Roadie (Rock-Hard Beautiful Book 2) Read online

  “I've got a key,” Ransom whispers, his voice warm milk and honey even in a moment like this. He moves around me, his body brushing against mine as he heads over to one of the small drawers on the left side of the kitchen, yanking out a ring with a bunch of tiny gold keys on it. “That stupid motherfucker better have earplugs in or some shit …” he mumbles, and I notice his hands are shaking as he tries to fit one of the tiny keys in the lock.

  “Here, let me,” I say, wrapping my fingers around Ransom's, stilling his quivering with my touch. I would smile if I wasn't so worried about Cope. The lock turns and then Ran's grabbing the door and shoving it open.

  Copeland's standing in the shower, the hot water dragging his auburn hair over his forehead and into those turquoise eyes of his. He's completely naked, and I feel a slight warmth suffuse my cheeks as I study his muscular form, palms outstretched and pressed against the wall, head hanging slightly.

  The steam rushes into the hallway and swirls around my legs, giving me chills as Cope glances over and sees us standing there, his mouth turning up at the corner in a slight smile.

  “You caught one of my sticks,” he says, like he didn't hear us calling his name or knocking.

  “Dude, are you fucking deaf?” Ran whispers, voice barely audible above the rush of the water.

  “Sorry,” Cope says, standing up and running his fingers through his hair, so much darker now that it's wet. It looks more brown than red at the moment. “You guys were knocking?”

  He turns toward us, his entire body exposed, water sluicing over his muscles, across the pair of heart tattoos on his chest, dripping down his half-hard cock. I feel my breath catch when he sees me looking and crooks a slightly naughtier smile.

  “Sorry,” he repeats, shaking his head. “I guess I was a little out of it.”

  “Well get back into it,” Ransom says, voice heavy and dripping with shadows. “We have a meet and greet. There's some famous local reporter there and she says you're her favorite; she wants to write a piece on us.”

  Copeland leans against the wall and focuses his attention on me, still clutching the stupid drumstick. I wasn't even aware that I was still holding it.

  “Is it me?” I ask, refusing to keep secrets or hide from the truth. Neither of those things have served me very well in life. And this, this is my new start. Today. Right here. “Am I the reason you're so upset?”

  “Of course not,” Ran answers for him, but then he looks from Cope to me, back to Cope again. “Are you fucking serious?”

  “It's not you,” Copeland says, leaning back against the silver and black tiles, the tattoos at his wrists vibrant under the rush of water, almost like they're being magnified. “Not exactly. I just … can you stall Octavia for a few minutes? I'll be right there.”

  “I'm not leaving until you explain what the hell is wrong with you—” Ransom starts, but I grab hold of one of the baggy sleeves of his sweatshirt and clutch the material tight, bringing his attention down to me.

  “Will you buy us a minute so we can talk?” I ask, my heart hammering, my stomach twisting in knots. Shit. I knew this was all too good to be true. I start to wonder if by the end of the week, more than one of the boys will be asking me to leave.

  “Fuck. Fine. But I want to know what the hell's going on after.”

  Ran leans down and presses a kiss to the top of my head that I appreciate more than I can even say. I watch him go, carefully sliding the hall door shut behind him.

  Without even thinking about it, I go into my strength pose—ankles crossed, hands laced behind my head, chest pulling in damp lungfuls of warm air. I can't let every little thing topple me. And today, I felt like I was on top of the world. That's as good a place as any to start a hard conversation like this, right?

  “Do you want me to give you a second to get dressed?” I ask, but Cope just stands up and moves across the tile floor, reaching out a hand and curling his fingers around my wrist. He pulls me into the bathroom and shuts the door, penning me in against it with a hand on either side of my head.

  “Lilith,” he says, and he sounds so boy next door, so apologetic, that I can hardly even believe he's breaking up with me. Well, maybe he's just ending something that never really got started in the first place? “I don't know if I can do this.”

