by Shade, S. M.
“Oh…so good. Don’t stop.”
“What’s the magic word?” I tease, still working my fingers inside her.
A frown crumples her face. “If you think I’m begging you to come you’re out of your fu—ohhhh.”
Mid rant, I plant my lips over her clit and suck steadily. Hands dive into my hair, pulling hard. Her head whips back and forth before her body seizes up, her thighs flexing around my ears and she cries a garbled version of my name.
I don’t stop until she pushes me away. A few seconds pass as she lies there, and I let myself just live in that moment. The fear and regret won’t take long to invade, but for a few seconds, there’s just us and the extraordinary way we affect each other.
She sits up, and I move back so she can stand. There’s no time for either of us to speak—not that I know what to say—because the sound of laughter and the guys talking in the hall draws our attention.
“Shit, could be Dani,” I curse and she chuckles as she watches me race to get my clothes on while she does the same.
“She’s going to know either way if you leave the room right while they’re in the hall.”
“I’m more concerned with not having my cock out when she walks in.”
Naomi laughs, and just as she gets her clothes on, Caden starts to fuss. “I’ll get him. He didn’t get a diaper change before bed. He’s probably just wet. If he sees you, he’ll get all excited and never go back to sleep.”
The voices in the hall fade and the sound of a few doors closing follows. “Okay.”
She walks toward the bedroom, tossing a few words back over her shoulder at me. “You should go now while the hall is empty.”
* * *
We leave for Wisconsin tomorrow and I hope the break in routine will be distracting enough to pull me out of the dark mood I’ve been in since we got back home. I’m functioning on little sleep. The nightmares have returned, along with a particularly long and terrifying episode of sleep paralysis this morning.
There’s no mystery around why. She’s sitting on the floor, her legs stretched out in front of her, leaning on her palms while she watches Hatch play. She must feel my gaze on her because she glances at me, then quickly returns her attention to Hatch. Neither of us has mentioned the sex after the concert, or the song I wrote about her. We’ve just carried on like nothing happened.
“Hee haw!” Hatch cries, running to Naomi. The winter hat she bought him, complete with donkey ears and earflaps has barely left his head since she brought it home. He rushes over to me. “Hee haw!”
“Even your kid knows you’re a jackass,” Jude quips, as he walks in followed by Elliot.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Hatch darts back to Naomi and plops into her lap.
“Is that any way to treat your friends who have the new Zombie Clash game and came to play it with you?” Jude says, pulling a bottle out of my liquor cabinet.
I’m not much of a gamer, but there are a couple of console games I play. With all that’s happened, it completely slipped my mind that Zombie Clash released today. “Please, dude, help yourself,” I scoff.
“To anything?” He raises his eyebrows up and down at Naomi, and she chuckles while shaking her head.
Hatch toddles over to Jude and grabs his pantleg, grinning up at him. Jude picks him up. “Hatchet! What you got going on here?” He tugs on the ear of Hatch’s hat.
“Hee haw,” is Hatch’s matter of fact answer.
Hatch likes all the Tragic guys—hell, he likes everyone—but he seems to have a soft spot for Jude, who likes to brag that Hatch likes him best. He and Elliot spend a few minutes playing with him before Naomi takes him to the sunroom to play.
“Alright, assholes, the console is under the cabinet. Hook it up while I grab some beers.”
The next few hours feel like we stepped back in time a bit, before the band took off, before kids or wives took priority over our time. We used to get together like this a lot, for games or drinking at some random bar.
“I’m starving,” Jude remarks, as Dani walks into the room. He regards her. “You’re just in time to feed me!”
“To what? My vote is alligator. They like to play with their food first,” Dani replies, heading into the kitchen.
“Ouch. Maybe we’d better order pizza.”
Elliot laughs then yells, “Jude! You let him eat my brain! Pay attention!”
Jude passes me the controller. “Here, save his whiney ass.”
