Ice Steam (Loving All Wrong #3) (16 page)

“You do realize that by asking me that you’re calling me a whore, right?” I said evenly. “Even though I told you last night that before you I’ve only ever been with my son’s father.”

Backing up from me, he scrubbed his hands down his face, apologizing, “Sorry.” He made a low, throaty, sound of frustration and sat down on the bed. “You just…make my head hurt.”

“Why stay with me then?”

Lurching forward, he grabbed my wrist and yanked me to him and down on his lap, knocking a squeal out of me. “’Cause I like the pain,” he confessed to my cleavage.

“I paid for the bracelet from my trust fund.”

Heated gray eyes left my cleavage and landed on my face. “Got a trust fund?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Fourte—Sixteen million.”

The disappointed expression from earlier returned. “Which is it?” His voice was tight, biting. “Fourteen or sixteen?”

Why did I lie about that just now? I could hear Saskia’s voice in my head:
always check for toilet paper before you squat and blow your load, Ally, so you’ll have something to wipe all that shite from your arse.

“Twenty. It’s twenty million,” I compulsively lied again, then winced.

Xavier gently pushed me off his lap, and I stumbled a bit at the suddenness of it. “Can’t do this.”

“What?”

He stood, depriving me the courtesy of eye-contact. “Dunno if it’s really fourteen, seventeen, twenty, or if you even have a damn trust fund. But what I
have
discovered in the last few minutes, Chino, is that you’re a liar. Starting to question everything you’ve ever told me.” He brushed past me to the door. “Hate liars, Alina. Can’t be with one.” He wrenched the door open and slammed out of the room.

Didn’t know much about relationships, but I was certain he just broke up with me. And my only invitation to Jake’s party was through him. I had to find another way to get into that club so I could see Davian.

Fetching my cell from my clutch, I rang Mel and asked her to come get me, then hustled around packing up all my stuff.

If Lion was in L.A., he’d indubitably be attending Jake’s bash. If not, I’d have to ring Saskia and have her check if any of her L.A. contacts would be attending.

I picked up the Cartier box from the bed and popped it open, diamonds winking. Walking to the nightstand, I set the box down squarely. I bought it for him. He should keep it regardless of our abrupt ending. I had no use for it.

I grasped the handle of my pull-along and wheeled out of the room. Xena was pacing downstairs.

“Finally you’re read—oh,
wow
. I lurrrve your outfit. Girl, you could be on the red carpet! You look gorge!” she exclaimed when she saw me. “But anyway we need to go. Ice Steam left with our limo because we were taking too long. So we’re all piling up in Xavi’s Humm—” As if belatedly spotting my suitcase, she changed tact mid-sentence, asking, “What’s that for?”

“Xavi broke up with me.”

Her face fell. She looked authentically disheartened by this despite her attitude the day before. “Ah…wha—okay. So…you can still come, you know.”

I shook my head. “Nah. It’s okay. I’ll just wait outside for my ride.”

We walked outside in awkward silence, and I parked my pull-along and sat down on the low bench outside the door.

The Hummer’s head and taillights were on, engine running, and I could see smoke swirling out of the tinted windows which were powered up halfway. The smoke was on either Tex or Mark’s account. Leo and Xavier weren’t smokers.

Xena closed the front door and hesitated. “Are…are you sure you don’t want to wait inside?”

“Nope. I’m good.”

As she started down the steps, her cell chirped and she paused to read the screen, then turned to me. “Xavi wants you to know you’re still invited to the party and that you don’t have to leave tonight.”

Giving her a sweet smile, I shook my head to decline. “I don’t like being where I’m not wanted. Yesterday you threatened me. Earlier Tex labeled me a she-devil. Fifteen minutes ago your brother dumped me. I think my welcome at Beach Rock is worn.”

She opened her mouth as if to refute that, thought better of it and resumed her descent down the steps. But when she got to the bottom, she turned again to ask, “Did you even like my brother? I’m not trying to be a bitch or anything, but…you don’t seem to care he broke up with you?”

