Collide Vol. 3 (Club Prive): Alpha Billionaire Romance Read online

  That didn't mean I would go along with it. Waiting to plan meant I'd have more time to figure out how to get out. For now though, I just stuck my hands in my pockets and headed out to the car. It'd been a long day, and we wouldn't be back in the city until late. I just wanted to sleep on the ride home and not have to think about the mess I left.

  I'd seen all of the voicemails, missed calls, and text messages. Mom, Carrie, and Bryne. And I'd ignored all of them. While the guys had heard me talk about my mom before, they didn't know I lived with her, and they definitely didn't know that I was still seeing Bryne.

  I doubted that would be the case when I got back though. She might not have been mad at me for leaving her last night, but if Mom and Carrie had told her that I wasn't answering any calls or texts, then she knew something was up. I'd fucked up enough that I wouldn't blame her for saying I'd used up my last chance. And even if she wasn't as pissed as she should've been, there was no way Carrie would want me anywhere near her niece now.

  I couldn't deny wondering if Mom had met Bryne. And what they'd thought of each other. I was sure Bryne would love my mom. Pretty much everyone did. Mom hadn't met any of the girls I'd been with before, so I had no way of knowing what her thoughts would be about Bryne. If she'd see the same amazing woman I did.

  Well, not exactly the same since there was no way she'd know anything about of the sex part of it. She knew I wasn't a virgin, but there were some things a guy didn't talk about with his mom.

  S&M was definitely one of them.

  I'd never let myself think about taking anyone home to meet her before. I wasn't one of those guys who said I'd never have a girlfriend or anything like that, but I hadn't let myself think that far ahead, especially after Mom's accident. I'd never met anyone who made me want to think that far ahead.

  Until Bryne.

  As much as I'd insisted she wasn't anything but a good lay, and as many times as I told myself that I needed to stay away from her, she was the only thing I thought about the entire way back to the city. I cursed, knowing I’d have to deal with this sooner rather than later.

  I just didn't know how.

  Chapter Three

  Bryne

  My costume fitting went well, and I loved how easy it made it to slip into character, but I wasn't able to truly enjoy any of it. And it was all Dax's fault. After my fitting yesterday, I'd taken lunch back to Carrie and Annabeth, then went back home to work on my lines. At least, that was the plan. It was almost impossible to concentrate on memorizing anything. I kept thinking about Dax and where he was and what he was doing. Every so often, I'd grab my phone, thinking that I'd missed something. Of course, there was nothing there, and I'd start worrying all over again.

  When Carrie came home, I took one look at her face, and she hadn't even needed to shake her head. I'd barely eaten dinner and then spent the rest of the night staring at my ceiling, trying to tell myself that the universe was sending me a sign, telling me to stay away from Dax, that he'd only hurt me.

  At one point in time, I may or may not have told the universe to go fuck itself.

  Out loud.

  I didn't sleep much at all, and the few times I managed to, I had strange, chaotic dreams that left me disoriented when I woke. Then it took forever for me to get back to sleep, only to have the process repeat itself. By the time my alarm was ready to go off, I knew I'd be depending on lots of caffeine to keep me awake.

  Even after two cups of Cuban espresso, I was having a hard time concentrating. It wasn't so bad that anyone really noticed since we were trying to go through things without scripts for the first time, but I could feel that I was a bit off. When we broke for lunch, Todd followed me to where I'd left my purse and coat.

  “What's going on?”

  Okay, so someone had noticed.

  “Weird weekend,” I said as I pulled on my coat.

  “Do you have lunch plans?”

  I shook my head.

  He held out his arm. “Then you and I are going to go somewhere quiet so you can tell me all about this weird weekend, and what has your pretty little head all messed up.”

  I hooked my arm through his, too tired to argue. And if I was being completely honest, I didn't really want to. I was tired, emotionally as well as physically. After having met Dax's mother yesterday, I felt guilty even thinking about going to Carrie with any of this. She didn't need to be reassuring me when I wasn't even sure I deserved to be feeling much of anything at all. Todd was different. He wasn't just a friend. He didn't have any personal stake in this, which meant he could help me figure out whatever the hell it was I needed to figure out.

