Claiming Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 2)

Angel was looking at me, watching me think to myself. As the fatigue of the night finally overcame me, I sank down to the mattress and pulled her into a deep embrace. With my mind finally quieting down again, I collapsed into the bed with her, allowing the world and its stupidity to fade into blackness.

Angel

I slept the best I’d ever slept when I woke up that afternoon, curled up in Trent’s arms. He was knocked out solid, quietly snoring away, and I watched this beautiful, strange rocker murmur and shift in his sleep.

This had been fast, but it had felt real.

I didn’t quite understand it, and I could tell that he didn’t, either. Not really, at any rate. He seemed the impulsive type, and he’d completely thrown me off-guard by almost backing down from the sex last night… and by inviting me into his world like this.

I’d heard his bandmates. They’d sounded pissed.

But he’d stood his ground, the alpha male that he was. It was clear what he wanted, and that he’d make concessions with them to have it. He could probably have told them all to go to hell, but I’d seen that he did care about them – especially onstage.

Do they fight a lot when they’re not performing?

Is that what it’s like to work with people like this?

Eventually, he woke up too. Once we’d climbed out of bed and freshened up a little, Trent laid down the single ground rule: stay back here. He made it clear that other members of the band had expressed some discomfort in having me around, and that he’d had to agree that I’d stay in his bedroom or in the adjacent bathroom.

I’d been too tired to really think much of being a complication, particularly in the madcap dash to get back to the bus and finally rest. It wasn’t hard to figure out the math once I dwelled on the details.

After all, I was on a bus with a bunch of guys who probably didn’t appreciate someone being thrust upon them at the last second – especially not a girl, regardless of the fact that I was apparently fucking their leader.

It was fine by me. I liked his room – it was kind of sparse, and not terribly big, but that seemed like the kind of thing Trent would favor. It was a little larger than my small backroom at the Riverton Bar, but it was free of the odds and ends that cluttered and dominated the space.

“I don’t need much,” he told me at some point after we’d woken up. “Not on the road, at any rate. My place is a little different…but I like to keep my distractions minimal when I’m on tour.”

“But what about me?” I chuckled coyly.

“I make exceptions,” he whispered, his fingers threading into my hair and exposing my neck for his hungry lips. “Exceptions for cute girls who know how to ride my cock the right way.”

Oh good, I thought to myself. So the arrogant asshole thing’s going to stick around for a while.

Oddly, I kind of liked it.

But we couldn’t play for too long.

Trent and his band had another gig.

The single, curtained window in his room didn’t tell me much, and my host kept me plenty preoccupied for a short while. But as he left to practice with them before the show, he told me where we were.

“Houston.”

“We’re in Texas? We just sailed through Louisiana and I didn’t even know?”

“Yeah, guess so.”

“But Houston is so far…”

“And now you understand why I was speeding,” he told me a little gruffly. “Steven might be a total asshole of a manager, but he’s generally competent. Generally.”

Before he left, I reminded him to take his pain medication. With an appreciative smile, he dug the orange bottle out from a hidden spot in his closet, and then popped into the bathroom to swallow it with a cup of water.

After he left, I stayed put. I flipped through some books of his, realizing that I should have tried to find something to keep myself preoccupied. But it wasn’t like I actually had anything like that back home, anyway.

I’d mostly spent my time tending to the needs of the bar, occasionally walking further into town and occupying myself at the single, small bookstore that we had.

At least there are different books here.

A few hours later, after the night had fallen, Trent finally returned to the bus. He planted a quick kiss on my lips before going to wash off in the shower. When he came back into the room, I was preoccupied with thought.

I knew that I had to tell him.

“There’s something you need to know about me,” I reluctantly blurted out.

Briefly, just for a fraction of a second, a look of penetrated concern flickered across Trent’s face. With the blink of his eyes, it was gone, replaced with his cool, smooth confidence.

“What’s that? You’re not really from Alabama? Secretly a government agent? Betrothed to another man?”

I shook my head, trying to not take personal offense to that last one. I knew he didn’t mean it. He had just sensed that this was bad.

