Page 47

47

STAR

GOD ONLY KNOWS - BEACH BOYS

I had to hand it to Kuznetsov—he was accommodating.

So long as we kept the guards with us, he gave us free rein to use his jet wherever and however we wanted, which could only be considered an advantage.

It also meant that Dead To Me was in the cockpit talking to—i.e. flirting with—the two pilots, whereas I was sitting in the back with Conor, who was working on his computer, while I made arrangements for after we landed in the States.

Well, in between watching him do his thing, that is.

Maybe I noticed because I was more relaxed now that we had a lead, but his hair had flopped onto his forehead, and he kept shoving it back with a glower. That glower did things to me that made me doubly glad we were flying private and not on a commercial airline.

“I can feel you watching me.”

With a smile, I mused, “You’re so pretty that I have to watch you.”

He snorted. “Do you have any dollar bills? I can cock my hip out and you can stick them under my belt.”

“Looking is free,” I argued, chuckling when he peered at me over his screen then closed it and started studying me with as much dedication as I’d been studying him.

The impasse made me laugh even harder.

He was somehow sexy as fuck with that tight ass of his and those abs that didn’t quit, and never mind that goddamn hair and the face—was there ever a face made for kissing more than Conor’s? I didn’t think so.

Yet, for all that, he was also the funniest guy I’d ever been with, someone who didn’t take himself seriously, who embraced his own quirks and celebrated mine.

It was impossible to stay where I was and not to move around the other side of the table. I plunked myself on his lap, knowing he wouldn’t argue, then I hooked my arm around his shoulder and pressed my forehead against his.

I felt his brows lift in reaction, but he just gripped my hips. “You’ll find that my knee is more comfortable than any chair that has ever been made.”

Wiggling my ass, I hummed. “What about La-Z-Boys?”

“Do they come with the orgasm option?”

“I doubt it.”

“I can get in all the nooks and crannies. It’s one of my top features.”

“I bet you can. But you don’t vibrate, do you?”

“No, but I’m working on something that does. Seriously, I’m better engineered than any armchair on the market.”

When I gave another wriggle of my hips, I felt the solid girth of his cock against my upper thigh and butt cheek. “What’s that big, thick, hard ridge there?”

“I don’t know. Might be a manufacturing defect.”

My head tipped back as I burst out laughing. “Stop! Seriously, stop.”

He smirked at me, seeming very self-satisfied at my amusement. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen that particular reaction out of him and the ‘why’ occurred to me—he liked to make me smile.

This man.

“How are you doing?”

I shrugged. “We have a lead so I’m okay. But it was an intense day.”

“It was,” he agreed. “Are you going to tell Katina that she had a cousin? Hell, an aunt and uncle too—there’s no reason to assume they’re dead.”

“She’s in a good place and I don’t want to wreck that. She might remember seeing his body or something.” I bit my lip. “But I think I’ll consult with a child therapist and get their take on things.”

“How will you explain something that never officially happened?”

“Would they look into it? They just need to know the details, surely?” Nerves fluttered to life in my belly and made it more imperative that I say: “Thank you, even though you hate flying, for taking two flights in a twenty-four-hour period. But more importantly, thank you for not letting me do this alone.”

His fingers squeezed me then they retreated to his pocket where he pulled something from within its confines. “I could say the same back to you—one is a hella lonely number.”

I stared at the Airheads and laughed. “Where do you keep getting these from? Are you really Willy Wonka?”

His eyes twinkled as I accepted the candy. “Sugar for when the world is too bitter for your tongue.”

“The implication being that your kiss isn’t sweet enough…?”

He liked hearing that. His grin was a delicious mixture of dopey and sheepish and cute, making it far sweeter than anything candy could offer.

“Do you know you’re very romantic?” I rasped when he remained silent, toying with the end of the wrapper.

“Nah.”

“You are.”

“I’m not.”

“The shit you say belongs in a Valentine’s Day card,” I argued, unsure why I was arguing when I was coming to rely on the little things he did and said. “In fact, I know you’re lying about not having a sideline with Hallmark.”

His lips twisted. “If I do, it’s only in the section that’s specifically for women called Star.”

I shoved his shoulder. “See?! There you go again with this romantic stuff. I’m not made for it, Conor!”

“Stop whining and take it,” he teased.

Though I huffed, I admitted, “I have a song for you. But you can’t listen to it with me here.”

“Why not?”

“You just can’t. And I’m going to go for a nap because I need to let my brain process all the crap that’s happened today.”

Pressing a gentle kiss to my mouth, he whispered, “Go and get some rest.”

