by C. R. Jane
I’m wrapped tight into what I know is Jesse’s chest. I suspect we’re moving, but I don’t actually feel anything. I’m no longer present in any way. I feel nothing. I can make as if it never happened. That night never happened. Everything is okay. I tuck away everything nice and neat in a pile I won’t unfold until I’m forced to.
Jesse
“Bathroom and a shower,” she murmurs, hoarse from the screaming that I don’t think she even realized was happening. “Please.” Her fingers sink into my arm.
“Anything you want. Wrap your arms around my neck.” She weighs a fraction of what I think she should. She was thin when she came to us, and the weeks since then haven't changed that. We haven’t done our jobs good enough of making her happy. I squeeze as much as I dare given how fragile she suddenly seems to me.
We’re in the hotel’s largest suite, courtesy of the public relations nightmare it would be for the hotel if the media got ahold of this story and how someone apparently was able to impersonate a maid and gain access to our suite while we were out.
Fucking hell. Gentry was going to pay for this. There were no good shots of him breaking into the suite; he’d been too smart not to come disguised, but we knew it was him. He had been stalking Ari for weeks and we had been keeping it from her. Intercepting the packages and the notes, keeping a security team on her 24/7. Despite all of that he had managed somehow to get on our bus with its top of the line security system to deliver flowers, and then later get into our room. He had somehow managed to reroute his phone so it looked like our security team was getting texts from us telling them to take a break and give Ari space.
I can’t help but squeeze her tighter thinking of the danger she was in during her run today. I breathe in her scent as I half-laugh and half-cry in exhaustion, I’ve lived and died what feels like a million times today worrying about her. I’ve been in meetings with execs at the record label and with the security company trying to come up with a plan to keep her safe. Of course, they wanted her to leave the tour, but we wouldn’t let that happen.
Once we’re in one of the suite’s lavish marble bathrooms, I softly brush a kiss against her lips, relishing the feeling of her fingers responding and teasing my nape. She’s my life. She’s all of our lives.
“I wish I could go back and take this away from you,” I whisper into her hair thinking of that picture of her lying in the hospital bed. A picture I know nothing about but know that it represents an unspeakable horror for her. Possibly the key to why she did what she did all those years ago.
She sniffles and nods, but when she opens her mouth a cry comes, and then another. I take her nape and tuck her into my shoulder, my lips to her hair. I’m in no hurry. Words will come when she’s ready, and I’ll be here to listen. For now, I’ll live in the sweet sound of her silence.
I haven’t a clue on how to make this better, so I do the only thing I can—hold her. Through my hands stroking her back and my breath in her hair my lips murmuring into her forehead, I try to show her how adored she is, as precious as the rarest gem. How I thank God with every heartbeat she is mine.
I take in her contented sigh, but know I have to let her down when she starts to squirm. “Easy now.” I set her feet on the tiles, but keep my hands hovering around her waist as she stands, eyes closed to the glare of the lights. It’s a good thing I do when she nearly crumbles. She presses her nose to my neck through the minute it takes to get her settled on the toilet and then I start the shower so it can heat up before she gets in.
“I’ll give you a minute of privacy while I go get some clothes for you. Don’t move.”
I hold in my grimace. She’s so fragile, sitting with her arms wrapped around her body, her eyes wild amidst the ebony hair that’s framing her unusually pale face.
“I’ll be right back, okay?”
“Ya,” she murmurs, but I can see her trembling lips. My beautiful girl is holding on by a thread. I close the door on her feelings only to be confronted by Jensen’s and Tanner’s. Tanner is talking to a detective in the New York City police department on the phone. Jensen is sitting on the couch looking through the contents of the box. He shouldn’t have moved the box just in case there were fingerprints, but I don’t have it in me to say anything. I know that the last thing Ari wants is for anyone to see the contents of that box.
I grab a pair of sweats and a shirt from my closet knowing that Ari finds comfort in wearing our things. It’s also out of necessity though since that bastard destroyed all the new clothes Ari was so proud of. I’m about to go back in, but I can hear Ari sobbing inside. I lean my forehead against the cool wood of the doorway, listening to her sob and letting her have a moment. Time is suspended as it goes on. Guilt steals my breath as I wrestle with the fact that we all just gave up on her five years ago. We should have known that Ari wouldn’t have changed her mind, especially that quickly. We should have been less interested in our own broken hearts, and more concerned about hers.
I hate myself and the decisions I made. It brought us here, listening to an ocean of her tears. I crack open the door an inch. It’s enough room for me to see through the steam and into the mirror reflecting Ariana as she steps into the shower. I softly close the door and let her shower even as the sight of all her skin makes me ache to join her even in this situation.
I hear a crash in the living room, and I make my way there to see Tanner and Jensen looking like they’re about to exchange blows.
“What the fuck is going on? You two can’t control your testosterone even in a situation like this?” I bark at them angrily. Tanner takes the opportunity to rip the papers out of Jensen’s hands that I hadn’t noticed he was holding.