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “Okay,” I say, trying to take calm, slow breaths. It's hard because the bathroom is so steamy and Copeland is naked, and his cock isn't just half-hard anymore. He might not be able to do this, but his body seems more than willing to try. “Can't do what? Share me?”

  “Date,” he says firmly, reaching down and uncurling my fingers from around the drumstick. “I can't be somebody's boyfriend. I told you one of the reasons why …”

  “Not looking to have kids right now,” I say, trying to smile through the pain. But shit. This is fucking painful, more so than I even thought. The agony is right up there, gnawing at me along with the grief from my father's passing. It shouldn't hurt this goddamn much, not after a week.

  I feel like Cinderella again, but this time, she's sitting back and watching her prince take the glass slipper … and shatter it into pieces.

  “Right, but …” Cope says, finally freeing the stick from my fingers and letting it drop to the floor. His eyes are so bright, like the ocean today when the sun hit it just right. Beautiful. I can't handle the intensity of that stare, so I refocus on the single ring pierced through the center of his bottom lip. “That's what one-night stands are for, fucking and hanging out for a little while and knowing it doesn't have to go anywhere. Dating is … seeing if there's the possibility of a future somewhere.”

  “And there's no future with me?” I ask, just to confirm, beads of moisture clinging to my skin, joining the sweat from the show. My skin feels tight, hot, and not just from the steam or the nearness of Cope's body, but from my own fear of losing him when I just finally, finally got all five of them to be mine.

  “Oh, Lily,” he says, his voice low and sad, almost resigned. But that's the part I just don't understand: resigned to what? “It's not you,” Cope says softly, trailing his wet knuckles down the side of my face, my neck, fingering the thin pink straps of my dress.

  My body lights up like a switchboard, electricity crackling in all the places he touches me. How can he do that, make me feel this way at the same time he's saying he doesn't want to take this risk, this leap off a high cliff into a tumultuous ocean? But the thing is, there are four other people down there besides us, waiting with life rafts, ready to rescue us if the waves get too rough.

  It's got to be worth the risk. It is to me anyway. I need Cope to feel that, too; I won't force him.

  “It's not you, it's me?” I ask, lifting my eyes back up to his face and finding his expression tired and withdrawn. “That's a little cliché, don't you think?”

  Copeland sighs, leaning down to nuzzle the side of my neck for a moment. The gesture, the action, it's too tender for somebody that truly wants to cut and run. Maybe he doesn't really know what he wants? I've been there, done that before.

  “I know you've heard me say her name before,” he whispers, his voice cracking for a split second, showing me this thread of vulnerability that makes my heart hurt. “Cara.”

  The way he says her name makes me think of my father. Roy. I haven't said his name once since he died. Roy. Even thinking it hurts.

  My breath catches and Cope pauses, leaning back to look into my eyes, letting his long fingers trace down the length of my arm.

  “Once or twice,” I say, chest tight, throat tight, wondering what the hell we're doing standing here with him naked and hard, the hot shower still running behind the smooth muscular planes of his back. All I want to do is place my fingers against all of that naked flesh, run my hands across Cope's wet body, put my mouth against the throbbing pulse in his neck, feel the hard curved length of his cock slide into me.

  Based on the signs his body is giving me—hard nipples, harder cock, dilate
d pupils—I get the feeling that that's all he wants, too. For a split second, I wish neither of us had a past, wish neither of us had experienced the kind of pain that rips through you and leaves you a bleeding mess on the floor. But then, it's our pain that drew us together in the first place. I don't know who I'd be without it, who Cope would be.

  And if it takes pain for us to be together then I don't know that I'd shed the cocoon of hurt around my shoulders if I could, snap my fingers and stop missing my family.

  “She was …” he starts, pauses, flicks his eyes away from me for a moment. “She was everything to me, Lil. Everything.” I watch his breathing, the rise and fall of his chest, the pair of heart tattoos on his pec, and I wonder if that image is for her.

  He glances back, catches me looking, and smiles tightly.

