Roxy (Pandemic Sorrow #3)

by Stevie J. Cole

  He had been back for one day. No triggers yet, but he was already in panic mode.

  Fame was his trigger.

  Being Jag Steele was the one thing he would never escape, and that fact terrified the shit out of me.

  Jag wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere in the civilized world and not be recognized. The only way he had ever been able to cope with that stressor was with a high.

  “Okay,” the girl behind me panted.

  I stared at the light, willing it to change.

  She cleared her throat, and I felt her reach over my shoulder to tap Jag.

  Oh, shit.

  Jag turned around, looking behind him, the muscles in his face still concentrated.

  “I’m sorry, but I…I just…I just wanted to tell you how much I love your music,” she choked on her words a little. “You are my favorite singer.”

  His face softened. “Thanks.”

  The light changed, but he’d now turned to face them completely, spinning me around in the process.

  “Could we get a picture with you?”

  “Sure thing. Rox,” he shrugged, “would you take the picture?”

  I nodded and took the phone from the girl’s jittery hand. I quickly snapped a few pictures and handed the phone back to her.

  I was so busy watching his reactions, wondering if this was helping or hurting him, that not one part of their conversation registered with me.

  The next thing I knew, Jag had placed his hand on my stomach and was gently caressing it, smiling back at the two girls.

  “…the best thing that’s ever happened to me, even better than getting that record deal with Deviant Faults Records,” he said.

  Both girls swooned and shot large grins in my direction.

  He seemed all right, like that may have been a welcomed distraction.

  “Thanks so much. You totally just made our day!” one of them said.

  Realizing that I probably seemed like the biggest bitch to ever exist, I smiled. “He’s a lot sweeter than he lets on in interviews, huh?”

  They both shook their heads and walked off.

  “It’s good to be back home,” Jag mumbled, taking my hand back in his and crossing the street.

  I remember thinking that maybe I’d been wrong, maybe this wouldn’t be the struggle I’d made it out to be in my head. Maybe Jag would surprise me.

  After all, nothing with him was typical.

  Chapter 32

  Jag flung himself down, panting and wiping the sweat from his face. “God, I love making love to you.”

  He settled back in the pillow, and I admired the way the outside light poured in through the window and bathed him in a pale white glow. My eyes traced over his body, over the shadows nestled within the crevices of his carved muscles, glad that he was within reach, thankful those three months were over, and that things were how they should be.

  Jag stretched his arm across my pillow and I crawled up next to him, resting my head on his chest.

  I listened to the sound of his heart beating, the thud of it drowning out the stereo. I felt his body relax under me, and then he shifted on the bed, turning on his side to look at me.

  “You know that I didn’t really overdose, right?”

  I held my breath for a moment as I let that comment set in. I wanted him to end that conversation right there.

  “Roxy, you know that wasn’t an accident?”

  A sudden chill swept over me, and I yanked the covers over my body, trying to block that sensation out.

  “What do you mean?” I finally looked at him. “You did that on purpose?”

  Jag raked his teeth over his bottom lip and stared at the ceiling. His chest rose as he pulled in a large gulp of air then blew it out.

  “Yeah. I did,” he said, shame coating each word.

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell at him, but I didn’t. I’d thought he’d overdosed. I’d believed that he had gotten so low, so twisted by his fame, so lost that he had lost all control.

  Suicide…that’s not an accident. That is premeditated to some extent, and it meant that Jag had thought killing himself was a solution. That revelation broke my heart. It seemed more tragic, it made him seem even more broken than I’d realized.

  I wanted to cry, but didn’t allow myself to.

  I fought back the tremble in my voice and asked, “Why? Why would you want to kill yourself?”

  He continued to look at the ceiling in thought, then he shrugged, his fingers combing through my loose hair. “I wanted to take care of you, and that’s the only way I knew how to. I didn’t want to be my dad, and I just thought that maybe I should call it quits while you could still have some respect for me.”

  I was choking underneath sobs. My nostrils flared, my throat kept constricting from my fighting the urge to let it all go. I had pushed him to that edge. That statement confirmed that for me.

  “I was in a shitty place, princess. A real shitty place. I felt like a loser, worthless…and I had felt that way for years. You,” he grabbed my face, pressing a soft kiss to my lips, “you made me feel like I had a reason. When I found you, I knew I’d found my reason in life…fame, I know that I became famous just so that I could find you, and when I fucked us up…I just couldn’t take it.”

  Jag’s eyes met mine and everything inside of me crumbled. This man, a man who had every single thing anyone could ever want, a man who had excess, who literally had the world at his feet, had just told me that without me he had nothing.

  A comment like that would tear at anyone’s heart, but for a girl who had lived her life hearing she was worthless from the people who “loved” her, well, that confession crippled me with emotion.

  Jag’s face crumpled and he propped himself up on his arm. “I promised you I’d never hurt you, and when I realized I had…I don’t like breaking promises!”

  Guilt drowned me. I hadn’t given him much room to keep his promise. I had been so selfish and demanded ridiculous things from him. Stop using drugs. That was my expectation of an addict, to just stop. There were better ways I could have handled that because I’d known what he was years before I ever knew who he really was.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed to say between sobs.

