by Mia Caldwell
"The magazine's out?" I pulled my phone away from my ear and stared at it. "Hang on Dayna, I'm right here at a drugstore, lemme run in and see if they have it."
Dayna was still talking over me, "...your best work though, I mean honestly. You're really good..."
"Thanks," I muttered, distracted, as I pushed into the air-conditioned interior of the drugstore and made a beeline to the magazine rack.
Dayna's voice fell away as my hand fell to my side. It felt like all the breath in my body left at once. I was dizzy and ready to fell through the floor, the only thing that held me in place was the sight of Tanner's eyes peering at me from the cover of Auteur magazine.
I have to give Gil credit. He's a shit manager, but as an editor there was none better. He zeroed right in on the best of the shots...the closeup I took of Tanner the first night I met him.
The picture where he was staring at me with frank and unbridled lust in his eyes.
All at once, everything that had happened since fell away and I was right back there on that dusty drive next to his ranch, pissed off at him for fixing his fence instead of talking to me. It seemed like a lifetime ago...but it wasn't. It had been...exactly one month ago today. This man had rocked my world, shaken me to the very core and I had known him less than a month. What the hell was I doing?
He was on the cover of a magazine. He was a star, a celebrity, a billionaire several times over. And in one more week, my stint as his tour photographer was over and it was all going to end. These feelings I was feeling...they were stupid and misguided. How could I ever think I could fit into his world?
"Monique?" Dayna's tinny voice sounded out of the receiver.
I held the phone back up to my ear. "Sorry, I uh, I'm looking at it now."
"You really did a great job," she said, as bubbly as every, unaware of the shambles I was in. "I read the article all the way through, but the pictures, they really make it all come together. That stuff he says about family and home, honestly I could just cry...."
I barely heard her. I was walking automatically back to my car, numb to everything except the loneliness. For one fleeting, stupid moment, I considered calling Tanner, before I remembered that I would be losing him again.
Nothing ever lasted. I had my whole life to learn that lesson. Why had I still not learned it?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tanner
Rehearsal paid off. That night's set was much tighter. We shortened the setlist by three songs, but I thought it was for the better. Opening with Everwild was a mistake...the crowd wanted to end on a high note. And so we moved it to last and gave it to them.
Back on the bus, Monique didn't seem much in the mood to talk. I didn't press, instead I just covered her hand with mine. "Ready to sleep in a hotel tonight?" I asked her.
The corner of her mouth lifted slightly, then collapsed back down again. My heart dropped down with it. "Everything okay, baby?"
"Told you not to call me baby," she sighed, but there was no fight in her
For the first time we fell asleep without making love. I held her as tightly as ever, but her body felt stiff against mine. She didn't relax until I started to feign sleep with long, slow, even breaths. Only when she thought I was asleep did she relax enough to fall asleep herself.
As much as I willed it not to, morning came anyway. Monique blinked her eyes open and then startled away. "Holy shit, have you been watching me?" she laughed. She seemed her old self for a moment.
"Can you blame me? I asked. "You ever seen yourself sleep? You're gorgeous."
"No, I've never seen myself sleep, idiot," she giggled.
I leaned up and looked at her. "I'm going to set up a video camera so you can watch it yourself."
She touched my face. "That's sweet...and deeply creepy."
I lunged for her neck, making her squeal and arch, loving the way she felt against me. Every single motion she made was erotic, even when she was pummeling me with her fists. God damn this girl, I was completely fucking gone for her.
I moved from her neck and up to her lips, kissing her long and slow. She sighed out a small moan and threaded her fingers into my hair. I felt myself stirring to life down there.
And then she did the last thing I ever would have expected. She pushed me away.
I stared at her, open-mouthed as she slid naked from the bed and padded right to the bathroom. I considered following her, but she shut the door firmly behind her.
Well...all right then.
I fell back in the bed, confused as all hell. My body still hadn't gotten the message and I was still pitching a ridiculous tent with the sheets.
If this were one of my songs, I'd go to her and say exactly the right thing and she wouldn't be angry anymore.
But life ain't a song. It's messy and complicated, mine moreso than normal. And I hadn't a clue why Monique was pissed, nor what the hell I could say about it.
So I got out my guitar. Noodling around with the strings, plucking restlessly, I listened to the sound of the water falling in the shower and waited. My stomach growled. I could hear my bandmates starting to emerge from their rooms. Soundcheck was in forty-five minutes. Then half an hour. Then twenty minutes. And still Monique was showering.
If I didn't know better, I'd think she was hiding from me.
Fuck that, she was definitely hiding from me.
Finally, with only fifteen minutes to spare, I stood up from the bed and strode across the room. "Hey Monique?" I called, knocking on the door and trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. "Soundcheck's in fifteen and I need to use the john."
