Remember You This Way

by C. R. Jane

The security team surrounds me as I walk through the tunnel towards the greenroom. Tonight, we are performing at FedEx Field in Washington D.C. and the crowd was expected to be huge, more similar to the first set of shows I had attended than the couple of college venues the band had performed at since then. After tonight’s show we would be headed to New York City first thing for a set of three shows. I wished we had more time to explore Washington D.C. since I had never been there or anywhere, but Jesse had promised they would take me out in New York City since we would be there longer. “I’ll show you the world,” he had promised me. I was going to hold him to it.

  The first thing I notice is that Miranda is berating the band about something as I walk in the greenroom where the guys have just finished an interview. She sees me come in and her mouth drops open. Our relationship hasn’t gotten better and true to form, instead of commenting about my new look, she scoffs and struts away.

  The second thing I notice, the guys look troubled. They’ve seemed stressed ever since they disappeared for that “band meeting” and though they tell me it’s no big deal, I can’t help but think it’s something to do with me.

  The band still has sound check and fan meets and greets to do, but Tanner already has a bottle of whiskey in his hands. He takes a long swig as Jesse says something to him angrily.

  “Hi,” I say, wanting to break up whatever is going on. Jensen sees me first. His face registers shock, but after a moment it just becomes hungry looking. Jesse and Tanner both look at me at the same time and suddenly I feel like a bunny that’s about to be devoured by wolves. If the wolves were delicious sex gods of course.

  “No,” says Jensen, getting up and striding towards me. He grabs my arm and starts to haul me back where I had just come from. “What are you doing?” I ask, stopping us suddenly and almost toppling over on my too tall high heels.

  “No one is allowed to see you like this. You’ll break the tour,” he says, actually sounding serious. I roll my eyes, but I feel gratified at his possessive reaction. He thinks I look good. They all think I look good. Tanner comes up behind me, the whiskey bottle left behind, and puts his hands on my hips while he leans in to me and starts kissing up my neck.

  “You’re the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispers in my ear. Combined with Jensen’s fierce expression as he crowds me from the front, I’m feeling like the temperature in the room has risen a few million degrees. When Jesse comes over and yanks me towards him, I only get hotter. He kisses me and seems just about to try and take it further when there’s the sound of throat clearing from behind us.

  “I believe we have things to do, gentlemen,” says Miranda, spoiling the fun as usual. Jesse groans against my mouth but pulls away. Tanner grabs my hand though and has me walk beside him as he walks onto the stage where all of their equipment is already set up and waiting for them to do sound check.

  “I thought that you guys weren’t going to have me sing with you for a while,” I mutter as I look out at the vast empty stadium where they will be performing to sixty-five thousand people later on.

  “I think we need to save our voices for the show tonight, so I think you should sing some songs while we check that our instruments are working,” says Jesse with a laugh. Jensen rolls his eyes when I look at him, but he goes over to the drum kit and winks at me after picking up the drum sticks.

  “What are we starting with, sexy girl?” asks Jesse, strumming a note.

  The next hour is one of the best of my life. We play through some of my favorites of their songs like “Broken Hearted Love Song” and “Just a Friend.” I then lead them through some of my favorite covers, “Turning Tables” by Adele, “Dirty Little Secret” by All American Rejects, and others. I sing my heart out to the empty stadium and a piece of me that’s been locked up tight begins to bloom.

  The guys are delirious with excitement afterwards, as am I. I can tell that they mean it when they say that I have talent, that I’m amazing. But it seems like there’s an ocean between my current circumstance having to operate under a whole new name, and ever being the star that I dream about becoming.

  Miranda eyes me speculatively when we run off stage, but she surprisingly says nothing. We get through the fan meet and greet. This time Jensen gently guides me to Tanner’s side as the fans start to arrive. I realize why when a group of girls wearing shirts with Tanner’s face on them rush inside. They almost bowl us over before security can push them back. Evidently Tanner’s personal fan club is based in Washington, D.C., and the fans showing up tonight will be some of the most avid ones we come across.

