Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)(54)

I pulled in a deep breath. The scent of sea and salt and summer heat filled my senses.

“Wow, that is some house.” I eyed Lyrik from the side before I looked back at the extravagance before us.

This was a part of Lyrik’s life I didn’t see. The money, the fame, and the limelight he barely acknowledged. He was strangely modest when it came to those things. But I had an inkling Savannah had become his own haven. Reprieve from the fans, stardom, and the endless roads and tours and cities that ruled his life.

While here, for a few brief moments, he could settle into some kind of normalcy.

I’d started to count it an honor to share that time with him.

Lyrik pecked me on the mouth. “What…you gonna go and get greedy on me?” It was pure tease. “And here I was thinking you were one of the good ones and not easily impressed.”

“Not easily impressed.” I looked over at him. Seriously. “But I am impressed.”

He frowned.

“By you,” I added, brushing my fingers over his tight T-shirt, across that confusing, conflicting heart pounding underneath.

“You’re so different than anything I expected.” My words came out soft.

He turned toward me, and for a second, he just stared. Then he set a big hand on my cheek. “You are everything I never expected. Never anticipated. Everything I never knew I’d need.”

Sadness flashed across his face. He was giving me a glimpse into something intensely private. Something real. I knew it. I also saw in his expression he didn’t want to need me. And I knew deep in my spirit he would refuse it.

I gave him a shaky smile, before I forced it into something sexy and coy. “Come on before your crew sends out a search party. I do believe Ash is a little needy when it comes to you.”

“Poor guy wouldn’t know his hand from his ass if I wasn’t there to look after him.”

I knocked my shoulder into him, and he hooked his arm around my neck and started to walk.

“And here I thought it was Big Bad Baz that looked over all of you,” I said as I threaded my fingers through his where they hung over my left shoulder. I brought the back of his hand to my lips.

So simple.

So easy.

“Pshh…” He smiled down at me. Affection played around his mouth. “I think we all know better than that. Baz is as soft as they come. Boy has his balls zipped up in the front pocket of Shea’s purse.”

“Is that where you were afraid they’d leave yours, too?”

He laughed, one of those ones that came from his belly, and I burrowed deeper into the warmth of his side.

He led me around the side of the house and toward the beach. Voices drifted along the breeze. Rounding the corner, the ocean spread out in front of us, with sandy dunes piled up in front of it before they gave way to the shore. Tall wisps of wild grasses grew from mounds of sand and the tufts waved in a gentle sway.

Twilight threatened on the horizon. A twist of pink and purple hung low in the sky, a reflection of the sun as it set behind us in the west. Ripples of the easy waves sparkled in the waning day.

My pulse quickened at the sight of the storm brewing in the distance. A toil of building clouds. Heat continued to cling to the humid Georgia air, but it was no longer unbearable as it mixed with the cooling breeze lifted from the ocean.

Raising my face to it, I inhaled. “It’s so beautiful out here.”

“Yeah,” Lyrik agreed with a short nod. “More peace out here than I’ve felt in a long, long time. So different than L.A.”

I slanted my gaze toward him. “Better or worse?”

Maybe I was digging. Looking for that connection. But it was already there, pulling taut between us. Tugging and stirring this yearning within me I’d never before known.

He hiked a shoulder. “Different. L.A. is what I know. The beat of the city. The rush. The road. Bein’ here just feels like an extended vacation. You know when you get to some awesome getaway, a country you’ve always wanted to visit or an island you’d only ever dreamed of, and the second you get there, you’re thinking just how nice it’d be to stay? To say f*ck it and forget all the rest. But you know at the end of the week, you’re going to be packing your bags, boarding a plane, and heading home. It’s unsustainable. The dream sounds real nice. But that’s just what it is. A dream.”

“But you dreamed hard enough that you do what you love. Every day.”

“But that dream comes at the greatest cost.”

My brow pinched. “Sebastian has both. Is living both.”

Lyrik shook his head. “Baz is in limbo. He’ll be at a crossroads soon. You get one or the other. Life doesn’t give you both, and he’s going to have to pick.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

He started to speak, but trailed off when Shea shouted my name.

I looked to where she stood down on the beach, holding Kallie’s hand.

Little Kallie’s voice mixed with hers. Higher and more excited the closer we came. She jumped around at her mother’s side. “Uncle Wyrik…Uncle Wyrik! Are you gonna go swimmin’? It’s way, way, way warm. My daddy already took me and I’m gonna go again. But my mommy said we have to eat first because dinner is almost all done!”

A rush of something sweet rolled through him. Something tender. It didn’t matter how hard this boy was. There was no question in my mind that another part of him was alive beneath the impervious layers he wore on the outside. A place soft, shielded below the calluses. A place reserved for something great waiting to break through.