He had said that, and Hannah believed him with everything she had, but at the same time, she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Things had never gone how she planned them before, and she was worried that this would be another one of those times. “I know, I just think I’m going to be on edge until the last show of this tour.”
“It’s nerves, Han. You’ve never asked them for anything like this before; you’ve never gone against anything before. You’re nervous. It can’t help that this has been the biggest opening week of your career and it’s happening just as you’re planning to take time off.”
“How did that announcement go this week, by the way? I’ve kept myself away from anything having to do with it.”
She and Shell had decided to be pro-active and let the fans know that she had decided to take some time off after the end of this small tour. That announcement had ended up coming the day after the album drop, and it hadn’t affected sales, so she hoped for the best.
“Pretty supportive, but the same BS about you being pregnant and that’s why you only want to tour for eight weeks.”
“My gosh,” she sighed. “What is with people’s obsession with me being pregnant? I would love to actually get to enjoy my husband for a few months before we add a baby into the mix. If we add a baby into the mix this soon.” It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought of it. She did every time they made love. There was a part of her that wanted it more than anything, but there was also another part of her that knew it was way too soon. They needed time on their own, and they needed time to figure out the dynamic of their married relationship before they added another stressor to it.
“Can you imagine how cute a baby Reaper would be?” Shell sipped her coffee. “I mean, my cold-ass heart is melting at the thought.”
Hannah snickered, throwing a piece of fruit at her friend. “You do not have a cold heart, and to be honest I do imagine how cute a baby Reaper would be, but it’s not the time for it yet.”
“At least you know that fans will be all about it when it does happen, because according to tabloids you’ve already been pregnant five times.”
“Whatever, I gotta get ready for this radio interview,” she laughed, getting up from the booth in the bus. No matter how much she thought about it, she knew they weren’t ready, but possibly it was something she could talk to him about during her time off.
* * *
“Your wifey is number three on the all-genre Billboard,” Jared yelled to Garrett as he entered the recording studio later the next night.
“Oh shit, for real?” He ran over to the computer that Jared sat in front of, moving him out of the way to look for himself.
“For real. We’ve all been waiting for the chart to update, and it finally did.”
Garrett thought it was amazing the way the guys had taken to her, almost as excited for the things going on with her as he was. There had been times in their relationship as a group that none of them had liked someone’s girlfriend. It was important to him that they love his wife as much as they loved him. “That’s amazing for her.”
“It is.” Jared smiled over at his friend. “Congrats, dude. You got a good one.”
He knew that without a doubt, and he missed her something fierce. The two of them hadn’t been able to get hooked up on FaceTime or Skype this entire week, and he missed seeing her face. He knew that she was incredibly busy, and with him being in the studio at night, it made it even more difficult than normal. “I know, I wish I could see her.”
“Hopefully soon,” Jared told him quietly. He, of all of them, knew what kind of schedule Hannah was keeping, and it was back-breaking for the time she’d allowed the record company. “When was the last time you talked to her?”
“A few days ago, but I haven’t actually seen her in a week. This is the hard part,” he told his friend, turning his wedding ring around on his finger. FaceTime or Skype at least allowed him to see her, and they hadn’t even had time for that.
“If it wasn’t hard, it wouldn’t mean so much.”
Jared had him there. It did mean a lot because it wasn’t easy. He had never had to make such an effort to be with another woman. It wasn’t his normal MO, and maybe that was why he loved her so much, why it meant so much to him that he had her. Dwelling too much on it would make him sad, and that’s not where he wanted to go on this night. “When are we starting this damn session?” he asked, running his fingers through his hair. “I thought I was fuckin’ late.”
“You were,” Brad looked at him pointedly, “but none of us wanted to say anything about it.”
Garrett threw him a middle finger. “Where’s our engineer?”
The door opened as he finished asking the question, and an intern peeked his head in. “Your engineer for the night has called in. He’s got food poisoning. He said you could either come back tomorrow or you could try to do some stuff on your own, just don’t fuck up his stuff.”
When the door closed, the group looked at each other. “What are we gonna do?” Garrett asked, looking around the room. This didn’t hold the appeal that it normally did. “It’s been a while since we hit the neighborhood bar.”
They all looked at Jared. “I will totally be the DD,” he said, holding his hands up. “I’ve finally got my shit under control. Besides,” he clapped his hand on Garrett’s back. “I think my man here needs a night of debauchery.”
The thought held a sort of promise. He did need to blow off some steam. He was sick of being stuck in California while Hannah was wherever she was for the night, and he missed her. He needed the feeling of peace that she gave him. Without that peace, Reaper had to come out, and to be honest, he wasn’t sure how that was going to fly. “Promise me,” he grabbed Jared’s arm as the group made their way out of the studio. “Promise me that you won’t let me get fuckin’ stupid. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, and I miss Hannah like I can’t tell you.”
Jared knew what that meant for his friend. He needed to blow off steam, and in the past, that had either meant he’d beat somebody with his fists until he was done or he’d find a groupie and fuck her until that peaceful feeling returned. “I promise.”
