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Authors: Ava Lore

Tags: #rock star romance, #rock star hero, #second chance, #second chance romance, #tattooed hero, #bad boy hero

Record, Rewind (3 page)

BOOK: Record, Rewind
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But that wasn’t me. I was a good girl, a studious girl, one destined for law school and politics and I always thought of my future and never did anything spontaneous or fun, thinking of the consequences my actions could have on my career. No drugs. No underage drinking. No casual sex.

No sex at all, actually. No guy had ever seemed serious enough for me to date, and none of them were Damien anyway, and I didn’t want some guy telling all when I was a rising political star...

Maybe I’d let myself pine for Damien for exactly those reasons. Maybe I’d used the impossible dream of him to keep everyone at a distance so I could keep my focus on what I was supposed to be doing.

Now all of it had blown up in my face and I was on a rooftop with Damien Colton and his hand was on my arm, making my blood pound in my pulse points. Between my legs was a throbbing ache I’d only known in dreams of him.

I’d denied myself so much, and for what?

He was still staring at me, his eyes pleading. He really, truly did not want me to leave.

“I’m not going anywhere yet,” I told him. “I was just going to get some more smokes so we could start our smoke break over.”

The hand on my arm relaxed and, to my frustration, retreated. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grab you like that.”

“It’s okay.”
So very, very okay.
My own hands were shaking again as I dug through my stuff for my pack of cigarettes. My fingers found the box, slightly crushed by the trauma of living in my purse with the rest of the detritus of my life, and a sudden, wicked thought came to me.

Something wicked. Something...
spontaneous
.

Keeping the pack in my purse, I nudged the top open and frowned at it. “I only have one left,” I told him.

Lie, lie, lie. I had at least five left. I tried to put disappointment into my voice. It sounded completely fake, even to my own ears, and I was certain Damien was going to laugh at me and call me out, but all he did was look disappointed and sigh as he slumped back against the wall. “Oh?” he said. “That’s okay, you can have it.”

I pretended to debate something in the privacy of my head, pausing and frowning as I pulled the cigarette out and held it up. It seemed to glow in the dim light.

“Or...” I said, dragging it out as though I were just puzzling through this dilemma, “...or we could share it.”

Damien turned his head sharply—too sharply, did he suspect?—and gazed at me with an expression I couldn’t read.

“Okay,” he said at last. “That’s cool.”

My cheeks heated under his scrutiny. “Like a peace pipe,” I said. “We share, make peace.”

To my relief he smiled at that. “All right. Give it here.”

I handed it over and then passed him the lighter. I watched, my mouth dry, as he wrapped his lips around the butt, cupped his hand over the end, and flicked the switch. The sudden flare of fire illuminated his face in ways that made him even more striking and beautiful, in a rugged and tired sort of way. Then the flame went out and he inhaled deeply. The ash chased the embers down the paper.

He took the cigarette from his mouth, leaned his head back, and let the smoke spiral up into the night. His eyes were half-closed, as though in pleasure.

That’s what he would look like during sex, I thought to myself.

Then his heavy-lidded eyes turned to me and he gave me a lazy, sleepy smile. A bedroom smile.

“So,” he said, holding the cigarette out to me, “what have you been up to, Cassie?”

For a moment I was paralyzed, my nerves jangling like a fire alarm.

Then I sighed, tired, and took the cigarette from his fingers. This time our flesh touched, and though it sent me swinging and dizzy with want and need and desire and all the thoughts of the things I should have done, I managed to push it all away. Barely. I wished he didn’t look so good in the Manhattan night, artificial light gilding his face. He looked like an apparition from the past, something I’d conjured in my loneliness. It was too easy to pretend he was a ghost.

I took the cigarette and took a drag, turning my face away, but to my disappointment it didn’t’ seem like a secret, second-hand kiss. It seemed like taking a drag on a cigarette.

Well, there were worse things. I let my eyes close as I held the smoke in my lungs and felt the feeble warmth from the vent waft over my face. “Nothing,” I said after a long few seconds. “Same old, same old, you know?”

“Not really,” he said.

