All I Need (9 page)

Jubb. That was all I’d ever be. Good ol’ Jubby. Fucking hell.

Delete.

Hey, I left a message earlier but you didn’t call back. I’m sorry about tonight. Let me explain? Please?

I was tempted. So damn tempted. But I’d been here with her before. Gotten my hopes up for no good reason.

Delete.

Dammit, Cohen. Don’t ignore me. We need to talk.

Was she serious? Did she think I wanted to hear about her night with Golden Boy?

By the fourth message, she was sighing a lot, sounding tired and annoyed. I deleted the rest without listening.

Just as I reached for my charger, my phone lit up again. But it wasn’t Ev.

Cynthia. Craig’s crazy girlfriend who was only
kind of
his girlfriend. She was also kind of that girl who hooked up with anyone and everyone who glanced at her twice.

Now there was a chick I wished I hadn’t let see my dick in high school.

Heard you were in town,
her first text said.
Maybe stop by later?

Pass. Hard pass. I shook my head and considered ignoring her completely. But as someone who’d been ignored for years, I just couldn’t do that.

Been on the road all day and exhausted. Think I’m just going to crash.

I plugged my phone in, and another message came through.

Ok. Maybe next time.

But there wouldn’t be a next time. Tomorrow I was going to check and see if Alex or any of my other buddies knew of a band looking for a lead guitar player. As soon as the sun came up, I was going to get the hell out of Abbott Springs.

For good.

I
checked my phone for the umpteenth time. Nothing.

Jubb hadn’t responded to a single text. We’d never fought like this before. We’d argued. Bickered. And then later we’d laughed about it. Or forgotten it about it altogether.

But this was different. We’d never stormed away angry. The issues we’d disagreed on had never been enough to keep that flame burning. It was usually snuffed out before it made it to a full roar.

Lying in bed that night, I stared at the watermarked popcorn ceiling of my childhood bedroom. I kicked my legs, wrestling them free from the patchwork quilt I’d had on my bed forever. It was from the Junior League Jamboree five or so years ago. Each woman had been instructed to bring a patch. But no one had specified what size the patches should be. None of them had fit together and the whole thing was one big clusterfuck. Which was why I loved it so much. It was tattered to hell and back from touring with me, but I couldn’t sleep without it.

And tonight apparently, I couldn’t even sleep with it.

I was in my own bed, in my own house, in the same room where I’d slept my whole life. Everything was exactly the same—same yellowing popcorn ceiling, same faded striped wallpaper, same quilt. My mom had even come in and given me a goodnight kiss on the forehead like I was a little kid again. After my little chat with Kennedy, I’d caught up with Bree at Village Hall, and we’d talked. Things between us were better. And yet, sleep evaded me.

I never had trouble sleeping. Not even at the shadiest motels or the time we’d parked in a Walmart parking lot outside of Scottsdale when we all got too tired to drive after performing in a tiny shithole bar.

After flipping my pillow over for the fifth time, realization hit me almost as hard as I pummeled my fist into the feathered cushion beneath my head.

I knew what was missing. The smell of his cologne, coupled with a hint of sweat and the smoke and stale beer scent of the show we’d just played at. The heat of his breath warming my neck. His thick, banded arm underneath me, holding me securely to him.

For the past few months, I’d slept in Jubb’s arms. With my head propped on his chest, in the perfect spot for the steady beat of his rhythmic pulse to lull me to sleep every night.

My heart ached as it dawned on me that what had been heaven for me had been torture for him.

After a sold-out show opening for an up-and-coming local band in St. Louis, we’d been unable to get anything more than a tiny one-bed motel room. Dax took the cot. Jubb offered to sleep on the floor, but considering what you get for thirty bucks a night, I was afraid he’d get Hepatitis C down there. So we shared the bed. He kept his distance at first, but we woke up cuddling.

Same thing happened at the next motel. And the next. Soon we gave up, and I’d just snuggle down into his embrace each night.

Shitty motels in the sketchiest neighborhoods had felt more like home than my own bed. Because of him. Because Jubb—or Justin, or whatever the hell he wanted me to call him—had become home to me.

His words from earlier burned me up from the inside out.
It’s about you and me. About how those nights while you sleep I lay there, wishing I was buried deep inside of you. I want to know it’s my name you’ll be moaning every night and my arms you’ll wake up in every morning.

