Blessed Fate (11 page)

"Not much at all," I admitted. "Your sister's having a pretty rough time, so I spent most of the night rubbing her back and trying to get her back to sleep when the tears woke her."

For the first time since I had sat at the table, Maddie's dad looked up from the steaming coffee in front of him. "Thank you, Colton. You're a good man to take care of her that way." He patted me on the back, and I wondered how these could be the same people Rain always told me were judgmental and unwelcoming.

"Thank you, sir." I felt my cheeks getting warm. Taking care of her wasn't something that should embarrass me, but I didn't like being called out on it. "I'm just doing what good friends do."

Matt snorted, still glaring at me. "Yeah, friends. Is that what you're calling it? Does that take away the need to stop sleeping around?"

"Matthew," Mr. Neumann scolded, "you will behave yourself. What your sister does or doesn't do is none of your business. If they have an unconventional relationship, that's between—"

No matter how entertaining it was to watch Matt slink further under the table as their father ripped into him, I had to set the record straight. I narrowed my eyes on Matt, who was directly across the table from me. "Matt, I have
never
had sex with your sister. We are friends, nothing more. If it was up to me, yes, I would be one-hundred percent committed to her and only her, but that's not what she wants. So last night, I was in her room
as a friend,
taking care of her like I have for the past five years. You can believe that or not, but there it is."

I excused myself from the table. While they weren't completely evil, nothing would ever put me in the mood to sit and listen to any of Maddie's family cut her down. Jon and Travis were just coming up the stairs as I passed the basement door.

"Hey man, everything okay?" Jon asked, probably seeing the way my jaw was twitching.

"Yep. Great." I lied. "I'm going to wake up Rain. There's hot coffee out there."

When I got back upstairs, I couldn't bring myself to wake her. I laid down in the bed next to her, once again watching her sleep. She twitched and inhaled sharply as my fingers lightly grazed the side of her ribs. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good," she sighed. It wasn't a sigh of 'I wish he'd stop doing that', it was a sigh that told me my touch was affecting her. "We should go find Jon and Trav."

She rolled to get out of the bed, and I pulled her back to me. As long as we were safely behind her bedroom door, no one could question my intentions, and she didn't have to face the cold reality that lay ahead of her for the day. "They're having coffee with your brothers. They're fine. I smoothed things over with your brothers and dad. I think they understand."

She turned to me, eyes wide with panic. "What did you tell them?"

"Relax. I told them that you didn't want to be alone last night, and I stayed with you." I left out the rest of the tense conversation, not wanting to be the reason she started her day stressed out. I began leaving a trail of kisses against her shoulders, testing to see how she would react. I fully expected her to pull away from me, but instead she nestled harder against my chest. It took everything I had to keep me from telling her exactly how I felt right then. "You just lost your mom. You had your entire world flipped on end yesterday. It'd be a lot for anyone to take in, even a badass like you."

My cock stirred beneath the thin fabric of my cotton lounge pants when she shifted to face me causing her breasts to brush against my chest. She pressed her forehead against mine. It was one of the few times I had seen her without her colored contacts in; the eyes staring into mine weren't emerald green like normal, they were the color of dark honey. They were perfectly unique, just like Rain.

We cuddled together, drifting in and out of sleep a bit longer before getting dressed to join her family in the kitchen. In another attempt to test the changing comfort level we had with one another, I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind as we walked down the hall.

"You know, you keep holding onto me like that and no one's going to believe there's nothing going on," she laughed. It was a beautiful sound I wasn't sure if I would hear again anytime soon. "And then we're back to me having to explain your death, and I'm pretty sure your little groupies would kick my ass then. It'd just be bad."

"Okay." I released her, holding my hands out to my sides. "You win. But only because I don't want your brothers to kick my ass. They're really not as bad as you make them out to be, you know. Sure, Matt's an asshole, but still nothing you can't handle."

"Well, let's just say they're not as bad as they used to be. Trust me, the loving family you see right now has only been in existence for about twenty-four hours."

Jon and I decided to go for a run after breakfast, wanting to give the family a little space. I knew they were trying to be accepting of us, but it didn't change the fact that we were outsiders, and they had enough going on without making sure they were good hosts to us. Rain was hitting the bottom of the staircase as we walked in the front door.

"Hey Colt, can I ask you a huge favor?" The way she was wringing her hands told me she was nervous about something. I motioned for her to lead the way to the basement, which we had taken over as our little corner of the house where we didn't feel like an imposition.

"I already told you I'm here for whatever you need. If I didn't want to help you out, I'd be on the bus in Wichita or holed up with some honey in a hotel room." She looked at me and laughed, exactly the reaction I was going for. While I had made some piss-poor judgment calls when it came to sleeping with Tanya, screwing groupies was something I had never done and had no desire to do. Even without the complication known as Rain, I wasn't much into sleeping with random women who would be teasing the cock of another musician as soon as the opportunity came around.

She started to say something but stopped abruptly when she heard Travis playing around on my acoustic guitar. I watched her watching him play
Dust in the Wind
, completely mesmerized by the sounds. Travis was the quietest one in the group, more than happy to play his bass guitar, fill in on back-up vocals when needed and go about his day. The fact that he had amazing pitch and knew how to play just about any instrument he picked up wasn't common knowledge.

