Rock the City: A Midnight Fate Novel (13 page)

By this point, I’m so tired of vague responses I lose my shit a little bit more than I should. I’m anything but pleasant when I say, “Cut the shit, Easton. You’re Lane’s best friend and you’re married to mine. I trust you to be honest with me.”

Lark wraps her arm around me after seeing how emotional I’m getting. She also looks to her husband for answers. “East? What’s going on?”

He glances between me and Lark, a pained expression overshadowing the cool confidence he usually carries around with him. “We were there five or ten minutes before he walked up on stage, took some blonde by the hand, and left. From the little I saw, they had history.”

Even though there’s a limo waiting to take us all home, I walk over to the line of waiting cabs, standing by the first one I come to. “Which one of you drives this thing?”

Three men turn around, eyeing me from head to toe. The youngest tosses his cigarette on the ground, letting the smoke waft through the air instead of stepping on it to put it out. “I’ve got you, gorgeous.”

I pull my tight skirt down as far as it will go and tug on my top, wishing it showed a little less cleavage. The guy I wore this for left with someone else.

“Where to?” he asks in his thick New York accent after helping me into the backseat. I’ve only taken a cab once in my life and it was in Manhattan on a busy summer day. Out here in the middle of nowhere Jersey, it’s scarier than I remember it being.

All my stuff’s still at Lane’s, but right now, that’s the last place I want to go. With a shaky voice, I make a split-second decision. “I’ll pay you double if you take me to Pennsylvania.”

Like he just hit the jackpot, he nods and smiles. “For that kind of money, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. California, or even Mexico—I’m at your service.”

“Just take me home,” I whisper, as my first trip to visit Lane starts to feel more and more like a mistake. It’s been one thing after another, but I’m done putting my heart on the line for a guy who would duck out on me to be with a stripper.

It’s clear this small-town girl wasn’t cut out for the world of rock and roll. Still, as each mile passes and the grandeur of the city slowly fades away, the high-rise buildings I fell in love with slowly becoming nothing more than a dark and dingy horizon, I try to remember what life was like before Lane.

I’ve gotten so used to looking forward to talking to him, to what it would be like when we finally saw one another again, that I may have lost a little piece of myself. I was too busy falling in love to even notice he might not be all mine.

It turns out Midnight Fate’s most eligible bachelor, the guy the tabloids can never seem to figure out no matter how hard they try, might not be as mysterious as they think.

Even though the world never knew I existed or that he hasn’t been single in six months, I never cared. It was okay with me that all the gossip rags painted the wrong picture of Lane Lewis, because in my heart I knew I had the version that mattered. I knew I had my guy.

Tonight, I’m wondering if they’ve been right all along, if I’m the idiot who didn’t see Lane for who he really is. Maybe I’m the one who was too mystified by dating someone like him to really care what he was doing when he wasn’t with me. Because as long as he was out there making his dreams come true, I was happy for him.

I was happy loving him from afar, and now I’m miserable loving him up close. But no matter how much my heart hurts, I still can’t picture any one of our conversations as a lie. We spent too many nights together, hundreds of miles apart, to not have gotten to our truths. Nights like the ones when we were both blanketed by the stars, making wishes on the brightest one, with the hope that every wish would come true.

“Are you in bed?” Lane asks as the noise around him dies down. He hates being trapped on the bus all the time, but I’ve loved all our late-night conversations that last into the early morning. Maybe we can’t be with each other as much as we’d like, and maybe we’re both a little more lonely than we’d like to admit, but getting to know him through words has brought us closer than anything we could ever do with our bodies.

“I’m in bed, looking at the stars,” I tell him, as I search for the one shining the brightest.

“I’m only about a hundred miles from you tonight. We’re probably looking at the same ones.”

Even though it’d be nearly impossible to be looking at the same star at the exact same time, I’d like to think we are—that one chunk in the sky could connect two people no matter where they are in the world.

“I miss you, Lane. All I can think about is the next time you’ll hold me in your arms.” I choke back the tears, not wanting him to hear how emotional I am tonight, but he hears it in my voice anyway.

“Don’t cry, baby.”

“This is hard, and I’m hormonal.”

If a smile had a sound, I hear it when he says, “It won’t be like this forever. I like sex too much to keep screwing you through the phone.”

Even though he’s flirting with me and it’s kind of dirty, he still manages to give me butterflies when he’s not even trying. That’s why I tell him, “That might be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“I’ll text it to you so you have it in writing.”

“I think I’d like that.”

We both pause for a few seconds, but it’s not awkward. It couldn’t be
—
not when I’m too busy falling for him as I lie here listening to the sound of him breathing. I’d like to think he’s having similar thoughts of his own. Which is why I’m hopeful when I ask him, “If you could be doing anything right now, what would it be?”

