Girl in Love (2 page)

“I’m serious. It’s been nearly a year. It’s
time
.” Mia stepped to the side where Jean Claude wasn’t. “
Come on
, Oklahoma. Steven and Chris have been asking us to do something with them forever. It’s just a club. We’ll have a few drinks, and hell, maybe we’ll go crazy and do some dancing.”

Now she wanted to glare at her friend, but Jean Claude was working on the other eye and one-eyed glaring wouldn’t have quite the same effect.

“Incase you haven’t noticed, I’ve been a little busy.” She waved a hand around to remind Mia where they were. Backstage at the CMAs. Where she was about to perform. And be recognized as a nominee in the New Artist of the Year category. In the past year, she’d spent more time in the studio than the people who worked there. She had two hit singles to show for it.
Not a Nice Girl
was up for Song of the Year and
Heartbreak Town
was up for Video of the Year.

“Exactly. You’ve been busy
working
twenty-four damn seven. It’s time to loosen up already.” Mia shook her head and stepped aside to let the makeup artist coat her in one more layer of shimmery powder.

She should’ve been happy-dancing around the dressing room like a maniac. It had been an amazing year.

She’d cried the first time she heard herself on the radio. She’d cried again when she sang an original song of hers for the first time and saw people in the audience singing along. Because they’d already known the words. Her words. She’d been bombarded with messages from fans saying that they loved her and loved her songs.

For some artists, this was a hassle to deal with. But for her, her fans were literally her family. Her only supporters. Everything she did, she did for them.

Tears of joy, she told herself each time she broke down. But deep in the core of her being, there was always that voice. The dark, ugly, honest one.

You’re crying because he’s not here to share this with you. Because all you want is to tell him about it. And for him to kiss you, congratulate you, and be proud of you.

She closed her eyes and focused on picturing nothing and no one. No one’s face with boyish dimples that appeared when he grinned. No one’s tan forearms under rolled-up shirtsleeves. No one’s muscular back. No one’s ass in jeans so tight it should be illegal. Just blackness. Nothingness.

In her twenty years, she’d loved two men. Loved them deeply. Her daddy, who’d died right after her eighteenth birthday in a freak accident at the factory where he worked. And another. One whose name she tried not to even
think
, much less say out loud. Because that was the past. And she was focusing on the future.

Music was her future. Nothing else really mattered.

“I like working,” she said, hopping out of the chair.

Her friend smirked. “Yeah, I get that. So do I. But I also like having a life. And living that life.”

“I have a life,” Kylie argued as they walked toward her stage entrance.

“Oh yeah? So what are you doing after this show?”

“Stopping by the studio to do one more run-through of—”

“No.” Mia shook her head. “I mean it. I’m done watching robot-Ryans work herself to death. You’re coming out with us tonight if I have to hogtie your ass.”

“Like you actually know how to hogtie anything,” Kylie said with a short sarcastic laugh. “You don’t understand and I don’t need you to. This is me. I’m doing what I love. Just because you would rather—”

Mia put a hand up to stop her. “See what I’m doing here? I’m cutting you off before you say something you’ll regret. Because here’s the thing. I’ve been as kind and gentle as I can with you. But I’ve been talking to Lily and to Olivia and—”

“You talked to Lulu?” Kylie was bursting with excitement about the latest news from her best friend. On the next tour she went on, Lulu was coming along as her personal stylist. But she was kind of pissed that the girls were obviously talking about her behind her back. She could feel an ambush coming on.

“Yeah. And the general consensus is we’re all worried about you.”

Kylie aimed a pointed look at the stage she was about to perform on in front of several thousand people.

“Not about your career. About
you.”

Is there a difference?

“So stop it. I’m fine.” She raised her arms as two stagehands came to clip her mics onto her dress.

“Kylie, I need you to listen to me, okay? You’re not fine. And even if you were, you should be so much more than
fine
. Your dreams are coming true and you’re
fine
. Wow. I’m underwhelmed.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at but—”

Mia cut her off once more. “But nothing. Grief is like your favorite pair of old sweats. You get comfortable in them. So comfortable you don’t want to take them off even to shower. They’re worn in and fit just right and you never want to let them go, even when they’re stained and gross and have holes all in them.”

Kylie arched a brow. “I think I’m missing the point of this little speech.”

“The point is they look awful on you.”

“That was a really shitty analogy. Wish me luck.”

Bryce Parker and an actress Kylie didn’t know but vaguely recognized were hosting the awards show. They were right in the middle of announcing her as the next performer when Mia touched her on the arm and sighed loudly.

“Sorry if that was harsh. I know you’re still hurting, and I can be kind of insensitive sometimes. Good luck out there.”

Kylie nodded and turned toward the stage. “Thanks,” she mumbled. The weirdest part was she wasn’t hurting. She wasn’t anything. She was numb and had been for the better part of a year. It’s why she wasn’t nervous about performances like this. She felt nothing.

Well, she felt Bryce Parker trying to cop a feel when the lights went down. She smacked his hand away. Hard.

But other than that, nothing. No butterflies, no jangled nerves. No worries about anything going wrong.

Except…when the lights came up on her this time, in that brief moment before the band cranked into her song, she looked down. Because she had the oddest sensation that instead of wearing the five thousand dollar designer dress she had on, she was actually in her sweatpants.

“W
E PROBABLY
shouldn’t sit by each other.” Gretchen shuffled down the aisle around Mike, putting a seat between them. “Unless we want to be engaged with a baby on the way tomorrow.”

