Let Me Be the One

by Christa Maurice

  “I trust you.”

  “Un-fucking-believable. Like I’m going to run off with a married man.” Like Brian. Suzi blinked at her reflection. She did want to run off with a married man. Logan just had the wrong one.

  “I turned around and saw him with his arm around you, kissing you—”

  “On the forehead?”

  “I couldn’t see that. I just—it looked like—” Logan ran his hands through his hair. “I’ve been having these really awful nightmares.”

  “About what?” She glanced at him in the mirror. He was blushing.

  Logan closed his eyes. “I love you, Suzi. I keep having these dreams of you and Jason together, and it’s making me crazy. The idea that you might… That I could lose you.”

  Suzi turned. Brian was right. Jason was making Logan question himself, and in questioning, he’d started to wonder why she was with him. “You tried to deck Jason Callisto.”

  “I know.”

  She set down the washcloth and put her arms around him. Logan was so afraid of losing her, he was willing to ruin his career. No one had ever loved her that much. Her heart twisted. She had never loved anyone this much, either. Why had she ever thought she was falling for Brian? “Logan, you have to trust me. I’m not going to leave you for another man. I love you and want to be with you.”

  “Unless someone better comes along.”

  “No.” She stroked his cheek. “There’s no one better.” Rising up on her toes, she kissed him. Instantly, he relaxed, opening her mouth and bending her back.

  “Suzi,” he murmured, kissing her throat. “God, I love you. I don’t even remember what it was like to be without you. I can’t live without you. I’m so sorry.”

  “You were aiming for Jason. You should apologize to him.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  Suzi brushed her fingers through his hair. “He’s trying to help you get better. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Logan stared at her, uncertainty clear in his eyes.

  Suzi put her finger over his lips. “Bayonet Ball sold eight million copies and had five hit singles. Lucky Charmer sold six and a half million copies and had four hit singles. He knows how to do that. And even if he can’t pull it off for you, there’s legions of Touchstone fans who are going to say, ‘Jason Callisto produced this. I need to hear it.’ It’s going to give you so much exposure.”

  “It doesn’t really work like that,” Logan muttered.

  “I was a consumer for a long time before I became a creator. Trust me, it does. You’re getting Jason’s seal of approval. You need to learn everything you can from him while you have the chance, and you can’t muck it up by being defensive.”

  “You’re so smart. How did I get anywhere without you?” He nuzzled her cheek.

  “Sheer determination. Now, Jason’s standing at the door.” She nodded toward the door. Jason, Suzi, and Greg still peered through the window.

  Logan allowed her to pull him to the door and open it. When she turned to prompt him, he clenched his teeth. She smiled, and his expression softened.

  “Everything okay?” Cassie asked.

  “Yeah, um, Jason, sorry about that before. I thought I saw something—y’know...” Logan held out his hand.

  “S’all right. I understand. I wouldn’t want anyone messing with my wife.” Jason shook his hand.

  The moment the one pump handshake finished, Logan wrapped his arm around Suzi’s shoulders. His grip was tight and reassuring. Suzi laced her fingers through his and leaned her cheek on his shoulder. He did love her. Enough to fight for her. That was precious.

  Chapter 10

  Present

  Wally parked the rental truck in the drive. “Are you sure about this? I can move your stuff out for you.”

  Suzi stared at the house. No, she wasn’t sure, but she needed it. She had to get it together and start living something that resembled an adult life. Even if it was an adult life that included roadies willing to move stuff for her.

  Every window was sealed against the August heat, and there was no central air. The house was going to be an oven. The grass was long and straggly, and the city had nailed a threatening note to the porch.

  “Give me a minute in case Logan is in there.”

  “I’m not giving you more than a minute. He’s in there,” Wally told her. Wally had been trying to dispel her hope that she could do this without confrontation since he’d picked her up at the airport. She wasn’t exactly sure when he’d gone from being a Savitar man to being hers, but she appreciated it.

  She forced herself out of the car and up the steps to the back door. The screen door and the inside door were closed. Very bad signs. She braced herself before opening them. Hot, fetid air rolled over her. Shaking her head, she backed down a step to let the first blast pass before stepping inside. She left the back door standing open as she walked into the kitchen. The counter was littered with empty liquor bottles, moldy plates, and crusty baking dishes. A couple of the pieces belonged to neighbors or his mom. They had tried to feed him, but most of it was uneaten and alive with mold. No bugs at least, but then maybe the house was shut up too tight for anything to get in.

  She walked around the first floor gathering bottles and opening windows. Most of the food had stayed in the kitchen. All she found were liquor bottles. Lots of them. When Wally came in, she asked him in a whisper to put all the bottles into the recycling bin while she scraped the food into the trash. As he did that, she took the bag outside before putting the dishes into hot water to soak.

  Wally had set to work putting fans in the windows by the time she finished. Already, the smell was clearing. “I’ll be down here with an ear open.”