“Jude.” My voice holds a warning as he heads toward the kitchen. Dani will tolerate him but even there the line is thin. They had a one night stand last year and he hasn’t been her favorite person since. He’s lucky I didn’t kick his ass for fucking my sister.
“I’m just looking for Pop-Tarts!” he shouts, disappearing through the doorway.
The game ends when both of us get overwhelmed by zombies. “Fuck,” Elliot laughs.
Jude flops down on the couch, eating a granola bar. Dani heads down the hall just as Naomi enters the living room.
“Caden’s asleep. I gave up trying to get the donkey hat off of him.” She holds up her phone showing a picture of him curled up in the crib with his hat on.
We spend a few minutes talking while Elliot disconnects the game. The TV switches back to cable. I pick up the remote when the SLY Report comes on. They’re the most invasive assholes of the entertainment news world.
“What the fuck?” Naomi exclaims. “Turn it up.”
Dani’s eyes are wide as saucers, and I have no idea what they’re seeing that I’m not until the banner below the blond woman they’re interviewing clears it up.
Paige Gray, Former Friend of Naomi Wells.
I’ve never met Paige. I know she helped Naomi get her job here and that she lost her job because of it. Naomi said she hasn’t heard from her since she returned. What the hell could she have to say?
The look of utter terror on Naomi’s face says it could be plenty.
The room falls silent as all eyes are on the television. The first minute of the interview introduces Paige as a former friend of Naomi who “has all the gossip on the relationship between Axton Todd and his nanny.”
“Are you saying that there’s a romantic relationship between Naomi and Axton?” the interviewer asks.
The grin Paige throws to the camera shows how much she’s enjoying this. “I wouldn’t say a relationship necessarily, but their connection is far from platonic.”
The studio audience oohs. “And how do you know this?”
“She told me…in graphic detail. Naomi was very happy to fill me in. After all, she’d been planning this for a long time.”
The interviewer leans forward. “Planning what?”
“Taking her sister’s place as the mother of Axton Todd’s baby.”
This time the audience explodes in exclamations and murmurs.
Fuck.
They go to commercial with the promise of more drama to come, and I grab my phone to call Milo. He picks up on the first ring. “I know. I’m on it. PR and legal are getting involved. Don’t say or do anything.” With that, he hangs up.
That was one fact that never got out, Naomi’s relation to Hatch. I know that isn’t the big thing Milo and the label are worried about though. It’s that the public will now know who his mother is. One simple search will show she was a prostitute.
I’m slammed by so much at once, I don’t know what to think or feel. I want to be pissed that Naomi told Paige about us, but I have no idea if that’s even true. Or when she might’ve done it. It’s everything I can do not to lash out at her, but one glance at the devastated expression on her face and the impulse fades.
She looks at Dani and whispers, “Why would she do this?”
It’s Elliot who replies with one simple word. “Money”
Jude is looking back and forth between Naomi and me. He raises his eyebrows at me, and I give a small nod. Fuck it. Secret’s out either way. I’m not going to deny it. The betrayal from her fr
iend is hurting her enough.
Arms crossed against her stomach, she leans against the wall and watches as the show resumes.
“Before the commercial break, you dropped a bombshell. You’re saying that the mother of the baby is Naomi’s sister? Baby Caden is her nephew?”
The sound of my son’s name in that vapid bitch’s mouth infuriates me. It’s bad enough my life is fodder for gossip, but he should be off limits.
“Yes, Deidre was the baby’s mother. You know how sibling rivalry can get. Naomi always thought she was better than her sister, what with Deidre being a prostitute and everything. I’m sure knowing her sister had a baby with Axton Todd was hard to swallow.”
And the other shoe has dropped.
The gasp from the crowd is echoed in my living room. The guys know about my sexual proclivities, but I sure as hell didn’t tell Dani. Or Naomi. She never knew what her sister did for a living.
“The mother of Axton’s child was a prostitute,” the interviewer repeats.
“That lying bitch!” Naomi exclaims, shaking her head. “Can they do this? Just say these things?” She’s not asking anyone in particular.
