Rend

  Rend is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Loveswept Ebook Original

  Copyright © 2018 by Roan Parrish

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN 9781524799335

  Cover design: Makeready Designs

  Cover photograph: Matusciac Alexandru/Shutterstock

  randomhousebooks.com

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Roan Parrish

  About the Author

  Prologue

  We had what some people might call a whirlwind romance. I wouldn’t have called it that. But then, romance wasn’t something I was familiar with at all.

  A sign outside the shabby bar in Crown Heights promised dollar well drinks and the chance to avoid my shitty apartment for a little while longer, so I ducked inside, out of the cold. I’d been walking for hours, desperate to be anywhere but home, and winter had seeped into my bones.

  I had three roommates and my bed was also the living room couch, so the only chance I ever had at solitude was to arrive home late and leave early. Tonight, with any luck, I wouldn’t be going home at all.

  The floor was dingy, the bar polished to a mirror shine, and the lull of a Wednesday night meant I could nurse my whiskey and ginger for a while. I slid a battered paperback out of my coat pocket but didn’t open it yet. My fingers were numb and clumsy, and after walking for so long, I had the sensation that I was still moving even after I sat down. An ocean in my ears and rust on my tongue.

  When the whiskey flared hot in my chest I let myself relax slightly. It had been a fuck of a day. The kind of exhausting day that reminds you that life is exhausting. That sometimes just rolling out of bed—or couch, in my case—was so draining you wanted to crawl right back in.

  Lately, every day seemed that way, and I was disgusted with myself, because I should’ve felt better. I finally had a job where I could help people with more than their beverage size or correct change. I had a chance—a chance to make life better for people who’d been through the same things I had. I should’ve felt better, but I didn’t.

  It had been two months since I’d started working at Mariposa, and the initial flush of pride and relief—and, okay, surprise—had faded like the crash after a high, leaving me in the unfamiliar position of finally having purpose but no idea how to wield it.

  I kept wanting to text my best friend, Grin, in Florida, but I couldn’t quite compose anything that didn’t make me sound like an ungrateful dick.

  Hey dude, you know how we swore a pact that we wouldn’t be shitty abusive losers like everyone we grew up with? Well I got a job I really like helping people and for the first time I should feel some kind of hope but I’m having this problem where I still sleep on a couch and troll bars at night bc I don’t know how to be anything but what I’ve always been. S.O.S.

  Yeah, nah.

  I ran my hands through my hair, the curls tangled from my walk, and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes in an attempt to blot out everything. Stars of light burst on the dark horizon behind my closed eyes.

  Maybe I could read in the park tonight instead of going home…

  No, you idiot, remember last time? Besides, it’s fucking winter.

  I sighed and opened my book to a random page, stabbing at a word without looking, in the hope it would give me some guidance about what to do next.

  The.

  Well. That was no goddamn help whatsoever.

  “Would you like another one?” a rough voice asked.

  I looked up from my reflection distorted in the glossy bar to see that the man who’d been talking close with the bartender since I walked in had slid onto the stool next to mine.

  He was big and blond, and I’d put him in his early to mid-thirties, maybe nine or ten years older than me. Most important, he looked like he could throw me down and fuck me into oblivion. Which was pretty much what I was after.

  When I nodded he smiled at me—a warm, genuine, eye-crinkling smile that made me reevaluate him from a powerful, aggressive fuck to a powerful, aggressive fuck who might invite me to stay the night after. Ideal.

  “I can only afford to pick up guys on Wednesdays,” he said, indicating the dollar-drink sign.

  It wasn’t funny, and it clearly wasn’t true. But his confidence, combined with the way he said it so seriously and then grinned at me again, like he knew it wasn’t funny…it endeared him to me.

  “Sucks for you,” I said.

  I expected some generic, predictable flirtation—“If I’m lucky” and a wink, or “It could suck for both of us if you come home with me” and a leer.

  But his eyes raked me, light blue, laser focused, and curious. Fuck, he was striking.

  “Nah,” he said seriously. “I wouldn’t say so.” He clinked my glass with his beer and took a long pull, tongue playing at the lip of the bottle, eyes on mine.

  After a moment I had to look away from those sharp blue eyes. The air between us bubbled with promise, and my thighs clenched in anticipation. I downed my drink and shoved my hands in my coat pockets, ready to move on to what we both clearly wanted.

  I shot him a glance under my lashes that said I was ready to leave whenever he was.

  “Which is better, do you think: breakfast for dinner or dinner for breakfast?” he mused, taking a slow sip of his beer, elbows on the bar. He was the picture of casual confidence.

  “Uh. What?”

  He leaned in and tapped my book with a thick finger. “Breakfast for dinner or dinner for breakfast?”

