by Lauren Rowe
“We started drinking afterwards,” I say. “Here at the club. We were both completely sober when we got the marriage license and then when we said ‘I do.’”
“Well, you’re not sober now. Either of you.” He holds up his phone. “Do you have any idea how big a story this is—especially coming on the heels of what happened at the awards show?” He leans into Aloha’s drunk face. “Is that what you wanted? To blow up the internet? To make yourself breaking news? Because if so, you succeeded.”
“I didn’t do it for publicity!” she shouts. “I did it because I...”
My heart stops. Every hair on my body stands on end. Please, God, make her say it right now in front of Barry. Please.
“Because I... wanted to do it!” Aloha says.
Barry crosses his mammoth arms over his chest and shakes his head.
I step to the side of Aloha and snake my arm around her shoulders. “I love her, Barry. It’s as simple as that. I told her if she’s gonna wind up putting my heart through a wood chipper, I forgive her in advance. At least, she’ll have been all mine in a way she’s never been anyone else’s. So fire me if you must, but I’m not going anywhere. At least, not today.”
Barry rolls his eyes. “I’m not gonna fire you, Zander. Now that I know Aloha was sober and in her right mind, relatively speaking, I have no intention of doing anything but congratulating you.”
My lips part in surprise. I look at Aloha. She looks as floored as I feel.
Aloha furrows her brow in disbelief. “Are you fucking with us?”
“No.”
“You’re not mad?” Aloha asks.
“Mad? Why would I be mad? I’m the one who picked him for you in the first place.”
Again, Aloha and I exchange flabbergasted looks.
Barry chuckles. “Do you honestly think I picked a guy with zero experience to be your bodyguard?” He scoffs. “To be honest, I didn’t have high hopes Zander would do the job all that well when I hired him.” He looks at me. “No offense, Z, but I thought you’re too damned nice for this job. Although you’ve certainly proved me wrong about that, especially tonight. Damn, boy, you’re one badass motherfucker, Zander Shaw. I apologize for underestimating you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Big Barry?” Aloha booms.
Barry smirks. “I’m saying I’m Match dot com. Only, you know, Barry dot com. I’m saying I hired Zander because I thought he was perfect for you, and not because I thought he’d wind up being your long-term bodyguard.” His smile widens. “And as it turns out, I was right.”
My mind is racing. “But... you said you’d rip off my balls...”
“And I meant it,” Barry says. “Nobody touches my girl without honorable intentions. And you can’t do this job if you’re messing around with The Package in places you shouldn’t be.” He grins at Aloha. “I also knew my girl wouldn’t give you the time of day if I’d told her, ‘Hey, honey, I met a great guy I think you might really hit it off with. Maybe you two should grab some lunch!’” He chuckles. “I know full well my little hula girl always wants what she can’t have. I’m no fool.”
“Motherfucker,” Aloha mutters.
“But most of all, Zander,” Barry says. “I told you I’d rip off your balls if you touched my beautiful girl because I knew if and when you defied me, you’d be doing it because you’d come to care far more about Aloha than any job. Or your balls.”
I’m shocked. “But, Reed...?”
Barry laughs. “Oh, you think I gave you this job because Reed told me to do it? Fuck, no. Reed can kiss my ass. I interviewed you because Reed asked me to do it. I gave you the job because I had my own agenda. A hunch. Well, more than a hunch, actually. When he insisted I waste my time interviewing you, I figured I’d do it right. So, I called Josh Faraday to ask about you, knowing he’d spent some with you in Maui. And Josh put his wife on the phone, saying she’s known you for over ten years—since you were thirteen—that you’re like a brother to her. And guess what she said? You’ve got a heart of gold. That you’re loyal. That you wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless that fly happened to be threatening someone you love and then watch out—you’re a beast. She said you’ve got a strong, strict momma who raised you right, taught you right from wrong, and a little sister you’ve always protected and respected. She said you’re honest and hardworking and someone everyone respects and listens to when you speak. And, most of all, she told me story after story about you and your best friend, Keane—stories that made it clear to me you haven’t just been a best friend to that boy all these years, you’ve been his service animal. His Godsend. So, based on all that, before you walked into Reed’s office, I already had a pretty good idea of what I was dealing with. But then you started telling me about your best friend and how much he means to you and I knew you were a needle in a haystack. The man who could take care of my girl and then some. And I also knew, just by looking at you in your suit and the way you’d taken so much care with that paltry résumé, that you’d do the job to the best of your abilities and respect whatever rules I laid out for you...” He pauses for a moment, apparently feeling overwhelmed with emotion. He swallows hard. “I knew you’d follow the rules unless and until you fell in love with her.” He smiles, his eyes glistening. “And rightly so.”