  “Why Washington, D.C.?” I ask as he signs what seems like the hundredth Tanner shirt. He grimaces and ducks his head.

  “I may have gone streaking one night when I was drunk here and the newspapers all got the pics,” he says under his breath.

  I burst out laughing, wondering at how I missed this when I would stalk them all online. It must have been a time when I was trying to go cold turkey.

  “I’m glad my pain amuses you,” says Tanner, unable to stop his own smile. “I think you should make me feel better,” he says in an innocent tone that doesn’t fit with the wicked gleam in his eyes.

  “And how do I do that?” I ask, my voice somehow growing deeper and more seductive as the mood changes between us.

  “I think you guys can finish up, right?” he asks, already taking my hand while Jensen and Jesse groan. Tanner ignores them. I think he’s going to take me to his dressing room, but instead he pulls me to a door I hadn’t noticed before and takes me up a set of stairs. He leads me over to a floor to ceiling window that looks out at the whole stadium. A stadium that’s starting to fill up with people. “Can they see us in here?” I ask. Tanner goes over to the door and after locking it, he flips a switch.

  “Now no one can see in,” he says. Trusting him that he wouldn’t want my naked body paraded all over the news, I let him gently push me until I’m pressed up against the window.

  He slowly undoes the clasps on the back that are holding up my corset, sliding it off my body. Tanner pulls away but he doesn’t go far, turning me around so it’s my back that’s leaning against the glass. He presses his forehead against mine and looks down as he starts to trace the skin down to my breasts. Since the corset had so much support, I hadn’t bothered wearing a bra and I’m completely bare as he touches me. I reach up to touch his lips. Eyes sparking with dark lust, he licks the tips of each digit.

  “Sweet,” he says, pulling them away from his lips and pressing them to mine. “Suck.”

  I groan and do as he commands, letting him take over, take control. It feels so good to let go. I lick him, suck the sweetness like I would him as if he had come—flicking and rolling my tongue between deep drags. His nostrils flair and then his mouth replaces his fingers and he devours me, hard and demanding. I lean into his power, the strength in his chest and his arms as they tighten around me, holding me in place. It’s a side of Tanner I haven’t seen, and I fall helpless into his control.

  “Princess,” he whispers, not satisfied until I’m looking him in the eyes again. This man unravels me, and I can’t help but kiss him again.

  (Tanner)

  The sweet, unassuming kiss sparks my desire for her, making me feel more alive than I have in forever. My skin buzzes with electricity as she flashes a lazy smile at me. I watch her, mesmerized, as she turns those gorgeous gold eyes on me. She bites on her lip as I pull my shirt off. Playful Ari. It had been two days since I’d had her and I missed her, desperately. I wasn’t feeling playful. The swelling in my chest, knowing this wasn’t a dream, that she was still here. The knowledge that I can keep her forever overpowers me, takes over all of my movements. I make quick work of her tight pants and her little slip of a thong. I hold her underwear in my hands, and keeping my eyes trained on hers, I bring it up to my face and inhale. I watch her face change. The playful glint leaves her eyes. In its place is heady desire. I inhale her scent, my favorite in the world, and I fe
el my whole-body change, shift into a familiar place.

  Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t that I didn’t love seeing her playful side. But my heart was burning in my chest, and I had seriously potent feelings for her, feelings that stole my air and changed the rhythm of my heartbeat. In Ari, I found more than love, more than hope and peace. I found my home.

  I walk slowly to her, watching the movement of her throat as she swallows. My eyes move to meet hers the moment my hands touch her skin. Her skin. Each time I touch her, my fingers come alive, as if she was the most beautiful instrument my hands would ever touch. I press my lips to her forehead, I feel the heat of her breath on my neck.