“You can join me. When you’re done, I mean.”

His grin was like quicksilver. “I will.”

“We’ve still got seven hours left of the flight so there’s time to sleep.”

His grin died and he groaned, “Seven hours.”

“I’ll distract you,” I promised with a soft smile, shooting him a shy look as I hustled off his lap then got to my feet.

Grabbing my cell, I sent him the link I’d prepared earlier and then moved my ass so that I didn’t have to hear him listen to the sappy song.

He found it easy to say stuff to me that gave me Conor-heartburn. For me, it was much harder.

Even now, knowing he was listening to “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys made me nervous, and I forced myself to use the bathroom then to clean my face and then to dawdle some more until I was certain the short song had finished playing.

Returning to the bedroom, I switched off the lights once I’d clambered into bed and immediately dragged the pillows around me so I was surrounded by their comforting embrace.

That was when I heard it.

Fuck.

I clenched my eyes closed as the song sounded in the background. Growing nearer and nearer. Until it was no longer outside the bedroom but in the doorway.

The melody always tore at me. The words snuck inside and did damage to the thing in my chest that some would call a heart, but I didn’t know what to make of it. It hadn’t done much else apart from send blood around my arteries before Kat and Conor.

Now, it did other things too.

Odd things.

It beat funny when he was near, and I could hear it pounding in my ears if he was kissing me.

That was, I reasoned, how I knew that it belonged to him—because he made it behave out of character.

“You can’t send this song to me and then disappear,” he grumbled.

I gnawed on the inside of my cheek rather than answer.

His phone clattered as it dropped against the nightstand, and then the duvet was being lifted and my pillows were being rearranged so that he could be inside the fort I’d made. When his heat spread all the way down my back, I sighed as it surged into the many cold spots that infected me like a disease.

With one arm around my waist and his chin on my shoulder, we listened until the song finished.

“I never imagined you’d like The Beach Boys,” he mumbled in my ear.

“Some of their tracks are nice. They used to…” I cleared my throat. “Some of their songs were my mom’s favorite. Which I always found hilarious seeing as her husband was Gerry Sullivan.

“But, I guess, who the hell knew what she truly liked? Everything could have been an act.”

“You’re right,” he said softly. “It could have been an act. Maybe a lot of it was. But I can’t see all of it being one. Tell me about the last birthday you spent together.”

I knew what he was doing. Humanizing a double agent. Still… “She sneaked me away from our guards and we headed to Chuck E. Cheese.”

He laughed. “Really?”

“Yeah.” I twisted over so I could peer at him through the dim lights. “We stuck around for about twenty minutes, grabbed the food, and left.”

“You didn’t do the whole kids’ party thing?”

My nose crinkled. “I was a teenager. I didn’t want Chuck E. Cheese.”

“So why did she take you there?”

“Because I’d had a tantrum about how being Gerry Sullivan’s daughter was ruining my life and that I never got to do anything normal.”

“And that was her reaction?”

“Yeah. Then she took me to Target and we headed into Bed, Bath and Beyond afterward, and…” My smile was shaky. “I guess she just made us do normal stuff. I never imagined that that wouldn’t have been normal for her. She fit in seamlessly, Conor. You’d never think she was Russian.”

“Her job was literally to fit in, but it wasn’t her job to be a good mom. Was she, Star? Was she a good mom?”

I wanted to say no but I couldn’t. “She loved me.”

Conor seemed to recognize that by saying those three words, I was admitting that she had been a good mother.

Fuck, she’d been the best.

For no other reason would I have gotten myself entangled with this bullshit if not to find the reason she’d been snatched from me too soon.

He reached for my hand and gently squeezed my fingers. “And your dad?”

“He was different when Mom was alive. Back then, he was a good dad. They did what they could when we were growing up in the goldfish bowl that’s life on tour and in the spotlight.

“After, he was lost. I knew he loved me, but he stopped being a ‘recovering’ addict and fell back into bad habits. I was too much to handle, so broken and lost, just as much as he was, and instead of us coming together, it pushed us apart.”

“When you talked about him with me in the past, I never realized…”

“How strained things were between us in the end?” I grimaced. “I don’t focus on those times. They make me sad and I’m sad enough. I was a daddy’s girl. Even after everything went wrong, that never changed.”

“If anything, it probably made you rebel more.”

I hummed in agreement. Sharing him with my mom was normal. But with groupies and roadies? No. Fucking. Way.

“Conor?”

“Hmm?”

“Were your ma and da good parents?”

