by Lisa Suzanne
*
I’m in a dead sleep when I feel someone shaking my arm followed by, “Maci, wake up.”
I open my eyes and squint at Griffin, who’s sitting on my bed next to me. “What time is it?” I ask.
“Seven. You go on in an hour. Are you gonna make it?”
“Yeah, of course.” Unless my voice is compromised, it’s unprofessional to miss a show. I’m fine—just tired.
“Are you sick?” he asks. My eyes have adjusted to the light enough to see how concerned he is.
“No, I’m fine.”
“You need coffee or something?”
“Not coffee. Just the smell made me sick before. What about like a Red Bull or something?” I turn onto my back and stretch my arms over my head. My hand hits my notebook—the secret one I don’t even remember pulling from under my mattress, and Griffin reaches for it the same time I do.
“I’ll find something,” he says, handing the notebook to me as a fresh wave of nausea rolls over me—this time because what if the picture somehow slides out of the back of the notebook? It’s dumb and dangerous to carry that photo with me, evidence of a past I share with these two men, but I always have it with me.
I just know if Griffin sees it, he’ll have way too many questions—questions I’m not ready to answer.
I clutch the notebook against my chest and vow to be better about sliding it back under the mattress before I fall asleep with it in my arms.
I get up and set to work on my make-up—a huge undertaking today considering the dark circles shadowing my eyes. My normally vibrant coloring is washed out and pale, and I fear I might’ve eaten something bad yesterday to cause whatever this is. I think back to yesterday. Being on the road means eating somewhere different all the time.
“Griff!” I yell once my make-up is done. He appears in my bathroom doorway.
“Yeah?”
“I still feel a little off. Can you stay side stage in case I get sick again?”
“Of course.” He nods. “Anything else I can do?”
I shake my head and turn back to the mirror. I touch up my lipstick.
“You look gorgeous,” he says. “As usual.”
My eyes meet his in the mirror as he stands behind me. I’m grateful to have someone who cares about me by my side.
I take the stage, I do my thing and I do it well, but I push myself beyond my limit. I feel the desperate need to crawl back into my bed as I step out of the spotlight. As soon as I’m through the curtain, I spot Ethan standing beside Griffin. Ethan’s arms are crossed over his chest, those biceps hard as they peek out of his shirt, and my eyes are drawn to them. It’s the first time he’s made his presence known after my performance since Denver, and him standing here provides far more comfort to me than it should.
Far more.
My heart races as I approach the two men, and that wave of nausea washes back over me.
“Great set,” Ethan says when I come to a stop in front of him and Griff. He shoots me a weak smile I almost mistake for an attempt at an apology.
I don’t thank him for his kind words—in fact, I don’t respond in any way at all to them. “Griffin, I asked you to keep him away from me.”
“I’m sorry, Maci, but I can’t stop him from being back here,” he says, handing me my room temperature water as he lights my cigarette for me. “He’s got full access, just like you.”
I roll my eyes. One thing. That’s all I asked Griffin to do, just one goddamn thing.
“I can’t do the last song with Vail tonight.” I say it more to Griffin than to Ethan, but both are there, so both hear.
“Why not?” Ethan asks. His voice is harsh—an accusation, not concern something might be wrong. He thinks it’s because of the interview yesterday morning, and I don’t care if that’s what he thinks. That could even be part of it—knowing our segment will air Monday morning could be what’s making me feel like shit today.
“I’m not feeling well,” I say.
“Are you okay?” His voice changes and is full of concern.
“It’s nice you’re pretending to care, but it’s not your business.” I don’t even know what game I’m playing anymore. Maybe this isn’t even part of the game—it’s more of a desperate attempt to escape this man who inspires such immensely conflicting mood swings in me. Love and hate are warring with me, as usual, and I’m no longer sure which side is winning.
