Hard As Rock (32 page)

His words hit me like a truck. They hurt – but I knew they were honest, too. I could hear it in his voice.

If he was going to be honest, there was one more thing I wanted to know.

“Were you planning on sleeping with her when you met her?”

Derek closed his eyes, and his face screwed up in an expression of pain. “…yes.”

I felt like he’d stabbed me all over again. “You lied to me!”

“I lied to you when I was in the middle of a full-blown meltdown. I would have done anything,
said
anything, to keep you.”

“Whatever,” I snorted. “You were a complete douchebag in half of your texts and voicemails, and you took forever to come get me in New York.”

“Because I resented that I had to come crawling back to you, and you wouldn’t even talk to me. I hated that I needed you that much. Hated that I was weak. And when I wasn’t begging you to come back, I was furious at you for making me feel like – like you had my balls in your purse.”

I glared at him. “Well,
I
didn’t feel that way.”

“I know.”

“All I could think about was how you cheated on me. How you
lied
to me.”

“I know.”

“And you’re still lying,” I seethed.

He frowned. “No I’m not. Everything I’ve told you was the truth.”

“You lied to Ryan tonight to get me out here.”

“Because he went after
you
,” Derek said darkly. “He fucking stabbed me in the back and took the woman I love.”

“He didn’t ‘take’ me – I
left
you because you
cheated
on me.”

All the anger departed his face, and suddenly he looked sad. “I know, and I’m more sorry than you can possibly imagine.” Then the forcefulness came back into his voice. “But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I want to know if you love him.”

“Of course I love him!” I snapped.

“Then the next question is, are you
in
love with him?”

I stood there, my heart thudding against my ribs, afraid to answer.

Because I was afraid he might hear the truth in my voice.

Because I was afraid
I
might hear the truth in my voice.

“I’ll ask you what I asked you four years ago: do you wake up happy in the mornings because he’s right there beside you?” he whispered. “Do you get sad the second he leaves, because you can’t stand to be apart? Does he make your heart stop when he walks in the room?”

He reached out and gripped my arms.

His touch was like fire, like electricity, like sex. I felt it spreading through my entire body.

“Do you crave his touch? Do you feel like his kisses are a drug? Does it make you insane not to be around him, not to be naked with him, not to have him inside you?” he asked, his voice low and husky. “Because that’s the way I feel when I’m not around you.”

He was killing me. When he said
to have him inside you,
I felt myself get wet just from the sound of his voice.

But I reminded myself I had felt like that back in Vegas, too.

“Then you shouldn’t have cheated on me,” I snapped, wrenching myself free from his grasp.

He let me go – at least, with his touch. But his words, his voice, gripped me more strongly than his hands ever could have.

“You belong with me, Kaitlyn,” he whispered. “You know it’s true. You belong with me, not with him.”

“I’m not cheating on him,” I raged.

“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to do the same thing you should have done four years ago: leave the guy you know you don’t really love, and stay with the man you do.”

My body wanted to go to him. His words… his voice… his body… his face… all of them drew me to him like a magnet.

But I forced myself to think of that hotel in Vegas, and the naked woman standing in the doorway clutching a sheet to her body.

“You’ll just get bored and hurt me all over again,” I said, my voice cold and steely.

He shook his head. “No. No, I won’t. I swear, this time it’ll be different. I would die for you.”

As soon as he said that, I remembered the cougar in the Black Hills. How Ryan had stepped across me, putting himself between me and certain death.

“I don’t believe you. But I’m with a man I
know
would die for me, because he’s already risked his life to save me.”

Derek didn’t give up. “I don’t know what he did, but I would do it, too. And that’s the thing – he’s a great guy. He is. I know you love him. But you’re not
in
love with him; you’re in love with
me.
And we both know it.”

He stepped forward, and I tensed up. I was sure he was going to take me in his arms and try to kiss me – and I was afraid, because part of me really wanted that, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop him –

But he didn’t. He just stood there a few inches away from me, close enough that I could feel his body heat radiating through the cool night air.

