“Linc helps, but it’s my job… And why the fuck am I explaining myself to you?” Rolling my eyes at him and the situation, I pushed past him. “It’s none of your business.”

Axton

I felt like my insides were itching to get free. That was how it always felt when I was this close to the home I had grown up in. I wanted to claw at my skin, to make this feeling go away, but knew that the only cure was to get as far away as possible.

My parents’ house was just twenty minutes from the farm. Twenty minutes was the only distance that kept me from my mother. Since I’d gotten a letter from my aunt a few years ago, letting me know that my father had passed away—well after he had been buried because my mother hadn’t cared to let me know, this was the closest as I’d come to any contact with any of my family members.

My gut churned at the thought of the cold, nasty bitch that had raised me. Or so she had told me countless times growing up. She hadn’t had much interaction in the process of parenting me, other than to look down her nose at how I wanted to live my life. It had been left up to the two nannies and the housekeeper to take care of me from the day I was born until I was old enough to fend for myself. After that the housekeeper had been the only one to care if I ate enough, came home at a decent hour, or even went to school. My mother had only cared if I was embarrassing her and the family name.

Anthony Xavier Huntington was not supposed to be running around with piercings, tattoos, and wanting to rule to rock world. He was supposed to go to law school, take over the family business, and marry a respectable girl that Sharon Huntington approved of. So when my eighteenth birthday came around, I’d done what would piss Sharon Huntington off the most: changed my name, dyed my hair, got my first tattoo, my first piercing, and joined OtherWorld. Anthony Xavier Huntington became Axton Cage. ‘Cage’ because I was finally out of the fucking cage my mother had tried to keep me in.

At the time, my father had simply shrugged his shoulders and shook his head with a grin on his face. I was nothing like him, but that hadn’t mattered to him. I reminded him of the only person he had ever really cared about—his sister, Tink. Tink, or Tammy as my mother had always insisted on calling her, was one in a million and the only saving grace in my life until I met Emmie. Tink had enrolled me in my first music lesson, and had supported and encouraged me when we realized that I was a musical prodigy. For about ten seconds my mother had supported it too, until she realized that I didn’t want to go to Julliard, instead wanting to make my own path in the rock world.

Julliard was respectable. Becoming a rock star, not so much.

When I had joined OtherWorld, taking over for the vocalist who had left because of some bullshit reason, my mother’s head had nearly exploded with rage. When I told her that we were being signed by one of the most popular managers in the music world, she’d completely disowned me. It hadn’t bothered me. You could seriously get frost bite being too close to Sharon Huntington for very long. But I did regret having to say goodbye to my father and my aunt. My father might not have been the best dad, but he hadn’t been the worst. And my aunt Tink had loved me in her own way, seeing as her only real love was horses.

Lifting my beer, I took a long swallow and glared out into the distance. Everyone who knew me knew that I hated being here, so they knew that I was only here for one reason and one reason only. Dallas. Nothing, abso-fucking-lutely nothing else would have brought me here. The need to be close to her, to breathe in her scent, to hear the sound of her voice and the adorable way she constantly dropped her g’s outweighed this constant itching inside to get away from here.

Blowing out a frustrated sigh, I watched my breath fog in the cold night air. Dallas hadn’t been here three hours and I was already about to blow my top with jealousy over Liam. Damn. I knew that she had to help him, it was why she was here after all. But why the fuck did she have to help him shower? Why did she have to be the one to see him naked? Couldn’t Linc do that?

The only man she needed to see without his clothes on was me.

Behind me the front door opened and just as quickly closed. I kept my eyes on the dark horizon as I felt Wroth sit down in the chair beside me. He had a beer of his own that he set down on the small round table between us. For a good fifteen minutes we just sat there, both of us freezing our asses off, but not seeming to care.

When Wroth finally spoke, the sound of his voice made me jump a little because I hadn’t been expecting it. Wroth’s voice was the deepest voice I had ever heard in my life. Full of gravel and slightly husky, he sometimes scared little kids with it, but it seemed to drive women crazy. He didn’t speak often, and he sure as hell didn’t sing backup in the band. But give the man a guitar and he could make you weep with the pure beauty of the music he made. Between Wroth and Drake, it would be hard to decide who played better because they could both shred like kings. For me, Drake would always be like a brother, but Wroth would always be the man I picked as my bandmate.

“You eat dinner?”

“Nah, man. I’m not hungry.” I lifted my beer to my lips and took another swallow, wishing not for the first time that it was a Corona instead of the brown bottle labels that Wroth seemed to favor so much.

“Dallas, or your ma?”

I shrugged. “A little of both.”

Wroth nodded but didn’t say anything else. That’s what I loved about Wroth so much. Normally he was a man of few words. We sat there in companionable silence until both our beers were gone. When Wroth had drained his, he grumbled a good night and went back inside. I figured that we would be doing that for the duration of our stay at the farm. Wroth didn’t like to drink in front of Marissa so he always drank his beer on the porch.

The tip of my nose was numb and a glance at my iPhone screen told me that it was nearly eleven, but I wasn’t ready to go inside yet. Zipping my parka closed a little more, I stuffed my hands into the pockets and leaned back in the chair.

How long I sat there, trying to empty my mind of all the bullshit that was crowded in my brain, I couldn’t tell. Despite the cold of the January night and the snowflakes slowly adding to what was already on the ground, I was comfortable, and my eyes started to drift closed…

“Ax...?” Warm hands touched my face and I jerked awake. My eyes blinked open and I met a beautiful, clear-blue gaze in the dim lighting coming from the porch light.

Without thinking about it my hands came out of my pockets and covered hers. I expected her to roll her eyes in annoyance, but all that was on her face was concern. “Are you okay?”