Playing the Pauses (Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll Book 2)

by Michelle Hazen

  I can’t afford to fly home and bail her out, and besides, I know better now. Without carefully held boundaries, love can swallow you whole.

  I shake my head and blink my eyes open again, checking the time even though I already know my power nap is a thing of the past. I put my hand on my suitcase but for a long moment, I can’t muster the strength to unzip it. This day feels like it has been weeks long already and we haven’t even gotten to the venue yet. But the world doesn’t care if you’re too tired to keep up.

  I straighten my shoulders and open my suitcase, beginning my six steps to unpacking for the night.

  I PUT DOWN THE PHONE, and blow out a breath. It took a while, but I kicked the bus company into line, re-negotiated shipping charges with the merchandise company, and prima donna-ed my way to a full refund on all the pre-booked tour flights.

  My to-do list is a lot shorter, but I still feel like there’s a hand clamped around my throat, dragging me out of my own hard-won life and back into Mom’s endless cycle of depression and rebound.

  I need to run.

  I’ve still got ninety minutes before I have to shower and round up the band to hit the venue, so I throw on some spandex capris and a sports bra under a slim warmup jacket. In the meeting yesterday, Jax asked if we could still afford to stay in hotels with in-house gyms. I was relieved to assure him we could, at least when we didn’t need to drive all night to make a venue. After all the buses and planes and waiting rooms, I need a treadmill to keep me sane on the road, and my performers need weights to keep up their eye-candy credentials.

  I take the elevator down to the main floor. I’m looking forward to clearing my head with a hard workout when I push through the gym door and stop dead. Apparently, a clear mind just isn’t in the cards for me today.

  Danny is sitting on a weight bench, bent forward for a bicep curl. He looks up when I enter, the chaos of his black hair somehow only emphasizing the unwavering focus of his eyes. I can’t breathe. I should say something. A whole dissertation of somethings that will lead us magically back to neutral ground and dissolve the scream of tension between us.

  He jerks a nod. His gaze falls as his arm regains its steady rhythm up and then stretching back down, the round knot of his muscle following the movement. His black shirt leaves his arm bare to the shoulder, revealing a delicate tattoo of a riding crop on his forearm. He has another that curls around the cap of his shoulder, ending in a texture that could be the froth of the ocean, or the lace of really expensive panties. I swallow and glance away.

  Small talk? Denial? Or leap headfirst and tell him I overheard his soul-baring confession to his best friend? Including the fact that he took off on me last night because he thought I wanted a life-sized sex toy and he didn’t want to bother me with his actual personality.

  I hate that he thought that of me, but in a way he’s right: I hardly know more about him than Wikipedia does. Just that he doesn’t talk much, fucks like a demon, and that I hurt him, however little I meant to.

  Danny finishes his set and I’m still standing in the doorway like a freak, so I turn toward the cardio equipment. I should take off my jacket if I don’t want to sweat through it, but I can’t bring myself to strip to a sports bra with him in the room. That would definitely be counterproductive to the Ignore All Sexual Tension Plan.

  Keeping the jacket, I skip my warm up and bring the belt up to full speed, my feet slamming down onto the machine with every step. There are no mirrors hung and I’m just facing a blank wall, but I can see him anyway.

  His hand, palm up.

  His brilliant, troubled eyes when I told him it would never happen again.

  There’s a soft thump as Danny replaces the set of weights and a scrape when he picks up new ones. He doesn’t say a word to me, but I can hear his voice.

  “She didn’t want me to break the scene, didn’t want me in the place that she’d just filled up with her fantasy Dom.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  I hit the acceleration button and stretch my legs out, but I can’t outrun his presence in the room behind me.

  I know better than to let another Dom into my life. If I tell Danny he misread me last night, he’ll think I want more. A fling, maybe even a relationship. But that moment when his fist was pressed over my heart...it was the opposite of fantasy, and I didn’t want it any other way. He deserves to know that.

  My feet leave the treadmill and settle on the solid bars to either side as I hit the “Stop” button.

