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  Out of Sync

  A Vertical Smile Novel

  Vanessa North

  Copyright © 2021 by Vanessa North

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Praise for Vanessa North

  “[A]uthentic characters charting complicated paths with grace and courage.”

  The New York Times on BLUEBERRY BOYS

  “A beautiful look at female relationships.”

  The Washington Post on ROLLER GIRL

  “A steamy book in which nuanced friendships are as central as the romance between two star-crossed lovers.”

  Kirkus on SUMMER STOCK

  “Steamy and compelling”

  RT Book Reviews on DOUBLE UP

  “Smooth and sexy”

  Publisher’s Weekly on ROUGH ROAD

  “[A] fabulous romance with two male leads.”

  RT Book Reviews on SUMMER STOCK

  Content Advisory

  Out of Sync is a romance novel, so I promise there’s a happy ending. However, it does contain content that will be difficult for some readers. There is on page violence and abuse of a teenager by their parent. There is on page self harm and discussion of an off page suicide attempt. There are people living in precarious situations and uncertainty of housing. This story takes place over ten years, and there are losses, including deaths of family members for both secondary and primary characters. Because these issues may be triggering and painful for some readers, please prioritize your health and safety.

  * * *

  If you or anyone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

  Contents

  Author Note

  Prologue

  I. Jacks – Then

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  II. Ritchie – Now

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Want more Vertical Smile?

  About the Author

  Also by Vanessa North

  Author Note

  Out of Sync is a spin-off from Off Limits, the first title in the multi-author Rose & Thorns series. While it can be read as a standalone novel, it does make references to events in Off Limits.

  Chronologically, Part One of Out of Sync takes place ten years before the events of Off Limits, and Part Two takes places several months after those same events.

  Prologue

  Ritchie - Now

  I love him, and I want to throw up every time I look at him.

  Jacks has his arms around Nat’s new girl, Bex. She’s got her hand buried in his mohawk, and their foreheads press together. The way they grin at each other like they’re the best friends ever makes me irrationally, incandescently angry.

  It’s not that she’s rich and famous or that he used to be rich-if-not-famous, or anything to do with that. I got over my weirdness about his wealthy upbringing about three seconds after I carried that bleeding sixteen-year-old boy he’d been out of his daddy’s house. I don’t harbor petty jealousies about what other people have. I don’t care about that shit, and I don’t care about money. Me and my Jacks? We get by.

  I know we’re here to brush elbows with the “influencers” Natalie’s girlfriend wanted us to meet, but we finally have a night off together. I want nothing more than to spend the night tangled up in him. Meanwhile, he won’t even look at me.

  And me? I can’t look at him without smelling blood and hearing my own desperate shouts like it’s all happening again every moment we’re together. Loving him makes me helpless, but the idea of not loving him? I’d have to be dead.

  I take another swig of my beer and stare at them. Best fucking friends. All his best friends have been women, which theoretically means I shouldn’t have any cause for jealousy, right? Because he’s gay. Gay. All day long every day gay.

  But when you’ve loved someone over a decade, it isn’t sex that gets you jealous.

  It’s intimacy.

  He’s got angry scars on both tattooed wrists and hasn’t spoken more than three sentences in a row to me in over a month, no matter how much I tell him I’m there for him. He shivers at night, even though our apartment is warm. He wakes up angry, he goes to bed angry, and he can barely stand to look at me when we’re in the same room. He says he loves me, but he just needs time. He loves me; he just needs space.

  But here he is, laughing.

  “All right, buddy?” Teri’s arm goes around my shoulders, and she rests her head against mine.

  “Why won’t he look at me like that?”

  She stiffens. Jacks has been a steady stream of tension in our friendship for over a decade now. I know she loves him like a brother—but that doesn’t mean she understands him. Or me, for that matter. Shit. Teri’s my oldest friend, I have no reason to read anything into her body language other than the same concern we all feel for Jacks right now.

  “You don’t want him to look at you like that.” She shakes her head. “You want him to look at you like he looked at you ten years ago. And that ain’t never gonna happen. He knows you too well now, the thrill is gone.”

  “Unfair and untrue.” I step out of her sideways embrace and turn to face her. “I don’t want his hero-worship. But I wish to God he’d talk to me. Smile at me.”

  “Blow you?” Teri smirks.

  I roll my eyes. Sex is not the problem. And if it were, I’d have an idea or two of how to fix it. But I can’t fix whatever’s hurting Jacks right now.

  “I want him to be happy, and I don’t know how to make him happy.”

  The smirk falls from her face, and she glances across the crowded room. “Maybe he needs to figure out happy for himself, and you need to step back and leave him to it.”

  If she punched me in the face, it would hurt less.

