“I know you do. And you’d be right.”
She stared at me, surprised.
“You wouldn’t be the first person to say that to me, Maggie.”
“Oh.” She went silent for a moment, thinking. “Okay. So here’s the thing. I feel like when you need to smoke weed it means you’re out of control, even just a bit, and it scares me.” She shrugged with discomfort, her shirt slipping a little farther off her shoulder. “I guess… it’s my hard limit. Does that make sense?”
“Hard limit…” I repeated, considering that. “So you’re saying… spanking and tying you up is okay, then?”
Her eyes narrowed at me a little. Then her full lips twitched in the hint of a smile. “Good to know giving up weed hasn’t dulled your sex drive.”
“Actually,” I admitted, “it’s kinda made me hornier.”
At that, her eyes went wide. “I’m… uh… not really surprised. It’s definitely made you… clearer. It’s subtle, but your eyes are clearer. You’ve been brighter, in general, since you stopped smoking up.”
I had to hold back a smile. “Brighter?”
“Yeah. Like all your dazzling-golden-sun-god shit just got more blinding. It’s annoying, really.”
Now I full-on grinned. “Sun god?”
“You know that’s what they call you. Rock’s golden god. Like, girls get a sun tan just gazing at you.”
I laughed.
She frowned. “I think we’re getting beside the point…” Then she wrapped her arms around herself.
And this was it. The moment Maggie started raising her defenses and I turned up the charm, cranked up the flirt, pressed into her space and got my hands on her, daring her to resist.
But I didn’t. Not this time.
My pulse was beating in my dick, my growing hard-on getting uncomfortable in my jeans, and yes, I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to pull her to me, peel off her clothes, jam my tongue in her mouth and my cock in her pussy and never let her go. I wanted to fuck her on the floor and on every piece of furniture she had. Never mind that we’d fucked right here on this couch about six months ago.
But I knew I had to keep it platonic, as hard as that might be. For now. Because I wasn’t ready to touch her.
Because if I fucked her again and she put up her wall, I could spiral.
I had no fallback now. No parachute. No bag of weed in my pocket to take the edge off.
And no way was I touching another woman.
It was Maggie for me, but it wasn’t even about proving that to her anymore. I definitely didn’t need to prove it to myself. I didn’t need to convince anyone that Maggie was the woman for me.
I didn’t care about any of that anymore.
All I cared about was staying clean and doing right by her.
“Here’s the point,” I informed her. “You’re gonna grab your bags, get dressed if you want to. You can wear sweatpants, I don’t care. You’re getting in the car with me and we’re going to the airport, and we’re flying back to Chicago. You’re not leaving the tour, and you’re not taking a break from the tour either.”
I studied her response to that. Maggie wasn’t used to me telling her what to do; I knew that. I mean, not like I hadn’t fucking tried. But she never really listened.
On this, she had to listen, because I was right. No way was she leaving the tour. I wouldn’t let her leave the tour.
Brody wouldn’t either.
I’d already talked to him. And while he was clearly a little pissed at me over the whole secret marriage thing—and probably worried I’d fuck things up with Maggie—he’d assured me fucking up-and-down that Maggie’s job was safe, that he was never gonna let anyone fuck with it. Even me.
“You need some time off,” I added, taking a gentler tone, “you can take time off, but you’re doing it on the road.”
Maggie shook her head slowly. “I don’t need time off, Zane.”
“Great. Go get your shit.”
“I’ll need to book us a flight,” she said.
“No worries,” I told her. “Got a jet on standby.”
When we were seated in the plane, I said, “Surprised you didn’t say anything about the private jet.”
Maggie looked at me. She’d sat right next to me, even though the cabin was huge and she could’ve sat anywhere. She’d gotten dressed and she’d even put on a little makeup. Her gray eyes looked tired and pretty. “Like what?”
“Usually you tell me not to waste my money.”
“Usually I don’t mind flying first class with you.” Her eyes moved slowly over my face. “But I don’t really want to deal with the bombardment of attention. You know… fans. Horny flight attendants.” She looked away. “I really don’t need people or their camera phones in my face right now.”
That was fine with me; I didn’t want that either. I just wanted to be with her.
“I don’t want to share you, either,” I told her.
She looked at me again, but she didn’t say anything.
Once we were in the air, she started reading on her iPad. I put in my earbuds and listened to some music.
After a while, she put the iPad aside, dropped her head on the headrest and went to sleep. Or at least I thought she went to sleep. But then she reached her hand onto my armrest, palm-up, without opening her eyes.
I put my hand in hers, and we curled our fingers together. And we held hands like that for the rest of the flight… even when we both fell asleep.
Chapter Seventeen
Maggie
Five weeks later…
“Maggie. You’re really cramping my style here.”
I looked up into the ice-blue eyes of the man I’d married almost two years ago to find him gazing down at me with a twisted, amused smirk on his face. Which was when I realized how tightly I was holding his hand.
“Oh. Uh… sorry.” I released my death grip. I also realized I’d been leaning heavily on his arm, flinching in sympathy pain, the little stool I was sitting on pressed tight up against the chair where he was sitting while he got tattooed.
