The Bad Boys of Summer Anthology(13)

“Why do you have to say things like that now?” I’d asked, causing him to smile.

“You want me to tell the truth, don’t you? Well, there it was.”

But despite what he’d said, combined with a couple days of feverish sex and cough syrup-induced conversations that blew my mind, the moment my fever broke, he’d bolted without as much as a goodbye. It had taken me a few weeks to convince myself to see him again, and even then, neither one of us had brought up the time he spent at my place while I was sick.

Now, a look of regret, which is quickly replaced by tenderness, flashes in his eyes. “Because it’s true.” He tugs me back to him, cursing. “And don’t do that. I can take tears from anyone but you, Ky.”

“I swear I’m fine.” I feel a little ridiculous…okay, incredibly ridiculous. I’ve never actually cried in front of him because he’s usually not around by the time the letdown kicks in and the waterworks begin. “I just need to go to bed.”

I stand to go join Heidi at the front desk, but he closes his hand around mine. “You’re not sleeping anywhere but with me tonight.”

As much as I want that to happen, as much as I want him, I can’t in good conscience leave my best friend alone. “I should stay with Heidi.”

Wyatt’s blue eyes scan the lobby until they zero in on Heidi. She’s kicked off her stilettos and is leaning against the front desk with her eyebrows pulled together as she signs a receipt. She was lucky. When Finn ditched her in favor of raiding our room, she had her license and bank cards on her. Instead of going directly back to our room, she’d stopped for a pity party shot at the first bar she found. I hate to think of what would have happened if she came straight to The Veranda.

Heidi’s right up there with my parents and Lucas and the band for me, and to think of anyone hurting her makes me feel physically sick.

“I can’t leave her alone, Wyatt,” I say, my voice brimming with so much emotion that he draws his thick eyebrows together.

“I’m going to text Cal.” He reaches into the pocket of his jeans for his phone.

I stop him, grabbing his hand, before he can send the other guitarist a message. “They hate each other.”

The last thing I want is to hear Heidi and Cal bicker, and they’ve been doing it for years, ever since he hurt her feelings by turning her down after a show. A vicious migraine is starting to make my eyes burn, and I doubt listening to them angrily spit out douche bags, hoebots, and fucksticks every few minutes will make it feel any better.

“And?” Wyatt’s smile is cocky and infuriatingly handsome. He shrugs out of my grip, his fingertips skimming mine in the process. He doesn’t seem to care that I’m glaring flame-tipped darts into his forehead as he sends Cal a message. “At least she won’t be alone.”

“Your tenacity is unnerving.”

“I want to do so many fucking things to you when you talk like that.”

“Let me talk to her, okay?” Sighing, I start toward Heidi, turning around to glance back at him a couple times. His eyes follow me, doing a double take when they drag over my ass. He’s probably just now realizing that I’ve not showered or changed since he left me, and knowing Wyatt, it’s probably giving him more ideas. “You shouldn’t look at me like that,” I hiss over my shoulder.

“Why the hell not?” he drawls. Running the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip, he gives me a confident smirk. “Trust me, she’ll say yes.”

I turn to face Heidi, whispering under my breath, “We’ll see.”

But, in the end, Wyatt is right. Heidi feels like she’s screwed up my night enough, so she doesn’t want to ruin what I had planned. Without so much as an eye roll, she quickly agrees to sleep on the extra queen bed in Cal’s room.

Wyatt and I go with her to grab her bags…well, bag because that’s all that’s left of her designer suitcases in our room. Most of my luggage is still there, and I pack my remaining belongings quickly. When Wyatt excuses himself to return to his suite, taking my stuff with him, I walk with Heidi to Cal’s room on the sixth floor.

On the third knock, Cal flings open the door, wearing nothing but a towel. A toothbrush is in his mouth, and his black hair is clinging to his damp shoulders. Leaning against the door frame, he gives Heidi a head to toe once-over. While under his scrutiny, I feel her fidget beside me.

Through a mouthful of toothpaste, he says, “Your mascara looks like shit.”

And here we go.

