Jacked - The Complete Series Box Set (A Lumberjack Neighbor Romance) Read online

  We were in the same space. I wasn't just looking at a picture of him; he was looking back. My eyes went down his body slowly before coming back to his face. He was fit and muscular, with ridges in his abdomen and two lines like a “v” at his hips, tapering down and disappearing under his underwear.

  What had I come up here to do again? Oh right.

  "G-good afternoon, Mr. Stone," I stammered. I cleared my throat. He came closer, leaning against the doorframe, crossing his arms. The movement made the robe move over his chest, tightening the large muscles there. Oh my God, could he at least tie it closed? I felt myself blush. Should I leave and come back when he's dressed?

  I was trying to be professional. I had come up here to check on him to make sure he was okay. Well, he certainly looked that way. More than okay. A lot more than okay.

  "Call me Nate. Abby?" he said, furrowing his brow a little like he was trying to remember my name.

  "Right. Abby. I'm Abby," I said stupidly. Oh my God, when did I stop knowing how to form whole sentences?

  "Is something wrong? I don't think I called the front desk today," he said. I looked at him, getting a better look now that he was closer. His hair was messy, and his eyes had dark circles under them, like he hadn't been getting much rest. He looked like he'd been stressed, like he hadn't taken that trip to the spa that I had suggested.

  "You didn't," I said.

  "You guys make personal room calls?" He cocked one brow asking me the question. I hoped I wasn't annoying him.

  "No. We're just a little concerned, Mr. Stone. Nate," I started. "The Hulopoe suite's one of the best in the hotel, but you haven't been outside for days." He tilted his head a little, looking surprised.

  "What? Are there cameras in here? Are you spying on me?" he asked.

  "No, not at all. With everything to do on the island, we're just surprised you haven't done anything yet."

  "I'm good. Thanks," he said.

  I held the pamphlets out. "If you change your mind," I said. He took them and looked at them. "In fact, there's a luau tonight on the luau grounds near the beach."

  "Oh yeah?" he said, not looking up.

  "It's the first one of the summer. There will be food, music, and performances," I said. He still hadn't looked up.

  "Uh-huh," he said. I blinked. Maybe this had been a mistake.

  "Hope to see you there," I tried to say brightly. He nodded, not even bothering making a sound that time. I opened my mouth to tell him good afternoon, but stopped. I turned and started walking away quickly.

  Had I been bothering him that much? What was wrong? Why was he in such a bad mood?

  I sighed, wishing I'd said something a little different. Even if he was in a bad mood, that didn't mean he had to act like that. What was that thing people said about never meeting your idols? I never imagined he'd be so dismissive. Even if he didn't want to talk to me, he could have at least said it, not treated me like I hadn't been standing right there.

  Maybe Makani was right; he didn't want to be disturbed. He wanted to enjoy Hawai'i from the great indoors. He wasn't going to come down to the luau. He was perfectly happy in there. If that was the case, then who was I to tear him away from his happy place?

  You can't get them all, I thought, coming back down to the lobby. I had made the invitation. If he really didn't want it, then so be it. As long as he was doing whatever made him happy.

  I got back behind the desk, flopping down into my seat.

  "How'd it go? Is he dead?"

  "He’s fine. He’s also not coming."

  "He said he wouldn't?"

  "He didn't have to. He was pretty upset that I'd gone up there."

  "Really? Was he rude? He seemed like a nice enough guy the last time I talked to him," she said. I shrugged.

  "I was obviously disrupting whatever it was he was doing up there. He was just humoring me till I left."

  "Maybe you just caught him at a bad time?"

  "No, I think he's just happy spending his days and nights inside. It's fine. If that's what he wants, then that's fine. He can do that."

  "Are you all right? You sound a little upset."

  "It's silly. I just thought talking to him would be different. He was a little cold and dismissive."

  "Bad fan experience?" she asked.