  What the hell kind of bizarrely normal question was that to ask a stranger you were picking up in a bar?

  “Are you a Boy Scout leader or something?” I asked.

  His eyes got wide and sincere.

  “Well, I was a Boy Scout. ‘Be prepared.’ ” He winked. “So?”

  I sighed. I didn’t have the energy for a Boy Scout role-play at the moment, so I hoped this was just idle conversation.

  “Honestly, I could eat mac and cheese for any meal, and I don’t really care,” I said. My exhaustion was back full force. “Why do you ask?”

  “I just feel like all breakfast foods are good at dinner, but only very specific dinner foods work for breakfast,” he mused. “Like pizza? Great breakfast food. Grilled cheese, spaghetti—okay. Even pad thai, maybe. But fish? Pea soup? Meatloaf? I don’t think I could face those first thing in the morning, you know? But in lots of places fish for breakfast is totally normal.” He shrugged
. “Culture, man. It controls us.”

  There was a moment of silence in which I forced myself to realize that this hot guy who’d bought me a drink was just…chatting with me.

  Memories of years of dry meatloaf clotted with ketchup and served next to a limp pile of mushy green beans on Tuesday evenings made my stomach roil.

  “I hate meatloaf,” I said.

  “Yeah. Pretty sure the word loaf isn’t great when applied to anything but bread.”

  “Amen.”

  This time the silence was comfortable, and a strange thought dropped into my head unbidden. The thought of waking up next to this man and eating cold pizza for breakfast together, his blond hair mussed and his sleepy blue eyes on me. I shook my head to dismiss it. I never stayed for breakfast.

  “Rhys,” he was saying, and I zoned back in to his outstretched hand.

  “Huh? Oh, I’m Matt.”

  His hand enveloped mine, big and warm and callused, and for just a moment his touch cut through everything.

  “Want to go somewhere with me, Matt?” Rhys asked, still holding on to my hand. There it was.

  “Your place?” I nodded and stood up.

  He smiled and shook his head. I shrugged. Whatever. A motel room was fine with me, as long as he was paying.

  Rhys leaned over the bar. “Later, Huey,” he said to the bartender, who was huge and bald, with intense, unsmiling eyes. “I’ll check back in with you.” The bartender just nodded, a barely there dip of his chin and shift of muscular shoulders, eyes moving to me for a second, and then away.

  When he unfolded from the bar and shrugged on his coat, I realized how big Rhys really was—tall and broad and thick with muscle, all held with the posture of a lazy prince. He guided me out the door with his hand a heated brand on my shoulder, and I shivered at the thought of what he could do with all that power.

  We walked in silence for a few blocks, and I snuck glances at him out of the corner of my eye. I was hunched in my coat against the December night, but he strode along like even the cold had no power over him. I couldn’t wait to feel his hands on my skin, couldn’t wait for that muscular body to drive everything else from my mind.

  I didn’t want to think about how I had no one who cared if I lived or died. No one to talk to even, since Grin had left town. Didn’t want to think about how I was scared every day that I wasn’t doing enough, that I didn’t know what I should do. I didn’t want to think about how things were better than they’d been a few months ago, but likely as good as they were ever going to get.

  Yeah, I couldn’t wait to have all of that fear and uncertainty and cringing exhaustion pushed out of my head as this man pushed inside me. I hoped he’d hold me down, his powerful arms—

  I tripped into Rhys as he stopped to open the door. But it wasn’t the door of a hotel or an apartment building; it wasn’t even a seedy club.

  It was the glass door of the brightly lit, chrome-clad, twenty-four-hour diner on the corner. I looked up at Rhys and narrowed my eyes in question.

  “I love a diner,” he said simply. His low, rough voice curled around me. “You hungry?”

  I shrugged. I was always vaguely hungry and never particularly inclined to do much about it.

  “Well, I’m starving,” he said. “Keep me company?”

  “I thought, uh…I thought we would…”

  “Go have sex and never see each other again?” he finished.

  “Basically.”

  He nodded, and for a moment I thought he might turn and take me…wherever. But he shrugged and held out a hand to me instead.

  “So, keep me company?”

  And before I realized what I was doing, I slid my cold hand into his and let myself be led inside.

  He apologized to the host for tracking in slush, was friendly to the waiter, and smiled easily at other diners. Was he for real?

  I kept an eye on him while I scanned the menu, trying to decide what would be cheapest without drawing attention to its cheapness. What would be filling that I could stomach with the constant knot of anxiety in my gut.

  When the waiter brought waters and dropped a handful of straws between us, Rhys said brightly, “Okay,” and then proceeded to order enough food for five people. Pancakes, eggs and hash browns, a burger and fries, cheesecake, onion rings, a chef salad, grilled cheese. He went on and on, and the waiter looked at him like she feared he might be pranking her. But he just smiled and thanked her, winking and saying he was famished and everything looked too good to choose.

