In an instant I was rushing into my bedroom, stumbling over my stilettos to get to my phone.
“Hello?” I gasped through a fresh set of tears.
“Emma?” Evan’s voice came over the line. “I’m putting you on face-talk.”
He knew something was wrong. He wanted to see my face.
“No,” I managed to say as I wiped my face with my free hand.
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“Then why don’t you want me to see your face?” he pushed.
“I’m naked.”
“Even better,” he replied, but there was no laughter in his voice.
I heard the phone beep in my ear and knew he had put it through. I sat down on the bed and hit the accept button, turning the phone so he could see me. When he did his forehead wrinkled and caused his brow to shadow his fatigued eyes. I smiled at him shirtless as he lay in his bed. I could see an alarm clock in the background next to a picture of us; it showed the time was 2:30 AM.
“What happened?” he asked, his jaw clenching as his eyes took in what was no doubt mascara stains, smeared by my hands.
“My mom brought up,” I took a deep breath before saying the name, “Eric.”
“Why would she do that?” he asked, and I noticed the purple halos that framed his tired eyes.
“She thinks I lost weight…she was thinking that maybe—”
“That I?”
“Yeah.”
He closed his eyes. “Maybe I should meet them.”
I shrugged. “Maybe or maybe they should trust I wouldn’t let that happen again.”
“Emma, I’m sure they don’t blame you for anything that’s happened.”
“That’s not the point,” I huffed as I wiped the remaining tear away.
“You do look like you lost some weight,” Evan observed as he leaned closer to the phone.
“And you look like hell froze over,” I commented, and I motioned to his eyes. “It looks like you haven’t been sleeping much.”
He heaved a sigh. “I haven’t been. We’ve been ridiculously busy, which reminds me—I’m sorry I haven’t called or texted. We did our last stop for the US tour and started recording the single for the next album the next day. They held my god damned phone hostage until they realized what it was doing to me.”
“That’s really not fair,” I muttered to myself as I flopped back onto the bed.
“To either of us, but I’ve done the same thing to them. Payback is a bitch. We’ve all agreed to never do that to each other again. It makes everything ten times more stressful,” he explained with a yawn.
“You’re exhausted, you should go to bed,” I suggested, even though it was the last thing I wanted him to do.
“No, you need to talk and you haven’t explained why you look like you’ve lost weight.”
“I don’t know I have…I just don’t eat when I’m stressed.”
Evan leaned forward. “You need to eat, and why have you been stressed?”
I shrugged and he sighed. I knew he could tell exactly why without me saying it. There was no use in me hiding it from him.
“I’ll let them know that their complete asses,” he teased with a crooked grin that made me smile. “That’s what I called in to see… God, I miss you.”
I leaned in and kissed the screen. “Did you get my text message about my job?”
“Yeah, when I have a little more time I can teach you some stuff so you know what to listen for in a good CD.”
I rolled my eyes at him with a smile. “Oh, yes God of music. Guess what I did? I played Shattered Mirrors today, all by myself.”
“Can I hear?” he asked.
I nodded as I got up, grabbed the guitar and propped the phone up against my light on the nightstand. “Can you see me?”
Evan nodded as he cradled his head against his forearm.
I began to play the song, concentrating on the strings and when I was finished I looked up at the screen to see Evan sleeping. I put the guitar back on the stand, shut off the light and crawled into bed just as he began to snore. I watched him until my eyes felt heavy and then hit the end button.
Chapter 17
The incident with Eric was still fresh in my memory—the frightened look in his eyes as Evan threatened to pummel his face in filled me with a sick glee that I hated. It wasn’t like me to enjoy someone in pain, but watching the purple form around his eye where Evan’s fist had fit perfectly had done something to me. I wondered if that was the power Eric had always felt over me. The difference was clear, though. He acted that way without provocation. I’d just been a teenager, smitten with the cool kid, or the person I had thought was the cool kid. I tried to shake away the thoughts as they began to creep in—memories I thought I had concealed so well, yet the darkness settled in, and the room disappeared. Everything dimmed and I was surrounded by black. I’d never imagined that a color, or lack thereof, could have a feeling to it, but the toxic sludge dragged me down into it. The words began to echo in my ears. My responding voice was weak, flat, hollow; it wasn’t mine but then… it was.
I heard myself ask, “Why are you doing this?”
I felt the hard push to my right shoulder, the jabbing pain as the bruise began to form, and I knew a clot of muscle was injured with it; a bruise with a physical presence.
“You need to learn how to defend yourself,” his voice assured me, demeaning and arrogant.
I knew I did. I needed to protect myself against him, but I hadn’t then. I’d listened as he gave me the scathing review of how weak and stupid I was. I let him grind me into the dirt.
The words had always been worse. They were the thing that lasted long after the bruises healed. If I was going to be honest, I didn’t remember the bruises all that much but my parents did. That scarred them the most. I needed a hero then—or so I thought, but what I really needed was to be the hero myself. My eyes opened to see the cursor still teasing me with its nonchalant blinking. I was struck by the thought Evan wasn’t trying to be my hero; he was trying to convince me I was the hero.
