5
Echo
I could survive a week stuck in the Catskills with Boyd without losing my shit. I could. All I had to do was not talk to him or look at him. Definitely not touch him. The thought slid into my brain, all sneaky like, and I winced.
Of course there would be no touching. Why would I even think that?
But I knew, didn’t I? Even though I disliked him more than any other human on the planet, there was still something there. Some invisible tether that caused chaos. That lit the electricity or energy or whatever the hell you wanted to call it between us and made it impossible to ignore. It’s true what they say. Love and hate and desire are practically the same thing. They’re differentiated by circumstance, timing, and weakness. It’s the weakness that gets you in the end. Because it’s the weakness that slowly tears you down until you’re like a junkie jonesing for a score.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and inhaled deeply. I was screwed. No one knew where I was or how to get in touch with me. Heck, the driver I’d hired for the trip out didn’t know who I was. I’d paid cash and kept my head down. He was a one-off, some random Uber guy and not part of my regular crew. I had no security. No driver. No nothing. I was stuck here with no way out, and, I’m not going to lie, the thought made my stomach turn.
The old me would have thrown a fit. Maybe broken a few things, like the guitar laid across the coffee table or the ceramic donkey (yeah, you heard me, ceramic donkey) on the table beside the sofa. But I wasn’t a spoiled little bitch anymore. Not really. I’d grown up. Sort of.
It was just…
God, this was going to be hard. Anyone other than Boyd would have been a breeze. But he still pushed every single button I owned, and it would take everything in me to make sure he never found out.
Seriously, this was a disaster. An utter and complete stain on what had to be the most pathetic, most miserable twenty-four hours I’d had since the last time. And he’d been at the center of that shit storm as well.
I snuck a look at Boyd. He was at the counter, huddled over a notebook, sweatpants barely hanging on to his hips, still no shirt, his hair all mussed like he’d just crawled out of bed. His profile hadn’t changed a bit, save for a slight crook to the nose. He’d broken it in a bar fight. Or at least that was what TMZ reported before his handlers managed to squash the story. He looked like a walking billboard for the most fuckable man on the planet.
And I’d had him. All six foot three inches of him. For one crazy summer, he’d belonged to me. Until he didn’t. Until he’d ripped my heart out with one hand, while with the other, he’d patted me on the shoulder and told me it was for the best.
My cheeks grew hot thinking about it. That summer. The summer when everything changed. I’d shared things with Boyd Appleton that I’d never told another soul. Secret things. Intimate things. All the hopes and dreams any sixteen-year-old would carry. Except mine were weighed down by the baggage my parents had given me. My mother had been living in a drug-induced haze at the time, and my father had never been around all that much. Too busy touring the world. Too busy making a career. Too busy getting love from pretty much everyone except his family.
Then he went and got married, and suddenly, I had a new stepmother and stepbrothers.
I’d laid myself bare to Boyd, and he nearly crushed my soul. I learned the hard way never to go there again. Never to trust. Never to be vulnerable. Never to let anyone in. After I picked my heart up off the floor, I squared my shoulders and got on with it. I dated. Sporadically at first, and then things got crazy. There’s something addictive about the power of sexuality, and sexuality was something I had in spades. I used mine with a cold, surgical precision that would make the most jaded man-eater proud.
I even considered myself in the odd relationship. Or two.
But I never gave any of those men anything other than my body. They possessed me because I let them. They held me because I let them. They fucked me because I wanted to fuck. There was no making love. No emotional bond. Nothing more than the physical release I needed, and the fleeting sense of comfort a warm body could give me.
It was enough. I didn?
??t need anything more.
Hell, the honest-to-God truth is that I wasn’t upset my boyfriend, or rather former boyfriend, Aiden had screwed another girl. Or that I’d been the one to catch them in the back stairwell of the club, Aiden’s pants around his ankles, his hands on her head as she bopped up and down between his legs doing her best to blow him into the New Year.
Nope. It was the fact that the girl had been Samantha Needles, an up-and-coming country singer who my dad had just signed to his label. A girl he’d written songs for. A girl he spent all this time with. A girl touted as the next big thing. A girl Axel was probably screwing. If it had been anyone else, I might have joined in on the fun. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t done a three-way before. But not her. She—
“You have to stop that.” Boyd’s voice cut through the silence.
“Stop what?” Wrapped in a blanket on the sofa, I turned toward him.
“Grinding your teeth.”
“I wasn’t grinding my teeth.” Okay. I was going to ignore the pain settling along my jaw because that would be an admission of guilt.
“Yeah, you were.” He looked up from his notes, irritation and dislike clouding his eyes darker than ever. “Stop it.” He tossed his pen and glared at me.
“I’m hungry.”
“There’s milk in the fridge. Toast. Cereal. Help yourself.”
“I don’t drink milk.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Why? Not in fashion?”