  Suzi nodded and started up the stairs. Sweat ran down her face, stinging her eyes. Another large collection of bottles crowded her office door, but the office appeared untouched. A coating of dust lay on everything. Her carefully tended African violet had shriveled on the sill. Outside the bedroom door, she chickened out. Instead, she went up to the attic, opened those windows, and put in a fan to draw out the worst of the heat. Moving back to the second floor, she started opening windows, not sure if the heat was already dissipating or if she was just getting used to it. Her stomach clenched as she opened the last window in the guest room. The only room left was their bedroom. Anything could be in there. Piles of dirty clothes. Logan. Logan’s dead body. Another woman.

  No. No one else would have allowed the house to get this hot and this smelly. Any other human would have at least opened windows and gotten the rotting food out of the kitchen. Not even the most hardcore and desperate groupie would have allowed it to go this far. And if there was another woman, the neighbors and his mom wouldn’t be feeding him.

  The smell wasn’t bad enough for Logan’s dead body to be up there, either. According to her research, dead bodies had a repellant, frightening stink to them, and nothing like that emanated from the bedroom. Poor hygiene, yes, death, no.

  She eased open the door and peered around it. The forest green carpet was buried under cast-off clothing as if he’d intentionally hidden the floor. The matching drapes were drawn against the sun, plunging the room into darkness. After he bought the house, they’d spent months decorating. Logan had loved picking out colors and finding just the right furniture. While they worked at the house, he’d kept saying he wanted this to be the place they grew old in together. For some reason, she’d bought the story. The filmy curtains around the bed were drawn, making it easier to spend time opening windows and putting off the inevitable.

  Then she walked to the bed. Taking a deep breath, she pushed back the curtain. Logan lay in the middle, twisted up in the sheets with only an empty Jack Daniels bottle to accompany him. His hair was greasy and tangled. He had about two inches of beard that was also matted. Suzi didn’t like to think what with. His ribs poked out like a xylophone. He reeked like he hadn’t seen the inside of a shower since she left. She leaned over th
e bed, grazing his jaw with her fingers.

  His eyes snapped open, and he grabbed her wrist, pulling her forward. She squealed and jerked backward.

  “Suzi?” he whimpered.

  “Y-yes.” She shuddered. His eyes had always been dark, but now they were black and dangerous. His grip on her wrist was so tight she could feel the bones grinding together. “Logan, you’re hurting me.”

  Staring down at his hand around her wrist, he blinked, frowning. “You’re really here.” He loosened his grip, but didn’t let her go. “Are you coming home?”

  “What’s happened to you?” She knelt on the bed and touched his cheek.

  “I can’t live without you Suzi. I need you to come home.”

  “Logan, please let me go.”

  “I don’t want to live without you.” He released her. “Go away so I can die faster.”

  “No. No, it’s not fair.” Suzi pulled her wrist against her chest, rubbing it. “If you give up, I can’t ever come home.” She scuttled backward and fell off the side of the bed, banging her head on the wall.

  “I can’t live without you.” Logan mumbled into the mattress.

  “And I can’t live like this.” She crawled away from the bed. Her gut hurt as if she’d been punched. On her hands and knees in the middle of the room, she pressed her cheek against the carpet, remembering the day they chose it. The rich, beautiful shade to contrast with the pale yellow walls. The dark wood of the bed frame with the bright white, filmy curtains around it like a dream. Right now, she wanted nothing better than to disappear into that fantasy.

  “Suzi?” Logan touched her shoulder. “Suzi, do you want to come home?”

  “Of course I want to come home. Don’t be an idiot.” She sobbed. “This is my home.”

  “Then come home. Now. Please. I need you.” He stroked his hand down her arm. The touch was agonizing. “I can’t.”

  “But why? This is where you want to be, isn’t it?”

  “You gave up. You disappeared into a bottle, and you left me alone out here.”

  “You left me,” Logan said.

  “I’m here now. I thought— I hoped—” She pulled herself into a tighter ball. “I’m so tired, Logan.”

  “You look tired, sugar. Why don’t you come to bed and rest? Let me take care of you.” He pushed up her T-shirt, nuzzling her back. “You taste so good, Suzi. Sweeter than wine.” He shoved her shirt over her head and reached for her bra. Moaning, she dug her fingernails into the carpet wanting to roll over and take him into her arms, into her body. Just like always. As if none of this ever happened. She’d closed her eyes to his behavior for years. Why couldn’t she keep doing that? “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known.”

  Overhead, something fell with a bang. The fan in the attic window. Suzi jerked. He was drunk, filthy, and disgusting. “No. Stop. Don’t.” She pushed away from him and scrambled to her feet. “Stop it, Logan. You can’t just take me to bed and all is forgiven this time.”

  “Why?” He staggered toward her on his knees.

  “Everything okay up there?” Wally called.

  Logan sat back on his heels. “You brought a bodyguard?”

  “I brought Wally to help me move.” Suzi chewed her lip.

  “Wally, you fucker. You are never going to work again,” Logan roared.

  “Sure thing, boss,” Wally answered.

  Suzi turned to the bed. Yanking the sheets off, she threw them on the floor. “You need to shower.”

  “I thought you were packing.”