The approval or disapproval of the townies in Abbott Springs didn’t mean a damn thing. Besides, I had my mom, Bree, Maya, and Sami. They were what actually mattered. Not the geography. This wasn’t really my home. Just the place I’d grown up. Being on the road wasn’t my home. Just where I went because I loved and needed music like oxygen. Justin freaking Cohen was my home. And I would only belong, would only be able to perform my heart out, to sleep peacefully, wherever he was.

I clutched my pillow against my racing heart while tingles descended over my entire body as I processed this new information.

He’d quit. He was done. Out of the band—and holy shit, maybe even out of our friendship—and still not answering my calls or texts. Panic covered my skin with a sheen of clammy sweat.

Before I had time to second-guess myself, I was out of my bed, yanking on my tattered sweats. My heart raced as I laced up the running shoes I hadn’t worn since high school.

I couldn’t do this without him—more importantly, I didn’t want to.

F
reaking hell, that look. That damned look on her face had nearly killed me. I’d never wounded her so deeply. I’d always been the one healing her hurts, not causing them. Every time I dosed off even a little bit, her face appeared behind my eyes.

But seeing her with Hale, making motherfucking eyes at him while singing the song I’d written for her…Well, every man had his limits.

When Hale had nodded his head toward the lake and she’d given him a subtle but definite yes with the slight dip of her chin, I was done.

Yelling at her like a maniac and then hashing things out had put me on some kind of temporary high. I’d been all adrenaline and anger as I stormed back to my apartment, slamming my door and downing the remaining four beers in my fridge. But now, lying here in the dark, staring at the blades of the ceiling fan above my bed whirring in a slow, torturous motion, a heavy, soul-deep regret replaced my previous buzz.

She knew. She knew how I felt now and she’d gone with him anyway.

A low hum of frustration still thrummed through me, but all I could see as those weathered wood blades rotated was her. I’d given it a shot and I’d bombed. She’d picked that colossal assclown over me.

As angry as I was—and I was still really fucking angry—guilt carved out the edge of that anger like a sharp blade.

I glanced over at the alarm clock on the boxes I used as a nightstand. Red digital numbers mocked me. At this rate, it would be daylight before I got any sleep. If even then. It was too much, knowing that I’d hurt her that way—that she might have let
him
console her.

Just as my blood pressure amped back up, a soft knock sounded at the door.
Who in the hell is here at this hour?

My heart constricted as if it had been squeezed and let go and squeezed again. It couldn’t be healthy to feel such a solid thud in my chest at only twenty-one years old. I forced myself to shove the idea out of my head that it was even possible for it to be her at the door.

If Alex had decided the Abbott Springs B&B was a little too quaint for him, he was probably coming to crash on my couch. But I really wasn’t in the mood for company.

Huffing out a breath, I sat up and made my way to my front door. It might have been a good idea to put a shirt on in case he had a chick with him, but that was his problem. I didn’t have a peephole, so I couldn’t check.

Pulling the door open, I was greeted with a vision of need I wasn’t prepared for. There she stood, the pink-haired object of my everything.

It felt like I’d conjured her from my thoughts. And I wanted her in the darkest, dirtiest way possible. Wanted to rip the navy blue hoodie I recognized as mine from where it fell off her exposed shoulder. My hands flexed, aching to grab her like a damn animal and drag her into my apartment. Traitor that it was, my dick throbbed and swelled at the sight of the creamy, exposed skin.

It was as if I’d been a burning man thirsting to death in my apartment for decades and she’d appeared with a tall glass of ice-cold water. Or she was the glass of water. Condensation might as well have dripped from her body.

Licking my lips, I propped my elbow on the door and raised an eyebrow at her.

Those bright greenish-gray eyes of hers widened. Her gaze dropped from my face, down my chest and stomach, and back up again.

“Help you?” I asked nonchalantly, like the sight of her hot mess of a self wasn’t damn near destroying me where I stood.

Dragging her eyes reluctantly from my body, she swallowed hard and shook her head. “Couldn’t sleep,” her soft voice rasped. “Ju—”

Giving up the good-guy persona I’d held on to my entire life, I gave in to the overwhelming urge to clutch her hips with both hands. The action was enough to make her gasp mid-sentence.

“You’re here,” I practically growled at her, pulling her into the apartment and closing the door behind us.

She nodded, her eyes growing wider as they burned into mine. The same lustful need I’d been nursing for years swirled in them.

“I told you exactly how I felt, exactly what I wanted from you, and you’re here.” Backing her up against my door, I leaned down until our noses grazed one another’s. “That can only mean one of two things. Either you feel the same way or you’re cruel enough to come here and expect me to fucking cuddle.”