by Lisa Suzanne
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
MACI
My eyeliner is smudged and my lipstick is smeared, but I don’t fix it until I’m in a dressing room just before my performance—long after the actual appearance part of this night. Griffin hands me my make-up bag with a look of disdain that tells me he definitely heard what we were up to in the back of the limo, and I wonder idly as I fix my face whether Ethan’s cock has my lipstick smeared all over it.
Griffin steps out of the room to chat with the club’s owners, and I glare at Ethan as the high from the pot and the subsequent high from the orgasm start to dissipate once my make-up is perfect again.
“What’s that for?” he asks. “I took care of you.”
“Yeah, you didn’t tell me I look like a fucking clown.”
He comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. He buries his nose in my neck. “Because you don’t. You look fucking gorgeous, just like always.”
Like always? I want to say it to him. Always, even back when I was just a pig?
I keep the words on the tip of my tongue to myself. “Thanks,” I say instead. He presses small kisses to my neck, and I twist out of his grasp. “Stop.”
“I thought you liked it.”
“I don’t. I love it. But I need to go sing a song and I don’t want to do it with goosebumps down my legs because you couldn’t keep your mouth off my neck.”
He laughs, and we’re quiet for a bit before he finally asks, “Can I sing with you?”
My brows furrow. “Sing with me?” I ask.
He nods. “I know the song, and I want to see what it’s like, what sort of chemistry we have. If it’s a good idea to collaborate beyond just writing something together, but to actually perform it.”
“What parts will you sing?”
“Second verse and I’ll back you up on the bridge. The rest is yours.”
“To be technical, the whole thing is mine, but I’ll lend out verse two and back-ups tonight. I’ve never heard you sing. You any good?”
He lifts a shoulder modestly. “We’ve talked about this before.”
“I know we’ve talked about it, and I know you’ve got rhythm. Sing the bridge for me.”
“Right now?” he asks. He looks a little embarrassed.
“You’re gonna do it in a few minutes out there anyway in front of a much bigger crowd.”
He sighs. “Fine.” He thinks for a minute, and then he clears his throat, turns away from me, and starts to sing the words I wrote. “Another shot, got me so hot, another shot, bring it to me now. Another shot, almost forgot, another shot, and I’ll take my bow.”
I raise both brows at him once he finishes the lyric. “Not half bad,” I say, my voice full of both surprise and affection.
“Not half bad? What’s the other half?”
I giggle. “That was good, Ethan. Surprisingly good. I didn’t know you had a voice.”
“There’s at least one song on each of our albums where I take lead vocals.”
“Who drums?” I pull out a stool from beneath a counter and perch on it.
“I do.”
“You can multi-task like that? Sometimes I have trouble singing and dancing at the same time. That’s why I have to wait until after the show for weed. I have no coordination after that.”
“What just happened in the limo tells me a different story.”
I’m sure I blush, but I don’t otherwise acknowledge his compliment about my sexual prowess. The door opens and Griffin pops his head in. “You’re on in three.”
I nod toward Ethan. “Get another mic.”
“He sings?” Griffin asks.
I nod. “And he’s backing me up tonight just for fun.”
Griffin rolls his eyes as if to ask whether there’s anything Ethan can’t do. Maybe I’m still a little baked, but I come up short when I try to pinpoint an answer to that question.
“Wait here,” I tell Ethan backstage. “I’ll introduce you.”
He nods, and then I hear my name. I run out to the stage and wave at the crowd. “Hello, Dallas!” I yell, and I’m met with cheers and excitement from the people gathered. “I brought a special guest with me tonight. You ready?”
They cheer again, and I continue. “I’m currently on tour opening for his band, and he’s gonna help me out on vocals. Please welcome Vail’s drummer, Ethan Fuller!”
Ethan strides out confidently onto the stage, looking every bit the rock star he is with his black jeans and tattoos peeking out from the arms of his charcoal colored shirt. His hair is a mess again, sticking up unnaturally but looking perfect anyway, and his icy blue eyes land on me. He grins, and that little dimple sends a shot of desire through me.
He’s everything I wanted when I was younger, and now…
And now.
He’s everything I want now.
He’s everything I’m not supposed to want because he has the power to break me. He already did his worst, and I’m certain I can’t make it through to the other side again.
But I also like to play with fire.
Now that the chemicals are wearing off, I find myself wanting him even more than I wanted him in the back of that limo tonight. I want him inside me, nothing between us again, but I want to be aware of what we’re doing, living for the moment so I can remember it and savor it rather than having it stripped away with the fading high.
I didn’t bring my band, so it’s just the two of us acapella. I sing the intro, and the crowd sings along with me. They know the words, which helps since I don’t have music. I get through the first verse while Ethan works the crowd, and once I get to the bridge, he steps toward me and sings an echo of the key parts of the lyrics. He interjects in places I never would’ve thought to have someone interject, and the sound is fucking amazing. I sing the chorus and then he launches into the second verse. The crowd goes crazy as they listen to the trained rasp of his voice—something they rarely hear unless they’re diehard fans who recognize his voice from the album tracks, ones that never made it to the radio in favor of the ones featuring the well-known, distinctive voice of the lead singer.
