Because of me.
Because of this fucked-up shit between us.
I really should’ve talked to him after the show, figured out if his tension onstage was in any way my fault.
But I didn’t.
Instead I’d let him push my buttons at the bar.
Feed me shots.
Make me suck a shooter out of his lap in front of everyone—because he knew I wouldn’t say no. That I’d be afraid of making an even bigger scene if I refused.
That I already felt bad about avoiding him at the show. He knew that, right?
Yeah, probably. And he’d only use it against me. See it as an opening to try to fuck me.
He’d definitely gotten the hard-on from hell right there in the bar, and didn’t even try to cover it up.
Obviously, I knew there was a danger in letting things go any farther. That if he kept watching me dance with that look on his face… If I had one more of those ridiculously delicious shooters… There was gonna be a disaster.
A naked, sweaty, orgasmic disaster.
He’d try to get me alone and he’d try to get his dick in me, and he’d succeed.
I played a tough game, but the truth was I was so damn ready and willing to give in, it was pathetic.
Which was why I had to walk away.
Thank God he didn’t follow. But even though Zane didn’t get me into bed last night, it felt like he’d had the upper hand. Like he was in control.
And I couldn’t afford to let Zane have control.
No more letting him buy me shooters, then.
No more sitting anywhere near him in a bar.
No more ordering his favorite drink for him.
No more acting like I was his wife, when I wasn’t.
When we were about a half-hour from Portland, Zane texted me.
Zane: I’m glad you’re on the tour
I hesitated to respond. I considered not responding at all.
I was still kinda mad about last night.
And I was scared.
I was sad, frustrated, irritated, and every emotion in-between.
I was tired, and this tour was barely twenty-four hours old.
But… it was a nice thing for him to say. And it didn’t come with a heated come-on.
Me: I’m always on the tour.
He responded immediately.
Zane: you should ride on my bus
For Christ’s sake. He wasn’t gonna let this go, was he?
No. Of course he wasn’t.
This was Zane.
As soon as he had me on the line… let the chase commence.
Me: I have my own bus.
Zane: we could be fucking right now
And there it was.
Not a question. Not an invitation. Just a statement of plain fact.
Because if I was riding on Zane’s bus right now, we would most definitely be fucking, and apparently he knew it as well as I did.
Zane: you telling me whatever you’re doing on your lady bus is better than that?
I didn’t respond to that.
Zane: I like having you around
I didn’t even know what to say to that. I really needed to stop looking at his texts.
But every time my phone pinged, I looked.
Zane: you make everything better
Zane: sunshine
Zane: cloudy day
Zane: something about the month of May?
Oh, sweet Jesus. He was serenading me with “My Girl” over text.
Me: Don’t get cheesy.
Zane: Motown, baby
Zane: it’s a classic
I didn’t respond.
Zane: I’ll Go is about you
I stared at his text as the words sank in. Slowly.
“I’ll Go” was an epic love song on the new album, written by Zane and Seth. Entirely acoustic, with Jesse and Seth on guitar and searing, haunting vocals from Zane. It was some of his best vocal work on the album, for sure.
There was a line in it about gray eyes. I assumed it was about Elle, that Seth had written it for her. Though I didn’t ask.
Maybe I just wanted to believe that was true.
Zane: come see me when we get to Portland
Shit.
I tucked my phone away.
Zane was constantly texting and calling me—at home. Flirting, coming on to me, reminding me how awesome it would be if I just spread my legs for him.
And yes, there were times when I did spread my legs for him.
But at home it was easier to just avoid him most of the time. It wasn’t like he lived right next door. Here, I’d have to be around him all the time and I knew he was going to put the pressure on, flirt with me.
But worse, he was going to be sweet with me to try to win me over.
And when Zane was sweet with me… it totally fucked with me.
It made me imagine what it could be like if I let him love me. It made me want his love.
It made me want to love him back.
It crossed the wires in my head, lighting a fire in me that would just keep burning, hotter and hotter until I found some way to douse it out.
Usually, I threw a bucket of cold water on it when I reminded myself what a manwhore he was.
I’d tell myself whatever I needed to, to convince myself to keep away from him.
But in the meagre hours since we’d rolled out of Vancouver on this tour, I was already considering many more interesting ways I could douse that fire.
Or stoke it.
Everything just seemed so different away from home. Maybe it was like the Vegas thing; like whatever we did here, on the road, somehow didn’t count or something?
Or maybe that as just an excuse.
It counted. I knew it did.
Because what Zane and I did in Vegas changed everything.
There was no taking it back. No pretending it didn’t happen.
Even if we got a divorce today, Zane would never let me forget what I’d done, and he’d probably never stop digging to find out if it meant more to me than I’d told him it did.
In the days and weeks that followed our wedding, when it sank in for Zane how mad I was that the whole thing was real, he’d accused me of being full of shit. I’d told him that even if the marriage was legal, it still wasn’t real because I didn’t know what I was agreeing to when I said those vows.
