IMPACT: A Secret Baby Sports Romance (47 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Madeline

As I made my way to the kitchen, I spied Harlow in the corner, kissing Casper so deeply I wondered how the both of them managed to breathe. The floor creaked under my foot, and she looked up guiltily. "You okay?" she mouthed as Casper began to kiss lower and lower.

"Fine!" I smiled. "Just getting another drink."

She nodded and disappeared back into her man.

"Should I tell them to get a room?" Rane rumbled behind me.

I clenched my fists. "No," I muttered under my breath. "Because they don't have to worry about getting caught."

He at least had the decency to make a small grunt of understanding. And in the bright lights of the kitchen, he looked almost as stressed out as I felt.

"I'm not going to talk about it," I began. "It was a mistake."

"Whatever," he said, looking at a spot just over my right shoulder.

"Whatever?"

"Yeah. Sure. Whatever."

I had been expecting more of a fight. But this was good. "Okay then." I wracked my brain for a smooth way to transition away from the fact that we fucked last night. But there wasn't any. "So how are you?" I managed lamely.

"Confused," he said.

"By what?"

"Why you'd ask me that. You have to know how I am."

"Rane, I helped my mom pick out her wedding dress this morning, okay?" He blinked a little. "Yeah,
her wedding.
To your dad. Ceremony is in a week."

"I know." He rubbed the back of his neck.

"So we need to..."

"Stop it. I got it. You've made your goddamned point."

I swallowed. I had two auditions lined up this week, and this was vitally important. I needed to stop dancing around my question here. "Rane, when is the video coming out?"

He was still looking at the point over my shoulder. I wanted to check, see what he was seeing, but I knew it was just a dark window over the sink. He was trying to avoid my eyes as much as I was avoiding his. "Huh? Oh, soon. Rough cut is done."

I waited for more, but he didn't seem to want to cooperate. It appeared I would have to drag it out of him. "How does it look?" I looked down at my hands and saw that I was twisting them, and consciously put them at my sides.
Pull yourself together.

He lowered his head, his eyes drifting down over my shoulder, raking slowly past my face and down to rest on my hands. I wiggled my fingers, unable to keep from moving, unable to keep still while he looked at me like that. Something softened in his face. "I haven't seen the most recent cut, but what I saw, Mads? It's killer." That slow, lopsided smile. "All that weird shit Warlox had us do translated really well to video. The set looks amazing."

"And... us?" I swallowed. "Me?"

He lifted his hand to my face. I winced, turning my lips away before I made another horrible mistake.

But he only tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear. "You're a fucking star," he growled.

When he looked at me like that, the only thing I could hear was his voice in my ear as he came. It was the same low, rasping growl that had vibrated through me as I fell to pieces around him.

I shook my hands at my sides and danced from toe to toe, trying to dispel some of the pent-up energy that was collecting at the base of my spine. "If it's good, I want to add it to my reel," I told him, desperate to keep on topic. "I need some recent stuff on it."

His face fell a little. "Yeah, of course."

"Can I get a copy?"

He leaned back against the doorframe and eyed me strangely. "Yeah, you'll get it, of course."

"When?" I pressed

"Does it really matter?"

"It kind of really does, yeah." I blinked and took a deep breath, unclenching my hands. I hated how subservient I sounded, how desperate. "Sorry. I'm just anxious. I haven't worked in so long..."

"Why are you pushing so hard?" he drawled. "You literally just got healthy. Take some time, take a break. Go easy on yourself for like the first time in your life."

Anger heated my skin. "Take a break? Really?" I pressed my fists into my sides so hard that it hurt. "I don't have the luxury, Mr. Rock Star." I hissed. "Just casually making plans out there with Jaxson fucking Blue? Getting him to sing for you with just a word? You think I have that kind of clout? I don't. But I used to. I used to be where you are. And okay, yeah, I want it back. But I'm not there. You're at the top of your game. You don't remember what it was like to be at the bottom...."

He looked taken aback by my anger. "I do."

"Not from what your dad has told me, or from what I found on Wikipedia." I hated myself for admitting this, even as I was saying it. "Yeah, I Googled you after...after...the hallway. All your interviews, you say it yourself: 'The second this stops being fun, I'm done.'"

He held up his hands. "Why do you make that sound like a bad thing?"

I nearly stomped my foot. "Because it means you don't want to
work.
"

"You're absolutely right." He grinned.

I wanted to hit. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw a plate. But I didn't do any of those things. "Goddammit," I finally exhaled. "You're absolutely maddening."

"Likewise, Princess."

"You have this way of turning everything I think I know to be true on its head."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

I stared at him. "It's not." I swallowed. "I think I'm going to go now. See you at the wedding."

Chapter Twenty-Five

Rane

Jax took a sip of his hot water with lemon and cracked his knuckles. "One last take?" he asked.

The overhead mic clicked. "You made me cry," Lily said from the booth, her voice accusing.

When we left Harlow's that night and called to book this studio time, the engineer scoffed. "We're booked out solid the next six months," he told Keir loftily.

"Mmm, that's too bad. Jaxson Blue will be on tour again in six months," Keir mused, tapping his pen against my Jeep's dash. "And so will we."

I could hear the guy start backpedaling from all the way over in the driver's seat. "Wait...who did you say you were again?"

And miracle of miracles, a slot opened up Thursday.

Keir had hung up the phone and glared at me, but surprisingly didn't yell or carry on. In fact, he took the news of my promise to Jax oddly in stride. "Cool, man. Whatever you think is best. I'm sure it'll work out." Then he started humming an old Billy Joel song.

I was too thrown off to question him.

Keir was still oddly happy here in the studio three days later. In fact, if I didn't know him as well as I did, I would have called him fucking bubbly. "It is a good song!" he crowed, clapping his hands together like a doof. "Aren't you going to cry, too, Pepper?"

