Brand New Sky Read online

  “That's not okay.” It was all he could think of to say. Because it wasn't okay. He was looking right at her. She was gorgeous. “There's no amount of weight that you could have possibly gained to make you unattractive. That guy was a dick and you're better off without him.”

  Ryan laughed a little and wiped wetness from under one eye. “Well, it's easy to say that. But you really don't know.”

  “I do know.” Sway leaned across the table and stared hard into her eyes. “I know that your smile would still light up a room. That your laugh would catch me off guard. And your mind would still be the most interesting thing in the world to me.” He looked over her face, seeing beyond the flesh. “No. That guy was a selfish prick. You're beautiful all of the time. If he couldn't see that, he didn't deserve you.”

  Another tear escaped her eye and she quickly wiped it away. “Stop it,” she whispered. “You're not supposed to make girls cry.”

  Sway left his seat and joined her on her side. He cupped her cheek and wiped a tear away with his thumb. “I will always take responsibility if I make you cry. You'll never have to wipe your eyes alone.”

  His gaze traveled to her lips and his mouth followed. His other hand slid around her waist to her lower back as her lips pressed back against his. It was small and closed mouthed, but it almost knocked the wind out of him. Her lips were plush and perfect, much softer than he had imagined. He went back for another one. Gentle and slow. He moved his lips softly against hers, and she responded in kind.

  He rested his forehead against hers and tried to slow his heartbeat. “Can you explain to me why you taste like honey?”

  She didn't answer. But she did tilt her head and place a soft kiss right on his Adam's apple.

  “Okay,” he said, hoping he sounded in control of his faculties. “Was that okay? Everything that just happened? Was it all okay?”

  She pulled back just enough so she could look him in the eye. “I think so.”

  “We just had our first fight, I think. How did it go for you?” he asked, staring at her mouth again.

  “I think it went okay.”

  “I'm probably going to want to kiss you again.”

  “Oh, really?” She looked so adorably confused he almost laughed out loud.

  “Yes, really.” He grinned and was relieved to see her smile in return. “And I'm going to want to know more about you. And you're going to get to know more about me. Don't look so scared. You can trust me.”

  “Everyone says that.”

  Sway felt his cockiest smile take up residence on his face even as something protective in him made itself known. He would do anything to keep her safe. The sensation was new and empowering. “It's a good thing I have a lot of experience being unlike everyone else. I look forward to proving that to you.”

  Chapter 16

  Carve Your Heart

  Ryan hardly tasted her food, that's how aware she was of Sway sitting beside her. His hands on her, his body heat mingling with her own. His voice stroking the tiny nerves in her ears that awakened something intense in her head.

  And in her heart.

  They had been playing footsy with their attraction. She'd been keeping him at arm's length (not successfully), and she was suddenly all too aware that she wasn't doing either of them any favors.

  If she expected him to be open with her, she was going to have to reciprocate.

  Her failed engagement being one of the more important things that she had shared so far.

  But it wasn't as simple as just telling a story. It was impossible to state facts and hope for the other person to understand all the feelings that went along with it. Which is why Ryan had decided a long time ago to just leave feelings out of it. Not all feelings, just the important ones. The ones that meant she'd get hurt.

  Could someone relay those types of feelings to someone else? Could she properly and accurately describe them without coming across as dramatic or immature? And weren't feelings a sign of immaturity anyway? Weren't they the fossil fuels of childish dreams and ill-conceived notions?

  Weren't they just another way to get exactly what you didn't want?

  “Where'd you go?” Sway's whisper in her ear caused goosebumps to erupt on her arms and she couldn't stop the shiver that came with them. He ran a solid hand over her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  “Huh?” Ryan asked, obviously the dignified response.

  Sway chuckled and pressed his lips to her temple where he held them for a minute. “You're lost in that complicated head again. You don't have to come out. But you could let me in.”

  Ryan took a deep breath and found her body leaning heavily against his sturdy one. “I'm a little scared about how all of this is happening. I worry that I'll think we're in a place we're not and I'll say something and you'll hear the wrong thing instead of the right thing. And then what if you just go away? And I'm stuck holding all of these new things we created together? Because that's what a relationship is. When you meet someone new, you create a whole new existence. Almost like its own person. And it can be too heavy for one person to carry all on their own.”

  She was rambling. But he wanted in and “in” looked a lot like this. Disjointed and interconnecting thoughts that stayed more in the realm of speculation than having any sort of solid conclusions to work with. Everything on the inside was fluid and flexible. Until it had something solid to mold to on the outside, it would constantly be shifting in the meanwhile.

  “I mean, it's like we were already moving at light-speed. But now it's like we went through a wormhole. I'm a little discombobulated and lost. I don't know if any of my instruments are working. Is navigation online? Can it be trusted? What if the readings are all incorrect because of the new galaxy that we've entered. Up could be down and left could be right. There's no way to tell.”

  Sway's arms around her tightened and he rested his cheek against the top of her head.

  “Ride with me today.” It was a question even though it came out like a statement. His voice was gentle, unhurried.