  “Danny,” I say, but the sound is lost inside a bang. I jerk my head around to see what he dropped, only to realize it was the sound of the door, closing behind him.

  Again.

  My heart sinks, but then I yank my shoulders straight, disgusted with my own reaction. I’m not going to stand here, mooning about misunderstandings like some bimbo in a rom-com. I can still fix this.

  I jump off the treadmill and push through the door, hitting the hallway in a full-stride run. There’s just a flicker of black as he disappears around the corner toward the elevators and I go after him.

  “Danny!” I round the corner and then skid to a halt because he’s right there. He whirls, his hands slapping against the wall to either side of me, caging me in.

  “If you don’t want it to happen again,” he growls, “then stop looking at me like that.”

  My breastbone struggles under the sudden lack of air in the hallway and my lips part as I fumble for what I needed to tell him. “I didn’t want you to leave. Last night, I mean.”

  His eyes flare with surprise and when the frustration is swept away, they’re left bare.

  The same question hangs between us, the one poised in the second before he fled. I have no answers, nothing to offer him. I just hope whatever he sees in me today, it won’t hurt him.

  Danny’s gaze drops to my lips, and I wet them without thinking. His hand comes up, long fingers settling along my jaw. I inhale, decisions and words and schedules falling silent as everything in me focuses on his mouth.

  Ding.

  My mind races dizzily through all the devices that usually make that sound: cell phone, tablet, oven, microwave, ignition...

  His thumb brushes deliberately across my lower lip, and my nipples prickle in a crazy rush even as his hand falls away.

  Elevator, I realize dimly. That sound was an elevator.

  “Hey, Kate.” My head jerks around at the voice and Jax steps into the hallway, his face warmed by an easy grin. “You come to fill in for my spotter?”

  “What, I’m fired that fast? After all your whining for me to work out with you?” Danny’s voice is smooth and calm and everything I’d need about a Valium and a half to pull off right now.

  “He’s so lazy I practically have to put him in a headlock every time I want to get him near a weight bench,” Jax says. “Come on, Kate. Tell him the ladies like some muscles on their rock stars.”

  “Damn right.” I keep my eyes and my manufactured smile squarely on Jax as I step closer to the elevator. “Now you two head in there and sweat me up some more ticket sales, hmm?” I toss off a wave and hit the “Up” button.

  Jax grins and salutes. “Yes, boss.” He turns and jogs off toward the gym.

  “Later,” Danny says to me. Something like a smile teases at the edges of his lips, but he turns away before I can be sure.

  I close myself into the elevator and clutch the railing, my head falling back against the wall. I just did a truly terrible job of convincing Danny I don’t want to sleep with him again. And tomorrow, we move into the tour bus. The tiny, tiny, tour bus.

  Chapter 6: Good

  I lean against the open door of one of our new tour buses, watching the crew load their luggage and get ready to embark. Jayna’s the first in. “Sharpen your axe this morning?” she mutters as she passes, the short spikes of her acid green Mohawk a perfect match for her personality.

  I’m playing the villain on the set since yesterday, when I had to fire a coupl
e dozen people with more experience than me in order to keep our production an affordable size. At least I was also careful to keep most of the people I already knew, so I don’t have to spend the next few weeks earning their respect before I can actually do my damn job.

  “My axe didn’t even taste enough necks yesterday to dull the edge,” I tell her. “But the day’s young yet.”

  Jayna’s not up for a pink slip and we both know it: she’s doing double duty this time around as a drum tech and a lighting tech. Still, she tends to get nervy when anybody’s too nice to her, so I don’t mind tossing out an empty threat or two to play along.

  Ruben and Rex are the next ones in line: a pudgy guy who barely tops five feet and a towering, bald Scandinavian man who are completely inseparable, though I’ve never figured out if they’re lovers or something more complicated.

  “Saved you the bottom bunk closest to the head,” I murmur to Ruben, clapping Rex on his broad back as he passes.