Pepper unrolled an elegant middle finger. Lily laughed and sniffled. Jax shot me a look over his shoulder. "That's a good sign, dude. If you can get through to Lily, you're golden. I wrote her a song that took an entire fucking year to get to her."

Lily started squawking something over the intercom, but I wasn't listening. I was thinking about what I had just heard.

Hearing the words I had written coming out of someone's mouth besides Keir's was an odd experience. I was so used to my brother's delivery that I could almost stop paying attention. But the way Jax was singing forced me to pay attention to each phrase that came out of his mouth.

And I wasn't sure I liked the feelings that came with them.

He took another step. "Okay." He nodded towards the booth.

The sound engineer nodded back and punched up the levels. Twitch counted out the beats and we started to play.

Recording live was fun. It reminded me of the old days, gathered in our garage, making a racket that echoed across the neighborhood. I tried to lose myself in that feeling, but found myself hearing my lyrics once more.

"When you see from the inside,

When the walls come tumbling down,

There's nowhere left to hide,

That's when I'll come around.

Fire in her belly,

Fire in her veins,

Fire all around us

Extinguished by the rain."

I launched into my solo savagely, angry at myself, angry at this situation—fuck it, angry at her for not having the guts to see that we were good together. Her uptight princess act wasn't cute anymore.

I wanted the real Maddie.

And I knew she wanted me.

This whole situation was just fucked.

Keir's angry, growling bellow mixed with Jax's clear tenor in a way that even I could tell was fucking magic. This song was going to be killer… That is, if I could stand to play it again.

"Great stuff, guys," the sound engineer chirped into our headsets. "Just needs a little mixing, but I think we’ve got what we need.”

Keir stepped back from his mic and yanked his headphones off. "I think we should toast this fucker," he said enthusiastically and reached for his flask. He poured out a line of shots. "To gettin' shit done," he cried.

I eyed my brother suspiciously. Recording was serious business to him. He wasn't usually this manic.

But I was never one to turn away free booze.

"Cheers!" Everyone knocked back their shots, when the loud sound of a vibrating phone interrupted the snorts and coughs.

"What kind of cheaper rotgut is this?" Balzac snarled, coughing into the back of his meaty hand.

"Shut the fuck up," Keir called, waving his hands for silence as he looked at his phone. "Holy shit, guys, it's the video."

The whiskey immediately reformed into a leaden ball in my stomach.

But everyone else was exclaiming excitedly. Even Pepper managed a half smile. Keir pulled his tablet out of his bag and set about downloading the file.

"I need to do more videos," Jax mused.

"Here we go!" Keir called. We all crowded around, and he pressed play.

I thought I would be prepared. I had seen the rough cuts, made my notes and comments for the editing team. Fuck it, I had
been
there, acting with her, touching her, kissing her. This was all old news to me.

Or it should have been. But seeing it… Seeing her… Seeing us that way. It was like I wasn't in this cramped, smelly studio anymore. I was there, with her, touching her all over again. And what was even better was that now I knew her, knew her well enough to see those moments where she had fallen apart for me. I recognized each look, the difference between the real Maddie and the Maddie with the mask. I knew… I fucking knew her.

I had to look away.

The blood flooded so loudly in my ears that I almost missed the end of the video. "Holy shit," Jax said approvingly. "That's gonna get a hell of a lot of attention."

Their voices melded into a blur. I looked around wildly for a place to escape. I stalked over to the corner and stared at the wall for a second, willing the frustration to pass, then freaking out that it wasn't. I turned back around.

And found myself staring right at Keir.

He was standing there waiting, watching me, a strange expression on his face. Somewhere between sadness and understanding.

It was fucking unnerving.

"What are you looking at?" I growled. I was ready for a fight. Something to distract me.

"I saw. Saw how you were watching the video," Keir said. I couldn't tell what the fuck he was thinking.

"You were, huh?" I said, crossing my arms.

"The way you were watching her..."

"And you figured now would be a good time to start giving me shit about it?"

Keir slumped against the wall and lowered his voice. "Yeah, well...maybe I don't feel like it today."

"Bullshit." Keir never let me off the hook...for anything. "What's gotten into you? You've been actually fun today. I mean, it's nice and all, but not exactly normal."

Keir's Adam's apple bobbed, and I felt something squeeze in my chest. "Keir. You're freaking me out. Tell me off about Maddie. Tell me I'm a fucking degenerate. Lay into me."

"Maybe I don't exactly have the moral high ground anymore."

"What did you do?"

He blinked several times.

"Keir. What the fuck did you do?"

"I called Scarlett."

"What?!?"

"Oh, relax. I didn't actually talk to her." His voice softened. "She must have changed her number." He ducked his head. "But I found her contact info. At the magazine? I wrote it down." He patted his back pocket.

"Keir," I said warningly.

"I get it, okay? But that night...at Harlow's. I saw Casper all happy, Jax all content, and you fucking mooning around like you were stoned off your chick, and I was like, fuck. I had that. It was forever ago, but I
had
it. And now I don't. And ever since I saw that article in Grip, I just can't get her out of my head, Rane." He looked at me with our mother's eyes. "And so maybe I don't feel like giving you shit about your bad decisions about women. Because I'm making a shit ton of them myself all of a sudden."

"Fuck," was all I managed to say.

"I've never seen you this gone about a girl." Keir exhaled, leaning his head back against the wall. "Like ever. I honestly thought you weren't capable of it, especially after tossing Gina like she was last night's empties." He cleared his throat and stifled a hiccup.  "So...fuck...I must be drunk 'cause this is like the most twisted thing I could possibly say, but...I think you should go for it."

I lunged for my phone.