We get back to the bridge again, and then I take over for the chorus and the third verse. By the time the song is over, the half of me denying I’ve fallen in love with him can’t do it anymore.
Singing my number one hit with me, knowing all the words, working my crowd the way he did—those are all nice and great. But the way he makes me feel inside—those little looks he shot me, the ones that told me he approved or he liked what I was doing or he was impressed with my voice—and the secret smiles, and the way he brushed against me while we sang together…those are the things I can’t deny.
It was the one thing I was trying to avoid, and it’s the one thing I went and did anyway.
*
Exhaustion hits as we head from the club to the hotel. As much as I want to spend the night letting Ethan work my body over, I need rest. Life on the road is exhausting enough, but add in concerts, sitting on a bus for hours on end, sleeping in foreign beds, appearances, meet and greets, practices, setlists, sound checks, and all the other administrative daily work…plus sex…and sometimes drugs or alcohol…it gets overwhelming. I don’t even realize I’ve fallen asleep on Ethan’s shoulder in the back of the limo until he’s gently shaking me awake as we pull in front of the W.
“We’re here,” he says softly. He presses a kiss to my temple, and it’s so sweet and out of character for him that I almost wonder who this is sitting next to me.
He walks me to my room, Griffin a few feet behind us, and presses a soft kiss to my lips. “See you tomorrow,” he says. I’m too tired to ask where he’s going or when tomorrow I’ll see him. Instead, Griff helps me get ready for bed and I collapse into a deep sleep.
I wake up to knocking on my door. Sunlight streams through my window and falls across my eyes, sending a searing pain through my head. The pot mixed with whiskey last night was dumb, and as my mind fully wakes, I realize something else I
did last night that was really dumb. A bead of guilt forms in my stomach. I have no real reason to feel guilty—I’m a single woman free to fuck whoever she wants—but the fact that Ethan dipped inside me for a few unsheathed thrusts was stupid. We put ourselves at risk, not just for diseases, which he told me wasn’t an issue, but for pregnancy. I’m not on the pill anymore, and I have no reason to be when I always have a condom separating me from a possible baby.
It was just a few dips in. He didn’t come inside me, and the chances of getting pregnant are slim. Yet the guilt feels like a bubble that could burst at any time. My chest feels heavy as I get out of bed, and I don’t think it’s from smoking. I open the door, and Griff looks me over. “You have got to stop smoking pot,” he says.
“Good fucking morning to you, too, asshole.” I realize I’m not exactly a sweet flower first thing in the morning, but I pay Griffin well to deal with it.
“You’re such a beautiful girl, even now. You know that. But the morning after you smoke, your eyes always look so swollen.” He touches beneath my eyes gingerly. “You feel okay?”
I lift a shoulder and turn away from the door.
He steps into the room behind me, and his tone turns suddenly all business. “Can I get you anything?”
“Coffee,” I say, holding one hand out in front of me and holding my other hand about two feet above that one to indicate I need a big coffee.
“Keurig?”
I shake my head. “Bigger and stronger. And a coconut water.” I read somewhere once it’s supposed to help cure hangovers. I don’t know if it’s true, but I always drink some when I feel like shit after a night out.
He nods once. “We leave in thirty minutes. I’ll get your bags.”
“Thanks, Griff.” I pick up my purse and check my phone. I don’t have any new messages, and I can’t help but wonder where Ethan went last night—and why he didn’t hang around with me.
“Let me walk you down and then I’ll get your coffee and water.”
He follows close behind me as we make our way to the limo waiting to take me to the bus lot. I sit in the back and check my email. The one still sits in my inbox, mocking me as I debate whether or not to open it. I open every other email around it, and then Griff opens the door with my liquids and the email is pushed aside once again.
I thank him with a kiss on the cheek. “What’s on tap for today?” I ask.
“Short trip to Houston, so we should be there in four hours. I need you to touch base with the band when we arrive. You could even call while we’re in transit. Trevor said something was off in one of the speakers last night. We have sound check at three.” He pulls out his phone and checks a few things. “We have a call into a radio station for a morning show just after we get on the bus. Bridget has a few interview questions for you to answer over email.”
I roll my eyes. “She told me. I’ll get to it and it really fucking annoys me that she makes you remind me.”
“We’re just here to make sure you get it all done, Maci.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I take a sip of the coconut water. It tastes like ass, just like always, and I’m convinced it’s not actually a hangover cure, but since it tastes worse than I feel, it’s helping.
“Can we do a few of the interview questions now? I’ll record your responses and get them to her.”
“Fine.”
He asks me the standard questions everybody asks with very few interesting or unique ones peppered in. One question, though, throws me for a complete loop.
“Are the rumors true about you and Vail drummer Ethan Fuller?”
I glare at Griff for a beat, and he shuts off the voice recorder. “You and Bridget both know better than to let questions like that through.”
He nods. “Sorry. I’ll talk to Bridget. But just for my own sanity, what’s going on with you two?”
