The Stage (Phoenix Rising #1) (17 page)

He opens his door, takes off his headset, comes around, and picks me up, walking me toward the house.

As I wrap my arms around his neck, I have no idea what’s going to happen. But I feel like everything has changed between us and he’s going to show me just how much.

House of Royce

K
olton opens the door and sets me down on a huge dining table near the front door. “Wait here,” he says.

I’m in the middle of a large, open-concept room. From what I can see, there is a kitchen to my right with a breakfast nook and knotty pine cabinets. To my left is a living room. It looks very eighties with a desert theme featuring Santa Fe style couches in light shades of pink and turquoise. There are heavy wood coffee and end tables, as well as a built-in adobe style, clay colored fireplace in the corner. There’s various desert scenes painted in water colors on the walls, some clay pots, and figurines on the shelves behind the love seat.

He said this was his parents’ house and I don’t think it’s been touched since they died, except for when Kolton’s come here. He’s left it like a shrine to them. I run my fingers along the heavily waxed dining table. I wonder if his dad made it. It has a rugged homemade feel to it. Kolton comes back holding some first aid paraphernalia: Band Aids, ointment, gauze, a bottle of peroxide. He sets them down next to me.

I reach over to take the Band Aids and he says, “Stop. You need water first. You’re dehydrated.” He opens the cupboard and fills a cup with ice and water from a new looking refrigerator. As I take the cold glass and down the contents, I know the refrigerator is new; it’s a little out of place amongst the eighties amenities everywhere else.

“You grew up here?”

“’Til I was four.” I wince. I should have known better.

“Who raised you Kolton?” I ask, peeking up at him.

“My uncle, Tedd Royce.” He says his name like I should know who he is. When I can’t acknowledge him he says, “He’s a record producer. Geez. I thought you’d read all about me on Wikipedia.”

“I didn’t read it all. It felt—wrong.”

“So, I’m still a mystery?” he asks but it pisses me off for some reason. Maybe ‘because he hides shit from me.

“What’s your plan? Now you’ve got me here, sitting on your table, what are you going to do with me?” I’m being playful. But then I feel a pang of sadness. It was just a few days ago he’d hurt his hand and I’d mended it. He’d told me he can’t love anyone. What changed his mind?

“You need a break, Mia. And I’m going to give that to you.”

“For how long?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. I’m going to call and reschedule the voice lessons to a later time.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, my ire easing. I run my hand along my other arm. It feels salty, like dried sweat and sand. He moves closer to me and my breath hitches.

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” I blurt.

“I don’t want to sleep with you,” he says and pulls the underside of my knee into his hand. I yank it away from him. I start to undo my laces, but remember my scars and stop. I don’t want him to see. My eyebrows are furrowed and I bury my face in my hands. “Does that disappoint you?” he asks, all smug, and full of himself.

My best defense against his charms is anger. He knows that, too, so I’d bet…“Are you
trying
to make me mad?” I say, sitting up.

“Did I?” he asks, leaning against the table and taking my laces in his hand. Now I realize he’d grabbed my knee to get to my shoe laces.

“You know you did. That’s a jerk face thing to say to me. You can have any woman you want but I might just put up a fight. I can resist you.”

“Jerk face?” he chuckles.

“Well, yeah.” I decide, rubbing my heel through the back of my shoe. It stings and I wince.

“I’ll make a deal with you.” I perk up in attention. “I want to
earn
the right, Mia, to be with you intimately. For me, what I want is already decided,” he says, his voice cracking a little. “But you’re going to need more time—to get to know me, to make it in the music business without me, first.”

“But you’re going to keep sleeping around while you try and woo me?”

“Woo you?” he laughs.

“Well, what’s another word for it?”

“Another word is celibate.”

“You and celibate don’t mix.”

“I haven’t been with anyone else since the first time I saw you,” he tells me, his face thoughtful, genuine. My jaw drops, but somehow, I already knew it.

“You hurt me when you hide things from me, when you pushed me away.”

