Authors: Emily Snow
“It locks when it shuts. I’ve got an armful of laundry, so I’ll be up there in five, okay?”
She mumbles something inaudible and then calls out, “Whatever, see you in a few.”
I count to a hundred before I yell out her name. When she doesn’t answer, I look up into Wyatt’s eyes. “You like to make your presence known, don’t you?” My voice is teasing, but the look on his face is serious. The pit of my stomach coils. I don’t want seriousness from him—not tonight.
“Where you’re concerned, Ky, yeah, I do.”
I touch the base of my throat, massaging the area carefully, and watch him as he heads to the door. “You’ll be in your room?”
He glances over his shoulder. “I’ll be there.”
“Cal’s not going to show up, is he?” I ask as he steps out into the hallway.
Wyatt scratches a hand through his blond hair and cocks his head to the side, grinning. “Not if he doesn’t want his fucking fingers broken.”
“Well aren’t you Mr. Effing Possessive.”
As he closes the laundry room door, he rakes his deep blue eyes over me, sending another flash of desire speeding through my body. “Damn right I am, Bluebird.”
Finally alone, I smile to myself as I stuff my laundry, which is still slightly wet, into the bag before I take the elevator back to my room. Heidi’s standing outside of our door with her arms crossed over her chest, scowling.
I stop in my tracks. “You okay?”
“That asshole Finn bailed on me, but I’m alright.” She stretches her arms out over her head and yawns theatrically. “I just want my bed.” As I dig in my back pocket for the key card, she tilts her head to the side. “You look way too happy for having just done laundry.”
I bite my lip to suppress a grin as I unlock our door. I’m contemplating whether or not I should tell her, but then I flip on the light switch.
And my heart sinks.
Every inch of our room has been rummaged through. There are clothes, both Heidi’s and mine, thrown all over the place, and all the dresser drawers have been pulled out.
“What are you—” Heidi begins, sliding past me to get inside. Like me, she stops in her tracks. She sums up exactly how I’m suddenly feeling in the single word she says next. “Shit.”
O
ver the last several years, I’ve gotten used to dealing with cops, not because of myself but due to the notoriety of the band. There’s the loud and completely out of hand hotel parties, Sin’s drunken habit of dropping his pants and pissing on the side of the street (or wherever else he happens to be standing at the time), and of course, my brother’s foul temper, which has gotten Lucas into trouble time and time again. Still, I’ve got to admit that going through the motions of filing a report with the police officer who shows up at this hotel drains my energy.
Since we can’t go back into our room yet, the staff at The Veranda is nice enough to set us up in one of the smaller event rooms located on the main floor while they prepare us another room. A Happy Anniversary sign is still hanging at the front of the room, and napkins congratulating Moira and Tom on reaching twenty-five years together are stacked on the table where the manager left us sitting.
“They’re probably more worried about losing guests due to a break-in than us. I mean, I’m pretty sure they don’t really give a shit about our safety,” Heidi says once the manager leaves the room.
I roll my eyes. It’s all I can do to stop myself from saying something that I’ll later regret. For starters, Heidi’s key card mysteriously went missing while she was out with Shiner Bock. Then, while we stood outside the door of our wrecked room, the person across the hall wandered out and drunkenly told us—through sloppy bites of loaded nachos that made my stomach turn—that the guy from last night had
just
left. It didn’t take a detective to figure out that Heidi had been royally screwed over by Finn, the so-so one-night stand.
I hear footsteps coming in my direction, and I flick a wary gaze up from the blank police report to take in Officer Townsend, the police officer who answered the call. “Mrs. Martin—” he begins.
I cringe but quickly jump to correct him. “It’s Kylie,” I say, glancing up at him. Out of habit, I run my thumb over the last name tattooed around my ring finger. “Or Ms. Wolfe works, too. I never got around to changing my last name after my divorce.” It was more than seven years ago, but I’m not about to tell him that.
A deep flush spreads around the crown of Officer Townsend’s balding head. “I’m sorry about that, ma’am.”
There’s no need for him to apologize for calling me by my legal name, so I manage a ghost of a smile and shake my head.
