by Lauren Dane
“Okay, then. Well, I’m going to skip this trip down memory lane. Mainly because it’s pretty rude with my girlfriend standing here. You two have a good day.” He stepped around them, juggling the bags to put a hand at Natalie’s back as they left.
He heard one of the women call Natalie a bitch and he stiffened, turning.
“No.” Natalie shook her head. “Who cares?”
“I do.”
“But I don’t. They don’t mean shit to me. Or to you, which is sort of sad and all, but that’s how it goes. Come on. We have lunch, and you don’t need to defend my honor.”
He snarled, but turned and kept walking. “I don’t like that. You deserve respect.”
“I respect myself. You respect me. What they think? Doesn’t matter to me.”
He drove them back to the hotel and ordered room service. Once he’d done that, he pulled her close. “I’m sorry about today.”
“About what? Spending the day with me instead of in the studio? Responding to your fans when they see you and want to interact? I don’t expect to have one hundred percent of your attention at all times.”
“No, but this was a day for you and me. We got interrupted over and over.”
“Three times in three hours. That’s not too bad.”
“And the women. I’m embarrassed.”
“Paddy.” She heaved a sigh and moved away from him, standing to look out over the river. “Do I like it that you’ve fucked your way from one side of the globe to the other? Not really. But I’m not a virgin and I can’t control what you did when you weren’t with me. So I guess the real question I have is why you’re embarrassed.”
Sometimes she was sharply intuitive.
“It’s sort of seedy. I clearly must have been with those women.”
“Both of them at once, and I bet it wasn’t the first time you’d been with more than one woman at a time. But so what? You’re a man in the prime of his life. You’re handsome and powerful. Charismatic and famous, too. It’s not like it’s a secret to women that dudes want to bone two women at once. We aren’t dumb. Not even those heifers who came on to you earlier. So it’s not the three-way.”
“Notice you didn’t argue that it was seedy.”
She gave him a look, and he sighed.
“I’m standing here in a hotel room with you. With a woman I once had a fling with all those years ago, and I remembered you. Pretty much the instant I saw you. I don’t want you to think you’re like them.”
She laughed. “But they’re like them. Do you get my meaning? Are you maybe embarrassed that you’ve stuck your dick in so many women, it’s like fast food? You don’t remember which burger shack you ate in, and maybe that leaves you empty at the end of the day? Not every sexual encounter has to be deep, meaningful love. But after a while, if you’re only giving yourself the dollar menu, you’re treating yourself like you’re only worth a buck.”
“Ouch.”
She reached up to cup his cheek. “I think you’re worth more than the dollar menu. I don’t want you to feel bad for being irresistible. I understand that better than those women ever will. I don’t want you to feel bad because you take the time to talk to your fans. I don’t even want you to feel guilty because you slept with so many women, you can’t remember a threesome. If you look back and think it’s seedy, maybe it was.” Her expression was rueful. “But you can’t go back and change it and let’s face it, you wouldn’t. It’s okay that you took advantage of one of the very reasons young men want to be rock stars.”
“But I have you. And I know the difference between what’s real and what’s seedy. It makes me feel disrespectful to you and what we have.”
“I can’t tell you how to feel. It’s sweet and all that you’re worried. But when I express discomfort over your lifestyle, it’s not that you banged a zillion girls before I came into the picture. Respect me now that we’re together. Right? That’s what I need. I don’t need you to feel bad because some catty bitch shoved me out of the way to try to hump you in the middle of the street. You handled it. We’re here. Right now.”
“I’m a lucky man. You know that?”
She nodded. “You totally are.”
Before he could show her just how lucky she could be, room service arrived to set up lunch.
“Foiled.”
She laughed as he moved to let them in. “It’s okay. I’ll just be thinking about it more now.”
“That works, too.”
* * *
SHE DISAPPEARED FOR a bit, coming back to find a fire built and crackling merrily and lunch laid out and ready to be eaten. He was in the process of taking a bite of the chocolate cake.
“What? It’s totally okay to eat dessert first at Christmas. It’s the American way. And stuff.”
She rolled her eyes and sat, forking up a bite of her own and humming. “This is really good.”
The soup she’d ordered was perfect and warmed her up. “The first time I tried pumpkin soup, I did not believe it could be good. I turned my nose up at it, and Tuesday shamed me into trying it. She’s usually right. It was delicious.”
“Was it just me, or were there some sparks when she and Ezra met?”
“It wasn’t just you. But she’s...well, she’s not easy to reach. She’s had a rough time since Eric died. I don’t know if she’s ready for more than sparks. She dates a little, mainly to have sex, I think.” But her friend was way too comfortable with her inner darkness.
“The first time I really understood Ezra was in trouble, we were on the road. It was the second tour, right after we’d made it pretty big.”
He hadn’t shared this with her, so she settled back and listened.
“We all... Look, I’m not going to pretend I was an innocent. I had enough problems of my own. I just liked coke better than heroin. I did it with him a few times, but where he loved the way it sucked him under and smoothed him out, I wanted the opposite. I liked being up. Loved the creative jolt coke gave me. At first, until it fucked my voice up and ate all my money and made my dick soft. All that was enough to keep me away from it after a while. Anyway, we were on tour, and he started getting rooms on a different floor. And at first I was like, well, I like to get the hell away from them sometimes, too. But then I realized his dealer was with us in every damned city.”