Heidi sneers. “I’m only staying with you because I love Kylie, limp dick.” She shoves past him, snapping the towel away from his waist in the process.

I’ve been on the road with the guys so much that there’s nothing I haven’t seen, but I still cover my eyes, feeling heat creep up my neck.

He chokes on the toothpaste and garbles something.

I’m laughing as I back away from the door. After the night I’ve had, it feels good to laugh. “Good night, y’all.”

Cal is still coughing when I begin to head down the hallway, but before I hear his door close, he says in a clear enough voice, “Bet you’re not going to try your small-dick-phone-sex humiliation shit on me now.”



For the next forty-five minutes, I sit in the hotel’s business center, canceling all my credit and debit cards. It’s a pain in the ass because it’s so late, but I finally get it done and order replacements to be delivered to my apartment in L.A.

By the time I’m ready to go upstairs to Wyatt’s room, I’m so exhausted that I practically drag myself across the lobby, and I lean against the wall of the elevator as I ride up to the fifth floor.

The door to Wyatt’s room is propped open with the hotel’s binder that’s filled with information about local restaurants and the cable channel lineup. I pick it up as I go inside, and then I lock the dead bolt and throw the binder on the chair by the door. I follow the hum of the pipes into the bathroom, walking into a haze of fog from the steam.

Wyatt pokes his head out from behind the shower curtain while he’s scrubbing shampoo into his scalp. “You. Naked. In the shower. Now.”

“You. Caveman. Go screw yourself.” I shed my clothes anyway and kick them under the sink. I take his hand and carefully step into the shower. I recoil at how hot the water is, but he pulls me to him, shielding my body from the stream, as he adjusts the temperature.

“It took you fucking forever.” He lathers soap over my breasts, testing the weight of each, as his thumbs trace around my nipples. His hands move to my belly button, and when he glides a soapy finger around it, I shiver. “Thought you forgot about me.”

He’s echoing my sentiments from earlier tonight, and I smile slightly. “No, that’s impossible. I had to cancel my cards linked to Lucas’s accounts before someone steals all his money, and he decides to strangle me.”

“He’s too busy with Red to notice anything, except for her pus—”

I flare my palms down his slick abs and his toned V to grab his cock. This must catch him off-guard because his lips part. “I don’t want to hear things like that about my brother.”

Wyatt laughs but then asks in a serious voice, “Did you get everything handled?”

“That idiot stole my ID, too.”

He bends his head, so he can run his tongue around my lips. “You know what has to happen, Kylie,” he says. I start to move my fingers away from him, but he closes them back around his length. “It’s not like Lucas is expecting you back anytime soon—who knows how long he’ll be in Nashville. So … you know that you’re coming with me tomorrow, don’t you?”

Yes, I know. I’ve known that’s how things would go down the second Officer Townsend mentioned my credit cards, and I realized there was no way I could board my flight tomorrow. I study Wyatt’s shit-eating grin. “You planned this, didn’t you?”

“For some motherfucker to screw you over? No. But for you to come with me? Yes. That was my plan all along.”

“And the fact that someone broke into my hotel room makes it easier for you.”

He pins me against the shower wall, hitching my leg around his waist, and I let go of his erection, so I can grip his tattooed shoulders for support. Water is beating down on my face, but I don’t blink as I wait for him to answer.

“Did you really think I’d give you up so easily, beautiful? Did you think I’d let you go without reminding you why you fucking fell in the first place?”

I swallow hard and nod.

Before he lowers his mouth to mine, he shakes his head in disappointment as he murmurs, “Then, you must not know a goddamn thing about me.”





Chapter Six

Generally speaking, I hate the way the insides of rental cars smell. I don’t know anyone who gets excited about the stale musk scent of dusty vacuum cleaner and Windex. But when I open the Suburban’s passenger door early the next afternoon, I pause. And I inhale. This particular vehicle smells like Wyatt’s cologne, Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male. I bend and put my nose closer to the seat. This time, I breathe in the scent as deeply as my lungs will allow. He must have spritzed some all over the leather when he was loading our bags.