Stay (Dunham series #2)

by Moriah Jovan

  I’m lonely.

  The thought shocked her because she hadn’t been lonely since she was a child; her self-appointed guardian and his minions had made sure of that.

  Way too much to do.

  Too many things to accomplish.

  Nash.

  Good Lord, how could she be lonely when she had a mile-long to-do list, a vision of a far grander Whittaker House, and a live-in lover?

  But right now, she wanted to not feel so empty and hopeless. She glanced at her email, Eric’s initials mocking her.

  It was the first time in almost two years—since Justice and Knox had asked her to be on Eric’s arm for their wedding—that she’d been able to put a name to those feelings.

  “I— I, uh . . . I’m not— Er, well, I mean—” Knox remained silent, waiting for her to say whatever she had to say. If only she knew what that was. “I don’t know how to say it,” she finally whispered.

  “It’ll all work out,” he said abruptly. “You need to have a little faith.”

  Vanessa hung up after the appropriate goodbyes, wondering what Knox expected her to have faith in and where he thought she would find enough to do any good.

  The camouflaged door between her office and Nash’s suite opened. When closed, it blended into the woodwork flawlessly; a careful inspection wouldn’t yield its presence, much less a casual glance. There were secret passageways and concealed doors like that all over Whittaker House and only Vanessa and her architect knew them all.

  She looked up to see Nash leaning against the threshold, his muscular arms crossed over his bare chest, his ratty jeans riding low on his hips. God, he was hot. Why couldn’t—

  “Shitty day?”

  She nodded.

  He said nothing for a moment, then, “Come to bed.”

  *

  He had performed excellently as usual, but tonight Vanessa’s body didn’t seem to find him satisfactory and her mind was filled with ecipriani@co.chouteau.mo.us.

  “All right, Granny, spill it,” Nash said. “’Cause you ain’t doin’ it for me lately, either.”

  Vanessa laughed reluctantly and snuggled up against him, their bare bodies slick with sweat, the room pungent with the aroma of sex. “Are you sure you’re not gay? You’d make a really excellent girlfriend. Except for that part about liking girls, I mean.”

  Nash laughed and played with her hair. “What, you wanna talk about shoes when we’re fuckin’?”

  “That would be diverting.”

  “Okay, divert me. Who’m I standin’ in for? And if you say Ford, I’ll kick your ass out for lyin’.”

  Vanessa didn’t have the energy or the heart to protest on any level. “I’m sorry.”

  “Would it make you feel better if I told you you’re standin’ in, too?”

  She laughed then, suddenly amused. Relieved. “Yes, it would, actually. I won’t have to find a way to shake you off my leg when I’m done with you.”

  His big warm hand caressed her arm and up her shoulder. She yawned and was almost asleep when he murmured, “I’m gonna make this hiatus official and retire.”

  That got her attention. “Why? You’re young. Look at all those old rockers that still go on tour and make albums.”

  “She—” He stopped. Started again. “V, you know why I ain’ left yet?”

  “I thought you wanted a break from your career, and then you just got spoiled.”

  He said nothing for a moment. “The fans, the road— They’re important. They pay my bills. They like what I do. But I don’t feel just right. It should feel just right. You got a career, you got money, you got women, you got the world at your feet. Everythin’s peachy.”

  “But something’s missing.”

  “Someone. She gave me an ultimatum. Her or my career, the fans, the road, the groupies.”

  Vanessa said nothing for a moment. “You’ve been here three years, Nash. No groupies. Just me, not exactly itching to leave or find anyone else. You’re not a diva. You’re polite, you keep to yourself, and you treat my staff well. And you’ve never seemed like the groupie type to me.”

  “I had my share,” he said slowly, thinking. “After she cut me loose. I was hurtin’. Strung out on booze and coke. Pissed she didn’t believe I’d been faithful, so I told her I hadn’t been.”

  “Oh, Nash,” she sighed.

  “Yeah. She wanted security and an education, which I promised her, and she got tired o’ waitin’. Can’t blame her for that. It took a long time to hit the big time, long past the deadline we’d agreed on, and she finally sent me off to Nashville with a handful of cash she’d saved and told me to do it right, give it one last good shot before we gave up.”

