Sweet Ache

Chapter 6

QUINLAN

Concentrating on teaching Hawkin how to operate the PA system is difficult with his comment running loops through my mind. Add to that, he’s taking his sweet-ass time savoring his treat while we’re both in the confines of the small alcove off to the side of the stage where the controller resides. The space is minimal so each time I demonstrate the switches on the board it causes him to lean in closer.

And with each brush up against my back—the thin cotton of my tank top does nothing to mute the feeling—I’m getting more turned on. And more irritated with him.

“Make it count,” he murmurs behind me, his breath feathering over the exposed skin and I immediately know what he’s talking about. I suck in a breath when his finger traces the small and delicately inked words in the space between my shoulder blades. The only tattoo I have. “What does it mean?”

“Pretty self-explanatory,” I bite out but when a sigh of disappointment falls from him, I relent and quickly elaborate, finding that I want to tell him the truth. “I … I think it’s important to make every moment count. Every friendship, every lover, every broken heart, every decision, every everything—they all need to count for something or else they’re pointless and when all is said and done and you look back at your life, you’ll have regrets.” I shrug, feeling a tad too philosophical over a damn tattoo but I’m being honest. “Regrets suck. Making it count lessens that for me.”

He’s silent behind me, mulling over my comments I assume, and I hate that I can’t see his face. Suddenly I feel extremely vulnerable both emotionally and physically so I finish flicking the switches over so that he can see what I’m doing. I need to get out of this small space and his proximity. Like pronto.

“See, simple,” I say, stepping back and into his chest. I expect him to move immediately, since the full contact of our bodies is anything but professional, but he doesn’t. And it’s his immobility that lets me know he’s doing this on purpose.

Irritation escalates to full-blown anger. I don’t like my hand being forced. He wants to flirt, fine.

No, it’s not fine.

God, he’s got me flustered when I never get flustered and now I can’t think straight. I just want to get this over with.

“Not simple, no,” he says, breaking through my internal debate, his mouth close to my ear so that his breath tickles my bare skin. “Is there a reason you’re trying to rush this?”

So many words fill my head but I know I need distance from the heat of his body clouding my thoughts. I step back again, aiming to free myself from the small space but only succeed in pressing my ass further against his groin.

I sidestep immediately, our bodies separating as I bump my back against the wall behind me in an ungraceful escape. “I’m not rushing,” I lie. “Just making sure I show you everything you need to know before class starts. I can slow it down some if you’d like?” I ramble the words out, choosing to focus on the Def Leppard logo on his black shirt instead of meet his eyes.

“Nice and slow is always good—don’t you think, Quinlan?”

I snort out a laugh, nerves front and center so that the quip is off my lips without thought. “Guys like you wouldn’t know slow if it hit you in the face.” The comment gives me a little better bearing, and I arch a brow at him, daring him to respond and grant me the argument I’m pushing for. A confrontation that will piss him off so he’ll steer clear of me and the trouble we’d cause each other.

“You think you have me pegged, don’t you? I assure you, square or round, I don’t fit in any predetermined hole.” With our sunglasses off, I can’t deny the question in his eyes like I could on the way here. Just as I can’t hide the truth in mine.

But I’m damn well going to try.

“You don’t have to fit in any hole for me to be right. My brother used to be just like you…. Hell, I probably know your game better than you do.” I quirk an eyebrow, waiting for the comment I can see on the tip of his tongue.

“Maybe I only want to fit in one hole,” he says softly as he takes a step into me, our bodies close, eyes locked, and libidos begging for the physical connection that we’re both fighting. I should be pissed at his comment, should think it sounds corny, but holy hell that melodic tone to his voice makes it sound anything but. “Go out on a date with me.”

My breath hitches and mind consents but my feet step back, reminding me I have nowhere to run. I falter against the wall behind me, emotions whirling and warring at a breakneck pace.

“Bet you didn’t guess I was going to ask that now, did you?”

I hope he doesn’t notice the slight hesitation before I respond with a laugh. “Smooth, but uh, no thanks.” Despite the words, my mind says yes.

He angles his head and his eyes lock onto mine—daring me to look away. “Then why do I make you so nervous?”

I can’t help but glance down at his lips and then back up to his eyes as every part of me wonders what they’d feel like on mine. My tongue darts out and wets my bottom lip in reflex and the slow curl of his mouth tells me he notices it.

The grip I have on logic weakens in the confined space, my fingers restless to reach out and draw him into me.

“You don’t.” I murmur the words, captivated by the proximity of his lips and the hunger in his eyes. I close mine to break the connection for a moment before opening them, resolve firmly back in place.

“Mm-hm, and yet earlier I asked you why you didn’t like me and you ignored it. Your lack of an answer leads me to believe just the opposite. Why fight it? You do like me don’t you?”

