Ben, who’s short and muscular with a shaved head, lifts his chin a little, acknowledging us. “Good to meet you,” he says to Heidi as she slides her phone into her bag.
She takes his outstretched hand and gushes over how much she loved the set. Then, she excuses herself and struts away, her mission to find Cal obvious.
Ben turns to me. “Been wanting to meet you since this shithead joined up with us in Albuquerque last year.”
This catches me off-guard, and I’m unable to keep a frown from making a momentary appearance across my face. When did Wyatt go to Albuquerque? For that matter, why did Wyatt go to Albuquerque? I dart my eyes up to him quickly, but he’s focused on something else. Typical dick move, Wyatt.
Because I can feel Terra’s enormous green eyes burning into me, I steer the subject in a slightly different direction. “You’re playing there in two nights, right?”
As Ben bobs his head, a tiny pierced woman with a shock of platinum and jet-black hair slips between us. She murmurs, “Excuse me,” and then slides a shot glass into Ben’s hand. After he downs the amber-colored liquid, he gives her one of those looks that makes me melt. It’s the look that’s not only full of desire but also that chaos-free kind of love that I crave.
“Thanks, babe,” he says.
She grins and wipes her fingers down the front of her ripped jeans before holding out a hand to me. “I’m Ivy, Ben’s girl.”
I grasp her hand, surprised at how firm her grip is. “Kylie Wolfe. Good to meet you.”
I can’t help but like Ivy because instead of mentioning my connection with Lucas, she immediately replies, “You play pool?”
“I’ve played.” And I have, just not well.
She inclines her blonde-and-black head to the opposite corner of the bar where a tall woman dragging on a cigarette ducks into a dimly lit room. “Play with me?” She jerks her thumb from Ben to Wyatt. “You and me against them.”
“Ky always loses,” Wyatt tells her. He bites the corner of his lip when I glare up at him. “But, fuck yeah, you’re on. You in, Bluebird?”
I glance around the bar in search of my best friend, but she’s nowhere to be found, and neither is Cal. I lift my shoulders. “Guess I am.”
I quickly learn that Ivy’s a bit of a pool shark and a whole lot competitive. She easily makes up for everything that I lack in the game, which is a lot unfortunately. She sinks billiard ball after ball into the table pockets. Each time, she rubs our winning streak in Wyatt and Ben’s faces while pumping her fist to the raunchy anthem about getting drunk and waking up naked that’s blasting from outside the poolroom. I’m ecstatic when I manage to knock one, the red 3, into the hole.
Between games, Wyatt has disappeared to get himself a drink, and Ben is talking to some of the band’s fans, the three women who stalked Cal and his cousin for signatures a little earlier.
“You going to Albuquerque with them?” I ask her.
Ivy downs her Jagerbomb and shudders from the aftereffect. She rubs her hand back and forth over her mouth, bothering the hoop at the end of her nose, before she shakes her head. “No, I live in Katy, half an hour from here, so I can’t go.” She stares longingly at the empty shot glass and sighs. “Plus, I’ve got work in the morning. Guess I should’ve thought about work before I dived into the Red Bull, huh?”
“Nah. I mean, just drink a few more, and you should be good.” I lean against the pool table, sliding my bottom up to the edge. Cocking my head to the side, I take in the women crowding around her boyfriend. “How long have y’all been together?”
“Four long-ass years.” She glances over at Ben, who’s signing right above one of the girl’s lower back tattoos. “Wonder if she realizes how long it takes to get Sharpie off?”
If watching other women fawn all over Ben fazes Ivy, she doesn’t show it. She seems entirely at ease with the multiple sets of breasts being shoved in his face, and I find myself studying the obvious trust she has for him, asking myself how the hell she does it.
Even though Wyatt and I have promised not to lie to each other—and there have been those times when he’s been so brutally honest that my chest aches for days—I’ve always hated the doubt that comes along with what he does for a living.
My thoughts are still conflicted when Ben and Ivy drop out of the next game, and Terra and Nate take their place.
“Wyatt says you sing,” Nate says shortly after the new game begins. “Here, like this.” He comes around the pool table and leans over me to reposition my grip on the pool stick. He’s careful not to touch the intimate parts of my body, keeping his crotch several inches from my ass, as he guides my arm forward. “You wanna get up there with us during the next show?”
“Yeah, I sing...in the shower.” I glance back into his teasing wide-set eyes. “And I’d ruin your show, babe.”
“Bullshit,” Wyatt says from across the table. When I lift my head, I flinch at how hard his eyes are despite the laughter in his deep voice. “She’s goddamn amazing—everything about her is—but she’s even better on the guitar.”
“You play?” Nate asks, standing upright.
During the tour that changed everything for us eight years ago, Wyatt showed me how to play on Lucas’s old Gibson. I’ve always been a quick study, so I picked it up easily. I’m not horrible, but I don’t think I’m goddamn amazing either. Besides, I haven’t played in well over a year.
“She’s better than Lucas’s ass,” Wyatt answers for me, his tone a little mocking.
Jamming the bottom of my cue stick to the floor, I straighten my back and narrow my eyes at him. Other than with my ex-husband, this is the first time in years when Wyatt’s played the jealous card around me. Because his intentions are obviously not to get me into his bed, Nate doesn’t notice Wyatt’s sudden mood change, but Terra does. She’s standing on the far left corner of the table, taking in the exchange, as she slides the tip of her tongue back and forth between her lips.
“Actually, I haven’t played in so long that I think I’ve forgotten how,” I say.
Wyatt glides his pool stick forward, managing to knock the cue ball into a red stripe ball. It stops a few mere inches from the pocket. He straightens and glowers across the table at me. “You forgot?”
My shirt has crept up on my waist, so I pull it back down before I focus my gaze on Wyatt. I nod, slowly and deliberately. “Yeah, I did.”
Our eyes never waver away from each other even as Nate and then Terra take their respective shots. By the time it’s his turn again, Wyatt slams his cue stick into the rack by the wall, and then he turns to me and jerks his head toward the door leading to the bar.
“Be right back,” I tell Nate.
Terra answers quickly, beaming at both Wyatt and me with her megawatt smile, “We’ll be here.”
Wyatt’s fingers close around my wrist, and as soon as we’re out of earshot, he mutters, “There’s no way in hell you’re going anywhere tonight other than my bed, Kylie.”
Yeah, we’ll see about that.
Ivy stops me halfway across the bar. She’s already wearing a jacket, and she yawns as she wraps a fringed scarf around her delicate neck. “I’ve got to go, but friend me, okay?”
After I get her last name and tell her that I will, I follow Wyatt into a quiet nook located in the other corner of the bar. It looks like it used to be a spot for pay phones, but now, there’s only a dirty ashtray and a crumpled Winston Lights package.
“You trying to drive me crazy?” Wyatt bends his head, leaning in close to me, with his nostrils flared. When his short wheat-blonde hair brushes the top of my forehead, I automatically reach up to touch it. “You trying to see what kind of rise you can get out of me?”
I jerk my hand away from his hair. “By what? Playing a game of pool? Abso-fucking-lutely not.”
He stares at me for a long time before shaking his head. “I’m taking you back to my room, and then I’m fucking you until the only thing you can think about is me.”