by Cherrie Lynn
She loved every minute of it, even if she did think she was losing her mind.
“I can’t believe how well you’re doing,” Savannah confessed after they had been home for several days. “Everything has been so hard on you, yet you’ve taken to motherhood like a duck to water.”
Rowan looked up from Zoey’s little chubby face—she was putting on weight incredibly fast, right now working on sucking her bottle dry. “I guess everyone thought I would be a sobbing mess through it all.”
“Well, it isn’t as if anyone blamed you.” Savannah finished making their caffeine fixes at the kitchen counter, then brought the mugs over to the table where Rowan sat. “It’s been tough on everyone.”
“She was exactly what I needed, and I didn’t even know it.”
Savannah smiled, taking the opposite chair and resting her chin on her hand. “Funny how things work out, isn’t it?”
“Like some kind of divine plan,” Rowan agreed. Zoey’s dark eyes opened and focused on her own; her little hand curled into a fist. She was strong; Rowan knew from getting her hair caught in that grip. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“She certainly got here as fast as she could, didn’t she?”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me of that part. What a nightmare.”
“Well, she knew you needed her.” Silence descended between them for a moment, and the only sounds were Zoey’s sucking and the birds singing outside. Savannah dropped her gaze to her coffee cup when she spoke next. “Have you heard from Zane?”
It was the first time she’d asked, the first time anyone had asked.
“He checks on me, asks how we’re doing. But that’s about it.”
Savannah wouldn’t have to be a mind reader to tell how she felt about that. Devastated. She kept her gaze fastened resolutely on her daughter’s face. “You miss him,” she said. When Rowan didn’t reply, she went on, folding her hands in front of her. “Come on, Ro. Talk to me. Whatever you have to say, it’s okay.”
“It never was before.”
“Things are different. You’re different. Since Tommy died, I’ve seen you down, I’ve seen you up, and everywhere in between, from day to day. Only in the past few weeks have I seen you . . . steady.”
Rowan digested that in silence for a moment. “I still have my moments. There hasn’t been any kind of miraculous recovery. That Tommy isn’t here to see his daughter’s face, how much she looks like him, breaks my heart. That he isn’t here to share this with me, to help me. Sometimes I can’t take it, and I break down all over again, but then she needs me and I’m okay again.”
“Whatever moments you have, though, I don’t think you can deny you’re in a better place.”
“Oh, definitely. I believe that. I feel like, I don’t know, I have a reason to get up in the morning now. She gives me a purpose. She saved me.”
“That’s good. I’m so glad to hear that. You know . . . he asks about you.”
That brought Rowan’s head up, and she stared at Savannah with wide eyes. “Does he?”
“All the time. Every single day, actually. He asks Mike how you are, how Zoey is. I guess he wants to know if there’s anything you’re not saying. He wants details. We practically have to have three-way calls so Mike isn’t passing messages back and forth between Zane and me.”
“Why doesn’t he ask me details?”
“He’s giving you the space you asked for.” She gave a little scoff. “He thinks he clouds your judgment.”
Hell, he did. What woman’s judgment wouldn’t be clouded with him around? All she knew was that she missed the hell out of him. She still listened to his music when she had a chance, both AoF and the songs he’d suggested to her, but it wasn’t prudent to wear earphones for very long at a time, lest she miss Zoey’s cries.
At the same time, she hadn’t reached out to him either, even though there had been nights when she was half crazy with wondering what he was doing that she almost broke down and did it. She still creeped on his social media accounts, but he hadn’t been very active there lately. The fans sure were, rampant with speculation about the shows he’d missed, his absence from his accounts. Apparently, they’d learned he’d been at the hospital when “that girl” had her baby . . . it must be his, right? So he must be with her, and OMG they hated her and were all so jealous.
Seeing things like that usually shut down any and all desire to get involved with his life. She always turned away from it seething.
Her problem all along had been separating Zane Larson the man from Zane Larson, international rock star, front man of August on Fire. She’d come to realize that it wasn’t possible. Zane was Zane and all the drama and trappings of fame came with him, whether she wanted them or not. There was no loving him or accepting him without all of that ugliness trailing behind. Maybe it would die down someday, but she didn’t want to think about that day. He deserved to have it all, for as long as he could, or at least as long as he wanted it.
“Remember how I once told you it wasn’t easy living with your brother?” she asked Savannah now. “How everything was always about him and his fighting, and I dealt with it as best I could, but sometimes it got tiresome?” Savannah nodded gravely. “Multiply that by about ten thousand, and that’s what life with Zane would be like.”
“Are you sure you’re not just making excuses because you’re scared?”
“Well, hell, yes, I’m scared. But I don’t think I’m making excuses. I think I’m putting Zoey’s and my well-being in front of my selfish desires.”
“Because really you do want to be with him?”
Now she was beginning to get angry. Savannah knew what the problem was here. “What does it matter? Your mother acts like she’s going to snatch my daughter from my arms if I so much as talk to him.”
