Page 8 of Noah
He looked a freaking god. If gods came covered in tattoos and smelling of cigarette smoke and whiskey.
And then a girl came out of the room behind him, adjusting her skirt like she’d just put it back on. And all the excitement I’d felt at my news disappeared like dust in the wind. All that excitement gone. The feeling that I’d done something worth sharing? Vanished like smoke.
I left his room an hour ago, and he’d been alone. What had he done, made one phone call to get a girl into his bed as quickly as possible? Had he had someone waiting on him, just in case he had some sort of emergency where he needed to get laid immediately? Did he have a list of girls, just for that sort of situation?
I almost snorted at that, because I knew he did. I’d been his best friend and roadie for long enough to see them around him at every show. He always had at least three tailing after him in their short skirts and high heels, their eyes wide and dreamy as they made up stories about how sweet he had to be under all that ink.
Or maybe they didn’t think they that. Perhaps they didn’t want him to be sweet or in need of saving. Maybe they liked the idea that he was a bad boy who would only use them for one thing and then leave them the next morning. More than likely, they wanted the conquest more than they wanted anythinglasting. Why would they have wanted conversation or anything deeper when they could get it over with quickly and then brag to their friends about how they’d bagged a rock star?
I didn’t know. I’d never asked any of them. And I didn’t ask the girl walking quickly after him now, her hand reaching out to take his and her eyes on the back of his head.
He was already over it. I could see that much. He wasn’t reaching back for her or even giving her the time of day. His eyes were on the elevator banks at the end of the hallway, his phone in his hand and his fingers tapping out a message to someone. Probably something about the band or the ideas he had rolling around in his head about the new direction he wanted to try. New songs to get a new audience and new record deal. Radio time.
Something more marketable.
His mind was a million miles away from the hall where he found himself, and the girl hustling after him. He’d moved on to something more important. Something that required the elevator.
Until he looked up and saw me.
He stopped nearly as quickly as I had and put a hand to his chin, his fingers brushing the stubble there while his eyes roved slowly down my body, then back up. I felt his gaze like fire on my skin, my body lighting up at that small bit of attention. And for just a moment, it was just him and me, the smoke billowing around us and his eyes trying to see right into my soul. I blew a breath out, trying to control the pounding of my heart at the smoldering heat in his eyes, and wondered for one wild moment if he was feeling what I was feeling.
Had that morning affected him too? Had he woken up and felt something he’d never felt before? Was that why he’d pulled me back against him and then called out to me when I wasleaving? Could it be that he was finally seeing me as a girl rather than just his little sister?
When his eyes left me and flew over his shoulder, I realized how stupid I was to even think that. Because I’d been gone for an hour and he’d already replaced me with someone else.
When his gaze came back to me, he was wearing a smirk. “Just the girl I wanted to see. I had another idea this morning after you left, about the plan. Can I go over it with you later? I need your input.”
He didn’t wait for a response, and he sure as hell didn’t stick around long enough for me to ask him why the fuck he thought I would help him when he’d woken up with me and then moved right to another girl after I left. I already knew why he’d think that. I’d always been there for him before, always picked up the pieces when he needed me to, and he didn’t have any reason to think I’d tell him no. He probably had no idea he hurt me with this sort of behavior, because I’d never fucking told him. I just took it all and kept on marching, partially because I loved him like the brother I’d never had and partially because I’d spent my entire life with only myself to count on. I’d never met an issue I couldn’t solve, and I didn’t get knocked down easily.
If I did stumble, I recovered immediately. I’d trained for it my whole life, and these days, I was getting pretty good at bouncing back from anything that came my way.
Hey, you try being deserted at an orphanage the day you were born and growing up knowing you had no one but yourself. I’d learned early on that vulnerability wasn’t an option. Neither was showing my feelings.
“Sure, no problem,” I said, getting out of the way as he strode past me, and looking up just long enough to see the hurt flashing across the other girl’s face at Noah having addressed me and not her.
Maybe this onehadwanted something more from him. If she had, though, she was out of luck. Noah never called girls for a second date and didn’t keep people around once he was done with them. People were disposable, as far as he was concerned. I’d always wondered if it came down to the home he’d come from, and a mother who was too high and too selfish to worry much about the kid she was supposed to be raising. Noah had also learned early not to count on anyone else. Or so I assumed.
Me, though...
I’d been around long enough for him to make me his home. Which was going to make leaving him a whole lot harder.
But sticking around and watching him go through girl after girl, keeping me on the sideline as a prop, instead of finding my own life?
That would be a whole lot worse.
4
MOLLY
“Got a minute?”
I closed my eyes and wondered what would happen if I told him no. I knew the voice like the back of my hand–the one and only Rivers Shine–and could already imagine what I’d see when I turned around. Tattooed and gorgeous, with eyes so sad it made you want to take him home and feed him chicken soup. The baddest boy in rock and a guy who’d made a career out of being damaged and broody.
Also one of my three adopted brothers, which was why I’d never been able to tell him no.
I opened my eyes, straightened my shoulders, and put my mask in place, then turned. “Sure, what’s up?”
“Noah needs a keeper,” Rivers said, smirking.