“Like I said, I’ve been surrounded by guys like you my whole life. No thank you.”

“I bet none of them have done this.”

His moves into me at such a slow pace that he grants me every chance to reject his advance. But I don’t. My quick inhale fills my lungs but nothing else fazes me because I’m completely focused on the descent of his mouth.

He brushes his lips against mine. Once. Twice. I’m so lost in the feeling that I don’t even realize his hands are gently cradling my face. Fingertips calloused by guitar strings angle my head to the side the same time my lips part, and the need to taste him is my only focus.

Our tongues meet in a gentle caress of heat and desire. A mixture of curiosity and lust, need and hesitancy. My hands are on his biceps, fingernails digging into muscular flesh as he deepens the kiss.

My body reacts instantly to his subtle claiming of my mouth. It might be light brushes of lips and licks of tongues but the ache deep within me burns so strong I emit a pained moan. There is just something about Hawkin that has me wanting so much more than a stolen kiss.

His thumb brushes over the line of my jaw as his other hand runs down the length of my back, pulling me into him. Our bodies battle the desire, wanting more but not taking it.

“Stop!” I cry out when something in me sparks to life. I can’t explain the feeling but it scares the hell out of me and has me pushing him away with a half-assed protest that sounds less than convincing. But how can it sound otherwise when my thoughts, my senses, my lips are consumed by the taste of him.

He leans back, lips parted and eyes wide with confusion. All I can do is shake my head back and forth to express my rejection. “I just … We can’t.” I fumble for the right words to say and then just say screw it. I turn on my heel and run up the stairs of the auditorium as he shouts my name behind me.

I push open the doors, needing the fresh air to clear my head and help with what I can only describe as a mini panic attack. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me, but I wave away Axe as he starts to approach me and walk a few more feet to a bench near the shade of a tree.

I sit down, lean my elbows on my knees, and hang my head down to try to calm myself. I close my eyes, welcoming the cool breeze on my face, when it hits me why I’m so freaked out.

I’ve kissed a lot of men. But never have I been so lost in a kiss that when I closed my eyes I saw tomorrows and ever-afters. Certainly not with Rick, and not with any man I’ve been with. Shit, I’m the last one on the planet to believe in the fairy-tale crap and yet there they were, vivid and in my face.

Frustrated and confused, I blow out an exhale and lift my eyes. Everything around me—students, buildings, bikes—blends together as I try to wrap my head around the irony of it all. I don’t usually think this way, don’t want these type of things—marriage, monogamy, kids, the death of spontaneity—at this point in my life, if ever. It’s just not my driving force. I’ve been in school forever, am about to graduate and dive headfirst into my dream career in film production, so they aren’t even a blip on my radar.

So why was I thinking them? And more important, why was I envisioning Hawkin Play as being the center of my universe when we butt heads like siblings and verbally spar like enemies?

It has to be because of his goddamn kiss.

Hell yes I wanted it—won’t deny it even to myself—because damn, the man can kiss. I shove the thought away that he’s probably had many women to practice on to get that kind of skill; it was so mind-blowing, I don’t care so long as I got the benefit of it.

His lips were the perfect combination of firm and soft, he used enough tongue but not too much, and then added to it the gentle coaxing of his fingertips to get me to open up to him, and ugh, I want more.

But therein lies the problem. I’m sure wanting more means different things to him than it does for me. For him it’s probably a quick fling that would run the duration of his seminar. And while I’m all for quick, fun, and meaningless, the way I just reacted to his kiss alone scares me into thinking that I might not be able to keep it on that level, promises made to myself be damned. That I’d be falling headfirst into something serious without a moment to enjoy it before heartbreak crashes down around me.

I roll my shoulders, stand up, and do something uncharacteristic of me. I’m usually a go-for-it, damn-the-consequences-later type of girl … and yet as I head back toward the auditorium with thoughts of how to play this with Hawkin, I tell myself not this time, not with this guy.

He may embody all of the things that call to me on so many levels—and I’ll probably curse myself later for it—but with the start of my career on the horizon, I need to be smart.

And walking headfirst into heartbreak is not smart.

“You okay?” Axe asks, his expression stoic, and his eyes hidden behind dark lenses scanning the students beginning to line up for the lecture.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I tell him as he opens the door for me. I walk through it, head down as I try to figure out how to handle this. Do I take the blame, apologize, and then hide behind the facade of hostility that helps me to resist him?

I’m still deciding what to do when I’m startled by a scuffing sound ahead of me. I look up to find Hawkin leaning against a pillar, arms across his chest and a condescending smirk turning up the corners of his mouth. “Well, well, well. So good you came back for more, huh?”

His words startle me. And not in a good way. I came in here willing to apologize, worried about everything, and he greets me like that? Pretending to be hostile is no longer a necessity because it’s a reality.

