by C. R. Jane
The dynamics I just witnessed suddenly make a lot more sense, and my heart hurts for Jensen and what he’s been through. Jesse hits the steering wheel suddenly, shocking me out of my sorrow. “That still doesn’t give him an excuse to take you in that situation,” he says with a curse. “Tanner and I can usually control the situation, but Carl obviously wanted to put on a show for you tonight.”
I don’t have anything to say in response, so I just stare out the window at the city lights as we pass them by. My phone vibrates in my lap, and I check it. It’s a message from Jensen. “I’m sorry,” is all it says.
“Do you think he’s alright back there?” I ask. “You should just drop me off near my house and go back there.”
Jesse shakes his head. “Jensen was about to leave and head to the practice center for the rest of the night. He’ll just pass out on that couch in there, and it will be as if tonight never happened tomorrow.”
Jesse pulls into an empty parking lot and I realize we’re at the park where the music festival was held. I look at him questioningly. He shrugs his shoulders at me. “I feel like some fresh air,” he says with a grin. I shake my head, but I follow him out into the empty field of grass where we once danced and I lay down on the blanket that he lays out. The sky is perfectly clear, showcasing a tapestry of stars that will probably end up reminding me of Jesse for the rest of my life. He turns his head to look at me, and I can’t help but feel a symphony of butterflies take flight in my stomach.
He leans in and brushes his lips against mine. It feels wrong in a way to enjoy this moment after the disaster of an evening that I’ve just had, but as Jesse moves his lips against mine, my capability for rational thought disappears.
It takes me a minute to catch my breath after he pulls away, his blue eyes seem to be almost illuminated under the starlight. They hold me captive, and I never want to be free. “How do I always end up lying under the stars with you, Jesse?”
He gives me a self-satisfied grin. “That’s easy, pretty girl. It’s the only place where I can get you to open up, where I see behind that mask you always wear. The dark seems to be the best place for me to unleash you. It’s where I can convince you that anything is possible, it’s the place where hopelessness doesn’t exist because the stars do. I’ll never pass up a chance to take you out here, to make you forget for a second all the shit that life seems to bring. Out here it’s only me and you. And I like that.”
His answer was much more than I was expecting, and I don’t have a response for him. Instead I inch my pinky finger towards his and link them together. I make a wish on every star I see that I’ll get the chance to watch the stars with Jesse Carroway for the rest of my life.
3
Now
When I wake up, I realize that it’s now dark outside, meaning that I slept the whole day away. Stretching slowly, I wince as the full brunt of my injuries hits me. I probably should go to the hospital, but with my luck they would call Gentry. A thrill of victory passes over me when I realize that this is the longest I’ve been able get away from Gentry for. He had always caught me within a few hours of my escape in the past.
Glancing over at the television which is still on, I’m relieved to see that the news has temporarily moved on to something different than my missing person story. “Fuck,” I whisper to myself, not knowing what’s going to happen next or how to deal with Gentry’s latest powerplay. I can hear pots and pans banging downstairs and I take a deep breath, trying to muster up the courage to face the complicated trio of men waiting for me. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the betrayed look on Jesse’s face when he found out that Jensen was telling the truth, even if it was a skewed version of the truth. And his statement about dreaming of me in my wedding dress, ugh, I’m not sure that my heart will ever recover. I wonder if my regret over losing five years of my life will ever go away. Even if my life were to end up amazing, would a piece of my soul always mourn these lost years?
Probably.
Getting out of bed, I walk to Jesse’s dresser and pull out a pair of sweats and a shirt, not wanting to put on my clothes from last night. Looking in the mirror, I gasp. My neck is bruised and swollen, as is my face from crying. I immediately start planning for the makeup I’ll need to wear before remembering that I won’t have to go to the country club tomorrow. I hopefully won’t ever have to go again. A big smile splashes across my face and I no longer see the beaten and haunted woman I did before, I see a survivor.
Feeling infinitely better, I walk downstairs, once again pausing on the stairs to stare at the gorgeous men in the kitchen. Jesse is bending over a pot on the stove that smells like it holds something mouthwatering seeing as how I haven’t eaten yet today. Jensen is sitting at the kitchen table, furiously writing in a notebook. Looking through the window I can see Tanner outside on the phone intensely yelling at someone.
I clear my throat before entering the room, feeling like I’m encroaching on an intimate moment. When I was 18, I never would have imagined feeling like a stranger with this group of boys. My how times change.
Jesse looks up with an easy smile that falters when he sees how awful I look. It’s a testament to the passion of this morning that he didn’t notice everything earlier. I had cleaned off the blood before coming to his house, but still...I couldn’t have looked good.
“There’s my sleeping beauty,” he says, quickly recovering. “Hungry?” he asks, pulling a bowl out of the cabinet. He looks so domestic standing barefoot in the kitchen that my heart involuntarily clenches. I glance over at Jensen who hasn’t looked up from whatever he’s writing. I get the familiar urge to snatch his paper away so that I can see what brilliance he’s writing, but under the circumstances I’m not sure that I would want to see. It’s probably something awful about me. Almost every one of their early songs that were raging against me were written by Jensen.
