“Like… something you wrote?” She gave me another look that was easy to interpret. Despite the fact that Grayson frequently wrote in his journal, he never shared.
Tom Tucker, the oily fuck, snorted a disparaging laugh before Gray could answer. “Grayson doesn’t write songs for Bellerose. That’s Jace’s job. And do I need to remind you that you’re supposed to start recording your next album as soon as this tour ends? Grassroots is for the nostalgia of the past hits, but now it’s time to think of the future ones.”
We absolutely didnotneed reminding. And so far, we had a grand total ofzerosongs to record. He wasn’t wrong that Jace wrote all of Bellerose’s lyrics, but after that first album that had shot Bellerose to stardom, all of us had contributed to the melodies. Jace worked better when he was collaborating. When it was all on him alone, the music turned too hollow and melancholy.
Which only added weight to Billie’s accusation that she’d been a part of those original tracks. Shit, he’d really screwed her over. We’d been living it up with our multimillion-dollar contracts, and she’d been fuckinghomeless.
That thought turned my stomach, and I pushed up out of my seat.
“Hey, Rhett, where are you going?” Tom demanded, looking up from his phone like he was our permanent manager or some shit. Shit, I really regretted the day Brenda Dove—best band manager in the business—had taken an extended maternity leave and the label put fucking Tucker on as our tour manager. Usually, Brenda chose our tour manager and they were a hell of a lot more tolerable than slimeball Tom.
“I need some fucking space,” I muttered over my shoulder, already halfway to the bedroom. I needed some space away from Jace because it was hard to swallow the fact that his broken heart had caused Billie such hardship. It was hard to sit there and pretend that we were okay, when the opposite was true.
“Rhett, don’t—” Flo started to protest, but Jace cut her off.
“Leave him,” he snapped. “Maybe if he gets his dick sucked, he’ll stop being such a sour little bitch.”
My fist curled at my side and my teeth ground hard, but I refused to take the bait. Instead, I slipped into the one and only bedroom on the bus and found Billie curled up in the middle of the bed. My heart ached and my gaze instantly softened as I closed the door behind me and flicked the privacy lock. She was tucked up in a tiny ball on her side, wet tracks cutting telling lines down her cheeks and a scrap of purple fabric balled up under her head.
Sighing, I realized how utterly paper-thin the bedroom door was.
Wordlessly, I kicked off my shoes and climbed onto the bed to wrap the little ball of Billie up in my arms and hold her close. My lips against the back of her neck, I pressed little kisses to her skin until she relaxed into my embrace.
“I don’t want to do this to you guys,” she whispered, her voice so broken it made me want to storm back out there and punch Jace for real. “I’ve hurt Jace enough already; I can’t be responsible for taking another friend away from him.”
Christ. She’d heard all that and still worried about hurting him? Billie Bellerose was a fucking saint.
I didn’t respond immediately, not wanting to make it seem like I was dismissing her concern. But ultimately… Jace was a big boy. He just needed to start acting like it. So I just lay there with her for a while, dancing my fingers down her bare arm and tangling our fingers together. Sniffing, she held up our interlaced hands and kissed my knuckles.
That innocent brush of her lips shot straight to my cock, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep my mind out of the gutter. Not while the entire fucking band was within earshot. Not when I wanted her anythingbutquiet while I fucked her until she couldn’t stand up.
Ah crap. That was the opposite of keeping my mind out of the gutter. I needed to shift away slightly so she wouldn’t feel thehardevidence of where my thoughts had just roamed.
“Can I ask you something?” I murmured, resting my chin on her shoulder.
She glanced back at me, a small frown on her brow. “Um, sure. I guess…”
I smiled. “Very confident response, Thorn.”
Her lips tilted in amusement. “Ask your question, Zep.”
I hesitated, wondering if I was pushing things too far, too fast. But theneedto know was eating away at me. So I wet my lips and went for it. “How did you get your scars?”
She went stiff in my embrace, so I hugged her tighter. After a moment she gave a small groan and rolled over to face me, her cheeks pink. “I hoped you hadn’t noticed,” she admitted in a soft whisper. “You didn’t say anything at the time…”
I grinned, letting the filthy thoughts shine through. “I had other things on my mind, Thorn.” Then I pulled her closer, hitching her leg over my hip so she could feel my hard dick against her crotch. “Still do, if we’re being totally transparent. But I just want to know what happened… Did someone do that to you?”Was it Angelo?If it was, I’d stop the bus right now and go after him with my bare hands. Jace would back me up, too, I knew it.
She wrinkled her cute nose and shook her head. “No, nothing like that. It… I was in a fire.” Her teeth worried at her lower lip, and she studied my eyes like she was trying to decide how much truth to offer up to a man she barely knew. I got it, I did. But it didn’t stop me from wanting her to just hand over the keys to her mind. And heart.
“What kind of fire?” I asked gently, trying to squeeze just alittlemore information out. For no other reason than I wanted toknow her. I wanted to understand what made her tick, what made her shed tears over a guy who was happy to leave her homeless to avenge his hurt feelings. Okay, in fairness to Jace, I didn’t honestly think he understood how dire her circumstances had been that night. He was just too stubborn and too self-centered to reallylook. Based on what he’d always told us, he genuinely believed she’d chosen money over love, since the Ricci’s were rich and he’d been all but a starving artist. He probably had never imagined her struggling in the time they’d been apart.
She gave a small sigh. “A house fire. My family home, the one next door to Jace and down the road from Angelo… They think it was an electrical fault or something, but… it was the middle of the night and none of the smoke alarms went off. My bedroom was upstairs, and when I woke up, the fire had already cut off the exit.” She paused, wetting her lips as her gaze darted away. “I got out, barely, but my parents didn’t make it. They never even woke up before the smoke got them.”
Holy shit.
“I spent a month in ICU… I didn’t know they were dead until two weeks after their funeral.”
Wow. Talk about insult on top of injury. I couldn’t even imagine…
