“Oh my God, Seth. Where’d you get this?” Horrified, Lacey reaches over him, so close he can smell her lavender and sea salt scent. A scent that shouldn’t be so familiar, shouldn’t smell so damn good, but does. When she snags the bag from the coffee table, his stomach twists. The sight of her holding something so dangerous has him trembling.
He grabs her hand. “Don’t.”
She stares at him.
Instead of extricating her fingers, she twines them with his, the baggie caught between their palms like a kind of temporary jail. Her hands are warm, her touch a torch.
“You can’t.” Her whisper cuts the silence between them.
He swallows. “I have to.”
“No, Seth. You don’t.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, hot tears burning his lids. His throat bobs. “I need you.”
Those three simple words have her face softening.
“I know.”
And then her hand, delicate, graceful, removes itself from his. The bag disappears, where he doesn’t know, and then Lacey’s cupping his scruffy cheek. Her face so damn beautiful, so kind, it has him choking up. “I’m here, Seth. Okay?”
It breaks him. Her words, her offer, like some heaven-sent angel.
“Oh God,” Seth cries out, pressing a hand to his eyes. Every emotion spilling over inside of him. Guilt, love, pain. His greatest fear. Something happening to Luke. His best friend. His bandmate. His brother. His fucking brother.
“If Luke ain’t okay—”
“He is, he will be,” Lacey soothes. She holds Seth close, sweeping tears from his face.
Seth sobs.
Sal and Luke have been through so much. Luke just learned that he’s going to be a father. Without Luke, without him singing beside Seth on that stage, it’s all hollow. His life means nothing.
Lacey lowers herself to her knees beside him. Seth wraps his arms around her waist. He grips her tight and buries his head against her stomach. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”
Shushing him, she leans down. She kisses the back of his head softly, her palm making smooth, healing caresses over his spine.
He raises his face.
Caught by an impulse, that same impulse that keeps getting him in trouble, he kisses her. His lips meet hers for the first time in months, soft and sweet, damn near desperate. He clutches her to him. Better than any drug.
His escape, his release, his goddamn savior.
When he goes to stop himself, to end their kiss, to pull his hand from her long blond hair, it’s too late. He can’t. He never could.
But then Lacey pulls away with a small gasp, leaving the chalk outline of her kiss on his lips. Her slender hands cradle his face. Her breath a pulse against his. “We can’t,” she whispers. “Not like this.”
Even as he shakes his head in protest, he knows she’s right. Blearily, he wonders when it changed, when they’ve gone from a sometimes fling to this. When they keep saying not anymore, only not anymore keeps turning into I need you now.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.
She presses her cheek against his. “Don’t be.”
With a quick sweep of her hand, she palms the drug, a drug he never should have touched, and then the girl he never should have kissed is standing, swishing down the hall, delicate footsteps, a flourish of silk, the flush of a toilet, and then Lacey’s back, returning to him, no drug in sight, a glass of water in her hands.
Once again, she sits beside him.
In that moment, Seth’s hit with a hot rush of shame at the thought of what he’s done.