  “Can only afford to pick people up on dollar-drink night, huh?” I said when the waiter had left.

  Rhys grinned at me and said, “Why didn’t you order anything? Won’t you be jealous looking at all my food?”

  He was clearly teasing, but I felt very much like I didn’t quite get the joke. My first thought was that he could tell I was strapped and was trying to get me to take home leftovers, but it was so supremely unsubtle that I dismissed it.

  And, whatever his intention, I’d felt the strangest freedom the moment I’d realized I wouldn’t have to decide what to order.

  I wasn’t sure if he’d done it on purpose—how could he have known?—but he’d effectively removed the stressor I carried with me every minute: the fear that if I had to choose, I would choose wrong and something terrible would happen.

  “What…are you doing?” I asked.

  He bit his full lower lip, and for just a moment as he looked at me I saw something nervous and hopeful underneath his shiny confidence.

  “I wanted to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with you, but I was worried you might turn me down, so I thought I’d go for all three at once,” he said.

  I gaped at him. It was a ridiculously cheesy thing to say, especially since we’d only known each other for half an hour. But his expression was so open that I thought he might have actually meant it. I found myself smiling at him, and his eyes lit up.

  The food came, dish after dish unloaded from the waiter’s huge tray, and Rhys tucked in. I hadn’t noticed how hungry I was before, but I started pulling food toward me because there seemed to be a real possibility he might eat it all before I got any.

  “I think you must have a tapeworm,” I said after a few minutes of watching him. “You should really get checked out by a medical professional.”

  Rhys threw his head back and laughed, a deep belly laugh so loud that people at nearby tables turned around to look at us. I just stared at him, but it had broken the ice.

  After fifteen minutes or so, Rhys slowed down enough to actually converse.

  “So, what do you do when you’re not hanging out in diners and bars?” Rhys asked, and I realized how little I ever talked with the men I picked up; how long it’d been since I’d talked with…anyone, really, beyond the logistics of rent money and utilities-splitting with my roommates.

  “I got a new job a couple of months ago, actually,” I found myself telling Rhys, because his interest seemed genuine. “It’s a nonprofit that works with folks transitioning out of the foster system. Helps them get jobs, apply to college, learn a trade. Or sometimes we teach life skills.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like stuff that people usually learn by watching their parents but wouldn’t know if they bounced around a lot or were in a foster care facility. How to open a bank account or apply for a lease. How to get credit. Learn to drive, get a passport, apply for financial aid or a loan. That kind of thing.”

  Unfortunately, there were so many more important but less tangible things we couldn’t teach.

  Rhys frowned. “I never thought about how many things I learned from my parents that are kind of essential to being an adult in the world.”

  “Yeah, most people with families don’t see how much of an advantage it is.”

  It came out a little sharper than I’d in
tended, and a shadow crossed Rhys’s face.

  “Um, what about you?”

  “I’m a musician. I write music, tour with other bands, work as a studio musician. That’s what I’m doing at the moment. I’m working on Dan Colby and the Kings’ new album.”

  He paused like maybe I was supposed to recognize the band, but I didn’t. I didn’t really listen to much music.

  “That’s cool,” I said. “What’s it like to write a song and then hear someone play it?”

  “It’s strange because I hear something in my head, and I write a melody, write lyrics. And they mean something to me. But then whoever performs it, it means something different to them, so they interpret it in their own way.”

  He sounded different when he talked about music, like he’d retreated just a little ways inside himself and was speaking from a place slightly farther away from me. It made me want to lean closer.

  “Plus the production style can drastically change a song. So it’s my melody, but they might change the key, or the producer might add an orchestral backing, or lay a swing beat over it, or—oh, once, I wrote this song that, in my head, had this kind of mournful longing. And the artist it was for loved it, but he already had three down-tempo songs on the album, so the producer changed the tempo and added this kind of…I don’t know what it was. Like a waltz rhythm? And a fiddle solo. It was virtually unrecognizable from the way I’d imagined it.”

  “That’s…are they allowed to just do that?” I asked.

  “Yep. If I sell the rights or if I contract to write the song for someone, they can do whatever they want with it.”

  “How come you don’t record them yourself so you can make them sound however you want?”

  Rhys shoved some fries into his mouth before answering.

  “I haven’t recorded any of my own stuff yet.” He ate more fries and glanced at me. Then he shrugged. “I’ve been touring for the last zillion years with my best friend. I co-wrote a few of his songs and played on all his albums. It was…enough for me, for a long time. Now I—” He bit his lip. “Guess I haven’t focused as much on what I want to be doing.”