Owned (Rockstar Romance) (Lost in Oblivion Book 5) (21 page)

The thought made her go still. She didn’t want to put anything on Nick that wasn’t his own baggage to carry. The hex comment he’d made to Michael that had led her to put in her earbuds that morning hadn’t helped matters, but she wanted to believe in him.

More than anything, she wanted to believe they’d have time to figure all of this out without a clock ticking over their heads.

“It’s the Oblivion curse,” she mumbled. So far Margo and Simon were the only ones who hadn’t had a pregnancy to deal with before or right after the wedding.

And them. They hadn’t had to deal with anything yet.

“What is?”

She blinked. Thinking aloud again. Fab. “Nothing. Just saying it’s easy to blame Martin when I walked into that situation. I stayed in it, for a lot of reasons that weren’t about him and had everything to do with me.”

He studied her face for a long moment, then slid one more longing glance at her piercing. Effortlessly, he swapped their positions, rolling until she was cuddled against his side. Completely surrounded. The hand wearing her ring—the ring she’d given him—covered her belly.

Tears formed again and again she forced them back. There was no reason to cry.

She was truly happy for the first time in her life.

“How did you meet him? We never really talked about it.”

“It’s a long story. The basics are he had a friend in the area, the friend took him apple picking, he got some apples from a seventeen-year-old wide-eyed virgin who’d never been farther west than the west side of Turnbull. And he offered her music, the surest way to her heart.” She smiled a little at her naiveté. “I didn’t know then that he was married. He proposed to me before his divorce was final. Quite a lot of wooing led up to that point. Limo rides, flowers, candy, fancy clothes. I’d only had a couple boyfriends and they’d taken me to the movies and for ice cream. Martin flew me to LA in his private jet and romanced me at a restaurant that overlooked the Hollywood sign.”

“A guy who ‘romances’ another woman while he’s still married is an A-1 dick. We won’t even mention the seventeen-year-old part. Sick fucker.”

“Not that kind of romances. My wedding dress was very much white on my wedding day.” She gave him a look under her lashes. “Good girl, remember?”

His eyebrow lifted as he stared pointedly at her chest. “With a sexy pink pierced nipple. Sure thing, honey.”

“Good girls can have pierced nipples. Besides, weren’t you talking piercings with Simon?”

“You mean last Christmas? That was a fucking joke.”

“Really? Too bad. I’ve heard it’s quite pleasurable for the woman.” She pretended to tap her lips. “Not that I did any research or anything.”

“You’d be into that?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Stop it. Creepy.”

She laughed and rolled away from him again, then flicked a glance at him over her shoulder. “Should I worry this is the first time you’ve passed up sex to chat?”

“Um, no.” He shifted his hips and she blinked at the steel club against her ass.

Okay, so no problems there.

“This rocked my world.” His hand came up to her newly pierced nipple. “But you are my world, and that includes what’s in your head. That’s more important than anything else.”

She pressed her face against her arm. “He doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Yes, he does. Every place you’ve ever gone, everything you’ve ever seen or thought or done matters. It’s all part of the whole. And the whole is more than I’d ever hoped for.”

She tried to swallow over the rock in her throat. “You’re a poet, Nicholas Crandall.”

“Nah. I still want to fuck you more than anything.”

Grinning, she shifted onto her back and lifted her hand to brush his hair away from his face. “Funny. I want that too.”

C
hristmas Eve brought another snowstorm
. No one was surprised. Not even Nick.

He walked around outside the main store at twilight, clomping through the heavy snow with the dog at his heels. His dog, Klepto. Lola was inside, taking a nap with Lila on the bed in their room. She’d been awfully tired lately, and he’d found himself fussing more than he was used to. She pushed herself so hard. Lived on stress. Eventually it caught up to everyone, he supposed. And she was on vacation. Extra naps were part of the deal.

Even so, seeing them curled up together had made him want to stay close to guard them in sleep.

Having something precious was the most dangerous thing of all. Far worse than having nothing. Because he’d discovered he lived in constant fear he would lose it.

Lose
her
.

So he’d made himself go downstairs and summon the other dog,
his
, who had holed up with a shredded newspaper and a thiefed sock. Laverne’s from the looks of things since it had a cat face on it and whiskers and he was almost certain Lila didn’t own anything like that.

Women were mysterious though. You never knew for sure.

It could’ve belonged to one of the others too. They were all still there for Christmas, but tomorrow everyone would start clearing out. Simon and Margo were headed to Boston to visit with her parents, and Juliet would likely tag along. Gray, Jazz, Molly and the baby were heading back to California the day after Christmas, thanks to Jazz’s doctor’s appointment. Deacon and Harper and Lexi would split not long after, since she had catering stuff out the wazoo. Michael and Ricki were flying back together in a few days too.