  Thanks to too many decades of hydrating with Irish whiskey, Ruben passed an excruciating kidney stone on a tour bus with me two seasons ago. Now he drinks so much water that he’s besties with the bathroom, which is a bit of a pain on a crowded bus, but I love the little guy and he’s fast as hell backstage, so I forgive him.

  Ruben gives me a gallant bow on his way through. I nearly miss Simon’s ghost-quiet climb of the stairs, but I catch the sound engineer’s arm just before he passes me. “What, you think you’re getting off without showing me pictures of your new babies? Give ‘em up, Si.”

  His face lights up even as he blushes and pulls out his phone to show me the newest batch of silky terrier show pups his wife is raising. Ugly, weird little suckers, but Simon adores them and he’s got a psychic’s intuitive touch on the sound board, so I’d bronze him a statue of a silky terrier if it’d keep him happy.

  Dalton passes while we’re still looking at pictures and I lift my head to call after him, “Wi-Fi password is RedLetters88, but watch your bandwidth on this run, ‘kay?” The ex-Marine is a little odd after too much time in Iraq, though if you keep him well supplied with porn, it takes the worst of the edge off.

  “She means you have to stroke the snake to stills of your boyfriend this time,” Clancy booms as his wide, soft shoulders fill the doorway. “And save the videos for special occasions.”

  “I’ll just lie back and think about your granddaughter,” Dalton says. “And I won’t even have to bust out the Jergens.”

  “You can lie back and fondly remember the sensation of having two tiny balls of your own.” Clancy scowls. “Because it’s not going to last long.”

  “They’re the cutest puppies you’ve had yet,” I tell Simon. “Now don’t let me keep you from grabbing the last top bunk.” I hand his phone back, ignoring the tremor that haunts his hands whenever he’s not working. I don’t know if it’s anxiety or something more serious, and I’ve never asked.

  Roadies are all a little broken: too addicted to the music and freedom of life on the pavement to ever fit in with normal nine-to-five society. But we get the job done and I figure we don’t owe the world any more than that.

  I turn and open my arms to Clancy, tilting my head with a smile. “Now what, does Dalton get all the love around here or did you save any for me?” It’s Day Five of the tour but we still haven’t had time to do more than shout insults and orders at each other when we pass backstage.

  The production manager’s thick arms crush me into the surprisingly firm curve of his pot belly. He smells like Irish Spring and Icy Hot, which means his shoulder’s acting up again. I bury my face in his shirt and hold on tight.

  “I got lucky with you taking over this tour, girl,” he rumbles. “Didn’t think I’d see you this year until Coachella.”

  A whoop announces the entrance of our lead singer and Clancy lets me go with a fatherly pat on the shoulder.

  “Just smell all that leather...” Jax’s tired face lifts and he grins at the long, cushy couches that line both sides of the narrow walkway.

  “Take a deep breath, son,” Clancy says. “Today’ll be the last time this place doesn’t smell like a greasy canister of farts.”

  “Oh, play up the glamour of life on the road, by all means.” I give Clancy a little push toward the bunks.

  Jera gives a low whistle, poking her head through the door. “Not bad for the budget option. Where’s the pool?”

  “Just past the tennis court but this side of the go-go dancers,” I say. This is the nicest bus I’ve ever toured on, but I refuse to gawk like a country mouse in front of the talent. I take an acoustic guitar case from her and fold up the couch seat to stow it. “Get any sleep last night?”

  “You kidding?” She grins and shimmies her shoulders a little. “After that show I don’t know if I could ever sleep again. A crowd that big is like an intravenous dose of happiness.”

  “I did practically have to drag you off the stage.” Jax sprawls back onto a couch and lets his eyes slump closed.

  “I think you mean throw me off so you could take another ten bows on your own.” Jera plops onto his stomach and ignores his grunt of protest as she begins to tickle him.

  I leave them to their roughhousing and go down the stairs, glancing around for Danny as I round the rear of the bus.

  Nothing.

