarlette somehow stumbled over her own stationary feet and caught the wall. His hand shot out, catching her as well, and he understood. His head was reeling as well, recognizing the third voice.

“What night are you talking about?” A repeat of the question by the third party, seemingly directed this time at Caroline.

And the inquisitor?

Ivy.

“Tell her!” Caroline bit out. “I’m out of here, soon as I can get Seth up and packed. And I’m done, Colt.
Done
. I’m moving back home to Carlsbad. Seth is old enough to choose where he wants to live.”

“Caroline…”

“I’ll respect his choice. You’re a decent dad, even if you’re a shitty son of a bitch." Caroline’s voice was growing closer with every word.

Unconsciously, he had moved closer. What he saw was Caroline, arms crossed over her chest, her head down sprinting away from Colt and Ivy, and toward him and Scarlett.

Colt swung his attention from Ivy to Caroline until Ivy gave him a push and a nod toward his baby mama. Colt hesitated only a second more and then ran, his long legs intercepting Caroline in no time.

Gage grabbed a bottle
of water—his third—from the mini fridge and twisted the top. What he really wanted was anything alcoholic. But he’d had his two drinks at the Fire Flight after party. And the third drink, his max in any social situation, he was saving for that rose champagne Scarlette had been lugging around all night. He eyed the bottle, now chilling in the room’s ice bucket. Would she want to carry on with their celebration plans when she returned?

Within seconds, Colt had talked Caroline into working out whatever was going on between them in private. Scarlette and Ivy, arm in arm, followed by Jimal, had disappeared into the elevator.

Scarlette and Gage had shared a last grim look as the elevator doors swished closed. And then he had passed the room the argument had taken place outside of and where Colt and Caroline had moved inside, and had unlocked the room he and Scar had almost made it to.

He’d been waiting for two hours. He checked his phone. Her last text message had been almost a half hour ago, letting him know she and Ivy were still talking and promising she’d be up to the room soon. Tired of being grimy, he’d taken a shower without her, and had settled into bed for some channel surfing time.

The scene with Colt and Caroline wasn’t surprising. He’d seen similar play out between them through the years, except this was the first time he knew of that Caroline had threatened to leave L.A. Shit, the entire time his friend had been poking his nose into Gage’s love life, it sounded as if he’d had his own ongoing relationship time bomb.

If his friend had been hooking up with Ivy, suddenly so many things made sense, depending on how long this relationship had been going on. How many times had Gage assumed Scarlette was running to Colt with personal business? How many times had the truth actually been Scarlette was spilling her guts to Ivy who was in turn passing it along to Colt, or either with Colt while taking a call from Scarlette? The guilt plagued him as he struggled to keep his eyes open.

He awoke to an empty room and blinked in the lamplight. His phone was dead.

Shit.

The charger was in his luggage at the other hotel. He had a power stick on his keychain for such emergencies. But, as shitty luck would have it, his keys were also in his luggage since he wouldn’t need them until they arrived in L.A.

Reaching out, he dragged the room phone closer and then simply stared at it, lost. Scarlette’s number had never stuck in his memory. He’d never needed it to as he only had to touch whatever sexy picture he’d assigned to her contact icon and seconds later was hearing her sweet voice. He could try to remember, but complicating this was the matter of dialing to get an outside line, and country codes.

When he had been the big dog in Fire Flight, he would have called Ben, no matter the time, and had any inconvenience such as this resolved. He dismissed calling Rattler’s tour manager. The change wasn’t only that he was no longer a mega rock star as had been the case in Fire Flight. The change was in him. Scarlette had made him think about things and as a result, he was no longer as spoiled or as entitled as he’d let himself become over the last few years.

Pulling on his shirt, socks, and shoes, he tried not to worry. Scar had Jimal with her. Whatever the reason she wasn’t here at the room, it wasn’t because she was in trouble. Grabbing up the keycard, he left the room. As he made his way down the hall, he hoped with each step he’d run into her. But he made it all the way to the lobby without seeing her.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the gentleman manning the concierge desk was surprisingly perky and obliged Gage with a cord that fit his phone and an AC adaptor. Glancing around, as if Scar would appear, Gage reluctantly headed back to the elevator. Inside the room, he wasted no time hooking the phone up to an outlet and immediately jabbed at the power button.