  There was a quiet little bakery around the corner from the theater, a short enough walk that we barely had enough time to get cold despite the brutal wind. Rich smells greeted us when we stepped inside. Cinnamon, fresh bread, various cheeses. Garlic, basil. Other spices I couldn't name. All sorts of different ones that shouldn't have smelled so great together. Then there were the soups. French onion. Tomato. And according to the posted menu, wedding soup was the special today. A wonderful cacophony of aromas.

  My stomach growled, and I remembered how long it had been since I'd eaten anything substantial. The two of us were the only ones there, so we went straight to the front. My mouth started to water as I followed Todd to a table near the window less than ten minutes later. I'd probably gotten too much food, but it all looked so good.

  I was halfway through an amazingly gooey cinnamon roll before I finally slowed down and let myself start to relax a bit. I hadn't realized how much I needed to eat. I'd never been the sort of girl who starved herself so she could fit into some unrealistic mold. I was the kind who responded to stress by not eating...except when food was this amazing.

  “All right, Bryne, time to start talking.” Todd dipped a chunk of seven-grain bread into his soup. “What's going on? You're all over the place.”

  I sighed. “Dax and I went out to eat Tuesday after rehearsal. Then to a movie.” I glanced up, then back down to my plate. “And then we went to a hotel.”

  “Did he force you?”

  Todd's voice was tight, his expression tense as my head jerked up to look at him.

  “No, of course not. He wouldn't do that.” I might not know Dax well, but he was consistent when it came to making sure I was okay with whatever we were doing.

  Todd's expression eased. “Was the sex bad?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Seriously? You go from him forcing me, to the sex being bad?”

  “So it wasn't?”

  I glared at him. “No, Todd, it wasn't bad. It was amazing. Toe-curling, in fact.”

  “Then what did he do?”

  I went through the whole thing, including what I hadn't told Carrie and Annabeth. Things like the completely mixed up way I felt about what was happening with Dax.

  “So you still don't know where he is?” Todd asked when I was finally done.

  “Nope.” The word left a bitter taste in my mouth. “And I don't even feel like I have the right to be pissed when he hasn't even called his mom.”

  “Do you care about him?”

  I leaned forward, resting my head on my hands. I could feel Todd's eyes on me and knew he'd wait for an answer. “Yes, but it's not like I really have any idea what that means. Like I said before, he's the first guy I've ever been with.”

  “Hon, it doesn't matter if he's the first guy or the twenty-seventh guy.” Todd's voice was gentle. “When you know, you know.”

  I looked up. “I told you about my grandma, how she thought she was in love with Chauncey Manning, and then he left her. Didn't even care that she was pregnant. She never got over it. She might've known how she felt, but he apparently didn't get the memo.”

  “Do you think it would've made a difference to how she felt if she'd known he'd leave?”

  “I don't think she would've slept with him,” I said.

  “It might've changed her actions, but do you think it would've changed how she felt?”

&n
bsp; I took a moment to consider the question. I'd never had a close relationship with my mom's parents. Grandma had never forgiven Mom for marrying a boxer instead of trying to “make something of herself.” I'd always thought it was a bit hypocritical of her since my parents had married for love. They'd been poor, but they'd stayed together and in love until the day he died. As I'd gotten older and found out more about the circumstances surrounding my mom's conception, I realized that Grandma had been jealous of what my mom had. No matter what her motivations were though, it meant I didn't have much of a relationship with my grandmother.

  But that didn't mean I couldn't put myself in her place. How would I feel if I found out that Dax had just blown me off completely? If he'd contacted his mom some time yesterday and told her that he didn't want me to know where he was? Would I regret the time I'd had with him if this was how things ended? If I discovered that the man I'd given myself to wasn't the man I thought he was?

