WILDER: A Rockstar Romance (16 page)

Chapter 34

Scarlett

I had been waiting for the phone call for three agonizing days, but when it finally came, I almost missed it over the din of the party around me.

"Hello? I'm here, I'm here. What did you say?"

The officer on the other line sighed. "...can certainly press charges..."

I had scurried over to the coat check to try to find some privacy. I shoved the heel of my hand into my ear and closed my eyes, trying to block everything out except the words she was saying.

They weren't good.

"...claims he came by the key legitimately. Your word against his."

"What can I do?" I breathed.

"In instances of domestic violence like this…" My heart had stalled at the words and I nearly missed the rest of what she was saying. "…unless they violate some sort of restraining order."

"Restraining order?"

"Yes, ma'am, that would be what I'd advise you to do. That way, if he comes anywhere near you again, even if we can't prove he's taken anything, we still get him for the order of protection violation."

I licked my lips. I was about to fix this. It was almost over, right now. I could be free of Kevin and this fear and move forward with Keir and finally tell him everything without the worry that it would come back and bite me...

"Yes," I had said. "I'd like to file a restraining order.

*****

Now Keir was holding me, and I was holding him, but instead of feeling the relief I craved, the panic still coursed through my body unchecked. Keir gently pulled back. "Scar, what's wrong?"

"Nothing." It
had
to be nothing. I was
safe
now, the order of protection being filed first thing in the morning. It
had
to be nothing.

Saying it made it true, right?

"Truth, baby."

I swallowed. "I don't want to say it. Because I don't want to admit it."

"Well, given as how I have yet to acquire the power to read your mind, much as I've prayed for it, you're going to have to tell me so I can help you—"

"Fix it?" I finished for him, finally looking up from his chest and meeting his gray-blue eyes.

He chuckled and leaned in, brushing his lips lightly across mine. "Well, what the hell else am I going to do?"

"You could try ignoring my melodrama for once?"

"Would you stop diminishing everything? If it bothers you, then it bothers me. That's just how it goes."

I chewed on the inside of my lip. "That...takes some getting used to."

"Hopefully not too long." He smiled. "Otherwise, I'm just going to record myself saying it and keep a tape recorder in my pocket." He tipped my chin up so that in the dark his eyes were the only thing I could see. "Now, spill it."

The sound of the party died away around us, the music, the laughter. There was only him and me.

I felt...safe.

"It's… Here," I realized.

"Here? This roof? This hotel?"

"This city."

"Buffalo?"

I nodded.

"It's too…close." I twisted my fingers around themselves. "I haven't been back on the East Coast since, well, since I left, honestly."

"Five years?"

I nodded. "Five years." A hysterical little laugh sprang from my lips before I could catch it. "You'd think that'd be enough, right? I mean, I've been all over this country with you. It's just another city; it doesn't mean anything. I mean, it's not even my home anymore. I have no ties, nothing keeping me here anymore. In fact, I could just leave right now, and none of my family would even know I was here."

My voice was rising. "But that's just it. I'm here, and they don't know I'm here. I feel guilty for that, but why do I feel guilty for that?" Keir raised his eyebrows, and I understood. This outburst was startling me even as it was pouring out of me. I thought it was Kevin that had me so on edge, but it went so, so much deeper than that.

"It's not like I owe them anything," I said, stepping back and starting to pace. "Except I feel like I still do. I feel like if I don't go and try to see them, that everything they said about me being a terrible person, a terrible daughter, well, that'd be true, right?" I whirled and directed this question right at Keir, who only shrugged helplessly. I nodded. "Yes. They'll be right about me, and yet, if I do go see them, I'll be falling back right into their trap."

I laughed, and it sounded strange in my ears, not mine at all. "Everything they said about me will be right if I go, because then I will still need them and I will still be part of the family, and they will still have a hold on me in spite of everything I've done to try to get rid of it!"

Suddenly, the frantic energy that had been propelling me forward, making me pace like a jungle cat in a cage, left me, and I sagged onto the gravel-topped roof. The stones bit into my thighs as I slumped on the ground, but I welcomed the pain. "So I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know why I'm up here freaking out, because no matter what I do—go or stay—they are still right, and I'm still wrong and…and…"

His hands moved over my shoulders, down my arms, and he knelt and held me tight, flush and warm against his chest. "Scarlett, Scarlett," he murmured, over and over again until it became a kind of chant, with no meaning other than soothing, warming love.

Love.