  I smiled sadly. Nate Stone was a person — just like any other person. I knew that by listening to his music. I couldn't romanticize him as someone who didn't have bad days and who didn't have a personality of his own. I just always have expected that people wanted connection. Smiling at someone, being nice to them opens you up to them. I had tried with Nate, and he hadn't wanted it.

  "I think we're doing our job leaving him alone," I said wryly.

  "Who knows? He might surprise you."

  I let myself think about it for a while. Nate Stone on the beach tonight. Given the way he apparently felt about company, I couldn't see it happening. Hey. I’d tried.

  "He won't show up."

  Chapter Seven

  Nate

  People have been getting addicted to heroin for decades. People have been getting clean for decades, too. Robert Downey Jr. did it, and he became Iron Man. I could do this. If I felt it coming and just managed not to do it once, this one time, then I could do it again. It would become easier. Then, I could become Iron Man.

  It had been hours. I was running out of things to do and tell myself so I didn't stab myself with a needle and shoot the heroin directly into my heart.

  I tried drinking; I had so much booze in the room, and it helped, but it wasn't the same. It had just made my head hurt. I tried eating real food, but the steak had only one bite taken out of it and was still on the dining table, stone cold from sitting there so long.

  My body knew what it wanted. It was a fight. It was trying to wear me down, just make me do it because I knew that when I did. I'd feel great. I'd feel like shit for giving in when I didn't want to, but I'd feel great. That craving would stop, and my mind would clear, and I'd feel normal.

  That was all it was. I just wanted to feel normal. If that meant feeding the beast, then that couldn't be that bad. Not if all the other time I couldn't even think straight because I was fiending too hard. I'd just take a little. Not enough to get me high, just enough to-

  I heard my phone vibrating somewhere in the room. I got up. Where the hell did I leave it? It wasn't on the bed, not on the couch, not on the floor, either. I walked out into the living area and saw it on the piano. I went over and picked it up, sort of surprised someone was calling me. I was scared for a second that it might have been Kirsten, but it wasn't. It was my dad.

  What was he doing calling me? I wasn't upset that he had; I just thought he had been traveling and was wondering where he was calling from. I took the call.

  "Dad?"

  "Nate. How are you?" he asked.

  "I'm great. I wasn't expecting you to call me. I thought you had gone somewhere."

  "I got back this morning. I'm at home," he said. Home was San Francisco. That was where he was. The same house I'd grown up in. He had never moved out. He had a lot of other homes around the country, but he always went back there.

  "Did you have a good trip?"

  "I called to ask about you, Nate," he said, laughing a little.

  I sat at the piano with my back against the keys. He wasn't about to let me get away with not talking about myself. He and I were close; I liked talking to him. I probably should have made more of an effort to reach out to him since he was always checking up on me.

  How did he know to call at just the right moment? Two minutes more, and I'd have had a needle in my arm, hating myself.

  We had became close sort of by force when my mom died. I never saw him with another woman again. He had hired people to help with me when I was a kid, but it was always women old enough to be my grandmother. Never young au pairs from Central America he'd fuck on the side. The older I got, I wished he would find someone, especially when it was time for me to move
out.

  I'd been better about talking to him when the band had just started out. He'd always hear songs I was working on before anyone else, and I'd send him our music that we released independently myself, so he didn't have to buy it.

  When the stuff with the band and Kirsten started going south, we stopped talking as much. He’d hired a lawyer for me during the divorce and had been really supportive since. He knew about the dope, but I spared him the gorier details of my addiction. Dope or not, I was in a bad place regardless, and he knew that.

  "I'm okay," I said shortly.

  "Is it all still the same?"

  "I'm staying somewhere else. The beach house is gone. It's a golf course now. I'm at the Four Seasons."

  "Oh, Lanai?" he said. He'd heard about it.

  "Have you been?"

  "Only once for less than twenty-four hours for work. Never got to really see anything, but it's a great choice. Beautiful island. Do you like it?"

