One Night with Sole Regret 06 Tell Me (7 page)

Melanie was done. Done running interference. Done preventing catastrophe. Done picking up the pieces. Done.

She grabbed Nikki by the arm and without a word dragged her toward the exit. They were out of the dressing room and halfway down the hall before she stopped and turned to confront her friend.
Friend?
More like soul-sucking leech.

“
You
are going to the hotel right now,” Melanie said, providing no opportunity for argument. “
I
am going to the concert by myself and
I
am going to Gabe’s house in Austin tonight without you. Do you understand? You are not going to weasel your way into accompanying us.”

Nikki opened her mouth to protest
, and Melanie lifted a finger of warning at her.

“I’m sorry it has to be this way,”
she said, “but sometimes I have to think about myself. There is no reason for you to be here. You saw Shade. He doesn’t want to see you. You knew he wouldn’t, but you came anyway. And right now, I don’t want to see you either.”

Nikki released a pained gasp and Melanie had to force herself not to look away. She didn’t like to hurt people and she’d just shredded Nikki’s heart. Melanie could see the devastation in every tense line of
Nikki’s face.

“
If you’d rather go straight home, you do that. Figure out how to solve this problem you created, Nikki. I’m not giving up my shot at happiness because you need someone to take care of you.
You
need to take care of you. Got it?”

Nikki’s eyes pooled with tears and Melanie softened her tone—partly because she couldn’t stand the look of anguish on Nikki’s face and partially because her throat had tightened with emotion to the point of strangulation.

“I can be your friend,” Melanie said. “I
want
to be your friend. But I can’t be your knight in shining armor. I have my own ass to rescue.”

Tears
began to flow freely down Nikki’s cheeks and yeah, Melanie’s vision blurred as her own tears threatened to overflow. She wasn’t good at doling out tough love. It wasn’t her thing. Tough love was so much harder than enabling, but she had to do this for Nikki’s good as well as for her own sanity. Nikki wouldn’t see it as beneficial. She’d see it as Melanie being mean to her. And yelling at Nikki made Melanie
feel
mean. She felt like a horrible person for hurting someone who had been hurt so many times already—broken, used, and abused by those she should have been able to trust—but Melanie couldn’t back down on this. Not even if it elevated her to megabitch status.

Heart thudding and eyes stinging with the threat of tears, Melanie
pivoted and started back toward the dressing room.
Don’t look back.
Don’t let her see you’re about to crumble.
Melanie hadn’t taken three steps when a body careened into her and a pair of arms tightened around her waist.

“You can’t leave me, Mel,” Nikki sobbed against
the back of Melanie’s shoulder. “You just can’t. I have no one in this world but you. I have no one. No one.”

This was not another case of Nikki’s fabricated drama. Nikki actually believed it, because it happened to be true.
Melanie closed her eyes, trying to stop the tears from falling, but a fat droplet crept out from beneath each eyelid and streaked down her face.

“I’m not leaving you, Nikki. I’m leaving this situation you created.” And the guilt was
already robbing her of breath. She knew Nikki didn’t have anyone. Melanie wanted her to be surrounded by caring people. She wanted Nikki to find more friends and a boyfriend who cared about her. She wished Nikki had a family that wasn’t completely dysfunctional and abusive. But if Nikki’s neediness was trying on their strong friendship, it was devastating to new ones. Nikki tried too hard to make people love her and went about it all wrong. She slept around because for the few hours she was with a man,
beneath
a man, she could pretend that he loved her. But no one could really love her until she loved herself. And Melanie knew how Nikki struggled to see her true self-worth after everything she’d been through.

God, I
’m such a selfish cow.
How could she have yelled at Nikki when she knew how much her disapproval would hurt her?

She was also a spineless coward, it seemed, because she was totally going to cave again. She could feel her resolve crumbling already. Melanie turned in Nikki
’s arms and held her while she cried. Tough love was one thing. Leaving your best friend sobbing in a corridor in an unfamiliar city was another.

“Pull
yourself together,” Melanie said gently. “It’s going to be all right. You want me to be happy, don’t you?”

Nikki nodded.

“Then give me this weekend with Gabe. Can you do that?”

Nikki
hesitated and then nodded slowly, her tears still falling. At least she wasn’t sobbing and wailing any longer.

“Do you want to go back to the hotel or do you want to fly home to Wichita tonight?”
Melanie realized she was treating Nikki like a toddler again, giving her two solid options and not an open-ended
what do you want to do
?

“I’ll stay at the hotel.”

“Are you sure?”

Nikki
nodded again. “And can we do something together when you get back on Sunday, Mel?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Just the two of us?”

“After Gabe leaves.” She wasn’t going to make promises she was unwilling to keep.

Nikki sniffed. “I’ll stay here.” She took a deep, gasping breath. “Alone.”

“
I’ll get you as far as the hotel and then you’re on your own for the weekend. You can handle that, right?”

Enabler, enabler, enabler,
a nasty little voice seemed to whisper in her ear.

“I think so,” Nikki said
, sniffing again.

“I know you can.”

Melanie pulled away slightly and waited while Nikki wiped her wet face on the hem of her T-shirt. Several curious men watched them, obviously wanting to comfort poor beautiful Nikki. Poor fragile, broken sex kitten Nikki. But the comfort those men had in mind was the last thing Nikki needed.

“Let’s go call you a cab,” she said. “Or maybe Gabe will let you ride in the limo.”

“Do I have to ride up front with Parker the penguin?”

