Girl in Love (26 page)

He chuckled softly beside her. “You did. And so did he. You both practically shout it from the top of your lungs every time you get within five feet of each other. You just have really fucked-up ways of showing it.”

She shook her head and stared at her hands in her lap. “He doesn’t love me. Regardless of how I feel or felt about him, he never loved me.”

“Did you even listen to the lyrics to his song tonight? The whole damn thing was about how much he loves you. I’m starting to think you both need some fucking therapy. My parents saw a couples’ therapist for a while. I could get you the number.”

“Gee thanks.”

He laughed again and bumped her shoulder with his. “To tell you the truth, I was really just hoping to finally get to have sex with you. You know, strictly for bragging rights.”

“You better be joking or I’m going to bust your other lip.”

He laughed again. “You never know, Ryans. Maybe if we do it, I’ll blow your mind and you really will finally get completely over him.”

She tilted her head and tapped her lips with her forefinger, as if she were actually contemplating his offer.

“Just kidding,” he said, standing. “Pretty sure it’s just a dick in my pants and not a magic wand. But if I could wave it and help you get over him, I promise I would.”

“You’re such a good friend, Blythe.”

“I know, right? A regular humanitarian ready to donate my body to the cause. There should be an award.” He gave her a one-arm hug as she walked him off the bus.

She felt the shift when his demeanor changed. “I have to ask you something. Something serious.”

Kylie contemplated making a joke about one of the Tailgate Twins, but his expression said he was actually serious this time so she didn’t. “Shoot.”

“Would it be okay if I got a ride home with Mia and Lily? I think this is my last stop, Ryans. I know a few guys who can be here tomorrow to replace me.”

It should have upset her for yet another guy to walk out on her. But it didn’t. She understood.

“Yeah. That’s probably a good idea. And no worries. I can call Aiden and see if he can meet up with us at the next stop.” She couldn’t even remember where that was off the top of her head. The whole damn tour was becoming one big messed-up blur.

Steven breathed a visible sigh of relief. “For the record, whatever you decide to do or not do, I hope you and Corbin get your shit worked out.”

She smiled as he kissed her goodbye on the cheek.
Me, too,
she thought to herself.
Me freaking too.

A
FTER A
long, hot shower, Kylie wanted nothing more than to crawl in bed and forget the entire disastrous day.

But that wasn’t the way her life worked.

Darla’s book stared at her from her nightstand. Mocking her. And she had to call her guitar player and let him know he was needed after all. Surprisingly, Aiden wasn’t upset. He told her that his mother-in-law had been staying with them to help with the twins and he was mostly in the way at home. She couldn’t tell if he was kidding or completely serious.

After calling Hannah and telling her to arrange his flight to the next tour stop, which Hannah informed her was in South Carolina, Kylie sat on her bed and began to read three hundred and fifty-odd pages of lies and bullshit. Twenty pages in, she seriously considered calling the publisher and suggesting they change the title.

By chapter six, she’d lost count of the twisted mistruths. Darla detailed screaming fights where Kylie called her terrible names. They’d happened, but it had been her wicked stepmother calling the names.

The passages reminded Kylie of some of the disgusting words she’d been called by Darla when her dad wasn’t around, long before she’d even known what they meant. She thought of how she’d feel if someone had called Lily or Rae those terrible things when they were that age. A sudden swell of sadness for her own preteen self washed over her.

But that was nothing compared to the scathing fabrications Darla’s story contained about Kylie’s daddy.

She’d called him an alcoholic, a liar, a cheater, and impotent—which really didn’t gel with the whole cheater thing—but clearly there was no one involved in publishing the monstrosity that actually gave a damn about fact-checking.

So far it seemed Kylie’s lawyers couldn’t
technically
prove that Darla had broken the confines of the NDA she’d signed.

The words on the page ran together. Tears pooled in her eyes as she read defamation after defamation.

