Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2)(10)

That bed.

That cold, empty bed is the reason I’ve spent the last week of nights under my piano. The sheets, void of Kai’s warmth, of the small curvy shape of her body, hold no appeal. The loneliness of that bed chases me into my dreams, and not even in sleep can I escape the fact that she’s not here. Kai was in my house just a few weeks, but it only took one night for me to crave her beside me every morning when I wake up.

I leave a trail of dirty clothes on the bathroom floor on my way to the jets of life coming from the showerhead. Rivulets rush over my head and down my body, washing away all my defenses and all my distractions, leaving me nothing to keep my mind off how royally I f*cked things up. Nothing to hide this deep, raw, self-inflicted wound that’s been bleeding out ever since Kai left LA without a word.

I rest my forehead against the water-slick tile and bang one fist into the wall. All I want is Kai. I miss the way we laughed together and talked so easily the hours felt like minutes. God, I miss her hot-honey voice and the sweet taste of her. Feeling her moving under me, our bodies in perfect synch. I miss being inside of her, feeling the desperate grip of her body around me.

Shit. Now I’m hard and my own hand’s the only thing gripping me. I tighten my fingers around my cock, ready to handle this the only way I know how until Kai comes back to me.

“Let me get that for you,” Jimmi says at my back, her hand reaching around to hold me tightly.

I jerk away, turning to face her. What the hell? She’s in my damn shower wearing nothing but lust and mischief.

“Jimmi, go.” I grit the words out, pointing to the opening leading out of the shower. “Now.”

“Come on, Rhys.”

She reaches for me again, this time stepping closer until our bodies are flush and her naked tits press into my chest. Celibacy isn’t exactly a habit for me, so of course my dick gets harder. It’s what it does. She feels me swelling in her hand and grins up at me.

“Somebody’s on my side. Maybe you don’t remember much about the night we had together, but your dick sure does.”

I don’t want her. I don’t want this. I’ve messed things up enough with Kai without adding this to the list of shit she might not forgive me for. I met Jimmi on my first day at the School of the Arts, and we’ve been through a lot, but she’s not worth losing Kai. Nothing is. I shove at her shoulder, maybe harder than I intended because she stumbles back against the wall, almost falling. I grab her arm to steady her, but she captures my hand and drags it to her breast, the nipple pressing into my palm.

“Nothing’s holding you back, Rhys,” she whispers so low I barely hear it over the water.

I jerk my hand away and step out of the shower. If she won’t go, I will. I grab a towel and tie it around my hips before turning to face her. She’s still standing under the spray of water darkening her hair. She runs her fingers over her breasts and slides them down her stomach to stroke between her legs.

“Rhyson, come on.” Jimmi drops her head back, heavily-lidded eyes snaring mine through the rising steam. “You want me to handle this myself?”

“That’s up to you.” I turn away from this scene before my body does something every other part of me will regret. “Be downstairs in five minutes ready to get outta here, or you get no song from me.”

I stalk off to my closet, quickly snagging briefs, jeans and a t-shirt. When I come back through to brush my teeth, Jimmi’s gone. A relieved breath pushes from my chest. This is beyond awkward. I feel sick, nauseated by the memory of her touching me, of her breast under my hand. I would never cheat on Kai, but do I tell her what just happened? Does it matter? Would she care? Is it cheating when she won’t even return my calls? I could even rationalize that technically Kai walked out on me and ended things, but there’s no rationalizing with my heart that insists she’s it, and no one else has the right to touch me. If she were in a shower naked with some other guy who touched her like that, I wouldn’t care if we’d been apart for two months or two years. I’d dice him into microscopic chunks, and f*ck Kai blind until her body remembered nothing but me.

The closer I get to the music room, the slower my steps become. I don’t want to have this conversation with Jimmi. Actually, we’ve had this conversation before, but it didn’t take. I need it to take. I need for what just happened upstairs to never happen again, or I’ll have to cut her out of my life as ruthlessly as I cut out my parents.

Here’s the problem. And to say it aloud sounds dickish, so I’ll just say it to myself. Marlon’s Uncle Jamal put it best. I think he’s the one who got my best friend categorizing * in the first place. Uncle Jamal is the OG. Compton’s original arbiter of *. He said most girls think they have that magic *, but one day you meet that one girl who makes you realize just how basic everyone else has been. And that’s Kai. And it wasn’t even the *. It was a look. It was her laugh. It was the way she smells. The way she carries herself. The way she cares about people . . . about me. The way she works hard and expects only what she earns. It’s a dozen things about her that make her not basic. She was Taj Mahal before I even slept with her. I knew she wasn’t basic. I knew she would shatter my world and I’d never be the same. And that’s what happened. And maybe I f*cked it up, but I’m gonna fix it.

And there’s no way I’m explaining that I slipped and fell into some basic * while she was on tour.