Quarantales: The Complete Contemporary Romance Box Set, page 45
Her expression softens, and I can sense her desire to melt back into me.
Do it, I urge silently, melt into me.
I want her to give in to this. Give in to us. I’m a fifty-seven-year-old rockstar, but I’ve never wanted anyone like this before.
“C’mon, Reina,” I whisper. “Why not?”
“Why not…” she repeats, whispering too.
She presses her face forward, leaving only a fraction of an inch between her lips and mine. I can sense her ache like it’s a twin of mine.
But then she says. “Because I’m your sponsor. That’s why not. We shouldn’t…we can’t do this.”
My sponsor.
Shit.
I let out a rough sigh, and this time I step all the way back. Because now I understand why Wyatt didn’t want me to touch her.
The bond with your sponsor is sacred, not something to be messed up with sex. I should know. I consider my relationship with Luis, my own sponsor, one of the most important bonds in my life. But whereas my go-to person is a retired Latino roadie, Wyatt’s person is a hot as hell woman who made a stadium concert happen when we kissed.
Why Wyatt would choose someone as attractive as Reina to be his sponsor, I have no idea. But I do know, she’s right.
It doesn’t matter what’s sparking off between us. If I want to keep this façade going, I can look, but I can’t touch.
Chapter Seven
Today is the Day
Two weeks later
Today is the day I kick Reina out.
I make that decision even before opening my eyes that morning.
Two weeks. I’ve been stuck here with Reina for two weeks. And I don’t see myself being able to survive here with her for two more.
I open my eyes to the same sight I’ve awoken to for the last fifteen days.
Reina on the deck, framed by morning sunshine as she goes through her yoga routine.
And would you look at that? A specific part of my anatomy has already rendered it so I can’t join her this morning. Not without embarrassing myself.
Too bad. Reina’s morning routines beat the weekly stretching sessions with my personal trainer hand over fist.
Her warm-up hits joints I didn’t even know I had, and the middle is challenging. It never matters how cold it is in the morning; I break a sweat. But the moves aren’t so complicated that I end up feeling like a goddamned pretzel, which is why I didn’t do it before when past girlfriends tried to convince me that establishing a yoga practice would change my life.
I’d only brought my yoga mat for warm-ups before my usual running workout. But with Reina guiding me, I had no problem using it for its original intention.
And did I mention she always made me breakfast afterward? Nothing too fancy. Simple fare like eggs and toast—not Eggs Benedict with green stuff floating around in the sauce.
The women I dated always tried to cook for me as if they learned how to date from romcoms or something. But they never made food. They made recipes—like they were auditioning to become my girlfriend via Top Chef. I hated those recipe meals. Half the time, I had to struggle my way through them because I’d eat at diners most of the time if it were up to me.
I liked that Reina kept it simple. No muss, no fuss, and nothing that required more than five ingredients—or even worse, chives. She made us eggs, bacon, and toast most mornings. And on the weekends, she made pancakes that we poured regular syrup over—not that overcomplicated confit shit most of the women I’d dated tried to push in front of me.
But Reina isn’t like anybody I’d ever dated before. She’s a yogi, a good cook, and a hell of a songwriter who made me laugh. It was hard to believe all that could come in one sexy package.
Too bad she’s off-limits.
My brain understands that. But the part of me I nicknamed Rockstar back when I was young and stupid and went through groupies like water?
Well, Rockstar isn’t so easily convinced.
Which is how I end up on the interstate outside the cabin, running off my woody as opposed to doing yoga with Reina on the deck.
I scroll to my Cardio playlists. Someone looking over my shoulder would probably be surprised at the eclectic mix. But it doesn’t matter what genre you play on stage, most musicians are musos, and I’m no different. “Boyz in the Hood” by Eazy E opens my cardio playlist, followed by Tool, Chris Stapleton, Brian Eno, Britney Spears, and Disneyland After Dark—this random Danish rock band that had to rename itself D-A-D to avoid a lawsuit from The Walt Disney Company. Anyway, they’re all in the background as I run along the town’s two-lane interstate, thinking about Reina and nothing but Reina.
These last two weeks have been….well, if I’m honest with myself, they’ve been fucking amazing.
Reina’s been bringing something out in me that hadn’t been there before. Also, there’s the challenge of me not wanting her to recognize my voice. That means going pretty far out of my comfort zone of growling heavy metal.
I’ve been singing a little softer. Almost crooning. And thanks to Reina encouraging me to go deeper with my lyrics, the songs resonate like country while remaining rock n’ roll.
If I were back in L.A., I’d be paying a producer thousands of dollars to guide me through the songwriting process the way she is for free. She keeps thanking me for letting her stay in Wyatt’s cabin. But the truth is, I’m the one who’s gotten the most out of the deal. She’s easy and beautiful to work with.
It’s only been two weeks, and I’ve already got two songs finished and ready to be professionally produced when I go back to L.A. Our arrangement would be perfect if I could just stop thinking about kissing her. And doing a lot of other things with her, too.