“Excuse me?” I take a step closer, eyes narrowed and disbelief undoubtedly written all over my face.

He straightens up some, and the smarmy look stays on his face but he drops his hands. I briefly notice he’s changed his shirt to a white button-up—and I can see the hint of another tattoo through the open collar—but my frazzled state leads me to not give it a second thought. I’m too busy watching how rejection doesn’t sit well with the rock god Hawkin Play.

Well, he’d better get ready for more of it if he thinks he can be an asshole to me. So what if I kissed him and then changed my mind? And standing here, eyes locked on each other’s, I’m dismayed by the way he’s handling this. Stupid me thought he’d be more hurt and less jerk. Guess I thought too highly of myself. The reality check that I really am just another in a long line of women to him is welcome.

Good thing I found out now rather than in a month when my heart’s already invested. I use my own hurt, the revelation of truths I didn’t expect—the spite in his glare—to keep my guard up. But guard or no guard, I become uncomfortable under his intense scrutiny when he just stands before me, posture in itself threatening, and doesn’t say a word.

“What do you want?” I snap, shifting my feet.

“You for a start.” He ghosts a smile and where before I found it sexy, right now, the sight of it mixed with the look in his eyes unsettles me.

“If my actions didn’t say it earlier, then my lips will say it so you can understand: Dream on.” I take a breath, eyes flickering over my shoulder to see if Axe is still there just on the other side of the door, because for some reason alarm bells are sounding in my head.

He laughs low and mocking and if he’s trying to freak me out, he’s doing a damn good job. I’m done here. Carla can pull my thesis for all I care but I refuse to work with this schizophrenic asshole. In the span of one minute we’ve gone from flirting to kissing and in the next making me uncomfortable.

I start to walk past him to go grab my bag I left when I ran away and he grabs my arm, fingers digging in. A shocked gasp falls from my mouth but I refuse to give in and meet his eyes.

“Believe me, any dream I have of you will be a wet one.”

I yank my arm from his grasp, disgusted by his comment and how far off the mark I was in judging him. How did he go from hot and desirable to cheesy and creepy?

I ignore his laugh at my back and all but jog to the open doors of the auditorium. I rush through them, head turning to glance back at him, and find myself colliding into someone.

“Jesus!”

I’m shocked by the voice, the scent of cologne, and the face when I look up to see Hawkin’s surprised expression.

What the hell?

“Hawkin?” His name comes out in a flustered gasp as I try to process the fact that he’s standing before me when I thought he was behind me. I push back from him, adrenaline hitting me now so that my hands are a little shaky and take in his black Def Leppard T-shirt and the hair mussed earlier from my hands.

How can? … And then it hits me. I recollect an article I read during my intermittent cyberstalking about Hawkin that he had a brother. It definitely didn’t say he had an identical twin.

He stares for a beat, trying to figure out what’s wrong, when his eyes lift to over my shoulder. Hawke’s gaze immediately turns hard, jaw clenched and shoulders squaring in irritation as he delivers an unspoken warning to his brother before falling back on mine and softening with concern.

“You okay?” His focus is solely on me, hands reaching out to touch my arm in a reassuring manner.

“Yeah?” I say it like a question, asking him if the man at my back is really who I think it is.

“I’m sorry.” Hawkin murmurs the apology, somehow realizing that his brother has unnerved me, and he positions himself so that he’s standing between us.

“What are you doing here, Hunter?” The two men stare at each other, animosity palpable between them as they speak without words.

“Wanted to see my big bro’s new gig. Got quite a nice surprise though when I came early and went looking for him. Alcoves can be fun places, no?” Hunter says with a chuckle, giving me the chills that he was watching us. He lifts his chin toward me and raises his eyebrows. “She yours?”

As much as a part of me wants to speak up, assert my position, the obvious discord vibrating between the two of them has me biting my tongue.

“New gig’s courtesy of you, right? If you wanted this for yourself,” Hawke says pointing to the auditorium behind him, sarcasm all but dripping from his voice, “all you had to do was have a little integrity.”

“Integrity is overrated. Contracts, a man’s word, family bonds—nothing holds anymore these days. But you already know that, dontcha brother?” Hunter chides him with a wink, and I notice Hawkin clench his fists. Hunter’s eyes glance over and meet mine, a ghost of a smirk playing on his lips.

“Leave her alone, Hunt. She’s with me.”

And I’m not sure if it’s the fact that he seems like he’s protecting me from his brother or if it’s him saying I’m his, but hearing those words pulls on some inherent female part of me, a part that longs to be someone’s. Despite the tension of the moment, I find it sadly comical that my resolve to keep Hawkin at arm’s length crumbles with that simple statement.

“Does she’s with me have a name?”

