Fade Into You (Shaken Dirty #3)(44)
“Is that your way of calling me basic?” he asked, brow raised.
“I’m pretty sure rock gods, by definition, can’t be basic. Not to mention it’s probably in your contract.”
His smile faded. “Yeah, well, a lot of things are in my contract.”
“Including the fact that Bill Germaine can’t bully you into quitting the band. The guys checked.” And so had she, but she couldn’t tell him that, not if she was going to keep her cover as social media director.
A quick flicker of his eyes was the only indication he’d even heard her and she decided not to pursue it. At least not yet…
The next few minutes passed in a companionable silence as Poppy cleaned and sliced up some fruit before setting a platter of it in front of Wyatt. “Eat,” she urged as he looked at the plate like he’d never seen such a thing before. “You need the vitamins.”
“I’m a grown man. Drug and alcohol addiction aside, I do know how to take care of myself, you know.”
Yeah, because she’d seen so much evidence of that in the time she’d been in Austin. No wonder Caleb had sent her down here—Wyatt totally needed a keeper. Not that she said that to him, though. Instead, she just nodded at the plate, telling him, “So prove it.”
He rolled his eyes at her, but as she slapped a slice of butter in a pan and set it on the stove to melt, she noticed that he was dutifully popping a strawberry in his mouth.
Once the butter was melted, she got the eggs and cheese in the pan and within minutes was sliding a slightly lopsided but completely edible omelet onto a plate, along with a couple of slices of whole wheat toast. But when she went to hand said plate to Wyatt, surprise flashed across his face for just a moment.
“Now is not the time to tell me you don’t like cheese omelets,” she informed him as she poured more eggs in the skillet for her own dinner.
“Definitely not what I was going to say,” he answered, and for the first time she realized that there was a red tinge to his cheekbones. She had no idea what she’d said or done to embarrass him, but she kept an eye on him as she cooked—and it was only partly because the slight blush somehow made him even more attractive.
He ate the fruit, but kept looking at the omelet she’d set in front of him like it was an alien life form. And she noticed that he definitely didn’t touch it.
“I was just joking, you know,” she said as she slid a second omelet onto her own plate. “I can totally make you something else if you don’t like eggs.”
“No!” Wyatt all but shouted, then lowered his voice at her look of alarm. “No, no, I like omelets just fine. It’s just…except for Jamison, no one’s ever cooked for me before. Thank you.”
“No one?” she asked curiously.
“Well, my mom, when I was little I guess. But not since I was six.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know what she could say that wouldn’t sound like she pitied him. Especially since she did have a ton of empathy for him—and the small boy he’d once been. Bill Germaine might be a bastard, but he’d always made sure she and Caleb were well cared for. It hurt her that Wyatt obviously hadn’t had the same experience.
As if he sensed that he’d turned the whole conversation into a downer, Wyatt concentrated on keeping the rest of dinner light. He told a couple of really funny stories from before things had gone to hell on the last tour, and even filled her in on why Quinn’s favorite Harley was now a hot pink, bedazzled mess (the answer being because Elise was diabolical and—according to Wyatt—the only woman who had ever been able to handle Quinn).
By the time he moved on to stories about Jamison and Ryder—and how Jared had definitely not taken that whole relationship well—her sides hurt from laughing. She was totally charmed by this new side of Wyatt. He was wry, sarcastic, witty, but somehow also really kind and understanding of his friends’ foibles, and she loved it.
Loved listening to the way his voice changed when he talked about them.
Loved even more the way his eyes turned a soft, swirly, happy blue with no darkness or angst in sight.
It was a rare enough occurrence that she found herself studying him, trying to memorize every detail of this version of Wyatt. Happy Wyatt. She wanted to tuck this picture of him away, wanted to hold it deep inside of herself for the rainy days she knew were coming.
But eventually the food ran out and so did the stories. She could see Wyatt kind of come back to himself, could see the moment he remembered he’d quit the band and would no longer have access to all the funny little things that happened between them. It was like the light inside him had been extinguished and his whole being plunged back into darkness.
And though she knew it was exactly the wrong thing to do, she couldn’t help resting a hand on his knee as she asked, “Are you okay?”
Those three words were all it took for his eyes to go dull and his face to close completely up. Not that she was surprised—every time she’d tried to have any kind of meaningful conversation with him at all, Wyatt had used sex to distract her. And himself.
And much as she’d like to take him into the bedroom and let him have his way with her—or have her way with him (she was flexible like that)—she couldn’t just ignore what had happened today. Couldn’t just let it go, not when it was obviously still bothering him. And not when she was terrified her father’s bullshit would set him right back to using.