When I went into Shelby’s song, I was as morose as the song demanded I be. My voice was vulnerable and raw, because I was vulnerable and raw. By the end of the song, the audience was on their feet and cheering, but I was in tears and halfway off the stage with a wave of my hand.
I brushed past Shelby, who was ready for her set of songs. Going first meant I could go hide in my dressing room until the encore, which was still a good hour away.
I needed the break. I couldn’t watch her sing my song, or see how the crowd reacted to it. My soul was wounded, my body was sore. I just wanted a bit of peace and quiet to still my noisy brain.
When I flipped on the light to my dressing room, I saw Jace sitting in my chair, facing the door. He held one red rose in his hand. The dam burst and I wept openly as I walked right into his arms. The minute his strong arms closed around me, I felt like I had come home at last. I held onto him for dear life as I emptied my pain on his shoulder.
His lips were against my scalp as he kissed me softly. “I’m sorry, Jordi,” he said softly.
“For what?” I asked as I gulped back tears. “I’m the one crying like an infant.”
He brushed my hair back with his hand. “After that mess at the mall, who could blame you?”
He was still angry from that afternoon. “It’s not that,” I started, then clarified, “it’s not just that.”
“It made PING,” he said. “Including how they mobbed you after I left. If I had known you were there I would have walked you right out of that place with me.”
I shrugged. “That’s just the way things are. That lady was right. This is the beauty of the capitalist society. There’s a customer for every business. So I can’t shop at T&L. I can’t find clothes my size – that fit properly anyway – at most stores. I don’t want clothes designed for skinny people that just happen to be larger proportions. I want clothes that are designed for me. That’s not T&L, big deal. I think that reporter just wanted a controversy and used us to do it.”
“I don’t want you to ever be a target. I don’t care what the motivation is. I called Graham to get me out of the contract.”
I shook my head. “Don’t do that. It’s not just you, it’s Shelby, too.”
“I think she’d understand. She’s your friend. She wouldn’t want to do anything that might hurt you.”
My red eyes met his. “You seem to know a lot about what she wants.”
He shrugged. “We’ve had a lot of free time to talk. How’s Eddie, by the way?”
I sighed. This was not the road I wanted us to go down now that we got time alone. “I’m sorry.”
He pulled me close. “No, I’m sorry. I’ve been jealous. I’m not the best version of myself when I’m jealous.”
“Nobody is,” I said as I straightened his shirt. “They call it the green-eyed monster for a reason.”
He echoed my sigh as he took both my hands in his. “When I was on the phone with Graham, I thought about just coming clean about the whole Eddie situation. Just force his hand.” My eyes widened so he continued. “I didn’t. I realized this is bigger than just losing the record deal or the tour gig. Having those tapes go viral would devastate you. Those reporters don’t give a shit about your feelings; they’d use anything they could to get the story. I’ve been a selfish asshole, Jordi. I’ve been thinking about what it would cost me… I didn’t even consider what it might cost you.”
“It wouldn’t be fun,” I admitted. “For either of us.”
“Like I care what people say about me.”
“I care if they make fun of you for being with me.”
His eyes widened as he stared at me. “Please tell me you don’t honestly think that would bother me.”
“Not now, maybe. But you saw them, Jace. They’re brutal. And relentless.”
“And they are irrelevant. There are only two people in this relationship. You and me. I don’t give a shit what anyone outside of us has to say about it. I never have, I never will.”
I touched his face with my hand. “I love you so much,” I said with a smile. “No one has ever loved me like you.”
He pulled me back into his arms. “I’m just waiting for the day when you understand why. Then you’ll know that videos, PING and all the Shelbys in the world will never change the way I feel.”
His head tilted toward me. I melted against him when his mouth covered mine. It warmed me all the way to my toes. All pain, both emotional and physical, was forgotten as I hungrily deepened the kiss. His strong hands lifted me up against his body, which strained toward me.