“You scheming bastard,” Aloha says, but her tone doesn’t match her words. She flings herself at Barry and he scoops her up and wraps her in a warm embrace while I stand drunkenly by, feeling like my brain is short-circuiting. I’m having a thousand thoughts, all at once, not the least of which are the following two: one, holy shit, Kat Morgan rocks, and, two, I can’t believe a girl nicknamed The Blabbermouth somehow managed to stay mum about her conversation with Barry all this time.
“I just want you to be happy,” Barry says into Aloha’s hair. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
Aloha nuzzles her nose into Barry’s humongous chest and whispers three little words that make my heart explode along with my head: “I truly am.”
Chapter 50
Aloha
The minute the door to my hotel suite shuts behind us, Zander and I rip our clothes off and begin attacking each other like maniacs. As we kiss and grope and consume and devour, we tumble onto my bed naked, a blur of lips and fingers and warm breath and skin.
Zander begins kissing my entire body furiously. “Mrs. Shaw,” he growls, his breath hot against my inner thigh.
“You’re my hero,” I gasp out. “The way you bounced that guy right off the stage like a rag doll... Oh, God, Zander.”
He stops what he’s doing, his chest heaving, and looks me in the eye. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you.”
My heart leaps. My clit jolts. “Holy fuck, get inside me.”
A wide smile splits Zander’s handsome face. “Patience, wife.” With that, he returns to his work, kissing and devouring my thighs, until, finally, blessedly, working his way to my clit.
I grip the bedsheet underneath me and purr as he licks me. A tidal wave of pleasure rises up inside me... hovers over me... and then crashes down deliciously, making my innermost muscles ripple and clench.
“Husband,” I purr during my climax. “Yes.”
Zander flashes me a beaming smile that makes my heart bound and leap. “This is the best night of my life, Aloha.”
I stroke his muscular forearm. “Mine, too.”
We share a huge, elated smile.
“Why not make it your best night in more ways than one?” I say coyly. “Let’s go for your personal best—lucky number seven?”
He chuckles. “Well, I can certainly try. But it’s gonna be hard to do with all that booze in your system. It numbs the nerve endings after a certain point.”
“No harm in trying, right?”
“No harm at all.”
And away we go. But four orgasms later, I’m done. Too wasted to come again and too aroused to mess around with foreplay anymore. I beg him for his cock and he gives it to me. Oh, man, does he give it to me. All.
The. Way. I hike my thighs up around Zander’s ribcage and grip his hard ass as he fucks me, every cell in my body reveling in him.
“Mrs. Shaw,” Zander murmurs into my ear, his voice telling me he’s on the bitter edge.
I press my lips against his ear and purr, “Husband.”
And that does it. Zander comes inside me with a loud roar.
When his body quiets, Zander slides off me and pulls me close and I lay my cheek on his heaving chest.
“Was that five?” he says.
“Five.”
“Not a PR, but, still, not too shabby.”
“Not too shabby at all.” I exhale happily.
Zander rises up onto his elbow. He brushes some hair away from my face. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Why is it so hard for you to say the magic words?” He doesn’t seem upset. Simply curious. “No pressure. I don’t need to hear them. I know what we’re both feeling. But I’m curious: have you ever said the words to anyone?”
“I say the words a hundred times a day.”
“But, I mean, have you ever said the words for real? To someone you actually care about? Not even someone romantically. Just... someone.”
