by Virna DePaul
“Maybe. Problem is, I’m not at my best. If I was, I would never have bailed when things got rough. I would never have left her to deal with shit on her own. But I did. And now I’m miserable,” I replied, downing my drink.
Liam sighed. “And I know I played a part in making you that way.”
I shrugged. “Yeah it sucked that we canceled tour dates. That me and the guys don’t even know what the future of the band is.” When Liam remained quiet, I got defensive, my tone snottier. “It’s not like you’ve worked hard to stay in touch. I asked before and you blew me off, which was fucking terrifying, man. It’s not just your livelihood on the line, you know?”
Abby frowned and narrowed her eyes at Liam. “You haven’t told him?”
“Told me what?” I asked.
“Look, bro, I was a real piece of shit for letting you hang out there for a week. I’m trying not to do that now. Abby and I talked. I want to be with her here in New York for a few months. I want to get past her audition. Support her. But then we’re going to finish the tour. In the meantime, I was hoping you guys wouldn’t mind going back to the studio. Here in New York. We could play with a few things. Grow our sound. I don’t want to go soft. But I like what strings have brought to the mix. I wouldn’t mind a few more ballads. That’s all that I’m saying.”
I grinned, my chest feeling light for the first time in days. We weren’t soft rock bullshit, but I liked the ballads too. There was that song I’d started and never shared before, those few, unfinished verses that I’d already sung to Nikki. She’d been upset and my song—raw as it had been—had calmed her and sent her into a peaceful sleep. It made me think something was there.
Enough that it would be worth finishing. Enough that it could be the most important bit of music that had ever flowed through me.
Dominique’s Song.
Yeah, I liked that idea a lot.
“So we’re getting back in the studio?”
He nodded and squeezed Abby’s hand. “I already talked to Corbin and Wes. They’re on board. If you are, we can record, then in a few months, begin the tour in Asia, then Europe.”
“I’m on board,” I said quickly. “It’s just, I have some ideas too…if you’re open to hearing them. I want to co-write. I also want to try singing lead on at least one song.”
Abby nodded. “You’re good at harmonizing. It’s more than time for you to try stepping out too. I mean, it’s your fourth album, go big or go home with experimenting, right?”
Liam studied me silently for a moment, then grinned and held out his hand. “I agree.”
I shook his hand, then we both laughed, stood, and hugged.
* * *
“So, do you want to tell me more about the mystery gal?” Liam asked later. After lunch, Abby had headed out to meet a friend and Liam and I had taken a walk and talked a bit more about the plans for the band.
“Her name is Nikki,” I reminded as we walked through the trees and past the various painters and artists in the park. “You know, as in Lorenz. We talked about that.”
“I know her name, dick, but I don’t know anything about her. Nothing except what’s been in the press. And I get there’s more to her than that if you’re this torn up about her.”
“That’s the problem,” I moaned. “I am torn up. I really care about her. But the things she does, man…it’s not just having fun in a club or even picking a few fights. She keeps having this weird urge to climb up on railings.”
“Railings?” he asked, quirking a brow at me.
“Yeah, I’m not kidding. I found her balancing on the Pont Neuf like it was a beam in a gym. Then she had this freak out and jumped onto a ledge of the Eiffel Tower. Liam, man, she slipped and almost fell. Technically, she did fall, but it was back onto the actual tower. If things had gone the other way, she’d have splatted all over everything. It keeps me up nights.”
“Shit. That is some heavy drama. Is she going to get help?”
“I suggested therapy to her but she blew it off.”
“Then there you go. You can’t save someone who won’t get help.”
“I know. That’s why she’s still there and I’m here,” I added, shoving my hands in my jeans pockets. “But I can’t help feeling like I let her down somehow, that I let both of us down. Maybe this was all a test.”
“A test for what?”
“For whether we were ever meant to be more than just fun together.”
“So what? Are you saying you love this girl?”
“Yeah,” I said, finally saying it out loud. “Or, at least, I think I’m falling in love with her.”
Liam nodded. “I understand. But you haven’t known her very long. Maybe you just got caught up in the drama. The white knight syndrome. Maybe when you’ve been back home for a while, you’ll forget all about her.”
“The way you forgot about Abby when she came back here?”
“Abby’s everything to me, Tucker.”
“Right now, I think I feel about Nikki the way you feel about Abby. I’ve been miserable. I’m just terrified when I’m with her she’s going to hurt herself. But she might do that anyway, whether I’m with her or not. And what if I can convince her to go to therapy? What if she just needed more time to get there? More support?”
Fuck, more love. Maybe she just needed to know that she was loved, that someone was going to stick by her while she got it together enough to seek help. And I’d kicked her in the teeth by leaving her just like everyone else in her life had.
“I let her down badly,” I said, “and I need to work on getting a flight back to Paris. I can’t just walk away from her, man. It’s wrong. It’s so fucking wrong.” Abruptly, I started jogging back in the direction of my hotel.