I should have seen that question coming. I got them all the time, with tilts of the heads and puzzled expressions as if I were an alien doing the Gangnam Style in black shades.

Did you love your parents? You don’t seem to care that they were murdered in your home. Do you even love your son? You don’t seem to care that he’s in pain from his umbilical hernia. Do you like your cousin? You don’t seem to care he’s never around. Do you even care about Saskia? How could you let her flip a couch after witnessing her suffer through two painful miscarriages?

“I don’t know what’s in my veins,” I told her. And that was the honest truth.

Xena nodded slowly, studying me, a crease between her brows. “Well, I guess this break up is the best thing for the both of you, then.”

She continued to the Hummer and climbed in the passenger side. Even then, the vehicle didn’t move for a good three minutes, and I could hear Xena’s high-pitched voice above the men’s deep grumbles.

In my lap, my phone buzzed. I glanced down at the screen to see an incoming text message from Xavier. Without even opening the text, I deleted it. If he had something to say to me, he needed to get his big ass out of the vehicle and say it to my face. We weren’t in high school.

I made a show of putting my cellphone into my clutch and snapping it shut.

Seconds later, the Hummer screeched off.

The minute the taillights were out of view I took out my phone and hit up Lion on Whatsapp.

Alina:
Heard Ninety Mile’s throwing a bday pawty 4 Jake @ SiTo. U going?

Lion T’mar:
How you know about that?

Alina:
This is Los Angeles…

Lion T’mar:
Going
. Me & T just heading out.

Alina:
Wanna b part of ur entourage 2nite.

Lion T’mar:
No.

Alina:
Seriously?!

Lion T’mar:
You only wanna go to see Davi. NO.

Alina:
Puh-leeeeze. Have moved on 2 bigger & better things. Davi who?

Lion T’mar:
??????

Alina:
Am hooking up with Xavier Xander.

Lion T’mar:
So why you ain’t going with him instead of me?

Alina:
Was supposed 2. But we had a tiff. He’s sulking. Rock stars. Full of theatrics.

Five minutes passed without a response and I knew he was contacting someone, somewhere, to verify my story, because that was Lion. He did not tolerate being bullshitted.

At same time Mel braked up outside Beach Rock, Lion replied:
Meet me outside SiTo in fifteen.

The club was packed.

The look Lion gave me when we met up outside told me we would be having words whenever we had less of audience.

We joined the celebration over an hour ago, but everyone was grooving and having a blast except me.

Nope, I was skulking in the depths of the top level VIP section, nursing a non-alcoholic beverage and spying in the VIP section on the bottom level, where Ninety Miles and Ice Steam were.

SiTo was a two-level night club with urbane aesthetics and the capacity to hold a couple thousand bodies easily with no elbows brushing. Each floor had two capacious VIP sections, and Lion and his entourage claimed the one upstairs, while Ninety Miles and Ice Steam claimed the section downstairs. Therefore, I had direct view of the bottom VIP from upstairs.

Jake was wasted, jumping around with Leo, Mark and Zach, their arms thrown around each other’s shoulders, doing something akin to square dancing to Imagine Dragon’s
Radioactive
, in true drunken fashion. Had to admit, it was unheard of how well both bands got along.

It was rare for a successful band to gladly shift over and make room for another band to dabble in their spotlight, but Ninety Miles did. And it was obvious they weren’t merely being tolerable because they were signed to
the same label. They genuinely liked Ice Steam.

Tex and Davian were sitting side by side, slouched forward, talking, Tex with wild hand gestures, while Davian seemed a little distracted. He kept glancing up to the top floor VIP section.

Although I could see all of them without hindrance from our section, I knew it wasn’t same for those downstairs. One, we were higher up, and two, being on the top floor meant railings, and in SiTo’s case, mesh railings.