  Even if all of that happened, I might regret having slept with him, but I didn't think it would change how I felt. Confused, yes, but I couldn't deny that there was something far more complicated than I liked going on here.

  “I can't think straight around him,” I confessed softly. “I mean it's like my brain completely short-circuits when it comes to him. In my head, I know we're supposed to be casual and that it's not a good idea to get involved with him. Then I see him, and all I want...”

  I let the statement trail off.

  “All you want is to jump his bones?”

  I laughed, grateful for the break in tension. “Yeah, that's about right. And trust me, if you'd had sex with him, that's all you'd want to do too.”

  He joined in my laughter but had a question at the end of it. “But it's not only sex, is it?”

  I shook my head. “It'd be easier if that's all it was.”

  “Tell me about it,” Todd said, rolling his eyes. “Sometimes sex makes things more complicated, but there are times when it's a lot simpler when that's all there is to worry about.”

  I finally let myself voice one of the things that had been worrying me. “Am I going too fast? I mean, I understand that I can't control my feelings for him, but am I rushing something that shouldn't be rushed?”

  Todd raised an eyebrow. “Didn't you sleep with him like two days after you guys met?”

  I flipped up my middle finger as he laughed. “I'm not talking about the physical part of it. I'd already been thinking about casual sex instead of relationships before I even got here, so I went into that with my eyes wide open.”

  “You mean emotionally.”

  I nodded. “Maybe I'm not wired to have sex with no strings attached, or maybe it's just him. What I do know is that every time I'm with him, he gets deeper.”

  The fact that Todd didn't focus on my unintentional innuendo told me that he understood that I was being serious.

  “So you're asking if I think you need to back off so you don't get any more emotionally involved than you already are.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And you want my advice?”

  I gave him a wry look. “As long as it's not to follow my heart, go for it.”

  “It's out of your hands right now,” he said, looking at me with so much sympathy and caring that tears pricked my eyes. “There's nothing you can do except wait for Dax to make his move. Either he’ll show up and give you some excuse about what he's been doing so you can decide whether or not to forgive his ass. Or you'll hear that he's being a bastard, and you can move on.”

  I dropped my face in my hands. “So your great advice is to do nothing?”

  He pulled them away, clasping them between his own. “My advice is to focus on what you have right in front of you, and if the shit hits the fan, know that I'll be there to kick his ass if you need me.”

  It was good advice. I'd been trying to put everything with Dax out of my head, but it hadn't been working at all. Now that I'd spoken to Todd about it, admitted the reality of the feelings I was struggling with, I felt lighter. Not really better, since I still didn't know that he was okay, but lighter.

  The feeling stayed with me as Todd and I walked back to the theater. We arrived at the same time as August Dumont, the other male actor in Collide. He was attractive, in a rough sort of way. Not like Dax with his tattoos and piercings, but more like those athletes who just had so much charisma that it took them to a different level. Appropriate since he was portraying a baseball player whose career was ruined by the same tragedy that brought the five of us together. Since the script didn't say what that tragedy was, we'd been discussing it among ourselves since the first day. Earlier today, August had joked about us keeping track of all of our ideas.

  “Ready to get back to it?” August asked as he fell in step next to me.

  “I am.” I was surprised to find myself answering honestly.

  “She's just looking forward to making out with me,” Todd said with a wink.

  “Yeah, that's it,” I said dryly.

  “I think you're the lucky one, Todd.” August bumped his elbow against my shoulder. At six and a half feet, his shoulder was too far above mine for me to reach with my elbow.

  “Thanks.” I gave him a stiff smile.

  August was nice enough, and he'd made it clear that he was interested in seeing me outside of work, but it hadn't even been a consideration. Aside from the reasoning I'd given him – that I didn't plan on dating anyone I worked with – I wasn't attracted to him. There was no spark between us, no heat. It hadn't stopped him from flirting, but he wasn't being obnoxious about it, so it didn’t bother me.

