RANE: A Rockstar Stepbrother Romance by Vivian Lux Page B

vitriol I could never understand. Once I was America's princess, and now I couldn't even find a job and....
    "Fuck!"
    I hopped on one foot, startled tears collecting in my eyes. That fucking painting was stronger than I had expected.
    Rane looked from my plaster-dusted foot and back to the dented painting. The canvas had peeled back in a perfect toe hole. "Nicely done," he said mildly, as if he hadn't just watched me disintegrate in front of him. "Now I'm gonna go get you a drink. Have a seat."
    "I'm going to get your couch all wet."
    He cocked his head. "Water is hardly the worst liquid that has hit that thing."
    I wrinkled my nose, but my toes were starting to throb. I hopped over to the couch to elevate them and wonder what the fuck I had just done. Since the...incident— the hair on the floor, the wind on my skin—oh fuck it, since I shaved my head and ran out of my old house naked into the nighttime. Yeah. That. Since that happened, I had kept myself deliberately in check. The second I felt that anger start to rise, I always squelched it.
    Except...with Rane. I had let it out with him...twice now. Twice today, even.
    I cowered into the couch, afraid to meet his eye when he came back into the room. Mad Maddie had reared her ugly, bald head again, and this time, I didn't have a camera trained on me to give me an excuse.
    "I didn't know what you drank. So I brought them all." Rane stood directly in front of me, forcing me to look up.
    Then I laughed. "You look like you robbed a liquor store."
    "All bought and paid for, I assure you." He deftly untangled himself and lined up the bottles. Whiskey, vodka, rum, a can of Bud and a bottle of expensive looking Chardonnay. I looked at each one of them, then back up to him, confused.
    "Did you bring glasses?"
    He slapped his forehead dramatically. "I knew I forgot something."
    I laughed again. I had laughed more times in the past hour than I had in the past year.
    "Well, you're being awfully nice, and I know that's hard for you. So I won't push my luck." I grabbed the bottle of Grey Goose by the neck. It was perfectly cold. "Cheers?"
    He smiled and grabbed the bottle of Maker's Mark. "Cheers."
    We clinked bottles. I let the welcome vodka slide down my throat like water, then set it down. It was too easy to drink too fast. I needed to keep my wits about me.
    Especially with Rane giving me that look.
    "What?" The vodka settled into my limbs and I sagged back into the couch.
    "I was thinking about kissing you."
    "What?" I stiffened.
    He waved his hand, irritated. "Yesterday. For the shoot." He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "You're a really good actress. I honestly thought you were into me there for a second."
    I reached for the bottle, thought for a second, pulled my hand back, then thought again and grabbed it like a life preserver tossed into stormy seas. Stormy seas the color of his eyes.
    What the hell?
    "You sound surprised." I sounded angry. I didn't mean to. That made me angrier. I took a quick, fortifying sip.
    The corner of Rane's lip twitched. The scarred corner that I couldn't stop staring at. "Not going to lie," he said, spreading his hands.
    "Well, fuck you then. I've been an actress almost as long as I've been alive. There's a reason for that."
    "Okay, sure, but...."
    "No." I held up my hand. My so carefully bottled feelings seemed to come all loose when I was with this man. I felt like I was tossed around in the ocean with no land in sight. A stormy ocean with clouds roiling above, the same threatening gray as his eyes and… "Fuck," I said out loud. "What exactly do you think you know about me?"
    If I thought he would apologize, I was sorely mistaken. "I could ask you the same fucking question, you know."
    "Not really."
    "Yes, really." He was calm, but dangerously so. The eye of a hurricane. God, I was really drunk coming up with all these cheap weather metaphors. "What do you think you know, Maddie?"
    "You're...." The vodka was working fast. I waved