  “And she let you go alone?”

  “She was workin’ full time, goin’ to school. She wanted to be somebody of her own, not just the ol’ lady draggin’ along with the band like a groupie, and I promised I’d give her that, too, but didn’t deliver.”

  “How long were you two together?”

  He drew a long breath. “Twenty-one years. Met at eight, got married at eighteen, divorced at twenty-nine.”

  Vanessa’s heart hurt all of a sudden, not for Nash exactly, but for the death of a longstanding relationship. She could feel the heartache in his voice, thick, heavy.

  “I have never, not once, stopped lovin’ her and I shoulda just left the road and gone back home to her when she popped up with divorce papers.”

  “Maybe if you had, you’d be wondering what you missed if you’d taken the other path and making her miserable over it to boot.”

  “Well,” he said. “That’s a possibility.”

  “So . . . what, ten years now?”

  “Yeup. Aw, I deserved to lose her, V. I was an asshole. I didn’t deliver on the promises I’d made her, but without her holdin’ the fort down, supportin’ me, I’d be nothin’. Not only that, but she thought I could do more, be more, always had more faith in my talent and my brains than I did. It made me mad. I felt like she was pushin’ me to be who I wasn’t, but she had a better handle on who I was than I did. She always thought—and I don’t know where the hell she got this—but she always thought I was smarter than her.”

  “You’re brilliant, Nash. She was probably right.”

  “She’s a cardiac surgeon,” he said wryly.

  Vanessa’s mouth dropped open. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Oh.” He thought a moment. “I been watchin’ your little pets—”

  “Missionaries.”

  “—pets rotate in and out like a revolvin’ door, always on the go. At first, I’d catch one or two of ’em to talk to ’em, see what keeps ’em goin’. These kids—they got a plan. Serve God, go home, get married, get an education, get kids, do what God tells ’em to do. Nothin’ distracts ’em. Hell, the last thing I wanna do is serve God, but I didn’t have any sorta plan. I just wanted to get famous. An’ I did that, but I never thought past that except when Mel—Melanie—forced me to. She made me mad when she did that, ’cause I never thought there’d come a time I’d get tired of it, but she knew I would.”

  Vanessa pursed her lips and refrained from expressing her opinion on that because her plan was the only thing she had. She’d never understood how Nash could tolerate his aimlessness and more than once wondered what he did all day, every day.

  “Used to be, I’d see these college kids at my concerts and laugh at ’em because after the concert’s over, they go back to their boring little lives and their little plans. Me? I’m the highest-paid poet in the world.”

  “No. That would be Sting.”

  He chuckled. “So I get to party all night and sleep all day and sing, pluck a few strings for my livin’, right? All I gotta do is stand there and be adored and get panties and money thrown at me. Life’s one big party.”

  “And now you’re bored with it.”

  He didn’t reply for a moment. “No,” he said slowly, “I’m not bored with performin’. I really love bein’ up on stage, V, playin’ banjo or fiddle
or mandolin or whatnot. Puttin’ my poetry out there. Adrenaline like you don’t know. The kinda energy that gets tossed back at you— It’s the other twenty hours of the day when I’m off stage, when all I got to look forward to is a long bus ride to the next stage. Not bored. Tired. I’m just not—”

  “Fulfilled.”

  “That’s it. My daddy always said that there comes a time in a man’s life he wants to leave something of himself behind, a little him, somethin’ that makes him immortal.”

  Vanessa knew the sentiment; Knox had said something similar to her once, long ago.

  Shit, Vanessa, I’ve wanted a family since I was nineteen. Marry a nice Mormon girl, create the kind of family I didn’t have, the kind of families my cousins have. Go to church. Hold callings. Raise good kids. Do my home teaching. Play basketball on Saturday mornings with the elders quorum. Be the kind of man most of my uncles are. Now I’m thirty, and I still don’t have it, and even if I do get married and have kids, I won’t be able to go back to church.

  She hadn’t quite understood that because she’d never given children a whole lot of thought beyond the idea she might want one or two someday. If she found the right man.

