I took a deep breath. “Look, I just want to talk to her. If she tells me to leave, I will. But I have to try.”
Ryan pulled to stop sign and leveled a serious look at me. “If she calls the cops, leave immediately. If you somehow get arrested, say absolutely nothing and call me.”
My breath hissed out of me. If it were anyone else by Ryan, I’d snap at him and say something that would probably lose me a friend. As it was, I could only nod. I knew he was just trying to protect me from myself.
“I really don’t think it’s going to come to that.”
“I know you don’t. I’m sure it won’t. I have to say it anyway.”
“Well, let’s not discuss it anymore, okay?” I couldn’t listen to all the reasons I should leave Vanessa alone. I was beyond reason.
The rest of the ride home was silent. We pulled up in front of my house and Ryan turned to frown at me. I stared back at him suspiciously.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head at me. “You said you didn’t want to discuss it.”
“That was before you started staring at me like I drowned your puppy. Just tell me.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Good luck, I guess.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Good luck?”
“I want you to be happy,” Ryan told me. “If she turns you down, promise you’ll call me and not…”
And not relapse.
I’d be lying if I pretended that it hadn’t been on my mind more this week than usual. But the thing about alcoholism is that the addiction is constant. It’s always there. It was a bit worse when I was upset or sad, but it was there when I was happy, too. I don’t think Ryan ever really understood that I was at nearly the same risk of relapsing when I was having a great day as I was on my worst one. There was a small difference between the two, maybe ten percent. Meanwhile, my willpower was always only just enough to keep myself sober. That’s the reality of being in recovery versus being cured. I was always going to be reliant on having just enough willpower to make it to tomorrow. I just had to keep making the decision, day after day, that it would be enough. As long as I did that, I was fine. But I think it would terrify Ryan if he knew the margin of error was so small.
So, in order to avoid shaking his worldview about my recovery, I put on my most confident face and tone. “I’ll be okay. You gave me the right address, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. I found her pretty easily. She moved in yesterday.”
Sometimes having a super smart lawyer for a brother was a good thing. Ryan dropped me off at my house and I went immediately to my garage, and then in my car to the address Ryan had given me. I didn’t have the code to her complex, so I had to sneak in past the gate. I just walked around it, but I still felt vaguely guilty. On the walk across the sprawling apartment complex and up to her door, I prepared myself to convince Vanessa that even though I was walking dumpster fire, she should love me anyway.
I was about a hundred feet away from her door when I saw she wasn’t alone.
36
Vanessa
“No, no, no, no, you stay right there,” I ordered the clock I’d just hung on the wall ten minutes ago. Someone on the floor above me had slammed a door, and it made the clock swing dangerously on its single nail. Hammering in nails was one of the hardest things to do by myself now that I couldn’t rely on my dominant left arm to work properly, and I did not want to get the hammer out again. Or clean up a mess.
At first, the picture seemed to be considering my instruction. But the force of will is nothing compared to the force of gravity. The clock fell and glass shattered everywhere on the lovely hardwood floors I’d just mopped. “Fuck,” I said to nobody. I shuffled over to my newly organized broom closet to clean it up.
Issues aside, the new apartment was nice. My furniture actually fit, unlike the last place I’d lived which had been so small that I could touch the oven door, the front door, and the toilet at the same time. This felt much less claustrophobic and depressing.
I’d just finished sweeping up the glass from the face of my now ruined clock when a knock on the door almost made me drop the dustpan. I scowled. The clock had stopped when it fell at seven-thirty. That meant it was much too late for anyone to be bothering me.
I opened the door warily, and nearly slammed it again when I saw who it was.
“Remember me?” the beady-eyed man asked me.
Unfortunately, I did. It was the creep who first asked me about Jason at the South by Southwest afterparty a few weeks ago.
“Leave me alone,” I said as coldly as I could. “Don’t come here again or I’ll get a restraining order.”
This guy, and people like him, had been torturing me for weeks now, although admittedly it was digital and not in person. Still, I didn’t have a thing to say to him. I moved to slam the door shut, but he pushed the toe of his boot inside. I was still holding the dustpan, so I had plenty of broken glass with which to defend myself.
“I know you got screwed over by the stories that got run about you, but I promise you want to hear what I have to say,” he told me. “My name is Clay Withers, and I’ve got an offer for you if you’ll give me five minutes. I can fix everything.”
Against my better judgement, I paused instead of squashing his foot.
“Fix everything?” I asked, still wary of this man and anything he could offer me. As they seemed to specialize in stalking me and telling lies, I didn’t see how the paparazzi could possibly do anything to help me.
Clay nodded. “Our readers are interested in the truth,” he told me. “If you’re interested too, we could set the record straight about everything that’s been run lately.”
Part of me wanted to believe him. Even though it was obvious that he was lying or telling me some sort of appealing half-truth, I would have liked to set the record straight. Over the last week, the social media fallout had been brutal. I’d deleted my Instagram and Twitter to escape it, but was still receiving my share of abuse. It’s hard to build a good video freelance business when there are scores of angry women out there who are convinced you destroyed their favorite band and their favorite singer’s marriage. But I wasn’t going to trust a character assassin to rehabilitate my reputation.