  Across the room, Bex detangles herself from Jacks’s embrace and drifts over to Nat. Nat’s packing tonight, and she looks hot as fuck. I don’t know what it is about her energy when she’s got her dick in her pants, but it has an aphrodisiac effect on a crowd. I know Nat to be a sweet, gentle soul who worries too much about everything, but the rest of the world sees her as a wild androgynous sex god, and it’s not hard to see why. Bex runs her hands down the front of Nat’s body, pausing to cup the bulge in her pants. Nat smiles at her, a dirty, indulgent leer, and I figure they’ll be leaving the party soon.

  “They’re hot together, aren’t they?”

  I hadn’t even noticed Jacks circling the room to come to my side. For all our troubles, he still seeks me out like a missile hitting its target. And, oh, I am hit. I swallow thickly and glance around. Teri has drifted away, chatting up a cute south Asian woman Nat used to work with. What did Jacks ask me? Oh, right. Nat and Bex. Hot.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to play with them?” His breath is warm in my ear, and the suggestion takes me by surprise. My sexuality is fluid as it gets, but Jacks doesn’t usually work up an interest in women. Well, besides Nat, but she’s different. It’s not like I wouldn’t be into it if he was, but that’s the problem, isn’t it?

  “Do you?” I turn to face him, studying the hard angles of his too-thin face. His gaze is steady but sullen as he shakes his head.
r />   “Nah.”

  “So why did you bring it up?” I cup the side of his face with one hand, stroking my thumb over his cheekbone.

  He shrugs. “You deserve a good time. And I’m…” He trails off, then blows out a harsh breath and a harsher laugh. “Never mind. I’m fucking tired. Let’s go home.”

  He grabs his jacket off a chair on the way to the door, and I practically have to run to catch up with him.

  It’s a cool spring night in the city, but he walks fast enough to heat the blood.

  “Jacks, wait, I’ll get a Lyft,” I call after him, but he doesn’t slow down. I sprint ahead and grab his hand. “Stop.”

  He does, his body ramrod straight, and his eyes wet. Damn.

  “Jacks.” I pull him into my arms. “I’m getting a Lyft, okay?”

  He nods against my chest as I fumble my phone out of my pocket and open the app. A few minutes later, a car is pulling up to the curb.

  “Ritchie?” The guy asks me, and I nod, bundling Jacks’s shivering frame into the car, and scooting in next to him.

  The Lyft driver isn’t a talker, which is good, because all my attention is on Jacks and how hard he’s trying not to cry.

  “What’s going on, baby?” I murmur, trying to keep my hands off him, but it’s difficult, especially when he’s like this, and I want—no need—to reassure myself of his safety. “You looked happy talking to Bex.”

  He shakes his head and draws in a ragged breath. “I don’t know.” The frustration in his voice is raw.

  “Okay. That’s okay. Let’s go home, and I’ll roll us a joint, and we can hang out, just the two of us.”

  He nods, his exhaustion plain on his face.

  He holds it together until we reach the apartment door. As I’m sliding my key into the lock, the first sob hits him, and my heart breaks all over again.

  I push him through the open door and practically drag him to the bed. It’s also our sofa, but we never folded it up this morning since we weren’t expecting company.

  He curls up in a ball in the center of it, huge sobs racking his entire body. The noises he makes are practically feral. I sit close so I can run my hands over his back, through his hair, down his arms, skimming past the pink scars on his tattooed wrists.

  He grabs my hand and pulls me down so I’m lying beside him, and he rolls into my chest and howls out his anguish against my body.

  There’s nothing I can do but hold him tightly and wait for the hurricane in his head to pass, hoping we’re still standing when it does.

  I

  Jacks – Then

  Chapter One

  Adrenaline flooded my body as I slipped down the stairs, past my parents’ bedroom, filling my mouth with a metallic taste. I was sure they could hear my heart pounding, never mind my footsteps. But no, whatever they were watching on the TV had their attention captured completely, and I crept out the front door without anyone hearing, seeing, or best of all stopping me.

  Once I was down the front steps, I broke into a run.

  Ade was waiting for me, her Volkswagen idling with the flashers on two doors down—which in this neighborhood, meant a quarter-mile away. When I flung open the passenger door and scooted inside, backpack on the floor between my feet, she dropped her phone and reached for me.

  “I thought you weren’t going to make it.” Her arms around my neck were a warm, solid comfort. “When you said they took your phone—fuck, Jackson.”

  I choked back the panic and squeezed her back. “I’m okay. They just yelled a lot and waved it in my face. Thank goodness they didn’t take my computer. As long as I’m back in time for Dad to drive me to campus tomorrow morning, I don’t think they’ll notice I’m gone.”

  “You still want to go?” She pulled out of the hug and held my face. “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to stay home. Don’t do this with me if you’re going to get in trouble—in more trouble.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I want to go. You and I have been planning this for weeks. I’m not bailing on you.” I’d wanted to see the Glitter Guerrillas play since the first time Ade insisted I listen to their songs. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.

