by Lisa Suzanne
“It’s stupid. Get out of my room.”
“Nope.”
She looks a little surprised when I start scooting up the bed toward her. I lay my head on the pillow beside her and turn my body so it’s facing hers. “Remember that bus ride from Denver to Dallas?” I ask, in hopes that reminding her of our very beginning might diminish some of her hatred for me.
She settles back onto her pillow then turns her body to face me. It’s the same position we were in for that bus ride, back when I thought I’d come over to her bus for sex but ended up talking on a much deeper level with a woman than I’ve ever gotten before. She knows things about me almost no one else does because of our bus ride that night.
She reminded me immediately of Dani when I first spotted her at our meeting in LA, but lying on her bed beside her was the first time I really thought it might be her. She bears quite the physical resemblance to Dani, though Maci is harder and more athletic with sharper features. Dani was softer. Willowy. Like a feather in the breeze.
I’m sure I’m right and Maci Dane is Dani Mayne. I just can’t put together why she won’t admit it—or why she left in the middle of her sophomore year, why she vanished without a trace only to show back up in my life nearly twenty years later.
My biggest pet peeve is wasted time, and it all stems back to her. Maybe it wouldn’t have been anything, or maybe it would’ve been everything. I always thought I’d never know, but I’m not sure that’s true anymore.
“How could I forget?” she asks softly. I wonder for a split second if she’s talking about our ride from Dallas to Denver or if she ever thinks about that secret, stolen kiss in a high school hallway.
Or it’s possible I’m just totally fucked in the head and she’s not who I think she is. There are just too many coincidences for me to be wrong on this.
“I don’t understand how you can go from so hot to so cold so fast,” I say. I’m playing with fire by asking for a real talk here, but I can’t think of anything I have to lose by beating around the bush.
“I’m a girl. We’re moody creatures.”
“Shitty excuse,” I mutter, and she laughs. Actually laughs, and the tinkling sound is pure music.
“Do you still want to write a song together?” I ask.
“I honestly haven’t thought much about it.” She looks away from me, and her voice is far away when she speaks. “There’s just some stuff going on.”
“What’s going on?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing. Yeah, sure, we can write.”
“Really?” I know my face just lit up like a kid on Christmas morning, but she’s giving me a gift. She’s letting me back in, giving me access to her again.
“Calm yourself. It’s just writing, Ethan. We don’t even need to be in the same room to do that.”
“But we will be.”
She lifts a shoulder. “Maybe.”
“I’m sorry about what happened at Larry’s club.”
She eyes me for a long beat before she responds like she’s weighing her next sentence. “The toxicology report of the guy who killed my mom came back with cocaine in his system, not just alcohol.”
My chest tightens. I didn’t realize that just being my jackass self that night, being a selfish pig who thought he could get away with shit, might actually be putting a huge emotional burden on the girl who came with me. I was showboating, being a dick as usual. Being the guy who thought no woman could tell him what to do or how to act or what drugs not to take. I never paused to think of how it might affect someone other than me.
“Jesus,” I finally say, scrubbing a hand down my jaw and rubbing at the tightness in my chest. “I’m so sorry, Mace. I had no idea.”
“How could you have? I don’t blame you for that. The thing that pissed me off was that you did it even after I tried to tell you not to.”
“I get it. I was a dick.”
“A total dick.”
I hold up both hands in surrender. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“I don’t know if there should be an again for us, Ethan.”
“What about three strikes before I’m out?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “This isn’t baseball.”
“But we sure hit a few homeruns together, didn’t we?” My voice is more desperate than I intend for it to be, but I want to remind her of the explosive intimacy we share.
“Yeah,” she says. “We did. But things are different now.”
“Because I did a little coke?”
She shakes her head and sighs. “There’s a lot more to it. It’s not just the coke, though that’s part of it.”
“Then what else is it?” My eyes narrow on her fake blue ones. I want to see the real brown ones underneath, the same eyes of the girl I fell for so long ago.
She doesn’t answer right away.
“Is it because I said you’re someone else?” I ask. “Because if it is, I take it back. I take back everything bad I ever said or did to you.”
She purses her lips and shakes her head. “You can’t just take it back and it’s all scrubbed clean. That’s not how it works. The scars are still there. Some things are permanent, you know?”
I nod. “Yeah, I know.” I can only think of one thing to say, and I already know what her response will be. “It is what it is, right?”
She lifts a shoulder. “Yeah. And it isn’t what it isn’t. And this,” she says, motioning between us, “just isn’t.”
“Isn’t?”
She shakes her head and closes her eyes. “Isn’t,” she whispers. “I need you to go now.”
I don’t say anything in response, but I do give her what she wants. If she needs to cry in peace, I’ll let her. I’d rather hold her, let her tears wet my shirt, wipe them with my fingertips and kiss them away with my lips, but she doesn’t want that.
What happened here tonight was a breakthrough, though. We’ll still write our song, and I’m not giving up on us. I can’t.
As much as she thinks we fall under the “isn’t” column, I’m sure we’re meant to be an “is.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MACI
“How are you feeling?” Griffin asks once Ethan leaves.
