No Quarter (NOLA's Own #2) (35 page)

“
Are you fucking kidding me
?”

With everything going on around us, Lili’s extremely loud outburst should have gone unnoticed, but I guessed Phil recognized her over the volume of the crowd and the pounding music because he looked up, looked over, and found us frozen to the spot.

“Oh my
God
, Kenna. Oh my
fucking God
,” Lili raged.

My
whole being
, my soul—which had bits missing from it already because of him—was in a state of utter shock. My brain was trying to scramble for anything I had done this evening with GianFranco to deserve to witness this horrific scene of intimacy between the love of my existence and that woman. Because that was what that was. Whatever was between them was
intimate.

I felt my heart shatter.

I don’t deserve this! I did nothing wrong by having a conversation with GianFranco. There was enough space between the two of us for Phil to bust his massive ass in between and demand that he leave me alone. I had only wanted to know how GianFranco had felt, pulling off the greatest guitar solo of our generation. I
really
don’t deserve this…

Phil rubbed the heel of his hand over The Tattoo.

I looked down, breaking eye contact with him, not wanting him to see how badly he had wounded me. I had a feeling he already knew though.

“Is there a restroom around here?” I asked Lili, still looking at the floor.

“I saw one over—”

“Kenna.” His voice was too close.

He must have hauled ass the second I’d looked away. His boots materialized in front of my blurred vision.

“It’s cool, Phil. We’re just looking for the restroom,” Lili snarked, tugging at my hand. “You can go back—”

“Stop it,” he said softly. “She’s a friend of mine, and that’s
all
she is. She’d like to meet you—both of you—if you can fuckin’ rein it in, Pygmy.”

“I’ll just go to the restroom then,” fumed the Pygmy. “Do you want to come with me, Kenna?”

I nodded, unable to speak past the lump in my throat.

“Kenna—”

“I just need to…” I forced my dry throat to push my voice out, cringing inwardly at the tremble in it.

His hands came up and cupped my face, bringing my gaze up to his. “She’s just a friend.”

“Was she always
just
a friend?”

Sadness crept into his hooded eyes, and he slightly shook his head.

Lili kicked him in the shin. “
Douche
!”

“Ow! You little shit!”

Despite her tiny stature, Lili was strong, and she yanked me out of his reach and started marching us toward the ladies’ room.

“Damn, Lili!” I snorted, torn between laughter and crying. It made the threatening tears leak out.

“Fuck that shit!” she raged. “How dare he dismiss you like he did and then turn around and cozy up to another woman! I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes! And
where
is Lewis?”

This evening had started out with such promise, and it was now going up in a bizarre inferno of heartache and possible indiscretion. I hoped for Lewis’s sake that he’d been innocently detained by security or something because he would have a feisty Pygmy on his hands when he was found.

“Damn it!” barked Lili.

We stepped into the queue just inside the restroom door—not that there was any need to do so. Just a few seconds after we did, the door burst open, and Phil reached in and hauled me out. Lili’s jaw dropped, and he flipped her the bird.

Without a word, Phil dragged me down the darkened hallway, away from as much noise and chaos as was possible. When he stopped, I was cornered, and not even a pygmy could ninja my ass out of there.

“Baby Girl—”

Poof!
There went my patient and understanding nature. “What the
fuck
, Phil? I mean,
seriously
, what the fuck was that? And why should I
ever
have to witness something like that?”

“Kenna—”

“No! You had your chance to explain to me what I had done wrong earlier! You decided not to, so it’s
my
turn now! If you had come up those steps and seen me with some guy’s arm around me, whispering in my ear, what the fuck would
you
have done?”

“I would’ve lost my shit. I’d’ve gone completely mental.” His quiet honest answer calmed me somewhat. “Please, Kenna, it really,
really
wasn’t what it looked like. I swear.” He gently took my face in his hands. “You
know
how I feel! You
know
there’s no one for me but you! Yeah, I had somethin’ goin’ on with her at one point, but it was never anythin’ more than passin’ the time—for
both
of us. She knew about you, that I was just waitin’ until I found you. She’s a good friend. That’s all.”

I balked at him. “What were you saying to her? And why were you holding her like that?”

“I was just givin’ her a hug. It’s been a while since I saw her last, and I said…I said she looked good. Because the last time I saw her…”

He shook his head, and my irritation rose back up.

“Fuck you then,” I snapped as I tried to push my way around him.

He pressed me into the wall with his massive body and braced his hands on either side of me. His angry face got all up in mine, and he said in a heated voice, “She had the shit kicked out of her, okay? She was a broken, bloody mess the last time I saw her. I only meant that she seemed to have healed up well, is all.”

“Okay. Now, why did you storm off and leave me like that?”

“I was setting a detail on you in case GianFranco came back.”

“
Why
?”

He took a deep breath. “Because he’s the reason Camryn was a broken, bloody mess. I didn’t want to freak out on you, not here, not in front of our friends. And I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“You guys were friends, weren’t you?”

“Once. At one point, he was one of my best friends. But…I just want you to be careful. If you see him, walk the fuck away. If he can go and do what he did to someone I only cared about, I don’t want to think of what he could do to
you
.”

“Does she know that he’s here?”

“Yes.”

“She didn’t press charges against him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She had her reasons.”

He was so close to me that I was having a difficult time thinking beyond how wonderful he smelled, how the heat coming off of him warmed me and was helping to fuse together my shattered heart.

“I’m so sorry if I gave you the wrong impression,” he murmured.

“She’s really cute,” I whispered.

“She’s too short,” he countered.

“She’s got big boobs.”

“She got what she paid for.”

“Why’d you sleep with her?”

He didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he closed the last breath of distance between us and crushed his mouth to mine. His tongue forced its way into my mouth, and I found that I didn’t care why he had slept with her. He never would again.

“Fuck,” he grunted, panting slightly. Slowly thrusting his pelvis, he ground his swollen self against me.

“Damn it, Phil.” I groaned, letting my head bang back against the wall.

“I know…I can’t help it, with you lookin’ all sexy.” He grasped my wrists and pulled them above my head, pinning them to the wall.

Briefly, I wondered if people were watching, but I found I couldn’t care about that.

His gaze traveled to my chest, and he bit his lip. “I want you.”

I sucked in a deep breath. “Later.”

“Now.”

“Later!” I laughed.

“Yeah, let’s make it later, all right, guys?” Lili said, exasperated. “Do you still want to introduce us to your friend? Because I need to find Lewis. He disappeared, and if I find him with some bitch in
his
arms, I won’t be as forgiving as Kenna.”

Groaning, Phil dropped his forehead to mine. “Yeah. And Lewis is in the kitchens.” He pushed himself off me.

“What the—”

“He knows the staff here,” Phil explained.

“Of
course
he does,” she seethed.

With his arm around my waist and his other around Lili’s shoulders—I guessed he’d forgiven the little shit for the shin kick—he steered us down the corridor and led us back to the spot where he had been sitting.

Camryn was sitting there, her long brown legs crossed, and she was sipping something icy and pink. When she spotted us, her pretty face split into a smile that irritated me.

Damn, she really is cute.

I was jealous, plain and simple. I hated that I was. But damn it…I didn’t want to have to see his past paraded about in miniskirts and big tits.

“Lili, Kenna, this is my friend Camryn. Camryn, that’s Lili—”

“Who aims low.” Camryn chuckled, making our lips twitch.

“Yeah, well, where else is she gonna aim?” he grumbled, his eyebrows knitting together in a scowl.

His gaze met mine, and his expression softened as his eyes sparkled. Camryn’s sharp intake of breath meant she had seen the change in him, too. He had never looked at
her
like that. I could almost hear Lili purring with smugness next to me.

“And this is my Baby Girl,” he told her, not taking his eyes from mine.

Breaking our gaze, I looked over at Camryn and extended my hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

The smile she gave me didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Likewise.”

“Phil?”

“Yeah, Pygmy?”

“Can you please find my man? I haven’t seen him in over an hour. And let me know if he’s getting a hard-on over the appliances. I consider that cheating, too.”

Phil laughed and patted Lili on the head. “Sure thing.” Smiling, he leaned down and kissed me quickly on the lips. “I’ll be right back.”

“What time are we heading out today?” I asked Phil before taking a sip of my iced tea.

Nest was a laid-back little restaurant on the twenty-fourth floor of The Ritz-Carlton where Phil had decided to take us for a private late lunch.

“Um…I think the guys and I are headin’ out once we’re done with lunch. The event provides most of the sound equipment, but we have a lot of our own shit we want to use, so we need to make sure we have everythin’ ready for sound check. You guys don’t need to be there for that. You’ll just be bored. Hell,
we’re
fuckin’ bored durin’ sound checks. Sheri said she was gonna do somethin’ special for you all. I don’t know what. She wouldn’t tell me.”

“What do you guys usually do before a show?”

“Hang out in the dressing room, smoke a shit-ton of weed, drink some beers, and then go on stage. Tonight’s different though. We’re gonna have our faces painted as voodoo skulls, which means I gotta fuckin’ shave.”

“Aw, man!”

He chuckled. “You like the face fuzz, huh?”

Maybe a little too much.
“It’s cool.”

“I should probably tell you…Camryn is doing the face paint for us.”

“Oh. Okay. Makes sense,” I replied although my chest burned with a spark of jealous fury.

Camryn seemed like a nice person and was easy to chat with. She was a makeup artist, and she’d had Lili and I laughing over some of the stories she had on the guys. She’d told us how she met them while touring Britain and Scandinavia before they headed to South America for the last leg of their world tour. She did makeup for some of the other bands since Our Boys didn’t wear that shit.

At first, I’d thought it was just my own jealousy bubbling beneath the surface, but something inside of me felt that there was something off about the girl. Since I hadn’t wanted Phil to get upset and have another bitch-fit, I’d kept my mouth shut and went along with it. However, after Camryn had left and Phil had been engaged in another conversation, Lili had quietly confessed that she had the same feeling, and that had set alarm bells off for me. Lili had a certain Spidey Sense about people. She just
knew
when people weren’t what they seemed.

I wanted to give Camryn the benefit of the doubt, but that woman was on probation in my books.

“You’re okay with that?” Phil asked me.

“Yeah, sure.”

He knew I was lying—I could see it in his eyes—but I thought he also appreciated that I wasn’t the type who’d make a stink about it. I trusted
him
, and that should be enough. I shouldn’t have to trust that she’d keep her hands to herself.

“Just make sure all three of your tramp stamps are showing when she’s around,” I told him in an offhanded way.

He choked on his iced tea, and I felt a bit of satisfaction while watching his eyes leak as he gasped for air.

“
Tramp stamps
?” He coughed.

“Mmhmm,” I replied, my lips pursed in contemplation.

“Woman”—
cough, cough—
“you’re killin’ me.”

“Pfft. I doubt it.” I took a sip of my own tea.

“I’ll have to shave my pubes, too, for the last one to show.”

I ended up spraying his face, but at least I wasn’t choking and gasping. We both roared with laughter.

“Oh, gods above,” I said while wiping a tear from the corner of my eye. “Make sure that you do.”

“Anythin’ for my Baby Girl.” He grinned.