  Yeah, how am I not surprised that the band member who never glances at the schedule is the one who shows up late? I was a little bit hoping he’d come in with the main herd of the crew so I could avoid the rest of the conversation we started outside the gym last night.

  Rifling through my purse, I find the two magnets I’m looking for and affix them to the bumper of the bus.

  “Declaring our political and religious allegiances?” Danny’s deep voice says from behind me.

  I whirl to find him giving an amused glance to my battered Jesus fish and yellow “Support the Troops” magnetic ribbon. “More like adding speeding ticket repellant.”

  He chuckles at that, sliding his hands into his pockets with his eyes on me instead of the magnets, like he’s in no hurry to go anywhere.

  “Come on, we should get loaded up.” I start edging toward the front of the bus before he can say anything or—God help my hormones—touch me. He slings an old Army duffel over his shoulder, picking up his bass guitar case with the other hand.

  Not only is Danny the last person in America without rolling luggage, he’s the only one who doesn’t have a carry-on. At least we’re not flying again for a while. He may look seductively free strolling the terminals unencumbered, but he won’t be so calm the first time the airline loses his checked bag and he has to play five shows in a row wearing the same sweaty boxers.

  I jog up the bus stairs, the whole backside of my body prickling with awareness at his presence so close behind me.

  “How many more people, Kate?” Reggie asks, his smoker’s voice rasping from the driver’s seat.

  I give my leather jacket a sharp tug as I turn my body away from Danny, but then I have to stop and think to give the driver the count that should have come automatically.

  “Two. If they don’t show up with your coffee, we will kick ‘em off and get new ones,” I promise him. When I glance back, Danny’s stowing his bass without me having to show him the trick of the couch compartment latch. “Come on,” I say to the three of them, cocking my head toward the rear of the bus. “Band meeting. Grab a bunk on the way.”

  I lead them past the sleeping area. Six bunks to a side, each enclosed with blackout curtains and equipped with a reading light and a small fold-down TV screen, courtesy of my customer loyalty card upgrade with the rental company. There’s a smaller lounge in the rear, couches wrapping around three sides of a little table backed by windows all the way around. I slide behind the table and pull down the eastern shades to block the glare of the rising sun.

  “I thought the three of us were still going with hotel rooms?” Jera asks in a low voice as she takes the spot next to me, fidgeting with the lid on
her water bottle.

  “You don’t have to be embarrassed about it,” I say. “None of us would be here if it weren’t for you, and if you want to get enough sleep to perform for all those paying ticket-holders, you’re not going to do it on a bus full of roadies. So yes, you and the other band members get a hotel room every night, and so do the driver and myself. Everybody else will sleep on the buses.”

  I try to look cool, like a room to myself and a shower every night is totally normal. Their previous tour manager must be way too used to red carpets and diamonds if he couldn’t make a budget that works with the kind of concert guarantees these guys are already pulling down. Once they gave me carte blanche, I had it balanced in twenty-four hours.

  “Extra privacy sounds good to me.” Jax collapses into the corner seat and stretches his arms out across the backs of the seats.

  “So what are the bunks for?” Danny asks as he slides into a spot across from me.

  “The bunks are because good old Bill thought you should pony up for airfare, so he didn’t bother to book the shows too close together. There are going to be plenty of overdrive days when we’ll need to sleep on the bus to make it to the next gig. So...” I clap my hands together. Jax winces and slides on his sunglasses. “You guys want the good news or the bad news?” I ask.

  “Good news,” Jax says. “I’m still about three aspirins away from being able to take bad news.”

  I reach into my purse and produce a bottle of painkillers, flipping it to him. “The good news is that as of this morning, your ticket sales are up, your website is hopping, and your YouTube hits have skyrocketed.”

  Jera pulls out her phone and clicks it on to take a peek. “Oh man...” She laughs. “There are fifteen people on Twitter right now just talking about my hair. Some guy just called me ‘the sexiest babe in rock and roll.’ This is insane!”