“I love you, Kaitlyn. I know I fucked up, and that it’s going to be hard to forgive me. But I’m patient. I waited four years for you last time… I can wait a little bit longer.”

With that, he walked off across the parking lot into the darkness, never looking back.

And just like four years ago in that very same spot, I got back into the car and collapsed, sobbing behind the wheel.

It took me a long while to compose myself, but when I finally did, I drove back to Ryan’s. The guard waved me through the gate, and after five minutes of winding through his neighborhood I parked in the garage.

I thought about what I was going to say as I sat there in the darkness.

I could tell him the truth… but then he would quit the band, I was sure of it. He would sever all ties with Derek, and it would all be my fault.

I didn’t want that. But that would be what happened if I told him.

…or…

…I could lie.

I could tell him about the rest of the evening. Nothing had happened at the dorm or the gyro place. I could leave out the part in the parking lot. I wouldn’t even have to leave out all of it – just the part at the end.

It wouldn’t be a full-on lie; more like bending the truth.

No… if you’re going to lie, at least don’t lie to yourself.

I felt sick.

I hadn’t wanted any of this to happen. I hadn’t wanted Derek to come back, I hadn’t wanted to feel these feelings, I hadn’t wanted things to be
so HARD.

Why couldn’t it be easy? For once, why couldn’t the choice just be clear? Why couldn’t all the things I wanted line up neatly in a row?

Ryan deserved the truth.

But if I gave it to him, he would destroy the band. He would walk away.

And I didn’t want that on my conscience.

I could handle Derek.

If he cared about me at all, he would listen to me and leave me alone, once and for all.

I decided on what I was going to do. I got out of the car, walked into the house, and went to go find Ryan.

He was sitting in the den with a full wine glass and an empty bottle.

“That took awhile,” he said, his words a little slurred.

“Yeah, he wanted the full tour down memory lane,” I said with a forced smile.

“Did he get whatever it was he wanted?” Ryan asked in a dead, flat voice.

My stomach turned.

No. No, he didn’t.

“I think so. He said he got closure, so…”

Ryan stood up, quickly and off-balance.

Suddenly I was afraid. I tensed, ready for a blast of anger – like from all the other men in my life –

I don’t know who you are sometimes. You’re becoming more and more like your roommate.

I guess you forgot that you reamed my ass out again last night for looking at some women who happened to be standing right in front of me. Which you always do, EVERY… SINGLE… FUCKING… NIGHT.

Don’t you walk out on me! DON’T YOU
DARE
WALK OUT ON ME!

But instead, he just walked over to me and put his hand tenderly against my face.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

“…yeah,” I lied. “Are you?”

“I am now.”

I looked over at the wine bottle. “You weren’t before?”

“Honestly? …no.”

“Why?”

He smiled sadly. “Because I thought I might lose you.”

His words were like thorns pressing into my heart.

“Oh, Ryan… no…”

“I know you still care for him, Kaitlyn.”

“Ryan – ”

“Shhh, it’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay. I’m not asking you to
not
feel that way about him. I just… I love you. I always will, no matter what.”  

My heart was breaking.

How could I have ever even thought for a second of hurting him?

I hadn’t – not consciously – but back in the parking lot, my body had betrayed me, and I hated myself for it.

“I love you
,
” I whispered. “I love
you
.”

He leaned down and kissed me, and the softness and sweetness of that kiss suffused my whole body.

His hands caressed my back. I pulled him tight against me – and felt him hardening against my belly.

It turned me on – which was a relief. After my uncontrollable attraction to Derek just thirty minutes ago, I had been afraid that maybe, just
maybe
I wouldn’t feel the same about Ryan. It had been a subconscious fear, but it had been there.

But as I felt him growing harder and thicker against my body, I felt the stirrings of desire, and was glad.