My heart squeezes. “I used to say the words to my mother when I was little. But, no, I haven’t said them to her or anyone else since childhood.” I take a deep breath. “I just... It’s hard to explain to someone on the outside. My mother always used those words like a weapon. To control me. Like, if I didn’t want to go to work when I was little, she’d say, ‘Do it for me because I love you so much.’ Or if I was crying because I wanted to go to a real school and meet other kids, she’d say, ‘You can’t. You’ve got a destiny to fulfill, unlike other kids, and I’m going to make sure you fulfill it because I love you so much.’” I twist my mouth, thinking. “At some point, those words just lost their happy meaning to me. They became painful.”
“Oh, Aloha,” Zander whispers.
I shrug. “And hearing strangers say it to me every day certainly doesn’t help matters. ‘Everyone’ loves Aloha, right? Fans, managers, agents, directors, producers, record label execs. I can’t begin to tell you how many times per day someone says ‘I love you’ to me. A fan who doesn’t know me. Someone who’s only reason for being in my life is making money off me. Like, I remember I used to have this one agent as a kid. And he’d always say, ‘I love you like a daughter!’ And I believed him. I didn’t have a dad, so what did I know? So, I’d say to him, ‘Hey, maybe sometime you could take me a baseball game or something!’ And he’d go, ‘Oh, absolutely!’ But he never did. He just kept putting it off. And then one day my mother fired him for embezzlement and I never saw him again. So much for him loving me like a daughter, huh? After that, I couldn’t help thinking maybe people only loved me when they were earning a big fat commission off me.”
Zander looks pained.
“I’m grateful when fans tell me they love me,” I continue. “I’m glad I’ve brightened their lives. I tell them I love them in return, because I do. Because I’m grateful for how good they are to me. And for giving me this amazing life. But at the end of the day, person to person, I don’t know them and they don’t know me. So if that’s love—and I do believe it is, in its own way—then I can’t fathom how those same words could possibly be applied to my feelings for you.” I take his hand and whisper, “My Shaggy Swaggy Hubby Bubby.” I bite my lip. “My beautiful, kindhearted, badass husband.”
His eyes are glistening. He smiles through his emotion. “Sweetheart—Mrs. Shaw. Hearing you call me your ‘husband’ means more to me than any ‘I love you’ ever could.”
He leans in and kisses me. And my heart surges. And for the first time in my life, I finally know what it feels like to be desperately, totally, and completely in love.
Chapter 51
Aloha
Zander groans deeply as I give him a first-thing-in-the-morning blowjob under the covers. “Oh, Jesus, Aloha,” Zander growls, his pleasure obviously on the cusp of boiling over. He rakes his fingers over the top of my head. His pelvis gyrates. “Oh, fuck, baby, that feels so good.”
A sudden banging at the door jolts us.
“Aloha!” a female voice hollers. “Open this door right now!”
“Satan,” I whisper hoarsely, my eyes bugging out.
Zander pulls on some sweatpants, looking like he’s about to have a heart attack.
“Aloha! Open this door!”
“Hold your horses!” I yell. “We’re getting dressed!”
“He’s in there with you?”
“News flash, Satan, we’re married.”
A minute later, I open the door fully dressed, and Satan marches into the sitting room like she owns the place, followed by my publicist, agent, and Crystal, all of whom look like they’re on the verge of throwing up.
Crystal mouths “sorry” to me, but I can’t be bothered. I train my eyes on my mother’s painted face and grit my teeth, girding for battle.
“You!” my mother says, pointing an accusing finger at Zander. “You gold-digging, money-grubbing—”
“I don’t want her money,” Zander says, putting up his palms. “I married Aloha because I love her.”
“Ha!” my mother says. “Con artist!” She whirls around to face me. “I’ve already got the lawyers drawing up the necessary paperwork for an annulment. They said it would take—”
“I don’t want an annulment,” I say. “And there are no grounds for it, even if I did. I wasn’t drunk. There were no false pretenses. It was spur of the moment, yes, but I knew exactly what I was doing.”
