“It’s all or nothing, Stella. Anyone can get lucky if they’re looking hot and feeling frisky. That’s easy. But life’s about being brave. And I’m not willing to let you be some half-assed fling. I want the whole package.”
I tremble, feeling the weight of what Tyler’s asking. “What’s this, then?” I ask, indicating our naked bodies entwined.
Tyler’s lip curls in a smile. “Persuasion.”
“Tease.” I hit him playfully on the arm, pretending that I’m going to roll away from him, but his arms clench tighter around me.
“When I’m teasing, you’ll know it,” Tyler growls, and his hand drops to my breast, stroking my nipple with his knuckle.
My breathing shallows and his eyes roam my body.
“You are so beautiful.”
“You’re not playing fair.”
Tyler snorts. “I’m not much of a rules-follower, Stella. So what do you want? All or nothing?”
“If I choose all, will it be like it was tonight? Will I have to beat the groupies off with a stick?”
“I can’t promise they’ll go away, but I promise you that no one will question who I’m with. Including you.”
“And if I choose nothing, does it mean we can’t be friends?” I shudder, feeling the possibility of that loss, but unsure I could give him what he’s asking. All means all of my secrets. My shame. The ugly parts I’ve packed away or fled.
Could he even see past them to continue to care about me?
Tyler frowns. “Stella, I’m not trying to rush you. I told you I need to take this slow, and I still do. There are too many things unresolved for me to just open the dam right now. I’m afraid it would scare you away.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, too,” I admit in a small voice. “I keep thinking, how close will you get to me before you find something you don’t like, something that makes you want to run the other way?”
“It’s bad?” Tyler asks me seriously.
I nod, silently begging him not to ask what.
“Mine, too.” Tyler says.
“Oh.”
Tyler kisses my forehead. “Sleep on it, Stella. When you’re ready, we’ll take it from here.”
TWENTY-ONE
I wake to an empty bed, the smell of coffee, and a painfully pounding head. The lows from last night come back hard, and I want to curl up in a ball and sleep them into foggy memory.
“It’ll get better, I promise.” I roll toward Tyler’s soft voice and peel open my eyes. He carries a tall glass of water and a steaming mug of coffee.
Tyler’s dressed in boxers and a T-shirt and he sits on the edge of the bed near my hip. I moan. A hangover is bad enough, let alone flashbacks to what happened last night.
“Start with the water,” Tyler coaxes, and drops two aspirin into my hand. I swallow and drink, my lower half covered by the sheet but my breasts bare. Something about his gaze doesn’t make me feel like I need to cover them up.
“Your phone rang a little while ago and I recognized the number so I picked it up. Kristina wants you and Beryl at her place in two hours.”
I flop back on the pillow dramatically. “I feel like my brain is being crushed,” I say, holding my temples. “I hate tequila.”
“Hate to tell you this, but vodka’s not your friend, either,” Tyler says.
I nod and sip from a creamy, sweet mug of coffee. It’s perfect. Did Tyler memorize how I like my coffee when we ate pastries together?
“Stella, I’m serious.” Tyler’s urgent tone refocuses me. “I’m more than a little worried about how much you drink. You polished off a fifth of vodka in just a few days, not to mention how many tequila shots you did last night.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I think you’re on the edge. I don’t know if drinking’s a problem for you, but at the pace you’re going, it’s a problem for me.”
It’s way, way too early to be having this conversation, to hear the accusation in Tyler’s gentle concern. “So you want…”
“I want you to stop. For a while. Give it a break and get focused again. Figure out how you feel without it.”
I swallow. I’m so used to having a few drinks here and there, to get pumped up or to unwind, to level out my emotions or to take me on a high. Alcohol does all of that. It’s part of my routine.
“I don’t have a problem.”
Tyler’s eyes harden. “You do. Because I have a problem with it. I’m crazy about you and I hate how it made you last night.”
“It’s not like I—wait. You’re crazy about me?” I squeak out that question, dizzied by Tyler’s admission.
He gives a solemn nod. “I am.”
I gulp my coffee to avoid his gaze, my heart racing. It’s too much—too much pressure, the ultimatum about my drinking, the all-or-nothing Tyler offered last night. I feel like I’m backed into a corner.
A bad boy has no claim to me. A bad boy can’t tell me what to do, what to drink, who to see. That’s just the way I wanted it.
But a good boy could suffocate me, lacing affection with rules and expectations. A good boy could break into my carefully walled-off heart.
I shove myself off the bed, feeling too naked, too exposed to Tyler.
“I have to go.”
I hop in the taxi with Beryl and we’re off to Kristina’s Brooklyn townhouse. Beryl and I have no idea what to expect, so we hold hands and giggle nervously like we’re back in college waiting on a double-date setup arranged by our dorm coordinators.
“So how are things at Tyler’s place? Other than the broken air conditioner?” Beryl’s really asking what happened after we left last night.
“A/C should be fixed by the time I get home,” I wince at the word home but Beryl doesn’t call me out on it, so I cover quickly, “and Tyler’s OK, I think. There’s something going on with him but he won’t say what.”
“What’s going on with you two?”
I stick out my lower lip and blow my hair off my forehead. “I have no freaking clue. He acts like he wants me, he pushes so hard, then he says he wants to take it slow. He wants me to tell him everything—”
“Everything?” Beryl interrupts, and I can tell we’re both thinking about my secret history.
“Yeah. He said ‘all or nothing.’ Like, he doesn’t just want us to be a fling. But I can’t tell him my secrets if he won’t even tell me what’s eating him.”
Beryl’s face falls. “Trust is a two-way street.”
“He doesn’t even know what he’s asking!” I explode. “How deep it goes, how much it still hurts.” I gasp, flattened by the admission that it does still hurt. Dixon, my baby Blue, cutting ties with my family and ditching my Broadway dream. It hurts like a fucking knife.
Beryl rubs my shoulder, letting me stew for a minute. “Maybe you don’t know what you’re asking, either,” she murmurs. “You don’t know how scary his secret is, or what it would cost him to tell it. But that’s not the point. The real question is what if you could get past that?”
“Like if our secrets didn’t matter?” I’m still for a few heartbeats, then I whisper the real answer into my hands. “I think I really want to be with him.”
“You think?”
I shake my head. “I know. Like, know it in my gut, know it like hunger or bliss. It’s indisputable.”
“He’s nothing like Blayde,” Beryl observes. “A fling’s not Tyler’s style. Jayce is the player, but Tyler’s a whole lot more … fragile.”
I raise my brows, questioning where she’s going with this.
“I don’t really know anything, just bits and pieces I pick up from Gavin or being around the band. But Tyler was never a girl magnet in college. He could hardly get a date. And when he finally grew into his height and got muscles, that was right around the time the band exploded.”