  “Okay,” she said, wondering if he was worried. If he'd heard all the crazy she'd just spewed all over him.

  “I don't—I don't have a lot to say to all of that. But I like it. And I understand it.”

  Ryan's heart turned over and knocked on her sternum as if to say, “Dude! He likes us!” Even as her head said, “Ha! No one understands us.”

  Sway may have heard them arguing because he chuckled and said, “No worries, sassy pants. I've got both eyes open.”

  ***

  Day three on the road of the most ridiculous date Ryan had ever been on and she was ready to wake up. Because there was no way this was real.

  She'd tucked her laptop away and instead sat quietly in the middle seat, Sway beside her. Like, right beside her. His lips kept making short trips to her neck and her ear to whisper humorous remarks and observations. He stayed close without being overbearing. Flitting in and out of her personal space like a flirtatious songbird. Almost as if he was too afraid to land and find himself in fresh danger.

  She hoped that wasn't true.

  In a very short amount of time, he'd become incredibly important to her. But how could someone be that important that quickly?

  That happened to be the discussion of the moment, weirdly enough.

  “I don't know,” Mike was saying from the front passenger seat, “I always thought it took about three years to really get to know someone.”

  “No way,” Blake disagreed from the back seat. “I think you can know everything you need to know about someone based on one road trip.”

  Mike craned his neck around and frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe. I just know that I'm still learning so much about Clarke even now. Through birthdays and different career moves.”

  “Obviously,” Blake sniffed. “But those things are the kind of things you guys get to learn together. I love shit like that. The growing and the discovering.” He slapped a hand on the seat back as he leaned forward. “I've known Lu
cy practically my whole life. I just recently learned that she does not respond well to snakes in the kitchen sink.”

  Ryan let out a short laugh and Blake heard her. He tapped her shoulder to get her to turn around.

  “Picture this: I walk into the house and hear my wife yelling in a deep voice, like a man. I go into the kitchen and she's standing on a chair holding the shotgun pointed right at the sink.”

  “That woman scares the crap out of me,” Sway said with a head shake. “What is it with her and guns?”

  Blake just laughed.

  “I agree with the whole three year thing,” Harrison joined in. “Zelda just had a birthday. I was not prepared.”

  Sway grinned. “Did the nerd girl have a good day?”

  Harrison shook his head. “I ruined the whole thing. She had this big romantic thing all planned out, and I thought she'd like it more if we went to a hockey game—”

  Sway's head jerked a little. “A hockey game? Really?”

  Harrison's face turned red. “She had mentioned the week before that she'd never been to one and so I thought it would be a cool surprise. I was wrong. She's not against going to a game, but she really didn't like having to cancel her whole day of—” Harrison's eyebrows went up as he snapped his mouth shut. “Stuff. Regular nerd girl... stuff.”

  “How about you, Luke?” Mike asked to take the focus off of Harrison's almost TMI. “Do you think you know Lenny yet?”

  Ryan caught the reflection of a lopsided smile in the rear view mirror. “The moment I saw her for the first time in the airport, I knew she was the kind of woman to mess up my way of thinking. The first time she rolled her eyes at Sway was the moment I fell in love.” He waited for the small eruption of laughter to quiet before added. “But that woman is full of more surprises than I could count. I don't think I'll ever feel like I've completely uncovered all of her mysteries.”

  Ryan's stomach did a little tingle. That was the kind of thing writers salivated over. Was it possible that these men were even real? Did they really go “all in” with their women as much as they appeared? And where did that put Sway? Where did he fit into all of this?

  Sway's arm dropped over the top of her shoulders and she looked his direction. But his gaze was focused out the front window. Ryan followed his sight line and saw a sea of brake lights.

  “What's going on?” he asked, voice deep and controlled.

  “Looks like an accident,” Luke responded calmly, already moving into the outside lane and slowing the big vehicle.

  They passed a cluster of emergency workers and two cars in the ditch. Ryan tried not to rubberneck too badly, but it was in her nature. She was a curious person.

  After they had cleared the accident and the road way opened up again, Sway lifted his arm from her shoulders and rested it against the seat back.

  She didn't say anything, but she did, ever so slightly, ease closer to him so that their thighs touched. Luke reached over and turned the volume dial so that the sound of Tom Petty filled the interior. She let out a contented hum along with the song.

  “Are you happy?” Sway asked in her ear. The feel of his warm breath so intimately close to her brain and her thoughts caused her eyes to fluttered closed and smile reflexively.

  “Very.”

  His lips gently brushed the spot just below her earlobe and she shivered. He chuckled as his fingers threaded into her hair at her crown.

  Maybe it took three years to get to know someone. Maybe she was reading too much into all the little things he was saying and doing. Maybe she should go back to being paranoid and suspicious and unhappy because it was safer.

  Or maybe she should go ahead and allow herself to feel the simple things being with Sway had reminded her of. Things she had somehow been missing. Like the color of asphalt out of a tinted window, or the smell of aftershave on a man who didn't want to be anywhere but beside her. Or the feel of the air on her skin in the early morning hours of waking.