“Asshole here was about to start reading through her medical records,” he says, going over to the giant fireplace against the wall and throwing the papers in. He stands there until they’re completely burned to ashes.
“Don’t you want to know?” asks Jensen in a frustrated voice, pulling at his hair so it sticks up all over the place.
“It’s not our business,” snaps Tanner. “She’ll tell us when she’s ready. I don’t see her asking us about everything that’s happened over the last five years.”
Jensen flinches. I don’t think any of us want that. The three of us have had our share of events we want to forget, and would rather Ari never hear about.
I hear the shower turn off, and I turn to leave. “Get all of that burned,” I tell them, making the executive decision that no one else is going to see those documents. “And try not to kill each other,” I add sarcastically as I leave the room.
Ari’s toweling off as I enter the room. She still looks pale, but she looks slightly better than she did before her shower. I look away when she drops the towel and starts to pull on my sweats. She walks over to me when she finishes getting dressed.
“I ordered your favorite dinner,” I tell her as we walk into the bedroom she’s chosen. She tries for a smile, a slight bend to her lip when I pull the lid back to show a perfectly cooked ribeye that I actually ordered from one of the nicest steakhouses in New York and her favorite sides of mashed potato and creamed spinach. It’s her favorite, but Ari picks at the steak to eat more like a bird than a woman who has barely eaten today since she didn’t even pretend to eat at dinner, and I know that she skipped lunch after the fight with Jensen. Sleep is what she wants and I brush a kiss across Ari’s forehead and whisper, “I’ll be back, I won’t leave.” I’ll never leave her but she’s already asleep before she can hear my reassurance.
After I’ve checked that Jensen and Tanner haven’t killed each other and that all the documents and pictures have been burned, I go in and lie next to Ari. Relief washes through me when she rolls into my chest as if she’s as desperate for me, as I am for her touch and sweet scent. But rest is out of reach. I lie awake petrified about how I’m going to keep this perfect angel safe.
It seems like minutes later that I’m blinking awake as my cell phone starts to ring. I struggle to get
my bearings since I’m thinking that I’ve only been asleep for a minute.
“Good morning,” Ariana says, as if she’s been awake for hours.
By her appearance, maybe she has. She has a new outfit on that consists of a sleek black pencil dress and four-inch heels that have her legs seeming limitless. No sign of the trauma from the night before-only gorgeous Ari. Her hair is pulled harshly back away from her face and she’s wearing a soft pink lipstick. She looks more like a politician’s wife than she does the girlfriend of a rockstar. She’s still beautiful to distraction though, and I find myself obsessing over getting a chance to kiss those pink lips. She bites the bottom one, sucking it into her mouth.
“Something wrong?” she asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s just a different look than usual. Did the stylist bring over more clothes?”
“I ordered it from downstairs actually. Did you know you can order clothes just like you can room service?” she says in awe as she checks her appearance in a small mirror hanging on the wall above a dresser.
“Ari?” I call for her attention because she’s so different from the terrified and fragile girl from last night. She’s actually acting different from how I’ve ever seen her. She wraps a dainty necklace around her neck that I recognize as one that Jensen bought for her and works to clasp it.
“Hm?” Her gaze follows me as I stand and walk to her side.
“Are you alright? Why are you up? I was kind of expecting to stay in bed all day after yesterday.”
“Miranda has you booked solid today and then we have to leave this afternoon for the show in Boston. I didn’t want to wake you until the last minute because I knew you probably didn’t sleep very much last night. You should shower. We have about an hour before you have to leave.” She turns and brushes her lips against my cheek.
“We can take the day off,” I say to her reflection, because I can’t move. What the hell is going on here? Blinking doesn’t bring on reality; I’m stuck in an alternate universe. I’ve woken up to a Ari from a different planet, one who wears dresses that belong more in church than in the life that we’re creating together. “Ari,” I say again.
She turns to me and for a second, I can see past the mask she’s wearing, and what I see takes my breath away. Anger so hot and foreboding that I’m scared we’ll never be able to get past it. “You should have told me,” she whispers looking away from me. “You all should have told me.” She grips the side of the doorway. “You’d better get ready. I’ll order breakfast.”
Our eyes meet again before she leaves and for a brief second, she cracks. Chin trembling, tears misting, until she blinks them away and turns, unwilling to look at me.
“Go get ready,” she whispers. “I just need some time.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet.”
I could push her, something we’ve done before, but I have a feeling that whatever happened in that picture that shows a scared young girl on an examination table, it could destroy us all. I grab my hair, torn. This is my torture. “Tell me what to do. I want to be whatever you need to get through this, but I’m not sure what that is.”
Looking up, those spectacular golden eyes blinking away the mist, she says on a faint whisper, “Wait for me.” The knife living in my gut twists, and I nod.
“Promise you’ll talk to us when you’re ready. Even if it’s in anger, promise me.”
“One day, I will.”
She leaves the room without another glance back.
12
Then
Kryptonite. That’s what those boys are to me I think as I stand outside my trailer preparing to go inside after another of the band’s concerts. It’s late but I still feel wired thinking about the new songs they introduced tonight. They made me itch to grab the notebook that I have hidden in my room and start writing more of my own songs.
