Rocking Kin (The Lucy & Harris Novella Series Book 3) (8 page)

While Jace had the messy hair and a little scruff going on tonight, Harris was clean cut and dressed for business in dark dress pants and a blue button-up that was only half done, showing a sexy glimpse of dark muscles. Aquamarine eyes brightened when he met my gaze and grinned, showing me twin dimples that could make any chick’s panties melt.

Mine, however, weren’t even affected. How could they be where this guy was concerned when I was still so invested in the stupid idiot behind me?

“Hi,” I greeted Harris. “I’m Kin.”

He tilted his head. “Hello, Kin.”

“I heard this is the place to be on Wednesday nights. Is there any way I can get on the rotation for the open mike?” I bit my lip, flirting unashamedly. “I have something I’d like to sing for you.”

“Oh, yeah?” He grinned again, his dimples popping.

Holy shit. I could totally see why Lucy was hung up on this guy, if that was what was going on with my friend. If I’d met him before I’d set eyes on Jace, I might have been crushing on him myself. “Yeah,” I said a little breathlessly and could actually feel Jace’s body temp freezing over.

Jealous Jace had always been amusing to me. He’d been jealous of Caleb that first night, but I’d quickly set him right about our relationship. Any other time I’d gone to that bar in Bristol to watch Tainted Knights perform he’d had his eyes glued to me to make sure no one approached me. He would rather I show up with Caleb than without him, because no one bothered to look twice when my stepbrother was in attendance and, if they did, one look from him usually had guys pissing themselves.

“Sure, Kin. I’ll put you on the list.” His gaze went over my head to Jace, then quickly back to me. I could almost feel the message that had passed between the two guys.

Hands off.

I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t shopping for a replacement for Jace. Hell, I was done with guys for the foreseeable future.

“Lu with you?” Harris surprised me by asking next.

I nodded my head in the direction I’d just come from and those aquamarine eyes zeroed in on her instantly. Well, hell. The look that crossed Harris’s face was unexpected yet…not. The way his eyes seemed to eat up Lucy told me all I needed to know about this guy. I wanted to get in his face and tell him that if he hurt her I would cut off his balls, but for some reason I didn’t think I had to stress that to this guy.

“You’re my new favorite person, Kin.”

I grinned at him. “Come over and join us.”

I didn’t have to tell him twice. He was on his feet before I’d even turned back toward our table. Lucy tried to look busy by pulling her phone out and playing with it, but I could see the slight tremble to her fingers as I dropped down into my chair just as Harris took the one right beside her.

“Why haven’t you answered my messages?” Harris demanded with a smug grin on his face as he scooted his chair so close to Lucy that I wondered if she would develop personal space issues. “I figured I would get a ‘fuck you’ or a ‘go to hell’. Instead all I got was nothing. Honestly, I’d rather have the ‘fuck you’, Lu.”

“What are you talking about?” Lucy demanded. “I haven’t gotten any messages from you.”

I sat back in my chair, watching them intently as they argued about Harris texting or not texting. It was slightly amusing to watch Lucy take charge of a guy’s attention like she currently was with him. In the few weeks that I’d known Lucy, I’d learned a lot about her. One of the things I already knew was that she thought guys were immune to her because she sure as hell acted like she was immune to them. Yet, with Harris, I could see how un-immune she really was. It was in the way her eyes dilated a little more every time their gazes met. In the way her breath seemed to catch when he dipped his head a little closer. In the way she lit up just being next to him.

“The hell you say. I’ve been texting you since Sunday night.” He pulled out his phone and showed her.

Lucy grinned and I glanced over her shoulder to see what was going on. “That’s not your number. Why would you wrong-number the poor guy like that, Lucy?”

“I didn’t,” Lucy said with a snicker. “Mom did.”

Harris snatched his phone back, a pout already forming. “Layla wrong-numbered me?” The hurt in his eyes made me feel bad for him. “I thought she liked me.”

“Oh, stop,” Lucy told him with a grin. “Mom loves you. She just loves me more.”