I rubbed him through his pants… cupping his erection, feeling it thick and solid in my hand.

“Kaitlyn,” he breathed out.

“Seems the wine didn’t affect this,” I whispered mischievously.

He grinned, and then we were pulling at each other’s clothes, tossing them to the ground, and sinking to the floor, our naked bodies intertwined.

There was only one problem.

As I built up closer and closer to orgasm, as my conscious thoughts shut down and my body took over, I began to see Derek.

Just flashes of him at first.

I would imagine
him
moving in and out of me, filling me up.

The first time it happened, I opened my eyes in shock – and was reassured to see Ryan above me, staring lovingly into my eyes.

Once the alarm passed, I eased back into the moment, feeling his body move in and out of mine –

And then Derek was there instead.

I tried desperately to push him out of my mind –

But over and over, as I neared orgasm, he was there – not all the time, but flashes of him, so that I was never sure from second to second whether I was thinking of Ryan or of Derek. I didn’t want to, but trying to push him away brought me back to fear and anxiety and stopped me from coming, and I wanted to come, to feel good again, to let the pleasure wash away all my doubt and fear. I would deal with the guilt later.

And so I let him in.

First Ryan, then Derek.

One, then the other.

Close my eyes and it was Derek.

Open them, and it was Ryan.

I lost all control over my thoughts and suddenly orgasm washed over me, through me, obliterating all thought.

I screamed.

Thank God I didn’t call out a name.

Ryan parked the BMW outside the music studio in downtown Athens just five minutes before noon.

“You can come in if you want,” Ryan said as we both got out of the car.

I didn’t want to tell him that I couldn’t face Derek right now. Not after last night in the parking lot… and afterwards, when I kept seeing both his and Ryan’s face during sex.

As I lay awake last night in bed and listened to Ryan drop off to sleep, I had started building a psychological fortress to protect myself: a wall separating me and Ryan from Derek, formed with bricks of denial, logic, promises of self-control… whatever was at hand as my thoughts raced through my head.

But I wasn’t sure the wall could withstand another attack so soon.

And I sure as hell didn’t want to admit to Ryan I was building a wall at all.

So instead, I went with the lesser reasons I didn’t want to go into the studio.

“No thanks. I don’t particularly like getting called ‘Yoko.”

“I’ll tell her to stop.”

I walked around to his side and got the keys from him. “Like
that’ll
happen. You know she’ll just whisper it when your back is turned. And I
really
don’t want to face Miles’s wrath.”

“He’s not going to get mad at you.”  

“You can guarantee that?”

Ryan sighed. “Fine… I’ll call you when we’re finished, or I’ll get a cab to take me – ”

“Hey!” a familiar voice shouted across the parking lot.

I tensed up, then turned slowly around.

Derek.

He strode up to us, all smiles.

First he looked at me, searching my eyes – and I knew he knew. I knew he could see it scrawled across my face, could almost hear his thoughts telepathically:

You didn’t tell him.

His smile became the tiniest bit broader. Like he was letting me know,
It’s our little secret
.

“Morning, Kaitlyn.”

“Good morning,” I said, trying to keep the panic I felt out of my voice.

Then he turned to Ryan. “Hey, man, thanks for letting me take her out last night. It did me a world of good.”

Ryan forced a smile I knew wasn’t genuine. “Cool. Glad it worked out.”

“It worked out
great.
” Derek turned back to me. “What’s up, you’re not coming inside?”

“No, I think I’ll let you guys do your thing.”

“You should come in.”

“I don’t want to be a distraction.”

“You wouldn’t be a distraction, you’d be a good luck charm.”

“How’s that?”

“You were the inspiration for the first two albums. Might as well be there in person for the third.”

I remembered hearing his voice when ‘Girl, Please Stay’ played over my car radio for the first time. Both pain and nostalgia washed through me.

“Maybe the whole key is that I
wasn’t
there.”