* * *
The local bar was just as Garrett remembered—a dive with cheap drinks. He and the guys had a seat at the booth they had sat at since they’d started coming here when each of them had turned twenty-one. Their favorite waitress, Lisa, came over and already had a tray full of drinks and a bottle of Coke for Jared.
“Do you want me to keep them coming?” she asked.
Garrett tipped his head back, the shot burning as it went down his throat and into his belly. He chased it with a large drink of beer. “Fuck yes, keep it coming until they cut my ass off,” he told her, holding up his credit card to her.
“Where’s that cute wife of yours?” she asked, watching him with a critical eye. She’d known him for a long time.
“Somewhere on the other side of the United States tonight.”
“You better be careful,” she warned him.
“I’m always careful,” he assured her, flashing the smile at her that always got him what he wanted from other people.
“I’m serious, Garrett. This place is bursting with hot girls in tight-ass skirts. You be careful.”
“Nobody is hotter than my wife.” He waved her off.
She glanced at him, this time her eyes soft. “I know you miss her, but remember that I’ve been doing this a long time, and sometimes a warm body means much more than the memory of someone. You boys watch him. There’s a group of women here that were hoping you guys would be in tonight.”
Jared looked up at her. “He’s not going to get out of line, I got it.”
She seemed pacified by Jared’s assurances and did what the group asked.
Over the course of the night, Garrett lost count of how many shots he’d taken. He texted Hannah at different intervals, telling her how much he missed her, the things he wanted to do to her when he had her alone. Checking his phone,
he realized that she was on stage and she wouldn’t be seeing her messages for hours. Maybe by that time, he would be sober again and he could have a normal conversation with her. Slamming back another shot, uncharacteristic tears filled his eyes. He didn’t know how to deal with this, the feelings that came with her being gone. The emptiness he felt when she wasn’t around. It had become increasingly worse, and he didn’t know what to do. Never before had his life been so wrapped up in another person that he didn’t know how to pull himself out of it. Sometimes he missed her so much it hurt to breathe.
“I gotta take a piss,” Jared told him. “Don’t get up from here, you’re shitfaced as fuck.”
Garret nodded, even though he wasn’t sure he understood what Jared said to him. He looked across the table and saw that, at some point, Brad had invited Stacey and they were sitting close to each other, Brad whispering in her ear. “Dude, back off my sister,” he said, but the words were slurred, and he wasn’t sure that they could understand him because he could barely understand the words he’d meant to say.
Stacey rolled her eyes. “You’re drunk, bro. It’s fine.”
Before he could answer, a dark-haired girl slid into the booth next to him, and for a moment, he thought it was Hannah. Then she turned so that she could see his face, and he knew without a doubt that this wasn’t his wife.
“Take a picture with me?” she asked, her smile bright.
“Sure,” he slurred, trying to hold his eyes open. Now all he wanted to do was go home and sleep it off. He turned so that he could be in the picture with her, and the girl settled herself right on his lap. That didn’t sit well with him. “You need to move,” he told her, putting his hands on her hips, trying to push her off.
“Just smile.”
In the end, all he wanted to do was get it over with, so he did what she told him, barely able to hold his head up.
Chapter Thirteen
* * *
Hannah felt her stomach drop as she opened the link that had been sent to her. Did she really want to look at this? When she had called Garrett the night before, he had been ranting and raving about some woman who’d sat on his lap. He was drunk, so at first, she’d thought it was cute. He’d admitted to getting drunk because he’d missed her, that he’d needed some way to deal with the loneliness. That had torn her apart, had made her feel like crap because she knew how much she missed him. When he admitted things like that, it gutted her. She wished in those moments that she’d never told the record company that she would do this final tour. Seven more weeks, that’s all they had to get through, but it felt like a million years.
“Have you seen it?” Shell asked as she came back to Hannah’s bedroom and had a seat on the bed.
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure that I want to. Have you?”
“Yeah, and I’ve talked to Jared.”
Jared had been the one person sober last night, so she was very interested to hear what he had to say. “And?”
“He went to the bathroom for five minutes. He figures those girls were waiting for him to leave because he’d been sitting on the outside of the booth so that nobody could get to Garrett. As soon as he was gone, they must have moved in. Jared swears that Garrett could hardly hold his head up. He just kept talking about how much he missed you and how much he wanted to see you because it’d been so long since you’d even Skyped or FaceTimed.”
That was true, and Hannah felt shame burn her face hot. They had become comfortable with just texting one another and the occasional phone call. Funny how quickly that had happened, that they’d become complacent. That was not what she had wanted at all. That wasn’t how she wanted her marriage to work. Not how she wanted to make things easy when the staying together part became harder.
“Do you need to see this picture?” Shell asked her. “Will it change anything?”
“No, it won’t change anything, but I do need to see it. I need to see and know that he couldn’t keep his head up, that this person preyed on him because he was drunk. It would make me feel better. I know that’s weak, but after Ashton, there are just certain things that I need to see with my own two eyes.”