When I drop my attention down to the sheet of paper sitting on the banquet table, Officer Townsend adds, “You’ll want to call your credit card companies and let them know your cards have been stolen. You’ll need to keep a copy of the report for your bank and a copy for your reference because it has your case number on it.”
I slump in the folding metal chair. For a long time, I simply stare at the police report, letting the typed words blur together into a dizzying cluster of black and white. My brain is such a catastrophic mess from what happened in the laundry room with Wyatt to finding out my room was robbed that I didn’t even think about taking precautions to make sure my bank account and my brother’s business account won’t be wiped out.
“Mrs. Ma—
Kylie
?” Officer Townsend takes the seat directly across from me, and I lift my face to his. “Do you need help filling out the report?” His heavy accent is gentle, but I shake my head.
“No, I’m fine, thank you.” I pick up the pen to begin writing out my statement. It won’t be much, considering I was bent over a running dryer with my jeans pulled around my knees while my room was being ransacked. As I scribble my signature and the date across the bottom of the page, I work my bottom lip between my teeth. “Can you show me what I’ll need to do to follow-up on this?”
Officer Townsend spends the next few minutes showing me where my case number is located on the report and what phone number I’ll need to call in order to check the status. When he’s finished, he asks, “Will you be in the area for a while?”
I rake my hands through my blue-and-black hair, pulling it up into a stubby ponytail on top of my head before dropping the strands to fall around my face. “No, I’m heading back to Los Angeles in the morning.”
The moment those words fall from my lips, realization hits me hard, making me wince, but Officer Townsend doesn’t seem to notice. He’s speaking to Heidi, explaining everything to her now.
Shiner Bock has my credit cards, which would be okay because I can get back home without my Visa or American Express. I’ve survived traveling without money before, and I can easily do so again. But when he cleaned out my room, he took everything in the nightstand drawer, including my ID.
I’ve had my entire makeup bag confiscated by TSA. There’s no way in hell I’m getting through the gate tomorrow without my license.
Or renting a car.
Or even boarding a Greyhound bus.
Fuck.
Clenching my teeth together, I amend my statement with Officer Townsend. “I
might
be going back to L.A., in the morning.” My breath hitches, but I swallow down the anxiety, making myself continue. “My license is gone, so I don’t think I have a way to get on my flight.”
He gives me a sympathetic nod. “We’re going to do everything we can to recover all your belongings, ma’am.”
As Officer Townsend escorts us out of the banquet hall, so we can book a different room for the night, Heidi shoots me a pitiful look. “I’m so sorry, Ky,” she whispers.
Since most of my initial irritation with her has evaporated, I lift the corner of my mouth and shrug. “Shit happens, babe. I’m just glad he wasn’t dangerous.”
My words must do her in because by the time we reach the entrance to the empty lobby, tears are streaming down her face, leaving dark eyeliner smudges that ruin the rest of her makeup. Miserably, I lower my brown eyes to the polished black floor just as I hear Wyatt call out to me from the concierge desk.
“Kylie?” The panic resonating in his deep voice causes my throat to swell. He reaches me in a few long sprints and yanks me to his muscular chest. Cupping the sides of my face between his large hands, he bends down, so our eyes are level. “What the fuck?”
I’m startled by how wild his blue eyes look, and I immediately blurt out, “I’m alright.”
I dart my gaze to Officer Townsend and whisper a thank-you. He gives me a nod of his head before taking off to talk to the manager on duty. Heidi slinks off toward the front counter, looking behind her in my direction once before dropping her eyes to the floor.
Pushing my shoulders back, I turn my gaze to Wyatt, and he straightens, dropping his hands to my waist to encircle it. “I’m fine,” I say once more.
He slightly loosens his hold on me, only moving his fingers to the small of my back. It’s as if he’s unable to let go, and I find it comforting. As he guides me toward the couches in the lounge area, I stay as close to him as our bodies will allow because, truthfully, I don’t want him to let go of me either.
Not just yet.
“Don’t put me through that shit again.” His voice is hoarse. Before I’m able to respond, he continues, “I text you, on the right number this time, and I get nothing back. When I go to your room, a fucking cop is there, and still, nothing from you. And then these fuckers at concierge refuse to tell me what’s going on.”