I’m so desperate for him to give me some clues about how he’s feeling, but he’s as honest as ever when he tells me, “You and cereal.”

Laughing, I ask him, “What?”

“Dom ate the last of my Cocoa Pebbles again. I punched him in the junk.”

Like a bunch of guys in a frat house, life on a bus isn’t much different. “You’re so normal it’s weird sometimes.”

“I am normal, Noelle. Just because I’m in a band doesn’t mean I don’t like the same things as everyone else.”

“I guess it’s easy to forget that sometimes because I have you on this pedestal. Plus, when I go to the grocery store, sometimes your face is on the cover of a magazine. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”

“That makes two of us. But baby, we’re on the same level. It doesn’t matter how much money I have in the bank or what I own. All that matters to me is that you’re with me to enjoy it all.”

“I wish I was with you now,” I tell him as I yawn, regretting it as soon as it escapes me. Like always, he’ll feel bad for keeping me awake because I have to go to work in a couple hours. I always remind him I’m my own boss and can show up whenever I want most days, but he always apologizes anyway.

I may have barely slept the past couple weeks, but I’d go without sleep every single day if it meant I could have Lane all to myself for a little while.

“Get some sleep, baby. I’m crawling in my bunk, too. We have an early meet and greet tomorrow.”

“By early do you mean noon?”

“Right? It’s crazy fuckin’ early, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know how you’ll manage.”

“You should probably text me something good around eleven to make sure I’m up.”

I smile because this is him asking me for naked pics. “Boobs or butt?”

He laughs before saying, “I love that I don’t have to beg you for hot shit.”

“Just remember how good you have it.”

“I don’t want anyone else, Noelle. And I’d never ask another woman for pictures
—
only the one I care about and who should already be in my bed.”

I didn’t mean anything by what I said, but his reassurance still makes me feel good. With complete confidence and zero doubt, I respond as honestly as I can, so he hears me loud and clear. “I trust you, Lane.”

Trust means everything to me. It always has and it always will, because if I don’t have your trust, and you don’t have mine, then we have nothing.

Our two-way street is congested with doubts, and considering the way tonight ended, I stopped trusting Lane the second he walked out Lola’s door with another woman.

He and I are done.

“This is where you live?” Lemon asks as I unlock the door to my condo and open it for her.

“This is it.” I took a risk bringing her here, especially since I have no idea how Noelle’s going to react once she meets Lemon. It can go one of two ways—she’ll either act like her usual accepting self, understanding the position I was in at Lola’s, or she’ll react with her heart and break into a jealous rage she would absolutely be entitled to.

Noelle’s visit may not be going at all how I planned, and this will undoubtedly be another challenge to add to our long list of things we’ve had to overcome, but I believe in her.

“How long have you lived here?”

“A couple years.”

Lemon’s instantly drawn to the fireplace, and with each tentative step she takes toward the mantle, she pulls the blanket that’s wrapped around her a little tighter.

I don’t know why I’m nervous as she looks around, but for some reason, I want her to like it here. Probably because this is the first real home she’s ever been inside—a place that isn’t littered with negative memories, doesn’t have chipped paint falling off the walls, or a screen door with a hole in it so big you wouldn’t even have to open the door to walk inside the house.

Still, no matter how many nice things she’s surrounded by, and how hard I’ve worked for every one of them, I’m not expecting her to relax enough to say, “This is beautiful. You must be really happy here. She’s lucky.”

Happy isn’t something either of us grew up with. It’s something I’ve had to work toward, and until Noelle I didn’t even understand what complete happiness meant. Considering Lemon’s still living in a house that has no shot at becoming anything other than the dump it is, I want her to experience this forever, too.

“I’m the lucky one,” I whisper, wishing this didn’t have to be so one-sided. I want her to tell me about her successes and see them with my own two eyes. I want to walk into her apartment and see her memories scattered all over the walls, framed in silver and gold.

“I can’t believe you still have this,” she says, her eyes transfixed on a picture of the two of us from years ago. “We were so young.”

“It’s one of my favorite memories.”

“You always were the sentimental one,” she jokes with a longing in her eyes for those days we had before the insanity began. The days when she became afraid of her own shadow.

When she finally sets the frame back down, she turns to face me with a curious expression. It’s the most emotion I’ve seen her show toward me in as long as I can remember. “You really have a girlfriend?”

“Yeah. Shocker, right?”

She sits on the edge of the couch like she’s afraid she’ll mess it up if she relaxes. She’s tense when she says, “Relationships are a head trip for me.”

“Maybe it’s the person you’re with who’s the problem.”

“Who else is there?”

“Anyone, Lemon. You could have so much more than you think.”