Page 77 of Rockstar Baby

As if it was meant.

As if we had known each other so much longer than the sum of the few hours we’d spent together.

It was the type of thing for which stories and songs and sonnets were written. Usually with a tragic ending, because how could anything so sudden and perfect be fated to last?

But that was for later. Tomorrow. Right now, she was still at my side. Sharing my air and smiling up at me with the rosy glow of the sun on her cheeks.

“So, you like my friends? Not that Kellan is one, exactly, as we’re just collaborators for now. But Ian—”

She came to a halt. Just like that, the easy moment between us vanished. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Pretend not to care. Diminish what matters to you. Try to be so blasé about everything.”

I went cold. Inside, outside. I didn’t drop my arm from around her, but I definitely loosened my grip. “I didn’t realize I was doing that. Or that I’d done it enough for you to label it a trait.”

“And now the snooty Irish tone. Jesus H. Christ.” She moved away from me and threw up her hands. “You’re so frustrating, LC.”

Part of me rejoiced that she could still call me by that ridiculous nickname despite her irritation. The rest of me was peeved she was irritated, period. As if she had any right to be.

Okay, so she had plenty of right. But I’d never insinuated we were going to be a long-term thing. My mistake was in coming back to her again.

Your mistake or your salvation?

I gripped the neck of my guitar case. “My apologies.”

She stared at me, her eyes catching the dying rays of the sun and turning them into fire. If this was a super hero movie, I would be lying dead in the dirt while she waited for the wind machine to blow back her flowing locks. “Your obnoxious attitude should not turn me on.”

“No. It shouldn’t.”

“Yet it does. What’s wrong with me?” While I pondered that, she stepped forward and fisted her hands in my shirt. “It’s the accent,” she muttered. “Gotta be the accent.”

Then her mouth covered mine.

The craziest part was I could taste her anger. And her frustration. And underneath both, her sadness. They were layered with the sweetness from Laverne’s pie and Ivy’s natural essence.

“I’m really mad at you,” she said between kisses, slipping her fingers in the gaps in the buttons along the front of my shirt. Her nails teased over my skin and made me hiss.

“Fuck.” I nearly dropped my case in my urgency to tilt her head toward mine. Our tongues tangled, hot and needy. “I’ve been dying to get my hands on you again all day.”

Even as I said it, I dialed myself back. She was worth so much more than just this. Yet I kept falling back on my base nature to avoid the tougher conversations.

I drew away from her and let out a long, shaky breath. “But we should walk first.”

The hurt registering in her eyes nearly undid me.

“You have a right to more than I’ve given you.” I rolled my thumb over her lower lip. “I didn’t expect you, Ivy. No matter how many times I think or say that, it’s not enough. I don’t meet people like you. I don’t—”

Fall for someone that easily.

Fuck easily. It was like crash landing without a parachute to break your fall.

She turned away. “Yeah, I get it. You live in a different world. I’d figured you did, just knowing the LA part, but now that I understand the rest?” She laughed quietly. “Maggie and Zoe came from here, and they made it work. I don’t know how.”

I gripped her shoulder in my free hand. “It takes effort on both sides. I don’t have that in me.” Not again. “Not because of you. But because of—”

“Because of you. Right. Standard line. Besides, who’s to say I’m any different than you? I like fucking too, you know. Just because I have a pair of ovaries and a fine set of tits doesn’t mean I’m one period away from needing to settle down.”