And she didn’t miss the fact that so many of them were eerily similar to things the media had published about Trace. The fact that she’d managed to pull this off without breaking the NDA even while referring to them indirectly, made Kylie wonder if whoever had helped a woman—who, as it so happened, couldn’t read and interpret the directions to make macaroni and cheese—write a book, maybe had a vendetta and had been purposely trying to draw a parallel.

Trace’s name was never mentioned specifically—the nondisclosure agreement did made sure of that—but Kylie was accused of using her daddy issues as an excuse to sleep her way through Nashville repeatedly throughout the chapters she’d read so far.

When she couldn’t take any more, she set the book aside and pulled her knees to her chest. Pulling her daddy’s faded blue button-up work shirt around her, she let her fingers follow the thread path of his name sewn into the front pocket.

She didn’t have much to remember him by. A few old shirts, his truck, and her memories. Good memories. Memories of fishing and camping trips, ballgames, and learning to play guitar on the front porch after dinner.

The falsehoods Darla spun were just that. False.

He’d drunk a beer every now and then and he’d been tired a lot once he had a high-maintenance hag of a wife to deal with. But he was a good man. The best man Kylie had ever known.

And no one would know. Because she’d put herself in the public eye, and Darla had found a way to exploit that for her own benefit. She wondered if there was any possible way she could’ve stopped this from being published. Bribed Darla. Or called a lawyer or sued the publisher or something. Anything to keep her daddy’s memory from being tainted in this repulsive way.

But it was too late now. It was already out there—this bound book of lies about him and her both.

A hard sob forced its way out of her throat and she threw the book across the room. It hit the wall with a dull thud and landed open on the floor.

“Kylie Lou,” a soft voice called. She went completely still, briefly entertaining the ridiculous idea of hiding in a closet so she wouldn’t have to face him. She hurried to erase the evidence that she’d been crying. “You okay?” Trace stepped into her room and picked up the book she’d thrown.

She lifted her chin in an attempt to appear perfectly fine. “What are you doing here? I thought everyone was staying at your place tonight.”

She didn’t add that it stung like a dozen angry hornets that he’d invited everyone except her to his place for a home-cooked meal after the show. Not that she would’ve gone. But it stung nonetheless.

“They are. I think the better question is, what are
you
doing here?”

She gave him her best that’s-a-stupid-ass-question face. “Well, I wasn’t invited to the farm last I checked. So where else would I be?”

“I didn’t ask why you were here. I asked what you were doing. I meant specifically.”

She sighed loudly and closed her eyes for a moment. With a light shake of her head, she opened them and looked at him.

“Trace, between your big productions tonight—you know, the one on stage and the one where you attacked Steven for no good reason—and then our argument outside where you decided to rehash painful memories just for fun, I’m kind of tired.”

“You’re tired?” He eyed the book in his hands. “So you decided to read a book that you knew would keep you up all night?”

An explanation came to mind, but she bit her tongue. She didn’t owe him anything.

“What I read is none of your business.”

“Fine. So why are you all alone on this bus reading that piece of garbage? Where’s Steven? I saw Mia and Lily leaving earlier and I could’ve sworn I saw him leaving with them. Care to tell me what the fuck is actually going on with the two of you before I make an even bigger ass of myself?”

“Not that that’s any of your business either, but he left. He’s done with the tour. Congratulations. Mission accomplished. You can rest easy now.”

Pushing off her mattress, she stood and placed a hand out for her book.

He frowned and ignored her gesture. “I wasn’t trying to run him off. I just didn’t want to see you get—”

“I swear to God, if you try to somehow spin this into you being some big damn hero, I am going to scream.” She shook her head and stepped back toward her bed. “And the idea of
you
protecting
me
from getting hurt is laughable.”

She expected him to say something back. But he just looked at her intently, as if she were a puzzle to piece together and he was struggling to make it all fit. Her patience ran out before he said anything else.

“Can you just grab whatever you forgot and go on back to Macon? I’m really not in the mood for this right now.”

“Okay. I’ll do that then.” Without warning, Trace leaned down and lifted her off the floor. Before she had time to say a single word in protest, she was upside down over his shoulder and they were bounding out of her room.