“You wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped you upside the head,” I told Clay.
He smirked. “I actually do. It just doesn’t drive web traffic.”
“That’s almost worse, you know. I could sue you for libel.”
He looked unconcerned. “You’d lose.”
Yeah, apparently that’s what Ryan told Ian, too. He told me he’d asked. I ground my teeth. According to Ian, our laws pretty much allow people to say anything they want online, regardless of the truth. I understood freedom of speech, but not when it resulted in people mailing me roadkill. “But that doesn’t mean we have to be enemies,” Clay continued. “Our interests are aligned now. I’m basically on your side.”
I gaped at him. This asshole had balls. I’d give him that. “Oh?” I stammered. I had a very hard time believing that he was on my side. He was on his side.
Oblivious to my skepticism, he grinned. “Now that you’re no longer working for Axial Tilt and your contract has terminated, you can share your side of the story. I’ll pay good money for it. And I think my readers would be interested to read it.”
Telling my story was tempting, but I knew that anyone paid to spread lies couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth now just because it was beneficial. Besides, didn’t he have other people to slander?
“It must be a slow news week if you’re looking for my story,” I told him.
He shrugged. “It’s never a slow news week when you make the news.”
With lies. What a fucking jerk.
“I’m not interested in being a part of your schemes,” I told him. “I have no story I want to tell.”
“I’ll pay you fifty percent more than Axial Tilt did for going on tour with them.”
My jaw went slack. “You d
on’t know how much they paid me.”
He handed me a business card with a figure written on the back of it. Okay. Apparently, he did.
“This isn’t real,” I told him, staring at the card in my palm. I wouldn’t have to work for a year.
“It’s entirely real,” Clay told me. “Think about it. I want to know what it was like going on tour with Axial Tilt, and I want details about everything. I want to know the truth from your perspective, I want every picture you took, and I promise to make you look good in the final story. You’ll be fully exonerated. When you decide, my number’s right there.”
He turned to walk away, and temptation hit me like a freight train.
Then, I remembered myself. I remembered Ian. I remembered how much he’d tried to help me when I was slandered online, and that he’d always given me the benefit of the doubt when it came to my integrity. Selling my story to Clay would be like putting a number on the time I spent with Ian, and it was priceless to me.
“Wait,” I told Clay, louder than I meant to. “I’ve made my decision.”
He turned around, grinning. I threw the card back at him, and then slammed the door in his face.
37
Ian
Clay Withers was to humanity what crocs are to shoes; technically a member of the group, but only by the very strictest definition. He was mostly just a parasite and a pain in the ass. I knew him primarily because of an incident where Don, master of pragmatism, nearly got into a fistfight with him when he caught Clay sneaking around backstage. There was no good reason for Clay to be at Vanessa’s apartment this late in the evening. Or ever.
Despite what I’d told Ryan, and against the best of my intentions, I was being a creepy stalker. I sunk into the shadows of the stairwell and watched Clay speaking with Vanessa. They were too far away for me to hear anything, and I couldn’t even see Vanessa, but Clay looked animated and happy.
A sinking feeling started to grow in the pit of my stomach. What did he want from Vanessa? Nothing good.
The hallucinated voice of my brother played out in my head as I watched them talking.
“She has every reason to turn on Axial Tilt. Because of the band, she lost her job. She agreed to go on tour with you and was subjected to fan abuse at every turn. Then, it got worse. She got fired for no good reason at all. There are a lot of reasons that she might be interested in whatever it is that Clay is offering her. Good ones.”
I swallowed hard against the negative thoughts. I couldn’t even blame Ryan for them, although I wanted to. The thoughts were mine, even if the voice of reason always sounded like Ryan in my mind.
I knew that Vanessa could do some serious damage to the band’s reputation if she started cooperating with the paparazzi. We’d all talked to her and told her personal things, especially me. Whether she realized it or not, we’d all considered her a friend. And then, or course, Don had to go and ruin everything for the world’s stupidest reason. I could hardly even blame Vanessa for wanting to figure out a way to spin her bad experience to her best advantage.
The conversation I witnessed wasn’t long. It took less than five minutes, and when it ended, Vanessa slammed the door. I thought that was a good sign until Clay started walking my way and I had to go halfway up a flight of stairs to keep him from seeing me. I probably didn’t need to have bothered. He was talking on the phone and didn’t seem to be paying much attention to his surroundings.
“It went well,” he was telling someone. Whoever he was talking to must have asked a question, because his next statement sounded like an answer. “About how I expected.” He paused. “I’m going to come by tomorrow and follow up.” His voice grew fainter as he walked. “No, I don’t think she’s going to be that hard to convince…”
My heart leapt as I watched him go. Whatever it was that he offered Vanessa, she clearly wasn’t buying it. At least, not yet. I sprinted up the stairs and in front of Vanessa’s door.
I knocked, but she didn’t answer. I knocked again, a bit louder, thinking maybe she walked to the other room or something. While I was waiting, my phone started to ring. I glanced down at my phone to silence it and realized that it was Vanessa. I answered it and Vanessa immediately started talking.