“Okay, but I’m warning you, I’m not even married to the guy and I want to kick her ass.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “Never in all my almost-twenty-five years have I wanted to kick someone’s behind, I highly doubt I’m gonna start now.” She opened the link and her eyes narrowed.
“I’m watching you, and it looks like you’re irritated,” Shell provided commentary.
“It’s because I am,” she whispered as she took a good look at the picture. She wouldn’t say it out loud, but Hannah did want to kick this girl’s ass.
“Irritated at him or the skank ho throwing herself at him.”
“The skank ho,” she breathed out. “He really couldn’t hold his head up,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
Anyone who knew Garrett and looked at this picture could tell that he wasn’t putting the moves on this girl. His lips were nowhere near her neck, his forehead rested on her shoulder. There was a series of pictures, and in the first one he looked irritated, while in the next one he was slumped over the table with his head in his hands.
“I can’t believe the media is running with this,” Shell told her. “If this was a woman, they’d all be talking about how he took advantage of her and blah, blah, blah.”
Hannah had to agree. “I wonder if he’s seen these yet.”
“I would say he’s in the process of sleeping off one of the worst hangovers of his life. This doesn’t bother you at all?”
“I won’t lie; I don’t like seeing another woman perched on my husband’s lap like that. I really don’t like that his mouth is near her neck either, because that’s my spot. I have to be realistic about this. I can’t let the paparazzi win; they do things like this to get a rise out of us. I’m sure that’s what this skank ho wanted too. While it doesn’t feel good, and it makes me more than a little sick to my stomach, I’m not giving them what they want.” Hannah’s voice was thick with emotion. “What they want is to break us up, and that’s not going to happen.”
Shell couldn’t believe the person talking to her was her best friend. At one time, this picture would have ruined her life and her self-esteem. She wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on anything besides the picture. Then the questioning would start. Was this the first time he’d done something like this? Was he doing this behind her back? How many women had he had? In all honestly, Shell had prepared herself for the worst and was pleasantly surprised at what she was getting from her best friend. “I’m glad this isn’t a huge deal.”
“I know what you were probably expecting, but I am working very hard on not letting these jerks rule my life. I mean, look what I was going to do a few months ago—send myself back into that downward spiral of an eating disorder. I’m trying to be my own person and not let other people’s issues affect me. I’m not gonna lie though, I would like to rip this chick’s brown extensions out of her head.”
Shell laughed. “Me too. I mean, he’s married. Who asks a married man to pose like that, and when he’s obviously that intoxicated? She gives women a bad name.”
“I wish I had time to sit here and google her and see what all I could find out about her, but I have another flippin’ radio interview,” Hannah sighed.
“When they ask you about this, don’t go off,” Shell warned.
“I’ll do my best.” And that was all she could promise.
* * *
Garrett felt like his head was being pounded on by a herd of wild horses. Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the curtains of his bedroom, and he hugged the pillow tighter to his body. It was the one that Hannah always used and tended to smell like her for weeks after she was gone. Hannah, his eyes popped open as he heard more pounding. It wasn’t just his head, someone was beating down his front door. Getting up on wobbly legs, he saw that he was still wearing his clothes from the night before. It wa
s foggy, but he knew he had gone to the bar with the band. He was missing his wife, and everything after that was a blur.
“I’m coming,” he whispered, not able to make his voice rise any louder at the pounding on the door. Finally he got there, swinging it open. Shit. It was his mom. What the fuck had he done?
“Garrett, you look like hell.”
She didn’t pull any punches as she swept by him, into his house.
“Come on in,” he mumbled, putting his hand to his forehead. It hurt like a motherfucker, and he had the worst case of cottonmouth he’d ever had in his life.
“What’s going on with you?” Marie did a once-over, curling her lip in disgust that he was still wearing his clothes from the night before. “I figured when you got married you would be done with all of this.”
His brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, and he needed her to take a small step back in her judgment of him, but he didn’t know how to say it. “I went out and got drunk last night because I miss my wife and we as a band had nothing better to do, that’s it.” He always thought he got his temper from his dad, until he pushed his mom to the breaking point. It wasn’t often that it happened, but when it did, he was actually scared of her.
“No, son, that’s not it.” She spit the word out. “Do you even remember what happened last night?”
Suddenly he got a bad feeling. Had he done something that he didn’t remember? He knew without a shadow of a doubt there had not been another woman in his bed, for that he could be thankful, but what had happened before he got home? “I went to the bar and started doing shots, after that it’s kind of fuzzy,” he admitted as he had a seat on his couch and tilted his head back against the cushions.
She watched him with what could only be described as an evil eye, pulling her smart phone from her purse and pressing a few buttons. When she had what she obviously wanted to show him, she whipped it around in his face. “This looks like a hell of a lot more than doing shots.”
The Price of Love (Rockin' Country Book 2) Page 8