“No.” Savannah shook her head. “They will not. Because if it comes to it, Rowan, they will learn very quickly that they would lose us all if they try to pull something like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. I love them, but I couldn’t stand by while they did something so malicious. I just couldn’t. I didn’t like it when they made the threat, but it got you home, which is where we all truly thought you should be, so I let it go. Whether they were serious or bluffing, Rowan, I really don’t know. I think they were hurt and they panicked. And it’s my mother who was spearheading the whole thing, of course.”
“Of course,” Rowan said quietly, stunned at this new information.
“So you do what you need to do, okay? Don’t worry about me. I’m on your side. If that means defending you and Zane until my dying breath, so be it. If it should come to the worst possible outcome and they somehow get you to court, which I doubt, I will be the first one on the stand for you. But I don’t think it’ll come to that.”
“I didn’t realize you felt this way.”
“I didn’t, always. I came to my senses. I love you. You’re my sister. If you need me to go to them right now and tell them this, I will. If you’re not going to try to make it work with Zane, I want it to be because it was your decision, and not anyone else’s. That’s all.”
Zoey took her first big gulp of nothing but air from the bottle, and Rowan started, plucking the nipple from her lips and lifting her to her shoulder to burp her. All the while, her heart thudded heavily, her brain racing.
“Your support means a lot,” she said, half bewildered. “I want to make it work. I really do. There was so much against us. You can’t know what it feels like for someone to threaten to take your child away.” Her eyes filled with tears from the mere thought, and she hugged Zoey’s tiny body a little closer.
“I know I can’t.” Savannah’s expression hardened. “And you shouldn’t know what it’s like either. That was a very, very shitty thing to hit you with, on top of everything. I’m sorry. If my not speaking up is something you can’t forgive me for, I’m prepared to accept that.”
“Savvy, it wasn’t you. You don’t
have to apologize to me.”
“Yes, I do. I want to make it right. Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do.”
Zoey ripped a burp that would’ve made her daddy beam with pride. Savannah and Rowan burst out laughing, Rowan swiping tears with her free hand at the same time. Once the two of them had sobered, she nodded, meeting Savannah’s amused gaze across the table.
“Thanks for that. I’m good, though. Do you keep up with some of what his snot-nosed little fans say about me? It drives me nuts. I know I shouldn’t look, but I can’t help it.”
“It’s hard to ignore. You and I both know that, after what happened with Tommy. Basically had to unplug from the ’Net for a while.” All at once, Savannah perked up. “We killed that press release back when Frank was talking shit about Mike before their fight. Do we need to put our heads together again?”
Rowan grinned. She’d been thinking the same thing. “Maybe. Only this doesn’t need to be nearly as professional. Let me put this little girl down for her nap.”
Then the two of them got to work.
* * *
The message was left on Zane’s latest Instagram post, where the conjecture was wildest about his whereabouts and his current state of mind and relationship status.
My name is Rowan Dugas. Get it right. Because I’ve been called “that girl/ bitch/slut/whore/baby mama” enough to last me a lifetime. My baby is my husband’s, but thanks for the speculation. He passed away several months ago. You might have heard of him if you follow MMA; look it up. A horrible memory I hate reliving, but am forced to every time I see you all hypothesizing about my child’s father. Thanks for that, too.
You know, ordinarily I think Zane is so lucky to have such devoted fans (I’m one of them, one of you, and have been from the beginning of his career), but some of you make me wish he’d shut these accounts down so none of you would have a venue in which to spew your impotent hatred. That would fix you, wouldn’t it? That might give you a real reason to hate me.
Instead of, you know, petty jealousy.
Rowan, taking a deep breath, posted on her own profile a selfie she and Zane had taken, so there was no mistaking her identity. She captioned it simply, Missing this guy with a heart-eye emoji. Now when the little snoops clicked on her page—oh, and they would—they would get an eyeful of proof. It wasn’t her favorite medium, so there was little else on there for them to ogle.
Then she and Savannah sat back and watched her follower count double by the hour.
Zane might kill her for it, since he liked to avoid the drama, but it felt damn good when the apologies and high-five comments started rolling in. Of course, there were still a few who insisted she was a skank-whore bitch, but that was the beauty of the Internet.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Dude. I think you need to check IG.”
Zane waved off Sol’s suggestion from the vocal booth as he made some quick changes to lyrics that didn’t have the desired impact. They’d been at it so long and so hard he was practically swaying on his feet, but he was determined to get this right. This was a big one; he could feel it.
“Really, Z,” Sol insisted from his seat at the mixing console.
“I haven’t been on there in weeks. What could possibly have blown up so fast?”
“It’s Rowan. She’s setting the record straight. I wouldn’t have known but I have people crying to me about it in my in-box.”
Zane’s pen froze on the paper, and he looked at Sol through the glass. “You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack, man. You should see it.”
In that case, he couldn’t dig his phone out of his pocket fast enough, while Maddox, their producer and a real slave driver at times, sat back and sighed. “We don’t have time for this shit right now,” he pointed out. “You guys want this done, or what?”
