Page 41 of Pretty Little Rocker

“I’m serious, Hayat.” Lifting his head, he locked his gaze with mine, his jaw so tight the muscles in his neck were twitching. He was pissed, but so was I.

“Let’s get a few things straight,” I gritted out between clenched teeth, my tone chilly enough to cause Jamie to stiffen where he stood nearby. From the corner of my eye, I saw him shift closer, but I kept my focus on Ky. “I’ve known you all of a few weeks. We’ve texted, fooled around a little, and now you expect me to trust you wholeheartedly?”

He opened his mouth, but I lifted my hand, cutting him off. “I’m not saying I don’t trust you. Because I do. Or rather, I did. I trust Jamie and Sparks. But you? After what you just said to me, holding this relationship over my head to control me? I’d be an idiot to trust you, Ky.”

His storm-cloud gray eyes widened, his throat working convulsively as if he had something stuck in it. “All of this may not be new to you, but it sure as fuck is to me. I’ve never been in a relationship before with one guy, let alone three. I’m going to make mistakes. We’ve had maybe five minutes to get to know one another. What I do know about you, that information can’t even fill a Post-it. And now you’re throwing out threats that the next time I mess up, you’re going to end everything with us?”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“It sure as hell sounded like it,” I snapped, pushing at his chest, trying to put distance between us. But he only shifted, tightening his hold so I couldn’t move away. “I don’t do well with ultimatums, Ky. I’m all in with this thing between us. Or I was, until you started trying to intimidate me by placing a proverbial anvil over my head and this relationship.”

“Hayat—”

“Just stop. You want me to trust you? Earn it. Fucking me and then texting me a few times a day doesn’t give you any type of authority over me. For me, as of this moment, you and I don’t have anything going on but sex and being in the same band.” I pushed at his chest again, hard, but he remained unmoved. Growling my frustration, I struggled against his hold. “Let me go, Ky. I’m done with your bullshit.”

“What the fuck is your problem, man?” Jamie demanded, grabbing Ky’s arm. “You’re making her think we don’t want her. She’s already about to kick your ass and leave. If you think I’m going to lose her over your issues, then you’re dead wrong. You want out, there’s the door. Get your shit and get the fuck out. Or we’ll go. Sparks and I have plenty of money. We can get our own place and take care of Hayat without any problem.”

Surprise jolted through Ky. “You’d leave Autumn’s Slumber for her?”

“Without hesitation. I’ll give up you and the band, but I’ll never let Hayat go.”

“Ky, stop acting like an asshole,” Sparks snapped. “You’re not going to talk to her like that. I’m not going to let you treat her like this. She was scared last night, with good reason. And we have done nothing to show her how much we care about her, what she means to us. There hasn’t been time to prove anything to her. If you keep running your mouth, then she’s not going to give any of us a chance. I’m with Jamie on this. Hayat means more than the band. And if you’d stop letting those voices whisper doubts in your ear, you’d realize that you’re about to ruin everything.”

Jamie and Sparks were both causing butterflies to flutter in my stomach. They cared about me. More than their friendship with Ky. More than Autumn’s Slumber. It was a soothing balm to all the bullshit Ky threw at me.

“It came out wrong!” Ky yelled, his fingers biting into me, as if he was scared to let me go. His breathing picked up, making his chest lift and fall rapidly as the air whooshed out of his mouth, almost as if he was close to a panic attack. “Fucking hell, girl, I love you! And you broke my heart last night. Even as we were scrambling to deal with all that shit, you were ripping me apart. You weren’t the only one scared over the warehouse craziness. All of us were. Because we didn’t know what was going on with you. For all we knew, you could have been dead.”

His confession made me dizzy.

Love?

Ky loved me?

Did Jamie and Sparks feel the same way?

Love was a big word. One that held so many levels of power. All my life, I’d been surrounded by people who loved me, but this was a different type of L word. This one was the kind that turned me into a we.

These three guys had been in my life for all of a quick minute, but suddenly, I was looking at what we were to one another through different eyes. Not just as the drummer for their band. Or the girl they fooled around with a few times. Or even as their friend.

Love changed everything.

“Ky,” I breathed, a piece of my heart breaking while simultaneously being healed. I was so damn confused by everything I was feeling at that moment. Elated that Ky loved me. Afraid that he would break up with me. In hindsight, I did realize that I’d been hiding. It wasn’t all about protecting my guys. I’d been independent all my life. If something needed to be handled, I handled it. Although, often enough Abi, and at times Maddie, was in on it, I was the one who got things done, who protected my baby brother, Ali, and the rest of our group. “I—”

“Don’t say anything,” he interrupted, some of his angry fire burning down to banked embers. His throat bobbed as he swallowed convulsively a few times. “I’m not even sure I’d believe you, even though I can see it in your eyes, Hellion. That’s a conversation for another time, when our emotions aren’t working against us and I might say even more things that I’ll regret later.”

I was so conflicted, it took me a moment to realize Sparks had ripped Ky away from me. He had a bruise along his jaw, and I immediately let out a cry of distress. “Sparks, are you okay?”

A few of my tears snuck out, but I didn’t care. All the conflicting emotions swirling around in my head and chest were put on pause as I focused on Sparks. He was stiff as a statue, his dark eyes dull brown and not the warm melted chocolate that I loved so much. “Who did this to you?”

He gave me a tight smile, only to wince when it pulled at the sore muscles on his jaw. “This? It’s nothing, goddess. Some families hug each other in greeting. Others punch each other in the face when they see them.”

That was when I saw the scraped knuckles on his right hand. “Did you punch him back?”

“Broke the fucker’s nose,” Ky grunted, dropping down on the short end of the sectional, combing his fingers through his hair in frustration as he propped his elbows on his knees and squeezed the back of his neck with both hands. “Nothing the bastard didn’t deserve.”

Skimming my thumb over the raw flesh, I lifted Sparks’s hand to my mouth, kissing the swollen, distressed tissue. “I’m so sorry you were pulled into my family’s shit. Everything moved so fast last night that I didn’t know which way was up. We didn’t know what was actually going on or why my brother and the others were at the fight club until after Abi and I got out of there. Then once things calmed down, I was scared to pull you three into the mess. I mean, Samara Vitucci was already there, and that was bad enough. I didn’t know you were connected to the PCC. My only thought was to protect you three from…all of it.”

With his free hand, he combed his fingers through my hair, tightened his hold at the roots, and pulled my head back enough that our gazes caught. “The only thing you need to be sorry for is not telling us what was going on to begin with. It turns my stomach to think of you in that warehouse with no one to protect you from the monsters that inhabit that cesspool.”

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