He grabs my arm by the bicep roughly, and my eyes fall to his fingers digging into my skin. He loosens his grip. “I do care, Mace.” His voice is gentle despite the way he just manhandled me. “And it is my business. If you’re bowing out on the last song, that affects my band.”
“Fine. That part’s your business, but I’ve told you what you need to know.”
He heaves out a frustrated breath. “Can we talk?” He glances over at Griffin. “Somewhere alone?”
I shake my head. “You’ve got shit to do and I need to lie down.”
“I’ll lie with you, then.”
“No, Ethan. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to see you. I don’t even want to be on tour with you anymore, but that crazy thing called a contract is forcing me to stay.” I rip my arm from his grasp and start to storm away, but his next words stop me.
“Is this still because of the strip club? Will you at least tell me that?”
I spin around to face him, anger lighting a fire inside me I can feel about to bubble over. This isn’t going to be pretty. How the fuck can he not know why I’ve been avoiding him for the last two weeks? “Are you fucking serious right now?”
Confusion wrinkles his brow. “You won’t talk to me, Mace. How am I supposed to know?”
“Yes!” I scream at him. I take a step toward him as tears sting behind my eyes. I promised myself a hundred times I wouldn’t shed another tear over him, yet here we are.
Again.
I start pounding my fists on his chest. I hit him as hard as I can, but he doesn’t budge. He just stands there and takes it. “Yes! It’s the strip club and it’s the interview and it’s just YOU!”
Griffin lets it happen for a minute, but then he wraps his arms around mine, caging me in and pulling me away from Ethan before leading me to my bus.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
MACI
I can’t sleep—probably because I napped earlier, but it could be from the adrenaline rush of hitting Ethan. I told Griffin to come check with me twenty minutes before Vail’s last song. Hopefully I’ll still make it out there.
Guilt gnaws at my gut for hitting Ethan, for being a huge cunt when he was only trying to be nice to me, but there’s not much I can do to apologize at this very moment since he’s on stage with his band.
I pull out my notebook from under my mattress and sketch his face freehand. It looks like him, the narrowed eyes that are always so shockingly blue, the full lips that are somehow both soft and firm against my mouth, against my breasts, against my body. The high cheekbones and the messy hair.
I pull the picture out from the back of the notebook and compare it to my drawing. He looks totally different, but it’s clear it’s the same person. If he had a picture of me that was twenty years old, give or take, I wonder how clear the resemblance would be of the old me versus the new me.
My eyes close after a while. I don’t even realize I closed them until I open them and Griffin is standing beside my bed, staring down at me.
“What is that?” he asks.
I glance down at my chest where he’s looking.
My drawing of Ethan rests there, and the picture of a young Ethan and Mark sits on top of it. My heart races.
For as much I feared this might happen—that someone might find the picture and I’d have to explain it away—I don’t have an explanation prepared. I have no idea what to say. My mouth opens and I hope words will come out, but they don’t.
He grabs the picture from its spot on my chest and squints at it.
“Um…” I try to come up with something
—anything—but I’m groggy and still half-asleep. “I, uh…”
I wait for him to guess, to fill in the blank, but he doesn’t. He just stares between the photograph and me as he waits, and that’s when I realize I don’t owe him an explanation. I don’t owe him a single thing.
“Gimme that,” I snap, snatching the picture out of his hand. “And get out of my room.”
“Why do you have a picture of a young Mark and Ethan?”
“None of your business. I’m still pissed at you for pulling me off Ethan when he deserved so much worse.”
“Maci, he’s in love with you. And you’re in love with him. Can’t you see that?”
I stare down at the photograph, at the young boy I had a mad crush on who grew into a man I never thought I’d fall for. I don’t expect to make the confession, but if there’s anyone in the entire world I trust, it’s Griff. I don’t look up at him when my truth starts spilling out of my mouth for the first time in my entire life. “I knew them in high school. I loved Ethan and then he hurt me and incited this whole downward spiral of my life.”