  “This,” he says, pointing at it, “this is for my mom and grandma. Cara … she was my best friend and my lover all the way from junior year of high school to my sophomore year of college. In fact, we never actually broke up. But our relationship … it was too messy to tattoo. She hurt me in ways my fucked-up family never did.”

  I stare into Cope's eyes, blinking against the white steam swirling around his handsome face, around that penetrative gaze of his that makes me want to spill all my hurts and hopes and worries. I told you—I told you—that guys like Copeland Park were the most dangerous. The nice ones, the sweet ones, the ones who promise that everything will be okay with a single look.

  They're the ones that fuck you over the hardest.

  “What happened?”

  “Well,” Cope says, glancing away from me and stepping back.

  My breathing starts again in a rush, making my heart pump faster, my pulse thunder in my throat. Now that he's moved away, I can see all of him again. All of him.

  “She killed herself,” he tells me finally, licking hot moisture from his lips and shaking his head. “I thought I could take care of her the way I always took care of my mom and grandma.” Cope closes his eyes and moves back into the water, letting it sluice between his full lips. “I spent every single fucking day worrying about that awful moment, knowing it was coming, fighting as hard as I could to stop it. Prescription drugs, therapists, love. None of it was enough—not even me.”

  He opens his eyes again and the sight is breathtaking.

  I remember his words from just a few days ago: I've had to hug a lot of people through a lot of things.

  This must be one of those things.

  “I couldn't take care of her Lilith, no matter how hard I tried. I wasn't enough. And I'm sad, and I'm tired, and I just … I can't go through that again. At least not yet. I'm not ready.”

  “Cope,” I say, taking a small step forward, feeling my skirt swish around my thighs. “You don't have to take care of me like that.”

  “All I want to do is take care of you,” he says, eyes half-lidded as he studies me with undisguised desire, want, a surprising amount of affection. “All I want to do is hug you and hold you and make the pain go away. And I'm good at it. But not that good. I can't be the man any woman needs me to be, not in the long term.” He pauses, takes a deep breath and looks at me with an unbelievable amount of sadness etched into the beautiful lines of that handsome face. “For a night or two, for a few weeks maybe. Not forever, as a boyfriend or a husband. I just can't. I should've said something this morning, but … god, I was so happy to see that you were okay.”

  “Cope …” I start, and I have to really breathe slow and deep to stop myself from shedding any tears. For him, for me, for … whatever else. But honestly, I don't really care how compelling his story is. I don't want to let him go.

  He steps toward me again, closing the distance between us, and pulls me into the water with him.

  “Can you forgive me?” he asks, brushing wet red curls back from my face as warm water streams over us. I blink past it, licking hot droplets from my lips. “You can stay, you know, with the other guys. You can still have the Bat Cave, still come on the tour with us. I'm not asking to put a stop to any of that.”

  I close my eyes as he cups the side of my face and kisses me with that gentle easiness of his, that comforting slant of lips that says his words are a lie, that I am his girlfriend, that he would never think to put the brakes on a start as beautiful and interesting as this. We have a connection, Cope and me. The idea of killing it before it even really gets started is … it's sad is what it is.

  I let him kiss me anyway, press my palms to his wet chest as his tongue teases mine, slow and sensual and languid, like we have all the time in the world. In reality, we have no time at all. It's over. It's over already and I just got started. I just claimed my boys, just pulled Michael into the group.

  I feel like Cope is chiseling a chunk of my heart off, chipping it away and making me bleed.

  When his wet hands slide up under my now sopping skirt and grip my ass, I don't protest. I don't want to. I want him is what I want.

  Cope curls his fingers under the waistband of my panties, some stupid frilly lace boyshorts I put on to impress the guys after the show. We're supposed to go back to that little bar by the beach, but … the thought of going without Copeland makes the whole thing seem pointless.

  He pulls his mouth away from mine for just a second, pulling my panties down and helping me step out of them. He tosses them aside, next to the discarded drumstick and then stands back up. For a moment we just look at each other.

