Malibu Rising: A Novel, Taylor Reid [best fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

with Diana lasted for two whole weeks and then he got bored. But he found that once it was over with Diana, the guilt made him want June more. He needed her love the same way he’d needed it when he first met her. He craved her acceptance, couldn’t get enough of her big brown eyes.

It was that much easier to cross the line a little while later with Betsy, the waitress at the bar across from his producer’s office.

And then there was Daniella, a cigarette girl in Reno. Just a onetime thing. It meant nothing.

And what did it matter?

He could still be a good husband to June. He could show up on time to every recording session. He could sell out crowds. He could charm the young and the old, wink at the old ladies who showed up with their husbands to have a good time listening to the hip young man. He was giving June everything they had dreamed of for themselves. They had their two sinks and they were starting a great family. And anything June could think of, he would give her.

He just had this one thing for himself.

But then he met Carol. It was the Carols that ruined everything. And he’d known that. That’s what was so maddening about it. He’d learned this all already, watching his father.

He’d met Carol at a show at the Hollywood Bowl. She’d been there with a studio executive. She was so tiny but her attitude filled the room. She didn’t want to be there, didn’t even know who Mick was—a distinction that was becoming more and more rare. She shook his hand politely and he smiled at her, his very best smile, and he watched the edges of her thin pink lips start to curl up ever so slightly, like she was trying hard to dislike him but couldn’t quite muster it.

Forty minutes later, he had her right there in an unlocked limo they found behind the venue that night. Just before they both finished, she screamed his name.

When they were done, she got up and left with little more than a “see you around.” And ten minutes later, she was back on the arm of the exec she came with, not giving him a second look.

Mick was sunk. He needed to see her again. And again. He would call her agent’s office. He showed up at her apartment. He could not get enough of her, could not help but be enchanted with her passive charm, her indifference to almost everything—including him. He could not get enough of the way she could talk to anyone about anything but did not hang on a single person’s word. Even his.

Oh, God, he thought a few weeks into it. I’m falling.

They had been seeing each other during late nights and long lunches for three months when Carol told Mick she was pregnant.

They had run into each other at Ciro’s. Mick had been having dinner with his producer. Carol was there with another man.

Mick had lured her into the men’s bathroom and taken her right there in the stall, so overcome with jealousy seeing her with someone else that he needed to own her.

Afterward, as he smoothed his hair and prepared to leave the bathroom, Carol fixed her skirt and made herself presentable. Then she said, “I’m pregnant. It’s yours.”

He looked up at her, hoping she was joking. It was clear she wasn’t. And before Mick could say anything, she left him there alone.

He closed his eyes and then opened them up to see his slack-jawed face staring back at him in the mirror. You fucking idiot. In an instant, he punched his own reflection, shattering the glass and cutting his hand open.

He did not see Carol again after that night. He’d sent her money but stopped calling her, forced himself to stop thinking of her, and he had not bedded another woman since then.

Now here he was, nearly a year later, barricaded from his own house. But he’d known from the very moment he punched the mirror that this was looming. Maybe he’d known long before that, too. Maybe he’d always known he couldn’t escape himself.

• • •

“Junie, I’m so sorry,” Mick said, starting to cry. It was so unbearable, to hate yourself the way he hated himself just then. “I tried to do the right thing, I swear.”

June refused to be moved by the weak sound of his voice.

It was not difficult for her to maintain her anger, but whenever she feared she might falter, she would think of herself being pregnant and retroactively change the memory, shading it with the knowledge that there had been another woman nearby, carrying another one of her husband’s children, almost as far along as she. How sad to not be the only one carrying your husband’s child at that very moment. It seemed to June that privilege was the very least you could ask of a man.

“I was weak,” Mick said, pleading with her. “It was a moment of weakness. I just couldn’t stop myself. But I am stronger now.”

“I don’t want you here,” June said, undeterred. “I don’t want you around these kids. I’d hate for these boys to grow up to be anything like you.”

She’d said “boys.” Not boy. Boys.

“Sweetheart,” Mick said. He saw it now. The way he could convince her to let him fix everything for all of them. “I’m Hudson’s father. If you want him, you have to take me, too.”

June and Mick were silent for a while after this, June unsure what to do. Mick waited with bated breath. There was no way she was going to allow a baby to be handed over to Mick. He didn’t even know how to change a diaper. That baby needed June. That boy needed a mother. They both knew that.

June opened the door. Mick fell into the house.

“Thank you,” he said, as if she had granted him clemency. “I will make this up to you. I will do right by