  He shook his head again, this time smiling. “No, princess, no. You have nothing to be sorry about. You just wouldn’t put up with my shit, and honestly, that was the only thing that saved me. Had you just let me keep on, had you accepted it like every other person did, I would have killed myself.” He swallowed, closing his eyes to hide the tears that had pooled in them. “I had to lose everything to see the things that really meant something to me. I had to realize that something could be better than that high. I’m just sorry I drug you down with me.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

  “All that matters is that you are now, princess.”

  Jag laid back down, pulling me back to his chest and securing his arm around me, his hand slowly caressing over my arm. We laid in the darkness listening to the music, and the song “Broken” by Seether came on.

  Those lyrics fit us perfectly; they fit me perfectly, because I didn’t know that I was strong enough.

  I had thought I was strong all my life, I’d thought I had grown hard, but Jag had shown me I really had just been pretending. I had been hiding behind a façade. The type of strength I would need to have to stay with him, to trust him, to be the rock that he needed…I really wasn’t sure I possessed that. I wanted to, but I was terrified I may be too weak.

  I didn’t want to let him down. I didn’t want to lose him. I so badly wanted it all to work out.

  And for a while, it did. It was perfect.

  Chapter 33

  I followed Jag down the hallway of the record company with knots all in my stomach.

  He had to meet with James and wanted me to go with him. I’d only had the one encounter with James, and it wasn’t that I was scared of him that had kinks going all through my body, but the fact that J
ames was such an utter dick that I wanted to punch him right in the middle of his unfortunate-looking face.

  There were people wandering around the hall, and none of them even gave Jag a second glance.

  Jag stopped in front of the door at the end of the hallway and glanced back at me. “Just don’t spit on him or anything.”

  “Really? You think I’d spit on someone?”

  “Well, you don’t have a soda gun, so I thought that might be the way you improvised.”

  I shook my head and whacked him on the back.

  As soon as we walked in and I laid eyes on James sitting behind his sleek grey desk, the baby jumped. I think she could sense the evil he radiated all the way through the womb.

  “Well, good to see you, Jag!” He rose from his chair and walked toward us. Grabbing one of the chairs, he pulled it out for me. “Roxy, right?”

  Like he doesn’t know my damn name by now?

  “Yes, Roxy.”

  James patted Jag on the back, squeezing the top of his shoulders when he sat down.

  “Well, we’ve just got to go over some details. Get things sorted back out now that you’re well.”

  He sat back down behind his desk and forced a fake smile at me before pulling out a drawer and fiddling with papers.

  I took a quick glimpse around his office. Platinum records covered the walls, mostly Pandemic Sorrow’s. There were countless awards on the wooden shelves lining his walls. Pictures of him and endless celebrities. A small bar with bottles of liquor, and, if I had to guess, somewhere in that office he had a year’s supply of every narcotic in existence.

  As far as I was concerned, this man was the devil incarnate. To me he was an opposition, he was the enemy.

  He laid down a stack of papers, turning them to face Jag. “So, this is our proposal for the tour. We’re planning to start in a year.” His eyes darted over to me. “Figured that would give you about three months with the,” he cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably in his chair, “baby before you had to start touring.”

  Jag glanced at me, nodding ever so slightly. “Sound all right to you? You think that’ll be okay? I mean, you both can come with me, but by then she should be on a schedule or something, right?”

  Shit, on tour with a baby? Really?

  Before I could answer him, James interrupted. “Jag,” he laughed, “It’s not really up for debate. I’m giving you a year…that makes it fifteen months since the tour was supposed to have started, we have to get this tour done.”

  Jag picked up the papers, scanning over the print and nodding. “Yeah, I guess so. I guess we gotta do it.”

  “We can make whatever arrangements you want.” His beady eyes shifted down to the invisible speck of dust he wiped from the edge of his desk. “We could give you a break once a month to come home, or have Roxy flown to you. I mean, there’s really no reason to drag her and the child along on a tour. They’d be miserable.”

  Jag turned the page, and, without looking up, he shook his head. “Nah, man. That ain’t gonna work.” He laid the paper down in his lap. “You want me to go, they go. That’s not up for discussion.”

  James’ eye twitched, his brow wrinkling as he decided how to combat Jag’s matter-of-fact tone.

  “Sure thing, Jag. Sure thing. Uh, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “No.” Jag tossed the papers back onto James’ desk. “You’ll see that what I said is fucking done. That’s what you can do.” He rose from the chair and I followed suit.

  “Hey, hey!” James stood up. “I’ll get it done. Here…”

  I watched him scratch through the document, scrawling out something in the margins. “Done. They go with you.”

  “Good.” Jag turned back and leaned over the desk, picking up the pen and signing the papers. “And, you make sure we have the best accommodations.” He dropped the pen on the table. “Oh, and make sure we have an extra room for a nanny. You know, just in case.”

  “You can’t be serious?” James clenched his jaw, his fist balling up on the desk.