I lift a shoulder as he slides his phone into his pocket. “I don’t know.”
“Are you just screwing around, or is it more?”
I glance out the window and my knee bounces up and down a couple times before I realize what’s happening—Ethan’s signature move. I’m already starting to copy some of his habits, just like lots of couples do at some point.
“It’s more,” I finally say.
“What is it?”
I don’t answer because I don’t have an answer.
But I know what it is.
It’s time to give up the big revenge plot.
The things I’m feeling for him are bigger than our history, and I think it’s time to bury the past and leave it behind us. It’s time to start fresh, to admit my feelings for him are beyond what I ever imagined they’d be.
It might even be time to confess my truth to him. I’ll tell him about the words he said to Mark, he’ll apologize and tell me he didn’t mean them, and we can start trying to figure out where we go from here. We can navigate these strange new waters together as we learn to be with each other.
As we pull into the bus lot, I’m ready. I’m ready for this, ready for him.
I take a deep breath. This won’t be easy, but it’s time to give up the plan I’ve worked toward for the last twenty years. It’s time to move forward with my life and let the past stay where it belongs.
It’s time to stop punishing both of us so we can find our way to happiness.
I glance over at the large metal tube that’ll carry me to Houston. This trip’s shorter, so I’ll only be locked up for four hours this time. I hope Ethan will swing by to ride with me so we can have a chance to talk. I’m about to tell Griffin if Ethan comes by, he should swap buses to give us some privacy.
Just as I open my mouth, though, I glance over at his bus. The door opens and a slender woman with long, wavy blonde locks steps down. Her eyes are covered with sunglasses, but I’ve never seen her before.
I close my mouth as my heart drops into my stomach.
The woman tugs down on her shirt and fumbles with the buttons. They’re out of sorts—one is looped through the wrong hole, and it takes her a few seconds to fix them while I watch from my front row seat. Ethan appears inside the bus on the top step. I can’t see his face from this angle, but I can tell it’s him…and I can see he isn’t wearing a shirt, just a pair of jeans. She turns around and blows him a kiss, and then he disappears back onto the bus. She gets into a car and drives away.
The whole exchange took less than ten seconds.
Ten seconds shouldn’t hurt like this.
Ten seconds shouldn’t slice like a knife through me when I wasn’t supposed to get emotionally invested.
Where Ethan is concerned, I shouldn’t feel a thing, but in the moment I see some other woman leaving his bus in the morning, obviously adjusting her clothes—after a night he didn’t spend with me—I feel it, and the pain tears into me.
It splits the heart he was mending back together with the words I didn’t expect him to say to me, with the feelings I didn’t expect him to evoke in me, with the hope I didn’t expect to blossom in me.
I should’ve seen this coming from a mile away. I allowed myself to get caught up in the teenage dreams I had about him. He’d become everything I wanted him to be back then, but he was even better than I could’ve imagined.
He shattered me once before, and considering the truth I’m keeping from him, I never should’ve allowed myself to get emotionally invested again.
But I did, and as I sit in the back of the limo and Griffin says words across from me I can’t compute at the moment, a rush of anger washes over me.
He’s a fucking asshole, telling me he doesn’t want anyone else and then running off to the first groupie whore who looked his way. What the fuck is wrong with me that I believed he wouldn’t do that? That I believed I’d get him to fall for me with this stupid scheme of mine but ended up falling for him all over again before he even got the chance?
I let that marinate in my mind for a minute.
I won’t let it happen again—that’s for goddamn sure.
The revenge plan is back on.
The limo comes to a stop. I throw the door open and storm over to my bus. Griffin’s calling after me, trying to get my attention, but what-the-fuck-ever. I can’t be bothered with whatever he needs right now. I just need to be alone to allow my anger to seethe for a bit.
I throw my purse on the couch with far more force than I intend to. Griffin gets on the bus behind me. I pull open a cabinet and I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I slam it closed and then I take one of the empty Styrofoam coffee cups sitting on the counter and heave it with all my might against the window. It barely takes off when it leaves my hand. Apparently Styrofoam doesn’t fly, and it just pisses me off more. I pick up the cup as it bounces on the floor and start shredding it in my hands.
Griffin comes up and grabs my wrists in his hands. “What just happened, Maci?” he asks. I yank my hands out of his grasp. “We were having a talk and now you’re throwing shit.”
“You didn’t see?” I ask.
He looks at me like I’m fucking crazy, which maybe I am right now. “See what?”
“That bitch walking off his bus!” I scream it at him.
“I didn’t see.”
There’s a knock at my bus door. “Don’t you dare let anyone on this bus,” I hiss at Griffin, and even though he’s easily got eighty pounds on me and he’s my bodyguard, he looks a little scared of me.
He nods once and heads toward the steps to see who’s there. It’s probably either Ethan or Mark, but the whole of Vail can go fuck themselves right now. I head toward my bedroom and slam the door. I pace around, wishing I’d grabbed my purse before I locked myself in here because my phone’s out there.
It’s better this way. No interruptions.