Unless I walked to railings and peered over, it was impossible for them to see me.

Also, I doubted either band knew I was in the club. When Lion partied, he partied with a large entourage, and when we entered the SiTo I was in the middle of that mix, plus the party was already in full swing.
So I couldn’t ascertain Davian’s distraction and constant eying of the VIP was on account of me.

I wanted to go to him. We needed to have words. But there was no way to do that without Lion giving me shit about it.

Xavier was lying supine on one of the seats in the booth, one foot cast off to the ground, the other bent up on the seating, cellphone in his hand casting a glow of light down on his face as he furiously tapped away on the touch screen.

Taking no part in Jake’s celebration, it seemed like just another shiftless afternoon on the couch for him.

Xavier was big on texting, I knew this; he could shut out the world and text for hours. He told me it had been his coping mechanism in rehab. But seeing as he wasn’t texting
me
anymore, he had to have found a new flame to start texting it up with, because Alina O’Hara was a liar.

Rock stars. That effortless for them, wasn’t it? At just the snap of a finger, a new girl on the scene. Replaced.

I admit I felt something minuscule at the thought of him replacing me in a matter of hours. A prick. A tiny prick of pain. Like a needle to the tip of the finger. Then it was gone.

Three of Lion’s artists tried to chat me up on separate occasions in the last hour since I’d been there, but after a few minutes of terse dialog, they got the gist that I was a barren land and there’d be no harvesting on my property, so they gassed up and skipped town.

I sat up straight when I saw Xavier got up and stretched his arms over his head as if he was just waking up from a long night’s sleep, then strode from the VIP section. He was bigger, taller, moodier and more striking than everyone else, man and woman, in the club, as he burned through the crowd like a ball of fire making a flaming path through a straw field.

It wasn’t a small prick that I felt this time as I watched him, but a deep puncture. Something, somewhere inside me, was punctured. It was leaking.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
And I knew in that moment as I watched him disappear under the railing, that this
wasn’t
the end of us. Not while I was still punctured and dripping. The end would come when I was leaked dry.

Xavier Xander, guitarist of world-class rock band, Ninety Miles, was going to drain me.

Shifting my gaze back to the booth, I caught Davian staring up at our section again, and I briefly wondered if his fiancée
was there. I could see Xena making the rounds through the crowd, chatting up each and every person she came in contact with. But I saw no sign of the southern sweetheart, Jessica Stucco.

My phone buzzed, and I hurriedly picked it up, hoping it was Xavier texting me to meet him in a back alley or a grimy bathroom or…anything.
Anything
.

But it was Saskia on Whatsapp.

Saskia Day:
Just spent d last 30mins whatsapping with Xavi…he’s off kilter.

Alina:
How r u allowed 2 whatsapp with Xavi? Where’s JK?

Saskia Day:
Am watching him on my TV right now, he’s hosting a live event. And ur little man’s keeping me up. He keeps yanking on my bloody hair, screaming “Assy! Assy! Dada eeho Assy!” So now am not Sassy, but Assy. Gawd I hope I don’t stink like that name.

Alina:
LOL. Kiss him 4 me & let him know his mommy loves him.

Saskia Day:
I already do that everyday. Wut did u do 2 Xavi?

Alina:
He broke up with me.

Saskia Day:
Yeah, he told me that, but y?

Alina:
He got nosy…

Saskia Day:
Not ready 2 tell him?

Alina:
I tried 2. But I botched it. Twice. So he told me he couldn’t be with a liar.

Saskia Day:
He said he still wanted 2 go 2 d party with u, but u were “assing”. Then u show up at the club with Dustin Latimore hanging all over u.

Alina:
Oh plz! Rock stars r SO dramatic! I came with Lion, Dustin was trying 2 find out who this “dove in white” was, I brushed him off, full stop. I didn’t even know Xavi saw when I came, 2b honest. Was in the mix of Lion’s entourage.