There was a series of crashes, the sound of water shutting off and the scrambling sound of the shower curtain rings screeching.
She opened the bathroom door and stared at me, wild-eyed. Billows of steam poured out around her, making her look like a wizard appearing out of the mists. In spite of the fact that she had been gloriously naked and laughing in my bed earlier, she now clutched her tightly knotted towel around her breasts. Like she was trying to hide them from me.
What the actual hell?
"Sorry," she grunted in that pissed off voice of hers. "It's all yours." She didn't meet my eye as she squirmed past me.
I watched her dart to her suitcase, dressing herself under her towel, once more like she was trying to keep me from seeing her body. A million questions sprang to my lips, each one crowding out the other, leaving me wordless, my jaw working silently. I knew enough about her to recognize this mood. If I asked her anything now, she would only come at me, claws bared, ready for a fight. I could see it in the grim set of her jaw, the tight set of her shoulders, the tendon standing out, marring the perfection of her beautiful neck.
"I thought you had to go to the bathroom," she said tightly, still keeping her back to me.
"Yeah, guess I do," I muttered, turning away.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Monique
I can't do this to myself anymore.
Every kiss, every joke, every caress of my body was a reminder that I was losing him soon. Every morning that we woke up together was one more morning I lost forever.
Every moment I spent with him only prolonged the heartbreak that was to come.
I needed to end it. Now. I needed to summon the strength and the words to say I was leaving. But they wouldn't come in time before we needed to leave.
I took my familiar post during soundcheck. Everything was a well-oiled machine by now and the guys breezed through with no issues. I smiled and laughed and joked, ducking away from Jimmy's flailing arms when needed. Once or twice, Tanner shot a penetrating look in my direction, but I was saved from having to explain by the crowds of people who always surrounded him.
That night as I sat in the wings, I turned away from the band for the first time and looked outward at the sea of ecstatic faces. The crowd was an instrument and Tanner played them just as skillfully as he played his guitar. Once more I was taken over with awe for the star he was.
Li
ttle by little, the awe turned into anger. Anger at him for pretending he was something else than a full-blown celebrity. The aw-shucks good old boy routine he pulled to charm his way into my pants.
And anger at myself for believing it.
By the end of the second encore I had had enough. The last chords were still ringing out in the stadium, but I couldn't stand to see him that way for one minute longer. There was no place I could go besides the bus. So the bus was where I headed.
But it was locked up tight with no sign of Gus or Leo anywhere.
I flattened my hands against the metal sides and took a deep breath. This was craziness, being at his mercy this way. This wasn't my style.
"Call Clara first thing in the morning," I told myself. "Get a plane ticket back, then go grovel at Gil's feet. You'll probably get fired over this, but you can find a new job. Fuck, you can move again. Start over again...."
"Who are you talking to, babe?"
I whirled on Tanner in fright and he caught my wrist just before I clocked him in the jaw. "Hey, steady now," he said in that tone he might have used for a frightened horse. "I'm gettin' real sick of being your punching bag."
"Why are you following me?" I lashed out.
His eyes blazed in the dark. "Oh I'm followin' you, am I? Just because I was looking for the girl I'm into at the end of my set? Only to find out she ran off before it even ended?"
"I didn't run off," I shouted. "You're really fucking arrogant if you expect me to just sit there all impressed with your little rock show...."
My back slammed into the bus. Before I could cry out, Tanner's big hands were on my shoulders, pinning me between the bus and his chest. I wasn't sure which was harder.
"Monique," he growled, his tone dark and dangerous. "You have been pissed at me all day. Care to stop slingin' these accusations and actually tell me what the fuck I did wrong?"
"Tanner this is ridiculous!" I shouted.
His face was crashing down in disappointment and I hated myself as I spewed the angry, hurtful words, but I couldn't stop. "You and me, this whole "thing" we've got going on. It won't work!"
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tanner
She scrambled away from me, that familiar fire in her eyes, like she was trying to smite me dead with her eyeballs. "You're deluded if you think this can work!" she shrieked, stomping her foot like an angry child.
"Tell me something right now," I demanded, shutting the bus door behind me. It was close and quiet in here and I tried like hell to lower my voice, stop antagonizing her. I was being rough, angry, holding her too tight. Her dark eyes blazed at me, but I was too far gone. "You tell me after all of this that you still want to go and I will get you on a plane right now and you never have to see me again. But you have to tell me, right now. No more kissing me and then ripping my heart out, over and over again."
"Ripping your heart out?"
"What do you think of me, Monique Williams? Have you really convinced yourself so completely that this means nothing to you? To me? Fuck that, I'm not the delusional one," I ran my thumb over her lips. "You are."
