Cal’s lips jerk into a grin. “Fuck you, Heidi.”
“You were right.” When Nate glances back at his cousin, I swear Cal’s olive complexion goes scarlet. “She is fucking hot.” He dips his attention back down to me. “I’d tell you the same, but McCrae would fuck me up in the parking lot.”
Wyatt has mentioned me. In a way, it makes Nate assume that we’re a couple.
Good God, what has been said about me?
I pull at the neck of my T-shirt, stretching out the tip of the sequin anchor on the nautical print. “Where’s your drummer?” I peek around the crowd in search of the bald man who was on stage up until a few minutes ago. As much as I hate to admit it, his skill is almost as mind-blowingly good as Sinjin’s.
Nate turns and scans the area before he finally points to the far corner of the bar. “Ben’s over there with Terra and Wyatt,” he says. Of course, hearing that Terra’s with Wyatt makes my stomach clench. Looking back at me, Nate mistakes my abrupt smile for something else—anticipation. “You wanna go over?”
I consider this for a moment, but then decide against it. There’s a nearly full bottle of Corona on my table—my fourth drink in the last hour—and I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve started to want to hug the bottles. “Maybe in a few.” I jab my index finger toward the small group of women who’ve edged their way up to Cal. One is glancing in Nate’s direction, tapping the cap end of a permanent marker against her hip. “I think you’re being summoned.” I want to advise him that he’s going to need more security soon, that there should already be more security since my guys are playing, but I stop before I say anything. I remind myself that I’m here as a music lover and not my brother’s assistant.
Nate flushes, racking up a few more good points with me because he obviously hasn’t let this world go to his head yet. “Looks like I am. See you in a little.”
When I shimmy back onto my seat, Heidi casts a sharp look in my direction.
“What?” I ask.
She runs her thumb around the neck of the bottle she’s been nursing for twenty minutes. “We’re going over there.”
I put my Corona to my lips and tip it back, drinking it entirely too fast. My nose is burning when I slap the empty bottle onto the wooden table. “If you feed me that bullshit about claiming Wyatt, I’m probably going to—”
She cuts me off. “Hey, Kylie.” I press my lips together, waiting for her to continue. “You need to get your tipsy ass over there and claim Prince Albert.”
“He got rid of that,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Whatever. Point is, you’ve said it yourself, that this is it for you guys, that you’re done with the games once we go home. So, why the fuck are you just sitting around and wasting the time you have left?”
This is another reason why Heidi and I get along. I’m not close to many women because I’ve felt the bitter sting of disloyalty, and it’s left a foul taste in my mouth, but Heidi tells me like it is. She doesn’t hold anything back even when her thoughts are all over the place.
“I’m not tipsy,” I tell her.
She stands and adjusts her tight jeans. “And I’m not sober, Ky.” She grabs my hand, hauling me off in Wyatt’s general direction. As she passes Nate, Cal, and the women they’re mingling with, she skims her hand across the crotch of Cal’s jeans.
He stiffens and screws up signing the R at the beginning of his last name on the breasts in front of his face.
Wyatt’s eyes drink me in long before I step into his bubble. “Bluebird.” His hands touch the first thing he can grab, my forearm, and he brings me to his side. This is such an intimate gesture that my lips part slightly. Completely hypersensitive to my every move, his head bends a little. “You’re fucking me up again,” he says so softly that only I can hear him.
Right. And he’s not doing the same thing to me? As his delicious scent of cologne mixed with sweat teases my nose, I dart my tongue across my lips. Before I can make a fool of myself, I glance away from him to Hazard Anthem’s drummer. “Your sound is incredible.”
Wyatt’s mouth moves against my ear, and I can feel his labret slide up against one of my earrings as he opens his mouth to say something. I go perfectly still because I know he’s about to say something that will result in him owning my panties by the end of the night.
Then, he pulls away, grinning suggestively. As he introduces me to the drummer, I realize he’s thinking of a hundred creative ways to fuck me in this bar, and it sends a thrill of pleasure through me.