“For the love of God, Aloha! You can’t marry your fucking bodyguard!”
“Well, the state of Nevada says I can and there’s nothing you can do about it. Ha!”
My mother narrows her eyes. “So that’s what this is about, huh? Sticking it to me?”
“This has nothing to do with you.” I march across the room and grab Zander’s arm. “I’m elated you’re furious about it. I admit that. But this is about Zander and me and nobody else.”
“He’s using you.”
“I’m not,” Zander says, his voice on the cusp of shouting. “I love Aloha with all my heart and soul—which is something you clearly don’t know anything about.”
My mother shoots daggers at Zander. “You stay out of this, you parasitic opportunist con artist. This is between Aloha and me. It doesn’t concern you.”
“Doesn’t concern me?” Zander bellows. He takes a menacing step forward, rage wafting off his every sculpted muscle. “I’m her husband. Not her boyfriend. Not her bodyguard. And certainly not her shitty, neglectful, greedy, narcissistic mother. Which means everything about Aloha concerns me, unlike you.”
My mother looks absolutely shocked. And so do Crystal, my agent, and my publicist, all of whom are standing slack-jawed on the far side of the room.
My mother glares at Zander like she’s telepathically ordering a hit on him, and then addresses me with clenched teeth. “Pack a bag. You’re coming with me. We’re getting this sham of a ‘marriage’ annulled and that’s final.”
“Now you listen to me,” Zander begins, but I hold my arm across his torso to silence him.
“Thank you, baby, but I’ve got this.” I return to my mother. “I’m not leaving with you, Lani. I’m staying here with Zander. My husband. But I’ll tell you who is leaving: you. You’re going to turn around and march through that door and never contact me again. You’re going to live in the house I bought for you, and spend all the money you stole from me for years, back when I was a minor and didn’t understand what you were doing. And in exchange for you disappearing from my life for good, I’m going to refrain from filing a lawsuit against you to get back the millions and millions you’ve stolen from me. But I swear to God, if you come near me again or so much as mention my name in the media, I’ll sic my lawyers on you to get back every dime you stole. And not only that, I’ll use the lawsuit as an excuse
to go on a full-out media tour—which I’m thinking is something the entire world would tune in to watch, considering the size of the crowd waiting outside this hotel just to get the tiniest glimpse of my new husband and me this morning. And you know what I’ll say on that media tour? Everything. I’ll tell them about the cutting and how you not only didn’t help me but actively tried to keep me from getting help, all in the name of the mighty green. I’ll tell them I grew up with a drunk mother who was livid when I wrote her a poem for Mother’s Day rather than showering her with diamonds—so pissed, she slapped my face. Remember that, Drunk Mommy? I’ll tell them about all the times I cried and cried as a child, alone in my bed or wandering the house with a fever, and you didn’t come to me, either because you were high or having sex with some guy at the other end of the house or passed out drunk on the couch.”
I feel untethered. Like I’m kicking the cage door wide open. For so many years, my mother told me the world as I knew it would end if I uttered the truth out loud. She told me nobody would love me if they knew my secrets. She said the money and fame would dry up and I’d be poor and miserable and alone. But now I see she was dead wrong about all of it. Because with each word of honesty I’m daring to speak in front of Zander and those three shell-shocked people on the other side of the room, I feel more and more powerful. More and more free. Suddenly, I realize it wasn’t the truth holding me hostage for so long, it was the lies. It was my mother, who extorted me with my secrets, all in the name of financing her lavish lifestyle.
I take a deep breath and continue, “I’ll tell them it was my bodyguard, not my own mother, who found me in that bathtub at age fifteen after I’d swallowed all my mother’s pills and almost went out like Whitney in a bathtub. I’ll tell them it was my bodyguard, not my mother, who rushed me to the hospital and got my stomach pumped and got me into rehab. Because my bodyguard, not my own mother, was the one person in the world who truly loved me for me and not what I could do for him.” I look at Zander. “Until Zander came along and loved me that way, too.”