“Pants,” she squealed. “Trace, I’m not wearing any pants!”

“I know.” He gave her a firm smack on her ass, which was right next to his head. “Thank God for that. It was the only reason I could stand listening to all your whiny baby nonsense in there.”

“Nonsense? Where the hell do you get off?”

He sat her down in the kitchen. “Well, I used to get off inside of you. On a good day, anyways. Otherwise in the shower mostly.”

“Something is seriously wrong with you.” Her mouth threatened to let a small smile creep out and she wanted to slap herself in the face.

“Lots of things are wrong with me, darlin’. Surely you get that by now.” He looked at her as if she were the one acting like a crazed lunatic instead of the other way around. “But I can’t fucking sleep in my big empty bed knowing you’re here on this damn bus all alone. So get your shit and let’s go.”

“I’m not going—”

“Spare me the toddler fit, okay? It’s late. It’s been a long day, like you said. And I have something I want us to do before we head back to the farm.”

“Oh no, Trace Corbin. If you think for one second that we’re going to—”

“Going to what, Kylie Lou?” His face was the picture of innocence. She knew hers was likely glowing with embarrassment. “I see you have your mind in the gutter. Nice. I approve.”

“I’m going back to bed.” She turned to storm back to her room, but he caught her by the arm before she’d made it out of reaching distance.

“Oh no you don’t. Look, we can do this the easy way, where you throw on some pants and bring your ass on. Or I can carry you out of here kicking and screaming and tomorrow you’ll have to borrow something from Rae to wear.” He shrugged. “Come to think of it, doesn’t actually make much of a difference to me either way. Welp, up you go then.”

He bent down to grab her again and she gave him a solid shove.

“Okay, okay. I’m coming.”

“Sure, we can make time for that too.” He reached for her again and she slapped him away.

“Dammit, Trace. Can you stop acting like a fourteen-year-old for five damn minutes?” She could feel her blood pressure rising. “I can’t do this if I have to constantly think about everything I say being turned into innuendo.”

“Doesn’t matter what you say. I’ll turn it all into innuendo regardless.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Great. And when will you be stopping that childish habit exactly?”

He made a big show of appearing thoughtful. “When you admit that you still have feelings for me, you still think about me, and that you missed me terribly every second that we were apart.”

“There’ll be figure skating competitions in hell before that happens.”

He nodded as if it made no difference either way. “Well, then I hope you enjoy my little jokes. I got plenty.”

She was getting a headache from all the glaring so she decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. “Actually, I do have a confession to make. It’s kind of embarrassing though.”

He turned his head slightly. “And what’s that, darlin’?”

She took a step toward him. “Do you remember that night on the bus, that one night when you told me to go back to my room and lock the door?”

She watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he swallowed. “Vaguely. Why?”

Steeling her own nerves so she could go through with her plan for getting him to back off, she reached out and ran a finger down the front of the tight gray T-shirt he was wearing.

Lowering her voice enough to be seductive, she glanced up at him from under her eyelashes. “Well, sometimes…at night…and even sometimes during the day, I think about you and I…I
touch
myself.”

His eyes went wide and then narrowed with suspicion. “You do?”

“Yes. I do.” She paused to bite her bottom lip. His eyes dropped to her mouth and she grinned. “I rub my temples. Because you give me a migraine.”

His mouth eased into a slow smile while she grinned triumphantly. He shook his head and touched her lightly under her chin. “You’re something else, pretty girl. You ready to go or you want me to see what I can do to take your mind off that migraine I cause you?”

Locked in his gaze, all sense of having finally beaten him at his own little play on words game vanished. The truth was, she may have finally made it to equal ground where their careers were concerned, but where anything physical was involved, she knew he would win every time. He’d shown her many,
many
times the way he could rob her of every single ounce of self-control she had with just one touch.

She took a deep breath and stepped out of his space—relenting because she knew he wasn’t going to.