Never Love a Rockstar (Never Trust Book 3) Page 3

  It suddenly made me want clarity on his gym comment from earlier. “What did you mean by telling me about your gym equipment in the basement?” I demanded, my tone going sharp. “That I need to work out? I know I’m not nearly as thin as I once was. But you try living off pasta and gaining forty pounds with pregnancy. I really don’t appreciate you commenting on my weight.”

  His expression changed in a second. From tired to something else. He took a step closer, staring down at me. “I only said it because I know it used to be a passion of yours. I thought you might like my house a little more knowing that was included. That you might have something here you liked, too. I think you’re beautiful. Just as much now, maybe even more so now, as you’ve ever been. I still can’t keep my eyes off you every time I’m in the same room as you.”

  What I felt coming from him now—there was no mistaking it. Luke liked me. Maybe he always had, and those residual feelings were still there for him. The realization of it hit me like a freight truck.

  “So you don’t think I’m fat?” I joked. Well, half-joked.

  “Fuck no, Rebecca. I didn’t mean to give you that impression. I only wanted to make you feel welcome in my home.”

  He meant it. He was so damn serious.

  I stood there with my pounding heart, staring up into his eyes, no smile left on my lips. Believing him without any doubt. It felt good to have a man look at me the way he did in this moment. It had been a long time. It made me wonder—just how many of his comments in the past had I twisted and never asked for clarification? I just assumed he was an ass ninety-percent of the time. What if he wasn’t?

  “Get some rest,” I told him. “And I guess we can continue this conversation when you get back from Virginia.”

  I walked away from him.

  I walked away as quickly as possible—before anything residual tried to stir inside my chest again.

  ~ CHAPTER 7 ~

  LUKE

  Two days in Virginia.

  One free concert.

  And it was as simple as that. Caleb stepped into the middle of that stage in Richmond. He confessed his love to his new girl, Emma. A minute later they were kissing in front of thousands, while I stood there with my mouth hanging open like a fool.

  Why was love so goddamned easy for everyone else?

  Even my cousin Dani, the most cynical person I knew other than myself, had recently found someone. The only woman I’d ever loved didn’t love me back. And now, as if fate were playing a cruel joke, she was back in my life.

  I FaceTimed little Caleb like I promised. He was more interested in his toys than in me. That was okay. I was just happy getting to see him for a minute. Only, then Rebecca and I were forced to talk after. “How’s he doing?” I asked, wondering how long I had to stay on the line.

  “He’s fine. Do you have insurance?” Her question came out of nowhere.

  “Of course, I do. Why?”

  “Could you work on getting Caleb on your insurance? For me, please.”

  “I take it that means you don’t have insurance for yourself.”

  “Neither of us do. That’s what I’m saying. I need Caleb on your insurance.”

  “Fine. I’ll work on getting you both on my insurance.”

  She shook her head, annoyed with me. “That’s not what I’m asking.”

  “I know what you’re asking. And I’m telling you, I’ll get you both on my insurance tomorrow. Even if I have to get two more separate policies.” I hung up on her before we got into a fight. I knew what she meant. She only wanted me to worry about our son. But fuck if I didn’t automatically worry about her, too. I told myself I’d just said all that because she was my son’s mom, so by default I should want to take care of her now too, but that wasn’t what just happened at all.

  I had this urge to take care of her.

  The flight home had my head spinning now, stuck on Rebecca. Now when I thought back on that night we shared, fucking, making love—some irrational part of me liked that I’d gotten her pregnant that night. Like suddenly that small window of time I’d been with her meant something more than I always thought it meant.

  I sat there on the plane, in first class, feeling as if the walls were closing in around me. I could not stop thinking about my seed impregnating her. Her belly being swollen with my child.

  I hated that I loved it.

  And that it fucking turned me on.

  I wished I could have seen her like that, touched her like that, pressed my lips against her round belly.