This was what we needed. It was all we needed.
“God, I want you so much,” he said into my mouth before he dragged his lips away. I wanted him too, but not some quickie in a dressing room. We needed so much more than that now. We owed it to each other to make up for all the crap we’d put each other through. We needed time to shut out the world, and T&L, and PING, and the tour, and Shelby, and Eddie. Dallas wasn’t going to give us that time, but it was only the fifth stop on our journey. This gave us something to look forward to, when we both desperately needed it.
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Nashville?” I said with a smile.
“Nashville,” he agreed before he kissed me again with all the passion in his promise. As he pulled away, I let my hand run down his body, lighting over his growing erection with an evil smile. He groaned as he wagged his finger at me, and then gave me a swat on my ass as he raced out the door to prepare for his set.
I lingered in my dressing room, dreamily toying with the rose Jace had left behind, killing time until the encore performance. In fact everything we had left to do in Dallas was just a matter of killing time until I could be with my love in Nashville. That was a hometown visit for Shelby, so I predicted she’d be just as busy with her folks as Jace had been with his. Jace and I could get there early and enjoy a little downtime away from the prying eyes of the press and the constant camaraderie of the tour.
It was a romantic getaway I was already counting the days to, so much that I nearly missed the disturbing sounds coming from the dressing room adjacent to mine. My brow furrowed as I slipped from the chair and made my way toward the other room. “Shelby?”
I was greeted by the sounds of violent vomiting coming from the bathroom. I moved further into the room. “Shelby? Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” she croaked.
“You don’t sound fine,” I replied as I got ever nearer to her bathroom door.
“I think it was something I ate,” she said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
I glanced around her dressing room table, which was overflowing with hair products, makeup and the decimated packages of every candy or cookie wrapper from the vending machine down the hall. When she finally materialized in the doorway, she was wiping her mouth and face with a wet cloth.
“Something you ate, indeed. Looks like you went into sugar overdrive.”
“Oh that,” she dismissed with a wave of a hand. “Don’t tell anyone but I’m doing a detox. I was feeling a little shaky earlier so I ate a candy bar. It’s no big deal.”
“A candy bar?” I said as I lifted up a pile of wrappers.
“Per day,” she said sharply as she grabbed the trash from my hand. “I’m just messy. Ask anyone.”
“Yeah, listen… I don’t think that detox flush is a good idea. You’re not getting any nutrients or anything, and I know from experience if you want to function at all you have to cheat.”
“I know,” she admitted as she flopped into her makeup chair. “But I had to lose three pounds quick. That outfit they put me in for Jace’s intro is unforgiving. It shows every bulge. With all this junk we’re eating night after night, I’ve gained weight in all the wrong places. I just needed to do something drastic. You know better than anyone that there are no free passes when it comes to the press. They expect certain expectations to be met, and woe to the girl who doesn’t meet them.”
I caught a glance of myself in
the mirror. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
She swung the chair around to look at me. “I’m sorry about what happened this afternoon,” she offered. “It was such a shitty thing for them to do.”
I had to smile. “Such language for a Christian girl.”
“I’m not that uptight,” she giggled. Then she grew serious. “I’ve missed you, Jay,” she said, adopting Corey’s nickname for me. “I mean it. Everyone on the tour is great but you’re like a sister to me. You understand me better than my own family. And I know I can trust you. That’s big for me.”
Each word she said hammered another nail in my coffin. “Shelby…”
“Say you’ll come and stay with me and my family in Nashville. They’d love you, I know they would.”
My stomach fell. “I don’t know, Shelby. I wouldn’t want to impose.”
She grabbed my hands in hers. “It wouldn’t be an imposition at all. We have tons of room. Oh, please say yes.”
