Devoured: A Novel(8)

She’s silent for such a long time that I have to pull the phone from my ear to make sure the call hasn’t dropped. It hasn’t. The moment of Tori inserting dramatic silence gives me time to load my chicken pot pie and a Coke on a breakfast tray. I start upstairs, toward the bedroom I slept in as a kid, before Tori says at last, “And that’s it?”

I pause at the top of the steps, supporting my weight against the bannister. There’s a major part of me just dying to confide in her about how Lucas had made me feel in that café, but the other part warns me not to touch that subject at all. Hadn’t Tori been the person I bawled to after the disastrous night with Lucas. Not to mention when I found out Your Toxic Sequel never wanted me on the set of any of their music videos again and thought my career was ruined.

If I told her I still felt the slightest bit of attraction towards Lucas she’d be in Nashville on the first available flight to slap some sense into me.

“Well, I did tell him to go f*ck himself,” I say. It’s somewhat true, even if it had been uttered after Lucas had deliberately frustrated me.

She claps her hands slowly. “Bad ass, Jensen. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Ugh, she has no idea.

“Look, I better run, but I’m proud of you, Si, for not letting Lucas run all over you and telling him off. I’ll text or call you tonight.”

But I feel like crap when I hang up the phone and walk into my bedroom, closing the door quietly behind so I won’t wake Gram. With my appetite suddenly a thing of the past, I leave the tray sitting on my dresser.

It’s comforting to see that Gram’s left my room the same as it was in high school and college. The same furnishings, same pink and orange hibiscus bed spreads and Have-A-Day posters.

I curl up in the fetal position on my old bed, burying my face in pillows that smell like fabric softener, and listen to the bitter sound of nothingness in a house that I’ll miss as much as my grandmother. Silent prayers roll through my mind for the next couple weeks to be easy. And more than anything, I hope today is my very last encounter with Lucas Wolfe because I never want to feel that dull ache in my chest again.





CHAPTER THREE





My hope of avoiding Lucas Wolfe is nothing more than wishful thinking.

Not only is he dominating the majority of my thoughts, but he’s suddenly everywhere I turn—like my iPod, on a random playlist that plays by some freak accident; on Fuse TV where they’ve dedicated a whole day to Your Toxic Sequel’s best videos; on my favorite local radio station giving an interview, his voice low and intimate, like sex over the airwaves.

And the next day—a little less than one day after our run-in at Alice’s Café—Lucas is at Gram’s house, too. I don’t realize he’s come by until I hear the sound of him talking with other people outside. There’s a luxury SUV—Cadillac—parked in the driveway, and a white truck behind it with some type of logo written on the side.

At first I have no intention of letting him know I’m here—my grandmother is out running errands, and he, along with whoever is with him, haven’t tried to gain access to the inside of the house. I follow the muffled sounds of their voices until I’m able to hear bits and pieces of what they’re saying. And this is when I totally freak out.

“Demolish this section of . . .”

“. . . completely do away with for the recording studio.”

“. . . better off just knocking down the whole damn house and starting over with what you want.”

For the better part of a minute, I’m breathing heavily at the thought of my childhood home being ripped apart for the sake of a recording studio. Even though I’m dressed in a too-small set of PJs I found stuffed in a bottom drawer in my room—Seth still hasn’t brought my luggage or called me back for that matter—and despite the fact I have pea green spot corrector dotted on various areas of my face, I shove my bare feet into a pair of my brother’s oversized boots that I find in the foyer. Outside, I let the voices guide me. Lucas is at the back of the house along with his entourage—no other rock stars or a bodyguard like he’d have in L.A., but two men in contractor shirts and a tall woman with dark eyes and black and blue hair. She’s rapidly taking notes of everything being said on a tablet.

It’s his assistant, Kylie.

I remember her well, and she must know who I am because when our eyes meet, she mouths a silent “Oh” just before breaking into a huge grin. I dart my eyes away from her before she succeeds in making me feel even more awkward. It won’t take much for me to lose my nerve right now, and if it happens, I’d prefer to dig my foot halfway into Lucas’s ass first.