He stared off into the middle distance for a bit and then sighed, eating some more. “He was dropping weight like crazy. We were at dinner and he disappeared right in the middle of it. Like he said he was going to the bathroom and he just didn’t come back. We were eating with some people from Rolling Stone magazine, for God’s sake! So I thought, maybe he fell or hurt himself, and I went to find him. He was still in the john, his goddamned rig in his arm, passed out on the toilet.”
She’d seen it herself more than once, and bile rose at the memory. Just imagining someone as hale and hearty as Ezra like that was sick-making. Hearing Paddy talk about it, though, that was worse. She heard the anger, the hurt and she understood it so well.
At the same time, she resented it a little because her father never really had that experience of getting himself together. She’d never known him when he wasn’t screwed up.
“I only managed to not kick his ass because Jeremy had come to find us. We got Ezra a cab to the hotel and Jeremy went with him. I went back to the table and made excuses saying Ezra was sick and Jeremy had taken him back to rest. An article came out in the next issue about us. And it wasn’t good.
“But by that point, things were so bad in the band, it didn’t matter what Rolling Stone had said. It was like Ezra had taken on addiction like he had making the band a success. He’d embraced heroin like it was family. He blew off sound check. One of us had to constantly be with him before a show or he’d be hours late. It’s when I started filling in that space for him onstage and taking over more of the vocals. We had to because he just wasn’t showing up. Hell, even when he was physically there, he wasn’t really showing up. Then he fucking nodded off onstage.
Just right there in front of thousands of people. He was already playing so bad, they’d turned off his amps so no one could hear him. And he just fell asleep. Standing up. It was like at that moment I was looking at a stranger who’d killed my brother. The rage just drowned me.” And a lot of shame, she supposed. Fear. Helplessness. “I hated him so much in that moment.”
She remembered this part. Remembered seeing the footage on television. Remembered, too, that sudden, cold-as-ice rage and hatred at another person.
“You charged him. Right there onstage and knocked him to the ground.”
“I did. In front of the whole world, apparently.” He snorted. “I should have known you’d have seen it. That film haunts me to this day. But I had just... He wasn’t even my brother anymore. It was like something had taken him over. It was an ugly, horrible thing. An abomination. He’d been stealing from us. From his family. Let people into our lives who didn’t care about fucking us over. They just needed money for drugs. And they were everywhere! Jeremy and the label people had stepped in, and they did a pretty good job at keeping them out of the backstage area. But Ezra would ditch his keepers to get drugs. My big brother never would have done that. Never would have abandoned what we’d built together. He endangered everything, including his own life. I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry.”
She reached out to draw the pad of her thumb over his knuckles.
Paddy looked up, his faraway gaze snapping into place, seeing her. Knowing she had been there. “You understand me. Sometimes it scares me how much you do. You understand the fear and the rage. The guilt. The moments when you just hate them so much for not choosing you over using.”
She managed a smile, but she had her own fear to choke past. “Yeah.”
“So we got in a fight in front of all those people. He hit his head on a corner of a speaker, split it open. Facial wounds are the worst. They bleed so much. But he didn’t even get it then.”
He drew a shaky breath. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said all that.”
“Why not? That’s how you grow to know someone. You share things with them.”
“It’s not really my story to tell. Ezra isn’t that anymore.”
“Sometimes you share a bad memory to let that other person share that burden. Or maybe you give them a piece of yourself to see if they can be trusted. You said it yourself. I understand. And I’m envious because Ezra is stronger than my father, and he got his act together. No, you weren’t the one addicted, Paddy, but it’s your story as much as it is his. Addiction isn’t just about the person with the habit.”
She had known in the back of her mind, even back in July when he’d first reappeared in her life, that to open the door even a crack would mean something she couldn’t have expected. It was probably why she’d tried to hold him back. Why she’d tried to keep control of all those things that could hurt so very much if they went bad.
He was beautiful and clever and talented and funny, but he brought so much into her life that scared her so much. Caring about him the way she did meant he had the power to hurt her more than even those years growing up couldn’t compare to.
Because this... These moments were about giving him access to all her wounds. Because his sharing meant she had access to his and the responsibility to be what he needed. Hell, to figure out what it was he did need, which was more than head-nodding. Sometimes he’d need the harsh truth, and she’d have to hurt him a little to help him in the big picture, and what if she fucked it up?
He brought the hand on his to his mouth and kissed it. “I guess you’d know that more than most. They patched him up backstage, and then he disappeared. We looked for him. Found him in a place that made that hotel at the bowling alley look like the Four Seasons. He was so ugly. Dope sick. He said some stuff we had to actually deal with in therapy.” He shivered.
“But he went to therapy with you.”
