I stood up and walked a few steps away, still keeping my heated gaze on hers. What the fuck did I just do?
Still locking onto her shocked and somewhat upset face, I reached for my phone and saw that it was Darcy calling, and every bit of freedom I had felt while kissing Brooklyn faded away faster than a ship in the middle of the sea. Before I picked the phone up, Brooklyn stood up and looked me straight in the eye. “You better start writing some songs so this”—she walked toward me and moved her hand in between us—“doesn’t happen again. Because I’m not sure I can take much more of you kissing me like that and then ending it with that look on your face.”
Then, she turned on her heel and stormed off to her room, leaving our heated moment on the couch, right there beside our abandoned guitars.
???
Three days had passed since the second kiss. The kiss that took away my inhibitions—yet again—and threw them into the pits of hell. The kiss that stole away every ounce of guilt I knew I should have been feeling. The kiss that silenced the thoughts in my head even after the phone call.
The feeling of Brooklyn’s soft, warm lips lingered in the back of my mind as I had stormed off to the other room with my phone clutched in my hand. I had wanted to answer, to find out if Darcy had gotten any more intel on Angelina, but I couldn’t speak. My mind was going a thousand different directions, my hormones raging, my heart thumping loudly. The strange twinge I felt inside my chest as I watched Brooklyn storm off felt even worse as I shut my door. But oddly, the kiss almost sobered me. It sobered me into reality. Here I was, hung up on a woman who had shoved me out of her life and then brought me back into a fucking shit show—the same one who apparently found pleasure in clamping the unstable, guilt-ridden pieces of my heart in her hand. And then there was Brooklyn, who I was using to make myself forget about said woman.
Brooklyn silenced the bad.
Angelina blared it.
That was why, when I heard Angelina’s voice on my voicemail instead of Darcy’s, I doubled over. My stomach dissipated into a pit of grainy sand, the kind full of broken seashells and grit. My heart stopped. Icy cold water was dropped upon my shoulders. In fact, the entire world was on my shoulders.
Her voice broke when she first spoke. “Reid, it’s me.” She paused, and I clenched my jaw in anticipation of what she’d say next. “Your stupid lawyer left her phone in my room when she came to speak to me earlier.” Angelina’s voice was no more than a whisper. “Why did you do this to us? Why didn’t you fight for me? Why did you break up with me?” My chest felt like it was split open when she began to whimper. “I’m scared and alone. They won’t let me leave or speak to anyone. They have me on all this medication, and I think they’re poisoning me. I very well could be dead by morning.” I ran my hand through my hair as I clenched my eyes shut. “I’m not sick, Reid. They’re lying when they say that. It’s all part of their plan to kill me. I need you to come get me. Save me.”
Then the phone shuffled once more before it clicked off.
I assumed that Darcy or a nurse had walked back in, ready to snatch the phone back from her. After hearing Angelina’s voice, the way it started off soft and sad and turned into frantic and rushed, it made me want to bang my head against the wall.
The Angelina that I knew was all sorts of things, but she wasn’t the type that wanted to be saved. She was strong, set in her own ways. It was her way or the highway. She was independent beyond belief, never needing anyone to do anything for her. She didn’t like to be tied down, which was one of the reasons why we didn’t work out. She was too flighty, one minute wanting to hang off my arm at a red-carpet event, and the next ignoring me for weeks.
Angelina wanted me to save her, but I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be saving her from.
Anger and frustration gripped me so hard that I stormed over to my wall, reached my hand back, and punched it, the bones in my hand stinging as drywall crumbled into pieces all around my outstretched arm. Angelina was toying with me. The second I felt like the guilt from our breakup was lessening and the responsibility that I felt for the fact that she was fucked up was quieting, she’d bring it all back up again, saying I gave up on her, on us.
There was barely even an us.
That night, after I’d calmed down and iced my hand, I lay in my bed on top of all my covers and tried to do anything other than think of the wretched voicemail. I didn’t tell Darcy; I didn’t tell a single soul. I kept it under lock and key. It didn
’t take long for my mind to wander away from the situation at hand and to the moment I was caught up in before the call.
I’d started to imagine the way Brooklyn’s soft lips opened up to mine.
I’d started to picture her with her one shoulder peeking out from beneath her oversized sweater, and her soft hair and how it felt between my fingers. I could almost hear her cheerful laugh. I could see the small, barely there smile on her face.
Then I got pissed all over again when I realized that I was caught somewhere between a harsh reality with Angelina and a fantasy with Brooklyn.
I was a fucking disaster, and not to mention, I was supposed to be focusing on writing a single that would blow my record label out of their fucking seats.
“Reid,” Brooklyn said from across the room. She was resting her back along the far wall, as far away from me as possible, which was exactly the same spot she’d been in for the last three days—far, far away from me.
Three days had passed between the kiss, the phone call, and now. Three entire days. Seventy-two hours. And all I felt when I saw Brooklyn was need… and want, and desire. All I felt when I saw Brooklyn was solitude—just her and me in the room, alone. Thoughts of Angelina disappeared. Thoughts of anything disappeared, if I was being honest.
“What?” I snapped, keeping my eyes on my guitar.
“You’re not giving this your all, and I don’t know why. It’s like we’ve taken one hundred steps back.”
I took a deep breath, knowing very well that, in the past three days, I’d done nothing productive. No mind-blowing songs. No amazing melodies. The only thing we’d done in these three days was stay clear of one another as I tried to fight every urge to run my lips along hers again.
I couldn’t focus.
That was a bold-faced lie. I could focus, just not on the right thing.
I ran my hand through my hair, feeling the mess of waves on top. I pushed my guitar off to the side as Brooklyn opened her mouth again. “Was it the kiss? Did that make you close up again? Because there, for a minute, you seemed like you were pushing through, like we were making progress, but now... it’s like you’ve closed off again. Like you don’t care. You’re back to being the Reid King I met weeks ago where you looked as if you were seconds from bashing your fist into a wall, scowling, muttering under your breath, the light in your eyes long gone.” Brooklyn paused, taking a huge gulp of air. “Listen… I know the hallway thing was wrong. I know the kiss a few days ago was wrong. We were just caught up in the moment. I get it, but you’re holding back, and it’s time for you to put a stop to it.”