The Rock Star's Baby Bargain - Lili Valente Page 0,33

was this uncomfortable.

Adjusting myself with a wince, I continue across the wide lawn toward the cottage that houses the recording studio. The smell of warm summer grass and sweet clover fills my head. A deeper breath brings memories of picnics with my grandparents and long summer days spent playing in the backyard while Gram hung laundry or peeled apples for preserves.

But the innocent memories are no match for the hot-blooded urgency of the present. All I want to do is turn around, run back to Colette, and fuck her until I’m free of this raging hunger.

Instead, I let myself into the cottage and flick on the lights.

The moment the door shuts behind me, I’m sealed into that deep, soft silence that only exists in well-padded rooms.

“A padded room,” I mutter. “Appropriate.” Someplace where I can have a nice long rest before I make any ill-considered, impulsive, life-changing decisions.

I wander farther into the cozy space, where an eclectic mix of faded furniture strikes a sharp contrast with the high-dollar guitar collection hanging from hooks on the wall.

Circling a well-worn leather couch, I move to the swivel chair in front of the soundboard and flick on the power. It’s a simple interface, and I’ve spent enough time self-recording the past few years—working on my own music during my breaks from touring with Lips on Fire—that I know my way around a mixer. In a few minutes, I have the settings where I like them and the mic on the other side of the soundproof glass live and ready to go.

My guitar is back at the house, but I’m sure Jed won’t mind if I borrow one of his beauties. I select a vintage Stratocaster from a hook on the far right and coax it into tune as I pace the room, willing my aching balls to shut the fuck up already.

We’ll shut up when you get back in bed where you belong, Shit for Brains.

They’re adolescent to the point of being embarrassing, but the balls have a point.

I do feel like I belong in bed with Colette, in a way I haven’t felt I belong with a woman in a long time.

It’s just so easy to be with her—something I know better than to take for granted. Finding someone who makes you feel at home when you’re naked and there’s nowhere to hide all your messy humanity is the hardest kind of easy.

“Hardest kind of easy,” I murmur.

Like that, the words catch fire inside me.

Some song ideas come at me from the head, some from the heart, but this one crackles to life in my throat, hot and eager, demanding to be born. So I hit record on the soundboard, shut myself inside the glass room, and write a song in fifteen breathless minutes.

It’s the fastest song I’ve ever written.

It’s also one of the truest.

And it’s all about Colette—a love song so raw and real I should be terrified.

Only teenagers and fools fall like this. The rest of us know better. We know how much there is to lose, how much it will hurt if we run too far, too fast, and the object of our affection pulls up short, letting us tumble over the cliff alone and smash on the jagged rocks below.

There’s only one way off that cliff that doesn’t end in disaster, and that’s holding tight to the hand of the one you love. And even then, you only stay airborne so long as neither of you lets go.

I riff on different chorus options for the first song and then move straight into a song about hearts made of wax and flying too close to the sun. I put out song fires all afternoon until I have almost two hours of rough material to send to Chip for feedback, and there’s finally peace in my head.

And my balls.

You wish, fuckhead, floats from south of my waistband.

But at least I’m no longer on the verge of spontaneous combustion. I feel fantastic—open and free and overflowing with creative energy and excitement about the next two weeks.

Colette may very well decide I’m a crazy person who should be kicked off the love cliff to fend for myself, but for two weeks, she’s mine.

Chapter Twelve

Colette

I spend the first five minutes after Zack leaves trying not to cry.

And then I go ahead and let myself sob into the soft cotton throw pillow on the couch for another five.

I don’t know why I’m so upset—I’m the one who had a glorious orgasm, not the one