Griffin sits on the edge of my bed the way people need to sit when they’ve heard shocking news. “Does he know?”
I shake my head as a tear drips down my cheek. Griffin catches it before it spills onto the photo I can’t tear my eyes from. “I left that school, changed my name, got a trainer, lost weight. I took voice lessons. I started wearing colored contacts and changed my hair.” I look up at him. “I’m not the same girl I was. She died, and he killed her almost twenty years ago.”
He rests one of his hands over mine. “We all have a past, Maci, and that’s okay.”
We’re both quiet for a few beats.
“Why haven’t you told him?” he finally asks.
I look down at the picture again and then I finally admit the truth. “Because I came all this way to get back at him for what he did to me.”
“All this way?”
“Maci Dane. The platinum records. The carefully crafted career. I got some lucky breaks along the way, but it’s not a happy accident I ended up on tour with Vail.” I pause and let that settle between us. “This is between us.” He signed an NDA that says it is.
“Of course.” He nods. “Of course. But I stand by what I said. You’re in love with him. You can sit on a decades-old grudge, or you can go get what you deserve. My personal opinion is you deserve better than that asshole, but I want your happiness above everything else, and I think you might find it with him.”
I shake my head. “It’s too hard. I’ve lost too much because of him, and every time I think he’s done his worst, he does something else that tears open the wounds all over again.”
He tightens the hand that’s holding mine, and my heart squeezes for his friendship even after how horrible I’ve been to him. “Babe, that’s love. It cuts and it hurts and it twists, but it’s worth every drop of blood.”
I don’t answer. I can’t seem to speak around the lump in my throat as I stare at Ethan’s icy blue eyes in that decades-old photograph.
He sighs. “You up for the final song tonight? Feeling any better?”
I take a sip from the bottle of water on my nightstand. “Yeah. I can do it.”
“Then let’s get you ready.”
I don’t have much time to waste. I set my notebook and the photo on my nightstand since there’s no real reason to hide it from Griff anymore. I touch up my make-up and head with Griffin back toward the arena. As soon as we’re inside, I hear Vail. They’re on the song before their encore. Griff leads me backstage, and we arrive just in time for the boys to step off the stage, for the wives and Vick to hand them towels and dry shirts. Ethan’s eyes are trained right on me, but after our eyes meet once and the nausea rolls back over me, I avoid his gaze.
Mark spots me after he kisses his wife. His face breaks into a grin, and he saunters over to me and tosses a casual arm around my shoulders. “Hey! She made it! You feeling better?”
I nod weakly. “A little.”
He leans in closer to me. “Between you and me, was it anything? Or are you just sick of Ethan?”
I chuckle and wonder if the whole thing with Ethan actually is what’s making me physically ill. I lift a shoulder, but I don’t have time to answer since Vick is ushering them back to the stage. They play their first two encore songs, Mark welcomes me back to the stage, and I smile and wave. I sing my ass off, and then we’re done. I leave the stage and dart with Griff back to my bus before they take their final bow, glad I managed to escape without having to interact with Ethan.
As I rush back to the bus, though, another wave of nausea hits me. I have to stop so I can throw up into some hedges.
“We’re going to a doctor,” Griffin says. His voice is firm, and as much as I want to argue with him, he’s probably right in this case.
He calls for a car and looks up the nearest hospital, and then we’re on our way. As ERs tend to go, this one is packed, and I’m not given special treatment because I’m a celebrity. I wait out in the limo while Griffin waits inside. I lie across the back bench and stare up at the ceiling. It feels like I drank too much even though I haven’t had a drop of liquor.
An entire hour passes before he comes out to get me. “You’re up,” he says. I keep my head down as I’m led back to a room, only it’s not really a room, more of a space with a shower curtain hanging around it. Griff stays in the waiting area, and the nurse pulls the curtain shut to give me the illusion of privacy. She takes my vitals and asks me about a million questions—questions I have to answer honestly. When she asks me about drug use, I admit to occasionally smoking pot. I tell her I drink often and I smoke cigarettes, more when I’m nervous.