I shrugged. “Standard story by now,” I told him. “Go to college, money dries up, take out loans, jobs dry up, and then...nothing.” I shrugged again. “Then you’re working a shitty dead-end job cleaning up after other people’s messes in hotel rooms.” I passed the cigarette back. This time he took it without touching me, and I found myself stupidly grateful for that.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you’d be a lawyer or a CEO by now. Or a famous scientist curing cancer.”

I snorted and glanced at him from the corner of my eye. “Oh yeah?” I said. “And I thought you’d be a famous rock star by now.”

He had the good grace to be embarrassed as he took another drag. “Yeah,” he said as he let the smoke out. “I screwed that one up, right?”

I rolled my eyes and snatched the cigarette from his fingers, taking another drag. The illicit thrill I’d been hoping for, to touch the place he’d put his lips just seconds before mine, failed to materialize.

Too sad to be turned on, I thought. That’s when you know you might as well cut your losses and go home.

Pathetic. I was pathetic. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I’m sorry, too.”

And he did sound sorry. He really
did
sound sorry, like he’d wanted to catch up with me, like he’d wanted to revitalize a connection that he had thought long lost, except the only connection we’d ever had was in my mind. In my mind, and in the fact that he remembered what my walk looked like.

The wind shifted then, blowing into our cove and whisking out the warm out. I shivered in my thin clothes. I passed the cigarette back to him.

“Here,” I said. “You can have the rest. I’m supposed to meet a friend.”

His face shifted, as though he wanted to say something, but in the end he just nodded. “Thanks for the smoke,” he said finally.

I gave him an answering nod and stood up, brushing the dust of the rooftop from my clothes and readjusting my purse and hoodie. “I’ll see you around, Damien” I said.

He laughed at that. That strange, strangled laugh. “See you around, Cassie. Don’t get into too much trouble. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Like fail?
I wanted to say, but that would have been rude, cruel, and entirely too intimate. I didn’t want to pick a fight. I just wanted to run away.

I shot him a little salute and rounded the wall, leaving him behind.

Oh well,
I thought.
So much for that.
Might as well go home and sit on Dwayne’s couch and drink a box of wine and watch
Downton Abbey
or something. Maybe throw up a little. Sounded good, right? I reached the heavy metal door leading down into the stairwell.

Step through this door and you’ll never see him again.

Fine. Just as well. I put my hand out and turned the knob.

It was locked.

Chapter Three

I
stared at the shining, icy metal under my freezing fingers.

Haha, universe, I thought. That’s a really funny joke. Now open the goddamn door.

Closing my hand around it, I tried again.

Nope. Still... yeah, still locked.

Uhhhhh.

I stepped back and stuffed my hand into my hoodie pocket, pressing it against my suddenly flip-flopping stomach to warm it up again, and looked around. There was another door to the stairs up here, right? Probably on the opposite side of the building. Yeah. That was it.

Only problem was that I had no idea where it was, and I’d have to walk straight past Damien to find it. As if I hadn’t made enough of an idiot of myself tonight.

Very carefully I reviewed my options.

Find the other door.
Out. Didn’t want to look too stupid. Or risk seeing Damien again. Or...just no.

Call someone to open the door.
Out. My phone was dead, and I couldn’t ask Damien to let me borrow his because I didn’t remember anyone’s phone number except my own and also I’d have to talk to Damien again so nooooooooo.

Hide.

I pursed my lips.
Promising
. I could hide. Then...wait for Damien to try to leave, and then he’d find the door locked, and then he’d call someone to come open the door, and then I could, I don’t know, run up behind him and squeeze past without being noticed somehow and then maybe I could cast a mind-erasing spell on him and he’d never remember he’d seen me or that I’d even existed and while I was at it I wanted a good career as a unicorn pooper scooper. I heard they crap rainbows.

So yeah. Out.

Footstep crunched behind me.

Or just stand here like a shithead, staring at a locked door, until all options are taken out of your hands and Damien finds you anyway, you dummy.

“Oh,” Damien said as he rounded the stairwell. “I thought you would have been gone already.”

I stared at the chipping paint on the heavy steel. “Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I turned and gave him a pained look. “Well,” I said, “funny story. The door’s locked.”

He laughed, again that weird little laugh. It was starting to get on my nerves, partly because it sounded so forced but also because it upset me. I’d remembered everything about him in perfect clarity—why not his laugh, as well?