“So give me your real number,” Harris commanded, holding the phone out for her once again. “Let me send you messages you can read and ignore. Or—and this is my preference, by the way—actually talk to me.”

It was cute to watch them together like that, but my attention was quickly pulled away when the fourth and final chair at our table was suddenly pulled back and Jace sat beside me. His shoulders were more tense than I’d ever seen them and his blue eyes were full of ice as he glared down at me.

“Are you really going to play games with me, Kin?” he gritted out. “I thought you were more mature than that.”

I could guarantee that I was more mature than any chick he’d ever dealt with before. “Go to hell, Jace.”

He leaned closer and I shot a quick glance toward Lucy, but she was still caught up in Harris as he tried to convince her to give him her real number. Jace tapped my hand and I moved it away before he could touch me again. “You haven’t returned any of my calls.”

I lifted a brow at him. “I was surprised you still had my number, actually. Figured that went out the door the second you decided I wasn’t worth your time.”

The look that crossed his face was so intense I got a twisted sense of pleasure. Direct hit. It didn’t make me feel any better that he could feel pain where I was concerned. If anything it just made my own aching heart ache all the more. I couldn’t even begin to guess why he would still care after so many months had passed without so much as a word from him. He hadn’t tried to keep up with what was going on in my life.

If he had, maybe I wouldn’t have still been so…

Destroyed.

Maybe if he’d reached out to me while I’d been going through pure hell watching my mom fade right before my eyes I could have been a little more forgiving. It wouldn’t have mattered so much that he’d left me for his band. I could even understand that—just a little. He’d had a chance to make something special with Tainted Knights and I never would have stood in his way where his dreams were concerned.

I loved him too much to stand in his way.

Had.

Had
loved him too much to stand in his way.

I’d loved him so much it had scared my mom and Carter. I’d fallen fast and we’d moved even faster where our relationship was concerned. I’d thought he’d loved me just as much.

But there had been nothing from him. After he’d walked away, leaving me a broken mess of the Kin I’d once been, there had been no calls, or texts, or emails. The one person I’d ached to talk to most in the world. The one I’d trusted to have my back and love me as completely as I loved him. The one I’d ached to see. To have his arms around me. To just be there for me to unload my day onto.

I’d had Carter and the twins to support me, but I’d needed more. Needed Jace. He’d known how much I’d needed him.

And he’d turned his back and walked away without a second glance.

Those blue eyes were still on me and I felt more than a little exposed right then. Deciding to tune him out—which was easer said than done—I turned my attention back to Lucy who was now standing with Harris taking selfies and looking so flushed and happy I thought I was looking at a whole new Lucy.

Those two looked good together.

If any two people were meant to be with each other, it was these two. It was kind of adorable.

Right then, however, adorable only pissed me off.

I’d thought I was supposed to be with Jace and look where that had gotten me.

“So when does this open mike thing start?” I demanded as I picked up my glass of ginger ale and took a small sip. “I’d like to get this over with.” And go back to my father’s house so I could forget this day ever happened.

Hell, now I was actually looking forward to going back to that pit of vipers? I needed to get away from Jace St. Charles as quickly as I could.

Chapter 8

Jace

If I’d thought that Kin was pissed, I’d been wrong.

She wasn’t pissed. No, she was hurt and that made it twice as bad.

Fuck.

As she stood to get ready to take the stage for her first open mike, I ached to reach out and take her hand. To give it a squeeze and offer my support, but the look on her face—in those damn blue eyes—told me that touching her right then would be the last thing she needed or would accept. Her eyes were hard, but I could see what was deeper.

The vulnerability.

She seemed almost…defeated, in a way. That look was something I’d never seen from her before and it stabbed me straight to the soul. What was going on with her? I had no idea what had happened to her after I’d left Bristol all those months ago and right then I would have killed to know what was going on. Before I’d left her, I knew that all I would have had to do was pull her close and tell her I would make it all better and she would wrap her arms around my waist and unload everything that was bothering her.

Now…

Well, now I’d fucked all that up. I wasn’t going to get what was wrong with her out so easily. If at all.

