Rock the City: A Midnight Fate Novel (2 page)

I don’t doubt it.

We easily talk for two more hours, starting with what makes the country so enticing and ending up with her forgetting all about her tears. The time passes by so fast it seems more like ten minutes.

“I have to pee,” she says as she scurries off the bed and into the bathroom like we’ve been friends for years.

The entire time she’s gone, I look around her room for hints about her. The perfume she wears sits on the table. Her drink of choice sits on top of the mini fridge. A half-eaten chocolate chip cookie wrapped in plastic rests next to the bed. I don’t know what it is about the cookie specifically, but the simple fact that she’s a dessert girl speaks volumes compared to anything else in the room.

When she finishes in the bathroom and walks toward the bed where I’m still sitting, the air in the room shifts. Her eyes meet mine and the instant attraction I continue to have for her doesn’t go away—it only grows stronger.

Without question, she walks into my arms and stands between my legs. She’s not much taller than me, even though I’m sitting down, but in the short distance I have to look up at her I see so many truths and a whole lot of questions behind her eyes. Each one lures me in and has me craving more of her story.

The urge to kiss her becomes so strong I lick my lips, already imagining her mouth on mine.

She does the same thing, her gaze zoned in on the tip of my tongue as I brush it back and forth over my bottom lip. “Are you going to kiss me now?” she asks, in a voice barely above a whisper.

I reach out for her face, cupping her delicate jaw in the palm of my hands. The callused tip of my thumb rubs over her pink lips and, without answering her question, I show her my response.

Like they’ve been on a collision course since I first laid eyes on her, our lips crash together. It’s as if they’re being reunited after a long break. Nothing about it is awkward or forced—it’s simply meant to be.

When we finally do pull apart, I expect a smile that matches mine, but it’s not there. Instead, all I see is regret. “What’s wrong?” I ask her, wishing we could go back in time if the kiss we shared is going to mess up what we had.

“Everything’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Even though she’s not giving me the response I was expecting, I wrap my arms around her waist, keeping her right where I want her. At least until she tells me more.

“Lane, that was exactly what I was hoping for.”

Not understanding, I wait for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t. “And that’s a bad thing?”

“Maybe,” she whispers.

With as much conviction as I can possess, I tell her, “Maybe it’s time to stop questioning why you’re in my arms and focus on how good it feels to be here.”

She pauses and blinks a couple times, like she wants to get lost in nothing for a little while. Still, I can feel the wheels turning inside her. She’s anything but settled. “I’ve watched you on stage this week. I’ve seen you on TV and I’ve even been to your shows. You’re talented and amazing, but I’m scared to want you, Lane. Your world’s so different than mine. I’m scared I’ll lose you before I even get you.”

I rest my head against her stomach, breathing in her sweet coconut lotion. “But you want me anyway, don’t you?”

Without a single pause or stammer, she replies easily. “Yeah. I think I do.”

Six months later . . .

“Are you sure you have everything? What about protection?”

I turn around in my tight closet, hangers poking me and a couple shirts falling to the floor in a heap, all while staring at my best friend, Lark, like she’s lost her damn mind. “I’m about to see Lane in person, after doing this whole long-distance thing for almost six months, and you ask if I have condoms?”

Lark narrows her eyes, not completely understanding why I have a problem with her question. “Um, yeah. That’s pretty much what I’m asking.”

I take her by the hand, sitting her down on the bed. “I get we don’t live together anymore, now that you’re married to Easton and all, but have you completely forgotten who I am?”

Laughing, she stands and opens my suitcase. Her smile grows as she discovers just how much protection I’ve already packed. “Three boxes? You’re only going to New York for two weeks, right? Plus, I’m pretty sure they sell rubbers in the city.”

If I didn’t have my salon to worry about, I’d stay longer, but there are only so many days I can stay away when I’m the boss. Lane wasn’t thrilled, mostly because if he had it his way, I’d be packing all my shit into boxes and moving in with him—just like Lark did with Easton. When the men of Midnight Fate fall, they fall hard, and they’re all in. Even if it takes a little while to get there.

“Noelle?”

“Yeah, two weeks. Sorry.”

“You realize there’s thirty-six in each box?”

I walk over and glance at the three black boxes. “I hope I have enough. Math’s never been my strength.”

Lark falls to the floor, laughing her ass off. “If you two do it a hundred and eight times, I’ll have to take one of you to the hospital. Maybe both.”

“According to my calculations, that’s roughly seven times a day. That’s totally doable.”

She stares at me, her laughter slowly fading once she realizes I’m not joking. I never kid about sex. When she sits up, she folds her arms over her chest. “I’ve been on a honeymoon, Noelle. My husband is a complete hornball, and even
we
didn’t come close to seven times a day.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Just pack your stuff so we can get to New York before they get off the bus. I want to surprise them. Gina’s meeting us there.”