  “And you can’t have her and a family and your career.”

  “Nope. It’s why I faked my death an’ came here. By myself. To sort out a plan, one that’d make her happy and me happy and so’s we could live together, too. Now it’s three years gone— It’s taken me that long to put it in play so I could go back to her with an accomplishment worthy of her opinion of me.”

  “So you have been doing something constructive.”

  “Yeup. Told you I was workin’.”

  But Vanessa didn’t ask what; he’d tell her if he felt like it and they each had their reasons for maintaining a comfortable distance.

  “I wanna go home, give her my . . . gift, I guess you’d call it. Keep doin’ what I been workin’ on. Raise myself a rugrat in peace, maybe two.”

  “What if she can’t have children or doesn’t want any?” A long moment of silence stretched out and Vanessa’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

  “She don’t think I know,” he muttered, almost so low she might not have heard him if her ear hadn’t been pressed to his chest. “She don’t want nothin’ to do with me. I ain’t had the guts to get close enough to let her know I know.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “Girl’s six now, almost seven. Second grade. Name’s Trixie. Beatrice. Little tomboy, is what. I feel like I already know her.”

  “How?”

  “My father-in-law. Well, ex. Reggie. He likes me— God knows why—”

  Vanessa laughed.

  “—but he takes videos, sends ’em to me. Lets me know what’s goin’ on, her grades an’ such. Her friends, what she likes doin’. See, he thinks I oughtta know about my girl, provide for her, which is the only reason he goes behind Melanie to tell me.

  “We— We wanted kids. We tried, didn’t happen. The last night, before she gave me the divorce papers, we— And then Trixie happened and it’s like I flaked on her again.”

  “Did she tell you she was pregnant?”

  “Not a peep.”

  “Then that’s on her.”

  “Naw. It’s all on me ’cause I didn’t do what I said I’d do in the first place an’ it all snowballed after that.”

  And that, Vanessa knew, was the heart and soul of Nash Piper: keeping his promises. Doing what he said he’d do. Being nice to people. Helping out where he could. Quietly.

  I vowed before God and a priest I’d stay with your mama . . . and I’m goin’ to. Don’t matter what she does ’cause what she does is on her at Judgment Day . . . Only matters what I said I’d do.

  Vanessa sighed and vaguely crossed herself.

  “So I try to make it up, but you know, money ain’t gonna do the trick. You can’t ever make it up, not when you’re not there to be a real dad.”

  “Would she even let you?”

  “No, but I ain’t tried, either, and that’s me bein’ a coward.”

  “Does she know you’re alive?”

  “Reggie wouldn’t keep that from her.” He paused. “I can’t live like this no more, V. It’s been eight fuckin’ years and I know I will never shake her. I don’t remember a time I didn’t love her, when I wasn’t in love with her.”

  “What’s she look like?” Vanessa asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Identical twins, V, I’m telling you, right down to the funky green eyes and the streaks in your hair. Except her hair’s curly. I saw you on Vittles and I thought, ‘Shit, if I did her—’ So I came here. But it didn’t work out like that. You ain’t her. You ain’t ever gonna be her. An’ I ain’t ever gonna be whoever I’m standin’ in for and I know it ain’t Taight.”

  She sighed.

  He nudged her. “C’mon. I ’fessed up. Your turn. The fish that got away.”

  She swallowed and tears stung her eyes. “Just a small-time country lawyer back home I’d never even spoken to until I decided to bring Vachel home with me last year.”

  He started. “Come a’gin?”

  “A boy I had a crush on. That’s all it ever was. I was thirteen. He was eighteen. I just wanted him to talk to me a little bit. I thought I’d have some time to grow up and catch his attention, but he left town before I even hit puberty . . . And here I am, fifteen years later with fame and a career and freedom, and I’m still . . . ”

  Pining.

  Pathetic.

  “Does he know about this?”

  “Pretty sure he does. And then he . . . He wanted to sleep with me. I think. Last year, I mean, when I went home. When we spoke finally. For the first time ever.”

  “Does he know how to find you?”

  “Yes, but he’s married now.”

  “Oh,” Nash said, obviously more startled now. “That ain’t like you a’tall.”