But she’d made it clear that she had no intention of sleeping with Wyatt. And Wyatt’s who I’m pretending to be.
I could confess who I really am to her. But that could blow back on me, too. First of all, there’s Wyatt to consider.
I made him a promise when we agreed to this switch. And obviously, my older brother has issues around people betraying his trust. He still hasn’t talked to my father after discovering our parents basically decided to reenact the backstory of Parent Trap with their two sons.
My mother passed a couple of years before Death Buddha released our first album, so she wasn’t here to explain her reasoning to us. But from what we could figure out, she and our dad had met at the University of Minnesota—the one closest to the South Dakota border.
They’d be referred to as social justice activists today, but people just called them “hippies” back then. Their shared passion for social justice work had been enough to sustain their relationship for the first year, but things went south when she had to drop out of college on account of getting pregnant with Wyatt.
At first, she’d been open to moving with our father back to the Lake Pinewood reservation. From what he’d told Wyatt, she’d been eager to have experiences that her cloistered 50’s suburban upbringing hadn’t afforded her. But life on the pre-casino money reservation had been nearly as boring for her as the Minnesota suburbs. And they weren’t married.
One day, our father woke up to a letter from her, saying that she was pregnant, but couldn’t bear to stay. She’d run off in the middle of the night, and back then, our father didn’t have the resources or money to track her or the baby she was pregnant with down.
But the thing was, he didn’t try to find us after he rose through the ranks and became the former economics major put in charge of his tribe and their booming casino resort. Even when I became an international superstar as the lead singer of Death Buddha, our father, whose name was John Clark, hadn’t said a word.
Wyatt suspects John would never have told him he had a full brother if Wyatt hadn’t found the letter from our mother while looking in his desk drawer for something else.
Now, three years later, even though we’re reunited, he still hasn’t forgiven our dad. And I’m not supposed to either. That was part of the agreement when he proposed this plan to change lives for a few months.
The idea had been for Wyatt to see what it was like to be a rockstar like he’d always dreamed. Meanwhile, I wanted to enjoy the thing Wyatt valued the least, his anonymity. Gator and I had written some of our best stuff before fame. I’d hoped to recapture that feeling of being nobody with nothing to lose again.
Wyatt and I were both supposed to be respectful and not do anything that would mess either of our lives up. I’d be returning to L.A. toward the end of May, and Wyatt told me he had no plans to come back to South Dakota. In fact, I’m supposed to pick up a few things for him while I’m out here.
But that doesn’t mean he might not want to stay in touch with Reina. And doing the things I want to do to his best friend would definitely mess with their relationship.
I’d thought about telling her the truth a few times. But if she’s too noble to sleep with the guy she’s sponsoring, how would Reina take it if she found out she’d been interacting with a virtual stranger for weeks?
I’m betting not well, and I’m too chickenshit to make that gamble. The thing is, I don’t have many real friends outside of my sponsor and Gator, who co-founded the band with me. And Carol V is Gator’s sister. To be fair, he never took sides. But it’s not like we’re hanging out like we used to—not with the band on a break because of the feud between his sister and me.
And Luis is pretty much the opposite of me. A family man and grandpa. He’s always there for me anytime I need him. But we don’t hang out or make music. Or sit in silence reading because we’re just that comfortable together in the same space.
I haven’t touched Reina again since that kiss, but our relationship is the most intimate one I’ve had in years. I don’t want to lose that. But I also don’t know how much longer I can keep my hands off her. And last night brought the situation to a crisis point.
The woods weren’t Malibu with its constantly crashing ocean. It was quiet at night. Too damn quiet. I swear I could hear every sound she made on the couch… her squirming to get comfortable… her breathing…her soft frustrated hisses when the new position she found didn’t work out, and she had to turn over again.
Her tossing and turning made me want to invite her into the bed with me.
Last night, I imagined myself walking over to Wyatt’s old, lumpy couch and replacing her hisses with my lips.
I’m at the age where I treat getting at least eight hours of sleep as my main religion. But I’d stayed awake imagining that scenario with my rod pulsing beneath my waist. Damn Rockstar had ached for her so bad, he didn’t let me fall asleep until she did.
This is why I’ve got to make Reina accept that she’s going to have to move into the hotel Wyatt told me about. She can come back to visit during the daytime, but I can’t take one more night of lying in bed with her delectable body just a few feet away.
So yeah, she’s got to move to the hotel. Furthermore, she’s got to let me pay for her room, so I don’t feel guilty as hell for kicking her out because I don’t know how else to keep my hands off her.
I’m so deep into my thoughts of Reina, I barely register the car beeping in the background. Not until a 90s-era Toyota Tacoma truck pulls up right beside me.
There’s a big woman in the front seat. Native American if her long black hair is any indicator. She’s got the window rolled down, and she’s shouting something I can’t hear over Disneyland after Dark.
I take out my AirPods.
“Hey, what’s up?”
I keep it vague since I have no idea who this woman is. For all I know, she could be somebody who knew Wyatt well. Maybe even an ex-girlfriend.
“What are you doing?” the woman demands.
