Dare to Rock (Dare to Love 5)

His stomach cramped at the thought of hurting her, but at the time, he’d had no choice but to get out. Leaving her hadn’t been easy, but making something of himself had been necessary. For so many reasons.

“I came back a couple of years after we formed the band. Saw my mom and stepdad and stopped by here. I met Tino’s family.” He shrugged, trying to make it like it was no big deal. “We kept in touch after.”

“That’s sweet. How is your family?” she asked.

“Good. I had to fight with Mom and Ricardo in order to get them to let me buy them a house in a better neighborhood.”

“They’re proud people,” Avery said, seeming to comprehend.

Grey didn’t. He never had understood his parents. Any of them.

His real father had been a true asshole, an academic who’d judged his son, found him lacking, and never let him forget he didn’t measure up. When he’d died, Grey’d been twelve. He’d left Susie Kingston with nothing. No insurance, no way of raising her kids, so she’d gotten a job cleaning homes to support them. Eventually she’d remarried, Ricardo Mendez, a nice man who’d stepped in as a father figure to Grey and his older sister. But he was employed as a janitor at the high school, and since kids were cruel, that had made Grey’s life damned hard.

“Mom wanted to stay in her old house, but eventually they agreed to move to a small house, nothing huge. And they still kept their old jobs.” Which Grey also had never understood and still didn’t.

“I’m glad you were able to do something for them,” she murmured.

“Yeah, me too.”

A young waitress came to take their order. She couldn’t be more than seventeen and paused at the table, her eyes wide as they lit on him.

“Hi.” The word came out like a squeak. “Can I get you drinks?” she asked without meeting his gaze, but her hand shook as it hovered over her notepad. Clearly Tino had warned her not to draw attention to who he was.

Grey gestured to Avery. “What do you want to drink?”

“I’ll have a Diet Coke.”

“Bud Light for me,” Grey said, smiling at the girl who’d finally looked at him, trying to put her at ease. “Do you still eat vegetarian pizza?” he asked Avery.

She grinned, obviously pleased by his memory. There was little about her he’d forgotten. “Yes. Please.”

“Large pie, half pepperoni, half vegetarian,” he said, handing the girl the menus.

She nodded, scribbled on the paper, and rushed away.

“Poor kid. I think she’s star struck,” Avery said, laughing.

At the sound of her laughter, Grey released the tension he’d felt talking about his family. Her good humor acted like a kick in the groin, tugging on all sorts of memories, many of them involving them sneaking around to find a place to have sex, her soft laughter inflaming his need even back then.

“Tino probably put the fear of God in her not to react.” He’d make it up to the girl with a nice tip.

Silence once again descended around them, but Grey was determined to keep things comfortable. Normal. He sensed that normal was the key to unlocking his Avery again.

“So. How did you become a succes

sful YouTube blogger?” he asked, wanting to hear all about her.

She shrugged. “In college, my friends liked how I did makeup, how I dressed. I don’t know. Maybe I had an eye from watching television, reading magazines, and paying attention to social media and pop culture. After a while, their friends from home wanted instruction too, so I would do videos and post them to YouTube, and things caught on.”

She shrugged as if it were no big deal. “I started running ads on my site, making some money, and retailers started to send me items to test and post my opinion,” she said with a grin, her pride in herself obvious.

He was equally proud of her.

She continued to talk some more, and he listened, fascinated by her expressive voice and features, just so damned happy to be here with Avery, alone, with nobody from his other life pulling at him or wanting him to be anything more than who he was. That’s what Avery gave him and always had, the same sense of normal he’d run away from. He needed it now. Craved it like he did music.

Like he did her. They might not know one another well anymore, but he sensed the heart and soul of her hadn’t changed. The rest, just details, would come. One thing he knew for sure, their physical attraction hadn’t waned. If anything, it had grown stronger.

His cock was completely aware of her, the new scent of vanilla that would now fill his car as much as it already had his senses. And this confident, competent woman sitting in front of him was appealing to him in so many ways.