  “I got a contract, but you gotta please me. You’re about to start earning your fucking money with me, fucker.”

  Jag grabbed my hand and we walked to the door. I was proud of him for standing his ground.

  “If you fuck up,” Jag laughed, “there’s a hundred other agents that would do a circle jerk to sign us. Just remember that. I don’t need you anymore, I’m famous.” He pointed at all his platinum albums hung along the wall and grinned. “You fucking need me!”

  And with that, the door closed.

  Chapter 34

  I know he’s not about to do this.

  Jag had sat down in the sand on both knees. His eyes locked on mine while he dug around in his back pocket. The moment he pulled out that little blue box, my heart pounded. You’d think having a baby with someone, that the fact that we’d discussed that we would stay together forever may have lessened the shock, but it didn’t.

  He opened the box, a deep grin setting over his face. “I want to marry you. I need you to marry me. I love you, and if I don’t have you I’m nothing. This is more than a promise to be with you, princess. This is a promise that I’ll be there for you. This is a promise that nothing will ever mean more to me than you do.”

  He shifted on his knees to move a little closer to me. He shoved the box toward me. “There’s meaning in this ring.” Removing the ring from the box, he continued, “You see—”

  “Jag, I—”

  He shook his head and slid the ring over my finger. “Let me finish. As ridiculous and fucking sappy as this all sounds, just listen. I had this made for you because amethysts are supposed to aid in sobriety, and diamonds are supposed to absorb weaknesses and amplify strengths.” Lowering his head to look up at me, he traced his thumb over my jawline. “And that’s what you do. That’s what we do for each other.”

  As much as we’d talked about being together, I had told him I wasn’t ready to go there. We had so much going on, I’d just wanted to wait until the baby had come and things had settled down a bit. I think I wanted to make sure he was ready. I wanted to make sure that decision was one he made because he really wanted it, not because of what had happened when he’d almost died.

  Jag grabbed the sides of my face and pulled me to him. “You won’t ever let yourself be ready if you keep worrying. We’re about to have a baby. A baby. You’re stuck with me no matter what. I want the things neither of us ever had. We need to be a family, princess. Every moment of my life, each fucking mistake I made was all to bring me to you, because we fucking belong together. And if you tell me no, I’ll just ask you tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, until you finally get so tired of having me ask you, you’ll give in. And I’m pretty fucking amazing at getting what I want.”

  All I could do was stare at the ring. Amethyst baguettes surrounded a very large diamond solitaire. It was elegant, beautiful—too much, of course. I shook my head, trying to find the right words to say.

  “Stop,” Jag whispered. “You’re gonna marry me and you know it.”

  Grinning, he leaned in and kissed me. “You gonna marry me, princess, huh? I swear I’m not a shattered fucking mess anymore. I’m just broken, just little chips here and there. Let me take care of you. Let me love you. Give me something to belong to, Rox. That’s all I need, is to belong to you.”

  A small laugh escaped my lips. “Always so certain.”

  He shrugged. “I gotta be.”

  “I’m glad you are.”

  He arched his brows at me. “But I’m not that certain to not hear you say it.”

  “Yes. I’ll marry you, gladly, happily…”

  Chapter 35

  And for a while our lives were beautiful. We got married two months before the baby arrived. We managed a small ceremony in Savannah without the first paparazzi catching wind of it.

  We’d bought a house in Long Beach, a very large house, which I had tried to talk Jag out of, but some things don’t change, and his d
esire to be eccentric wasn’t one to be calmed, even without the drugs.

  On February 8th, we brought a beautiful, precious baby girl into the world. We named her Savannah after a fan who had given Jag a journal detailing her struggle with addiction, saying that Jag and his music was one of the few things that got her through that battle.

  And for the first three months after she’d arrived, my life was filled with the most tender, sweetest moments ever.

  Jag loved her, he was in awe of her, and he was a wonderful father and husband.

  Two nights before Pandemic Sorrow’s international tour started, I woke up and didn’t feel the heat from Jag’s body against my back.

  My first instinct was to panic.

  Every day that drew closer to the tour date, I grew more anxious. Jag had done so well, but the way his life had been since he’d gotten out of rehab had been the most normal life he’d experienced in years.

  It had just been us. No shows, no recordings, and he’d only had one interview.

  Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I glanced at the clock, then at the baby monitor. I rose from the bed, stumbling toward the door while the cold floor sent chills up from the soles of my feet.

  The light from the kitchen bounced down the hallway. Following the light, I came out into the open living room. I searched the room for him and noticed the porch light on and the sliding glass door cracked.

  The closer I got, I could hear Jag singing.

  Stepping onto the patio, I found him gently swinging Savannah. His finger traced over her forehead while he stared down at her. The lyrics to “Wild Horses” tenderly floated from his lips, and the sweetness of that moment made me fall even more in love with him.

  Jag glanced up, a soft smile shaping his mouth. “You’re supposed to be sleeping,” he said and scooted over to let me sit.

  “I had four hours straight, I feel like a new person. Not so much like a zombie.” I noticed the empty bottle sitting next to his leg. “Was she crying? I didn’t even hear her.”