Her voice was frantic. “Ian, I’m sorry to call you, and you probably don’t want to talk to me, but Clay Withers, that creepy gossip guy, is here at my apartment. He offered me a ton of money. He wants me to sell my story about the tour and I told him to go away, but now he’s knocking on my door.” She sounded frightened and angry. I wasn’t sure which was winning.
“Vanessa, it isn’t Clay knocking on your door,” I told her. “It’s me.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath. “What? How do you--”
“I’m here right now. Please open the door.”
“But you’re—”
“Right outside, Vanessa. Just open the door. Please.”
The seconds ticked by and I waited with the very last of my hope. If she said no, if she told me to go away, I’d have to do it. But she hadn’t said no yet. She hadn’t said anything. So, I waited.
After the longest thirty seconds of my life, the door cracked open to show that Vanessa was still holding the phone to her ear. Her eyes were as big as saucers, and she was wearing leggings and a crop-top style T-shirt that had, of all things, the cast of the X-files on it. Her ruby-red hair was free around her shoulders. She looked absolutely beautiful, and her expression was wild and unsure.
We blinked at each other.
She dropped the phone and reached for me.
I kissed her.
38
Vanessa
Something in me ignited when I saw Ian standing at my door, and then catalyzed into some kind of insane chain reaction when he kissed me. I was powerless to stop it. I pounced, pulled him inside, and kissed him back with every ounce of feeling I’d been bottling up. He laughed into our kiss, a sort of low rumbling against my lips.
We didn’t say anything. There was nothing that needed to be said with words. Our bodies could communicate everything we needed to say.
Ian kissed me passionately, claiming my mouth and holding me up against his chest. He gripped my waist with both his hands, and I felt like I still couldn’t get close enough. God, how I’d missed him. It had only been a week, but it felt like forever.
I was totally overwhelmed by what I was feeling, and it seemed like Ian felt the same way. There was no stopping. He pinned me against my front door, kissing down the length of my neck and pulling my shirt up and over my head.
My apartment was hardly presentable at the moment. It was a mess of unpacked boxes and disorganized, random possessions. There were dinner plates on the couch. Most of my dresses were laid out on the countertops. But at the moment I didn’t care. There was a bed in here somewhere, and I wanted to be in it with Ian.
In the moment between kisses, while I was being stripped to the waist, I pointed toward the bedroom, and promptly found myself scooped up and carried that direction. I sighed into Ian’s chest, working free the buttons of his shirt during the short walk, although my attempts were thwarted when I was tossed on the bed. Ian took care of the rest of his buttons himself and then went to work on my pants.
My body felt unreal and fake except where Ian was touching me. I needed to be touched everywhere to feel real again, and he seemed more than happy to oblige. His fingers teased and probed over every inch of me, and he was looking at me like this was as essential to him as it was to me. Under his hands, I felt beautiful and alive.
It felt so good to be wanted, and I wanted Ian as much as he seemed to want me. Ian’s fingers brushed over my bra, pulling the clasp apart and freeing me. My breasts felt heavy and over-sensitive as he cupped me. They almost ached when he dipped his head to lick and suck on one nipple and then the other until they were hard, eager points. I arched my back into every moment of it. I clutched at the back of his head, gasping into the sensation and willing it to go on and on until the tight, needy fee
ling between my thighs became nearly unbearable.
Ian, however, seemed content to go at a much slower pace. Even when I was bucking my hips up and whimpering for more, he wasn’t in any rush. He took his time working down the length of my body, kissing down the sensitive skin of my stomach and hips, and then pulling down my leggings and panties to leave me completely naked while he was almost fully dressed. When he spread my thighs and kissed between them, I’d been considering the utter injustice, but those thoughts were quickly banished. Along with all other thoughts.
His tongue and long, skilled fingers went to work on me, rubbing, circling, and probing until he found a gentle, steady rhythm. I was totally at his mercy, and happy to be there. He took things very slow, easing me into the sensation before backing me off, only to repeat with greater pressure. When his teeth first grazed my clit I shivered, but it wasn’t long before I was tipping my hips up and begging for more.
My heart was pounding against my ribs as the pressure between my legs grew tighter, sweeter. I needed Ian to keep going, and he didn’t disappoint me. I stared down the length of my soft body to his tightly muscled, tattooed, lean one. How had I managed to get this man? At the moment, I was just grateful that I had. He pressed a second finger inside me and the combination with his tongue pushed me over the edge and into spinning, soaring ecstasy.
The final clenching shakes of my orgasm were still echoing when Ian crawled back up my body and the look in his eyes told me that we were only getting started. Like some kind of manual reset, I was instantly ready for more. I pulled at Ian’s belt and finally managed to shove down his pants and get my fingers around the long, hard length of him.
I felt his weight on me, listened to the low noise of approval he made while I stroked him, and he fumbled with a condom. I spread my legs beneath him again and lined us up. He pushed inside me with a single, slow, relentless press of his hips. This was what I needed.
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