“I’m trying to protect you. I’m too bad for you.” I look away from his pained expression. It’s not that he doesn’t deserve me. What is it?

“That’s not true, Kolton. I’m just a girl from Sacramento; you’re a freaking rock star. You’re the guy all the women want. They fantasize about you.”

“You know that Oscar Wilde quote about sinners and saints?” and I look at him sideways. “The saint has to fully trust the sinner for it to work.” His voice is achingly sincere.

“Who’s the saint?”

“You,” he takes my chin in his hand. “You are.” He moves his hand down my arm to my hand, tracing circles with his thumb on the inside of my palm. I close my eyes for a moment, paying attention to the way his thumb still circles my palm. It’s so comforting—exciting, but comforting. It’s comforting that he knows what I need. It makes me feel open to other ideas.

“So, you want to date me—in secret?”

“I want you to fall in love with me.” I move back. Holy shit. I forget to breathe. “I want it to be real—me and you.” He’s saying he won’t sleep with me. He won’t sleep with anyone else. He wants me to fall in love with him. He said ‘intimately.’ What the…

This is Kolton Fucking Royce. It can’t be. It just can’t.

As I’m in denial, he starts to pull off my other grey wedge. Those shoes are super cute, but gave me blisters. I swipe my arm to try and stop him, but he’s standing there, holding my shoe. “Mia, it’s just a blister. I’m going to take care of you now.”

“No,” I say, trying to get down off the table. He stops me with his proximity.

“What, Mia? What is it?” That’s when I decide. He told me things. I mean, here I am in his secret house. I may as well tell him what I’m not ready for him to see.

“My feet—and ankles—they’re scarred. They’re really bad.”

“From the fire?” he asks and I nod. I’ve wrapped my finger up inside the long part of the white sock I didn’t think anyone would see underneath my jeans. “I have scars, too.”

“Just on your chin.”

“No,” he shakes his head. “My arms. My torso, my back, even parts of my legs.” Thinking back to the picture, he was bandaged up all over. “As I grew, the scars changed and spread out. I covered most of them with tattoos. Feel.” He puts my shoe down, takes my hand and runs it along the skin on his forearm. It feels bumpy like my scars do. The tattoos cover them, but they’re there.

“Mine are still pink and raw,” I say, tightening my hold on the white sock. “They’re ugly.”

“Nothing about you is ugly.” Then he wraps his hand under his shirt, lifting it above his head. He’s covered in tattoos. His entire chest, upper arms, his six-pack—mostly colorful symbols and tribal art. Everywhere except over his heart. There it’s empty and sad looking. My hand is drawn to the empty spot. When I touch him, his eyes close and he leans into my hand.

“Why’s it empty?”

“Because nothing belongs there.” And it’s then that I know I want to belong there.

I do.

I let go of my white sock and drop my hands, silently giving him permission to look at my ugly secrets. The proof I’m alone in this world to raise Riley. He understands and tugs the string of my other shoe and pulls it off. The blisters protest and demand attention. I lean back on my hands and bite the inside of my lip as he slowly pulls down the first sock, then the second. I watch to see if he’ll turn away, thinking I’m disfigured, and ugly. But he doesn’t, his expression doesn’t change.

“You are a warrior,” he says, examining the naked, red, bumpy skin. I shake my head ‘no,’ and let the tears fall. They needed to come out, had I kept them in they would’ve made a knot in my gut. “You saved your sister’s life. These are your battle wounds.”

“They’re ugly. They look like death.”

“They look like
survival.
You should be proud, not ashamed. Please don’t hide them, not from me.” I nod, and he smiles with his eyes, using the side grin meant for me. Without another word, shirtless Kolton tends to my blisters with care until I’m bandaged and sated. He takes my hand as I step off the table and says, “I’m going to start water for your bath—with Epsom salt in it for your muscles.”

I smile and catch a quick glimpse of his back tattoos as I watch him walk away. On his hip, I see one of those nicotine patches. Did he quit smoking?