Liam ran with me. “You sure about this, Tucker?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m going to prove to Nik that there’s one person who will stand by her no matter what. Me.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nikki
After I left Tucker, I checked into another hotel room (I didn’t want Mom or Hermes tracking me down at Claude’s) and laid in bed for days, getting up only for the bare necessities of food and bathroom breaks. I was numb. I didn’t feel anything. It was like separating from Tucker had separated me from all emotion. At one point, however, a thought occurred to me and it was like a dam had burst. I realized I didn’t feel anything, and that meant I didn’t feel like balancing on balconies or bridges either.
Cue the hysterical laughter.
At least the pain of losing Tucker was good for one thing, I’d thought.
And then I’d started crying.
Now I was done. My guilt and self-loathing were eating away at me. Guilt that I’d worried Tucker so much. Self-loathing that I’d driven him away after only a week. That was a personal best for me. All behold the amazing freak that is Nikki Lorenz, she who can send men running in days. Give me time and I could probably lower my time to mere hours.
But this was all about the mourning and wallowing, and I knew I couldn’t do it forever. Eventually my mom and Hermes would come looking for my body. At least, I assumed they would.
But despite all evidence to the contrary, I wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel to that degree.
I got out of bed, creaky and stiff, completely like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz before his oil can. It was as if moving at all cost me everything. But I managed to drag myself to the bathroom and get to the sink. Standing before it, I reached down and splashed water on my face. It felt good, cool, and that at least centered me. My eyes were red and slightly swollen. I figured that was what almost an hour of crying did to you.
It wasn’t just Tucker I’d cried for. It was so many other things too. I wasn’t a good enough designer no matter what I did, and I wasn’t the right kind of daughter, not even close. So far, I’d lived up to my reputation as the family embarrassment and done nothing to live up to the promise of my early buzz and designs.
And, you know what?
It wasn’t all my mother’s fault.
I’d blamed my mom in so many ways since I was a teenager, for always being gone and then for never seeming to care. I was angry at her for always digging hardest at my designs and my efforts and most especially for blaming me for my father’s death. Maybe I was overdesigning and creating the extreme looks in part to spite her. Maybe with every bizarre piece of so-called art and every spiraling high heel, I was sticking it to my mother.
Except I was twenty-seven now, and it was time to get the fuck over it. Maybe we’d never be more than acquaintances. Maybe I’d have to endure her condescension and bitterness for the rest of my life, and those awful jabs that cut into me more than any knife could have, but I couldn’t keep blaming her for everything.
I’d made so many bad decisions all on my own, including climbing on balconies and bridges. And maybe it was the loss of him that made me hear Tucker’s words about getting help, but I finally heard them. I was going to call a counselor and at least try to get my head on straight.
Except for the battle scar on my calf, I was unmarred, but inside I was a mass of scars and hurt, of pulsating pain seeking to push everyone else away. But I already knew it didn’t always have to be this way, because Tucker had broken through my pain and made me feel good about myself. He’d believed in me. That proved I could do better, and I would do better.
I strode out of the bathroom and got dressed in my red dress because I hadn’t bothered to pick up any new clothes before checking in. As I slid it on, the garment felt different today, as if the dress was a costume. It was gorgeous. There was no doubt of that. It was worth every bit of the three thousand dollars I’d paid for it. But it felt like exactly what it was—dress up.
It was all about the scared little girl trying to exude the sexiness and the confidence she’d never really felt. I was surprised that Tucker had liked me in the look as much as he had. Couldn’t he see what a ruse it all was?
But things could no longer be just about Tucker.
He deserved far, far better than me. He didn’t need to be the fireman rushing in to save me every time I set my life on fire, which seemed to be every damn day with me. I wished we could be together because I really believed I was half-way in love with him. That maybe if I weren’t such a mess he could learn to love me back.
“You have to love yourself first, you dumbass,” I said out loud.
I giggled then. I had been a dumbass. I couldn’t get a guy to fix me, even if poor Tucker had tried and even if Hermes was still up for the job. I had to work on me, on liking myself. On figuring out who I really was, when I wasn’t trying to win the approval of others.
Starting with footwear.
It all led back to shoes, didn’t it?
There was no way I was putting on those ridiculous gladiator heels. It was crazy. I mean, no freaking wonder all the magazines and critics had panned my stuff. They were nuts and they were uncomfortable as hell. For the first time in years it was like I was actually seeing my designs for what they were—that giant middle finger to the fashion establishment, especially Anna Lorenz. But that wasn’t fun for anyone. It wasn’t something the rest of the fashion world could dig and, frankly, having worn them for a few years, they weren’t anything a normal woman could actually wear out to work or on a date.
I needed to go all the way back to the damn drawing board.
Shaking my head, I rummaged around the suite until I found my cell phone.
My show was in a few days, but I needed to get an extension as long as I could, until the last day of the two-week event. I had a plan, but I’d be working around the clock to pull it all off now.
“Hello, Hermes?”
“Thank God, Dominique! Where you have been? Are you alright? What were you thinking?”
“Nothing good,” I muttered. “But I’m fine,” I said, stopping him from getting into things more deeply. “I’m working through everything, but I do have something huge I need. I want my show moved to the last slot.”