For the longest time, he said nothing. To the point where, when he pressed his face to my shoulder, I just thought he was going to shrug my question off and go to sleep.

My own eyes were starting to close, beginning to feel heavy with fatigue and the stress from the day by the time he muttered, “Do you know how people do what they can with the best they’re given?”

“Yes?” was my drowsy retort.

“That’s what Ma and Da were like. They did what they could with what they’d learned, but my grandfather was a mean son of a bitch. Da was two screws loose of a full set, but he didn’t help any. Ma’s family wasn’t much better, and she was always irate and erratic, quick to temper because, I think, she knew Da responded well to that?—”

“What do you mean?”

“The more irate she was, the more he calmed down in an argument. He didn’t fear her, not by any stretch, but she was a loose cannon. We have this inside joke about her hitting him over the head with a rolling pin, you know?”

“Yeah, you told me the story.”

“But she used to throw shit at him too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Cans. One time, potatoes.” A soft chuckle drifted from his lips. “Nothing hits harder than a fucking Idaho potato. That was actually hilarious. He got a black eye from it.”

“That’s spousal abuse, Conor,” I pointed out with concern.

“It was, but I don’t think we looked at it that way back then.”

“Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have.”

“No. I agree.”

“Did he hit her?”

“Never.”

“Were the attacks frequent?”

“No. Only when he pushed a topic.”

“Like what?”

He sighed. “Do you really want to know this?”

“Of course. You don’t talk about yourself a lot, do you know that?”

“I talk plenty.”

“That’s an understatement,” I drawled. “You definitely talk plenty, but not about where you come from.”

His nose crinkled but he explained, “Da was terrified that Declan was gay?—”

“Why?”

He kissed my shoulder. “Catholic.”

I grunted my disapproval as I twisted around to face him.

“Trust me, I wouldn’t give a fuck if he was gay, but I’m not Da. So, anyway, he found out this one year that he took art in school…”

“Well, that’s normal.”

“He wanted him to not be in that class, and if Da had gone down to the school and told the faculty he didn’t want his son learning art, it would have soon been swiped off Declan’s class schedule.”

My brow furrowed at his words, and the atonement I was supposed to be attempting to achieve hit a plateau because how the fuck could I be sorry about eradicating that type of man from the earth?

“It’s when you say shit like that, I wonder how I’m supposed to atone,” I admitted, unable to hold my tongue. “I couldn’t be Catholic.”

“Most Catholics can’t be either. You’re just supposed to promise your priest you will repent and cross your fingers behind your back.”

“That’s the standard treatment?”

“Yup.”

“And you won’t accept the standard treatment?”

“Nope.”

I blew out a breath. “Did your da think wanting to draw was contagious or something?”

“Who knew how Da’s brain worked? Anyway, Ma would chide him for this stuff, but I think she was worried too. Not for the same reasons, but because it’d have been harder for Declan to find a path in the Points…”

“Homophobic asswipes.”

“It’s a breeding ground of toxic masculinity,” he mumbled. “What else did you expect?”

Knowing my defiance shone through, I declared, “I don’t care if Katina is gay.”

“Good. You shouldn’t care. Who the fuck cares so long as she’s happy and loved?”

That encouraged me to tip more of my weight onto him as a silent reward. Not that I’d been testing him, but maybe I’d have found some potatoes and thrown them at him too if he’d come out with any of that bullshit?—

Oh.

“She hit him with potatoes to get him to back down? That’s where you’re going with this, aren’t you?”

His chuckle was low. “Yeah. He was going to the front door and about to head to the school when, out of nowhere, boom , straight in the shoulder. One on the head. He twisted around and she got him in the nuts. Got a couple more licks in too before he tackled the potatoes out of her reach.”

“You saw all this?”

“Was sitting on the stairs listening to them argue.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “This was after the priest. I used to listen to the arguments to make sure they weren’t talking about me.”

That made me deflate. “Oh, Conor, you did nothing wrong.”

A shaky breath escaped him. “I know. Now. Back then, not so much. Plus, Aidan and Finn had killed him and I’d drawn my godfather into this, so I was terrified they were going to get arrested… Good times,” he finished weakly.

Letting my arms tighten around him, I whispered, “Did it stop him from going to the school?”

“Yes. It also led to shit I didn’t want to see,” he complained, but he sounded more like his normal self, thank God.

It made me tease him, “I think your da was an asshole but he was a silver fox. You’ll be hot as fuck when you’re his age.”

“You going to stick around to see me mature like a fine wine?”

My lips curved. “You going to stick around to watch my tits sag?”

“I’ll hold them up so gravity can’t attack them,” he vowed.