“Running?” I answer, my voice lifting in a question because what does it look like I’m doing?
“You, Wyatt Clark, are running at seven a.m. in the morning? What the hell did California do to you?”
So she does know Wyatt. And, I don’t blame her for being skeptical. I couldn’t see my pack-a-day brother sticking to an exercise routine— much less running for any amount of time.
“Yeah, decided to change my ways.” Again keeping it vague as possible.
She raises her eyebrows. “Okay. Well, I saw Reina put in an order for delivery before I got off last night. But she’s still got her old address in the system. I’m putting in the order when I get to the Cal-Mart. Should I drop the stuff off at your place, now that you’re a couple?”
Okay, so I guess I know this woman, and she’s a delivery person for the local Cal-Mart. Reina mentioned that she was ordering some fresh produce and more meat yesterday. But one thing the woman in the truck said makes me shake my head in confusion. “Who told you we were a couple?”
She chuffs. “Bruce. He told everybody you were shacked up together after he caught Reina going over to your place with a backseat full of groceries. It’s about time if you ask me. Everybody around here was getting sick of you breaking all those white girls’ hearts. You’re too old to still be hound dogging around like that.”
“Okay…” I answer, not knowing how else to respond to that. “But us living together isn’t about us being a couple. She needed a place to stay for a little bit. We’re just quarantining together.”
The woman lifts her eyebrows. “You and Reina are just quarantining in your one-room cabin? Even though South Dakota doesn’t have a Stay-At-Home order?”
“You don’t have to get an official Stay-At-Home order to know it’s better to keep your ass at home with this virus going around,” I reply, not bothering to keep the judgment out of my voice. My aging ass falls firmly on the side of pro when it comes to the debates about whether to wear masks and shelter in place to keep everyone safe. “We’re just friends who happen to agree about that.”
“Well, Nelson said he saw you two out on the balcony doing yoga together.” She leans out the window, sticking her nose even further into my business. “What kind of ‘just friends’ do that?”
Nelson—finally, a name I know. That’s the neighbor from across the lake. Reina had waved at him and called out, “Hey Nelson!” a few times when we were out on the balcony deck. He seemed like a nice enough older man. But apparently, he’d been spreading the word about our morning yoga sessions.
“Every single person who’s ever lived in L.A. has done yoga with a friend,” I answer the nosy woman in the truck. “We’re not a couple.”
She sucks her teeth, blatantly not believing me. “So you want me to drop this off at your place. Do you also want me to put this on Reina’s bank card, or can I just charge it to your account? Since you’re just friends, you probably want her to pay for her own grocery orders, right?”
Okay, I know she’s setting me up to prove her point. Also, I’m annoyed that this town’s Cal-Mart has such lax customer privacy that the delivery person can simply charge the groceries to any account she wants.
The wise thing to do here would be to tell her to charge Reina’s card. That would make my “just friends” story believable to the woman in the truck.
But I’m about to kick Reina out, and I don’t want her to have to pay for the groceries she bought yesterday, thinking she’d be here for a while. Also, I don’t like the thought of her possibly going without money later on.
“Yeah, just charge her orders to me until further notice,” I grumble.
Her whole face lights up. “Why, Wyatt Clark, that’s straight-up romantic. Wait till I tell everybody else how kind you’re being to your just friend.”
Irritation thrums through my head louder than music. “Look, I’m just being nice because she’s doing all the cooking. We’re just—”
She puts the Tacoma in drive and speeds away before I can finish that sentence.
“Friends!” I yell after the truck, nonetheless.
But what’s the use? Whoever that was doesn’t believe me. And truth be told, neither do I.
The way Reina’s got me simmering, I know I won’t be able to keep this just friends act going for much longer.
No, she definitely has to go, I decide once again as I return my AirPods to my ears and turn around to jog back to the cabin.
I’ll kick her out as soon as I get home.
Oh no!
Is this cozy little arrangement coming to an end?
Find out in the next episode of
Reina and the Heavy Metal Prince
Part Five
Episode 5: TRUST ME
Chapter Eight
Trust Me
WEST
Kick her out…Kick her out…Kick her out. I was never in the army like Wyatt, but I chant my mission as I jog through the woods.
Music’s spilling out of the house when I reach the steps of Wyatt’s humble cabin. It’s Reina, I realize as I climb the steps, playing my guitar and singing.
I don’t recognize the lyrics. So it’s not one of the songs from my journal that we’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks. It’s also not another take on “Broken Road,” the ballad we gave up on fixing last night.
This is a new song. One about hard choices and bitter regrets. About personal failings and wishes to fix the past that will never come true.
Reina’s voice stops me outside the door. It’s R&B strong but country broken and full of alt-singer remorse. This is the first time I’m hearing her sing full out. And it touches me to the core.
But, as sad as the verses are, the chorus is full of hope.
But I count my blessings…yes, I do.
I count my blessings…till I’m through.
I count them.
I count them.
I count them all!
So yeah…
As opposed to striding inside and telling her she’s got to clear out as I originally planned, I stand there, listening to her sing.