  She remembered this Ryan. The one she had been back before betrayal and heartache had closed her inside her self-made tower. She'd been dizzily optimistic once. Not stupid, but dangerously—idealistically—naive. She'd been a poet; a hopeful, nonsensical dreamer who really believed that love conquered all.

  She still wrote that way. She was always careful to give her heroines backbones and happy endings. She lived carefully and vicariously through her characters. Her stories had become her confessions and her diary and her secret world of “what-ifs” and “never agains.”

  But at the heart of her was still a woman with an artist's spirit and a will to really live.

  Was it Sway's rebellious energy that had opened up the windows in her soul and let in the fresh air? Maybe.

  Or maybe she was just done sleeping.

  And it was time to wake up.

  Chapter 17

  Free

  They might as well have been alone.

  The highway stretched out before them, open and full of promise and sunshine. The same things that Ryan's smile held, incidentally.

  At the last rest stop, Luke and Sway had swapped places, and Ryan moved into the passenger seat recently vacated by Mike, who decided he was going to ride with Clarke for a while.

  The interior of the Expedition had fallen silent as one by one, the remaining band members dropped off to sleep.

  Sway had missed this. The open road, the unknown in all of its glory beckoning them through the mile markers and the little towns along the way. He liked traveling by bus, and he enjoyed the larger audiences and the fact that they didn't all have to share one hotel room anymore.

  But nothing felt like the freedom of this.

  Sway glanced to his left and felt his chest fill up with a combination of trepidation and peace. Ryan had the window open and was resting one bent arm on the sill, her chin on her arm. Her blonde hair was dancing around her in the wind, as if to taunt anyone to try and claim her as their own. She was a beam of sunlight, floating and shining and delicate. Every time he touched her, it shocked him that he could. That she didn't disappear like a whisper of a perfect day.

  A small voice in the back of his mind told him he should run for cover. That sunny skies could turn cloudy. They could open up and pour heartache and pain in an instant. But the explorer in him was too determined. He'd take the clouds if they came. Because the sunshine after a storm was always the most brilliant.

  Ryan turned her head slightly and caught his gaze. Her smile was immediate and shy, but she didn't look away. She was peacefully relaxed as she openly watched him. He didn't know what she was seeing, but he hoped she saw everything.

  ***

  “You really think it takes three years to get to know someone?” Sway asked Mike as they unloaded the van for their show that night.

  Mike placed his hands on his hips, breathing hard as he looked into the back of the van that Carl had been driving with all of their equipment. Old, beat-up, used equipment. Used in the kind of way that hopefully made the instruments, pedals, and amplifiers feel loved—instead of taken advantage of.

  “I don't know, it's just a theory I have.” Mike rolled his lips in and frowned. “I think everyone is different. Some people are easier to read and predict. But on average, I think it takes about three years' worth of birthdays, anniversaries, career moves, things like that. You see them at their worst and best, and you get a better feel for who they are. Not just who they want to be.”

  Sway turned that thought around in his head, trying to figure out where it fit. It made sense, but he wasn't sure what to do with it.

  “Things are moving fast with the writer, aren't they?” Mike asked. Always just a little bit wiser than the rest of them, Mike never had a problem calling it like he saw it. It used to get under Sway's skin more. Sway preferred to not have his motivations and actions called into question in front of everyone. But as the years had mellowed him and taught him different things, he'd learned to be more open to other perspectives.

  “I keep tr
ying to figure out if it's fast because I want it to be fast, or if it's just supposed to happen like this,” Sway admitted.

  Mike took a deep breath and looked into the bright blue of the sky above them. He finally turned his gaze to Sway. “I can't tell you the right course of action here. Every relationship has its own path. But what I can tell you is, I'm really frickin' proud of you.”

  Sway's eyes widened and he sucked in a shallow breath. His history with Mike and women hadn't been the best. Too many misunderstandings and bad decisions has left a bruise on their past and Sway had come to accept it as always existing. It still didn't change the fact that Mike was a brother to him and he respected him immensely. But he'd come to terms with Mike always thinking of him as a loser and screw-up. And he was okay with that. Because it was mostly true to what Mike knew.

  Mike noticed Sway's reaction and he smiled dimly. “I haven’t always been the fairest with you. I blamed you for the choices of others and that wasn't right. But I've been paying attention, Sway. I see how you are with your boy. I see you being sweet to the girls. But what I've noticed on this trip is that you seem to be...” Mike trailed off as his eyes wandered over Sway's shoulder and then back again. “More you, I guess. You're relaxed and happy. I want that for you. We all do. So if this girl is part of that development, or if she's just coming along at the exact right moment in your life, I have no idea.” He shrugged. “But we've got your back. I've got your back.”

  A shiver ran through Sway and he realized he was very much on the verge of having an emotional reaction. Unexpected didn't cover it.

  That's when Mike pulled him into a hug. They pounded each other on the back extra hard and Sway took a deep breath before stepping back.

  “Thanks, man.”

  Mike nodded silently and then grabbed an amp and headed towards the back door of the bar they were parked behind. Sway took a minute to put his thoughts back together, and then he resumed his task as well. This time with less of a burden than before.