This is what love feels like.

That's what this is.

The trembling that had only started to dissipate under his soothing touch began again, but this time, I was trembling not with panic but realization.

I realized...I had never felt like this.

I was in love.

I thought love was supposed to be pain. The house I grew up in, the parents I had, the boyfriend I lived with after that—each one of them burned into my brain that love was a toxic thing, full of drama and tears and retribution.

I was completely wrong. Love was sitting next to me, quietly taking my hand and letting me cry without shushing me. Love was listening to everything I said without interruption. Love accepted me as I fell apart and had the grace not to gather the pieces before I was ready. Love had always been there for me, waiting for me to stop running and notice it.

Keir loved me, but I never took it seriously because I didn't know, until this moment, what love really was.

Unconditional.

"Keir, I love you," I blurted. Then I pulled back and bit my knuckle when I saw I had gotten snot on his shirt.

The four words seemed to hit him in slow motion. First, the slow blinking of his eyes, then the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. Then a slow, spreading smile growing wider and wider like the sliver of sun rising above the horizon at the dawn of a new day.

I started to cry before he even said the words.

"I love you, Scarlett," he said simply. Just stating a fact, as true as anything. "I always, always have."

Then he held me. Held me as the crying quieted, then came again, then quieted once more until the only thing left was the steady beat of his heart as I listened with my head against his chest.

"Here's what we're going to do," he finally said.

It was the dead of night; even the streets below us were hushed. The party had ebbed away, shouted laughter no longer bubbling up from the ballroom below. The music was over. We had missed everything. What was there left to do?

I turned to look at him.

He slid my hair behind my ear and wiped the tear that hung on the tip of my nose. "Here's what we're doing now, Scar. We are going to go to Wallace Street." I twitched a little, but he pressed on. "We're not going to call, we're not going to tell them where we are, we're just going to go. And when we're there, you're going to tell me exactly what you're feeling. Can you do that for me?"

I licked my lips, then nodded slowly. "I love you," he repeated, entwining his fingers with mine.

"I know," I said. "I know you do."

*****

Keir drove slowly down the quiet streets, the way etched into his muscle memory even with driving an unfamiliar rental car. I watched out the window, feeling protected by the dark, the quiet...the man beside me.

There were things that were different, but there was still so much that was the same. They had replaced the playground equipment at the corner public school, but the brick building was still squat and ugly and surrounded by chain-link fence. The house on the corner was no longer obscured by a massive pine tree, but it still had the white flower boxes in the front windows. As Keir's headlights swept around the corner, I sucked in my breath hard and squeezed my eyes shut. "I'm not ready…" I heard myself say.

Out of the darkness, I heard Keir say, "Yes. You are."

I opened my eyes when he stopped. Peering out into the darkness, I tried to make out where we were. The sun was just starting to light the horizon a pale turquoise blue, but overhead, the stars were still twinkling, winking in and out of the scuttling shapes of dark clouds.

The house in front of us was all wrong.

"This is it?" I exhaled.

"This is it."

I looked up and down the block, certain that he must be mistaken. "It looks so…small…"

He shook his head minutely. "No, still the same size." He looked over at me. "It's you that's bigger."

Chapter 35

Keir

I let her stare as long as she needed to. She glared at the Sawyer house, then winced, guilt passing across her face like a shadow. Then she sighed and closed her eyes, tired of it all. Tired of carrying this place around on her back, dragging her past behind her.

I knew what she was feeling because I was feeling it too.

The past wound its way around my heart as we sat here. The garage where Ruthless had started was sagging inward now. Whoever moved in after my father left was an even worse housekeeper than we were. The whole place seemed to have collapsed inward, like the soul had been sucked out when we moved.

I wanted to be sad about that.

But I wasn't.

Because it was over.

The edges of the clouds were starting to go blush pink now. Scarlett was leaning back in her seat, eyes closed, asleep for all I knew, her regular, gentle sips of breath quiet and peaceful. Something warm and flowing moved through me.

I fixed this.

I finally fixed it for her.

The Sawyer house was not looming large and overpowering in her mind anymore. I had shown her how small the past really was, and even better, she had let me show her. She had trusted me enough to let me shine a light on the dark shadow that followed her everywhere.

I had slain a dragon for her.

I felt like a fucking conquering hero.

But it still didn't feel right.

The chill night air had settled into the silent car, stiffening my legs. I tried to shift them quietly, get the blood moving again.

