Breaking Giants, page 12
I. Will. Not. Run.
I manage to keep my promise to myself and once outside, decide the walk home will be good for me. The heatwave has loosened its hold and there’s a nip in the night, but it feels good on my flushed skin.
My walk stays peaceful for ten minutes, before my brain is irrevocably hijacked by JulianJulianJulian. The craving rears up, seizing control of my mind.
I want to run back to him, the urge so primal that my steps slow. With the last of my sanity, I shake my head roughly and pick up my pace.
By the time I reach my driveway, my vow is toast and I’m running. Taking the front steps in one leap, I attack the lock on my front door like someone’s chasing me. Only its just my mind, and there’s no escape.
I finally have the key in the lock when the unmistakable sound of a Harley roars down my street.
My fingers spasm and the key falls. Limbs heavy and tingling, I slowly turn.
Julian pulls into my driveway with a protest of tires. He’s off the bike seconds later, helmet on the ground and striding toward me like Hell’s on his heels. Then I’m in his arms, flattened against the front door, my body exploding with sensation as his mouth devours mine.
I don’t know who finds the key, who opens the door, but we make it inside.
He pauses long enough to ask, “Rose?”
I grab his hair in my fists and drag his face back to mine. He answers my demand with a needy groan and possessive sweeps of his hands, capturing my breasts, my hips, my ass, before lifting me away from the wall.
“Bedroom, now,” he growls, and I point. He walks through the dark house with me in his arms, and after some fumbling and a few near collisions with walls, he finds it.
We fall onto my bed. Urgency robs us of grace as we tear off clothing as fast as we can. My nails score his back. His teeth imprint my shoulder. He is heat, and movement, and perfectmorenowplease.
“Please, please,” I chant, and hear a condom foil rip. He settles between my thighs, which quiver in welcome.
“Fucking hell,” he breathes. “Last chance to kick me out.”
I answer with my fingernails on his ass, and his first thrust is hard and deep and drives straight to my body’s limit. I cry out, arching to accommodate him.
Yesyesyes.
He moves like a man possessed, fucking me with such singleminded focus I feel simultaneously worshipped and sundered. My body is his. And when he grabs me under the legs, lifting and rolling so I sit atop him, I sacrifice myself to the same passion. I make him mine.
“Rose.”
I open my eyes and absorb a vision I know will be imprinted in my memory forever. Julian beneath me, sweaty and real and inside me, one hand on my hip, the other curved around the back of my neck.
His eyes are locked on mine, the look in them more naked than our bodies. I move faster, needing, needing… his jaw clenches, abdomen flexing as he effortlessly matches my pace.
“We’re perfect,” I whisper.
And he says, “You’re perfect.”
I touch his face, then guide his hands to my breasts as I shift to a slower, deeper rhythm. Searching… there.
Julian closes his eyes, whispering something I don’t catch. I feel him grow thicker, harder, and I know he’s close, struggling for control. And the knowledge makes my own body quicken.
My climax is shattering, lightning bright, and loud. Julian hauls me to his chest, fingers tangling in my hair, and swallows my cries. His hips jerk hard and go still, and against my sensitive inner flesh I feel his release.
I collapse on top of him, my cheek against his shoulder, and relearn to breathe. Our hearts are pounding so hard I’m not sure which beat belongs to whom. A cool breeze flows like a blessing over my naked back, lifting goosebumps.
Belatedly, it occurs to me why there’s a breeze.
My open window, of course.
Swallowing past a throat gone raw, I gasp, “Oh my God, the neighbors.”
Julian’s chest shakes with silent laughter. I slap his arm, but there’s no force in the blow.
“At least the curtains are closed,” I continue, torn between hilarity and embarrassment. “Was it that bad? Am I going to be known as the Harlot of Fremont? Most of my neighbors are elderly. Poor Mrs. Thompson.”
Unable to hold it in longer, Julian bursts into laughter. He shifts onto his side, gathering me in his arms, and I frown up at his grinning face.
Smoothing the sweaty hair from my temples, he finally composes himself enough to say, “Rose Cunningham, you are loud,” then starts laughing again.