I stared into her hopeful blue eyes. They were so trusting and so innocent, yet the lie came easily anyway. “Let me check with Eddie. I don’t know if he’s planning to come to Nashville or not.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” she said as she hopped up from the chair with a vigor convincingly masked by her pallid complexion.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked again. Just a few minutes before she sounded like she was coughing up a lung. Now she was shrugging out of her clothes like nothing in the world was wrong. She stripped down to her matching bra and panties and reached for the T&L outfit she wore for the encore. Where she had three extra pounds, I couldn’t even be sure.
“Yeah, fine,” she assured as she dressed quickly, as though she was ashamed of her half-naked form. “Like you said, it’s not that healthy to do the detox thing. Probably low blood sugar or something.”
A stage hand knocked on her door. “Three minutes,” he alerted before he headed off down the hall.
She linked her arm with mine. “That’s our cue.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nashville, Tennessee
February 13, 2012
Jace wasn’t too thrilled by my change in plans for the Nashville trip, but we finally decided on a compromise. We’d get there two days early, so we could have two days – uninterrupted – just to ourselves. As far as Shelby knew, we weren’t due until that Wednesday. This gave us a little down time when we wouldn’t be torn every which direction.
On Wednesday, I’d go stay with Shelby and her family, like she wanted. I figured it was the least I could do, considering I was a lying, two-faced, no-good cheat who was basically doing to her what I thought my best buddy Bree had done to me.
In fact, it was worse.
When I found Bree’s bracelet in the back seat of Eddie’s car on my eighteenth birthday, I immediately assumed that she had been canoodling with the boy of my dreams. And if she had, she would have done so not knowing – in fact – that was what he had been. I played my teen dream crush on the most popular boy in school very close to the vest. I didn’t want to be ridiculed or worse, talked down from my lofty aspirations.
Whenever you dream big, there is always that well-meaning person who wants you to rein it in so that you don’t wind up disappointed. This was the story of my life in small-town Iowa, where the best I could hope for was a job teaching choir at the one and only high school.
So even though Bree and I had been best friends since grade school, I never once would have taken her into my confidence about my crush on Eddie, or even my dreams to have a singing career that would take me all around the world – much like it was doing now.
Ironically I ended up married to the most popular boy in school as well. I guess that’s what I get for dreaming big. It’s not that your dreams won’t come true; it’s that you might regret them every day thereafter if they do.
I guess one person’s confetti is another person’s really shiny trash.
Shelby, on the other hand, had shared her budding infatuation with Jace quite candidly with me. She took me into her confidence and awarded me her trust, as one does with a friend. I was the one, once again, not forthcoming about how I truly felt. Every time the opportunity passed in conversation to be open about what was truly happening, I was essentially lying to her. I let her hang her heart on a doomed crush with a man she had no idea was taken – by me no less – simply because it was too complicated and risky to be honest. Yet I called her my friend – truly my best friend on the tour.
I had plenty of excuses for this duplicitous behavior, some altruistic and some not. But ultimately it came down to one inescapable fact: I was a lying, two-faced, no-good cheat. Guilt dogged me until I finally agreed to stay with her in Nashville, where I hoped to find some way to make things right… or at least better.
When I stepped off the plane in Nashville, however, all the drama and the angst took a backseat to seeing Jace again. He really was worth any price I had to pay.
I got to the hotel first, so it was my turn to set the stage for romance. I ordered an extra dozen roses, to scatter petals across the floor and the bed, reserving some for the oversized bath. With a grin I unpacked a fragrant bubble bar and bath bomb from one of my favorite cosmetics companies, along with a package of tea light candles.
When Jace arrived an hour later, he found a path to the bathroom where I waited, up to my neck in perfumed bubbles, surrounded by a sea of candlelight. Music played in the background, songs from my MP3 player I had created especially for our time together.
“Hey beautiful,” he said with a lazy grin as he leaned against the doorframe. He held up a bottle of bubbly. “Thirsty?”
I scooted to the edge of the tub, running my hand up his leg. “Hungry,” I said in a low growl.