I wasn't quiet enough. Scarlett's eyelids fluttered, and she stretched her arms out in front of her.

Then she turned and looked at me.

"You're still here." She smiled. Then she looked out the window and her face fell a little. "We're still here."

"I didn't want to wake you."

She blinked three times, her lashes resting heavily on her cheeks. "I had odd dreams," she said blearily.

"Want to tell me?"

"You were there."

I smiled, throwing the car into drive. "That made it a good dream, of course." I grinned.

"Of course," she echoed, smiling. "We were kids again, here, on this block. But...it was now. You were on tour, and I was writing, and we were making plans to meet up after...oh geez, I forgot what it was already, some kind of function." She grinned at me and licked her lips a little. "You were wearing a tux. I remember that part very clearly."

I pulled a disgusted face, and she laughed.

"But it was good, because," she huffed out a sigh, "because, well, we were making plans."

I swallowed as we pulled up to a red light and turned to look at her. She was twining her long fingers around each other. "What kind of plans?"

"Ones...ones for the future. Whatever comes next."

I was nodding already. "Plans. We can make plans, Scarlett. Let's make some, right now."

"Go somewhere? Together?"

"Just the two of us."

She sat back and pulled a face. "It'd be nice to just be...real with you. Without all this tour weirdness and homecoming sadness and all the shit we have done to each other. It'd be nice just to be your girlfriend and have you be my boyfriend. I wish… I just wish I was someone else. Someone without all this…shit in my past." She looked up at me, pleading soundlessly for me to understand. "Then…then we might have a chance, both of us, to be happy together. If we were able to just be normal teenagers in love back then."

"I thought about that," I answered after a moment. "Believe me, I have. And some days I even wished it too. But then I think," I reached over and smoothed the hair away from her face, "and I think, if you had a different past, would you be the same girl? Because I don't want that hypothetical Scarlett. I want the real one. The one I'm sitting next to right now."

I grimaced. There was still an ugliness there, sitting between us, unsaid. A grimy window I still couldn't see through no matter how many times I tried to wipe it clean. I knew what it was... "Scar," I said, turning the wheel and taking us on a loop past the hotel. She widened her eyes, wondering why I was taking us eastbound on the 90, but said nothing.

Which was good because I had some shit I needed to lay out.

"I'm going to tell you something I don't really like about myself right now." I was grateful to concentrate on the road. It was almost impossible to look her as I spoke. "But it's true, and I'm tired of hiding it."

I heard her take a breath, but spoke over her. I needed to say this. "When I met you, Scarlett, I fell in love with you immediately. But
loving
you and
being
with you are two different things, and after a while, I realized I loved the only part of you I could see."

She made a confused noise as I clarified. "You were a project for me. Something I could fix, make whole again after wishing for a love like that my whole life." I looked over at her and saw her eyelashes flutter in the morning sunlight, and I knew she knew what I meant.

She was thinking of my absent mother and my overworked father.

I was too.

"So, I loved the Scarlett that was in my head, the one that if I loved her in just the right way, I'd be the one to save her from herself. I'd be a hero." I chuckled ruefully. "And how fucking selfish is that? I didn't want you to grow and thrive on your own because I wanted to be the reason for it."

I swallowed back the hard, ugly knot that threatened to choke the truth away and pressed on.  "I have to wonder what I would have done if we stayed together back then. Would I have kept you caged up in my heart, thinking you were this fragile fluttering bird?" I looked over at her, stock still and ramrod straight, her elegant neck held high like a queen's, and felt like such an idiot for ever thinking she was fragile. "You're not. You are anything but, honestly. And now that you're flying free, I find that I still love you, but it's not the same."

She looked at me, stricken, misunderstanding. I held up my hand. "It's not the same, and for that I am so fucking glad," I choked out. "This isn't a solution. There's nothing to fix here." I slid my hand over and twined my fingers with hers and brought them up to my lips, kissing them hard for a second. "There's only us."

She took a deep breath. "Keir, I need to tell you..."

"No," I shook my head.  "You don't. That's what I'm saying. You don't need to tell me anything. Leaving me like that? You did me...did
us
, a favor. You made it so I could be here, in this moment, loving you for who you are now, not for what I could do to save you."

I looked over at her one more time, her head held high, her smile curving quietly across her face, and love walloped me over the head like a fucking hammer. "Let's go be a couple. Tomorrow. Today. Grab your shit and I'll buy some tickets. The tour is over, baby, but we're just getting started."