The front door suddenly swings open. “What are you doing standing out there?” sneers David in a slurred voice. I avoid these kinds of interactions at all costs and I’m like a deer in the headlights for a moment as I stare at him. His eyes are bright red, and the room is smoky behind him. All I hope is that they aren’t doing something like cooking meth. That’s all I need is for the trailer to blow up and blow me up along with it while I’m sleeping innocently in my bed.
“Get in here,” he says, grabbing my arm so hard that I know there’s going to be a bruise there in the morning. I look around for my mother, hoping she’s still awake. She’s nowhere to be found. Number one on my list of how to survive is to never find myself alone with David and that’s exactly where I’m finding myself now.
I try to wrench my arm out of his grip. The move catches him off guard and before he can grab me again, I’m out the door. It had been a minute since I’d had to do this, and my heart beats a thousand beats a minute as I sprint through the unkempt grass to who knows where. I would call Jensen, but he’s been going through so much since his mom died that I don’t want to bother him. And the other guys already do enough for me as it is. Maybe Amberlie could pick me up.
I get to the road and I’m pulling out my cell phone to call her when I notice a familiar black Escalade parked in the same place where I left it. I never let the guys drop me off by my trailer because I don’t want David to ever see the guys’ nice vehicles and start to try and get things from them.
Walking up to the passenger window, I see Jensen slouched down, playing a game on his phone. I tap on the window and he jumps, hitting his head on the window. I hide my smile and open the door after he recovers and opens it up.
“You scared the crap out of me,” he says, rubbing his head embarrassedly. He suddenly realizes that it’s strange for me to have come out to the road at 1:00 in the morning when he just dropped me off. Just as strange as him still hanging around where he dropped me off…
“Why are you still here?” I ask before he can start any of the questions I’m sure that he has.
“Just didn’t feel like going home,” he mutters dejectedly, saying something that’s no surprise. Since his mom passed, he’s been a little lost. He was still in his apartment with Tanner and Jesse and although they did everything they could to be supportive, there were just some things that you couldn’t understand unless you had been through it.
“Why are you out here?” he asks before I can say something else to distract him.
I sigh, trying to think of what to say. I’ve never let on how truly bad it is for me at home. We’re already coming from completely different social backgrounds, I don’t need them to feel sorry or try to do something if they found out about Terry and David’s drug habits.
“Just some family stuff,” I finally say. I know that Jensen wants to ask more questions, but he holds his tongue. We sit in the car in silence, Lana Del Ray’s Young and Beautiful playing softly in the background. It makes me think about all the things I don’t like to think about, like what if the guys don’t suddenly think I’m so great if they make it big. What will happen when there’s far more beautiful girls to grab their attention. Will they still want me? Will I still hold a place in their hearts?
“Let’s go for a drive,” Jensen says, and he takes off before I can say anything. Settling into my seat I pull my seatbelt on. I watch the shadows that you can only see at night as we pass through town and out to the road that drives by the river.
“I just can’t stop thinking about how I could have saved her,” he says in a gravelly voice. It comes out like he hadn’t meant to say anything, but it had just popped out of his mouth.
“Your sister?” I ask. He shakes his head. “My mom. I know I should have saved my sister. I can’t seem to save anyone I’m supposed to.” He looks at me. “You won’t even let me try and help you. Why are you even here? Do you just feel sorry for me?” he spits out in a hurt voice.
My eyes widen. Why am I here? Do I just feel sorry for him?
Has Jensen forgotten who he is? Who I
am?
“You don’t believe that, do you?” I immediately say. He doesn’t say anything. He just pulls the car over at an overlook that looks out over the river.
I get on my knees in the seat and take his hand in both of mine. He’s covering his face with his other hand and I know that if he took his hand away there would be tears in his eyes.
“Oh, Jensen,” I sigh. “You and Tanner and Jesse have done everything to take care of me.” I take a deep breath feeling myself start to tear up. It’s an unfortunate habit I have that I usually end up crying whenever anyone else is sad.
He groans when he hears the hitch in my voice, dropping his hand from his face and leaning over to me to lick a tear from my face before it can fall to our lap. His heavy breath fans over my mouth as he does so. I try to force away the shiver tickling my spine, to hide how he affects me since this feels hardly like the time for lust. But I can’t.
I belong to him and I want him to belong to me. More than anything I want to find my place next to this man, next to Tanner and Jesse. Jensen lightly strokes the skin peeking out from the top of my shirt and I shiver and give off a desperate sound that I’ve never heard come out of my mouth before.
He responds by practically growling, it’s a low vibration that warms the depth of his eyes. Leaning in to murmur against my mouth, he says, “Let me inside, Ari.” My gosh. This man with his scorching good looks, his smooth tongue, and wicked hands is no match for me.
“Let me in,” he demands again, and yet the simple statement is laced with desperation and need. But it’s his eyes that grab hold of mine and won’t let go. Pleading. My hands find their way to his neck, circling to hold him in place and feel his pulse under my thumb. Life.