“You know how I freaked out in the car earlier this morning?”

Trent looked genuinely troubled for a moment.

“Yeah. There’s a specific reason for that?”

“There was an accident,” I told him.

“An accident.”

“I was in the car with some people – I don’t really remember who. Just a group of us. The driver, he was going too fast, taking too many risks…we hit something and I was thrown from the vehicle.”

“Oh my God,” he spoke, his face growing pale. He covered his eyes, looking incredibly guilty. “I had no fucking idea. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know,” I told him.

“But were you…were you hurt?”

“Well, it was a high-speed collision, and I was ejected from the car,” I snarked lightly, before toning myself back. “I mean…yeah. I was hurt pretty badly.”

“What…how did you…?”

“How did I survive?” I asked, almost bitterly. “I don’t know. I was thrown into some trees. Luckily, I wasn’t too mangled up. But I was in a coma for, like, weeks.”

“And your friends?”

“They didn’t make it,” I told him, fighting back tears. “I think the driver did, but the rest of the people in the car, they all died on impact. Getting thrown out saved my life.”

“And your memory?”

“Yeah,” I continued, struggling to recall the details. “It’s kind of fuzzy. I lost a lot of my memories from that point and back. The doctors told me that they don’t know how I woke back up. But the damage was done. I barely remember a thing from before the accident. Hell, the accident itself is totally gone. I only know what happened because I was told.”

I realized that Trent was squeezing my hand, staring deeply into my eyes.

“So, what do you remember?”

It wasn’t an easy question to answer.

“It’s kind of like…you know how you dream sometimes, and occasionally you remember it when you wake up, but sometimes you don’t? If you’re lucky, you’ll remember it in the shower, or maybe something during the day will remind you…and maybe it takes months for it to click?”

Trent nodded thoughtfully.

“Right. So, I remember bits and pieces – like, I know who my parents are. I can remember little… flickers of things. Like, mental pictures. The way the sunlight bounced off of my hand, running through the cattails in a pasture. I remember a man – I think he was my grandfather – carrying me on his shoulders when I was really young, spinning me around in the rain.”

He squeezed my hand gently.

“But

…most of it is gone. All I have are these tiny, fleeting moments. They’re small, and maybe insignificant, but they’re all that I have left,” I told him.

It was only as he brushed his knuckles against my cheek that I realized I had been crying. Trent looked pained as he listened, wiping my tears aside.

“Everything from before me being sixteen and younger is like a dream. I can’t remember much at once. It only comes in small flashes, and then they’re lost unless I really focus on them…and I can barely remember they were ever there from the start.”

“Have you been checked out?” Trent asked. “Have you gone to see someone about this?”

“Not since the start. The follow-up treatments were so expensive. Just the hospital visit from my coma alone was terrible. It basically bankrupted my parents, not that they had much to begin with.”

“And where are your parents?”

“Back in Alabama,” I told him. “Not Riverton, though. Further back… deeper into the state. Interstate doesn’t go anywhere near it.”

“You haven’t really mentioned them before,” Trent observed. “Is there a reason why?”

Involuntarily, I thought back to my other secret… the secret I wanted to take to my grave. His hand squeezing mine felt so distant all of a sudden, and things were growing darker and darker…

There was a voice, a husky chuckle.

It shook me down to my core.

With a deep, calming breath, I summoned up my strength and fought my way back to him from that crushing darkness. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than a second or two but, to me, it felt as if I’d drifted back to that lightless abyss for hours… possibly days.

“There aren’t really many pleasant memories,” I quietly conceded to him.

“I see,” he answered with a suspicious but supportive nod. “I’m not going to push you on that. I just…I can’t imagine what it’s gotta be like.”

“What do you mean?” I asked sincerely.

“I mean, I remember mostly what it was like, growing up,” he told me. “But to have most of my life completely gone? I can’t think of how hard that’s gotta be.”

“It’s not as difficult as you might think,” I shrugged. “It just took some getting used to. Luckily, I had help. Like with Old Greg. He didn’t have to take me in like that, but he was a total lifesaver. I don’t know how I would have coped on the streets.”