I feel like a weight is pressing down on my chest, like it’s too heavy of a load for one person to bear alone. I want to cry but the well feels dry. I want to heave but my stomach’s empty. I want to feel something other than sadness, want to figure out how to make things right...but I don’t know how.
“Fine,” I mutter instead of saying all those things. I stare out the window into the darkness of night while Griff moves around my room, tidying up. He folds a sweatshirt I tossed on the floor and picks up some empty water bottles.
It would be so easy to just admit the truth to Ethan, wouldn’t it?
But something stopped me dead in my tracks during my conversation with him.
Every time I looked at him, every time his blue eyes met mine, the weight of what we were doing pressed heavier and heavier.
I need to tell him I’m pregnant. I need to tell him I’m Dani. I need to tell him he broke my heart. I need to tell him I blame him for the downward spiral my life took.
I know what I need to do.
But I can’t.
A tiny thought edges its way in.
If you’re blaming him for the downward spiral, couldn’t you technically blame him for the successes, too?
If I hadn’t gone to Michigan, I might not have had the inspiration to form a band as I wrote songs I wanted to perform for audiences everywhere. I might not have met Kai, who tried to teach me forgiveness. I might not have taken the job writing jingles, and I might not have gotten my first big break when I signed with a vanity label, the very label that opened doors for me and eventually pushed me into the opening act for Vail.
I might not be here on this bus, pregnant with Ethan’s child.
It may not be what I planned for, yet it’s where I’m at. And at the same time, I’m
scared of the consequences that’ll come from getting so close to the end game. I’m terrified the wounds that turned into scars will rip open again if I allow myself to get close to him.
Still, the innocent life just starting to grow deserves more than I can give her alone—she deserves to know her father.
And Ethan deserves to know her, too.
I hate being the gatekeeper of all this information. It’ll kill so many different pieces of him, and for as much as I like to think I’m the fierce lioness who came here simply to take Ethan Fuller down, I’m not. I’m weak. I care. I care so much—too much. I don’t want to hurt him anymore, yet telling him the truth will do the very thing I came here to do...the very thing I’m no longer prepared to do.
It’ll kill him anyway when I tell him the real motivation behind why I’m here.
I’m not prepared to do that, but I also can’t move forward to a future with him and this baby with so many lies and secrets standing between us.
I’ll do it when the time’s right. I’ll do it when I’m ready.
That time just isn’t right now.
“You ready to go on stage in a couple hours?” Griffin asks, snapping me out of my thoughts. He sits on the edge of my bed.
I lift a shoulder. “Sort of have to be, don’t I?”
I think about telling him the truth, too. He already knows a little about the history between Ethan and me. I know I could trust him. Maybe he could help me sort through the mess I’ve made of my life.
Ethan needs to hear it first. He deserves to hear it first, before Griff.
“You don’t have to do anything except pay taxes and die,” Griff says.
I roll my eyes. “Okay, Dad.” It does sound like something my dad would’ve said—back when I used to talk to him.
It’s that very moment that it hits me for the first time. My dad is going to be a grandfather, and I haven’t spoken to him in fifteen years. Is this the type of thing a long-lost daughter calls to tell her father about?
It’s yet another unanswered question to add to my list of who-the-fuck-knows.
I toss the comforter off my legs. “I won’t cancel on Vail. I won’t do it to Mark.”
“Ethan?” he asks softly.
I shake my head. “I’m a professional. Despite whatever is going on between us, and I’m still unclear as to what that is, I won’t duck out on them. I’ll barf in a bucket backstage between songs if I have to, but I won’t bail on Vail.”
Griff pulls an outfit from my wardrobe cart and shows it to me. I nod as he chuckles at my rhyme. “Whatever you say, boss.”
I roll my eyes. “You know I hate when you call me that.”
He winks at me on his way out the door. “That’s why I do it.”
I wish for the millionth time on this tour that I had feelings for him. As much as he teases me, he takes care of me, and he never makes me hurt quite the way Ethan does.
Even as I think it, though, I realize that’s what sets it apart with Ethan. Because, after all, the ones who we love the most wield the strongest power to hurt us.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ETHAN
I skipped the bourbon after we played Boston Garden and went straight to my bus for bus call at midnight. We traveled overnight and I had to get up after only a couple hours of rest for this stupid in-studio interview Penny scheduled. I sleep in the car on the way to the studio, and Chuck hands me a cup of coffee that used to be hot but now has turned freezing when he wakes me as we arrive.
My head pounds from a lack of sleep. I wipe the fatigue from my eyes and try to figure out how the fuck I’m going to wake up enough to do this interview. I’ve never been much of a morning person, and my career choice only solidified that. On top of the fact that I have late nights, I require a solid eight hours of sleep each night. More is preferable. If I don’t get it, my creativity suffers. As does my congeniality. As do the people around me, I suppose, but Chuck’s a trooper.
Chuck looks out the window. “There’s a line of women standing by the doors we need to go in. You want me to clear the area?”
“It’s fine,” I mutter.