Paige continues. “Yeah, it was sad. She had a drug problem. Died of an overdose, and the baby went to Axton. It didn’t take Naomi long to see an opportunity to slide into Deidre’s place. I admit I helped her get the job. I felt sorry for her. She had no other family and swore she only wanted to be closer to Caden. I didn’t know she was after a nanny with benefits position.”
The crowd erupts in laughter and the banner at the bottom of the screen changes to read: Nanny with Benefits, Naomi Wells, pursued Axton after death of her sister.
It’s all Naomi can take and she turns abruptly and walks down the hall to her room, closing the door behind her. Dani glances at me, then follows her. I can’t move until I see what else is going to be said about us.
They go to commercial again, and the guys both stare at me. “Shit, Ax, this is going to be bad,” Elliot says.
Jude rubs his chin, staring at the screen. “Milo will take care of this. He isn’t the first rock star to fuck a prostitute. I don’t think he’s the one who’s going to come off the worst in all of this.”
He presses his lips together, looking at me, and I nod. No, this is going to fall on Naomi. “It’s not all true,” I mumble, trying to hold my temper. Not at my friends, but at the whole situation. “Naomi didn’t know I was Caden’s father, and she couldn’t stand me in the beginning.”
“Yeah,” Jude scoffs. “I remember.”
“She wasn’t after me and she damn sure wasn’t jealous of the junkie sister she barely knew.”
“But you two are fucking each other,” Jude clarifies with amusement in his voice.
“That’s nobody’s damn business.”
He fights back a grin. “Well, here’s the thing. We just need to know when exactly you first started so we know who wins the pool. Please tell me it was the first month. There’s five hundred dollars at stake.”
One thing I’ll say about Jude. While I sometimes want to choke him, he knows how to lighten a mood. “Fuck off.” I run my hands through my hair. “You assholes don’t have a pool going.”
The show resumes, and we fall silent to hear the last question. The interviewer leans forward and a hush drapes over the crowd. “The kidnapping. Do you think Naomi had anything to do with that? After such a crazy story, it wouldn’t be farfetched to consider she was involved.”
Paige pretends to think about it for a moment. “I don’t believe she was involved. What would she gain? She wanted Axton, not the baby. But if Caden were gone, he wouldn’t need a nanny and she’d be out on her ass, wouldn’t she?”
The audience laughs, and the interviewer thanks her for joining them. As the credits roll, I turn off the TV and grab my phone. It’s not going to take long for this to show up on all the other networks and media sites.
Milo answers on the first ring. “I want to get out of here tonight. Screw the plane, we’ll take a car. The hotel shouldn’t have a problem accepting us early.”
“I’ll arrange a car and call ahead to the lodge to expect you.”
“A limo. It’s an eight hour drive, and I want a partition between us and the driver. Security can follow but not ride with us. I want some privacy. Dani, Naomi and my son will be with me. The rest of the guys will follow on the plane when it was scheduled.”
“I’ve got it.”
Dani walks back into the room. “We’re leaving tonight before the crowd gets too big. I don’t want to end up followed all the way to northern Wisconsin. Are you packed?”
“Not yet, and I have an appointment early in the morning I can’t miss. I’ll meet you there.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone here.”
“I’ll finish packing then sleep at Clara’s. Catch the plane tomorrow like we planned. I think Naomi is already packed up, but I’ll go see if she needs help. Caden has a lot of stuff.”
“I’ll let you know when the car’s here.”
She pauses. “Ax, this isn’t her fault, you know.”
If Dani expects me to blame her, I’m sure Naomi does too. “I know. It’s okay. Let’s just get away from all this.”
Elliot gets to his feet. “We should probably get out of here while we can.”
“I can take Dani to Clara’s,” Jude volunteers.
“Yeah, thanks.” I run my hand through my hair, trying to think of anything I might have forgotten.
“Are you packed?” Elliot asks.
“Fuck,” I snort. “Good idea.”