The Oblivion/Warning Sign holiday season was about to end. And he was almost sad.

He’d told Lila the truth. He’d never had a real home, not one that had lasted. Sure, when he’d been a kid, there had been good times. Great ones. He treasured those memories of his mother swinging him and Ricki around and playing with them in the yard. His dad trying futilely to get him to play baseball, finally realizing Ricki’s swing was ten times better than his. He’d been the band kid in the corner, not into sports. Not into a lot of stuff. His sister had been the bubbly, fun one until their mother had left and day by day, he’d seen those bubbles pop.

As the years had passed, she’d changed into a caricature of herself, and he was still the same, just harder. Just more bitter and used up, even though he’d been at the beginning of his life.

Mistrusting had come easily to him. Too easily. He’d missed out on a lot because he’d always been looking for shadows and skeletons. Always waiting for something he loved to get snatched away as his mother had been.

But she hadn’t been snatched. She’d walked. So he’d learned early—love meant loss. Don’t love, don’t lose. So simple.

He’d done a bang-up job of it for so many years. Other than Simon and Snake and Deacon, he’d never really invested in anyone.

Then Snake had gotten hooked on horse. Deacon had decided he wanted a different life. He wanted to strive for more than a shitty basement apartment and practicing in a laundromat. Slowly, he’d started to distance himself.

At least he’d had Simon.

Until he didn’t have him anymore either.

Music had been the one thing that saved him. The reason he could still breathe when the pain got to be too much. His guitar never abandoned him. As long as he could play, he could make it through.

He’d almost retreated behind the mask of his music when Oblivion had broken up. Shattered in pieces. But by then, he’d had Lila. He’d nearly run from her too. She was going to leave him.

Everyone he had ever loved had left. One day or another, by choice or by circumstance, they always left.

Except she hadn’t. She wasn’t. She was wearing his ring, as he was wearing hers, and he’d bought a goddamn horse.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

But he was. He was leading his dog back to the chapel where he’d fought with Simon that first night, standing so alone in the shrouded darkness as snow hammered the roof. Heavy flakes battered the world into submission, then blanketed it until all sound fell away.

He had no reason to go to the chapel. Other than the pull he couldn’t deny.

When he saw the footsteps on the path and the flicker of a lighter inside, he understood.

Deacon had been right about second chances. He wouldn’t have one with Snake. Simon was still around.

An asshole for sure, but he was still around.

“Come on in, boy,” he said to Klepto, who’d taken to hiding between Nick’s legs when approached with intimidating situations. Like the old chapel where he’d first been wrangled by Nick and Simon.

Only a week and a half ago.

He reached for the door handle and yanked it open with a creak of hinges. Stepping inside, he let the flare of light Simon had made guide the way to where his best friend stood near an old husked out pew. There were half a dozen of them, all in various stages of disrepair. Some had holes in the seats, some were missing the end cap or kneelers. All looked like they’d seen better days.

Nick could relate.

“I still can’t take a full breath without my ribs screaming,” he said conversationally, his gaze centering on the cross above the decrepit altar.

Chunks of plaster had fallen from more than a couple small gaps in the roof, and the occasional bucket caught the drainage. The wood beam supports seemed to sag under the weight of the ceiling.

The vivid stained glass windows were the only slices of perfection left. They refracted the dwindling light outside, turning it into prisms of illumination. Somehow the rainbow glow helped to make the small chapel feel huge and wide open to the wilderness that surrounded it.

At his side, Klepto cowered.

Simon turned and held out his lighter to Nick. When Nick took it, he pulled out another from his jacket pocket and clicked it to life.

“I got used to carrying two. You always seemed to lose yours, so I kept them on hand.”

Nick swallowed and stared at the cross. He’d never been one for religious imagery, or religion period, but it was easier than seeing Simon’s faded bruises in the flicker from the flame.

Violence glimpsed in the light was a lot harder to stomach than that done in the dark.

“I don’t want to fight forever, man. Not with you.”

“Me either.”

“Then how do we fix it?”

Simon glanced at him and away. “I don’t know if we can. I don’t know if I can be the guy who used to be your best friend.”

Used to be
. Even prepared for the words, they still dug into his skin. Shrapnel he would never fully be able to extract. “What’s changed?” he asked, voice raw.

Around Klepto’s leash, his hand trembled.

“Everything. You. Me. We’re not who we used to be. I can’t be that Simon anymore. I wish like hell I could.”