  These had to be the most maddening and ridiculous thoughts. She’d also named him Caleb—not wanting him to be mine. I kept reminding myself of that little detail. It was the only thing keeping me grounded in reality.

  I stepped off the plane, back in my home state, but I didn’t head home.

  I drove. I drove for hours.

  Until my heart stopped racing over thoughts of Rebecca’s pregnancy. Until my cock cooled off and remembered that she was my brother’s girl first. That she hadn’t fucked me because she loved me. I still didn’t know why she had fucked me. Maybe she was just horny that night. Who the hell knows? But this fantasy I was trying to build in my mind about little Caleb’s conception—it was just that. A fantasy.

  I returned to the house. It was past midnight. The lights were all out. I moved quietly, so I wouldn’t wake up my son.

  I had to see him. And his door was left ajar. Completely breaking boundaries that I shouldn’t have been breaking, I gently pushed open the door to the second bedroom. I’d check in on him and then I’d head to my own room.

  Little Caleb looked so peaceful in his bed, sprawled out sideways, inhaling tiny breaths in the moonlight. And Rebecca... she was on the damn floor.

  Wait. What? What the hell?

  She had a pillow and a blanket, ones I recognized from the linen closet. But that didn’t take away from the fact that she was asleep on the fucking wood floor, curled up in a little uncomfortable ball.

  It was December. It was chilly.

  Why the hell was she on the floor?

  I moved into the room and without a second though, I scooped her up in my arms. I carried her to my bedroom.

  Jesus Christ, she felt good to hold.

  She stirred in my arms as I walked through the dark, but she said nothing. Not until I set her down on my bed.

  “I need the monitor,” she whispered. “I need to listen for Caleb.”

  “I left his door open.” I pulled away from her, shrugging off my coat, breathing heavily. “My door is open too. You can hear him from here. He’s just across the hall.”

  I stepped back. I wasn’t staying. I knew better than that.

  “I always have the monitor.”

  “You don’t need the monitor.” I’d seen her monitor. It was crappy and outdated.

  “I’m going back to the floor.”

  No, she wasn’t. I was physically there, blocking her from getting out of the bed. I had my hands on her waist so she couldn’t get up. Heat moved through me. “He’s one room away. I promise, you’ll hear him from here.”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t like being far from him. I’m a heavy sleeper once I get to sleep.”

  I could barely see her face in the grayness of the night, but I felt the sincerity in her voice. “Well, I’m a light sleeper,” I said softly. “Hell, half the time I don’t sleep.”

  I still had my hands on her slim waist—something I was very conscious of. I hadn’t touched a woman in four years. The last woman I’d touched was her. That suddenly felt like a mistake. Why hadn’t I clouded my memories of her with other women in the time between? I should have. I should have worked very hard at that. Because all I wanted right now was to have her again, exactly the same way I once got to have her.

  I cleared my throat and stepped away. But not far. I kicked off my shoes, moving around to the other side of the bed. “Stay on your side of the bed,” I warned, crawling under the sheets. “And I’ll stay on mine. One o
f us will hear him if he wakes up.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Without me blocking her way, she easily slipped out of bed. I kind of felt like a fool, thinking she wasn’t coming back. But a second later she returned with the monitor. She set it up on the nightstand next to her side of the bed. “There,” she said. “Easy. Now I will worry less. And don’t touch me again.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  ~ CHAPTER 8 ~

  REBECCA

  Luke tapped my shoulder lightly.

  “Caleb’s awake.”

  He specifically said he’d call him CJ, and instead he kept calling him Caleb. Maybe the name bothered him less now. Maybe it was growing on him.

  Surprisingly, I’d slept decently. More surprising, I liked being next to Luke all night.

  I didn’t want to read too much into that. But the way he’d pulled me off the ground last night and put me in his bed had felt really nice. Like I was wanted. Like my comfort was a priority to him. I liked it. I liked it a little too much.

  Luke tapped me again. “Rebecca.”