When he refused to agree to an annulment or a divorce, and I was the angriest I’d ever been with him, I’d told him that none of it mattered anyway.
The marriage didn’t matter.
But it did matter, and we both knew it.
No matter how much we fought about it, no matter how much we disagreed, no matter how much I told him I wanted a divorce and he denied me, no matter how many times he slept with other women… it mattered.
All of it mattered, because we were friends. We were coworkers. Our lives were intertwined in our shared passion for Dirty.
And we cared about each other.
We were still married, even though we weren’t living like a married couple. And the truth was we were still married because we both still wanted to be.
Because neither of us was willing to let it go.
Which meant that whatever we did on this tour would matter. A lot.
If I let myself cross the line with Zane, I’d just be giving him another glimpse of the truth. Sex revealed my attraction to him, but more than that, it let him closer to my heart and all my fucked-up feelings for him.
It made me vulnerable to him, which should’ve made me hellbent on staying the fuck away from him…
He wrote a song for me.
I grabbed my phone and opened my music app. I pulled up “I’ll Go,” put my earbuds in and listened, really listened, closer than I ever had before.
It was a song of longing and devotion. Of wanting someone who was far away, out of reach… yet so close you could taste it. Someone who was standing right next to you, but you couldn’t have.
I’ll go
where you are
gray eyes, so far
with you (come with me)
I’ll go there (with you)
wherever you are
And hearing Zane sing those words, knowing they were about me… I got a giant lump in my throat as the familiar, dangerous longing flared to life in my chest.
Desire.
Fear.
More fear.
I knew I was afraid to let myself fall for him…
I knew I was afraid he’d already fallen for me.
I knew I wanted him… and that wanting was just never going to stop.
The only thing I didn’t know was what the hell I was going to do about it.
Chapter Four
Zane
After the Portland show, I headed straight out to my bus alone and told Shady not to let anyone in. Fuck meeting fans and fuck everyone else.
I was not in the fucking mood.
I dropped onto one of the couches in the lounge, dug out my weed and rolled a fat joint. Then I sat back and let the green start to do its thing…
I just needed to smoke, and think things over a bit.
Like why the fuck was I so bent out of shape over another night of inconsequential fuck-ups?
Second show of the tour and I was definitely not feeling it. I’d lost count of the number of small fuck-ups tonight. I’d tripped and almost fallen on my face, for one. And I’d run into Matty countless times, almost knocking him down twice. Would’ve liked to blame that on the new guy, but wasn’t his fault.
I was all motherfucking tense and out-of-body, not even fully conscious of where the hell I was. My body was on that stage, but my mind was somewhere the fuck else.
Total lack of commitment.
Worst of all, I’d fucked up the words to “Road Back Home,” a song we’d been playing live for a fucking decade, and I did not do that shit.
Tonight, I’d done it.
Started singing the wrong fucking verse, in a song I knew by heart, upside-down and inside-out, in my sleep and fucking stoned. Stoned or not, when was the last time I’d fucked up the words to a Dirty song onstage?
I couldn’t remember it. Maybe back when I was drinking… eight years ago?
Tonight, I’d done it in front of an entire arena filled with fans.
And Maggie.
Yeah. Fuck.
I took a long, deep toke. That was what was up my ass, right?
Fucking Maggie.
I’d performed in front of her for almost eight years.
I’d been famous as Dirty’s frontman for longer than that.
But I’d never been on tour with her while we were in this fucked-up relationship before. We’d never had this bullshit push-and-pull, kick-and-claw tension between us, this messed-up secret marriage shit that was screwing with my head.
Straight up, I’d never worried what Maggie would think of my performance before. Sure, I’d probably always wanted to impress her. But this… this was different.
It was like I was performing just for her, singing every song to her… and waiting for her to pass judgment on me.
Waiting for some kind of thumbs-up from her that was probably never gonna come.
She didn’t say one word to me, either before or after the show. She didn’t talk to me all day. I’d barely even seen her in the last two days; she’d been avoiding me ever since she ran out of that bar where I was feeding her shots the other night.
I’d seen her in the shadows backstage, but she wouldn’t even meet my eyes.
Christ.
All those fuck-ups… They’d just compounded in my head with the pressure of knowing she was watching.
A few minor fuck-ups were pretty normal, typical at the first few shows of a new tour.
And yet the entire show tonight was sitting all wrong with me.
Again.
Even the weed wasn’t helping as much as it should.
I shouldn’t have needed the weed anyway, but fuck it, what else did I have? It wasn’t like Maggie’s pussy was waiting for me, warm and ready when I came offstage.
And touching another woman was out of the question.
I didn’t need any other woman.
But I needed this tour.
I needed the music and I needed the shows.