Jesse scoops some pasta into a bowl and I eagerly go to take a bite just as Tanner walks in. Jensen and Jesse both look at him expectantly.
“Well?” asks Jesse.
“The label is refusing to delay anything,” says Tanner bitterly. “Evidently our idiot agent allowed a damages clause into the contract that would send us all into bankruptcy if we do anything to delay the tour beyond a day.” My eyes widen in shock at the sheer amount of money that must be, while Jensen swears harshly.
“Why were you trying to delay the tour?” I ask, looking around the room.
Jensen scoffs and rolls his eyes at my question, and I scowl at him. Jesse, the usual peacemaker of the group, takes one of my hands. “We’ve talked about it, and we can’t leave you. So, we were trying to delay the tour until we could come up with ideas of what to do about that asshole you are still married to.”
I blush in shame at his words. Tanner turns to look out the window, running a hand through his hair. He suddenly turns around. “We’ll just take her with us.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” asks Jensen, standing up from the table so fast that the chair he was sitting in crashes to the ground.
“It’s the only way she’ll be safe,” says Tanner. Jesse nods next to me. “I can’t leave her,” he says stubbornly, walking behind me to envelop me in his arms.
I stare at all of them shocked. “You want me to go with you?” I ask breathlessly, my mind automatically going back to the nights we had dreamed about when they would make it big and what it would be like to be all together on tour. “But what are we going to do about Gentry?” I ask, reality setting in about how he’s managed to get me on every missing person list in the country by now. “I’ll call him,” I murmur before anyone can contribute any ideas. “I’ll threaten to tell everyone about who he really is if he continues to come after me.”
Jesse and Tanner immediately begin to voice their displeasure with my plan, but Jensen strides over and thrusts his phone at me. “You can call him on my phone,” he snaps. And all of a sudden, I realize what his problem is. He still thinks this is somehow an insidious plot
for me to get rid of an itch I have after being married for a few years. My chest burns thinking of how low he must think of me, but I try to push it away. I have nothing to be ashamed about.
“Won’t he be able to find out I’m with you if I use your phone?” I ask, ignoring his still outreached hand.
“We have untraceable numbers because of problems with fans in the past,” Tanner explains. “It’s a little perk of being a rockstar with stalkers.”
Still feeling wary, I grab the phone and start to punch in Gentry’s number. As I’m typing a text pops up on Jensen’s phone. Let’s finish what we started last night blares on the screen, ingraining itself in my mind as if it was written in scarlet red. I pause in my typing and Jensen yanks the phone out of my hand, his face blushing as he clears the screen. He clears his throat and hands the phone back to me. A wave of possessiveness passes over me. Logically I know that Jensen isn’t mine anymore. All of his actions the last few days have made that perfectly clear. But he still feels like mine. It also hurts to think that he was probably getting it on with some bimbo while I was getting my ass beaten by Gentry.
I try to clear my head and again type in Gentry’s number with trembling hands. I put it on speakerphone so that the guys can hear.
It rings once before he answers. “Ariana.” he says in an amused voice. Of course he would know it was me.
Taking a deep breath, I channel the courage I found last night. “I thought I made it clear last night that I wanted a divorce,” I tell him staunchly.
He laughs. “If anything, last night’s little tantrum only made me want you more,” he says. “I never would have guessed you had it in you.” I hear a loud crack, and I look up surprised to see that Jensen has broken the top of his chair.
“We’re done, Gentry. I’m going to file for divorce, and I never want to see you again.”
“Not sure how you are going to do that with every cop in the state looking for you,” he says. “There’s an awful lot of state resources being put into tracing your whereabouts. I would hate for you to get in trouble for putting them through all of this.” My eyes widen at the implication that I could get in trouble, but Tanner’s shaking head next to me makes me feel better. I could find a way out of this with them at my side.
“Call off your dogs. We’re done,” I say, hanging up. I can picture Gentry furious on the other side of the phone. He hates not getting the last word.
Everyone is quiet for a second, and then they all start talking at once. Jesse is talking about how we’ll just mail the divorce papers in, Tanner is saying we should talk to their publicist about how to let the police know I’m not really missing, and Jensen is yelling about Gentry. It’s the first time all three of them have been on my side since we’ve reunited, and a rush of warmth spreads over my entire body. I had forgotten how it felt to have them all on my side.
Once everyone has said their peace, we get to work. Under their publicist’s direction, I go with Jesse to place a call to the police station at a phone booth at a gas station nearby, telling them that I am perfectly fine, but that Gentry and I are in the middle of divorce proceedings and I went away to deal with that. The publicist figured that it was better to be safe than sorry if they are tracking the phone and can somehow track one of the guys’ numbers. The officer that I speak to demands to see me in person and the feeling of dread that passes over me tells me that this officer is one that is in Gentry’s family’s pocket, and the conversation isn’t going to get me anywhere. I hang up without saying another word. When I get back Jensen is about to lose it that Gentry seems to have more sway than they do with all of the resources at their disposal. Jesse shoots me a wink at Jensen’s meltdown, and I can’t help but give him a return smile. It feels like progress that he’s furious on my behalf rather than furious that he’s going to be saddled with me on the tour for the indefinite future.