  “I hear him.” He was happily chatting and making noises. “I won’t interrupt him yet. This time is good for his language development.” Or so I’d read online. “His speech is delayed.”

  Had Luke noticed?

  Probably not. I doubted he spent much time around many three-year-olds to have a comparison base. I rolled over to look at him, to gauge his reaction. But being in bed with him was entirely too intimate. He laid there on his back, his hands behind his head, and his eyes on the ceiling.

  He glanced at me for a second. “Does that have something to do with the insurance thing?”

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “He needs to be in speech therapy. And it’s expensive.” I didn’t elaborate because I wasn’t quite ready to tell Luke everything.

  “I’ll pay for whatever out of pocket. And then I’ll pay for whatever insurance won’t cover once we figure that out.”

  How many single women out there wished they had a man just magically say those words to them? I sat up. I was so damn grateful; I didn’t know what to say.

  “Have you looked for places in the area?” he asked.

  “I have.”

  “Well, call one of them,” he told me. “See when he can start going. If you have to, if it helps, mention my name. The whole area knows my name. In any other city, people don’t really care. But in Nashville, everyone does.”

  “Okay.” I wanted to hug him. I’d never wanted to hug anyone more, actually. Of course, I didn’t. Instead, I moved to climb out of the bed.

  “Hey,” he said before I could go. “I’d like to see some baby pictures of Caleb.”

  “Yeah?” I smiled. I had lots of baby pictures. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and started scrolling back through all my pictures. Only—I remembered I transferred most of them onto my mom’s computer. I needed to get her to send them to me on a flash drive or something. Instead, I went to Facebook. I had an album I’d uploaded there when Caleb was first born.

  I’d made it private, so only I could see it. I didn’t want the world to know I’d had Caleb Mills’ kid. Sharing that news on social media would have been the fastest way to spread it to the world. But I wanted a safe place to store my photos.

  “This is the first couple weeks,” I told Luke and handed him the phone.

  He sat up, taking my phone, scrolling through the pictures. I watched him intently as he studied them. His face, his jaw—it went from relaxed to tight in seconds. He made a noise deep in the back of his throat.

  “You shared all this on Facebook.”

  “Well, technically—”

  He didn’t let me finish. “I hate that your friends on Facebook, who don’t even matter, got to see my fucking son as a baby before me.” He tossed my phone aside on the bed. “I never got to hold him that little. I never got to go with you to the doctor and see him on the black and white screen, or hear his little heartbeat. You took that from me.”

  Heat hit my face. Shit. I felt awful. I felt every bit of the pain rolling off him. “I’m sorry,” I said, but I knew that wasn’t enough. He was right. I’d taken that from him. I’d been angry and heartbroken during my pregnancy and in the early months of little Caleb’s life, but I saw now that was no excuse for the mistake I’d made. I thought I was protecting myself by keeping both brothers in the dark. I saw now I’d only hurt Luke. And hurt little Caleb. Because, as it turned out, I think Luke might make a really great father.

  I left the room.

  I hurried across the hall for little Caleb’s room. “Hey, buddy,” I said through tears, crawling into his bed with him. “You slept so good. I’m so proud of you.” I gave him a great big hug. “You hungry?”

  “Pudding,” he said, giggling.

  I nodded, sniffling. Pudding was his absolute favorite. He’d eat it for every meal if he could.

  I wondered if Luke was going to want us to leave now. Because it was a mistake I’d never be able to make up for. I’d want to kill someone if they kept my child from me. As if on cue, Luke came into Caleb’s room a second later.

  He saw I had tears in my eyes but didn’t acknowledgement them. “Get dressed. Get Caleb dressed. We need to go to Target. We need about a million things. Can you be ready in ten minutes? I hate going when they get busy.”

  I rubbed at my eyes with the heal of my hand. “Yes.”

  “Good. Ten minutes.” He left.

  I sat up, shaking, not sure what to think.