My fingers hit the keyboard with a tapping force I hadn’t felt in ages. I could be my own hero. I was my own hero.
Chapter 18
After two weeks of relentless recording for the single Evan had convinced the others they needed a break from his tyranny. He had vented to me he had begun to feel like he was forcing it out so he could get it over with and come see me. I reminded him it wasn’t worth it, but he decided what he really needed was a break. I couldn’t have been more thrilled when the next morning he showed up at my door.
“So, who lives upstairs?” Evan asked, leaning forward on the couch and pointing to the ceiling. “They’re very quiet.”
I swallowed and looked away. “Sound proofing helps that—recording studio style.”
I saw him nodding out of the corner of my eyes as I flicked through the channels, distracted.
“No wonder the acoustics are so good.”
“Perfect for my musician boyfriend,” I teased as I leaned in to kiss him, hoping he didn’t notice I’d avoided the who part of his question.
He kissed me back and let his fingers run over my cheek. I could tell from the look in his eyes he wasn’t giving up.
“You didn’t answer who?”
I pulled away and looked at the ceiling. It was their kitchen and above that was the bedroom I’d grown up in.
“Being a freelance writer doesn’t exactly pay well…you’re so successful. I’m not. I live in an apartment in my parent’s basement.” I cringed at the words and let my head collapse into my hands.
“I got lucky; otherwise I’d be in a lot worse shape than living in my parent’s basement.”
“I do pay rent and my utilities—I swear!” I said with a little bit too much force.
Evan threw his hands up. “I’d never think otherwise.”
“I feel like such a loser,” I muttered as he pulled me into his arms.
“As lo
ng as you’re not after my money—”
I shot off the couch and turned. “No! Of course not!”
He stood laughing. “I was just teasing you.”
He reached for me, but I turned and walked into the kitchen and began doing the dishes as angry tears slid down my face into the soapy water.
Evan came into the room and wrapped his arms around my waist, putting his head into the crook of my neck.
“You have to know I didn’t mean it.”
“I know,” I replied, hanging my head, “but you hit my shame on the head.”
“There’s no reason to be ashamed. You pay your own way. It’s just taking longer. Maybe if you’d write what you love?”
I turned to face him.
“You’re pushing all my buttons tonight, Evan! I just want to spend tonight with you—we have so little time together. I don’t want to argue. I know I promised I would write and I am. I really am; I just don’t want to harp on it.”
He pushed his forehead to mine.
“I just want you to be happy,” he whispered, his lips hovering over mine.
“I am, no it’s not perfect, but right now when you’re here it is.”
His lips found mine, gently parting them and letting me breathe him in.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” he said as his lips left mine and caressed my chin, down my neck and to my collarbone.
“You shouldn’t do this to me,” I sighed as my breathing quickened.
“What?” he asked as his hand slipped the thin cotton of my t-shirt off my shoulder and kissed my bare skin.
“Drive me insane just to leave.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
His nose nuzzled the place beneath my ear, sending a numbing sensation down my body.
“Not tonight…not ever,” I whispered, and he pulled his face to look into mine.
His eyes searched it, looking for the meaning—making sure that he understood exactly what I meant. The uncertainty in his eyes was unusual compared to what everyone else knew, but it was something I was beginning to become familiar with. He was taking his time, making sure I knew he truly cared, and I did; now I needed him to know I felt the same. I let the smile come over my lips as my hands went to the buttons of his black plaid shirt. His chest rose up against my hands as I slipped my fingers through the buttons, his breathing quickening as I slipped his shirt off over his shoulders with my lips grazing the beads tattooed around his neck. He tipped his head back with a sigh as my hands slid down his back. The measured control he seemed to have as my lips ran over his skin slipped away the moment I lightly bit his collarbone. His hands raced down my body and he pulled my legs around his waist before his lips found mine. For a moment we stood, locked in passionate kisses before he gave in and carried me with one arm while the other kept us from tumbling into the various objects in our way to the bedroom.
When he placed my body on the bed, he hovered over me, his breathing ragged as his eyes looked over my face, his hand moving a piece of hair behind my ear. “You have to know how much I care about you,” he finally said.
“I know,” I whispered as his hands ran underneath my shirt and gently lifted it over my head.
The rush seemed to evaporate and everything turned to slow motion as soft, slow kisses, and gentle whisperings of his hands and mine led to less and less clothing, and then finally, the feeling of his warmth completely enveloped me in ecstasy.
Chapter 19
Waking up in Evan’s arms was always surreal; his scent, the feel of his skin against mine, but most of all, his voice. In the edges of my sleep I could feel him holding me, and when I began to hear him singing I swore I was still in a dream, but as his cologne drifted over me and as his fingers traced the bare skin of my arm in between the waves of my hair, I realized it was real. His voice was gentle as he sang a song I had never heard before. I tried to memorize the words along with the rise and fall of his chest beneath my body. A contented sigh managed to escape me even though I kept my eyes shut.