The evening passes in a whirlwind as I fill out my divorce papers and send them to a courier that will be filing them in the courthouse first thing tomorrow morning. Before I know it, I’m in Jesse’s car driving back towards the stadium where the tour bus is waiting to take us to their next stop. They are playing at a smaller venue in Charlottesville, Virginia the following night, so we need to get on the road.
Jesse parks the car, checking the compartments to make sure he didn’t leave anything since it will be returned to the rental company by one of his staff tonight. I suddenly get very nervous. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I ask him, digging my fingernails into my legs with unease.
“Never been more sure of anything,” he says, his eyes warm and soft as he looks at me. He grabs one of my hands, preventing it from continuing its nervous torture of my leg. “I promised myself that if I ever got the chance to have you in my life again, I would never let you go,” he says. “Not taking you with us would constitute letting you go.”
My whole body softens at his sweetness. Loving Jesse is so easy. Life would be so different if I could just pick him. Stupid heart. It had to make me love the other two as well.
Suddenly his smile drops, and a hint of panic crosses his face. “We do need to talk though about the tour.” I sit up straighter at the serious look on his usually cheerful face.
“The tour can get a little crazy,” he says, looking away from me and dragging a hand through his hair. “We work really hard, but I’m sure you’ve heard a few stories about the band over the years.”
“Yes,” I say, and he flinches at the pain in my voice.
“They were mostly all true,” he says, his voice now low...and embarrassed. My eyes widen at his admission. I had always comforted myself by telling myself the stories couldn’t be true, that they were exaggerated by the greedy media... just like all the other stories of celebrities supposedly are. I mean there had once been a story about Tanner being caught in a hotel penthouse snorting coke off five models’ asses. There had been a story about Jesse hooking up with a different woman every hour for twelve hours because of a dare from Jensen. Jensen was rumored to frequent sex clubs in all the big cities...doing who knows what. The stories that had been written about my boys were larger than life. They fit into a world that I couldn’t even imagine. It was as far away from trailer parks and southern country clubs as you could get.
“Hey pretty girl, stop whatever you’re thinking. Everything will be different this tour. I just wanted to warn you because other people won’t immediately know that it’s different...that we’re different. There may be things that happen that we won’t want to happen, and we’ll have to put a stop to it,” he pauses, taking a breath and brushing a piece of hair sweetly out of my face. “Just don’t give up on us. Whatever you see, whatever you’re told...just know it’s not true unless it’s coming out of one of our mouths.” He flinches. “Well maybe don’t trust anything that Jensen says either until he gets his head on straight. He’s so scared of being hurt again that he’s determined to push you away before you have a chance.”
The words inside me swirl like a storm. What happens if I follow them on tour and realize that it won’t work...that we’ve all just changed too much? What will I do then? More importantly, who will I be then? I’ve spent so much time wondering what would have happened if I had been able to meet them in California, I never stopped to think about the fact that it might not have worked out at all. Despite my presence, they still could have wanted the women, the drugs, the parties. I mean...what normal, beyond attractive man would want to share a piece of trailer park trash from their hometown. Was I fooling myself that this could work now? Were we all just fooling ourselves? Was this destined to blow up in all of our faces? I could feel myself start to hyperventilate as a panic attack came on.
“Ari,” Jesse gently says my name, making me look into those sparkling, knowing, blue eyes that always seemed to be able to see right through to my soul. “Everything is going to work out. There’s a reason we’re getting another chance. It’s not going to be easy, sometimes it’s going to fucking suck. Bu
t I promise Ari, we’re going to get our happy ever after someday.”
My heart melts at his words. Happily ever after. It’s what I’ve always dreamed of with them. Looking at the real-life fairy-tale prince that’s sitting in front of me, I can work for it if he’s promising me happily ever after in the end. There’s no story for my life that I would want to end any way but with the three of them.
Jesse opens up his door and squeezes my hand. “Ready?” I nod, ready for my new life to begin.
4
Then
I’ve tried to keep it from the guys, but the bullying at school has steadily been getting worse. Once word began to spread that the guys had stopped hooking up with random girls, and that they seemed to be hanging out with me quite a bit, the rumors started to spread. “Slut” and “Whore” are whispered to me every time I’m alone. Things are stolen out of my locker, which is really unfortunate since I don’t have much in the way of earthly possessions in the first place. One day during gym, my outfit was stolen, meaning that I had to spend the rest of the day in my sweaty gym clothes that reeked from the three miles they made us run that day in class.
I get notes in all the classes that the guys aren’t in. Some of them are just notes asking me for dates, but others...the others are so filthy that I want to throw up at the idea of them. The abuse comes from boys and girls alike. The boys think I must be a good fuck since I’ve managed to keep the three gods of the high school interested for more than a night, and the girls hate me because they think the guys are off the market. Which really isn’t fair to me since I have no idea if the guys are off the market. I mean I am with them quite a bit, but after I go home at night who knows what they do. I haven’t heard any rumors of other girls, and they’re quick to push any girls away that come on to them, but still...there haven’t been any promises made.