“This is horrible,” I laugh-groan. “At least tell me I had enough brains not to scream your name.”
He’s still laughing. “I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know is that I’ve never seen or heard anything more sexy in my life. You’re an animal, Cunningham.”
This time there’s more force in my slap. “You’re the animal, Ashburn. What happened to romance? Candlelight and massage oil?”
He’s laughing so hard now I wonder if I should fear for his health.
“Stop,” he gasps, “I can’t breathe.”
I wriggle into his side, seeking warmth—and if I’m honest, imprinting myself with his scent.
“Oh well,” I say on a hearty sigh. “I guess that stuff only exists in romance novels.”
He bites my neck, laughter turning into a growl, and suddenly I’m flat on my back. His arms cage me as his fingers roam my features, sliding across my cheekbones, my jaw. Tracing my lips and temples.
My heart stutters at the reverence in his touch, then kicks hard as he gently kisses my mouth. Upper lip, then lower, and each corner, before kissing me slow and deep, our tongues lazily exploring.
When he finally lifts his head, I raise my brows in expectation.
He grins. “Not yet, wildcat. Soon. In the meantime, where do you keep the candles? I hear they’re necessary for romance.” One hand wanders down my belly, tickling as it goes. His smile turns wicked. “Besides, I want to see what I’m eating.”
Oh, have mercy.
♫
At three in the morning, we make a meal of pancakes, eggs, and hash-browns, the latter almost inedible because there might have been a fifteen minute detour to the couch.
Julian sits in boxers at the kitchen table, sipping tea and watching me. I’m across from him, wearing underwear and an oversized t-shirt, stuffing my face with a second helping of pancakes slathered in maple syrup.
“Has anyone told you that you eat like caveman?” he asks dryly. My reply is a grunt, which makes him grin. “Where do you put it all?”
Around a mouthful of carbohydrates, I say, “Good genes. Besides, I just burned a bajillion calories.”
His smile transitions to smugness. “I’ll say.”
I point a fork at him. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re an insatiable madman?”
Julian sets down his tea and snags my free hand, pressing a kiss to my palm. “Actually, no. Frankly, tonight’s—”
“Debauchery?” I offer.
He cocks a brow. “I was going to say brilliant, sweet, uninhibited love making—” I giggle. “—Hey! I’m trying to be romantic!”
Laughing outright, I abandon my pancakes for his lap. Despite my aching muscles (and other parts), my body instantly warms. Taking his face in my hands, I press our foreheads together.
“It’s almost four o’clock in the morning. I think we should forget romance and take a shower together. A dirty shower. Then, if I’m going to be at all conscious during work tomorrow—er, today—I need to sleep.”
His hips flex up, earning a fluttery exhale from me. “You’re the boss,” he murmurs, one hand sneaking beneath my t-shirt and up to palm and knead my breast. His mouth veers to my neck, nibbling, as his other hand navigates south.
When he finds me already aroused, he groans. “Let’s shower after.”
“Mmm,” I agree, shifting so he can pull aside my underwear and his. I feel him thick and blunt at my entrance, and twitch helplessly in need.
“Damnit,” he hisses, head lifting, expression strained. “I’m out of condoms. Do you have any?”
The heavy hand of reason descends on my shoulders. Standing to adjust my undies, I tell him, “I don’t think so, but let me look.” Then I see what’s exposed beneath me. My thoughts scatter. Spreading his knees, I kneel hungrily between them.
Julian is completely still above me, eyes bright and fixed on my face. I wait for the canned You don’t have to line, but he surprises me with the quiet words, “I want to fuck your mouth, Rose. More than anything.”
My newly awakened inner sex goddess preens and gleefully complies.
We make it to the shower eventually, after Julian carries me back to bed and returns the favor with gusto. We’re both so tired that we sloppily wash, then stand listlessly in each other’s arms while the hot water turns cool. After heroic efforts to towel ourselves dry, we make it back to bed and fall into a naked heap, passing out almost immediately.
I don’t hear him leave.
