Page 89 of Give Me What I Want

“Outstanding performance, boys,” I praised when Ro turned the music off. “You look happier,” I commented quietly to Maverick.

“I’m fine,” he said with a smile.

Ro laughed like it was some inside joke. “Of course you are, bro.”

I frowned, but Mav’s lips twitched, and he laughed, turning to Ro and slapping his shoulder. “Cock-womble,” he said, then got out of the car.

“Cock-womble? God, you sound like my sister.” I looped my arm around his as we walked to the front door.

“No, I sound like you,” he disagreed. “And you sound like your sister. Is she coming to visit soon?”

“Yeah, soon.” I looked up at him, wondering how his mood had managed to turn around so drastically. What had the guys done to him to stop him from looking at me like I would ruin his life?

He looked down at me with a heated gaze. “Then we better make the most of our privacy before then.”

“Oh.” I gasped, then squealed as he pushed me through the front door, swatting my ass as he followed me inside and chased me up the stairs. It was only when I reached the top and spun around that I found his face had fallen, a mirror of how it had been before he had stormed out. The expression was gone before I could question it though, and he was smirking, closing in on me, and kissing me like he was a starving man, desperate and needy, yet so full of silent command that I was gladly backing up across the landing towards his bedroom.

Once we were inside, he released me, grabbed my hips, and slammed me into the forest green wall, knocking a guitar from its mount as he pinned me.

“Shit,” I gasped, staring at the guitar on the floor.

But my focus was pulled less than a second later as his teeth tugged on my earlobe, and I knew that he didn’t care. Mav was going to take me no matter the damage.

24

As I sat in the office, alone, playing my guitar, it started again. The break, the fall. I felt like I was in one of those hourglasses, filled with sand, slowly pouring over my head. Time was moving too slowly, and with each passing day, I felt myself spiral a little more. And the further I spiralled, the bigger I smiled.

No one seemed to notice how fake it was. Bea would look at me with concern etched into the lines of her face, but I’d smile, and they’d disappear, replaced with a relieved smile instead. She hadn’t asked me about my outburst from the day we arrived home, and Ro hadn’t told her what we had discussed when he had found me pulled over ten minutes down the road from our house, crying against the steering wheel of my Cadillac.

I had confessed to him how I felt about Bea. I had told him how deeply I had fallen for her, and we’d had a long chat. I opened up about each of the losses of the last few months, Steve, the baby, Jordan, and I told Ronan that I was scared of losing her and them too. He hadn’t judged, not for a second, because no matter how tense things became between the two of us, no matter how many times we collided, we loved each other in a way that only we understood.

Cole had waited in the Audi, not knowing how to fix things, and having complete and utter faith in Ronan. For good reason. Ro had told me how he felt too. He had told me that it had only felt fake between them for those first two weeks, and even then, it hadn’t felt like a complete hardship all of the time. We spoke about Cole, how he had been in love with her for eight years and had done a damn good job at hiding it from himself and her, but not us. We saw through him. The two of us so alike, and for once getting along because of it instead of arguing over it.

He had then told me that we needed to give her time to grow a big enough pair of balls to tell us how she felt. He believed that she felt the same about all of us as we did about her, and that she’d tell us she didn’t want to choose. I wasn’t so sure. She had never had a real boyfriend before, surely, she’d pick one and dump the rest of us. But Ro was adamant.

“Just wait it out, see what she does, and if I’m wrong, you can beat the ever-loving crap out of me, and I won’t fight back.”That was what he had said to me in that car.“Pretend to be fine.”

It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. There was a tiny chance that I’d get the girl, and I was perfectly happy to keep sharing her as long as I had her, and then if she chose otherwise, I’d get to release all of my emotions on the man who managed to irritate me more often than not.

That was three weeks ago. Three fucking weeks of waiting and getting nowhere. She was flitting between us like she had no idea what she wanted, and I was losing hope.

I was losing more than just hope actually. I was losing my mind. The single shred of true, honest optimism that I had was almost gone, and I had this strange feeling washing over me, rolling like crashing waves. It wasn’t fear though. It was pain. My thoughts began to race, intrusive, aggressive, hopeless and fed up.

Flopping back against the high end of the chaise lounge I placed my guitar on the floor, propping it upright against the side table and tossing my pick across the room. I stared up at the ceiling, unable to escape my own head as the thoughts grew louder.

Sweat began to coat my skin, and I tugged my top off before I could overheat. It was the start of winter, and Bea had put the heating on every day this week, desperate to warm our home and stay cosy until I had the ‘time’ to go and chop wood for the fireplace. She could’ve gone out and bought some, or asked one of the other guys to do it, but she hadn’t. She had whacked the heating up instead as she waited for me to be a better man for her.

I wasn’t though. I was failing her.

With my shirt chucked on the floor, I waited to cool down, but I never did. I wasn’t scared, but I wasn’t okay. Not at all. The heat was coming from within, burning through me as my mind screamed at me, thoughts deafening now.

It was hurting. The sounds in my head were far too loud. The pain in my heart was too heavy, I could barely hold myself up anymore. I could barely stop my nails from gouging at my arms. It was all too much.

I didn’t want this life, didn’t ask for it. Sure, I had Bea, and them—my bandmates—but was that enough? WasIenough? I doubted it. Fame and love and friendship hadn’t been able to pull me from this pit. I wasn’t okay. I hadn’t been okay for a long time, but I had been trying.

I was done trying now.

That realisation didn’t scare me. Not even a tiny bit. The only thing that inflicted fear in me now was a life with more loss. I didn’t want to lose anyone else. I wanted to keep them forever, but I could only do that if I…

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