“I was filling out a police report.” We sit on the couch at the same time, and I accept his hand when he reaches for mine, linking our fingers. I tell him everything that’s happened before and after we met up tonight, leaving out the part about the disastrous double date with Shiner Bock and James. “I honestly didn’t even think to check my phone.”
He brings our hands to his mouth, running his lips across the backs of my knuckles. My chest expands, my muscles relax, and I squeeze his fingers.
“Don’t say sorry, Ky. Just don’t fucking...scare me again.”
Wyatt McCrae. Scared.
Something about him admitting that to me tonight—on the night that we’ve agreed would be our last—sends multiple emotions pummeling through me, beating against my heart like a strong fist.
I pull out of his grip and scrub the heels of my palms over my eyes. “God, why do you have to say things like that
now
?” I drag my hands back, slicking tears through my hair as I push it away from my forehead. Asking him this makes my thoughts flash back to a string of days and nights we’d spent together a few years back, and for the briefest moment, I let myself relive the memory.
Wyatt had come to me after my brother or Sinjin—I can’t remember which one, not that it matters now—had told him I was sick with a particularly nasty strain of the flu. He’d let himself into my apartment where he found me lying on the couch, and I’d shivered violently as soon as his fingertips made contact with my feverish body. When I finally found the strength to ask him to leave, fearing that he might get sick and be out of commission, he’d swooped me up effortlessly in his arms and taken me back to my bedroom.
“Breaking and entering is illegal,” I had coughed into the front of his tee-shirt shirt. “So get the hell out.”
“You gave me the key, beautiful,” he’d pointed out, holding me closer. “I’m not going anywhere with you feeling like this.”
“I’m not kidding,” I’d argued, each word practically wheezed. “Go home, McCrae, before you catch this crap, and I have to hear Lucas’s mouth about getting you sick.”
“You mean more to me than a goddamn fever,” he’d told me as he dropped me on the bed and then reached for the bottle of Nyquil on the nightstand. “And I don’t give a shit what your brother has to say—never have. I’m not leaving until you’re better, beautiful. And even then I don’t want to go.”
“Why do you have to say things like that now?” I’d asked, causing him to smile.
“You want me to tell the truth, don’t you? Well, there it was.”
But despite what he’d said, combined with a couple days of feverish sex and cough syrup-induced conversations that blew my mind, the moment my fever broke, he’d bolted without as much as a goodbye. It had taken me a few weeks to convince myself to see him again, and even then, neither one of us had brought up the time he spent at my place while I was sick.
Now, a look of regret, which is quickly replaced by tenderness, flashes in his eyes. “Because it’s true.” He tugs me back to him, cursing. “And don’t do
that
. I can take tears from anyone but you, Ky.”
“I swear I’m fine.” I feel a little ridiculous...okay, incredibly ridiculous. I’ve never actually cried in front of him because he’s usually not around by the time the letdown kicks in and the waterworks begin. “I just need to go to bed.”
I stand to go join Heidi at the front desk, but he closes his hand around mine. “You’re not sleeping anywhere but with me tonight.”
As much as I want that to happen, as much as I want him, I can’t in good conscience leave my best friend alone. “I should stay with Heidi.”
Wyatt’s blue eyes scan the lobby until they zero in on Heidi. She’s kicked off her stilettos and is leaning against the front desk with her eyebrows pulled together as she signs a receipt. She was lucky. When Finn ditched her in favor of raiding our room, she had her license and bank cards on her. Instead of going directly back to our room, she’d stopped for a pity party shot at the first bar she found. I hate to think of what would have happened if she came straight to The Veranda.
Heidi’s right up there with my parents and Lucas and the band for me, and to think of anyone hurting her makes me feel physically sick.
“I can’t leave her alone, Wyatt,” I say, my voice brimming with so much emotion that he draws his thick eyebrows together.
“I’m going to text Cal.” He reaches into the pocket of his jeans for his phone.
I stop him, grabbing his hand, before he can send the other guitarist a message. “They hate each other.”
The last thing I want is to hear Heidi and Cal bicker, and they’ve been doing it for years, ever since he hurt her feelings by turning her down after a show. A vicious migraine is starting to make my eyes burn, and I doubt listening to them angrily spit out douche bags, hoebots, and fucksticks every few minutes will make it feel any better.