Only the matching rawness he heard in Simon’s voice was enough to push him forward. To take the chance, one more time. “Why can’t you?”

Simon gripped one of the carved out pews, his jaw clenching. “I…I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

Simon’s lighter went out.

When Simon didn’t speak, didn’t so much as breathe, Nick took another step. “What? What is it? You know you can tell me. If you don’t want anyone to know, it stays here. I promise. Goddammit, I swear it.”

The buzz in his pocket made Nick curse. “Jesus, ignore it.”

But Simon was already pushing past him and the cautiously sniffing dog, moving through the door and out into the storm without a glance back.

Nick extinguished the lighter he’d been given and pulled out his phone.

Lila.

He smiled when he was certain he couldn’t. “Yeah, you. What’s up?”

“Where are you and Simon? What are you doing to each other?”

“That sounds fairly ominous.”

“Tell me about it. But we’re trimming the tree and you’re the only ones not here.”

“Trimming what tree? Where? There’s decorated trees on every square inch of this property already.”

“The apple tree in the kitchen. Duh. That’s the one where my mom hangs up all the new apple ornaments everyone gives her. You know, customers and family friends and me and Dad.”

“Thanks for all the warning. I’m so glad I’m prepared.”

“I covered us, don’t worry. My gift is from us both, silly.”

“Oh yeah. Whew.” And wasn’t that nice.

He hadn’t been part of any kind of an us for more than a month or two at a stretch since…ever.

“Are you okay?” Lila lowered her voice. “Is Simon?”

“We’re both fine.” Physically anyway. “We wouldn’t rip into each other on Christmas Eve, Li.”

“Good. I was worried.”

That was something else new. Having someone to worry about him. Who actually cared.

“Not that I give a crap what damage you two morons inflict on each other,” she continued, making him grin. “But I do care about Ripper Records’ investment, and you both need to look pretty for pictures in a week.
Guitar Monthly
wants to do a studio spread.”

“He’s the pretty one. I’m ruggedly handsome.”

She snorted. “Get your ass back to the house, Crandall. And find your dog. He’s MIA, probably with another one of Mama’s socks.” She clicked off.

He shook his head, still grinning. “Love you too, Dragon Lady.”

A quick glance at Klepto revealed the dog looking up at him questioningly in the near pitch blackness. Dusk dropped quickly this time of year, and the walk back to the main building would be cold and dark.

Emphasis on cold.

“Come on, boy. Let’s go home.”

He didn’t have to tug on the leash for Klepto to fall in line with his steps. They trudged out into the cold, still night, forging on into the wind and pelting flakes.

Simon was nowhere in sight.

Funny how the Cali boys had adapted so quickly to the frozen East. Though Simon had other practice, going on his modeling gigs all over the world as well as accompanying Margo to Boston.

Nick had been baptized by ice last Christmas on his first visit home with Lila. Every time he came back, the more he loved where she’d been born and raised.

The more it seemed possible for him—for
them
—to build something similar, but all their own.

Nick opened the side door and stomped snow off his boots. He shut the door, unclipped Klepto’s latest borrowed leash—one of Lola’s old ones, in a particularly virulent shade of pink—and hung it up beside Lola’s. Then he opened the door that led to the kitchen and just stopped.

Everyone was all coupled up and happy, singing carols and bustling around the half-decorated tree in the corner. A year ago, that hadn’t seemed possible. At least for him and Lila.

Now there were babies and engagements busting out everywhere. Jazz knocked up again and he and Lila were going to get married—

And when Lila turned toward him and smiled, her hair so golden and shiny, the sparkly gray top she was wearing seemed to cling to her belly. Just for a second, less than, he would’ve sworn it was rounder.

Instead of panic filling him, it felt good. Right. Like they were laying the foundation to something real. Something that would grow and bloom and never flounder.

Something that was theirs and theirs alone and could never be taken away.

Then he blinked and the image dissolved.

The disappointment that bled through him halted his footsteps. Halted everything, even his heart.

“About time you show up,” she said, gliding over to him. She gave the dog a head rub before she leaned up to kiss him. “Simon’s in one piece too, so I guess you weren’t lying about your Christmas truce.”

Nick grabbed her arm and gazed into those sparkling eyes and nearly made another one of his decrees.

One he’d never ever thought he would make. At least not voluntarily.

Let’s make a baby.

Luckily before the words formed, she slipped away into the center of the festivities around the tree. After a couple seconds, the insane notion passed.

He wasn’t that guy. There was moving forward and then there was leapfrogging into the unknown.

Baby steps were just fine. Minus the baby part for a while.

They had all the time in the world.