Tell Me

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Melanie pulled away from Nikki’s kiss and stared at her in astonishment.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I told you,” Nikki said, her big blue eyes suddenly flooded with tears. “I love you, Mel. I love you. You said you love me too.”

“Nikki,” Melanie said. “Honey, you’re confused. You’re not attracted to me. We’re just friends.”

Nikki dropped her chin to her chest and whimpered like a wounded animal. “But you must love me, Mel. You’re the only one I care about who has never hurt me. The only one.”

Melanie swallowed the lump in her throat, knowing she was going to have to hurt Nikki now, when she was at her most vulnerable. Melanie was not interested in a romantic relationship with Nikki, and she didn’t know if there was a way to salvage their friendship with this on the table. She should have recognized the signs. She’d honestly thought that when Nikki made sexual advances toward her—and she’d been making them more and more frequently—that she’d just been playing around. It had never occurred to her that her best friend—a woman—could be sexually attracted to her. She was having a hard time processing that reality.

“Do you remember why we became friends?” Melanie asked her.

Nikki sniffed. “You mean when we were little?” she said in a tiny voice.

“Yeah. We met in the park. You were sitting under a bush, sobbing. Remember?”

Nikki swallowed and nodded. Melanie lifted a hand to brush Nikki’s hair back, but thought better of it. She clenched her hand into a loose fist and dropped it to her side. Melanie did love Nikki as more than a friend. She loved her like the little sister she’d never had. Someone to take care of. To defend. To cherish.

“I went over to see what was wrong and you had this huge bruise on your face,” Melanie said.

“My stepfather was an abusive son of a bitch.”

“But that wasn’t why you were crying. Do you remember why you were crying?”

Nikki nodded again. “I had found a beautiful blue butterfly. I held it so gently and stroked its velvety wings. And it died right there in my hand.”

“We spent the rest of that summer chasing live butterflies in the park.”

Nikki smiled. A slightly watery smile, but a genuine one. “And every time you caught one, you’d put it in my hair and say I was beautiful. No one had ever told me that before. Or made me feel beautiful.”

“You are beautiful, Nikki. Not just on the outside, on the inside. I knew it from the moment I saw you crying over a dead bug.”

“Butterfly,” Nikki corrected. “I wouldn’t cry over a beetle. Well, maybe if it was a lady bug.”

Melanie laughed. She so wanted to give Nikki a hearty squeeze, but a line had been crossed, and Melanie knew she had to be careful not to give Nikki the wrong message.

“I was sad when you moved away,” Melanie said.

“Yeah, well, sometimes abusive sons-of-bitches beat your mother to death and you’re sent to live with your alcoholic father.”

The alcoholic father who had sexually molested her for six years, but Nikki didn’t have to say it. Melanie was very aware of Nikki’s past. She just wished she could have been there for Nikki at the time, to help put her back together.

“I thank God that we ended up going to the same college,” Melanie said. “It must have been fate.”

Nikki dropped her head. “Not fate so much as me stalking your social media pages.”

“So you went to Wichita State—”

“To be with you. I never forgot you. Mel, the little girl with the kind eyes and the uplifting words who put butterflies in my hair.” She touched her hair as if she could feel wings flapping against her. “Memoires of those butterflies got me through a lot of very dark nights, Mel, even when you weren’t there.”

Nothing could have stopped Melanie from hugging Nikki then. She crushed her against her chest, squeezing until her arms began to tremble.

“Do you hate me for loving you?” Nikki said dully.

Melanie drew away and cupped Nikki’s face in her hands. She tried not to look at the scab on her lip, because it was a harsh reminder of even more pain that Nikki had suffered, and Melanie couldn’t allow herself to be wishy-washy about this.

“I don’t hate you—at all—I’m just not attracted to you. I don’t love you that way. Do you understand?”

Nikki lowered her gaze.

“I do love you unconditionally,” Melanie said. “I do. Nothing you do will change that. So stop testing it, okay? I’m not going anywhere. You’re my baby sister for life.”

“Are you sure?”

“If I haven’t given up on you by now, it’s not going to happen.”

Nikki laughed. “I’ll try to behave.”

“Just keep yourself safe,” Melanie said. “And if you kiss me again, I’m going to tell my boyfriend to kick your ass.”

“Okay. I don’t want an ass-kicking from a guy with a bad haircut.” She was laughing when she said it.

Melanie glanced around the empty interior of the bus. “Speaking of Gabe, shouldn’t he be back by now? He said sound check wouldn’t take long.”