When I wake up at noon to my alarm, I reach for him before I’m fully conscious. And in that moment, when my hand finds empty space, I feel the heaviest, most pervasive disappointment of my life. It steals the air from my lungs, jerks my knees protectively to my chest.
Because although my mind had known he’d slip away, my heart had hoped he’d stay.
♫
The week following what I come to refer to as the Seven Hour Mistake is one I hope to look back on someday and recall only the vaguest details: long work days, poor sleep, overconsumption of chocolate, and compulsive sheet-washing. Not the messier details, like almost chopping off my hair, considering my first tattoo, and listening to the untitled B-Side on repeat while I sob in the shower.
And sending tens of text messages that go unanswered. Or that, when I finally gather the courage to call him, it goes immediately to voicemail.
And I definitely don’t want to remember Aunt Katherine’s impromptu arrival at my house in the middle of the night—in the midst of a tearful cookie fiasco—to inform me that the message of the tarot remains the same.
The timing is inopportune.
16
breathe
At Tullamore on Friday afternoon, a week and a day after the Seven Hour Mistake, I take advantage of a lull in customer traffic to watch a summer thunderstorm play war-games in the sky. I’m thinking about collisions and timing and consequences, but there’s no poetry.
No music.
I wait for my mother’s voice to remind me that love kills art but it doesn’t come. I muse that maybe instead, love is so powerful it can interrupt art, at least for a while, either while the spirit soars in happiness or works to heal and endure.
The front door creaks open, wind gusting wetly inside before the man entering hurriedly swings the door shut. Pulling down the hood of his coat, Greg wipes his face with the backs of his hands then passes fingers through his short, damp blonde hair.
When he sees me out of the corner of his eye, he turns with a smile. A familiar smile, full of warmth and mischief—one I’ve missed terribly.
“Hey, Rose,” he greets, sidling around tables to join me at the far window. “Do you have a minute?”
I lift my brows. “What’s up?”
“Well, I noticed last week at open mic that your CDs have all sold…”
I blink hugely. “They have?”
He shakes his head chidingly. “You’re the absolute worst.”
I nudge his shoulder. “Just kidding. I’m not that clueless.” Narrowing my eyes, I add, “Are you offering to produce another album for me?”
He nods. “Full length this time. Ten to thirteen songs, all original. I want to bring in a band for some of the tracks, mix it up with a heavier sound for Feline Tendencies. Maybe a violin for Decay—”
“Whoa,” I interrupt, my hand flying up between us. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. I know you have at least three albums worth of songs stacked in that head of yours. I’ve seen the sheet music for a few that you’ve never played at open mic but I know will be fucking amazing.”
Staring into his determined eyes, I ask, “What brought this on? I sold a hundred CDs over several months—it’s not like I’m rolling in demand over here.”
He chews his lower lip, and finally blurts, “I got a new job. I’m working at Icon and I played your EP for one of the big producers and—”
“Icon?” My scalp prickles. “As in the studio where my mother recorded?”
He smiles. “Yeah. And Pearl Jam, Deathcab, Dave Matthews, Breaking Giants, Johnny fucking Cash… Yes. And Jonas said even though we’re booked from now until Armageddon, he’ll make space for you. And cut some of the fees. He even said he’d review our final tracks and make suggestions.”
“Because of my mother,” I whisper.
“Maybe in part, but trust me on this, Rose, if he thought your music was crap he wouldn’t have made the offer. This guy is the real deal.” He gives a comical shudder. “He scares the hell out of me.”
“Okay.”
He blinks, swallows, and asks slowly, “Okay?”
I nod. “Yes. Let’s do it.”
Greg’s hoot of victory startles most of Tullamore’s patrons, including Owen, who yells from behind the register, “Pipe down, this is a respectable establishment!” which in turn triggers laughter from nearly everyone.
I yell back, “I’m recording at Icon!”
Owen’s mouth drops open, and a second later he hollers, “It’s about damned time!”
Christy squeals, Ritchie throws his hands in the air, then everyone in the café is smiling, laughing, and clapping.
