Bo & Ember (13 page)

Now, there was no hesitation as I backed up toward the bed, and Bo followed, shrugging out of his grey suit coat and tossing it on the trunk by the foot of the bed. He pulled his tie over his head. When he threw it in the direction of his coat, I caught it mid-air.

“We’ll keep this.” My cheeks were on fire at my suggestion.

Bo’s eyebrows shot up. “For … what?”

With my voice having ducked for cover, I whispered, “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

“Oh,” he crooned, unbuttoning his shirt as I unbuttoned mine. “So I get the sexy dominatrix
and
the sexy rock star? Yes please.” He repeated my teasing from downstairs, only he was far from teasing.

My fight or flight response clicked on, igniting a rush of adrenaline that sent me up onto the bed, grabbing the waistband of his pants as he followed.

I licked my lips before speaking against his earlobe. “I like it when you say ‘please’.”

“Jesus,” Bo panted as he pulled me against his sweat-soaked chest.

I looked up at him and shrugged with a sly grin. “I missed you today.”

He laughed a loud hard laugh that told me everything else was far away in his mind. The kind where his jaw was loose and his shoulders shook freely.

“Crap.” Bo sat up quickly, resting against the headboard. “I totally forgot Tyler was supposed to come over today. Did he?”

My stomach sank at the mention of his name. I nodded as I sat up.

“Sorry I couldn’t be here to introduce you two. Are you okay? Did it not go okay, or something?” Bo leaned back, studying my face.

I smiled. “Oh, God no. He’s a goddamn dream! We had a blast talking plans.”

“So why that look on your face?”

I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”

If there was one thing I wanted to avoid, it was bringing up heavy subjects after sex. We ended up in those conversations so often when we were naked between the sheets. Sometimes it was a little bit of emotional overload.

“Ember…”

I shimmied my lower body under the blankets, not wanting to be stark naked for this discussion. Bo followed my lead.

“We just got to talking, and I asked him how long you two had been friends…”

Bo looked thoroughly lost. “And?”

I sucked in as much air as I could while looking at my hands. If Bo hadn’t told me this story, there must have been a reason for it.

Finally, I looked up. “He told me about high school. And the football team…”

In an instant the tension returned to Bo’s beautiful jaw. His eyes darkened as he looked down at his own hands. I couldn’t imagine what thoughts were scrolling through his mind. He was silent, so I spoke again.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about that … or about Tyler, for that matter? The only friend I’ve heard you mention is David’s son.”

Bo shook his head, not speaking.

“Bo. Bo, why didn’t you—”

“Did he tell you the whole story?” he snapped without raising his voice.

I shrugged. “I …I guess I don’t know since you hadn’t told me
any
of it.” I tried to keep my temper in check, since I didn’t know what was fueling this change in demeanor.

Bo brought his hand to his mouth, closing his eyes as he took the same controlled breath he always took when he felt like he was losing emotional control. “It’s nothing.”

He got out of bed after using my earlier phrase seemingly against me. He strode nude into the bathroom and shut the door. I heard the shower turn on.

Arching my eyebrow to no one but my increasingly angry self, I slid out of bed and knocked on the door.

No answer.

“Bo?” I cleared my throat to make sure I wasn’t speaking with an unkind tone.

The situation with Tyler clearly went much deeper than what Tyler had told me. That was concerning, given how emotionally gutted I was by the tale. I wanted to handle Bo with care, but I wasn’t about to let him start shutting me out.

I knocked once more while entering, the warm steam and the scent of my eucalyptus oil filling my senses. “Bo?”

I pulled the shower curtain open a fraction, peering in. Bo stood facing the torrent of scorching water, his head pressed against the tiled wall beneath the showerhead. Water pelted his neck and shoulders before cascading down the rest of his body.

Slowly, I reached into the water and touched his shoulder. He didn’t flinch. He only straightened and lifted his hand to meet mine, tugging slightly.

“Come on.” He nodded his head to the side, asking me into the shower.

As I stepped in, I winced at the scalding heat. Bo must have seen the look because he quickly reached around me and turned the heat down.

“You okay?” I asked, my voice barely louder than the falling water.

He nodded. “I am. Sorry about that.” He slid his hands down my sides, resting them on my hips as he pulled me into his body.

I wrapped my arms around his torso. His back was cool from being away from the water, but his chest was warm. As I rested my cheek against his collarbone, I resisted the primal urge I had to ask follow-up questions. We were done talking about Tyler and whatever the hell had happened. For the time being.

Once we were dressed and downstairs, we were able to quickly eat the food I’d prepared earlier before someone buzzed at the gate. The sound was slightly foreign.

“You closed the gate when you came home?” I questioned. We rarely had it shut during the day.

Bo grinned, eating the last of his seaweed cracker. I knew he didn’t like them that much, but I appreciated the effort. “I didn’t want to be disturbed this afternoon. I missed you, too.”

He left the table and walked to the intercom.

I lived in a house with an intercom. And a gated driveway.

“Yes?” Bo spoke in his typical business-casual tone.

A loud voice crackled through the speaker. “Beckett with Grounded Sound.”

With a crease between his eyebrows, Bo clicked the buttons to unlock the gate.

