Page 52 of Feral Touch
“They don’t mean anything,” she said. “Those girls? It’s just an act. They have to flirt with the fans. It’s part of their image. Part of what keeps the fans coming back.”
“I know. I get it. I do. It’s just…” I trailed off.
“It’s hard,” Emily said with a sympathetic note in her voice. “I understand. I worried about it, too, when I first met Kell.” She shook her head. “I know they all seem like bad boy players, but they’re good people.” Then she snorted. “Well, I don’t think I could ever call Kellgood. Harmless, maybe.”
“That’s what my friends have been telling me. They’re fans. They say Ren isn’t like that.”
“He’s really not. You can trust him.”
Hearing those words from a perfect stranger should have been reassuring. This girl was dating one of the members of Feral Silence. She knew them personally. If she said Ren was a good guy, then I should have believed it. Iwantedto believe it.
But I was so out of my depth. I felt uneasy at the club. I had nothing interesting to say when it was my turn to play that drinking game. I didn’t know anything about rock music.
Those girls up thereprobably knew everything about Feral Silence. They were gorgeous in their cute club outfits. They knew how to talk to guys, how to flirt.
Then there wereAiley and Emily. They were so self-assured. So put together. They didn’t seem to doubt themselves. All I ever did around Ren was doubt myself.
I looked up to the second floor, where I could see the three girls in the booth with the guys. That girl was still talking to Ren, practically sitting in his lap. I clenched my fist around my drink. I couldn’t stop the dark, swirling ball of fear that punched me in my stomach every time a girl touched Ren, every time he smiled at one of them.
He so rarely smiled when we were kids. I liked to think I was the only one with the power to make him smile, but there were so many pretty girls out there, all dying to be with him.
He was still caught up in the surprise of seeing me again. What would happen when the novelty wore off?
What would happen when he realized what everyone else already knew?
Nice girls don’t date rock stars.
CHAPTER 13
RENANDI had been working together for weeks and the song was coming together nicely. I thought so, at least. Ren would continually shake his head and insist that we re-do this part or switch around that part.
I would have gotten annoyed at him for being so nit-picky, but I wanted our song to succeed just as much as he did. I accepted that he was going to have higher standards than most people. The kind of stuff I composed for college classes wasn’t nearly professional enough for someone like Ren to put his name on.
“What about this?” I asked, placing the bow in position on the neck of my cello. I played the piece again, slower this time and in a different key. Ren’s eyes lit up and he nodded vigorously, throwing his pencil to the side and throwing his arms around me. I jumped back, startled, bow screeching across strings.
“That’s it!” He placed a quick kiss on my lips, causing a flush to rise to my cheek. “That’s perfect. Just like that. Now do it again.”
And they said Kell was the demanding one.
“Can we stop for today?” I asked. “We’ve been at this for hours.”
“Hours?” Ren turned to look at the clock in surprise. “It’s past ten!”
“Yeah. I’ll need to start heading home if I want to get enough sleep.”
Ren’s eyes narrowed with a brief flash of heat. I knew exactly what he was thinking. I blushed and looked down at my instrument.
We hadn’t had a repeat of that one afternoon on his sofa yet. I’d been too busy with final exams and composing our new song, and Ren was busy getting ready for his next tour. We hadn’t had much free time to ourselves.
In fact, I’d had the strange feeling that we were acting more like colleagues than boyfriend and girlfriend. He greeted me in the morning with a kiss, held my hand throughout the day, and drove me home every evening with a goodnight make-out session at my front door, but we hadn’t gone on any dates. We hadn’t had dinner together or gone to the movies. I hadn’t properly introduced him to my friends yet. I’d never stayed over at his place and he’d never stayed over at mine.
The longer we went without doing anything intimate, the more I wondered where our relationship was going.
Surely Ren couldn’t be sick of me already?
Then he said the words I’d been anticipating for a month.
“Why don’t you spend the night?” He tried to keep it casual, but I could sense the tension behind his words. “It’s getting late and I just live around the block. Tomorrow’s the weekend. You don’t have class.”