At an unseemly snail’s pace, the screen loaded. The almost five a.m. time he already knew, but the digital display jarred him with the reality of how long she’d been gone.

Six missed texts blinked and almost a dozen missed calls. All from Scar.

Without looking at or listening to them, he tapped the icon pic—a close up of cleavage with a silver cross—and then tapped ‘dial.’ A minute later, he ended the call in frustration when he got her voicemail.

Pulling up the texts, he skimmed each.

Phone calls and voice mails with cutesy wakeup messages like ‘if you want a bj, wakeup’, faded into weary ‘hey asshole wake up!’ messages. Until the last voicemail, letting him know she was giving up and going to her Rattler accommodations.

“Dammit!” His curse was loud in the empty room.

The champagne had sunk lower in the bucket. Snatching it, he shook the water from the melted ice off and stuffed it back into the box. He dialed Scarlette a couple of more times, leaving a message the last time.

Forty minutes later, he stood before the door to her hotel room, debating whether or not to wake her. The ring of his phone startled him, and he struggled with the bottle box in one hand to silence it.

Scar!

He answered, “I’m outside your room.”

“Here? At the Inns?” She shortened the name of the hotel, and a moment after he affirmed, the door swung open, and she pulled him inside.

Her arms around him were heaven, and as she clung, he apologized for the dead phone. Letting the champagne drop to the closest chair, he wrapped her, returning the hug. She still smelled of open air and music. His lips clamped to hers, and his hands began to explore, finding her wearing a tee shirt and shorts. Tunneling his fingers beneath the hemline of the shorts, he found only bare skin and greedily splayed his hands over a bare butt cheek.

“I’m out of underwear,” she whispered with a nip at his neck.

“You won’t hear me complaining.” He was backing her up as they kissed. Stopping several feet from the bed, he frowned at the shadowy bulk of covers. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Ivy.” She kept her arms around his neck, but slid down his chest and stepped back. “She didn’t have anywhere to go. She was rooming with Colt and…”

“Yeah, yeah.” He got it. In all likelihood, Caroline and Colt were together—in the room Colt had been sharing with Ivy and not in the room Caroline had checked into with Seth.

“I sent her here with my key and tried to reach you from the lobby of the other hotel before giving up and coming here.”

“Yeah.”

“Could you say something besides that? You sound mad.”

“I’m not, Scar darlin’. Just frustrated at how things turn out sometimes.” Transferring the champagne to a table, he sat in the chair and tugged at her hands. “C’mere.”

She straddled his legs, and leaned her face to his. And despite all that had gone down, nothing seemed as perfect as this moment. The friction of her lips against his was heaven. The slide of her tongue to his was bliss. They made out, hands grappling beneath clothing. One of her perfect tits was in his hand, and the fingers of his other hand were curled, dipping into her perfect pussy when he asked, “How hard does she sleep?”

He stifled a groan when she slid another stroke of her hand from the tip of his cock to the base before shrugging. “I’ve no idea.” With her other hand, she pinched one of his nipples. “She could be awake now.”

Damn voyeuristic darling!
Fuck, it was sexy. Was she serious? Did she get off on being watched as much as watching? An exhibitionist?

“And if she is awake and listening, this, my dear Ivannah, is payback for the summer I stayed with you, and you did your boyfriend on the floor by the bed I was sleeping in.”

“She did that?” He couldn’t imagine his virginal teenaged sis being subjected to that sort of sleepover.

“She did.” Scarlette giggled into his neck.

“Then paybacks are a must.” He glanced at the bed, but truly, Ivy seemed dead to the world. Peeling Scar’s shirt off, he admired the way the barest bit of light shadowed the lines of her body. His restless tongue sucked the tip of one breast into his mouth, then the other. Her nails bit into his shoulder. Wanting to feel that sweet pain without the barrier of his shirt, he shed the garment. He was licking and lapping, heady on the taste of her tits, and her hand that wasn’t curved around his cock was tangled in his hair when she slid from his legs. With a look toward the bed, she stood.