Exposed (VIP 4)

I bite my lip to keep from laughing as Jules turns back to me. “I’ll be quiet now so Ms. Buttered Buns here doesn’t have a fit. But when this show is done, we’re having words.”

We shut up until the lights go up, and finally we’re let into the museum. As soon as we’re free, Jules grabs my elbow and hustles me to a corner where a cherry-cheeked Santa lifts a bottle of Coke high in the air. “All right, now tell me everything.” Her eyes are alight and avid with curiosity.

“I don’t know…” I hedge, feeling weirdly protective of it now that I’ve opened my mouth. “It was a moment of weakness.”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

“What can I say? He was persuasive.”

Jules gives me a get-real face. “He’s Rye Peterson. He doesn’t need to say a word. Just looking at him is enough. I mean, those arms? That ass?”

“I didn’t realize you’d noticed.”

“Am I dead?” She pinches my arm again with her quick fingers. “Don’t be jealous. I’m not into him. But I can appreciate the package.”

“Apparently I do too.”

“Of course, you do. It’s Rye. He’s always been your weak spot. Not that I blame you. Few can resist that aw-shucks grin. The beard thing is a surprise. I didn’t think it would work for him, but it’s like when Chris Evans went from wholesome, cute ‘how do you do, ma’am?’ Captain America, to ‘who’s your daddy, you’re gonna like the spanking I give you’ Cap.”

“God, don’t say ‘Daddy,’” I moan, remembering Rye’s stupid texts. Call me Daddy, indeed. The arrogance. Why had that turned me on? If it had been anyone else but Rye, I’d be intrigued…No, that’s not true. It turned me on more because it was Rye. Which makes me twisted. Totally twisted to get hot at the idea of playing Daddy with Rye freaking Peterson when I’ve spent the whole of my adult life trying to prove to myself that he has no power over me.

Silence greets me, and I realize what I’ve said. I wince at the utterly gleeful expression on Jules’s face.

“Oh, really?” she drawls.

“There’s no really.”

“I knew he’d be a dirty bird in bed.”

I clear my throat and catch a glimpse of grinning Santa. Edging away from him, I roll my stiff shoulders and try again. “We did not go there!” Texts don’t count. “I just don’t want that image in my head.” Too late. “But, okay, it was…good. Really good. But it’s Rye.”

Jules hums thoughtfully under her breath then pins me with a curious stare. “Can I ask you something? You and Rye have always been at each other’s throats, and I assumed it was simmering repressed sexual tension—”

“Oh, for crying out—” I shut up, because she lifts a brow as if to say, Get real, Brenna. And she isn’t entirely wrong. Damn it. With a sigh, I make a motion with my hand for her to continue.

Jules sniffs delicately. “As I was saying, I’m pretty sure we all thought that. But how did this animosity between you two start? Where’s it coming from?”

Part of me wants to turn tail and run. But I squeeze the bridge of my nose and answer her. “In the beginning, it was a simple case of immaturity and my inability to handle rejection.” I tell her about my crush on Rye, the way he effectively squashed it, and the resulting low-key feud. “We started relating to each other by bickering and sniping. But a few years later…”

I grit my teeth. I don’t want to remember. I put it aside a while ago. Remembering only pokes a sore spot that I’ve worked to heal. Remembering only threatens to make me view Rye in a way that will make everything harder. But Jules asked, and maybe it’s better to get it out instead of burying it away.

“I saw him doing something he shouldn’t.”

“What, like a crime?”

“No. He was with a woman—”

“Please don’t tell me he hurt her.” Horror shimmers in her eyes.

“Jules!” I huff out a weak laugh. “Stop interrupting. No, he didn’t do that. I’d have told someone, and he’d have been out of the band in a blink. He was just kissing someone he shouldn’t have.”

I close my eyes and will away the memory, the utter disappointment and rage I’d felt toward him, knowing that he put his drunken lust over the happiness of his friends.

“I’m not going to say who, because it’s been ten years at this point, and it does no good to stir the pot.” I give Jules a sad, wane smile. “But it set the tone for how I related to him for so long. I held on to that rage for years, let it feed me when it came to him. But it wasn’t healthy, and he never did anything like that again—not that I know of. So, I let it go. Only by then, we’d settled into the pattern of animosity like a pair of favorite shoes.”