They did, but they didn’t want it to suffer from being a rush job. “Just a sec, man.” It would take him more than a second to navigate through all the comments, but before long he was reading Rowan’s words, his eyebrows hiking farther and farther toward his hairline. She’d really put herself out there. When he got to the end, about how she wished he would delete his accounts, he had to laugh. Mainly because it had crossed his mind more than once. “Damn.”
“Right?” Sol chuckled. “She’s a spitfire, isn’t she?”
No, not really. Rowan must have really been pushed to her limits to react in that way. Or something else was going on. He hoped no one had sought her out and was hassling her. She didn’t need that right now. When he clicked over onto her page, his heart seized up at the picture of them together. It started beating again at the caption. Missing this guy.
The only way he kept from going fucking insane from missing her was throwing himself into work. He looked like shit, shadows under his eyes, and he wasn’t eating enough. The hollowness showed in his face. Mike had stopped by the other day and demanded to know if he was drinking or using again.
And yeah, he was. He was strung out on his preferred drug. Making music. It kept him up, kept him going. Kept his head clear from all the noise . . . or at least kept it at the edges where it couldn’t intrude on his momentum. He had been awake for about thirty-six hours, even if the guys in the studio weren’t aware of that. Not stopping, not slowing down.
Until now.
All at once, the past hours caught up with him, and exhaustion pulled at his limbs. All the noise came flooding in. Without a word, he walked out of the booth, shutting the door behind him, the stricken eyes of his producer and bandmates fixed on him. “You okay?” Maddox asked, true concern in his voice.
“No. I need sleep.”
“Okaaay, but—”
“No buts. We want this done, I need to crash for a few hours. I’m about to drop.”
He left them staring after him. Let them bitch and moan all they wanted. Even the climb up the stairs to his blissfully dark bedroom was almost too much for him, and he was tempted to lie down there on the stairway and pass out. He couldn’t make any rational decisions right now.
His head had barely hit the pillow and he was out. When his eyes opened, it was dark, and according to the time on his phone, he’d slept for ten hours. But he couldn’t really say he felt better; now his head pounded and his entire body ached like he was coming down with the flu.
“’Bout time, brother.”
Jolting upright, he focused on the area where the voice was coming from, but he couldn’t see shit. He knew that voice’s owner, though, all too well. “Damien. Where the hell have you been?”
“Everywhere.” Damien was his younger brother by two years, but you would think he was the elder. He probably should have been the rock star; few people Zane knew, even in the business, were as intimidating as Damien Larson.
“And why are you here now, exactly?”
Damien flipped on the lamp next to the chair where he sat. Zane flinched from even the meager light it emitted. “Mike called me. He was flying out to New Orleans, but he was worried about you. Deke called him after you ran out of the studio.”
“I didn’t run out. Mike’s fucking convinced I’m on the shit again. I’m not.”
“I didn’t figure you were. Can’t say I didn’t check your pulse and breathing when I first came in, though.”
Bad flashbacks swamped him. Zane collapsed back onto his bed, digging his thumb and forefinger hard into his eyes. His fucking head. It pounded. “Fuck. Man, I’m just trying to get this album finished. I’m killing myself in the process.”
“Well, don’t do that.”
Sounded so simple. It wasn’t. “I guess everyone scattered,” he said. Some studio time alone might be exactly what he needed.
“I don’t know,” Damien said. “I haven’t been down there. I came right up to check on you.”
“How long have you been sitting there?”
“Long enough to hear you talking in your sleep about a girl.”
Oh, hell. “Great.”
“I don’t think i
t’s the album that has you so fucked up.”
Something else about Damien was that not only did he have no ties to Rowan’s family like Mike, but he had always been the devil sitting on one shoulder while Mike was the angel on the other. Damien didn’t judge, didn’t lecture, didn’t condemn. He listened, and while his advice might not be always be the wisest, it was usually the more realistic. Mike had been a father figure for too long.
When Zane took too long answering, Damien got to his feet. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Players.”
Because hanging around Damien’s nightclub was just what he needed. “I don’t feel like it.”
“Yes, you do. Get out of these four fucking walls; that can drive a man crazier than anything else in life, as we all well know.”
It was the reason Damien traveled so extensively. Each of them had their own ways of dealing with their origins in life. Damien’s was that, while he had roots here, he was never in one place for very long. France, Hawaii, Fiji, the Maldives, Cabo . . . one never knew, when one called Damien, where Damien might be when he answered his phone. If he answered his phone.
“Get up, Zane. Go take a shower. You look like hammered shit.”
“I feel like hammered shit.”
“Then it all makes sense.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Damien knew how refreshing it was for Zane to hear the truth from someone. He was so used to having an army of yes-men around him at all times. Finally, he rolled his ass out of bed and trudged toward the bathroom, glaring at his brother every step of the way. Damien only grinned back at him.
Once he was as presentable as he was going to get, headache medicated with four ibuprofen gelcaps, he made his way downstairs. Actually, some sleep and a shower had worked wonders. Now when his head settled down, he would be good to go. Damien was in the kitchen, drinking a beer he’d found in the fridge.