Harris dropped down into his chair that he’d been in before having to get back to work and starting the open mike show, but he only had eyes for the beautiful chick I’d been left alone with the second Kin’s name had been called. I glanced at Lucy out of the corner of my eye.

There was no one in the music world who didn’t know who Lucy Thornton was. Her entire life story had been publicized from the moment Jesse Thornton had adopted her. The drummer for Demon’s Wing had married Lucy’s oldest sister and the two had adopted her. Two years after that, just when Layla Thornton had gone into labor with their twin sons, Lucy’s biological father had resurfaced and had snatched her. The media world had lost their shit trying to get pictures of Lucy after that little fiasco and one of them actually had.

Lucy had been one big bruise. No part of her face had been left untouched. Her eyes had been swollen and her nine-year-old little body had looked like someone had used it as a punching bag. The scar on her lip was the only lasting outward sign that still remained, but I couldn’t help but wonder if that part of her life had left some emotional scars as well.

Since then things had calmed down—with the exception of a few other tabloid moments for the other Demons—and Lucy had tried to keep out of the limelight as much as possible. For celebrities and their kids, however, that was nearly impossible. Which explained the ex-military dude in a suit who was watching Lucy like someone was going to jump out of nowhere and attack her at any moment.

“Can she sing?” Harris asked Lucy as he scooted his chair closer to the chick.

Lucy shrugged. “I haven’t heard her yet, but she can play the guitar like a goddess.”

My gaze went back to Kin who was sitting down on the stool on stage, getting ready. “Caleb taught her,” I informed my friend as I watched Kin closer.

Someone would have to be looking hard to notice how nervous she was right then. She was always so brave and strong that, unless you really knew her, you wouldn’t know how anxious she could actually get. Her smile was bright and friendly, but there was a detachedness in her eyes that would have kept most people at bay. 

“Caleb?” Harris murmured.

Before I could explain, Lucy spoke. “Kin’s stepbrother. They’re pretty close. Kin’s been pretty bummed about being away from him, his twin sister, and her stepdad.” She blew out an angry sigh. “Her dad isn’t ever home and her stepmom and her evil step-bitches are making her life miserable. Before she died, Kin’s mom made her promise to spend this year getting to know her dad and his family. Pretty hard to do that when her dad is more interested in that piece-of-shit movie he’s directing, and his family would rather she disappear.”

Well, fuck. So that was it. I hadn’t really thought that Abigail would actually follow through on making Kin keep that promise. Why would she make Kin leave everything that she knew and everyone that she loved to spend time with her piece-of-shit father and his asshole family? That seemed too harsh coming from a woman I’d known had loved Kin so completely. Abigail had been a great mother, but this…

This just wasn’t right.

No wonder Kin looked so miserable. It wasn’t just because of what had happened between us, I would bet money on it. She was feeling lost right then, having just had to uproot herself from Caleb and Angie, and felt abandoned.

On stage, Kin finally settled in and licked her lips a little nervously, before releasing a small laugh that seemed to wake up my entire body. “Hi,” she greeted the room with that easy grin in place. “I’m Kin and this…” She broke off and I watched as her eyes filled with tears. Seeing how she tried to blink them back only made me want to jump up on that damn little stage and wrap my arms around her. “This song is for my mom.”

I clenched my hands into fists as she started to play. Because she was still fighting tears, she started out a little slow but less than half a minute into it her natural skills with the guitar took over and she settled into it like the rock star I knew she was. The longer I watched, the harder it was to catch my breath.

Fuck, she was amazing.

Her voice was better than a lot of the pop stars I’d heard on the radio with Auto-Tune making them sound the way they did, but it wasn’t the kind of rock voice that people would stop and take a second look at. That didn’t matter, though. Her skills with the guitar made up for that, and the words that I knew she must have written herself, were so full of emotion—so fucking moving—that the entire club was soon stopping what they were doing and taking a harder look at the girl on stage.

Kin had a talent with writing music and poetry. She could destroy a person with her words, make them feel as if they are nothing or everything. She could open herself up and show the world just who she was with one song. For me, music was everything, and Kin was so incredibly talented that she made me feel that life without her music had no meaning at all.