“Shit, you’re strong,” he muttered, flexing his newly-freed hand and wiggling his fingers. “Not sure the blood’s coming back anytime soon.”
“Oops.”
I’d sworn to him this morning that if he let me come along with him to the tattoo parlor today while he got his tattoo, I wasn’t gonna freak out. Just because I’d almost fainted when I saw Jude getting a tattoo once didn’t mean I was gonna be a freak about this.
Or so I’d hoped.
It wasn’t like I’d ever seen Zane get a tattoo before, though. How did I know for sure how I’d react to watching him get tortured?
Until today, Zane didn’t have any tattoos. Jude had a ton of them, Brody had several, and Jesse had one big one on his forearm, but for a bunch of rock stars, the members of Dirty weren’t all that into tattoos. Zane himself had claimed aloud, more than once, that he didn’t want to “desecrate” the work of art God had made—i.e., his body—by putting ink on it.
I was pretty sure that comment was aimed at Jesse, since Jesse’s tattoo was pretty damn sexy and girls were always wanting to touch it.
When I asked Zane this morning, seriously, why he’d never gotten a tattoo before and why he suddenly felt the need to get this one, he told me, Just feels right.
He was getting a Viking ship, one of those cool dragon boat things, on his right shoulder. Except that the dragon part of the boat turned into this giant serpent that wrapped around the boat. He had it all sketched out by a tattoo artist; he’d been conversing with this guy Jude had connected him with for a couple of weeks already, and had made an appointment to see him while we were here in Nashville.
When I’d asked Zane the meaning behind the tattoo, he’d asked me in return, What are Vikings famous for?
When I’d answered, Uh, raping and pillaging? he’d given me a mildly dirty look and said, Boats, Maggie. They were seafarers, explorers. Feel like I’m conquering new ground here, that’s
all.
Later, I’d heard him tell the guys, It’s to commemorate some big shit in my life. I’m fucking serious about staying clean, and marring the beauty of this God-given body of mine? Serious as it gets.
Then he’d winked at me, and I knew that last part was kind of a joke. Except that it also really wasn’t.
He was serious as hell about staying clean.
Then he’d explained to me privately that the serpent symbolized his addiction, that it would always be with him, but he wasn’t going to let it take him down.
I’d almost cried when he told me that, I was so proud of him… But I’d managed to keep my cool.
Right now, I was totally losing it.
“Maggs,” he said, “why don’t you go get some air, stretch your legs? You know, take a walk around the block and chill out.”
“Oh…” I glanced nervously at that buzzing needle scraping at his flesh and shivered. “I can stay with you though, you know, for moral support.”
“Sweetheart,” the tattoo artist drawled, “that’s his polite way of asking you to get gone.”
I looked at Zane and he just smiled.
“You want me to go?”
“Why don’t you go find somewhere for us to eat? And I’ll take you for lunch after this.”
“Oh. Okay.” I got up and retrieved my purse, taking a final glance at the ink that was permanently marking him. The tattoo artist glanced up at me and smirked. I gave him a narrow eye, then told Zane, “Text me when you’re done.”
Then I went to find someplace yummy for us to eat… even though the thought of eating right now was making me feel a little queasy.
I pushed through the door of the tattoo parlor to be greeted by sunshine and crisp spring air, and Shady, who was leaning against a lamp post. I waved at him and took a deep breath, trying to relax my nerves.
Apparently, I had a major aversion to seeing Zane in physical pain, and watching him get inked made me want to stab that tattoo guy in the eye with his tattoo gun.
But other than that… it was a pretty good day.
For the last five weeks, I’d been enjoying my life as assistant manager to Dirty again—a hell of a lot—and working literally side-by-side with Zane.
Actually, I’d been spending every possible moment with him.
I’d even started accompanying him to his interviews and appearances. He’d started doing them again, at a much gentler pace than usual, and so far, so good.
I hadn’t gone to a single interview on this tour before Zane got clean. I could have. I worked closely with our publicity teams and was the main point of contact for all of them—we had a main publicist in Vancouver, a company we worked with out of L.A., and another one in Europe—and I probably would’ve gone along with the band members more often for their day-to-day promo stuff on this tour, if it didn’t mean I’d have to see Zane so much.
Now, it was like my priorities had totally flipped upside-down.
Instead of me spending my days holed away in my hotel room or the Lady Bus or some random cafe, where I hoped I wouldn’t run into Zane, I found myself materializing outside his hotel room or his bus, or in the hotel lobby, waiting to spend the day with him.
He didn’t complain.
The first time it happened was a couple days after we’d flown back from Vancouver together, while we were in Chicago. Bright and early, I was waiting in front of the hotel with a Rolls-Royce Phantom stretch limo, laptop and coffee in hand, ready to start the day—with Zane—when the band members started rolling out of the hotel.
To everyone’s surprise, the car, which was a step up from your standard luxury sedan, was for Zane and Zane only. Well, and me and Shady. Zane had been clean for just over three weeks, and by three weeks, the doctors had expected the worst of his withdrawal symptoms to subside.