“That
is
a funny story,” he said. Then he sobered when I didn’t laugh along with him. “Wait, are you serious?”

I stamped my foot impatiently. “No, I’m totally lying because this reunion turned out to be so much fun I decided we should keep it going.”

Goddammit. Just say what you’re thinking, why don’t you? Foot in mouth.
Maybe it was for the best that I’d never made it through law school. I would have been an awful elder stateswoman.

But Damien, being himself, just held up his hands. “All right, I’m sorry. Truce?”

I had no idea how to respond. “Why are
you
apologizing?”

“Because I’ve upset you somehow,” he replied.

I deflated. “No,” I said after a second. “No, you haven’t upset me. I’m sorry, I’ve been an ass because I have issues and it has nothing to do with you.”
Except for the fact that I still want to tear your clothes off and bang you into the ground after seven years, and until tonight I didn’t even think you knew my name
. “But yeah.” I scratched my ear. “This door is locked.”

He looked at the door, then looked back at me and grinned. “Okay,” he said. “Now please don’t take this the wrong way, because I believe you are a competent and intelligent woman, and that you wouldn’t lie to me, but sometimes there are things you just have to find out for yourself, right?”

I couldn’t help but smile ruefully at that. “Yeah, all right.” I stepped back.

He slipped past me and I inhaled deeply, smelling him, as he tried the knob. He smelled amazing.

“Yup,” he said, turning back to me. “It’s locked.”

“Yup,” I agreed.

His eyes twinkled at me as he smiled. “So...any ideas on what to do now?” he asked.

I shrugged. “A couple. That’s what I was trying to figure out when you snuck up on me.”

“Let’s hear them.”

I doubted he wanted to hear all my dumb ideas, but I shrugged again. “You got a phone on you?” I said. “That’d be easiest. Call someone to come and let us in.” This was the best option, because he was an international icon. He probably had a secret spy phone on him at all times. Why would he have a super secret spy phone on him? I wouldn’t know, but that was how I imagined the lives of the rich and famous to be. Quality assurance volunteers for James Bond.

However, to my dismay, he got a funny look on his face. “Uh,” he said. “Don’t you have a phone?”

Shit. That’s right. He’d seen me as I’d been pretending to check my messages. I ignored my flaring cheeks. “Battery’s dead.”

“What? Weren’t you on it in the elevator?”

Couldn’t you try to be stupid for ten seconds?
I thought. That had always been the problem with him—he was smart, just like me, just like a lot of people. Actually he’d been smarter, going for the gold instead of whatever I’d been aiming for.

At least the blush kept me warm. “No,” I said. “I was pretending to check my texts,” I said.

He blinked. “Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to talk to you, remember?”

“Yeah. Why not?” Before I could answer he held up his hand. “You know what? It doesn’t matter right now. The problem is that I don’t have a phone, either.”

My mouth dropped. “How can you not have a phone?” I asked him. “Don’t you have to be in touch with your... you know, with your manager or whatever at all times?”

His shoulders hunched. “No,” he said. “Not really. I left it in my room. Told you. Drama. And the best way to get away from drama is to get away from all electronic devices.”

My eyes narrowed and he looked away. Yeah. He’d said something about drama. I’d thought he’d been...well, making conversation.

I shook my head. He was right, it didn’t matter. “Okay, that’s out. We can go try to find the other doorway,” I said.

He brightened at that. “There’s another door?”

“I think so.”

“You think?”

I almost threw my hands up in the air, but remembered at the last second that it was fucking freezing up here and I had to conserve warmth. I settled for stomping my foot instead. Stomping a high heel on a gravel rooftop is not something I would recommend, by the way. “Well, it stands to reason, right? This is a big building, there must be another doorway to the roof, right?”

He glanced around. “I suppose,” he said, clearly dubious.

I didn’t want to show him how much I shared his doubts, so I pivoted and started to march away. “Well, we aren’t going to find out by sticking around here,” I said. “Let’s just go see. I figure it’s probably this way,” I added as I rounded the door again and set out among the weird and arcane structures of the roof.

BOOK: Record, Rewind
10.63Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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