For some addicts, touring knocked them right off the wagon. Every time. It was the constant partying, the free access to all the shit that came along with the partying.
Booze. Drugs. Sex.
For me it was the opposite. It was the band, the music, the touring that kept me sane and sober.
But I needed it to go a certain way.
When it came to my talent, some people called me a perfectionist. So be it. The bar I set for myself and those around me was incredibly fucking high; I knew that. And yes, that high bar was probably half the reason I was an addict in the first place. Got me drinking, then drinking to excess, because reaching for that high bar all the fucking time? It was exhausting and damn near debilitating.
The constant striving.
The almost crippling fear of failure.
But once I got sober, I still reached for that high bar. I reached higher.
And good thing.
Those high expectations I set for myself, for my voice, for my performance… they kept me sharp. They kept me engaged and wanting more, always pushing to be better.
They kept me at the top.
And they kept me from ever thinking about giving up.
I could never give up on anything once I’d decided I wanted it. Just wasn’t in me.
Even if the pursuit of it destroyed me.
That’s why I would never give up on Maggie.
She’d have to sue me for divorce and marry someone else, and I’d probably still be pawing at her door, trying to win her over.
Yeah. That was the truth.
I wanted to be Maggie Omura’s husband like I wanted to be Dirty’s lead singer.
I had to be.
What the fuck else would I do if I didn’t have Dirty? If they ever voted me off the fucking island? I’d be lost without them.
I could sing with another band, but it wouldn’t be music.
I could fuck a lot of other women.
It wouldn’t be love.
Someone was knocking on the door. I had no idea how much time had passed, if someone was waiting to take me back to the hotel, if the guys were heading out to a bar, whatever. I just ignored it and kept smoking.
Then the door popped open and Shady stuck his head in. “Maggie’s outside,” he told me in a low voice. “Said she needs to talk to you.”
I sat up and brushed the weed aside. “Let her in.” I took a final hit from the joint, then crushed the rest in an ashtray.
Shady stepped back and Maggie poked her head in the door. “Need to go over a few things for tomorrow,” she said. No expression on her face. No warmth. No How the fuck are you?
I nodded and she came up the steps, shutting the door behind herself. She lingered there, barely inside the lounge, one foot practically out the door.
She glanced at the weed on the table but she didn’t say anything about it.
She used to say a lot about it.
These days, she chose her battles with me carefully.
She wore tight jeans and a long, loose sweater that hid her petite curves. Gray, to match her eyes. Her dark hair was smoothed down straight around her face, as usual. She looked a little tired… But those fucking lips. I only realized she was talking because her lips were moving.
Kinda got lost looking at her mouth…
“… three phone interviews in the morning,” she was saying. “The first is at eight—”
“Eight?” Christ, I was barely out of bed at eight. What about the gym? And breakfast?
And maybe a morning lay?
“East coast,” she said. “Brody wants you to do it.” She watched as I got to my feet and moved toward her. “Talia will be over at five-to to get you set up…” Her eyes widened as
I got close, as I reached past her and flipped the lock on the door. “You’ll probably want to set an alarm…”
I drew the curtain behind her, closing off the front steps and the driver’s seat, blocking the front windows so we were totally alone in the lounge. The blinds on the windows down the sides of the bus were already shut.
Then I went back over to the couch and sat down.
Maggie just stood there with her arms crossed, watching me.
“That all?” I said.
“For now.”
“How was the show tonight?”
She stared at me for a moment, searching my face, like it was a trick question. “That screw-up on ‘Road Back Home’?” she said. “It wasn’t as bad as you think. You handled it really well.”
“Come sit down.” I nodded at the couch beside me, lounging back.
She cocked her head as if to say, Seriously?
“Do I have to play the employer card? You know, I am yours.” I rarely played the employer card with her, but hey, I wasn’t above it.
Definitely wasn’t above letting my “employee” get down on her knees and suck me off with her gorgeous mouth, if that’s what she wanted to do.
“What do you want, Zane?”
“I want you to come sit down.”
She took her sweet time about it, but finally she came over and sat on the couch, tense as fuck.
“How was the show?” I asked her again.
“Overall, it was good. I mean… it was awesome.” But she didn’t unclench when she said it. Her arms were still locked over her chest.
“So, this how it’s gonna be?”
She stared at me, totally fucking guarded. “What?”
“You gonna play it cold the whole way through? Avoid me? Talk to me about not one thing but business? Tell me the show was awesome like some yes-woman with a stick up your butt?”
Yeah. Pretty much. I could read that plan all over her face and her Fuck right off, Zane body language.
“There’s nothing to talk about but business,” she said.
“And nothing to do but talk, huh?”
I put my arm up on the back of the couch. I could just reach her, and brushed her silky hair back off her shoulder. Couldn’t help it. I had a chance to touch Maggie, fucking right, I was touching her.
Dirty Like Zane: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 6) Page 5