“You’ve already met Terra, but this motherfucker is Ben Dillinger. Ben, this is Kylie and Heidi.” Wyatt jerks his head from me to my best friend, who’s standing a couple feet away, typing something into her phone.
Ben, who’s short and muscular with a shaved head, lifts his chin a little, acknowledging us. “Good to meet you,” he says to Heidi as she slides her phone into her bag.
She takes his outstretched hand and gushes over how much she loved the set. Then, she excuses herself and struts away, her mission to find Cal obvious.
Ben turns to me. “Been wanting to meet you since this shithead joined up with us in Albuquerque last year.”
This catches me off-guard, and I’m unable to keep a frown from making a momentary appearance across my face. When did Wyatt go to Albuquerque? For that matter, why did Wyatt go to Albuquerque? I dart my eyes up to him quickly, but he’s focused on something else. Typical dick move, Wyatt.
Because I can feel Terra’s enormous green eyes burning into me, I steer the subject in a slightly different direction. “You’re playing there in two nights, right?”
As Ben bobs his head, a tiny pierced woman with a shock of platinum and jet-black hair slips between us. She murmurs, “Excuse me,” and then slides a shot glass into Ben’s hand. After he downs the amber-colored liquid, he gives her one of those looks that makes me melt. It’s the look that’s not only full of desire but also that chaos-free kind of love that I crave.
“Thanks, babe,” he says.
She grins and wipes her fingers down the front of her ripped jeans before holding out a hand to me. “I’m Ivy, Ben’s girl.”
I grasp her hand, surprised at how firm her grip is. “Kylie Wolfe. Good to meet you.”
I can’t help but like Ivy because instead of mentioning my connection with Lucas, she immediately replies, “You play pool?”
“I’ve played.” And I have, just not well.
She inclines her blonde-and-black head to the opposite corner of the bar where a tall woman dragging on a cigarette ducks into a dimly lit room. “Play with me?” She jerks her thumb from Ben to Wyatt. “You and me against them.”
“Ky always loses,” Wyatt tells her. He bites the corner of his lip when I glare up at him. “But, fuck yeah, you’re on. You in, Bluebird?”
I glance around the bar in search of my best friend, but she’s nowhere to be found, and neither is Cal. I lift my shoulders. “Guess I am.”
I quickly learn that Ivy’s a bit of a pool shark and a whole lot competitive. She easily makes up for everything that I lack in the game, which is a lot unfortunately. She sinks billiard ball after ball into the table pockets. Each time, she rubs our winning streak in Wyatt and Ben’s faces while pumping her fist to the raunchy anthem about getting drunk and waking up naked that’s blasting from outside the poolroom. I’m ecstatic when I manage to knock one, the red 3, into the hole.
Between games, Wyatt has disappeared to get himself a drink, and Ben is talking to some of the band’s fans, the three women who stalked Cal and his cousin for signatures a little earlier.
“You going to Albuquerque with them?” I ask her.
Ivy downs her Jagerbomb and shudders from the aftereffect. She rubs her hand back and forth over her mouth, bothering the hoop at the end of her nose, before she shakes her head. “No, I live in Katy, half an hour from here, so I can’t go.” She stares longingly at the empty shot glass and sighs. “Plus, I’ve got work in the morning. Guess I should’ve thought about work before I dived into the Red Bull, huh?”
“Nah. I mean, just drink a few more, and you should be good.” I lean against the pool table, sliding my bottom up to the edge. Cocking my head to the side, I take in the women crowding around her boyfriend. “How long have y’all been together?”
“Four long-ass years.” She glances over at Ben, who’s signing right above one of the girl’s lower back tattoos. “Wonder if she realizes how long it takes to get Sharpie off?”
If watching other women fawn all over Ben fazes Ivy, she doesn’t show it. She seems entirely at ease with the multiple sets of breasts being shoved in his face, and I find myself studying the obvious trust she has for him, asking myself how the hell she does it.
Even though Wyatt and I have promised not to lie to each other—and there have been those times when he’s been so brutally honest that my chest aches for days—I’ve always hated the doubt that comes along with what he does for a living.