  "Uh, yeah, it's great. I'm having a great time," I said. I wasn't lying. I knew it was a beautiful island from what I'd seen of it coming here from the airport and looking down at the beach and ocean from my private terrace. I did like it.

  The fact that I hadn't been outside or spoken to another person face-to-face for nearly a week straight was less important than letting him know I was okay. I would be okay, eventually.

  "You learned to swim in Hawai'i, do you remember that?" he asked me.

  I did remember. I was the only mainland kid, and I didn't know how to swim. After almost drowning myself trying to join them when they would go out into deeper water, my dad put floaties on me. By the time we were heading back to the Bay, I knew how to swim.

  "Yeah. It’s great being back."

  "How long will you be gone?"

  "The whole summer. I need the time alone. LA's a disaster."

  "You know you can always come home. If you want to move, you can have the house in Marin," he said.

  I smiled, sighing. I was a twenty-seven-year-old man. I already had a house, and I didn't need to hide out in one of his properties. I wasn't that far gone...yet. I appreciated the offer, though. It was his way of looking out for me.

  "Thanks. I'll remember that. I'm doing good, though," I said more brightly than I felt. "It’s nice here. Quiet. I don't have to talk to anybody if I don't want to. It's beautiful, too. I think it's good for me."

  "It might be that. Maybe it'll inspire you with your music," he said.

  There was something we agreed on. I had been playing a lot since I'd gotten here. Nothing new. Not even any of my stuff, just pieces I'd memorized over the years – some classical stuff, pieces from movie scores, things like that. I'd fallen out of practice when shit got bad. It had been nice to get used to playing again.

  "Yeah. Let's hope it does," I said.

  "Can I ask about the band?" Dad asked carefully.

  "I think I'm done," I said honestly. "I don't want to go back. The label only wants to make money, which means they have to make music that sells, not music that matters. I don't want to put my name on something I don't believe in."

  "Your label isn't the only one in the world," he said.

  "I know. I'm not saying I want to give up. Remus started as something I loved, but it's changed too much. I won't sell out. I care too much about the stuff I write."

  "Take your time off to think about that, okay? When you come back, talk to them; if their terms still don't work, buy yourself out of your contract and leave." The music business was slimy as all hell. It would be a lot harder to get out than what my dad suggested, but I agreed with him.

  Remus’s first major label album had broken records. It had done great. We had had unprecedented ticket sales and sold out shows. All four of the songs we released as singles charted in the top ten.

  The album had twelve tracks, and in the beginning, as we were putting the track list together, I'd had nine songs that I had written on it. I watched that number drop to seven, then five, then four as the producers engineered what they believed would be a better sound for us, as far as popular appeal would go. They'd chopped some of my songs up, rewriting lyrics and changing the music before they used them, making them unrecognizable.

  They made a Remus album that wasn't a Remus album. When it was released and had done as well as it had, I tried to take credit for it, but I couldn't. Not when I had almost nothing to do with more than half the songs on there.

  If nothing else, I was getting my career back. The career I had wanted in the first place when I started playing piano with my mother over twenty years ago. The money was less important than being real. I could deal with less money, as long as it meant I wasn't lying to myself.

  "I'll do that," I said. "Thanks, Dad."

  "I'll leave you alone now. You get back to your vacation." I thanked him again for calling me and hung up the phone.

  Sometimes it made me feel shitty that my dad was about the only friend I had left, but other times, I felt like it was a good thing. He was clearly the only person I knew wasn't trying to get anything from me. Me doing well would only make him happy because he cared about me. He didn't need me to make him money or give him money like the band or Kirsten.

  I got up from the piano and walked back to the bedroom, feeling a lot better. I spotted my kit on the bed and walked over to it. I picked it up, uncovering some colorful pamphlets underneath. I had picked it up to lock in the safe or something so housekeeping didn't find it, not to shoot up, but what were those?