“You should go look for him. I’ve been hogging your attention all day. I’m sure you two would like to be alone for a while.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” she said. This weekend hadn’t quite been the endless love-making session she’d envisioned. “You okay now?” she asked Nikki.

“I’ll get over you,” she said. “Eventually.”

Knowing Nikki the way she did, Melanie figured it would take her no more than twenty minutes or so to move on. “Stay out of trouble.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Backstage, Melanie asked several people if they’d seen Gabe. The rest of the band was in the dressing room, bull-shitting. Gabe was not among them, and no one had seen him since sound check. They all said he’d been headed to the tour bus with instructions not to disturb him. Melanie knew that he’d never made it to the bus. At least, she hadn’t seen him. Maybe they’d crossed paths somewhere.

When she saw Jordan in a hallway and asked if he’d seen Gabe, he pointed toward the stage. “I think he’s rehearsing.”

Rehearsing? Rehearsing what? When she concentrated, she could hear him playing, sticks hitting skins with such powerful, rapid percussion that it couldn’t have been anyone but Gabe.

She hurried to the stage and climbed the steps to watch him. She stumbled over a cord not yet taped down and then stood to the side of Gabe’s drum kit. His instrument was tucked away behind the equipment for the opening bands, far to the back of the stage where the overhead lights didn’t quite reach. His eyes were closed as he punished the drums; there was no other way to describe how he was playing. His face held none of the rapture, none of the fervent concentration she’d witnessed at the concert three nights before. There was only anger and retaliation.

She was afraid to interrupt him and would probably have stood gaping all day if the skin on his snare hadn’t ruptured.

“Fuck,” he said. He flung his ragged sticks between two of the drums and dropped his elbows to his knees. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, his fingertips digging into the wicked-looking dragons on his scalp. Gabe looked anything but wicked at that moment. He looked… broken.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” he yelled. And then he kicked one of his bass drums clean off the riser, taking a set of crashing cymbals with it.

Melanie was stunned and half-tempted to back away and pretend she hadn’t seen him. “Gabe?” she said quietly.

He tensed and turned, searching for her in the shadows.

“Is something wrong?”

“Yeah,” he said in a harsh, raspy tone. “Everything is wrong. Get the fuck out of here. I don’t want to talk to you.”

She sucked in a breath, certain she was hallucinating. Who was this guy? Definitely not the Gabe she’d come to know over the weekend.

“What?” she said breathlessly.

He glared at her. “You heard me. Go back home to Kansas! And take your fucking girlfriend with you.”

“Well, yes, I’ll be taking Nikki when I go home,” Melanie said, still more confused than insulted, hurt or angry. Though she could feel those emotions quickly taking hold of her. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you, Melanie? How many guys have you done this to? Did they think it was sexy to be caught up in your kinky little triangle? Well, I don’t want any part of it. Take your loser friend and fuck off. We’re through.”

She obviously wasn’t registering words correctly, because his made absolutely no sense.

“Gabe, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t want to be with me? Where is this coming from?”

“You can’t have us both, Melanie. It’s me or her.”

She gaped at him, unable to believe her ears. She knew some people were naturally jealous—hell, she happened to be one of them—but what kind of asshole slapped down that kind of ultimatum out of the blue? He knew what Nikki had been through. He couldn’t possibly expect Melanie to desert her.

“Are you asking me to choose between you and Nikki?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw set in a harsh line. “Yeah, I am.”

“Asking that of me makes it very easy to pick,” she said, struggling to get the words out around the lump in her throat. “How can you even ask me to choose between the man I love and my best friend? Why would you ask me to?”

He threw out a hand, pointing toward the parking lot. “Your best friend? Don’t you mean your lover? I’m sure there are plenty of guys who would love to be the spare dick in your bed, but I’m not one of them. If you’re going to be my one and only, then I have to be yours as well.”

Melanie’s head started spinning. She wasn’t sure what to focus on: the fact that he thought Nikki was her lover or that he thought she would actually cheat on him or that he considered her his one and only.

“She’s not my lover,” she said finally, needing more time to process the rest of what he said. “Never has been. Never will be.”

“Bullshit, Melanie. I saw her kiss you.”

Melanie touched the back of her hand to her lips, feeling suddenly queasy. “You saw that?”

“Yeah, I saw it. I also heard you say that you love her.”

“And I suppose you didn’t stick around long enough to hear my reaction to Nikki’s misguided confession of love?”

Some of the tension went out of his long, lean frame. “I’d already seen all I needed to see,” he said quietly.

