His cheeks were a little rosy and I marveled that this celebrity-who could have just about anyone-was flustered over my friend. Famous or not, in the end, Justin was just a typical boy.
"I think she'd like that, Justin. Actually, she wanted me to tell you 'hi' if I ran into you . . . so . . . hi," I said.
I rolled my eyes at myself. Nice message delivering. Justin's grin grew, and he bit his lip. Remembering something Kellan had told me once, I asked him, "I thought girlfriends weren't allowed on the bus-only wives."
Justin scrunched his brows. "The label doesn't care who's on the bus . . . so long as we're on the bus." A mischievous smile crept over his face. "Who told you that?"
Pursing my lips, I glanced over at Kellan. He happened to look back at me, and when our eyes met I minutely shook my head at him. He'd been teasing about the whole wife thing. Kellan cocked a questioning brow at me, and I giggled. "My husband," I told Justin.
Justin laughed, then patted my shoulder. "Ah, well, congratulations."
Justin left to say hi to Kellan after another minute, and I got back to work on my novel. Within seconds, I was absorbed in the story and had blocked out everything else around me. I started when a hand caressed my knee. Kellan was squatting beside me, an amused smile on his sculpted face. "We're just about to start. You good here?"
I lifted my pad of paper and nodded. Kellan glanced at my bag full of notes and frowned. "You should get a laptop so you don't have to lug around all this paper." Twisting his lip he added, "I think when we're done here we'll go shopping."
Smiling at his thoughtfulness, I leaned over and kissed him. "I thought you would appreciate my old-fashioned approach."
His lips lingered against mine, warm and sensuous. "I do, but it's time to step into the twenty-first century, Kiera."
I made an unladylike noise of amusement, almost a snort. "That's funny, coming from you."
"Hmmm," he murmured against my mouth. "You know what's not funny?"
He pulled back and I pouted a little. Your lips no longer touching mine? His amused expression returned as he searched my face, then a small scowl formed on his lips. He tapped my pad of paper. "That I still haven't been granted access to your bestseller."
I sighed and discretely covered the top sheet with my arm. "You'll have access . . . when it's done. When it's perfect."
He shook his head; the long, shaggy layers on top were irresistibly tousled this morning. The shorter layers near the bottom slightly curled around his ears, hugging them. "I don't care about perfection." He touched my forehead with his finger. "I care about what's going on up there. I care about what you think." Averting his eyes, he added in a quieter voice, "I care about what you think . . . about what happened with us."
My heart broke when he looked back up at me. His deep blue eyes could hold so much pain sometimes. Not able to say anything, I nodded. It might hurt me, it might hurt him, but I'd stick to our pact of honesty and let him see the deepest, darkest corners of my heart, of my soul. It was only fair, since he constantly let me see his.
Kellan smiled, gave me one last kiss, then exited the control room to go record his masterpiece. Headphones were put on, instruments were plugged in, lights on the board lit up. Evan ducked into his private drum room while Kellan stepped into the vocal room. It was fascinating to watch, but after a while, it did get a little tedious. There was a lot of repetition involved in recording. The song was played several times so the best recordings could be used. By the fifth or six run-through of the song, I stopped listening and worked on my book. I got through the painful part just as Kellan and the guys were finishing up for the day.
"Ready?" Kellan asked, a gleam in his eye.
I nodded and stood up to stretch. Sitting for so long had made part of my butt fall asleep. Hazard of my chosen profession, I supposed. Kellan said goodbye to the guys in the room, who were intently listening to the song they'd just finished mixing. It sounded amazing-a million times crisper and clearer than the live version of it. Hearing Kellan's voice so pristinely gave me goose bumps. He was going to be so huge.
Eli clasped hands with Kellan, telling him, "We'll start on the new song after you guys have had a couple of days to practice. Cool?"
Kellan nodded, and my heart sank a little. If they were going to learn a new song that fast, then I wasn't going to see a whole lot of Kellan. But that was okay, since neither one of us was going anywhere . . . except shopping, apparently.
The next couple of weeks were relaxing and peaceful-for me, at least. I called my parents as often as I could. Mom started crying when I sent her a picture of my new ring. Dad, just slightly less emotional, told me things like, "Now, don't you go anywhere without Kellan, you hear me?" It made me smile that Dad now saw Kellan as my protector.
Kellan was pretty busy, though. The band learned the new song faster than I would have thought possible. Of course, they only had to learn it, not create it. Creating a fresh piece of music was a time-consuming process. I'd watched the boys debate about a thirty second song intro for three hours once. Every time I'd approached their table at Pete's, they'd been discussing it. Well, Matt, Evan, and Kellan had been discussing it. Griffin had been trying to convince anyone who would listen that the Starbucks's logo was kinky.
Once the band had the new song down, they started recording it. I went in every day with Kellan, new laptop in hand, and dutifully worked on my book while Kellan worked on his album. It delighted me to no end that our careers could coexist so peacefully. Kellan's actually helped mine. His band, his music, and his voice all opened up my mind, and the words poured out of me. In fact, there were several times when he was done for the day and I wanted to keep going. But Kellan was pretty good at persuading me to put away my computer and go home with him. The art of seduction always was one of his greatest talents. Right up there with music, really.
At the end of July, Kellan and the boys were done with their portion of the album; the mixing men would finish the rest. All the guys had left to do was have their photo taken for the album cover. Kellan was morose about it on the drive to the studio. "I don't see why we have to be on the cover. Couldn't it be some generic photo of . . . a duck or something?"
