Toxic (Addiction #1) (40 page)

“Funny, it didn’t seem like you needed me when you were kissing your fans and signing their tits.”

Maisy pulled away and sat up in bed. She wrapped her arms around her knees that were pulled into her chest. Rook tried to get close to her, but she held out her hand to stop him. An electric current went through his body when her dainty hand made contact with his chest, causing him to inhale deeply from the contact he craved. She quickly removed her hand and turned her head away from him.
 

“Maisy, how can I make this better? Help me out. I don’t know what to do.”

“Leaving would be step one.”

The icy exterior pouring off of Maisy was startling to Rook, as fear ripped through his body. She wasn’t warming up to him and it scared him.
 

“Can we please talk about this…please?” He pulled at her arm as he tried to scoot closer. No matter what, he needed to touch her when they were together. For some reason her touch eased him, it eased the knot in his stomach and calmed his nerves. She didn’t scoot closer to him, but she didn’t pull away her hand either. Rook felt good about his small accomplishment and entwined their fingers together.
 

“Well…explain.”

“I’m a dick. I was jealous and just reacted.” He raked his hand through his hair as he tried to explain. “I’m not good at this, at being a decent human. I’m trying to be good for you, but I don’t know how to. I’m going to fuck up, I just need you to remember that when I do, it’s because I’m an idiot but I do care about you. I need you Maisy, please forgive me.”

Rook’s voice caught in his throat as he looked at the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on and pleaded for her forgiveness.
 

“I won’t share Rook; I told you that.”

“I know. I don’t know what came over me.”

“You said you didn’t know if you could trust me, how the hell am I supposed to trust you after what happened this morning? You kissed those girls, on the cheeks, yeah, but still. You let them grab at you, you signed their tits for fuck’s sake, all the while you made me feel like a fool and left me to fend for myself.”

“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry I left you there and let that bastard bring back bad memories. I know you can’t trust me, but let me try to earn your trust. Please, I can’t lose you right now. Not after I finally got a taste of you.”

Maisy took a second before she spoke. She played with Rook’s hand as she looked down at their connection.
 

“Give me a little bit of time.”

Rook blew out a frustrated breath. He didn’t want to give her time because if he gave her time her damn bandmates would convince her to not be with him. She would have too much time to think and she would finally realize that what Kaid said was right, she was too good for Rook.
 

“I can’t,” he said softly.

“You can’t?” she asked, a little more pissed off than he expected. He shook his head no. “And why the hell not?”

He scooted so he sat right in front of her and wrapped her legs around his waist. She didn’t move, but took her hand away from his and crossed her arms in front of her chest, closing him off…again. He placed both his hands on her thighs and rubbed them up and down.
 

“If I give you time, you won’t come back to me and I can’t survive that. My soul needs you.”

Maisy looked away from his pleading face. Rook took the chance to reach into his pocket and pull out the item that kept him from apologizing to Maisy earlier on. He pried her hand from her iron clad clasp to her chest and forced her to look at him.
 

“I have something for you.” She raised an eyebrow at him, but didn’t spit in his face so he continued. He opened her hand and dropped the necklace he had made for her a couple of days ago into her hand.
 

She looked down at the thin chain and examined the main piece. It was a white gold guitar pick with their initials engraved in it. She looked closely at the edge and she must have seen the engraving that surrounded the edge of the pick because she wiped a tear away from her face.
 

“I had it made a couple of days ago. I can understand if you don’t want to wear it now, but I wanted to make sure you had it.” He traced the pick with his finger as he clasped her hand with his. “You own my soul,” he recited from what he had engraved along the edge of the pick.
 

She looked up at him and gently said, “Thank you.”

Rook felt confident from her reaction that things between them were going to be okay. He moved in to hold her when she stopped him again. She looked into his eyes and brushed his face with her thumb.
 

“Give me some time.”

Rook’s heart fell, but he knew he didn’t have a choice but to grant her what she wanted. He nodded yes, grabbed his shirt and put it back on before he walked out the door. He looked back at Maisy before he left and saw her place the necklace around her neck. Her hand was holding the pick when she looked up at him and gave him a weak smile. He returned the small gesture and tried not to think about the fact that she was wearing his necklace, she was wearing his soul.
 

He would give her some time, maybe a day. After that, he was going to stake his claim again. Waiting wasn’t his forte, but if it meant being with Maisy, he would wait forever in order to hold her in his arms again.
 

***

A layer of sweat coated Rook’s body as he jerked awake. His body jackknifed forward when he woke up causing him to slam his head and his legs on the top of the bunk. He rubbed his head as he tried to calm his breathing to a normal pace.
 

He looked around and was glad to see he was in the comfort of his bunk on the tour bus, no matter how uncomfortable and cramped he could be at times. It was reassuring to know that he was surrounded by people who actually cared about him and as far away from his fuckhead of a father as he could be.
 

Nightmares didn’t come along very often for Rook, in fact he didn’t even dream most of the time, but when he did, he always dreamt of the night he finally left his father’s drug-induced wrath. It was many years ago, but he could still taste the blood that ran down his face from when his dad beat him with a baseball bat for not lining up his coke lines. Rook refused that night because his dad was already high as hell; he didn’t need anymore. The dickhead couldn’t walk that night and could barely see, that was why he needed Rook so badly.
 

By the time Rook was in high school, he was able to stand up for himself and step away from feeding his dad’s habit, but there were nights when Rook couldn’t escape his dad’s demands. That’s what happened the last night Rook stayed at his dad’s house. His dad beat the shit out of him that night and that was what Rook relived every so often in his dreams.
 