Melanie laughed.
“No, hon.” She cupped Nikki’s streaked cheek in one palm. “You ride in the back and drink champagne.”

“But I don’t like champagne.”

Melanie smiled and kissed the tip of Nikki’s nose. “Drink it anyway. Wait here,” she said. “I’m going to go talk to Gabe about the limo. Okay?”

Nikki nodded and the in
stant that Melanie stepped away, two guys tripped over each other trying to get to Nikki’s side, as if the first to touch her could claim her as a prize.

Melanie found
Gabe slumped forward in a chair, his elbows resting on his knees and a bottle of beer between his palms. He was staring at the spot between his impressively large feet with a scowl on his handsome face. The high forehead, square jaw, and long straight nose would have looked good on anyone. His lower lip was slightly larger than the upper and just begged to nibbled on. Every visible inch of the man was long, lean, and hard. Masculine. Lord, he was gorgeous. And he was even better looking when he smiled; his perfect grin lit up his mesmerizing grass-green eyes from the inside. Melanie intended to put that smile back on his tasty lips as soon as possible and keep it there. She hated the glum expression he was currently sporting, especially since she knew she was responsible for it. It didn’t suit him. Or her.

She
squeezed onto his chair, resting on one hip until he scooted over to give her more room. He gaped at her as if stunned to see her. He didn’t really think she was going to give up her weekend with him to coddle Nikki, did he?

“I need your help,” she said.

“With?”

“Nikki.”

“I don’t know any hit men, but Adam might. He runs in some rough circles.”

“Not to
kill
her,” Melanie said. “To get her to the hotel. Can she ride in the limo?”

“The rest of the band should be coming here from the hotel now,” he said. “She can ride back after the show.”

Melanie crinkled her nose and shook her head. That was not what she had in mind at all. “She’s leaving now.”

“And you are…”

“Staying here with you. But that’s why I need your help. I can already feel myself slipping up with my intentions to stay strong, just to make her happy. I need you to do my dirty work for me and make sure she gets to the hotel because if I see her looking all depressed and crying, I’m going to cave in to her wishes again and she’s going to end up sleeping between us and hogging the covers all weekend.”

His brow furrowed with confusion.
“You want me to ride with her?”

“No, baby,” she said. “I want you to play your rock star card and get someone to do it for you.”

“Oh.” He grinned, and she melted beneath the warmth of his smile. “Now that, I can do.”

“Well, hurry up about it. My lips are lonely.”

He gave her a sample of the company his lips could provide hers, climbed from the beige club chair, and handed her his beer. “I’ll be right back.”

She shifted into a more comfortable spot in the chair and took a swig off his beer.
“Maybe there
are
still some knights in shining armor left in the world,” she said, and tipped the neck of the bottle toward him in a silent toast to his heroics.

While waiting for Gabe to return—she owed him big time for handling Nikki for her—Melanie scanned the room, feeling as out of place as she had the first time she
’d been backstage with the band. She couldn’t help but notice people were staring at her with curiosity. Was it because she had just bossed Gabe around or because her attire was unlike anything else in the room? She really liked Gabe, but this scene was a rude reminder that they came from entirely different worlds. She didn’t fit in his reality and he didn’t fit in hers. So why did she feel that they fit together so well? Maybe she should try a little harder to blend in with his crowd. She lifted the beer bottle to her lips and took another swig. It was going to take a lot more than half a beer to help her with that.

As
Shade gave his big-boobed companion a parting hug, his gaze landed on Melanie over the woman’s shoulder. He was wearing the sunglasses that had obviously been welded to his face at birth, but Melanie could feel his eyes on her, his gaze was that intense. It took an actual effort to turn her head and not stare at him. She couldn’t stand the guy. Or, more specifically, she couldn’t stand the way he treated women, Nikki in particular. But she also couldn’t deny that there was something mesmerizing about him.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see
him crossing the room in her direction. The man didn’t walk, he prowled. And that pissed her off for some reason. Melanie’s body stiffened involuntarily and she reminded herself to be civil to him if he approached her. If she wanted to be with Gabe—and she very much wanted to be with Gabe—she was going to have to learn to tolerate this man. She didn’t have to like him though.

Shad
e perched himself on the arm of her chair, and she glanced up, as if surprised to see him.

“I get the feeling that you don’t like me much,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said, turning toward the door in hopes of spotting a tall, lean drummer with a red and black mohawk headed in her direction.

No such luck.

“Okay, then I get the feeling that you don’t like me
at all
,” he said.

She
stared up at him thinking he was incredibly perceptive, and he did something that completely threw her off guard. He removed his sunglasses and hung them from the neckband of his T-shirt. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Not a pale blue but a startling cerulean, with dark rims around the irises that made the color appear even more astonishingly bright. Why in the world would anyone hide those gorgeous eyes behind sunglasses?

“I get why you’re defensive of your friend,” he said, “but I spent a lot of time in her company last weekend and I learned quite a bit about her. She’s a manipulator.”

Nikki wasn’t a manipulator. Melanie opened her mouth to defend her, but then snapped it closed. Okay, she was, but Shade had no right to talk bad about her. He had slept with her—um,
had sex with her
—several times and hadn’t even bothered to call her the next day. Assholes had no right to judge anyone. Especially not people Melanie cared about.

Shade lifted a hand to stop her from interrupting
, and she could see the concern in his pretty blue eyes. What exactly did he have to be concerned about?

“It probably pisses you off to hear it from me.”

“Yeah,” she spat.