Because I’m going to record an album at Icon Studios. Because they’re happy for me. And because they can’t see the painful squeeze in my ribcage as I have the sudden urge to tell Julian, then remember that he got what he wanted.
I’m out of his system.
♫
The next seven weeks pass in a blur. Goodbye July and August, hello September. My days are full of work and helping Greta with the wedding, as October 1st is rapidly approaching.
There are final fittings, tastings, and tours. Finalizing of the vows, music, guest list, hotels for out-of-towners, honeymoon details, and oddly, the most time consuming and aggravating finalization of all: seating arrangements for the reception. Greta doesn’t morph entirely into Bridezilla, but there are a few close calls requiring Saki-interventions.
Nearly all of my remaining spare time is a juggling act of caffeine, songwriting, and trips to Icon Studios in Belmont. Greg and I audition and hire a violinist, a percussionist, and two more guitarists. When a track calls for piano, I play it myself.
The work is hard, oftentimes excruciatingly so, and exhausting, especially since our hours in the studio are random and many times limited by the scheduling of bigger acts. But little by little, one song at a time, the album takes shape.
Sometime in August, Breaking Giants’ new album is released. I barely notice (okay, I notice) when their new material floods the radio with single after single, garnering acclaim left and right. They perform on all the late night shows, amping up interest for their upcoming U.S. tour.
I’m happy for them.
I am.
Only, there’s still a jagged place inside me that won’t heal. It wakes me up in the middle of the night with memories of his touch. Fingers in my hair. Tattooed arms and ridged, pale stomach and whiskey eyes locked onto mine as he…
You’re perfect.
On one particularly bad night, I almost burned the kitchen chair, the couch he bent me over, and the headboard marked by my fingernails and teeth.
At around the four-weeks-of-silence mark, I couldn’t stand the pain anymore and talked to Aunt Katherine. I spared no details about the Seven Hour Mistake. For once, she didn’t have any advice from the mystical world; instead, the mix of sympathy and nostalgia on her face convinced me it was time to pull on my Big Girl Pants.
After all, the past belongs in the past. And maybe someday I’ll feel nostalgic—like Aunt K does for her own private memory—about my single, glorious night of mind-blowing, body and heart wrecking sex with a rockstar.
Until that day comes, the most I can do is be happy for Breaking Giants’ success, avoid gossip columns like the plague, and make my own music.
And apparently my alleged spirit guides are all about timing, because on a Friday evening in mid-September (exactly seven weeks and one day after the Seven Hour Mistake), Greg walks into Tullamore an hour ahead of open mic night with a single, unlabeled CD case in his hand and a grin on his face.
The album is finished.
I squeal and run around the counter, launching myself into his arms. He spins me a few times, then to the amusement of the steadily growing crowd, waltzes me around the area before the bakery case singing We Are The Champions by Queen at the top of his lungs.
As we pass Owen, my cousin snatches the case from Greg’s fingers. “Is this it? It’s finished?”
“Yep,” says Greg, bringing us to a halt.
From across the café, a young woman who looks vaguely familiar calls out, “Rose! Is that the new album?”
When she smiles, I realize it’s Lavender-Blonde, only she’s recently dyed her hair bright blue. She looks as ecstatic as I feel, and the connection warms me to my toes.
“Yes,” I tell her, laughing. “You wanted it, you got it.”
A couple of our regular open mic acts approach, and Greg and I spend the next thirty minutes chatting with them about recording at Icon, and the indomitable (and frankly terrifying) Jonas Smart, who tweaked four of the twelve tracks before giving his imperious Nod of Approval.
When it’s time to set up for open mic, Greg disappears with folksy flower girl Kelly West, who he’s been happily dating for the last two months. I draft another regular to handle setup so I can take a quick break.
Clutching my unnamed CD, I swing by my office—which has been cleared of residual energies by Aunt K—and grab my phone, then step onto the back patio for some air. It’s cold and empty, the iron chairs locked to the tables, the sunshades tied tight. The rain has let up a bit, but I stay out of its reach under a wide overhang.