  And then he lifts me up, turns us so that my back is to the tiled wall. Cope presses me into the wet tile with his body, my legs around him, the spray from above soaking us both as we kiss and I wrap my arms around his neck. I can feel his cock pressing against my opening, blocked by the wet pleats of my skirt. It's maddening, to have him so close and yet … not at all. The physical complication of our bodies is just mimicking the emotional complication, isn't it?

  Behind Cope, the door slides open again, much harder this time.

  It's Michael.

  “What the fuck is going on in here?” he asks, his ire dissipating slightly at the sight of us tangled hot and wet together. “You need to be at the meet and greet,” he says, voice trailing off as his violet eyes take in my face. Something about my expression must give the moment away. “And what's this about you having some kind of problem with Lilith?”

  Copeland sets me down so reluctantly, I swear he believes this is the last time we'll ever touch.

  “I'll …” Cope looks back at me and our gazes lock tight, emotions traveling through the connection like lightning. “Shit.”

  “Shit, what?” Michael asks, angry and panting, his arousal obvious by the bulge in his dark jeans. But his rage, that's also obvious, written all over his face. I almost smile, seeing Michael turn that ire of his on its head, using it on my behalf instead of against me. “Shit, what, Cope?”

  “I can't be a boyfriend right now, Michael,” Copeland says, sounding about as destroyed as I feel inside, studying me like he's trying to memorize my face. “I'm just not ready to try that again.”

  “Cope,” I start, but Michael's scoff causes me to pause.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he growls, stalking forward and grabbing his friend by the arm. “Do you realize that I just broke up with Vanessa yesterday? That I just ended a five year relationship and found out that the baby I've been mourning all this time was probably my niece or nephew instead of my kid?” He's panting with the force of his frustration, flicking those blue-purple eyes my way and then back towards Cope. “You don't screw up an opportunity like this because you're not ready, you stupid shit. None of us were ready for this, but it bit us in the ass and so here we are. Life doesn't wait for you to get ready, Copeland.”

  “I …” He leans back against the wall for a moment, breathing almost as hard as his friend.

  “Fuck,” Michael says, raking his fingers through his dark hair. “Take a second and get your shit together. Stop being such a fucking ball sack and grow some ovaries,” he continues with
a slight smile for me, referencing our conversation at the beach. While I appreciate his reversal of traditional gender bullshit, I don't seem to have it in me to smile back. “Come on, Lil.”

  Michael takes my hand when I step out of the water, realizing that it's actually gone ice-cold while I was standing there. I hadn't even noticed.

  We step out of the room and Michael pushes the door closed behind us.

  “Let's get you a towel,” he says as I pause there for a moment and stare at the black lacquer surface of the wood. Michael digs into a cabinet in the other bathroom, but I don't wait for the towel. Instead, I rip the door open again to glare at Copeland.

  But he's already right there, stumbling into me and knocking us both into the wall.

  “Fuck,” he whispers, putting a palm up next to my head to steady himself.

  “Do you like me?” I ask him as his turquoise eyes catch on my lips and lift back up to find my gaze hard and steely.

  “More than any girl I've met since Cara or …” He doesn't finish that sentence, but it feels like a loaded gun, so I decide to leave it for later.

  “I'm not sick like Cara, Copeland.”

  “It shouldn't matter, even if you were,” he says with a long sigh, putting his forehead against mine. I'm hyperaware of the fact that Michael is standing just inches away, tucked into the second bathroom, listening. But it doesn't feel like an invasion. No, he's got just as much right to be here as I do. “Lilith, I'm just … I think I'm fucking scared to try again—especially with someone like you.”

  “Someone like me?” I ask as he adjusts his mouth, puts it precariously close to mine. I can feel his warm breath feathering against my lips, smell the clean sharp scent of bar soap, the slight mineral tang of the water.

  “Someone I like as much as you,” he corrects, and then he's kissing me again and I don't have the resolve to resist, not when he kisses me like that, uses his whole mouth, his lips, his teeth, his tongue. Cope cups the side of my face and holds me there, romancing me with his kiss, scrambling up the thoughts in my brain.