Her eyes blazed at me, her shoulders huffing up and down. She was hot to the touch, scalding really. I held my thumb right there on her mouth, waiting. "Are you going to bite me again?"
She didn't answer. Stretching her lips forward, she drew my thumb into her mouth. I sucked in my teeth to feel her lips wrapped around something of mine and she smiled an evil smile and closed her teeth against my skin,
I had her by the neck, but she had me in her teeth. A dangerous dance of trust. I could choke her. She could bite down at any second. It all depended on which one of us yielded first.
"Fuck this standoff shit," I growled. "Bite me and be done with it."
Her eyes flashed in triumph and she pulled back her lips, baring her pearly teeth. I sucked in my breath and waited for her to hurt me physically. Make me feel the pain that my confused heart was already hurting.
She bit down slowly, inexorably, leaving her mark on me. I grimaced.
And then the strangest thing happened. All the wind went out of her sails and she collapsed in a dejected heap on the bus floor. "Tanner..." she moaned, burying her head in her hands.
I immediately sank to her side and cradled her head. Her shoulders hitched a little as she quieted herself in my neck.
I was prepared to stay like this as long as she needed. My thigh was cramping and my thumb was throbbing, but I didn't give a damn about either one of them. I wanted to know why the hell Monique was crying. She seemed finally ready to tell me.
"Mmmhmmpfh," she mumbled into my neck.
"Didn't quite catch that, darlin'" I muttered into her hair.
She pulled back and wiped her eyes. "You must think I'm crazy," she said, more clearly now.
I cocked my head. "Yeah, but that's what I like about you," I grinned.
She half-laughed, half grimaced, then clasped her hands tightly in her lap. Her fingers twisted over and over again and I held my tongue, waiting for her to have her say.
"Tanner, what are we doing here?" she finally sighed.
There was a little-girl-pleading quality to her voice that I had never heard before. It made me sit right up at attention. "Well, honey, right now, we're sitting on the dirty ass floor of my tour bus. You're crying and I'm trying to figure out what I did to make you cry."
She looked stricken. "You didn't do anything. You're wonderful. Incredible. And that's the whole fucking problem."
"Oh? Gotta say darlin', I've never heard that particular complaint."
"Be serious a sec."
"I am deadly serious." I cupped her chin in my hand, forcing her to stop looking at the ground and look at me. "What is the problem?"
She looked around, wildly, like a trapped animal. "The problem is that it can't happen. You and me. You're leaving for Europe. I'm going home. It's ending in a week. You're talking like this is something that's going to last but Tanner...." Her breath caught in her throat and the rest of her words were forced out around the sound of her sobs. "Nothing ever lasts!"
She collapsed into my chest and I caught her up in my arms, kissing and murmuring sweet words that made no sense except they felt right to say, but all the while I tried to piece together her fears. The afternoon in the graveyard, the sun filtering through the trees as she settled her fingers on my granddad's tombstone and told me about how she had never had a place to call her own. How her family had to keep moving, and even when they thought they had a place to settle down, they ended up moving on from there too.
There was pain there, deep hurt she didn't want to relive. But everything about me seemed to set off that pain reflex again, no matter how hard both of us tried to get away from it.
"Darlin'," I ventured, quietly. Her sobs had settled and she had my shirt bunched up in her fist still, but her knuckles were no longer white. The glorious color was returning and I knew she had calmed enough to hear me when I said. "I gotta ask you a question and I need you to know it's not meant to hurt you." I chuckled a little as my thumb throbbed. "And I need to know that you're not gonna hurt me for asking it."
"Gee, that inspires a hell of a lot of confidence," she snarked into my chest.
I laughed a little, glad to have her fire back. It warmed me. "Maybe I'm gonna want your teeth a bit away from my flesh, here," I said lightly.
She sniffled and pulled back fixing me with her laser eyes. "Okay, cowboy. Ask away."
I placed my hand lightly on her leg. "You were a kid. You had no choice in your daddy moving you all the time. Nothing lasted then, but it wasn't your fault. But I gotta wonder why you still believe it now that you're grown."
She made an angry sound, but I pressed my finger on her lips to quiet her. Centimeters from her teeth. What can I say? I like living dangerously. "You say nothing lasts, but have you ever actually worked to make it last?"
Her eyes widened and she parted her lips. I snatched my finger away and replaced it with my lips, pressing
in a deep, long kiss that said most of what I was trying to say. When I finally pulled back, her eyes were glittering again, but I'll be damned if those didn't look like happy tears.
"Because I'm a real hard worker, Monique. I've never been one to shy away from something just 'cos it's hard. I'm going to Europe, you're going home, but that's only for a little while. I'm willing to make the effort to make this..." I touched her lips again and this time she kissed my finger fervently..."something that lasts."
Chapter Thirty