An hour later, Naomi sits across from me in the limo, with Hatch asleep in a car seat beside her. He didn’t wake when I carried him out. All this turmoil around him, I’m glad he’s so blissfully unaware.
After a few minutes on the highway, I’m sure we aren’t being followed by the vultures. “We’re okay. Nobody stalking us,” I mumble, and Naomi nods. She’s been stone silent since the newscast.
“I’m sorry,” she says after a few more minutes. “I didn’t exactly tell Paige that we slept together. I was on the phone with her after the night that…we watched the storm, right before everything went bad. She sort of guessed, and I didn’t deny it. I swear I never told her details and everything else she said was a lie.”
“Not everything.” I hate this. Hate that I have to tell her something that may change how she sees me and her late sister. Her eyes dart up to meet mine. “I’m not angry at you. She’s the one to blame.”
“What do you mean not everything?”
“Deidre was a prostitute. That was how I met her.”
Disbelief wrinkles her face. “No. Look at you. Why would you have to pay for sex?”
“Before you, Naomi, for the past few years, I only slept with prostitutes.”
Shock I’m okay with, but I’m glad to see no revulsion on her face or reflected in her voice when she asks, “Why?”
The mini bar to my right is stocked with an assortment of tiny whiskey bottles and I help myself to one while I try to think of how to explain. Or if I want to explain. After draining it, I look her in the eye. “Hookers don’t want anything I can’t give them. Just money. No expectations, no disappointment. The guys might be fine with fucking around with groupies, but I didn’t trust them not to pull some shit. Go to the tabloids or worse, lie about birth control to try to cash in by having my kid. I figured it was safer to pay for it.”
“And you ended up with a kid by a prostitute.”
“I believe it was an accident, or she would’ve contacted me. She wasn’t after money or anything. I always use condoms, and in this case, it just wasn’t enough.”
The only sounds are Caden’s light snore and the hum of the road under the tires. “I should’ve suspected how Deidre was surviving,” she says.
“You can’t blame yourself that she hid it. The few times I was with her, she wasn’t…unhealthy. If she was doing drugs then, it must’ve been just the beginning. She was dre
ssed nice, hair and nails done, all that. Things likely went downhill once she was pregnant. There’s probably not a lot of work for pregnant prostitutes.”
It’s important to me that she understand something. “I don’t pick up strung out women working a corner, Naomi. I don’t want to take advantage of someone’s misfortune, get laid just because they desperately need the money or a fix, plus I wouldn’t want to chance the STD’s. I hired high class escorts, the type that charge thousands of dollars and choose their clientele wisely. That was the Deidre I met.”
“Did you ever care about her? I mean…was it ever more than sex?”
“No, I didn’t even remember her name when Milo told me.”
The limo eats up the miles, spitting them out behind us while we sit, each lost in thoughts we aren’t willing to say aloud. Until Naomi breaks the silence.
“Why me?” It’s not a whine or complaint. Just a genuine question. “You only slept with hookers for years, so why me?”
I don’t have an easy answer, but I give her the most honest one I have. “I lose control and forget my own rules around you. You fuck up my head, Naomi.”
After a moment of consideration, she nods and lies down on the seat. “Only fair I guess. You fuck up my heart.”
Chapter Twelve
Naomi
The sun is just coming up when I wake, stiff from sleeping for hours in the same position on the limo seat. Axton is stretched out on his back on the seat across from me, his arms folded across his chest. Even in his sleep his posture is guarded.
His brow furrows and relaxes. He’s dreaming about something and I wish I knew what haunts him.
I sit up and get a good look out the window at a snow covered landscape. Empty fields stretch out on either side of us, coated with white that’s hard to look at with the sun bouncing off of it. Beautiful.
The events of the night before filter in, and I still can’t comprehend it. Paige. We’ve been friends forever, and I never thought she would betray me. She’s the only person I really trusted. Elliot said it was probably for the money, but that’s hard to believe. I guess she could’ve had trouble finding another job after the nanny agency, but she could’ve called me, and I would’ve helped her.