“Trixie,” Hawkin states, beating me to the punch when I was going to give my real one. And then I wonder why he’s giving his own brother my fake name but in the same breath I’m glad he does.

“Trixie.” Hunter rolls the false name around on his tongue before nodding in acceptance. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

Hawkin’s sigh is audible and his voice monotone when he speaks. “Trixie, this is my brother, Hunter…. Hunter, this is Trixie. Satisfied?”

“Very,” he murmurs, eyes finding mine again and I have no problem being the first to look away this time as he takes a step closer. “So Trix—”

“What do you want, Hunter? If you wanted to be here, I know a surefire way you could be.” The derision in Hawke’s voice is frigid.

“Testy, testy. Do you let him talk to you like this?” Hunter directs the question at me, and it’s more than obvious he’s enjoying taunting his brother.

“Answer my question, Hunt.” Hawkin’s tone tells me he’s had enough of whatever game his twin is playing. I just wish I knew what exactly it was.

“I need to borrow your car.”

Hawkin physically startles at Hunter’s request. “You have your own.”

“It’s in the shop. Besides”—Hunter shrugs, completely unapologetic—“I like yours better.”

“You always like mine better.”

“Yes, I do,” he drawls the words out, a predatory gleam in his eye as he glances my way, “since you seem to enjoy taking what I deserve.”

“Cut the crap,” Hawkin orders, authority resonating in his voice as it echoes around the empty theater. “Why do you need it?”

“Mine’s in the shop so—”

“So you thought you’d trek halfway across town to a place you’d never go otherwise to ask me for my car? Ever heard of a taxi? Kind of presumptuous to just assume I’d hand it over, dontcha think?”

From the way they glare at each other—testosterone mixed with what I can guess is familial bad blood—I can’t help but wonder what else they are speaking about because it sure as hell isn’t a car.

“You’d do anything for family, isn’t that right?” Hunter angles his head at his brother, lips pursed, attitude prevalent.

“Try me again. Seems my generosity is running thin.” Hawke’s body vibrates with anger.

“Hmm.” Hunter laughs, the sound in itself mocking. The two spitting images stare each other down, animosity and irritation dueling between them. “Mom needs me.”

The simple statement causes everything about Hawkin to immediately alter despite the cocky raise of Hunter’s eyebrows that says, see, I told you, you’d bend for me. His shoulders fall and he glances back my way for a split second, indecision mixed with concern marring his face, before walking closer to his brother. “She okay?” he asks in a hushed whisper, his back toward me now.

I can’t hear the rest of what is said, just bits and pieces that don’t make sense as Hawkin digs in his pocket for his car keys and hands them over. He gives him some sort of instructions, and then puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes.

The mirror images look at each other for a prolonged period of silence before Hunter nods his head and walks out. The students, in line waiting for the lecture to start, call out “Hawkin”—mistaking Hunter for his brother—as the door shuts behind him.

I study the lines of Hawkin’s back as he watches his brother’s movements outside, shaking hands, posing for cell phone pictures … acting as if he is his twin. It vaguely crosses my mind to wonder how often he does this, impersonates his brother. I turn my focus back to the man himself. His demeanor seems altered now, so far from the arrogant, self-assured man from earlier or the clips I’ve seen of him performing. A part of me wants to ask what’s wrong, figure out what can affect him so quickly, but I also understand that I know absolutely nothing about him besides the image he feeds to the media.

And growing up in a household under the scrutiny of the Hollywood magnifying glass, I know better than most how image can be a manufactured product.

Standing here beside Hawkin I can feel his angst, sense his restlessness, and I want to know more. Every person has two sides, the side they let everyone believe and the side they let few see. Usually I couldn’t care less because each person deserves their own story, but for some reason with Hawkin, I want to see that private side. The man has been making me question my own sanity with the reactions he’s pulling from me. Maybe the rest of his story will explain why I respond so strongly to him.

His audible sigh pulls me from my thoughts. “Everything okay?” I can’t help it. I know he won’t answer, but I have to ask anyway.

“Fucking stellar,” he snaps, and then hangs his head with a self-deprecating groan. When he turns and faces me, I can see the lines etched in the sculpted perfection of his face, the remorse in his eyes that melts my heart. “Sorry, I just …” His voice trails off as we stare at each other. Just when he’s about to explain, Axe pushes open the door and peeks his head in.

“You ready for them, Hawke?”

Hawkin holds my gaze for a second longer, relief flickering that he doesn’t have to explain further, before glancing over to Axe. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

He walks past me and down the steps to the podium without another word. Students file in and do a double take when they take their seats and realize the imposter outside was not really him. You can hear the hushed buzz grow louder until Hawke clears his throat and a hush falls over the room. When he begins to speak, the students hang on his every word.

But it’s the words he’s left unspoken that captivate me the most.