Cannon (A Step Brother Romance #3) Read online

  "You wanted me to serenade you, didn't you?"

  Addy laughs. "I didn't mean it," she says. "Sit down."

  "Not on your life, sweet cheeks," I say as she covers her face in mock embarrassment. "Don't worry, I'll dedicate it to you."

  "Hendrix, no!" she protests, but she's laughing, and she leans back in her chair with her legs kicked out in front of her, teal flip-flops on her feet, and tucks the brim of her hat down over her face. I watch her flag down the waitress and get another shot of tequila, that she hold up at me in a "cheers" gesture.

  When the music starts, I can practically hear her groan from the stage. Okay, I can't really, but her reaction is priceless. She buries her face in her hands as I take the microphone. "This is for my best friend, who should just admit that my voice is much more amazing than hers will ever be."

  I belt out the lyrics to Addy's first hit, "Country Sweetheart," the candy-coated pop country song that made her famous. And by "belt out," I mean I do my version of singing, which falls somewhere on the tolerability scale between nails on a chalkboard and the most annoying sound in the world. But I know all those goddamned lyrics, even though I wasn't into that bullshit when I was in high school. That damn song worked its way into my brain and took up residence there, way back then.

  Just like Addy did.

  The other people in the bar think it's funny, that I'm doing some kind of serenade for my girlfriend, and Addy covers her face with the brim of her hat as people clap along. When I get back to the table, I'm pretty sure Addy is going to say we need to get the hell out of there before she's recognized, since we're skating on thin ice, but she doesn't. She doesn't touch me either, doesn't make any public display of affection that would wind up on one of the gossip sites, just laughs and shakes her head. "Nice song choice."

  "Thought you'd like it."

  "I'd rather every copy of that song were just burned," she says. "If I never have to sing it again, I'll be more than happy with my life."

  "What would you rather sing?"

  Addy traces her finger absently around her glass again and shrugs, not looking at me. "I don't know."

  "Bullshit," I say, my voice just a little too loud. "I know you. You haven't stopped writing songs."

  Addy looks at me. "Maybe I haven't," she says. "But the label will never let me sing them."

  I nod at the stage. "You should go up there and sing one of them."

  "It's for karaoke."

  "So?" I ask. "They have a band here. There's a guitar right over there."

  "They're personal," she says.

  I shrug. "Suit yourself," I say. "But the old Addy would have grown a pair and gone up there."

  "You're trying to bait me."

  "Is it working?"

  Addy sighs heavily. "Not at all."

  Between songs, the silence is suddenly deafening and Addy looks up. "Fine," she says. "Fuck it."

  "That's what I like to hear."

  "Me growing a pair?" she asks, standing up. I want to reach out and grab her, pull her onto my lap, but I don't, conscious of being in public with her.

  "Nah, you saying 'fuck'," I say.

  Addy leans close, her hair spilling down around her face, and whispers in my ear. "Fuck fuck fuck," she says. "That's what I want to do to you later." Then she walks up to the stage, leaving me with the biggest raging boner in the history of the world.

  She talks to someone beside the stage, who nods a lot and then rushes to grab her the guitar. Then she pulls a barstool to the middle of the stage where the microphone is. The bar is filled with conversation that doesn't quiet even when Addy starts to play the first few notes on the guitar. The low rumble of drunk conversations rolls through the room, refusing to be silenced. Until Addy opens her mouth and sings the first note.

  And then, it's like everything in the place stops. People pause, conversations go mute, and it's like the way it is every time Addy sings. She's got that thing, that special-ness, that tells you you're in the presence of greatness. She sings softly, her voice lower and breathier than when I've heard her sing in the studio.

  I think I stop breathing, listening to her sing one of her songs. I tell myself that they're just lyrics, words she's singing and nothing more, that they're not directed at me in any way. But it's hard to think that when she's looking the way she is, at me no less, singing the way she is.

  ELEVEN MONTHS AGO

  "How could you?" I scream. The tears well up in my eyes, and I blink furiously, attempting to keep calm, trying to keep from picking up the nearby vase and throwing it across the room at my mother, letting it shatter into a million pieces all over the marble floors.

  "I don't understand what you're so upset about," she says. "Hendrix is fine. He came through the hospital, but he's in one piece. He wasn't even injured. It was ages ago, anyway. You had a tour, and you didn't need to be bothered with that kind of news. What a downer, right?"

  I clench my hands, my fingernails digging into my skin, and focus on the pain. I count, taking deep breaths to steady myself even though I feel like I'm falling apart, fragmenting into a thousand little pieces right here in front of her.

  "You two aren't even close," she says. "I fail to see what the big deal is."

  "Hendrix was in the hospital," I say. "You don't think I might want to know that?"

  "He was fine," she says. "We called him on the phone. He was doing some -- I don't know -- Marine stuff, and had to travel somewhere or something. He did not want us to visit."

  "He -- he said that?"

  "He specifically mentioned you by name, Addison," she says. "I was trying not to be mean."

  "I don't believe you," I say, my voice breaking. Hendrix was back in the United States. Hendrix was in the hospital. He was in an explosion in Afghanistan. The pieces of news come flying at me, one at a time.

  Hendrix didn't want to see me.

  Me, specifically.

  My mother shrugs and flips a page in her planner. "I don't know what kind of bad blood the two of you have between you, but you really need to start acting like adults," she says. "Now, we need to talk about the interview tomorrow. The label wants you to plug the tour and..."

  Her voice drifts away, becoming quieter and quieter as the thoughts swirl in my head.

  Hendrix was back.

  He could have died.

  He didn't want to see me.

  I hear my mother protest as I stand up, stumbling to the bathroom and barely closing the door before I collapse into tears, a mixture of anger and sadness and overwhelming relief.

  Anger that Hendrix didn't want to see me.

  Sadness that his squad was killed.

  Relief that he's alive.

  PRESENT DAY

  "Do you think anyone knew it was me?" I ask. Hendrix has my hand and he's pulling me down the beach until we're far away from the bar, the only ones out on the sand at this time of night.

  Hendrix laughs. "Yes," he says. "You're lucky we got out of there quickly. That video is going to be everywhere tomorrow. And we are going to be fucked, you know."

  The tequila in my belly makes me warm and brave and foolish and I know, but I don't care. I spin around in circles on the beach, my arms wide. I'm spinning because I'm half-drunk, on tequila or love, I'm not sure which. And because I'm happy. And, most of all, because Hendrix is here. He's here, with me, on a beach in South Carolina, after I thought I'd never see him again. And that is something. "But tonight, we're going to fuck," I say.

  Hendrix laughs. "You're practically cursing like a Marine now," he says. "I'm afraid I'm rubbing off on you." He pulls me against his hardness, and slides his hands over my ass.

  "We could go back to the hotel and you could really rub off on me," I say.

  "Or, we could stay out here," Hendrix says, reaching for the button on my pants. I laugh and smack his hands away.

  "Out here?" I ask, thinking of photographers and tabloid photos of us on the beach. "That's just what I need."

  Hendrix's mouth is