"A duck? Really?" I questioned as I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear that the wind was continuously whipping into my mouth. Darn convertible.
"What? Ducks are sexy . . . right?" Kellan gave me a sly grin. I rolled my eyes and he chuckled. "They've got those long, flat bills, plump bellies, wide, webbed feet." Still grinning, he brought his eyes back to the road. "What could be hotter than that?"
Staring at the way his dark sunglasses framed his face, amplifying his attractiveness, my immediate thought was,You. Smiling at his ridiculous suggestion, I laughed out loud. "Um, just about anything."
His perfect face swung my way. "We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one."
I was just about to tell him that he would be all alone on his side of the argument when my cell phone rang. Quickly digging it out of my bag, I glanced at the screen before answering it. "Hey, Denny. How are you?"
Kellan's eyes shifted to the front as he turned the radio down. I played with the guitar-shaped necklace around my throat while I waited for Denny's response. It was long in coming. "I'm fine. How are you?" The concern in his accent was clear, and confusing.
"I'm great. Why do you sound weird?"
As Kellan pulled onto a side street, he flashed me a brief questioning glance. I shrugged, not knowing any more than he did. In my ear, Denny's warm voice asked, "You're okay . . . really okay?"
"Of course." Dread started filling my stomach. "Why? Did something happen?" My thoughts immediately went to my sister and my unborn nephew. "Is Anna okay? Is the baby?" Fear seeped into my stomach, and I tried to squelch it. Surely Anna, Kate, or Jenny would have called me if something had happened to the baby.
Denny immediately sputtered, "No, no, they're fine. It's nothing like that. It's just . . . have you seen the tabloids recently? Been on any gossip sites?"
Relief immediately flooded me. I shook my head at Kellan's concerned face, letting him know that everything was fine with Anna. Focusing on the first part of his reply, I told Denny, "Oh good, you freaked me out." I frowned as I puzzled his question. Tabloids? "No, I've been way too busy for that. Why would I care about tabloids and gossip sites?"
Denny sighed. "Crap. I would've called you sooner, but I just noticed today. It's still pretty quiet around here, and I don't think anyone's put two and two together yet, but I thought you should know what's out there, so you could be prepared."
More confused than before, I tentatively asked, "Prepared for what?"
Denny paused again, and my anxiety started resurfacing. "You mentioned earlier in the month that the guys were doing a collaboration with Sienna Sexton."
His voice held a trace of awe and wonder in it, a feeling I completely understood; it sort of blew me away too. But I didn't understand why he was changing the subject, and my voice came out agitated. "Yeah, what does that have to do with tabloids, though?"
As I watched Kellan swerving his way through traffic, a slight frown on his lips as he listened, Denny said, "Does Kellan . . . hang out with her?"
My frown deepened. "No. She's not even here. She went back to London after recording her part of the song." Pulling my gaze from Kellan, I bluntly asked my ex, "What's going on, Denny?"
He sighed. "There's a picture of Sienna and Kellan that's circulating the Internet. It's all over the magazines too. No one seems to know who Kellan is yet. It's mainly his back in the photo, but there is some serious buzz about Sienna and her new mysterious . . . boyfriend."
My jaw dropped so far I thought it might have to be surgically reattached. "Boyfriend? Wait, what picture?"
Denny's exhale was sympathetic. "I don't know. Looks like they're walking into a restaurant together. She's holding onto his arm. He's smiling and looking down at her. It's all very . . . convincing. Are you okay?"
My mind blanked, then I remembered the photographers outside of the place we had gone with Sienna for dinner. They'd been snapping pictures of all three of us as we'd been walking into the restaurant. Sienna had invaded Kellan's personal space a bit before we'd walked through the doors, but I'd been in the picture too; Kellan was holding my hand the entire time. But of course they wouldn't show that. I was a nobody. Sienna was a celebrity. And Kellan was now her new mysterious boyfriend. They were already linked . . . and no one knew about the single yet. What would happen when they did know? My stomach dropped as the car pulled to a stop.
"It's not what it looks like. I was there, you just can't see me." As I whispered that to Denny, I felt irony wrapping around my throat, sealing it shut. Hadn't I wanted to be invisible, to not let Kellan's spotlight shine on me? Be careful what you wish for. I was now invisible. "I have to go, Denny. Bye," I mumbled into the phone.
"Kiera, wait, are you okay?"
I disconnected the line without answering him. No, I didn't think I was okay. As Kellan shut the car off, I stared in shocked silence at my phone. What the hell just happened? In the public eye, Sienna and Kellan were dating? Did this change anything for me? No, not really. It didn't matter what the public thought was real; I knew what was going on. It still churned my stomach, though.
"Kiera, are you okay?"
Kellan's concerned words matched Denny's. Feeling light-headed, I looked up at him. "I'm fine," I whispered.
He frowned. "Honestly, you're fine?"
I groaned internally, really hating our honesty-at-all-cost pact at the moment. "I don't know what I am."
Kellan nodded. "Okay, can you tell me what that was about? Maybe we can figure out what you feel together."
I bit my lip and held up a finger, so he knew I would speak when I could. Kellan grabbed my hand and patiently waited. As he rubbed his thumb over my wedding ring, the shock of Denny's revelation passed through me, and I truly did feel okay. Not great, but okay.