“You know that’s highly unusual.”
“But not impossible.”
“Of course but if this is all so you can go on another bender with that rock star of yours, I’m not going to sign off on it.”
“We broke up, Hermes. This isn’t about him.”
Hermes perked up at that. “That was wise of you, Dominique.”
“It was the best thing for him, Hermes. But as for my show, I need a little more time, Hermes.”
“For what?”
“To grow up. I’m going to show the shoes I want to, the ones I was too scared to display before. If this is the only solo show I get in Paris, I’m going to be honest about my art. Will you help me?”
After only a slight hesitation, Hermes said, “I will.”
“Then let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nikki
“I don’t understand, mademoiselle,” Cristobal asked.
He was a chubby man with thinning grey hair and a distinguished mustache. He was also one of the best leather sewers in the industry. I might come up with designs, but he and his team were the ones who created my vision en masse. They’d worked for months on my line for my show, but now Hermes had pulled every string he could and had succeeded in moving my show to the last slot of the fashion event. I had to hope it would buy me enough time. Based on the bugged out eyes that Cristobal was giving me, maybe I was asking for the impossible.
Too bad cobblers’ elves weren’t real because I could really use some right now.
“No, you heard me right. I know it sounds impossible, but I’ve had a complete revelation about my line. If you can only get ten new designs ready with all your assistants, that’s fine. These are the ten that will be the cornerstone of my show.”
“But we’ve been working on dozens of designs for months,” he pointed out, as if we hadn’t been working on those lines together, cheek by jowl.
Maybe he thought I’d gone nuts. I couldn’t blame him, maybe I had. It wasn’t just unorthodox. What I was asking should be impossible, but succeeding in getting my show pushed out was a good sign. I had to change my life, and that meant pursuing what I’d once loved, designing shoes in a way that was right for me. And what better way to do that than putting it all out there for the critics, including my mom, to see. I was going to do the designs I actually loved, using years’ worth of sketches I had shoved into drawers for too long because I was afraid they wouldn’t fit with my brand.
“I think I can call in some extra help for the week. It will be horrendously costly, and we can’t get through more than eight.”
“I need all ten.”
Christobal bit his lower lip and frowned back at me. “I’ll get you ten but only because these designs are excellent and the best thing anyone’s brought me in ages. I’ve longed to make bold yet classic designs again. You’re not the only trendsetter out there who has made me sew things I hated.”
“Ouch,” I said, giggling a little and tossing my red hair over my shoulder. “I’ll try not to take offense at that.”
“You shouldn’t. Because I’m excited about your masterpieces here. I will do my best, Dominique. I’m honored you brought your Renaissance to me. In fact—”
My cell started blaring then, and I had to grab it fast out of my purse. I frowned apologetically at him. I had to check in case it was one of the millions of other assistants or vendors that I was working with for my show. Also, I’d promised a still extremely freaked out Hermes that I’d answer as soon as he called. He was still upset with me for what I’d pulled at the Eiffel Tower, and I could understand that. However, my heart started beating faster when I saw who was actually on the other end.
Tucker Benning.
He’d been back in New York for a few days. I knew that because I’d seen a photo of him in Central Park taken with his friend Liam on the internet. Seeing it, knowing that he was now thousands of miles away from me, had been a punch in the gut. I’d almost been laid low a
gain, but I’d pulled myself together.
But why was he calling me now?
To check in, probably.
Because Tucker Benning might be a cocky rock star, but he was also a sweet, caring man. It would be the right thing to do—call on crazy Nikki Lorenz and make sure she was doing okay. I was. Or at least I would be. And he needed to get on with his life.
I had to let him off the hook, so he could put my cray cray behind him.
Frowning apologetically at Cristobal, I held up my index finger. “I’m really sorry. Can you give me about five minutes? I just need to take this call. I’m truly sorry.”
I didn’t have the heart to screen out Tucker and focus on work entirely. I was terrified if I didn’t answer that he’d take my actions as a slight on him. Like I blamed him somehow when I don’t. I was finally taking full responsibility and I needed to keep doing it.
Cristobal nodded and started eyeing my designs more thoroughly. “Of course. You’re the client after all, mademoiselle.”
I nodded and hurried back to the entry hall and away from prying ears.
“Hey, uh, it’s me,” I said once I clicked on the line. I hoped he didn’t change his mind just hearing my voice and then hang up on me. “You did want to reach me, right? I’m not making you feel like this was all a mistake already?”
Tucker laughed sedately on the other end. It was a little bit more than a forced, polite laugh, but not by much. “Nik, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“Why?” I blurted, even as I closed my eyes and wanted to slam my forehead against a wall. I wasn’t being smooth in the least. God, how dense could a girl be. “I mean, I didn’t expect to hear from you. I never would have blamed you if you never called me again. Hell, I wouldn’t have called me again, not at all.”
“Look, let me talk. I have to get this out first,” he said, and his tone was kind and soft. “I was wrong to leave.”
