When it was over, however, I didn’t sit around and chitchat with him and Jace, who seemed to have become friends in the short time we had all known each other. No, I was more interested in what kind of fun the model could offer if she was still around.
I found the brunette at the bar, surrounded by guys trying to talk to her. She looked bored as she forced a smile up at some guy who looked vaguely familiar. I pushed my way up to the bar, a fe
w feet from where she and her pack of horny pricks where.
The bartender stopped in front of me. “Another beer?” he asked, surprising me by remembering what I had ordered earlier. There was no way I could have remembered what anyone had been drinking two hours ago when the place was this packed.
I nodded and he set an uncapped bottle in front of me. Then I tossed him a few bills and turned to watch the model. I was about a third of the way into the beer when she turned her head. Her smile turned from bored to sultry when she saw me standing there with my eyes on her.
Brushing by the guy who had been talking to her like she didn’t hear him, she walked up to me. “I’m Camilla,” she murmured in a thick Brazilian accent.
“Gray.” I nodded toward the exit. “Ready to get out of here?”
“I was hoping you would ask that.” She lifted a hand to touch my chest, but I caught it before she could make contact. “My place or yours?”
I didn’t care whose bed we ended up in. All I wanted was to blow off some steam and have a little fun doing it. “Whichever is closer, love.”
SIX
Kassa
I lifted my phone but paused before I hit connect. It was one o’clock on the West Coast, but I figured that neither Gray nor my brother was awake yet. For the last week, they had been going out and not getting home until nearly dawn, or so Jace had told me. Gray hadn’t been nearly as forthcoming with what he had been doing during the last week, but I could guess.
I hated that I could guess. Hated that I spent so many hours thinking about what he was probably doing, but I kept reminding myself that I wasn’t supposed to hurt over the things he did with girls I would never meet. Girls he most likely would never see a second time and forgot their names the minute they walked out the door.
But, even though I wasn’t supposed to, I did anyway. It had hurt when he had done the same thing when he’d been on the other side of my bedroom, and it hurt with him thousands of miles away. Hell, it hurt more and more with each passing day.
I kept telling myself that it was just a crush, a huge one on the guy who had always watched over me and tried to protect me from the real world. I would get over it one day. Some guy would eventually come along and wipe every thought I had of Gray out of my head.
Until then, I had to pretend like I only loved him as a friend so I didn’t ruin our relationship. Because Gray needed me just as much as I needed him.
I started to drop the phone back beside me onto the bed when it rang, which made me jump in surprise. After rolling my eyes at myself, I glanced at the screen and had to remind myself of all those things all over again, even as I my heart melted at the picture on my screen. I was hugging Gray and he was smiling at the camera.
Swallowing hard because I still hadn’t figured out how not to miss him, I hit connect.
“I need you to wish me luck, little caterpillar,” he said by way of greeting. “Our first show is tonight.” He was nervous, but he wouldn’t have ever admitted it to anyone but me.
I grabbed one of my extra pillows and hugged it to my chest as I turned onto my side with the phone pressed to my ear. “You don’t need me to wish you luck, Gray. You know you’ll bring the house down.”
He blew out a hard breath. “I wish you were here.”
I clenched my eyes closed to prevent the sudden sting of tears from escaping. “Me too. But I’m sure I’ll see it on YouTube later. Someone is bound to post it to the Tainted Knights’ fan page.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he grumbled half under his breath, and stupidly, my heart melted a little more.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t say stupid stuff like that. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
We both didn’t speak for a long pause, and then he blew out another hard breath.
“So, what are your plans tonight, caterpillar?”
I grimaced and rolled onto my back, glaring up at the ceiling. “I thought I would stay home and binge something on Netflix. Maybe order some Chinese and then gorge on all the extra ice cream now that you aren’t here to help me eat it.”
“Why not go out with friends and watch a movie or something?”
“Because all my friends are gone right now. Camp, or vacation with their parents, or in L. A. with my brother, playing kickass music.” And I was stuck in Bristol with no one to keep me company. No friends, no family. Just me, myself, and I.