“That’s dedication.”

“I’m a dedicated man,” he quipped.

I cupped his cheek. “I know that already.” He tipped his head down and rubbed his nose against mine. “Thank you for sharing that with me, Conor.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“I do.” I gently, cautiously, warily , reached out and let my fingers stroke through his hair. He tensed at first, released a soughing breath, swallowed roughly, and then sagged into me. I knew he was forcing himself not to react, so I cut it off there and let my hand retreat to his shoulder. “I wish I’d been around when you were a kid.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d have killed that priest before he even had the chance to look at you funny.”

“Why do I believe that?”

I hitched a shoulder. “Because you know it’s the truth.”

He grabbed my hand and returned it to his head. It was very awkward, enough that if it weren’t such a serious situation, I’d have snickered, but his intent was obvious.

With a care that I wasn’t known for, I stroked my fingers through the sable locks that felt like silk and love and non-verbal promises against my skin.

Because I knew it helped me when he talked to me, I whispered, “I know I have to atone, Conor, and I know I’m by no stretch of the imagination America’s greatest parent, but I really dislike your da.”

His tension broke some at my unexpected words. “Da didn’t care about being liked or disliked. He wanted your respect and your fear. Actually, I had it easier with him than the rest of my brothers.”

“Why?”

“He accepted I was different and that my gifts weren’t what he was used to dealing with, but he learned quickly that I was good for padding out a bank account.”

“So he was a user.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah, but it was for the family.” He shuddered when I accidentally touched his ear. It wasn’t a good shudder. My hand whipped away, but he rasped, “No. I want to take this back, Star. You should?—”

“I should, what?”

“ He ’s affected how I do things for too long.”

“Did I give you your first blow job?” When he tensed, I whispered, “You were very grateful. You never told me that?—”

“I’m not a virgin,” he blurted out.

“Even if you were, it wouldn’t be a problem,” I replied easily.

“I’m not and I’ve never come that way.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve fucked but… I don’t… God, I’m going to sound like such an asshole.”

“I’m an asshole too. We can both be assholes together.”

His laughter sounded choked. “I used to hate jerking off. Until you.”

Startled, I blurted out, “Really?”

“Yeah. I have a high sex drive. I used to have a lot of one-night stands because I couldn’t just tug it in the shower to burn away some of my tension, you know?”

I didn’t know. But God, watching Conor doing that in the shower was definitely something I needed to see before I died.

“Yeah,” I croaked out.

“But then, after I met you, I didn’t want to fuck a hole. I just wanted you. So I had to get used to my hand and it worked. So I know I can do this, but it has to be you. Don’t stop.”

Biting my lip, I whispered, “You don’t need to do this so quickly. We can build up to it.”

“I’ve been building up to meeting you every day I’ve been on this planet, Star.”

I clenched my eyes closed at those words. “The stuff you say, Conor. Christ. How can I… I can’t say it back, not because I don’t feel it, but because it’s not something I’d imagine saying.”

“You think it comes easy to me? You think I routinely go around squawking out lines that, what did you say earlier, belong in a Valentine’s Day card? You have to open the door to it, Star, and I did that a long time ago with you.”

“I-I’ll try,” I promised.

“That’s all you can do, and that will always be enough. And, some days, if you can’t find the words, then that’s what songs are for.”

Some of the tension abated in me.

Songs.

I could do that.

Music had always been integral to my life because of my dad, and it was fitting that Conor’s love language could be found therein too but he had more tunnel vision than Dad who used to listen to everything, not just rock.

It was ridiculous then, that as I cuddled up to him, my hand still stroking over his hair, I started to hum the melody to “God Only Knows.”

As he relaxed into me, gracing me with the priceless gift of consent, I had no idea why but I started to sing the lyrics.

If Dead To Me heard this, I’d never live it down, but what did it matter? He was important to me. He deserved to know I was as all in as he.

Tears burned my eyes as the meaning behind the lyrics hit home, somehow making more sense to me now that I’d experienced them on a personal level. He had to hear the emotion in my voice, but I didn’t care and I didn’t think he did either. Maybe that made it better. Stronger. He could feel what I could only say through lyrics someone else had written because they’d felt this way too.

Love—the great connector.

When I finished, he was still and I was almost embarrassed by my stupid singing, then he whispered, “You got your dad’s voice,” and he sank into me totally.

It took me a moment to realize that he was asleep, our legs and arms tangled together, his face pressed against my shoulder, my fingers still in his hair.

And it was perfect.

Nirvana.

Enough that I closed my eyes and allowed myself to rest too.