He nodded. “My mom made us lock her and Ezra in the room. We guarded the door and the bathroom window from the outside, and they were in there a long time. When they came out, he’d agreed to rehab. I’ll always be grateful to Jeremy because they sent Ez to a really amazing inpatient rehab in the middle of nowhere. And when he came back, he was changed. He wasn’t the Ezra he’d been before. Not entirely. He had shadows in his gaze. A seriousness he’d never had. But we all went to therapy with him and worked through a lot of stuff. He still goes from time to time if he feels like he needs to unload.”
She liked Ezra, liked that he owned his shit and cared about his family the way he did. Was thrilled he’d gotten clean and stayed that way. But she couldn’t deny the twist of envy in her belly.
“I’m sorry if I upset you. I just... He’s got his own darkness. I said more than I’d intended to. I just wanted to say maybe he needs someone who is as familiar with that pain as he is.”
“Maybe. I’ve teased her about it. I know she finds him ridiculously attractive and at the same time, hello, he is ridiculously attractive. As for telling me all that? Sharing with me? You didn’t upset me. Not like that. Ezra isn’t my dad. Ezra got himself together. He has a life. He’s on track.”
* * *
“HE’S STILL AN asshole with a lot of jagged shit in his gut. I know that much. But he’s the strongest person I know. He kicked and when he did, it was awful. But he did it. And he rebuilt his life. I admire that so much.”
“So maybe he doesn’t need to be back out on the road.”
Paddy thought that over. “Or maybe he needs it more than I thought he did. In any case, what I do know is that he can make the choice, and I’ll back him up either way. Thanks for listening.”
“One of the services I provide.”
He gave her a smile as the intensity of the moment shifted to something else entirely. He got up and dropped his iPod into the dock, spinning the wheel until Natalie came up on his playlist. He pressed it and the opening strains of Death Cab For Cutie’s “Transatlanticism” came over the speakers, filling the room.
He turned to find her watching him.
“I think you need to stand up.”
She looked at him briefly and then did it.
Every time he took the reins during sex and she let him, every time she trusted him to be what she needed, he learned something about himself as well as her.
“You’re so beautiful.”
Her lashes swept down as a pleased smile marked her lips, and a pretty pink blush flamed her cheeks.
“Show me. Get naked and show me all that pretty skin and that ink that’s my own private work of art.”
He leaned against the back of the couch, hands in fists to let her get naked on her own.
She toed her shoes off first, then unbuttoned and unzipped the soft pants she’d worn. Because she knew he watched, she left her panties on, deep blue against her skin, with ties at each side. Those were his favorite.
Something stirred in his belly that she’d put them on just for him to look at before she took them off.
For him.
Her socks made him smile. Wonder Woman socks.
“They were a gift from Jenny.”
He could see that. “I approve.”
“I knew you would.”
That made him suck in a breath. This dance—her giving up control, his taking it—was delicate. She knew what she was doing. Everything she did was purposeful. Which made it all the more powerful. Because she was choosing to let him take over.
This tightly wound control freak who shared his life the way she did made a conscious choice to give herself to him this way. Which made him both proud she thought him worth it and freaked out that he’d screw it up.
He was trying to find the balance with her. He wanted her trust, loved when she gave it to him. But he was working still to find an equilibrium. He didn’t want to walk on eggshells. Didn’t want to be so careful they lost all the heat between them, either.
He was just taking it bit by bit. Trying to learn. Trying to listen. Definitely enjoying being i
n love with this woman who made every moment, even those of struggle, worth it.
She slid her hands up her belly, pausing to cup her breasts through her clothes and then up her neck. He hummed his delight at the sight. Bold.
She unbuttoned each small pearly button on the cardigan she wore, sliding it off and tossing it on the couch behind him. The wisp of her scent rose as the soft-as-sin cashmere caressed his skin as it landed.
The song ended and “Lightness” came on.
“Someone loves Death Cab for Cutie.”
“This is your playlist. There are other bands on it, but shuffle apparently decided this was a good start. I agree.”
“Yeah?” She sang along with the lyric about a heart being a river, and he finished it.
“How come I never knew you could sing?”
She crossed her hands over at her waist, grabbing the shirt’s hem, and pulled it up and over her head, tossing it to join the sweater.
“Oh. Well, now.”
The bra clearly matched the panties. Deep blue, coming to a V in the center, between the breasts it so lovingly cradled together, creating the most luscious curves he’d ever seen.
“I figured you’d like it.”
“I’ll like it even more when it’s in a heap with the rest of your clothes.”
She smiled, reaching behind her to unhook and with a shimmy that was more theatrics than necessary, though certainly appreciated, she ridded herself of the bra and indeed, tossed it to join the rest of her clothes.
Band of Horses’ “No One’s Gonna Love You” came on and her gaze swept up to meet his.
“So how come I didn’t know you could sing?” He made himself stay still as he watched her really hear the lyrics to the song.
“It’s sort of like telling Kelly Slater you surf. Anyway, it’s not a hobby or something I do other than around my house and in the car. Not onstage in front of a zillion people.”
“Panties can go. I like the socks, though.”
Ever so slowly, she pulled one tie and then the other and tugged until the panties fell from her body.
“Seeing you naked is like being really hungry when you go grocery shopping. I want to rush and devour every inch of your body even when I know I’d be better off going slowly.”