  I put the kit down and picked up the one on top of the pile. It was a pamphlet advertising cultural activities and experiences on the island. Oh right, that girl from the desk had brought them up here. Abby. She had been telling me about something. I had sort of blown her off. I had had a rough morning. I looked through the pamphlet, looking at the colorful photographs and skimming through it.

  What had she told me? Something was happening tonight near the beach. A luau, I think she had said. I put my kit back down and thought about going. I mean, I had no good reason to just stay here.

  I put a shirt on and got dressed, putting a hoodie on because my addiction meant I couldn’t really do short sleeves anymore. I made my way out of the room and followed signboards down towards the beach where the luau grounds were.

  I heard the activity and smelled the food before I saw it. The luau grounds were packed with people. There was a food and drink area where people were eating at a buffet, sitting around tables. There were people selling crafts around the perimeter, and there were women dancing on a stage, putting on a performance. My luau memories weren’t too clear from the ones I’d been to as a kid, but I remembered one time seeing a guy pull an entire pig out of the ground.

  Right at the entrance, there were a couple girls giving the guests a lei greeting as they walked in. There were a couple people ahead of me. Looking past them, I realized the girls giving out the leis were Abby and her friend from the front desk. When I got to the front of the line, Abby’s friend greeted me, putting a lei over my head. Abby looked over and seemed sort of shocked to see me.

  “Hi, Abby,” I said to her.

  “Good evening, Mr. Stone,” she said. I hated when people did that. Mr. Stone was my dad; it made me feel old. “You decided to join us.”

  “I did,” I said, moving out of the way so other people could go past me. She looked really nice. Her hair was long and curled. She had a red flower in it and a lei around her neck. She had shorts on and a t-shirt with the hotel’s logo on it.

  “We’re glad to have you. You missed the imu ceremony, but the performances have just started,” she said with a smile. I nodded and thanked her, walking into the party.

  I felt almost all the way relaxed. I hadn’t shot up for hours; I probably should have before I came. How fucking pathetic would it have been to leave just so I could get a fix, though? A drink would have to cut it. I walked over to the bar where I spotted Keno.

  “Nate,” he said, smiling when he saw me.

&
nbsp; “Hey.”

  “I didn’t think you’d show up.” I laughed a little. Great, I already had a reputation.

  “I always find the alcohol,” I said. I asked him whether he’d give me a vodka soda since I didn’t like fruity cocktails.

  “Tonight, your drink comes with entertainment,” he said.

  A bunch of young girls were doing a dance with poi balls while a band performed behind them. It was good being the one in the audience for a change. I thanked Keno for the drink and fixed myself a plate at the buffet before sitting. The large tables sat groups of people together, but I managed to get one that was still empty.

  I tried to eat, but wasn’t that hungry. I tried to concentrate on the performers, but the music just turned to a meaningless droning sound. I started feeling uncomfortable. What was the use of coming here if I couldn’t even stay present? I felt myself start to get sweaty. I downed the rest of my drink and managed to sit five more minutes before I had to leave.

  It was bad enough jonesing so hard I couldn’t sit still; I didn’t have to do it in front of fifty strangers. If I was alone and could concentrate, I could will myself not to need the drugs.

  I left the luau and headed towards the beach. The water looked black. The tide was out, so the waves breaking on the shore were small and gentle. I had looked at the ocean a lot from my room. The moon was up now, casting light on the dark water. It looked really deep and still and calm. Why hadn't I spent more time here since I'd come? I thought for a minute about going in but realized how much of my clothing I'd have to take off to do it.

  There was always tomorrow, right? I was here until the end of the summer. Yep. Then I was going back home where... I didn't know what would happen. I felt like I didn't know anything. I might have had control of the wheel at some point, but I'd crashed and burned a while ago. My addiction, Kirsten, the stuff with the band — it was just gasoline on the flame, making it bigger.

  I swear to God I hadn't meant it to get this out of control. Did it even matter what I had wanted in the beginning? I was here now. Sitting alone at a party on the beach. Why'd I even come out of my room tonight?