I walk toward the hallway. That’s when I see it in his parent’s room at the end of the hall. Behind the bed is a watercolor painting. I walk closer as if it’s calling to me. It’s so intimate—a little family of three in the bed. A mother is on the left. She has long black hair and her leg is partially covered by a white blanket. She looks tired and her breast is partially uncovered by a blue nightgown, like she’d just been nursing the baby in the center. He looks just born and is swaddled in white, making a little baby yawn face. On the right is a father. He has blond hair and doesn’t have a shirt on—he looks like Kolton without tattoos. He’s covered with a checkered blanket, kissing the baby on his head. All around them are little blue flowers that match her nightgown. They are the flowers from the sheets under them because they only show where the blanket or pillows are not. They are sparse and lovely.

The image is love. They are even slightly forming their bodies around him like a heart. It’s not trite, though. It’s only through staring long enough that I see the heart. It’s subtle. It’s in the way the parents’ hands are joining. Her hand on her forehead, the father’s hand touching hers, and the bend of their elbows. Their bodies are bent at their backs and their knees come together in an off-center point below.

I feel him before I see him and know he’s watching me look at the painting. I’m all the way inside the room. My upper thighs are even touching the footboard of the bed.

“He’s you, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” and I feel him walking up from behind. My spine tingles up and down in anticipation of the nearness of him.

“You are loved.”

“
Was
loved,” he says, putting his hand possessively on my left hip. Everything in me flutters.

“No, I don’t think so. It’s the same with my parents. Just because they’re gone, it doesn’t make their love just go away. It just changes it. But there’s your proof,” I say. This picture touches me. It makes me smile and feel warm all over.

“My mom, she was an artist,” he admits up to my right ear.

“Mine was a teacher,” I say and he hugs me from behind, wrapping me in a Kolton cocoon.

“I’m going to make you dinner while you’re in the tub. There are really no clothes here—except my mom’s, if you want—I had them cleaned about two years ago. I didn’t want to get rid of them.”

“Oh, I mean. Yeah, if you don’t mind,” I ask, turning around to face him.

“She wouldn’t have minded,” he says, looking toward the closet. As he walks away, I see that his back is filled with a huge Coat of Arms tattoo. On the top near his neck is a closed metal Knight’s helmet. Below that, stretching across his broad shoulders, are green and yellow swirled leaves that wrap around the shield and down to his hips. Dead center of his back is the shield bearing a cross, surrounded by a few roses and then what looks like a phoenix—only it is more animal-like than bird-like, but its wings are outstretched. Underneath, just where his jeans hit the curve of his narrow hips it says “Royce” in old English over rolled paper. He’s beautiful. His shoulders are broad, his hips narrow. I want to run my hands along his muscles as he walks out, closing the door.

I shake my head to deaden the trance and open the drawer of the tall dresser, finding some light pink cotton pajamas. I take them with me into the bathroom in the hallway. It hurts to take my clothes off, but once I’m soaking in the water, I smell the telltale evidence of garlic and onions and other yummy food scents coming from the kitchen. After drying off, I put the pajamas on without anything underneath. I leave my feet bare, because he’d asked me not to hide them. It feels weird, but I do it anyway. I have to start somewhere.

The pajamas have a just cleaned scent. I wrap my hair in a towel and walk out to him. He looks me up and down, smiling at my bare feet and stares at my top for a little too long. I think it’s see-through. I cross my arms over myself and sit down to eat.

“Don’t cover yourself around me,” he demands. “I love your body. Someday, I’ll worship those breasts, so don’t deny me seeing them now.” I uncross my arms, but say nothing. It’s like they heard him. I feel my nipples swell and reach out to him. He bites his bottom lip, smiles, and sets my plate down on the table.

“I made spaghetti,” he says. “Do you like garlic?”

“Hell yeah,” I say. “Before I started on the show, my best friend Kaya took me to The Stinking Rose in San Francisco. They put, basically, raw garlic in a cup and give you bread to dip into it. I ate it until my gut ached.”