“So you didn’t hear me tell her I considered her my sister? Did you hear me tell her I am not attracted to her? Maybe I went easy on her, but for fuck’s sake Gabe, hasn’t she been hurt enough? I’m not fucking my best friend!”

He didn’t say anything. But his eyes narrowed, as if he were considering her words.

“What do you mean that I’m your one and only?” she blurted without thought.

“Don’t change the subject,” he said. He hopped down from the riser and took several steps toward her, but stopped short of touching her. “Did you mean to say that I’m the man you love?”

She laughed hysterically, light-headed from the see-sawing emotions surging through her. “Oh, you heard that little slip up, did you?”

“Did you mean it?” he pressed.

He reached out and cupped her shoulder, and she forced herself not to pull away. And not collapse into his arms.

“I don’t know if I can love a man who believes what he sees with his own eyes over my word,” she said, hoping to break some of the tension between them before it broke her.

“Maybe I need glasses,” he said, one side of his mouth lifting in a grin.

“Gabriel Banner in glasses?” she said, touching her fingertips to her chest. “Be still my quivering loins.”

His arms went around her hesitantly, and the tension immediately dropped away. She pressed her ear to his thudding heart.

“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you,” he said.

She shook her head slightly. “I guess if I saw you macking with Shade, I’d have probably jumped to the same conclusion.”

“Ugh, that’s disgusting,” he said, shuddering dramatically. “Do you have any idea where that man’s mouth has been? Have you met his ex-wife?”

Melanie chuckled and pulled away so she could look into his grass-green eyes. “I do love you,” she said. “I meant that. I just figured it was much too soon to tell you.”

He smiled. “The time feels right to me.”

She laughed a little, embarrassed, and then she snuggled into his chest, hoping he’d say the words in return, but not wanting to pressure him.

“I have this strange idea about love,” he said against her hair. “I think a man can love many women in his life, until he finds his one and only. Then it’s game over. He’s stuck loving her, and no one else, for the rest of his life.”

“Is that a bad thing?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t known my one and only long enough to know what fifty or sixty years with the same person feels like, but the first week has been pretty fucking spectacular. Well, except for the part where I thought she was in love with someone else. That pretty much sucked.”

“She isn’t,” she whispered. “She’s only in love with you.”

“That’s a relief.”

Melanie lifted her face to look at him, and he claimed her lips in a deep, passionate kiss. He drew away much too soon.

“Will you tell me one thing?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you anything.”

“Is she a better kisser than I am?”

Melanie swatted him on the butt. “What kind of a question is that?”

“A competitive one.”

She pursed her lips, considering. “I’m not sure. I think you’d better show me your best game so I can decide.”

She grabbed the back of his neck and surged up on her tiptoes so she could kiss him more thoroughly.

“Mel?” he whispered against her lips.

“Gabe?”

“Would you consider becoming my personal traveling accountant for the summer?”

Her heart skipped a beat as a world of possibilities opened wide before her. “I don’t know if you can afford me,” she teased.

“The job has a great benefits package,” he said. “I promise to wake you every morning with an orgasm and a smile.”

“Hmm,” she murmured, snuggling closer to his chest again. She could never seem get close enough to the man. She doubted she would ever feel he was close enough unless they were naked—skin on skin—and he was buried deep inside her. And if she spent the summer on the road with him, being woken each morning with his promised orgasm and smile, there would be plenty of opportunity to experience the closeness she craved. “Not bad perks.” She slid her hand down his belly and cupped his cock. It jerked against her palm, and her pussy clenched in response. “Is this package included as a benefit?”

He laughed. “That’s up for negotiation.”

She grinned up at him, her heart near bursting with the love she felt for this man. “I’ll put in my two weeks’ notice tomorrow.”

“I promise you won’t regret it,” he murmured before claiming her mouth in a deep, toe-curling kiss.

Melanie couldn’t regret anything that kept her in Gabe’s arms.

When he drew away, she stared up into his eyes—rimmed with dark bruises that made her heart ache—and whispered, “Tell me.”

“Tell you, what?”

She toyed with his shirt, too embarrassed to flatly request the words she wanted to hear. “You know.”

He touched her cheek and her hair, searching her eyes for clues. “I love you. Is that what you want me to tell you?”

She smiled brightly and nodded, happiness giving her heart buoyancy.

“Then I’ll tell you again. I tell you as often as you need to hear it. I love you, Melanie.”

“I love you too,” she gushed.

“Now let’s go find a nice private location so I can show you.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Let’s.” She did adore the way the man’s mind worked.