Skin Hunger Read online

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 1537

  Burnsville, NC 28714

  www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  Skin Hunger

  Copyright © 2017 by Eli Lang

  Cover art: Natasha Snow, natashasnowdesigns.com

  Editor: May Peterson

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-617-0

  First edition

  November, 2017

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-618-7

  ABOUT THE EBOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED:

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  Ava should be living her dream as the drummer for Escaping Indigo. The problem is, she’s secretly in love with her bandmate, Tuck. But he’s fallen for someone else. Being a drummer is still the best, but for Ava, every day is also a reminder of what she can’t have.

  With her grandmother moving into assisted living, Ava figures it’s a good time to head home and help out. And if it lets her get some distance from Tuck and his girlfriend, all the better. But Ava hasn’t visited her family in years, and home isn’t really home anymore. Instead, it’s the place she’s been running from, full of memories of everything her parents wanted for her—and everything she didn’t want for herself.

  But on the airplane, Ava meets Cara, and the two women feel an immediate connection. And when they bump into each other a second time, it seems like fate. Cara offers Ava something she’s never had—someone to love who loves her back. But to be with Cara, Ava may have to change her whole life around, and that’s something she’s not sure she’s ready for.

  For my grandmothers.

  And for LL. Live as you like.

  About Skin Hunger

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Dear Reader

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Eli Lang

  About the Author

  More like this

  I clenched my hand on the armrest. The fabric was rough and nubby beneath my palm, but thin enough that I briefly wondered if I’d tear it. There wasn’t even anything to be afraid of, and I kept trying to tell myself that, to use logic to get rid of the anxiety. But fear was an illogical thing. And squeezing an armrest to death would have more of an immediate effect on my fear than any reasoning ever would.

  I thought about closing my eyes and pretending I was somewhere else, but I figured that would make it easier for me to picture something going horribly wrong. Better if I could see. At least it would give me the illusion of some control. I took a deep breath and wished, futilely and not for the first time that day, that I wasn’t alone. That Tuck, my best friend and the guitar player for our band, was here next to me, cracking jokes in an attempt to distract me. That Bellamy, our singer, and his boyfriend, Micah, were sitting in the seats in front of me, Bellamy’s voice drifting back while he worried about our instruments and equipment being handled correctly by the airline. I even missed Quinn, our sort-of manager, and his perpetual, overbearing protectiveness.

  But instead I was by myself, flying somewhere I didn’t want to go, and scared before we’d even gotten off the ground.

  I sighed and leaned my head back against the seat. Passengers were slowly making their way down the aisle still, bumping elbows and knees with bags that looked like they would never fit in the overhead compartments. No one had claimed either of the seats next to me yet—I’d snagged the window seat for myself, so I could see what was happening—and I hoped no one would. It’d be nice to stretch out, sleep a little, so that I wouldn’t be quite so groggy when we landed in the morning.

  I changed my mind when a tall girl stopped at my row and casually hoisted her bag into the overhead compartment. She glanced down at me after she closed the latch, and smiled before she slid into the aisle seat.

  I was staring, and probably being obvious enough that she’d notice, but I couldn’t stop. She wasn’t particularly striking. She wasn’t an average beauty queen. Her dark-blond hair was cut too short for that. It fluttered around her ears and her bangs drifted into her eyes. The length of it made her face appear almost too long, but not quite. Her makeup was heavy, dark, but it suited her, brought out the green in her eyes. There was something about the way she carried herself, though, that made me want to watch her move. She had an almost tomboy style going on, but she was elegant, graceful. She’d lifted her bag overhead like it was nothing, the slender lines of her wrists and arms delicate in their strength. Now she buckled her seat belt with the same smooth movement, her shoulders straight, fingers careful on the metal and cloth. Then she turned back to me. I was still staring, my brain screaming at me to look away. She brushed the hair out of her face with a flick of her finger, and I realized I must have been wrong before. They weren’t green, but blue—almost too pale but absolutely lovely.

  “Hi,” I said stupidly. God, I couldn’t remember the last time this had happened to me, the last time I’d been completely stuck for words. I was objective. I didn’t get swoony over every attractive person I saw. Maybe it was because we were going to be stuck on an airplane together for six hours, but after that, we’d go our separate ways. Safe, or as near to safe as you could get.

  She smiled back shyly. “Hi.”

  Her voice was soft and sort of husky. She twisted toward me a bit in her seat, and the olive-green jacket she was wearing fell into perfect place. Even her clothes wanted to do the graceful thing. It was captivating. I hadn’t seen anything quite like her before.