Rook’s young, pleading voice rang through his head as he begged his dad to stop and the crazed look that ran through his dad’s eyes was ingrained in Rook’s mind. A shiver ran through Rook’s body as the sweat that had formed on his bare skin started to turn cold. He tried to calm himself down, but he was having an extremely difficult time, since he felt so alone since he left Maisy. He needed her more than anything right now. She would take the pain away and give him what he needed. He would be cared for and taken care of.
 

Swearing at his idiocy of screwing things up with Maisy, he decided to get out of bed because there was no sleeping for him after he just re-lived one of the worst moments of his life. He walked toward the front of the bus and made some coffee.

It was early in the morning as the bus drove along the highway toward their next stop. The sun was barely peeking through the sky and a light fog was lifting off the ground, giving the drive an almost serene look. Rook would have enjoyed the view if he wasn’t trying to block his mind from the awful moment he never wanted to relive.
 

He looked at the bus that was driving in front of theirs and longed to be in it, with his edgy angel. He deserved the nightmare after what he put Maisy through. He was such a shithead. He knew he was mad at the DJ for hanging all over Maisy, but if he was going to be honest with himself, the way he acted with his fans was what he always did, he just never had to face the repercussions of his actions since he never had a girlfriend before.
 

He ran his hands over his face as he waited for his coffee to brew. What the hell did he get himself into? Why couldn’t he just stay away from her? His life would be so much simpler and so would hers. He was ruining both of them, but he couldn’t stop it. He needed to be with her and, deep down inside, he hated it. He hated that she made him feel needed and wanted and cared for. He was doing fine without her and now that he got a little piece of her, he couldn’t leave her the hell alone. No matter how hard he tried.
 

“Fuck,” he muttered as he shook his head and filled up his coffee mug.
 

He grabbed his guitar, a pen and his notepad and started writing music. It was currently the only escape he could use to forget about his past, to forget about what a fuck up he was and to forget about the fact that he was falling for a girl he knew he would ruin.
 

***

Loud and obnoxious voices trailed down the hall and filtered into Maisy’s bunk. The curtain that closed her off from the rest of the bus while she was trying to sleep did diddly squat for blocking off the noise coming from the front of the bus. Kaid and Landon normally had breakfast together and talked about different drumming techniques; it was all kinds of boring to Maisy, so she stayed in her bunk while the two idiots carried on with their morning tradition.
 

She thought about the night before and instinctively lifted her hand to the necklace that now lay gently against her chest. It was one of the most precious gifts she had ever received. Usually a father gave his little girl a locket at some time in her life, but she had never received anything, she was never gifted a piece of jewelry. Her heart completely melted when Rook handed her the necklace that had so much meaning and heart in it.
 

Thinking of his face when he gave it to her, crushed her. He looked so sad and lost, she wanted to scoop him up and make everything better, but she was hurting. She couldn’t put her feelings aside to comfort him.
 

Last night was one of the first times she actually saw how much she meant to Rook. She always thought their relationship was one-sided and he fed her some meaningful lines on occasion, but last night was different. He showed his side of vulnerability; she saw that he really did need her. She needed him too. She woke up with an empty feeling in her stomach since his arms weren’t wrapped around her in the morning. She had grown accustomed to his strong, comforting embrace and without it she felt lost, almost depleted.
 

Lying on her side, she rested her head and thought about Rook while she casually listened in on Landon and Kaid’s annoying conversation about who the hottest supermodel was. Men!

“You are on crack, man. She does not have bigger tits than Evangeline.”

Kaid’s laughter carried down the hall. “Whatever you want to believe.”

Landon’s voice got quieter but not so quiet that Maisy couldn’t hear him. “What happened with Maisy and Rook, I thought he went to apologize last night? Maisy not accept his apology?”

“Guess not,” replied Kaid. “It’s probably for the best. Rook can be such an ass.”

“He can, but he has reasons as to why he is the way he is. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be in a relationship or even be decent to a woman. The fact that he was able to give himself over to Maisy was impressive.”

“She can do better,” Kaid said gruffly.
 

“You might be right about that, but she’s everything to him.”

“Did he tell you that?” Kaid asked, questioningly.
 

“No, he doesn’t talk about his feelings with us, but after a few years of traveling in a sardine can together, we became pretty good at reading each other and he is different around her. He is soft and sweet and caring. Believe me, I’ve never seen him like this.”

Maisy’s chest constricted at Landon’s words. She knew Rook felt something for her, but for someone else to confirm his feelings ripped her apart, especially since she was lying in her bunk all by herself, hurting. Hurting from what he did to her and hurting from not having him around. He always said she was his drug, but Maisy started to think the same thing about him. She craved him, even though she knew he had the power to completely obliterate her.
 

Maisy zoned out for a second until she heard Landon say, “I’m worried about him if Maisy and him don’t get back together. Not because he could go on a serious bender, but because this morning I found him wide awake at five in the morning when I went to go take a piss. I asked him what he was doing up and he said he had another nightmare.”

“Nightmare?” Kaid asked.
 

“Yeah, I won’t go into it because it’s not my place, but he will occasionally have these nightmares and they always lead him to a very dark place that will take me and the boys days, sometimes weeks to get him out of. If you tack that on with the fact that Maisy is no longer with him, I think it’s a recipe for disaster. When we parked the buses, he took off with his guitar and I haven’t seen him since.”