All in.
The way she always was.
“His name’s Sebastian, but everyone calls him Baz.”
A dubious frown cut a path across her forehead. “Baz? You went out with a guy named Baz? That was your first mistake,” she teased, leering at me. “Just the name Baz has player written all over it.”
I threw a pillow at her. “Shut up.”
Catching it, she laughed and hugged it to her chest. “But seriously…you never go out and then you text me in the middle of the night that you’re going out with someone I don’t even know…which means you don’t really even know him. I was worried about you.”
I shook my head. “I know. It was stupid. Careless.” Still, I knew if I had the choice to go back and erase that night, I wouldn’t. I’d willingly do it all over again. “He’s been coming into the bar for the last couple of weeks. He’s just…”
How did I explain it? The way he made me feel? The desire that seemed impossible to escape. He was both the sun and the darkest night. A promise of heaven and the curse of hell.
Funny how we always want what we shouldn’t have.
“The first time he came in, I noticed him, and by the second time he came in, I didn’t want him to leave.”
“So he’s good-looking?”
I rolled my eyes at her.
Good-looking.
“He’s…he’s…” I struggled for a description sufficient for Sebastian Stone. I looked at her seriously. “He’s breathtaking. And I don’t mean that in a cliché way. I mean that when I look at him?” I gathered the fingers of my right hand into a tight point, jabbed at the spot at the center of my chest that had been aching for him for the last two weeks, although today it was aching in an entirely different way. “I feel it right here, April. And it hurts and feels amazing all at the same time.”
“Oh God, Shea, you really like this guy?”
“Too much.” I slanted her a somber smile. “But it doesn’t matter anyway.” I plucked at a loose thread on my comforter, hoping if I focused on it hard enough it would keep the tears at bay. “I ran into him downtown this afternoon. I had Kallie with me. He took off faster than a dog that’d caught its tail on fire.”
“Jerk,” she said as if it was going to make me feel any better. My smile just weakened, but hers was just as weak, filled with sympathy and compassion.
I chewed at my bottom lip. Fighting. Fighting the emotion. I sniffled, wiped at a single tear that broke free. “It’s fine. I already knew. I already knew, April.” My voice turned pleading, somewhere inside berating myself for being so foolish. “I shouldn’t have let myself get caught up in the moment.”
I shouldn’t have let those glimmers of a simple girl’s dreams invade my mind. Because they’d taken root—each second growing stronger. The impossible idea that someone could love me.
That someone could love us.
I should have known it was inevitable I’d end up alone.
April crawled up beside me and pulled me into her arms. “He doesn’t deserve you, Shea. Doesn’t deserve either of you. Don’t let assholes like him bring you down. One of these days, the right guy is going to show up and sweep you right off those pretty feet.”
I forced myself to smile at my best friend. She was only trying to help—voicing out loud what I knew was her own secret hope for my daughter and me.
It wasn’t her fault I had already been swept.
I knew it though, when Baz stood staring at me in shock, a look of terror crossing his perfect features. Hardening them more. Those grey eyes dimming the darkest dark.
I’d already started the fall.
And he wasn’t going to be there to catch me.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING DOWN HERE?” Lyrik stood on the third step from the bottom, squinting at me. I sat in the virtual dark down in the secluded basement. It was a lounging area outside the recording studio, basically a man cave with couches, TVs, and a pool table. I guess a place to unwind or get sloshed after a gruesome recording session, but I’d been using it as some kind of asylum.
I shrugged at him as I resituated the guitar on my lap. “Nothin’.”
He scowled. “Nothin’? What the fuck is up with you, man? Your pissy ass has been even pissier the last few days, and that shit should be damned near impossible.”
I grunted. “Love you, too, asshole.”
Deep laughter rolled from him, and he drove a hand through the disarray of black hair on top of his head. He sauntered my direction and plopped down on the couch opposite me, a gush of air rushing from his lungs. “Seriously. What’s going on with you? You’ve got the rest of the guys worried. You’ve basically been down here by yourself for the last three days.” A sharp brow lifted in warning. “Zee is about to stage an intervention.”