Page 63 of Flirting with the Rock Star Next Door
Her soft lips parted. “Killian, I—”
Darth Vader’s theme blared from my phone and shattered the moment. Shit.
Emily straightened and pulled back a bit. “You should answer that.”
I hit the red button. “It can wait. I want to know what you have to say.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Emily
I bit my lip, my mind blank. It was ridiculously ironic that I, a writer, couldn’t think of anything clever to say.
But when I wrote, I got a chance to revise. I couldn’t travel back in time and emend a real-time conversation. And that was why I hadn’t been able to say any of the things that had been flashing through my head since Killian said he’d be gone in June.
Weird. Why hadn’t I thought of that possibility before? He might be from Kingstree, but he’d left. He had his own career and things to do. Tours and interviews. Maybe professional conferences. Did musicians have music conferences?
I didn’t want him to teach me how to make breakfast like him. I wanted him to be here and make the breakfast every day. Or at least stop by every morning.
When had I become so dependent and needy? The realization was scary, but there was nothing I could do to change how I felt. It was as though Killian had somehow managed to slip through my shell and lodged himself inside me. Like a grain of sand that later became a pearl.
I was going to miss him. Even if he’d said he liked me, it didn’t change the fact that he was going to be gone in June. Being one of hundreds of notches on his bedpost wasn’t my idea of a nice spring fli
ng.
His phone rang again. He swore.
“You should definitely answer that. Nobody ignores Darth Vader and lives,” I said, relieved at the interruption. Whoever was calling must have been ultra-scary for him to assign that ring tone.
Sighing with irritation, he answered it. “Yes, Mir?”
I started eating again, trying not to listen to his call in case it was private. That wasn’t like me, either. I listened to phone conversations all the time. I liked to guess what the other person was saying and what the speakers’ relationship was. Sometimes I got story ideas that way.
But Killian was a celebrity. He wouldn’t like people using details from his life in a book—even if it was fiction—when it might be recognizable to oodles of music listeners around the world. I wouldn’t want to use him that way. He’d earned his spotlight, his fame. Nobody had the right to leech off it.
He hung up, looking annoyed. “Sorry. That was my sister.”
Darth Vader was his sister? “Is she okay?” I asked even though what I really wanted to ask was: Are you okay? Whatever she wanted couldn’t be good, especially if she was the evil Sith. And I understood better than anybody how complicated and dysfunctional a family could be…and how you couldn’t ignore it, no matter what. Just look at the way I’d been dealing with my parents’ marriage.
“No. She’s on her way here. To visit me…supposedly.”
Supposedly? Weren’t they close? Or maybe they’d fought recently?
“Surprise visit, my ass,” he muttered.
Yup, definitely annoyed. “Do you need to get going?” I wished there was something I could do for him. Except what could I do? I wasn’t his family or girlfriend or anything. I was just a neighbor.
Three firm knocks came from the door. I glared, wondering about the interruption. I hadn’t ordered anything.
Killian got up and opened the door. “Hey, Mir,” he said.
His sister was here? Like, at my house? But why?
I craned my neck to get a look at the person who merited supervillain music, but Killian was blocking my view.
“Oh my God, you didn’t tell me you were having breakfast with Emma Grant!” Killian’s sister squealed.
That didn’t sound like somebody who deserved Darth Vader’s theme. Actually, she sounded like…a fan.