It’s just me and the nurse, who introduced herself as Holly before she started grilling me. It’s not until she’s halfway through her list of questions that I’m hit with what I think might be the truth.
“What was the date of your last period?”
“December twenty-seventh,” I say.
Holly clears her throat and taps into her tablet. “Do you practice safe sex?”
The time Ethan dipped his unprotected tip into me in the limo flashes through my mind. The broken condom.
Shit.
Shit.
I clear my throat as a shudder races through me. “Usually, yes.”
“Is pregnancy a possibility?”
The word tears into my very soul as terror seeps into my pores.
A little strangled noise escapes from the back of my throat before I can stop it. “There was a broken condom. But it wasn’t that long ago.” My voice is a whispered defense. It can’t be true.
“If it’s pregnancy, we have tests that could show pretty early.” Holly is all business, and I’m all anxiety and fear.
“But I’m nauseous. Doesn’t morning sickness start way down the line?” I’m desperate for any shred of possibility it’s not true.
“Every woman is different, and no two pregnancies are the same. It’s a possibility. My sister felt nauseous the day after she became pregnant, but I never had any morning sickness at all. And by the way, morning sickness isn’t exclusive to mornings.”
I shake my head. “I’m not pregnant.” My voice is firm, but even I know it’s probably a lie. I say it because I’m willing it to be true. I can’t be pregnant…I can’t have Ethan’s baby inside my body. I can’t. It’s not possible, it’s not probable. Ethan Fuller isn’t cut out for fatherhood—not any more than I’m cut out for motherhood. He does drugs—hard ones—he drinks, he smokes both weed and cigarettes. He’s a foul-mouthed manwhore who admittedly doesn’t want children and he ignores me when I tell him not to snort cocaine.
Despite all that, though, and despite our history, despite his flaws and despite my own, somehow I love him. Somehow he’s wormed his way into my heart—or maybe he’s the one who has always been in my heart and I’ve just been waiting for the apology I’ve deserved for two decades.
Coming on this tour,
living my life with the intent to get revenge, getting close to Ethan…it was all a mistake. I should’ve told someone about my plan so they could talk me down rather than listening to my own lies that this was what I needed to get over the crushing pain of losing the sweet girl I used to be and losing my mom all within a short timeframe.
Nothing will ever change what he said, and nothing will bring my mother back. Not revenge, and certainly not a baby.
What the fuck have we done?
I’m not pregnant.
“Let’s run a urine test to rule it out. The bathroom is down the hall on the left. You’ll find cups in there. Get a sample and leave it in the cabinet on the wall.” Her voice is flat, like this is no big deal when my insides are trembling harder with every word she speaks.
I think about calling him as I place my sample into the little cabinet Holly mentioned. As I shut the cabinet door, the little clicking noise reverberates in my head like the sound of doom, the vibration echoing a deeper and deeper pitch.
I cross my fingers and stare at the closed door before I head back to my little curtained off room, my heart racing and the nausea back in full force.
“How long until we know?” I ask Holly once I’m sitting on the exam table again.
“The lab’s a little backed up, so anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. I’ll be back with the results. Until then, here’s some Sierra Mist. Sip it slowly. The bubbles will help with the nausea.”
“Is there any medication you can give me?” I ask.
“I’m sorry, but we have to wait for the results first.”
She disappears, and I’m left to sit in lonely and isolated fear. I open my mouth to call out to her, to ask her to stay by my side while I wait, but I close it when I hear someone crying in the cubicle beside me. Tears well in my eyes as I realize yet again how very alone I am in this world.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
MACI
“I’m pregnant, aren’t I?” I ask once Holly returns to my room. My heart pounds so hard in my chest I’m sure Holly can see it from where she stands.
This is it. The truth that’ll change my future.