“Are you pretending to be asleep?” Evan asked, moving my hair away from my ear.
I nodded as I opened my eyes and looked up at him. The sun was streaming in between the sheer curtains in front of the French doors and washing his face in a pale yellow light. It intensified the hints of gold flecks in his eyes.
“I’m still dreaming aren’t I?” I replied.
He shook his head as he lifted my chin up and kissed me. “That’s what I keep asking myself.”
“You don’t sleep very much, do you?” I asked as I slid up in the bed and he put his head in my lap.
“I try not to when I’m here,” he answered as he closed his eyes.
I traced the tattoos on his chest and down his shoulders.
“Why is that?”
“I’m trying to suck every moment I have with you out of the day.” He looked up at me as he took my hands in his. He seemed to study the way our hands fit together and the shadow they cast over the bed against the back lighting of the sun. “It helps me to keep going until the next time I see you.”
“I thought you weren’t lonely on the road anymore?”
He bit the inside of his lip before answering, “Not exactly—I get to be with my best friends. The band and I have been through a lot together, but being with your best guy friends doesn’t really fulfill all of a guy’s needs.”
I raised an eyebrow and he kissed each of my fingers slowly. “Not all of them being sexual.”
“What other needs do I satisfy?” I asked, smirking at him.
He spun a piece of my hair that was hanging in his face. “I feel like I can tell you anything…and that I don’t have to—”
“That you just understand things when I feel like crap.”
He nodded.
“Guy’s take two routes; they leave you alone and let you wallow in it, or they tease the shit out of you until you give in.” He studied my face before he continued, “You must get lonely?”
I looked away and swallowed. “Because of my general lack of friends?”
“That’s not—”
I pushed away from him before standing with the sheet wrapped around me and going to the window. “It’s true, Evan. I know it.”
I could feel his eyes on my back as I moved the curtain and looked down at the ducks floating on the lake in a group. The swan floated at the edge of the water, beautiful and quite alone. I heard Evan finally stir and soon I felt his hands hovering over my shoulders before he placed them there and then let them slip down my arms and to my waist.
“It sucks. I was so stuck in how hurt I was and how they had only added to my pain…I just didn’t want to look back. I left everyone behind me. I told myself I didn’t need them; that I don’t need them but now…”
“The emptiness shows when I’m not here?”
I let my chin drop to my exposed chest. “I still have my parents…I’m never really alone.”
He kissed my shoulder before sighing. “Yet you feel it.”
I nodded.
“Just know when you’re feeling it so am I,” he reassured me.
“How did you handle it when you were younger?” I asked as I turned to face him standing in the boxer briefs he must have slipped on after getting out of bed.
“I found ‘love’ in all the wrong places—after a while that got old, especially when everyone found girlfriends and then most got married.”
“So the bad boy image…?” I asked as I let the sheet drop and pulled on a pair of shorts and a tank top from the floor.
“You’re asking about drugs, huh?” he guessed, following me into the kitchen.
I poured us both cups of coffee and looked over mine as I hesitated before asking, “So?”
“No,” he answered as he leaned up against the counter top. “Yoga helps a lot.”
“Yoga?” I choked on my coffee as I thought of him in spandex pants, contorted in a strange position.
He nodded and winked at me.
“Well,” I said, running my finger over the rim of the coffee cup, “that does explain some things.”
It was his turn to burst out in laughter and soon we were both gasping for breath.
“Maybe you can teach me something?” I teased as I put my coffee down and bent into a scorpion position.
He pulled me into his arms with his lips against my ear as he said, “Oh, you’re plenty flexible.”
“Knock, knock!” I suddenly heard someone standing at the entrance to the kitchen.
“Mom!” I yelped, pulling away from Evan and yanking at the hem of my booty short pajamas, glad I’d put some clothes on before getting our coffee.
I looked over at Evan who was searching the room for a t-shirt to no avail. He stood awkwardly, shirtless in just his tight briefs as my mom’s mouth dropped open.
“So this is the new boyfriend?” she gasped as she looked him up and down.
“Mom!” I repeated, going to stand in front of him.
“That’s—that’s,” Mom stuttered as she pointed between him and I.
“Evan Levesque—nice to meet you.” Evan stuck his hand out from behind me with a smug smirk.
“Holy crap!” Mom stared at his hand for a moment before her brain kicked in and she shook it. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too, Mrs. Walker.”
“Now I get the tattoo thing,” she muttered as she looked him up and down again.
“Mom,” I growled one more time as I pushed her out the door so she couldn’t see him anymore. “Stop staring!”
“Tattoos are nice,” she said to herself more than to me.
I looked over my shoulder to where Evan stood covering his smile with his hand, but his eyes still showed his amusement at the situation.
“Why didn’t you call or, you know, knock? What if we had been—”
Her eyes widened. “That…would’ve been interesting.”
“I’m going to change the locks if you don’t start calling first!” I threatened.
“Yeah…well, we just aren’t used to you having a boyfriend. Good thing for the sound proofing, eh?”
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