  Part of me wondered what Dax would do if he saw me with August. He'd acted like he was jealous of Todd, who wasn't even interested in me that way. Seeing August hitting on me should make Dax even more possessive, and the thought made something primal in me twist. I'd liked feeling claimed by him, and I now realized that should've been my first clue that I wasn't as indifferent to how things were going as I wanted to believe.

  Then again, if Dax was trying to blow me off, he wouldn't care about August at all.

  That thought didn't sit well with me, but I reminded myself that I had a job here and that Todd was right. Until Dax decided to make a move, I couldn't do anything about the situation. What I had control over, what I could do was become Gretchen and focus on the dream that had brought me to New York in the first place.

  Chapter Four

  Dax

  We got back to the city late enough that I was able to tell myself that it was better to sleep on the shitty couch in the shop than to go home, but I knew it was a lie. I was so tired that I managed to get a few good hours in before Little Eddie came in to open up, but that was about it.

  Between being crammed in a car for hours and then crashing on the couch, my joints and muscles were so stiff I felt like an old man. My head hurt too, but that was because I knew I had to deal with my shit today. The first thing on that short but brutal list was calling my mom. I should've gone home and talked to her in person, but I took the coward's way out and went into the office for some privacy for the call.

  She answered on the first ring. “Dax?”

  “Hey, Mom.” I closed my eyes and waited.

  “Are you okay?” Under her concern, the anger and disappointment made me sick to my stomach.

  “Yeah.” I knew she wouldn't push me for details, and a part of me actually hated that she wouldn’t ask because she didn’t want to know about some of the things I'd done. “Sorry for worrying you.”

  I meant the apology, but I knew she would still give me hell for it. That was how we'd always done things. I fucked up, kept as much of it from her as possible, and then apologized. She didn't ask questions she didn't want to know the answer to, and she chewed me out. Then we went back to the way things always were.

  Except this time, she didn't say anything. I looked at my phone, but the call hadn't dropped. The longer the silence stretched, the more nervous I got, the faster I paced. Final
ly, I couldn't take it anymore.

  “Mom?”

  “You need to get your shit together, young man.”

  Oh, fuck. Mom shouted at me when I deserved it, but when she started talking all quiet and flat, that's when I was really in trouble.

  “I don't know what you were doing, and I don't want to know, but you had all of us worried sick about you, and you’re too old to be pulling that.”

  She was right, and that was the worst part of all of it. I was twenty-four years old, and I needed to get my act together. I just didn't know how to do it. Without meaning to, I'd gotten in too deep.

  “You need to make things right, Dax.” Her voice was firm. “I love you, but I can't keep doing this. I can't spend my days and nights wondering if you're hurt or in jail or if you're just being thoughtless. It's not fair to the people who care about you.”

  It wasn't until she said that last bit, about people who cared about me, that I connected it to something else she said. Us. She said that I'd had all of us worried. Not just her. Something happened yesterday to change things to plural, and I suspected I knew what it was.

  “Mom?”

  “Like I said. You need to make things right.”

  She ended the call, leaving me staring down at my phone with what I knew was a stupid expression on my face. She hadn't raised her voice, not once, and she hadn't called me names or threatened to kick me out of the house. But what she did say was worse than any of that.

  I'd fucked up worse than I ever had before and knew that the only way to make it right was to tell the truth and try to figure out a way to get out of the mess I'd made.

  That was the right thing to do.

  The smart thing.

  Instead, I walked back out into the shop and asked Little Eddie what was on my schedule for today.

  It was a good thing that I hadn't had anything complicated to do because I probably would've fucked it up. I wasn’t able to stop thinking about what my mom said. I'd known almost immediately that she and Bryne had met. Not because I'd had the balls to take Bryne to the house to meet Mom, but because I'd been an asshole, and Carrie had brought the two of them together. The timeline of the calls and texts I'd gotten were enough for me to figure out how things had gone down. Not that the chain of events mattered. It was done, and now I had to man up and face it.