Subside, they had.
It was a major accomplishment, and I thought we could celebrate. I was proud of him and I wanted him to know it.
That day, I’d accompanied the band to a photo shoot, and all of us had lunch together.
From that day on, I went pretty much everywhere with Zane.
I’d hang out behind the scenes or at a nearby café, working on my laptop and phone while he did his thing, or I’d run errands, and when he was done we’d meet up. We’d eat meals together or with the rest of the band or with Shady.
We even hit the gym together sometimes. I’d do a yoga class while he lifted weights with Dylan or Jesse and Jude, and Shady smoked outside; big and burly as he was, Shady wasn’t much for working out.
Or we’d sit in the back of the car or in his tour bus together and work, side-by-side. He’d write lyrics in his notebook. I’d make phone calls.
Sometimes we’d enjoy long silences.
Sometimes we’d talk.
And when we did… we talked about a lot of shit.
He told me, at length, about a ton of shit he’d done over the years that he wasn’t proud of. A whole laundry list of his self-proclaimed faults and fuck-ups, that he wanted me to know.
I listened, but honestly, it didn’t make me think any less of him. Partly because I pretty much knew all that shit about him already, and partly because I thought it was incredibly brave of him to tell me. That instead of chasing me down and trying to win me over, he was just being real. He was opening up to me in a way he never really had before.
I already knew most of his dark shit, but not because he’d actually talked to me about it.
More because I’d been a reluctant witness.
I figured he was scared that it all might scare me away. But actually, it just made me feel closer to him—that he chose to trust me with all these things he felt so bad about.
He also told me how hard it had been giving up pot, that it wasn’t as easy as he’d probably made it look. That he still craved it, that he still had some difficult nights and moments he wanted to break right down and smoke up.
Just like he sometimes still wanted to take a drink.
It was pretty brave of him to tell me this, too, because I was pretty sure it scared the shit out of him to admit it to me.
Zane had never wanted me to see his weaknesses; I knew that about him by now. He didn’t want me to decide that he was a failure; that he was going to fail at this, that he couldn’t do it—and give up on him.
So we talked about that, too.
We talked about pretty much everything.
Everything except our relationship.
It wasn’t a point of contention between us. It was a nonissue, actually; something we’d finally been able to call a bit of a truce on and put aside, for now.
We didn’t need to fight about it or even discuss it. We knew it was there, waiting to be dealt with, when we were both ready.
For now, we were getting along. Things were good between us. We weren’t together, but we were copacetic.
For fucking once in our lives.
And he still wasn’t trying to get in my pants. He never tried to touch me for anything more intimate than a hug.
But all the while… he looked at me like a man who loved me.
He spoke to me like a man who loved me.
By my side, he felt like a man who loved me.
The man.
He never once put pressure on me to discuss our relationship or to further our relationship. I never asked him to further our relationship, because I’d realized it was pretty damn sweet as it was, and maybe it should just stay this way for a while; respectful, peaceful, mutually comfortable.
Platonic; at least on the surface.
When I walked back into the tattoo parlor this afternoon, though, that all changed.
“What do you think?” Zane asked me. He’d gotten up out of the chair and stood before me, his T-shirt sleeve rolled up over his newly-tattooed right shoulder, which was turned to me.
The tattoo wasn’t massive or crazy-elaborate, but it covered most of his shoulder. The skin looked tender, which still made me cringe, but the tattoo wa
s gorgeous. Both the boat and the serpent were pretty detailed, outlined beautifully in crisp black.
He’d already told me the tattoo artist had a friend in New York that he was going to see in a few weeks, to have the colors inked in.
“It’s beautiful, Zane,” I told him honestly. “Are you happy with it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s exactly what I wanted. But… I think this one is my favorite.”
Then he showed me his left hand. I had to blink at it several times before it really sank in.
Those ring tattoos some people got around their ring finger when they got married? Like in lieu of or in addition to an actual wedding ring…
Zane now had one.
In very delicate, tiny, gorgeous script, the name Maggie was now inked on his ring finger, right where a wedding ring would go.
Permanently inked.
My jaw dropped.
When he turned his hand over to show me the other side, it said May.
“Oh my God… Zane.” I looked up at him. My vision was blurring. “You didn’t.” I blinked furiously, looking at his hand again… but there it was. I grabbed his hand and pulled it toward me.
“Easy,” he said, eying me. “It’s tender, babe.”
“Sorry.” I gentled my touch, lifting his ring finger and turning his hand, back and forth, reading the little script-ring.
Maggie May
“You hate it.”
I looked up into his blue eyes, startled. The look he gave me back was guarded, his eyelids lowered.
“No. No, I don’t hate it, Zane. I’m just a little… stunned. I mean… it’s so…” I swallowed. “Permanent.”
“Yeah?” Now there was a spark of challenge in his eyes that I knew all too well. “Well, so were my vows to you. Even if you divorce me, right the fuck now, what I said at that altar stands. The fact that I married you stands. Even if we aren’t together, all that shit is real and it’s forever. At least, it is for me.”
Dirty Like Zane: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 6) Page 23