  The bouncer at the club barely looked at Ade’s driver’s license, seeming way more interested in her tits. He drew an X on each of her hands and waved her through. My turn.

  “ID.” He looked at me expectantly.

  “I don’t have my license with me.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You need ID, kid.”

  “I have my student ID from Princeton, would that work? I’m not wanting to drink. I only want to hear the music. Can’t you just X my hands like hers?” I bit my lip as I flopped my wallet open so the Princeton ID was visible.“Please?”

  He glared at me for a minute. “You’re eighteen?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “A freshman at Princeton.” Well, that part wasn’t a lie.

  He held out the marker; I held out my hands.

  I paid my cover at the window, then made my way down the linoleum-floored hallway to a door painted black. It was heavy, and it was shaking, and opening it felt like freedom.

  Once through the door, I stopped and closed my eyes. The pounding bass filled the room, shaking everything right down to my soul. Ade was right inside the door, and she grabbed my hand and squeezed.

  “Jackson!” She shouted in my ear, but she sounded miles away. “Let’s dance!”

  The band was electric, with a jittery energy that seemed to emanate from the bass player, a dark-haired, loose-limbed God in a leather jacket and ripped jeans. The singer-slash-guitar player was a tall woman with dyed black hair and tattoos—intense and scary. The drummer, another woman, looked bored, but it wasn’t like she was having any trouble keeping the beat. My own hands itched with the urge to play along, but I raised them over my head and started moving instead.

  Ade was a better dancer than I was, but I loved putting on a show. We gyrated together, then apart, occasionally grinding up on each other, but not in a sexual way. I wasn’t really into girls, and Ade wasn’t into anybody that I could tell.

  The next hour of my life was as close as I’d ever been to happy. Dancing, sweating, enjoying the attention of other dancers, and losing myself to music with my best friend right next to me. It was like a bubble of perfect, thoughtless sensation. When the band stopped playing, that bubble burst, and I wanted to burst with it, sure I would never feel that good ever again.

  Ade’s arms came around my waist and she rested her sweaty head against my chest. I hugged her close and kissed her hair.

  “I gotta pee.” I pushed her away and shoved a ten-dollar bill in her hand. “Go get us a couple bottled waters? Make sure they’re sealed.”

  She nodded, a blissed-out look on her face, and made her way to the bar.

  The line for the single-stall restroom was shorter than it would have been earlier in the show; a lot of the people who were there to hear the Glitter Guerrillas had gone, leaving only the people who were there to drink. My ears felt like they were full of cotton, and I could barely hear anything as I waited.

  A man came and stood behind me, but I didn’t look up from my examination of my cuticles. He smelled good, though, good enough to make me inhale deeply, appreciating the scents of sweat and cologne. I closed my eyes and swayed a little on my feet.

  “Steady there.” A voice murmured in my ear and a hand fell to my waist.

  I jolted at the contact and turned around, ready to shove the guy into the next century, but my indignation died in my throat. A dark-haired, loose-limbed God in a leather jacket and ripped jeans. Up close, I could see all the little details I couldn’t see when he was on stage: a freckle just under his clavicle and the sharp slants of his cheekbones. His eyes were the color of chocolate and his lips curved up in a wicked smile.

  “You looked like you were about to pass out,” he said, loud enough for me to hear him over the cotton ears, and his hand tightened on my waist. “Are you all right?”

  I swallowed hard
, nodding. “Your set was incredible.”

  His smile softened, and he laughed. “Thank you. I’m going to let go of you now.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” I blurted. I was sure I sounded like an idiot, my face flushing red.

  “Is that so?” His gaze dropped to my lips, and he bit his own. “I’m Ritchie.”

  “Jacks.”

  “It’s nice to meet you.” He leaned in close, and my heart started racing. His nose brushed the side of my face, and his lips grazed my ear, sending shivers down my spine. “Do you live nearby?”

  Danger! Red Alert! My brain threw up all kinds of signals and warnings, but my body was still thrumming with the energy of the music and the intoxicating nearness of him. Ritchie.

  He backed me up against the wall, right there in the hallway to the restroom, and kissed me. It wasn’t how I thought my first kiss would be. It was better.

  His lips were firm but gentle, and his stubble scraped my chin. I opened my lips and his tongue slid against mine, triggering something wild in me. I felt, rather than heard the moan that rose from my chest as the hand on my waist slid down to my ass and pulled me against him.

  His other hand held my jaw—it was half caress, half restraint, and it made me dizzy with wanting. When he pulled back from the kiss his other hand slid up my chest and cupped the other side of my face. “Oh, sweet Jesus. Please tell me you live nearby,” he whispered, his thumbs rubbing circles on the hollows under my cheekbones.