  Then I realized I wasn’t just staring, I was staring, and it was totally inappropriate and probably creeping her out. I wanted to say something, make that banal conversation you normally would when you were stuck next to a stranger, but I was too tired, my brain fried from the last few weeks of touring. Maybe it wouldn’t have helped anyway. Maybe she already thought I was a psycho with no self-control. I gave her a little nod instead, turned to gaze out the window, and tried to pretend that I wasn’t on the plane and this lovely girl wasn’t sitting two seats awa
y.

  My small show of boredom and indifference lasted right up until we were cruising down the runway. Everything was fine, fine, and I kept repeating that to myself like I could make the irrational part of my mind believe it. But when the plane tilted up, leaving the ground in that sudden way, letting loose that disturbing feeling of being completely untethered, I gasped. I had to keep staring out the window. If we were going to crash, I—perversely—wanted to see it coming. There was that idiotic imaginary control again, the idea that if I watched closely enough, nothing bad could happen. Or, if it did happen, I’d be able to do something about it.

  A warm hand covered mine, thin fingers squeezing down, and any thoughts of watching for a crash flew right out of my head. I flinched and turned to the girl. She had her arm stretched out, and she was leaning over her own armrest so she could touch me.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, but I didn’t know what to say. My mouth was totally dry, with nerves from a host of different sources.

  She gave me that same tiny smile as before, but this time it seemed more thoughtful than shy. “Sorry.” She started to move her hand away, moving back over the space that separated us. “You looked—”

  The plane tilted the other way, and my heart leaped up until it was lodged somewhere just behind my tongue. I flipped my hand over, the movement desperate and completely unconscious, and grabbed at her retreating fingers. For a second, I felt the hesitation in her, the tension in her arm, as if she were trying to decide whether to pull away or not. But it was only for a moment, a short one. Then she did move, but it was to lean closer and to wrap her fingers around mine.

  After another minute, the plane straightened out, and I could breathe more easily. I looked up at the girl. She was watching me, watching while I took deep breaths and tried to calm down, to slow my heartbeat, and when I met her eyes, I was embarrassed. My palm was sweaty and sticky against hers, and I knew I must look like a complete fool, panicking when no one else was, when there was absolutely nothing to be afraid of. I couldn’t help the fear, and I accepted it. Normally I was okay with it, because it was something that wasn’t pleasant or easy but simply was, and I could deal with that. But I didn’t want this girl to see me like that. I didn’t want to imagine anyone had seen me like that, but especially her, right now.

  I drew in another shaky breath. She still had a hold of my hand, and as much as I wanted to wipe my palm on my jeans, I didn’t want to let go either. I raised my other hand and brushed my bangs out of my face.

  “I don’t like flying,” I said. Captain Obvious. Great.

  Her smile went a little wider, and I thought I might hear some teasing, but there was none. She pressed her fingers to mine. Our wrists nearly lined up, and I imagined I could feel the steady pulse in hers, counterpoint to the erratic leaping of mine. She held my hand until the plane had stopped twisting in the sky and we were more or less steady, and I wasn’t flinching at every move. Then she let me go, carefully untangling our fingers. She was even polite enough not to wipe her palm off once our hands had separated.

  “Thanks.” My voice still sounded tight, but I’d probably be okay, now that we’d gotten past the takeoff stage and the plane was even, and I could almost, almost imagine I was on a bus instead, cruising down the highway, firmly on the ground.

  She nodded. “Sure.” She hesitated, then reached her hand back out for me to shake. “I’m Cara.”

  “Ava.”

  She sat back in her seat and gazed at me, studying me almost like I’d studied her before. She had a book in her lap, but she hadn’t opened it yet. Her fingers brushed over the cover.

  “Ava. What’s making you take a red-eye all the way across the country?”

  I laughed, short and soft. Around us, the cabin lights were dimming, and there was the shifting, rustling noise of people trying to get comfortable enough to sleep in a cramped space. “You mean I don’t look like someone who might travel to see the fall foliage?”

  She grinned back and shook her head. “Nope. And it’s too early for it to be any good yet, anyway. But you don’t have to say,” she added hastily. “Sorry. I’m used to talking to people, but I shouldn’t have pried.”

  My turn to shake my head. “Nah, it’s fine. I’m going . . .” I almost said home, but the word caught in my throat. Where I was headed wasn’t home. Home was the place I’d left a few hours ago, the people I’d left. I wasn’t sure when it had happened. Even when I’d been so eager to leave my parents’ place, the town I’d grown up in, when I’d finally escaped to a college across the country, I’d always called where I was from home. But somewhere along the way, that had shifted. I didn’t think of it that way anymore.

