Risky Rockstar: A Hero Club Novel, стр. 76

Chapter 39

Hayley

When Kade gets in the car, I expect him to say something. Sitting with my heart in my throat, I wait for him to comment on my actions or at the very least say something about my declaration, but he remains silent. I’m sitting against the window, as far away from him as I can possibly be—a stark contrast from how I was practically on top of him at the studio—but it doesn’t stop me from being assaulted by his delicious scent that seems to pulse off him in angry waves. How often was I comforted by the scent of him when now it is my own form of hell. An olfactory prison sentence.

Out of my peripheral vision, I see Kade in profile, his jaw twitching again, but this time he doesn’t have any reason to hide it. He stares out the window, flicking his thumbnail against his teeth, the sound a tap, tap, tap. In the silence of the car, the lone repetitive noise grates on me and amps up my anxiety, and I can’t take it anymore. I wish he’d say something, anything; freezing me out is torture and hurts worse than a thousand words spoken in anger. But then what do I expect? He did try.

“Can you stop that?” I know I have no right, but my nerves feel raw and my sensory system is screaming at me in overdrive, and suddenly I’m overwhelmed. His scent, his proximity, and even his tap, tap, tapping is a reminder of what I had but lost—what I’ll never have again because I couldn’t make it work. Remorse for the pain I caused him settles over me like a straitjacket, trapping me, suffocating me.

He moves his hand from his mouth and continues to stare out the window. The silence is oppressing, and suddenly I wish I had the irritating noise to distract me from the feeling of numbness seeping into my body and freezing me from the inside out. Kade moves his arm to rest against the back of the seat, and guilt makes me flinch.

He pulls his arm away as though I’ve scorched him and leans forward in his seat as far as the seat belts allow and rests his elbows on his knees, thumbs squeezed against his closed eyes.

I reach out and place a hand on his back. “Kade—”

“Stop the car.” His voice is stagnant, lifeless, and the hairs on my neck stand on end. The driver either doesn’t hear him or ignores him, so Kade reaches over and places a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, my man. Can you stop the car?”

I watch as Benji’s guy pulls into the parking lot of a run-down 7-Eleven at nine o’clock at night. Kade gets out and paces up and down alongside the car. I wait, watching him for the longest while. He’s so beautiful, his hair a tangled mess from where he’s repeatedly run his hands through it. I step out of the car, closing the door behind me. Kade stops pacing, his back to me. When he hears my footsteps, he doesn’t turn around.

“Get back in the car, Hayley.”

“Kade…”

“I mean it. I can’t speak to you right now.”

“I wish I could explain—” The driver gets out of the car and leaning his elbows on the doorframe, doesn’t say anything. Just like before, it’s a silent warning for me to watch what I say.

I see Kade counting to ten, and then he whips round to face me, his beautiful eyes a turbulent sea.

“You mean that shitshow you put on for everyone? What the fuck was that?” His arm shoots out in the direction we just came from. I open my mouth to speak, but the glare in his eyes cuts me off.

He runs his hands through his hair, blowing out a breath, and I can see he is trying to compose himself. I should leave him alone, but I don’t. Because I’m hurting and feel like shit, and I want a fight. A fight is better than nothing.

The Santa Ana winds whip my hair across my face. “Kade, I—”

“Is this a fucking game to you? Me? Am I…my career all a game you get off on playing? Do you think it’s cute putting on a little show for Marissa and her listeners when we both know I’m nothing more than a security blanket like Kevin was?”

All the color drains from my face as the blood rushes to my pounding heart.

Kade rubs a hand over his scruff. “I fucked up, I know I did, and there isn’t a second that goes by that I don’t wish I could take it all fucking back. But what you did back there…” He runs a hand through his hair again. “When are you gonna start being real? When are you gonna start being honest with yourself, huh?”

I take another step back, his words lashing out at me like slaps.

“I’m done, Hayley. Honest to God, I’m fucking done. We’ve got three more dates to fulfill, and then I’m out. And you’re out of my life. We’re through.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose and bows his head. I can see the rise and fall of his chest as though he is struggling for oxygen. “Please just get in the car. I don’t want to regret this more than I already do.”

♫♫♫

I want to push back against Kade, figuratively and maybe literally, because right now, more than anything I want to see more than the defeat in his eyes. I want to hear the passion his voice held thirty seconds ago instead of his defeated resolve, but I don’t. I look at him one last time, sorry and sick for all I’ve put him through. Anger builds and I’m so pissed—more pissed than I can honestly say I’ve ever been in my life, and I’m not even angry