I still can’t believe that after five and a half months on tour, and being about as far apart as we could possibly be from one another, that I’m about to be reunited with Lane—the guy I fell so hard for after one of the most memorable weeks of my life.

Sure, maybe we didn’t have the most romantic meeting, given the fact that we were on a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean. But after seeing him, I realized I hadn’t gone all that way for nothing.

I may never understand how we happened to be in the same place at the right time, but no matter what the cause, Lane rescued me when I thought I wasn’t worthy of love. When I was positive I’d go on being invisible, he told me differently. He showed me I was enough for him.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he whispers against my face as I hold tightly to the handle on my suitcase, wishing it was him I were holding onto instead.

“I don’t want to go either, but we both have a world to get back to.”

He doesn’t disagree as he grabs onto my hip, pulling me against him. “Promise me you’ll still want this when you get home.”

“I’m sad we don’t have more time, but this feeling inside me isn’t going to disappear in a day, Lane. If it does, I’ll see a doctor—because surely I’d have lost my damn mind.”

He stands up, laughing as he puts even more distance between us. When I look up and into his eyes, I see a man I’m going to enjoy getting to know beyond this physical pull we have. And as I stand here memorizing every inch of his face, in case I never get to see it in person again, I say a silent prayer that he’ll still want me in the morning and every morning after that.

“Don’t question it, Noelle. You have nothing to worry about.”

“I believe you,” I tell him. “Just don’t make me regret it.”

Looking back, I’d have regretted not giving Lane a shot. For me, all our moments—whether face to face or from a distance—have been equally special. The little bit of time we’ve spent physically holding each other doesn’t seem that insignificant—not when I’ve been holding him in my heart for months.

Those first calming moments grounded me, and they’ll always be ours.

Lark tosses a T-shirt at me. “Hey, stop daydreaming. You’ll see him soon enough.”

“It’ll never be too soon,” I tell her, already wondering if it’ll be like we’ve never been apart a single day, or if we’ll have to work on the connection I felt so strongly about before he left. “I haven’t talked to Gina in a while. She kind of feels like a stranger lately, but I take it she and Dom are still solid?”

Lark tosses a sweater in my suitcase I wasn’t planning on bringing because the more clothes I’m wearing, the less likely I am to be screwing my man.

“They survived touring together, so I’d say so.”

I was the only one who had to stay home because of my job. Lark’s still working as the band’s publicist, and the guys gave Gina a job as their financial advisor, with her being an accountant and all.

The day they all left was the first day I ever regretted having my own business. More than anything, I wanted to close up shop and live life on the road, but I worked too hard to get where I am to give it all up. “What about you? You toured with them, too.”

She smiles, rolling her eyes. “Let me tell you, PR for Midnight Fate is no joke. You wouldn’t believe the stuff people try to pull, mostly the gossip magazines. They have no shame in making up stories, that’s for sure.”

“So, if you skipped out at the end of the tour, who was watching over them all week?”

“Even when I’m not there, it’s still my job. In fact, just last week, I squashed a story about you.”

“Me? What was it about?” I stop folding my underwear that doesn’t even need to be folded, wondering what they could have on me. Other than my work in the salon, I lead a pretty low-key life these days. If you don’t count my all-night Skype dates with Lane that end up with the both of us naked and satisfied, I’m pretty mellow—almost boring.

“Lane’s always been the mysterious one of the band. They can’t figure him out, know absolutely nothing about his past—not that anyone else does either, but it drives them crazy. Not to mention he can’t be linked with any female celebrities in the business.”

“Because he has me. And he doesn’t like people in his personal business.”

“We know that, but the media had no idea you even existed until he slipped in an interview. They tried their hardest to figure out who he was talking about, even coming up with some creative guesses, but in the end, they had no idea Lane was seeing a girl from a small town in Pennsylvania who happens to be my best friend in the entire world.”

“Lane wants me to have a normal life without being hounded by press or followed by paparazzi.”

Lark stretches out on my bed, yawning like she would fall asleep if I let her. “Why do you say it like it’s a bad thing?” she questions.

“He’s a private person, that’s all,” I tell her, even though I’m trying my hardest not to doubt Lane or feel like his dirty little secret. But if I don’t exist to the public, I have to wonder if I completely exist to Lane—at least in the way I want to.

Although he’s never given me any reason to doubt what we have, I want to be able to claim him as my guy and stand proudly by his side.

“Even with you?”

“We talk, but I want him to confide in me because he wants to. Not because he feels like he has to.”

My best friend can see through my bullshit answers and pats the bed beside her. When I lie down next to her, she turns on her side and smiles at me. “Noelle, I really feel like this is the beginning for you and Lane. These next two weeks will be good for you. You’ve survived months apart, and now that you can be together in the same place for more than an hour or two at a time, it’ll all work out.”