“You’re being paranoid.” Trace shook his head.

He hadn’t even wanted to come to this. The label was holding all the cards now though, and he was grateful they’d understood about his needing time to step back from his career and get his drinking under control. Plus, he wasn’t a complete moron. They weren’t really as understanding as they were pretending to be. They just didn’t want to send a public message that they didn’t want their artists to get help if they needed it.

He knew that at the first sign of any wrongdoing on his part they’d drop the ax over his head so fast he wouldn’t even feel the pain of being cut loose.

“No, I’m not,” she said. Her voice was a hiss of a whisper because the lights were going down as the show began. “You need to read some tabloids, my friend. There’s all kinds of stuff going around about us.”

“I’ll pass. Thanks.”

He didn’t care what anyone said. That had been part of his therapy in rehab. Overcoming the impulses that surged when he felt out of control or powerless.

Some things he could control. Himself. His drinking. He was working on his temper. What a bunch of dickheads printed about him in some trashy-ass magazine…there was nothing he could do about that.

“She’s right, Trace.” The oldest member of his band, Danny, leaned over. “If you want to start clean, then you two need to keep your distance. If it gets around that you and Gretch were in the front row for Kylie’s first big performance, you’ll be a shoe-in for Asshole Country Artist of the Year.”

He blinked at the man.
Kylie’s big performance?

He hadn’t paid attention to any of the stuff about the awards show. He’d just shown up because the label said he had to. Before he had time to ask any questions, the room went pitch black. Bright pink lights on the stage caught his eye. They lit up, one letter at a time. K-Y-L-I-E-R-Y-A-N-S.

Aw hell.

“I’m an alcoholic,” he whispered to Danny. “An emotional drinker. None of y’all thought it might be a good idea to mention this ahead of time?”

Danny’s eyes were glued to the stage as he answered. “Pauly and Noel said not to. Said you wouldn’t come.”

Trace turned to see her coming from the smoke and fog on stage. The lights hit her and for a second he couldn’t breathe. “I wouldn’t have.”

In nearly a year of rehab, he’d learned a few things. One was that there were certain situations he had to avoid if he wanted to remain sober. Triggers, Dr. Reynolds called them. Tabloids—any media coverage at all, actually—were some of them. He’d yet to determine if Kylie Ryans was a trigger or not.

Guess I’m about to find out.

The woman on stage was something else. Her sound had changed. It was harsher, angrier. But mesmerizing. She was a force of nature up on that stage, stalking toward the audience as her lyrics hit him like bolts of lightning.

I know they talk trash behind my back. But baby I got news for you. Those crazy rumors about me? Well hell, they might all be true. I’m not a nice girl.

He tried to focus on his breathing while her guitar player rocked out. She was doing country-rock crossover? Last he’d seen her perform, she was going more a folksy bluegrass route.

His chest ached as his mind conjured the most probable cause for the change. He hadn’t seen Steven Blythe anywhere tonight, but surely if he and Kylie were still a couple, he’d be here. He’d been with her on her birthday three months ago. Alone. In her apartment. Trace had to swallow a few times to choke down the bile that rose in his throat from the memory.

Knowing it was entirely possible that a television camera could be aimed at his face at that very moment, he worked to keep his features expressionless as she continued to sing.

I’m not the one that your mama would choose. I’m not the kinda girl that you propose to. Turns out I’m just fine with a one-night stand. Baby I’m not lookin’ for a wedding band. I’m not a nice girl.

The picture-perfect moment her lyrics brought to life behind his eyes was a solid chink in the armor of his resolve to try and put the past out of his mind and move forward.

You are not a nice girl,
he’d told her when he’d thrown her into his pond and she’d faked him out and pretended she couldn’t swim.

Some days he wished someone could punch him hard enough to make him forget. If he knew it would work, he’d take the hit. Happily. And at the same time, his ego swelled just a bit. It could have been a coincidence that something he’d said to her when they were together became the title of her hit single, or it could be that she still remembered too.

There wasn’t a single second of their time together—from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her in a smoke-filled bar two years ago—that he’d forgotten. And he’d tried.

She was strutting around the stage with the confidence of a superstar. Even if Steven Blythe was the one responsible, he was still proud of her. And as much as a part of him still wanted a drink, wanted to soothe the hurt of seeing her again, of knowing she probably belonged to another man—maybe even a better man—he knew he wasn’t going to give in. Not tonight at least. Tonight he was going to focus on his music and taking it one day at a time.

So he thought.

Damn that dress she had on. It was black and tight and light reflected off it all over the place. There was a longish skirt-type deal but it was wide open in the front and the sight of those perfect legs was enough to make him regret everything.

Leaving her. Going to rehab without asking her to wait for him. Going into rehab period, because it meant nine-plus long months without those firm, perfectly toned legs wrapped around him.

The tightening in his pants reminded him
how
very long those months had been. She was still singing, but in his head, she was moaning his name.

He closed his eyes. Hard. Trying to erase those images. It wasn’t fair to remember that. To think of her that way. He’d walked away from it. From her.

In place of her lip-biting, please-don’t-stop, I’m-coming face, another version of Kylie Ryans appeared behind his eyes. His girl. Kylie Lou. Those gorgeous eyes of hers round and wide and full of tears. Her voice was as clear in his head as it was on stage.

Don’t do this. You don’t mean it. I don’t believe you.

And even though she was wearing a black dress and singing her ass off right in front of him, the Kylie he saw was just standing there. Crying and broken in a red dress.

Just as he’d left her.