  “I’m visiting family,” I said. “Annual trip.” Or it would have been, if my parents had had their way. I’d put it off the last two years in a row. Maybe three, if I bothered to count. I’d begged off with a crazy touring and recording schedule, and made do with seeing my parents, and maybe my cousin, briefly whenever Escaping Indigo passed through. I hadn’t actually gone there on purpose, to spend any time there, in years. “My grandmother’s going into assisted living too. So I’m going to help.” It was the only reason I’d been corralled into a trip this long. I’d had to do it.

  Cara nodded.

  “You?” I asked, because I was curious, and because I wanted to stop talking about myself and why I was going. I didn’t want to think about it. If I did, I’d start thinking about how I’d wanted to get off the plane as soon as I’d gotten on, how I wanted to turn around and get back to my friends and the place I belonged.

  She smiled. “Going home. I went out for a dance thing.”

  “Oh.” What I knew about dance could fit in a tissue. My mother had tried to make me go when I was younger. It was the thing all little girls were supposed to do, and I probably had gone a few times, but it hadn’t lasted, and I couldn’t remember much about it. It was never going to be my thing, and I’d put it behind me like all the other things my parents had pushed at me. “That’s really cool,” I told Cara now. It was, and I thought I should say more, but didn’t know what else wouldn’t sound completely ignorant, either.

  I wanted to ask her more about it, but a huge yawn caught me. I covered my mouth, embarrassed, but Cara smiled and shook her head. “You look exhausted.”

  I huffed out a laugh. Maybe I should be taking that as an insult, but I couldn’t quite. “It’s been a crazy couple of weeks.” Touring always was. This round had actually been easier, calmer, than any tours I could remember before. We’d finally kind of made it. We had a tour bus and enough money in our pockets that we knew we weren’t going to starve, cash to pay people to help us while we traveled so we didn’t have to do every little thing ourselves, and while the venues we played weren’t massive, I wasn’t quite as worried that we were all going to be ax murdered in a back alley because the place was so scuzzy. It wasn’t like those early days, when Tuck and Bellamy and I had lived out of a van for weeks on end, sleeping with our gear so we wouldn’t get ripped off, playing for crowds who weren’t always exactly sure who we were. Happy when we were making enough money to pay for gas so we could get to the next city. I was glad those days were over.

  Sometimes I missed the simplicity in them, though, missed how each day was only about putting one foot in front of the other, and nothing else. That was all there had been—a steady march toward our goal—and it had made everything so clear, had given me so much focus. Now it was easier but also somehow so much more complicated. We’d arrived, we’d actually gotten to where we’d wanted to go, and there were possibilities and options spread out before us, so that sometimes they seemed endless, and that wasn’t anything but good. But it was scary too, and it made me want to sleep forever sometimes, so I wouldn’t have to stare those big things in the face.

  “Why don’t you stretch out?” Cara asked.

  My mind, not really performing at peak, went in about a million directions, and half of them were dirty. I
was immediately embarrassed with myself. Cara’s smile twisted slightly to the side, and I knew that whatever I was thinking was showing clear on my face, or clear enough for her to at least get some idea of it. Doubly so now, probably—a blush spread over my cheeks and up my neck. I didn’t blush cute. I blushed in splotches and spots, uneven patches of red that were as embarrassing as whatever was causing them. I sighed, but Cara reached out before I could look away or say anything, and ran her hand down my arm. It was only a couple of inches, elbow to forearm, but it was enough to make me shiver, to make me want to lean in to that touch. I hadn’t expected that reaction from myself, but it had been a long time since anyone had touched me quite like that—tender and gentle and a little bit shy—touched me to bring me back to them. I couldn’t even remember when the last time had been.

  She raised the armrest on her seat and patted the cushion of the seat between us. “My schedule’s all messed up. I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep. But you could.” A slight blush, the faintest pink, spread across her own cheekbones. “If you want.”

  What I wanted, with something that felt almost like surprise, was to stay awake and keep flirting with this girl. Even though I was pretty obviously doing a terrible job of flirting. It had been so long since I’d had any practice, and it was showing. I kept putting my foot in my mouth. Maybe it would be best to stop while I was ahead. And I was tired, anyway. I hadn’t been kidding when I’d told Cara that it had been a long few weeks. Good weeks, but draining nonetheless. And this would be my last chance to simply . . . sleep and rest and not think about where I was coming from or where I was going. Caught safe in the middle while we were in the air, before we landed and I had to deal with my family and being back in my hometown and everything that meant.

  I nodded. “Thank you. That would . . . That would be really good.”

  She nodded back and moved her hand for me, freeing the space. I lifted my own armrest and curled over onto my side, squashing my jacket under my head for a makeshift pillow. It wasn’t exactly comfortable. It was too tight and the seats were too narrow, so my knees hung over the edge. But I’d slept in worse positions. It was more space than I would have had otherwise, and I didn’t care if it wasn’t exactly ideal.