I reached out for Rain when I saw her starting to cry. This wasn't the ugly crying from the other night, simply tears spilling down her cheeks. "Good job man, you made Rain cry," I called out to Travis.

Travis hurried over to apologize to her. She wiped away the tears and got a mischievous glint in her eyes. "I'll be right back. You guys stay here, okay?" She ran up the basement stairs as if the house was on fire, leaving us to wonder what we had missed.

"You have any clue?" Jon asked, pointing to the already empty stairwell.

"Nope." I picked up the guitar and started playing the same song Travis had been minutes before. As much as I hated to admit it, it was one of the few songs he knew better than I did, a fact Jon had no problem pointing out to me.

Rain came running back down the stairs after a while and asked us to come over to the sitting area on the far end of the basement.

"Okay, so my dad asked me last night if I'll sing at Mom's funeral tomorrow." She looked around as if gauging our reactions. I squeezed her shoulder, urging her to continue. "You guys were right the other night on the bus. I need you. You're my rocks. I don't want to sing without you."

That was totally unexpected. We had gone from her not wanting us here to her wanting us to perform as a group in just over twenty-four hours. I kissed her forehead, allowing my lips to linger a moment longer than normal. Despite how hard she tried to fight it, she was finally letting us in, accepting our help.

We all got to work, trying to figure out how to arrange
Dust in the Wind
to fit our group and the instruments we had on hand. By early in the afternoon, she had returned from the high school with a set of bongos Jon wanted to round out the sound. She then informed us there was a catch to her acquisition; the band director asked if we would be willing to make a quick appearance during the last hour of the school day.

"So, uh, how much do you guys love me?" She asked as she handed the bongos to Jon.

"Well, Jon and I like you an awful lot, but I think Colton's the only one here that
loves
you." Travis laughed. I glared at him. Even if it was true, he didn't need to blurt it out like that. My gaze shifted to her, waiting to hear her response. Luckily, she ignored his comment.

"Mike might have told the band director we'd go up there for eighth period today." She was avoiding eye contact with us again. I hated the way she did that, hated even more that she did it when she expected us to balk at what she had to say.

Garrett Dietrich, the high school band director, was the exact opposite of what I pictured. If he was as old as we were, I would have been shocked. I assumed he was a local boy by the overly friendly greeting he gave Rain. Seeing his arms wrapped around her as he said something only loud enough for her ears, I felt a tinge of jealousy building inside.

"Garret, this is Jon, Travis and Colton. Guys, this is Garrett Dietrich." We took turns shaking his hand, and I tried to mask the fact that I didn't care for him. I had no doubt he was a decent guy but I couldn't shake the feeling there was a story behind his familiarity with Rain.

For the next forty-five minutes, give or take, we sat on hard metal stools at the front of the room answering questions on everything from how we got into music to what it was like to have hot girls wanting to sleep with us. I snickered at the question, coughing to hide my laughter at Garrett's attempt to chastise the teen who had stones enough to ask such a question.

Jon grabbed my shoulder while we waited for Rain to finish saying goodbye to Garrett. "Easy there, killer. They probably went to school together or some shit. You're not in the city anymore; everyone knows everyone in these podunk towns."

"No, there's something else there," I grumbled. "I don't know what it is yet, but they're more than former classmates..."

I expected the worst part of the visitation to be sitting in a room filled with complete strangers, many of whom were narrow-minded and judgmental. As the three of us huddled together trying to ignore the comments floating in our direction, I realized there was something worse…not being there next to the woman I loved because she couldn't open her heart to me.

Rain was having a rough time listening to everyone tell stories about her mom as they shook hands and offered their condolences. Making it worse, I heard more than a few people tell her how proud Mrs. Neumann was of Rain's success.

After two hours of watching, listening, and trying to keep my distance, my patience was wearing thin. I needed to get out of there before I did something I would regret, like grabbing Rain's hand and dragging her out of there before one more person could twist the knife in her heart.

"Hey, we're going to head back to the house. Jon said something about grabbing some food for whoever comes over later." She looked confused by the fact that we wanted to do this for her family, but when Jon mentioned it, I agreed that it was about the only thing we
could
do, and it would get us out of there.

"Thank you," she whispered before kissing my cheek.

"Don't mention it. You'd do the same for me." I leaned down so our foreheads were touching. "I meant it when I told you we'd do anything we could to help." I leaned in closer, catching myself less than an inch away from kissing her soft lips and diverted to place a kiss on her cheek.

Watching Jon and Travis try to guess how much food we needed to buy to feed an unknown number of mourners was funny. By the time we made it to the checkout, I was sure we had enough to feed at least fifty people.

"Hey, aren't you the guys from Blessed Tragedy?" The cashier asked, apparently forgetting how to do his job as he stared at us with a bag of lunchmeat clenched in his hand.

"Uh, yeah," Jon answered gruffly. He was usually the one reminding us that we would be nowhere without our fans, but after someone recognized us a few times at the visitation and deflecting autograph requests to Tanya's office, he was tired of being the mouthpiece. It's probably good that he was there because I'm not sure I would have been as professional under the circumstances. "We're kind of in a hurry here, thanks."