Page 119 of When the Storm Breaks
She lowered her eyes, and I knew. Landry and Ari were sleeping together. “Wow. How long have you two been together?”
“It’s kind of new,” she hedged. And I didn’t know what to believe. Had they gotten together before or after Landry asked Ari to join Acadian Storm? And why should it even matter? “It’s not public knowledge so…”
“Right. Well, don’t worry about it. My lips are sealed.”
“He loves you. And he misses you.”
“He has a funny way of showing it.” The words had just slipped out. I didn’t know why I was having this conversation with her.
“I’m sorry. I thought you knew about us.”
“There’s a lot of things I don’t know about Landry.” She gave me a sad little smile and I walked away before she could apologize again. My problem wasn’t with her, it was with Landry. And yeah sure, Ari had given Dean a blowjob but by then my relationship with Dean was all but over. Oddly, that had hurt less than finding out, once again, that my brother had been lying and keeping secrets from me.
On the drive to the hotel, I tried to shake it off. I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter who Landry slept with or what he did in his private life. Hadn’t I been equally guilty by not telling him the real reason I’d gone to Texas back in May?
Now I regretted confiding in Landry. Back in October, when I saw him in L.A., I’d told him about Brody. I wish I’d kept it to myself. How many lies had he been feeding me all these years? God, he really was so much like Rhett. Our dad was the biggest liar. And he’d had no problem taking money from me. As if he’d earned it. As if I owed him just because I’d made something of myself. Like father, like son.
Try as I might, I couldn’t shake off this feeling of betrayal. The more I learned about Landry, the less respect I had for him. And that made me so sad. My own brother was using me for his personal gain.
I pushed it out of my mind. I didn’t want any of these bad feelings to ruin my time with Brody. Not when I only had him for three days. God, I’d missed him so much. The last time I’d left him was the hardest. Probably because we’d spent six weeks together and I’d gotten to see him every single day. Sleeping with him every night and waking up with him at the crack of dawn every morning to go horse riding. And every time he’d told me he loved me my heart felt like it might burst. Because I knew it was a huge deal for him to say those words.
The only cloud in our silver lining, if you could call it that, was that our relationship wasn’t a secret anymore. We’d been caught together when we were in New York City before Christmas and the photos were everywhere. And it hadn’t taken people long to figure out that he was the same guy I’d been with in London and Paris. The same guy I sang for at Madison Square Garden. Let them talk. Let them speculate. I wasn’t about to announce it to the world. I would do the best I could to protect Brody’s privacy, something I knew he valued.
* * *
Brody arrived lateon Thursday afternoon. I’d left a keycard at the front desk for him and he’d texted to say he was on his way up to the room. I’d opened the glass doors to the balcony of my ocean-front suite. The air was warm and salt-scented, the room modern and decorated in all white. The only hints of color came from the bowl of green apples on the round white lacquer table in front of the sofa and the potted palms on the balcony.
When the room door opened, I tossed aside the magazine I was reading and stood up from the sofa. For a moment, I just stood in the middle of the room and drank him in. He was wearing faded denim and a plain white T-shirt, his dirty blond hair all messy and disheveled, reaching the collar of his T-shirt. Even in the winter, his skin was suntanned from being outdoors all day, his muscles threatening to burst the seams of his T-shirt. His broad shoulders and tall frame filled up all the available space.
Brody was all man, and that man was all mine.
He dropped his duffel bag to the floor and in a few long strides, he erased the distance between us. Pulling me into his arms, he fisted my hair in his hand and tugged on it so my face was tipped up to his. “Fuck, I missed you.”
“Missed you more.”
He crushed his mouth against mine and kissed me hard.
We’d become one of those sickening couples, but I didn’t care. He swept me off my feet and I clung to his shoulders, my legs cinching his waist as he carried me to the bedroom. Our mouths collided and we said hello with a kiss that stole the breath from my lungs and made me dizzy. I never wanted to let him go.
I had no idea how I’d make it to the end of April with only a few stolen hours and days at a time with him. After a short break, I’d be going into the studio to record my next album. But I didn’t want to think about any of that now. I didn’t want to think about how I hadn’t even gotten a chance to meet Gracie McCallister yet. Jude and Lila’s baby was born three weeks ago. Two days before that, Ridge had celebrated his eighteenth birthday. In two weeks, Brody and Lila were throwing a seventh birthday party for Noah. I’d be missing that too. But I shoved it out of my mind and enjoyed the feel of his hard body under my fingertips, his lips on mine, soft but demanding.
He was here now, and that was all that mattered.
* * *
“Are you sure about this?”Brody had asked when I was getting ready for our night out.
“I’m positive.” I’d given him a big smile. “It’ll be fun.”
Now I was tipsy on Mojitos and pleasantly sated from the Cubanos we’d eaten, my body moving to the Latin beat of the live music playing. We were sitting in a round red-upholstered booth at the back of the room near the small dance area, his arm slung over the back of my seat, my thigh pressed against his. The small club was dark and intimate, decorated in dark red and glossy black with ceiling fans and candles in red glass holders on each table.
My lips loosened by alcohol, I confided in Brody how betrayed I felt by Landry. Brody was more than just my lover, he was my best friend, and I’d made up my mind when we were in the South of France that I wouldn’t keep anything from him. I needed to get this off my chest so I could move on and try to put it behind me.
“Do you think I’m overreacting?” I asked him when I finished telling him about the encounter with Ari Bell and how I suspected Landry had been with her even before he invited her to be the newest member of Acadian Storm. “It made me feel like he was the one manipulating me… I mean, I always knew Dean was capable of this. But my own brother?” I heard the hurt and disappointment in my voice and Brody must have heard it too.
“Yeah, I get it. You don’t know what to believe anymore. He had a chance to discuss this with you, but he chose to keep it a secret. He destroyed your trust in him. And his first loyalty should have been to you. Not the band. Not Dean. But his own blood.”
That was exactly it. Brody understood where I was coming from and hadn’t tried to downplay my feelings which I appreciated more than he could ever know. I lifted my Mojito. “Let’s make a toast.”