“Do you know anyone else named Beckett?” he asked.

“No. Do you?”

“I don’t even want to know one Beckett,” he grumbled.

I laughed. “Grow up.”

“I’m serious.” He walked behind me and pinched my butt as I cleared my plate.

A minute later there was a knock on the door. I followed Bo into the entryway and couldn’t help but chuckle as he opened it and there, naturally, stood Beckett Roth.

“Hey guys.” He always sounded like a pumped up surfer just off the waves.

“Beckett.” Bo nodded and pulled the door open, stepping aside to let Beckett in. His eyes shot to me and I felt implored to ask the million-dollar question.

I gave Beckett a quick and friendly hug first. “What are you doing here?”

Beckett stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled broadly. “A week after you guys signed with Grounded Sound, I had an offer from Yardley at the New York office. So, I moved back there. She hired me as a sound engineer and last week asked me if I’d be interested in your album as my first project.”

“Wow,” I forced myself to sound cheerful and supportive, “congratulations! I’m surprised no one told us … including you.”

I caught Bo’s lightning-quick grin as I grilled Beckett.

“Well,” Beckett answered nonchalantly, “I wanted it to be a surprise.” He stood up straight and smiled comically large. “Surprised?”

Bo

S
urprise, indeed.

Beckett didn’t want to surprise Ember; he wanted to make sure he secured his first job, and he knew that would be risky had I known he was assigned to the project ahead of time.

For the first two days of recording with Beckett, we worked through a lot of sound checks and some of our ready-made songs—ones that Ember and I had sung a million times and wouldn’t need a lot of work. It didn’t take Beckett long to get used to the control room, which made very good use of our time.

Ember and I didn’t have a
discussion
about Beckett, because Beckett wasn’t the issue. It was me and my archaic jealousy. I’d told Ember weeks before that I was over any unjust animosity I’d had toward Beckett. That was, in part, because I hadn’t seen him in several weeks. Out of sight and out of mind.

I hated that he knew things about her that I never would. I couldn’t tell Ember that, either, because then she’d push me on my
deal
with Tyler, as she called it. Since I didn’t want to go there, Beckett was off the table.

Beckett clicked on the mic in the control room. “Ready, guys? Take ‘Lovin’ Me Down’ from the chorus. Ember, when you’re singing the high notes, don’t pull back on the guitar. Match your intensity there, k?”

Ember nodded. “Will do.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught her flex her hands twice. Even though we’d spent the last year and a half playing all over the West coast, two things were different now. First, Ember was playing a lot more guitar than she had with The Six. Second, we hadn’t played much in the past few weeks since the move back home. Her fingertips were raw from three days of nearly nonstop playing as she worked to get her calluses back.

“Ready?” I asked her, avoiding discussion about her certainly burning skin. It would just make the pain worse if I brought her attention to it.

“Yep. One, two, one, two, three, four…”

Ember and I began humming the intro to the chorus. “Lovin’ Me Down” was a song we'd worked on over the last six months. It was one of the few we’d written without Regan’s vocal or instrumental part, so it didn’t require any reworking for recording.

Ember rocked her shoulders and half her mouth curled into a sexy grin as she leaned toward the mic.

I was high, oh so high. The tears brought me to the edge.

But you’re
lovin’ me down, baby, lovin’ me down

Off that dark, dark ledge …

It’s no surprise that we wrote this song together to try to make some musical sense out of a rocky time in our relationship. We’d split up, made mistakes with other people, Rae died … it wasn’t great. The one thing that did get us through all of it was our deeply rooted and intense love for each other.

It was that love that allowed me to ask her to leave after Rae’s funeral, that love that let her, even though it hurt. It was the love that gave us time to heal while we were apart. And, that love that brought us back together and made us stronger every day.

Mmm, girl,
I begged
you to go, I begged you to stay…

When I entered the song, I found myself lost in our relationship. The early ups and downs and the smooth sailing ever since. I was one lucky bastard, and I intended on spending the rest of my life paying that luck forward to Ember. She deserved the best of me every single day.

The song ended, and Ember winked at me from behind her mic. The sight of her with headphones on, holding her guitar, filled me with peace and joy.

Before I could say anything, Beckett infiltrated our private moment. I realize we were in a studio recording our album, but the intimacy between Ember and me was always intensified when we were in the studio.

“Excellent, guys, really. You’re making my job far too easy.” Beckett clicked off the microphone, removed his headphones, and made his way into the studio.

I reached for Ember’s hand, but she whipped around as Beckett opened the door.

“Really, Beck? You’re not just saying that?” She lifted the strap of her guitar over her head and set it against its stand.

“November, I don’t get paid to
just say
things. Trust me. Just saying anything other than the truth would get me fired. That was fantastic. You guys are way ahead of schedule. I wouldn’t be surprised if the label began pushing for a small spring tour, rather than waiting until summer.”

That got my attention. “Are you serious?”

Beckett seemed a lot less annoying when he was discussing the advancement of our music career.

He nodded and shoved his hands in his pockets. It’s like he could never have a conversation with his hands anywhere else. “Oh, hell yeah. In fact, when Yardley comes up tomorrow, she’s going to talk to you guys about plans for the Grounded Sound website. You’ve seen it, right?”