He chuckled as he uncorked the bottle and handed it to me. I watched him peel his shirt from his lithe body, tossing it over in a dark corner. Our eyes met and locked as he unzipped his jeans, sliding them easily over his hips and kicking them free. He sat on the edge of the tub to remove his artificial leg and dressing, then swung easily over to join me in the warm water.
He wasted no time in pulling me to him for a deep, hungry kiss. His hands slid across my wet, bubble-covered skin, all the way down my back until he cupped my ass and lifted me toward his lap. “God, I can’t believe it’s really you,” he said against my mouth. “We’re really here. Alone.”
I nodded with an incoherent moan. I wanted him so badly I ached. I explored his mouth liberally with my tongue as my hands drifted down his muscular torso and across his taunt stomach. When my fingers dipped lower, cupping him in an eager little grasp, he sucked in a sharp breath. He grew hard in my hand as I stroked him under the water.
“You naughty little girl,” he playfully growled into my neck. “You’re not wasting any time.”
“I want you,” I said simply.
He tilted his head to look at me. His hand traced the curve of my face. “I need you,” he confessed as he tugged my hair free from the pins holding it up away from the water. “I can’t breathe without you, Jordi.”
I rewarded him with another kiss as I straddled him. His fingers dug into my hips as I ground against him, savoring how hard he was for me. I did that…and it made me feel like a goddess. He watched me gyrate against him, his eyes on the body I hid from the world. Yet he thought me beautiful… desirable…perfect.
Neither one of us could speak as I slid him inside of me. He opened me with his hard body, resurrecting me with his touch. I held him deep inside of me for a long moment as I stared into those eyes that had never held one ounce of cruelty or ridicule. In his eyes I saw amazement and wonder. They were a mirror of everything I wanted to be.
He cupped water in his hand to rinse my torso free from residual bubbles, baring my body even more for his eyes, his fingers and his mouth. He took one full breast in his hand, bringing it to his lips. I gasped as he covered the painfully erect nipple, lapping over it with his tongue, making me shudder all over. I began to m
ove against him, grinding myself down. My back protested but I didn’t care. I just needed to feel him inside of me, filling me, making me whole.
He captured my lips for another kiss as he guided my hips. I braced against the tiled wall as we lost ourselves to each other. The ache in me couldn’t be easily satisfied. I needed him deeper. I wanted him to reach so far inside that he became a part of me. Our kiss broke but our eyes were locked solid as we raced together toward the abyss. He toppled blissfully over the edge first, his hands gripping my shoulders to slam me down on him as he released himself. I was triumphant as I stared down at him, my hair falling like a curtain across my face.
One hand sneaked around my neck as he pulled me for another kiss, while his other hand slipped in between our bodies. While he was still rigid inside of me, his finger surrounded my clit, slipping easily along my smooth skin. I gasped in his mouth. He captured my bottom lip between his teeth and his eyes bore into mine while he sent me into outer space with his magical fingers. He didn’t stop until I was screaming from pleasure, my body a quivering mass all around him.
I collapsed against the strong wall of his wet chest. It had been a long time coming, but it was always worth the wait. His heart thundered against my ear as he cuddled me close. “My Jordi,” he murmured.
“Always,” I said.
We were prunes by the time we got out of the tub, but neither one of us cared. We spent the rest of the night, sprawled on the bed completely naked, exploring one another. No TVs, no phones – just us. We fed each other from the room service tray, decadent treats that were more delicious when shared. Kisses tasted especially sweet after a plump, juicy bite of a strawberry.
“You’re my favorite dish,” I giggled as I ran a bit of whip cream along his chest. He propped himself with both arms behind his head as he watched my tongue follow the trail down his body. Every time I took him into my mouth, he caressed my hair with his hand. He knew what a victory it was for me to savor him, given the abuse from my childhood. He always insisted that I never had to push myself to do it, but I wanted to bring him pleasure the same way he would bring me pleasure.
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