  My eyes close and I savor this moment, savor being home again. My fingers slide from her arms up and over her shoulders, touching her neck. My thumbs trace her jaw line, meeting at the center of her chin. My thumbs tremble when I watch her lips part. Every single part of her was made perfectly for me. I brush a thumb over her lips and look into her eyes again. They’re clouded over with lust. Seeing that lights a match in my veins. My arms move to encircle her as my mouth touches hers. I capture the breath she’s about to take and sink in, lips and tongues and nibbles from teeth.

  “Tanner,” she moans against my mouth. I turn her around, so she’s completely bare pressed up against the glass, the entire stadium of thousands of people beneath her. If they only could see the decadent tableau laid out above them. I relish the fact that out of all the people in this stadium, this is mine. Only mine. I crush her body to mine, winding my hands through her unfamiliar ebony locks, diving my fingers into the strands. Turning her head towards me, I kiss her ferociously.

  I pull back to catch my breath, our noses pressed against each other. I fill my lungs as I look at her. “You make me crazy,” I tell her, my voice foreign even to me. I cup her cheek with one hand while she looks at me, her eyes open and unguarded.

  “I don’t think you’ll ever understand the depth of my feelings for you.”

  She swallows hard, sucking in air. “I feel the same way,” she says. I smile, running a hand down the side of her face, feeling an ache blooming in my chest at having her here in my arms. I want to bury myself in her smiles, in the way she looks at me. On impulse, I bury my head against her neck, breathing in her scent again. I send up a silent thank you to the powers that be that they sent her back to me.

  “Tanner,” she says. “Hmm?” I murmur against her hair. “I really want you. Now.”

  I pull back abruptly and seal my lips to hers. I feel her purr in the back of her throat. Bliss. That’s what this is. I run my hands up her back, along the line of her spine. She pulls back and abruptly sucks in a breath as my fingers follow along to the front of her ribs, over her breasts, over her curves. I hear her suck in a breath and a second later, she’s flipped herself around, her delicate hands on my shoulders, impatient for more.

  She runs her hands down my chest, over my stomach. My muscles clench involuntarily. She looks up at me with just the light spilling in from the glass lighting up her face. Her lips are swollen and parted, her eyes heavy-lidded. So fucking beautiful. I can’t keep my eyes off of her. My blood is pounding in my veins.

  “Do you know what you do to me, princess?” She bites her lip and the corners of her eyes crinkle.

  “Show me,” she whispers.

  I step between her legs and run my hands up her thighs, squeezing every few inches. I feel her skin tremble beneath my hands, and I smile calmly, patiently, at her. Her eyes are burning with lust, their gold the brightest shade I’ve seen them. I run a finger gently up her inner thigh, back and forth.

  “Tanner,” she pleads this time, impatience clear in her voice. But I still move slowly, unwilling to rush this. I push a soft kiss to her lips before turning her around, her back to my front, loving the view of her pressed against the glass with the whole world spread out in front of her. I move her hair to rest over one shoulder. I kiss a line over the gorgeous curve that exists between her neck and her shoulder. My hands move all over her while my lips press kisses across her exposed shoulder.

  “We never get enough time,” I whisper against her skin. “I didn’t get to explore all your delicate curves and lines the way I wanted to last time.” I put my lips to her ear, nibbling on her lobe. “I plan to do a lot of exploring, princess,” I breathe.

  My hands move around to her front, cupping her breasts. Her head falls back onto my shoulder and I kiss the side of her neck, while I squeeze her gently.

  “Fuck, you’re flawless.”

  “I think you’re trying to make love to me with your words, Tanner,” she says, her eyes closed, her chest heaving with exertion. I push the hair from her face as I make her kiss me again.

  “Every single part of me wants that. I want to fill your thoughts, so that there isn’t room for anything but me.”

  “And them, right?” she says, a look of vulnerability all over her face.

  “And them too,” I agree. Ari had always been all of ours. I didn’t know how it could not ever be that way.

  I reach down for my jeans, grabbing the condom I’d put in my pocket earlier that morning with the hope of this moment on my mind. I always explored the stadiums when we were at new places, and I knew this was the perfect place to take her as soon as I saw it.