  ~ CHAPTER 9 ~

  LUKE

  Rebecca hadn’t said much since I snapped earlier. She’d changed her clothes, gotten Caleb ready, and had been in my car in the ten minutes I’d given her.

  I drove to Target where we parked and went inside together. She was in sweatpants, her winter coat, and had absolutely no makeup on. Her eyes were puffy since I’d made her cry. But, once again, fuck if I couldn’t stop staring at her.

  Yes, I was mad at her.

  Yes, all of this was such bullshit.

  But she had a way of making me push everything else aside and only see her. I loved the soft way she spoke to Caleb. I loved how protective she was of him. I loved how anything I did—it all seemed to keep surprising her. She made me want to fight for her.

  Which scared the shit out of me.

  The last thing I needed was to fall for her a second time.

  “Let’s get this rug.” I heaved it into the back of the shopping cart, half of it hanging out the back end. “I don’t have enough rugs in my house. Caleb doesn’t want to play on the hard wood, right?”

  “Um, sure.”

  Then I picked out a railing for Caleb’s bed. I didn’t want him falling out of his bed. Then some better bedding. It was cold at night in Tennessee. Some shelves. We needed somewhere to organize his things. Then we hit the toy section.

  I got him out of the cart, the first time I’d ever picked up my son in my life, and set him on the ground. “Go ahead and choose some toys,” I told him.

  I didn’t have to tell him twice.

  “This is too much,” Rebecca said as we watched him play with some pink pig family.

  “No, Rebecca, it’s not.”

  “I’m not going to be able to repay you.”

  “And I don’t want you to. He’s my kid. I’m doing all this for him.”

  “Caleb already bought him a lot of toys when we first moved in with him.”

  “Fuck what Caleb bought him.”

  I stared long and hard at her. I know I just exposed every ounce of what I was feeling by saying that. The jealousy I’d always felt for her ran very deep. She was here with me now. But only because a piece of paper told her the DNA was mine. And still, some irrational part of me wanted to kiss her—right in this open aisle, right as Caleb played—and take exactly what I wanted from her. Show her just how fucking right we might be together.

&nbsp
; I took a breath instead. “You decide what toys he should get.” I kept trying to breathe.

  “No. I’m going to go get some of his favorite snacks. You stay here with him and decide. Come meet me in the food section when you’re done.”

  She pushed the cart away and she left me alone with our son. I ran my hands through my hair, staring at him down on the floor. He held onto the box with the pig family.

  I knelt down beside him. “Who’s this?” I asked.

  “Dad-dy pig.” He pointed to the biggest, rounded member of the pig family.

  “And this?”

  “Mom-my pig.” He said that more clearly. He’d clearly had more practice saying Mommy.

  “These two?”

  “Peppa and George.”

  “You want to get the pig family?”

  “Yes.” He was so excited, holding his toy. I wondered if he already had it. I didn’t even know. But it didn’t matter. I also grabbed the Pig family’s house, their red car, and some other characters that looked like they matched.

  It was the best two minutes of my life. Even if I didn’t have money, nothing would have stopped me from spoiling him in the Target toy aisle. We carried our treasures through the store, toward the food section. I found Rebecca on one of the aisles, looking at the nutrition information on the back of some organic snacks.

  I went to her. I dropped all the pig family toys into the back of the cart, I picked up little Caleb, getting him in the cart too, and then I plucked whatever was in Rebecca’s hands from her fingers. I tossed it into our full cart too.

  Shit.

  Then my hands went straight to her face. Oh God… the soft feel of her smooth, milky skin. Running my fingers against her jaw, working them into the strands of her beautiful hair—hair I’d always been so damn enraptured with.

  Her big blue eyes stared at me like a doe caught in headlights. I know this was breaking boundaries, but I didn’t care. It didn’t stop me. The frightened look in her eyes didn’t slow me. This exact same moment had happened four years ago too. I’d had no control over it then just as I had no control over it now.