Page 32 of Wild Infatuation (Rebel Rockstars #3)

Chapter Thirty-One

Shawn

IT FEELS DIFFERENT WAKING up with him this time.

It’s happened before, but back then we both expected to slink off to our separate lives sooner rather than later.

Today, when a beam of sunlight trips across my eyes and rouses me from sleep, I find Terrance tucked against me and feel absolutely no urgency to move either him or myself.

His hair sprawls over my chest, where his cheek rests as well.

My arm is trapped under him, but fortunately it didn’t go numb in the night.

I stay very still, prolonging the moment. We have nowhere we need to be, nothing we need to do, and zero concern about other people. Waking with Terrance’s weight on my chest instead of the weight of anxiety on my back makes every breath lighter.

I’m truly the luckiest guy in the world.

It was strange unloading so much last night.

I never talk that way, not even to my bandmates, but after all I’ve put him through, the least I owe Terrance is full honesty and transparency.

I don’t regret it as much as I might have expected to.

There’s still something inside me that’s cringing and scared, a younger version of myself who’s huddled in a corner waiting for yet another betrayal.

It’ll take time and patience to soothe that part of me, to really, fully believe this is safe, but I swore last night that I’d work as hard as I could to get there.

My fears aren’t written in stone. I don’t have to be the person my father sees me as.

This is my chance to leave all of that behind, and having Terrance here with me for the journey gives me hope I can see it through.

My phone buzzes, and Terrance stirs. I reach for it, but the bed is so big that the nightstand is out of reach with us cuddled in the center of the mattress. Terrance groggily rolls off me and onto his other side so I can grab my phone, where a message from Levi awaits me.

Have you looked online yet?

Dread floods through me. After what happened at the party, I can only imagine what kind of rumors and pictures have made it online. I can only hope they’ve left Olivia out of it, whatever they’re saying.

I sit up, propping a pillow against the headboard.

Cool air prickles my bare chest as the sheets drop to my waist. We never bothered to get dressed last night.

It didn’t seem worthwhile when we had every intention of continuing to touch each other.

I cast a glance at Terrance’s shoulder peeking past the sheets and wonder if I can go back to touching him instead of dealing with whatever the internet is speculating about.

I pull myself away from that far happier prospect with an effort, partially because he’s sleeping and partially because I know it will only delay the inevitable. Then I force myself to unlock my phone and scroll through all the usual haunts.

As expected, there’s plenty of pictures of Terrance and I.

Thankfully, it does seem like they’re mostly leaving Olivia out of the fray, but there is plenty of speculation about Terrance to take her place.

The image of Terrance at the music video shoot is making the rounds, fueling speculation about when and how this started.

Oh, if they only knew, but I’m certainly never going to tell them.

The official story will be that it took place well after anything with Olivia or the music video.

That party for the premier will be, at least as far as the public knows, our first ever interaction.

It’s scary how accurate some of the speculation online is, though, even if we’ll never confirm it. The whole band, and Emmett, are on board with sticking to the official story no matter what, so we simply need to wait out the feeding frenzy.

Besides, it seems like some if not most people are plenty happy to focus on the music video instead.

That’s a happy surprise. For every post wondering about my date for the party, there’s one or two where people are raving about the music video and single. There’s plenty of gushing over my bandmates as well. Jacob is always popular, but Levi has his fair share of fans.

I reply to Levi with relief.

Looks positive so far.

Yeah! People love the video. It’s nuts. Emmett says the numbers are “exceeding expectations.”

High praise.

Our stern manager isn’t one to dole out compliments. I take it as a very, very positive sign if he has no complaints. It also means that my showing up with Terrance hasn’t caused a PR fuss he feels needs attention. Me, Olivia, Terrance and the entire band may sneak out of this unscathed.

How’s Terrance? Levi writes.

Sleeping.

Tell him I said hi.

I smile to myself. If anyone in the band could have hated me for this whole thing, it’s Levi.

It was his sister I was pretending to date, after all, but both Levi and Olivia have shown me nothing but warmth and grace while I bumbled around making a mess of everything.