  “I know.”

  Vanessa, uh, I’d like— I mean, would you— Do you want to go get breakfast or something? With me?

  Are you out of your fucking mind?!

  “An’ you’re goin’ back tomorrow.” Vanessa heard the question in his voice, but didn’t answer it. “So what else?” He waited. She ground her jaw against the tears and said nothing more. “Don’t make me drag it out of you in little bitty bits. Start from the beginnin’.”

  Vanessa opened her mouth, snapped it shut, then shifted and climbed sinuously back on top of him. She leaned down to kiss him and he followed her lead.

  “Don’t think fuckin’ me’s gonna make me forget about this,” he muttered between kisses.

  “And don’t think fucking me is going to make me tell you.”

  * * * * *

  17: Stay Out of the Mud, Flutterbudget

  The stares she and Vachel garnered as they drove through Chouteau City were exactly the same as the ones she had gotten the year before. Only this time . . .

  “Did you bring something else to wear besides your usual?”

  She wished she’d thought to ask before they left.

  “No.”

  Vanessa sighed. “Did you at least pack a good shirt or two and a jacket?”

  “Of course!”

  She might have laughed at how offended he was if she’d felt like laughing. Her gut clenched as she drove by the courthouse at two o’clock, saw people spilling from the doors and caught herself looking for him.

  A married him. She gulped, wondering if she was so callous she could contemplate—

  Absolutely not. She had too much religious training, both Catholic and Mormon, to stomach adultery. Besides, she knew what Laura would think, and Vanessa would never be able to bear Knox’s disappointment.

  Once she and Vachel had gotten a room at the motel by the courthouse, and unpacked toiletries and such, they went to her mother’s mobile home.

  Vanessa and her streaked hair.

  The Prowler.

  The strange kid with her.

  LaVon’s whole fan club, gathered a
round her on the deck of the mobile home, fell silent as they watched Vanessa and Vachel get out of the car. Now, nothing but the relatively quiet ambient noise of the trailer park could be heard.

  Suddenly, LaVon wailed and fell to sobbing as if her heart had broken and, well, it had. She’d miss that social security check, all right.

  “Eric?” called LaVon through her sobs, calculated to swing everyone’s attention back to her. “Is that you?”

  “My name is Vachel Whittaker,” he said, his voice clear and confident, his diction precise. Suddenly, Vanessa didn’t mind his wardrobe quite so much if this was what he was getting out of playing highland warrior with every grown man in Wright and Davis County every third weekend of the month.

  “Vanessa!” she snapped, shooting out of her chair, forgetting to stay in character. “You changed his name? Simone—God rest her soul—named him that for a reason!”

  “Which is exactly the reason it got changed.”

  “What the hell kinda name is Vachel? Vachel the satchel?”

  It took every ounce of control Vanessa had to remain cool, but Vachel said, with an admirable calm, “A friend suggested it.”

  LaVon gestured to his clothes and screeched, “Did he tell you to wear a skirt, too? Good Lawd A’mighty! The boy’s turned homo!”

  Vanessa rolled her eyes and Vachel snorted. “It’s not a skirt.”

  “Why’re you wearing it? You go in the house and put some pants on right now!”

  Vachel curled his lip. He and Vanessa both leaned back against the car, crossed their arms and ankles, and stared at LaVon benignly until she started to sputter and cough. The fog of cigarette smoke overhanging the deck was visible and neither of them would brave it. It forced LaVon to descend from her redwood throne to come to Vanessa, which pleased her mightily.

  She stopped a couple of feet away and wagged a long, gaudily manicured finger at Vachel’s attire. “This, this, this— What’re you doin’ to the boy, Vanessa?”

  Vanessa looked down at Vachel, inspecting him as if for the first time: white tee shirt, black knee-high Doc Martens, tiny blue reflective sunglasses, and a white-red-and-blue tartan kilt. He had a tightly folded red bandana wrapped around his forehead. His short blond hair had been bleached white by the sun and his skin tanned fairly dark by same; it was an amazing contrast. Try as she might, could find nothing but petty glee in the way he looked as long as it sent her mother over the moon.