  “You’ve filled my thoughts since day one,” she tells me as I slide a condom on. I don’t plan on sharing her thoughts with anyone but the other two for a long, long time.

  She looks back at me, her eyes full of emotion. She lifts a hand to cup my face. “You do, Tanner,” she whispers earnestly. I lean down and kiss her, feeling my heartbeat settle in my chest. And then my body joins with hers in a dance that belongs only to us, with the music only we can hear. Every single second is worth all the years of missing her. All the years of agony, of the dreams and the nightmares, the way I yearned desperately for this, for her breath on my skin, her body in my arms, her heartbeat in my ear. Everything was worth this moment. I’m never letting it go.

  9

  Then

  Jensen’s mother died at the beginning of my senior year. She took a bottle of scotch from the liquor cabinet downstairs, and followed that up with ten pain pills, and she simply fell asleep, wrapped up in her daughter’s bed in the room that had never been touched since her daughter’s death.

  It was a maid that found her. Jensen had been at the beach with the three of us, enjoying the last warm days before fall truly set in. I’ll remember the look on his face when he checked his messages until the day that I die. It was conflicted, a mix of agony and anger that I never want to see again.

  As I stood clenching his hand at the gravesite on a cloudy, rainy day, as the preacher went on and on about how his mother was in a better place, all I could think about was that I was so glad he had been with us when it happened. I was so glad that he didn’t have to find her, that he didn’t have to take that memory with him forever.

  His father had been out of town on a “business trip” when it happened. There was a pretty younger woman standing next to him at the gravesite today, and I had the horrible suspicion that she was the next Mrs. Reid, already lined up for when something like this happened. Jensen was pointedly ignoring his father, and his father for his part had been smart enough not to approach him.

  After the service is over a crowd of well-wishers gather around Jensen, giving him false platitudes about what a great woman his mother was, and how much she would be missed around the community, a community that had ignored her existence for the entire time she had lived in it.

  He stiffly accepts their condolences, my hand tight in his. It’s like I’m his lifeline to surviving this day. I’m not sure what to do. I’m not sure how to act. So, I just try to be there for him. I’ve realized that Jensen sees himself as the protector in his little world. And in his eyes, he’s failed now twice to protect the people that he loves best.

  His father leaves without saying goodbye, his probable mistress following close behind
him as he walks away. He never looks back and all I can think is how glad I am that Jensen was able to move out this year from that hell house. Even if it meant that I was all alone without them at school.

  We eventually walk to Jensen’s Escalade. Jesse and Tanner somehow know that he needs time alone with me, and they drive off in another car.

  Jensen doesn’t say a word to me the whole drive. We eventually arrive at the warehouse they rent out to practice. I’m not sure what we’re doing here, but I follow him silently inside.

  Once we’re inside he stands there for a moment, looking around unseeingly at the warehouse around us. And then he yells. It’s a tortured sound, more scream really than a yell, and it echoes off the walls around us. He picks up a set of drums and throws them, shattering at least two of them with the impact.

  Furniture is overturned, pages are ripped, and all I can do is stand there as it happens. He suddenly sinks to his knees and starts crying. “I’m sorry, please,” he cries, facing demons that I can’t see.

  “Jensen,” I whisper, taking a step towards him.

  “Stay away from me,” he spits out angrily, clenching his hair so hard that I’m afraid he’s going to pull it out.

  I’m helpless in that moment, and then the dumbest words I could say in that moment fall out of my mouth. “I love you,” I tell him, meaning it with every breath in my body.

  “Don’t say that,” he rages, looking back at me with angry, hate filled eyes. I know it’s not me that he’s mad at, but it makes me take a step back, nonetheless.

  A look of regret immediately passes over his features at my retreat. “I can’t be around you right now,” he says to me. I nod and quietly leave the warehouse to give him some peace. As I stare up at the rain-soaked sky, I can’t help but think how unfair life can be.

  “You can’t love me,” I hear Jensen say a few minutes later from behind me as he walks towards where I’m standing in the pouring rain.