They serve as yet another reminder that I could stand to invest a bit more trust in the people around me.

They’ve earned it, and my shitty father and shitty ex-boyfriends shouldn’t be allowed to take that away from them.

I set my phone aside and finally give in to the thing I’ve wanted since I woke up.

Sliding down on the bed, I wrap an arm around Terrance and pull him against my chest, soaking up the warmth of his bare skin.

He murmurs sleepily and nuzzles closer, our bodies making contact everywhere they can.

Even that is enough to have me stirring, but I settle for kissing the shell of Terrance’s shoulder and burying my nose in his soft, layered hair.

“Morning,” he mumbles, voice thick and drowsy.

“Mmm,” I respond.

He smells like warmth and sleep and sex, all the makings of a perfect morning.

“Who’s messaging so early?” Terrance mutters.

“It’s almost noon,” I say, even though I have no intention of leaving this bed. “It was Levi. He says hi. He wanted me to see how people are responding to the music video.”

The slight stiffness that lances through Terrance’s shoulders tells me he reads between the lines and understands that I was also looking for news about us when I opened my phone.

“And?” he says.

“They love it. It’s going great, even Emmett says so.”

I kiss his shoulder for emphasis, savoring the heat of his body against my lips.

He sighs and rolls over, facing me and drawing me to his mouth.

Long, languid kisses dispel the final figments of sleep, especially when our hands start roaming over bare skin.

I stroke along the taper of his waist and follow the narrow line of his hips.

There, my hand gets greedy, reaching around to grab his ass.

He chuckles as I squeeze and pull him closer.

I soon discover I’m not the only one who woke up thinking about last night.

“I’m glad everyone loves the video,” Terrance says as I kiss his neck.

Our hips meet, hardening cocks grinding against each other. I use the hand on Terrance’s ass to hold him against me, fingers digging in harder as the contact excites me.

“I knew they would,” he says. “It’s a great video.”

“Mmm,” I murmur against his skin.

“And your fans love you. All they really want at the end of the day is more of your music. The rest is interesting, but it’s not why your real fans are there.”

“Mhmm.”

I lick my way up to his ear, tugging the lobe between my teeth until he whimpers. His hips hitch against me, and he slings a leg over me so we can get even closer.

Yet he tries to go on speaking, even as rasping breaths shred his words.

“They were always going to believe in you. They were always going to root for you, no matter what.”

He’s right. Our fans do love us, and they’ve supported us even when we were basically nothing. People like Terrance are a large reason why we’ve reached this unfathomable height … but I really, really don’t care about that right now.

I jerk my hips against him, my cock completely hard. I pull away from his ear so I can look him in the eyes.

“You’re right,” I say.

Terrance smirks. “But? You don’t seem like you care about your music video very much at the moment.”

“I don’t.”

Terrance chews on his bottom lip, and it only makes me more insane for him.

“Some day,” he says, “you’re going to have to learn how to appreciate your fans properly.” He’s smirking, clearly joking. I can feel that he’s every bit as hard as I am.

“I know,” I say, and I try, I truly try, to focus and be serious for a moment. “I am grateful, this just … is going to take some time. Life keeps changing, and I’m still trying to believe that people actually like us this much.”

Terrance strokes my cheek. “They do, trust me. I would know. They really do love you. A lot of people really do love you, and not just for your music.”

Our eyes lock in a meaningful gaze. My voice sobers, even my aching need insufficient distraction in this moment.

“I know,” I say. “I do. I just … need to get used to it.”

“I know,” Terrance says. “But I’m not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever.” His soft smile quirks. “After all, I’m your biggest fan.”

I crush our laughter between us by seizing his lips, and soon the music video, the press, the fans, all of it couldn’t be further from my mind.

I can’t change overnight. I can’t heal the scars and banish my father’s sneering voice in a single evening.

But for the first time in my life, I’m actually working on it, trying to overcome those old, harmful assumptions that have lurked inside me so long.

And I’ve got my number one fan at my side while I do it.