In the past, I’ve been known to pick through the line of women for the hottest one, let her accompany me into the interview, and then fuck her in the back of my waiting car while Chuck stands guard outside.
But something’s different now, and I think it has a lot to do with the opening act on this tour.
I pull on a ball cap as I usually do when I get out of a car. Chuck gets out and the first peal of excited screaming reaches my ears, only serving to make the pounding in my head worse. Chuck helps me out, following close behind me as we move toward the doors. Some caution tape and a single security guard hold back the girls. I flash my cockiest grin at them. There’s twenty or thirty out there, some yelling my name and others taking video or pictures with their phones—images that aren’t going to turn out since it’s still fucking dark outside.
It’s too early to be up doing this shit, but for my band’s sake, I slap on a smile, stop in front of the women, and give a little wave. “Morning, ladies,” I say, and one of them fans herself like she’s about to faint.
I head inside after that, and I wonder how many will still be out here when the interview’s over. I wonder how many of them think they’ll be the one who I usher back to my car, who I take backstage, who I fuck in a quiet alley.
None. The correct answer is not a single one of them, because not a single one of them is Maci.
Some studio exec nervously introduces himself once we’re inside. I forget his name the second he says it because it’s meaningless in the grand scheme of things. It’s dark in the lobby, illuminated only by one panel of emergency fluorescent lighting—the perfect amount of light to find a dark corner if I was so inclined.
The building isn’t even officially open for business yet. Just the radio station morning crew plus this exec are here. He leads us to the elevator, which we ride up to the fourth floor. We follow him through a series of corridors and finally end up just outside a small studio.
The exec chatters away about things the deejays will ask me, and I have to admit I’m not paying him a single bit of attention. I do, however, pick up on his final words. “We’ve got a staff photographer here to take some stills and candid shots during your interview.”
I twist my ballcap around on my head. “Warning would’ve been nice, but we’ll make it work.” It’s a dick thing to say, but I look like I just rolled out of bed.
Because I did.
I don’t say that last part to the nervous executive, obviously. Instead, I look into the studio. It’s a pair of deejays, one male and one female. The girl makes eye contact with me, and then my eyes automatically fall down her body. She’s hot-ish, and my mind goes where it always does: sex. But then a flash of Maci’s face pulls me out of it. I never thought one woman could hold so goddamn much power over me.
I don’t like it.
The dude deejay waves me in, and Chuck stays outside talking to the exec. “Ethan, nice to meet you,” he says, standing and shaking my hand. “I’m John and this is Jackie.” He nods to his counterpart, the chick I was just checking out.
“Hi John and Jackie,” I say. I clear my throat so it’s radio-ready instead of groggy like I just woke up.
“Jackie will run a promo introducing you in forty-five seconds. Then we’ll run a set of commercials and play a Vail song before our interview. It’ll take about ten minutes. We’re on a seven-second delay, but we always request our guests try to avoid cursing so we don’t have to use it.”
I nod. “I’ll do my best.”
“Any questions?” he asks.
I look over at Jackie. Her eyes sweep over me, and a few weeks ago, I’d have taken her right in this little studio in front of John.
Maci makes me want to do better, I guess, and as Jackie narrows her eyes at me, it’s the first time I’ve allowed that realization to sink in.
I shake my head at John, who han
ds me a headset and nods to an open stool in front of a microphone.
“You’re listening to John and Jackie in the morning,” Jackie says into her microphone. “Today we have Vail’s resident bad boy drummer Ethan Fuller in the studio. Welcome, Ethan.”
“Good morning,” I say, my voice coming out huskier than I intend it to.
“We’ll be back with more from Ethan in just a few minutes.” She presses a button and pulls off her headset, and then she twirls some of her long, dark hair between her fingers as she looks at me with wide, innocent brown eyes.
Girls with long, dark hair do things to me. Bad things, wicked things. And brown eyes? They kill me. They remind me of the girl who resides on the bus next to mine who has blue eyes and shorter, blonder hair now. The girl who won’t admit the motherfucking truth.
I glance away from Jackie’s scrutinizing gaze and pull my phone out of my pocket. I take a second to focus on deleting some emails, and then John gives me the one-minute warning signal.
That one minute feels like forever as Jackie’s probing eyes drill into me. It’s teetering on the verge of uncomfortable. About ten seconds before we go live, Jackie says quietly to me—so quietly I don’t even think John hears it, “You wanna come to my office with me after the interview?”
I’m surprised she’s as forward as she is—not because I haven’t had similar invitations before, but because she’s a professional and we’re in her workplace.
I’m not used to denying women what they want. I hate that sad look of disappointment, the one that tears at my guts like I did something wrong.
But if it’s wrong, why does telling her no feel like the right thing to do?
I give her the smile I know always works on women. “Wish I could, babe, but I’ve got somewhere to be.”
Her face falls, and as bad as I feel, I know it’s the right thing to do.
“You’re listening to John and Jackie in the morning,” John says, and I wonder how many times in one day these two say that. “Let’s welcome Vail drummer Ethan Fuller to the program.”
“Good morning, Ethan,” Jackie says.