  Suzi unhooked the curtains. They carried an aroma, too. “I can’t leave you like this.”

  “Why should I shower?”

  “I can’t come home if you stink.”

  “You might come home?”

  Suzi turned to him, clutching the curtains in front of her. This was her home. She had nowhere else to go. Closing her eyes, she sat down on the bed.

  He sat down beside her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “For what?”

  “Everything. I’m a jerk. The house is a mess. I’m a drunk.”

  “Sh. Not now. Let’s go shower.”

  “Us?”

  She tensed. How many times had they made love in that shower? How many times had he touched her and told her he loved her as he washed her hair? He loved to shave her legs. Never once had he even nicked her. “I meant, you need to shower.”

  He walked out. She followed him into the bathroom. It was vile. Logan had been sick and had very bad aim. She picked up a barrette from the counter to put her hair up. The butterfly he’d bought her in Japan. She started wiping down the counters. Logan picked up two moldy towels and dropped them into the trash. Suzi sprayed out the shower area and left the room. It needed more, but she wasn’t up to the temptation of climbing in there right now. “Don’t forget to drink some water.”

  Bundling everything into the fitted sheet, she carried it downstairs. Wally was attacking something crusted on a clear Pyrex dish. The basement door stuck before it popped open. At the sound, Wally turned around.

  “You’re gonna stay, aren’t you?” His soft, sweet face had gone hard, his eyes glittered like ice chips.

  Tears welled in her eyes. This was her home. How could she not stay? But how could she stay?

  “He’s gonna stomp on you again.”

  She nodded.

  “You’ve got other places to go.” Wally stalked across the kitchen, dishwater dripping off his big, scarred hands. “Why won’t you call your friends? Somebody from fucking Touchstone has been on the phone with me almost every day. Sometimes twice a day. The band, the management office, their fucking publicist. I lied to Marc yesterday and told him I hadn’t heard from you because you told me to. I got an email from Jackie at the SendDown office wanting to know if I’d heard from you. They just got back from fucking Europe and want to know where you are. All those guys are worried about you, and you go back to him? You have eight thousand places to go, and you want to go back to him?”

  “I love him.”

  “No, you don’t. You think you’re responsible for him.” Wally leaned in. His effectiveness as a security guy didn’t come from his six-foot-eight height and weightlifter’s build. His real success came from his scowl. “I am not leaving you here tonight, and I am not leaving you alone with him.”

  “He would never hurt me.”

  “He already is. And you are letting him.” Wally walked back to the sink to attack the dish again.

  Suzi scuttled down the basement stairs and stuffed the sheets into the washer. On the way back up, she grabbed a clothesbasket to clean the bedroom floor. Wally had finished the dish without breaking it and moved on to the next. He didn’t speak as she reached around his legs to grab her bottle of bleach water from under the sink. As awful as the house smelled, the scent of bleach would be an improvement.

  She collected all the clothes on the bedroom floor into the basket and left it at the top of the stairs. Then she went back and sprayed the mattress and pillows.

  “Hey sugar, do we have pair of scissors in here?” Logan yelled from the bathroom.

  “Little ones in the drawer by the sink. Drink water.”

  “Drink water,” he repeated. Then the faucet turned on and a cup filled.

  She wiped the mattress with a rag to spread the bleach around and started on the other surfaces. What he needed in here was a carpet cleaner. Why had the cleaning people stopped? They came once a month to handle heavy stuff, but the entire house was coated in dust, and she couldn’t imagine them letting those dishes grow in the sink. She’d have to give the cleaners a call.

  “Hey sugar, what do you think I’d look like with a mustache?”

  “Like some other woman’s boyfriend.” Oh, no. Suzi sucked in a breath, trying to pull the comment back, but it hung in the air like feedback. She peered out the bedroom door.

  Logan stood in the hall, his face slack as if he’d just
been smacked in the face with a mic stand.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “S’okay.”

  Suzi hurried down the hall and grabbed the basket. Before she could make her escape, Logan grabbed her arm. “Where are you going?” There were traces of shaving foam on his cheeks. Without the beard, he appeared even more gaunt.

  “Downstairs to sort the laundry. Then I’m going to run to the grocery store. I’m willing to bet everything in the refrigerator is spoiled.”

  “But you’re coming back, right?” His eyes pleaded with her.

  “I’m not going to drive all the way to California with groceries.” She tried to smirk, but it hung on her face lopsided. “I’ll be back in a little while. Wally will be here.”

  Chapter 11

  Wally. Like that was a treat. Logan watched her run down the stairs with the overflowing clothesbasket in her arms. Why the fuck had she brought Wally with her? Wally had become “her” security guy on tour to protect her from the fans, not from him. In the basement, he heard her banging around. Maybe if he made more of an effort, she’d stay. Logan went back into the bathroom and finished shaving. Then he cleaned it up to her standards using the bleach she’d left behind. He never should have let everything get this out of control. No wonder she thought she needed a bodyguard. He’d scared off the cleaners and the yard guys. Next on the to-do list should be calling them with hefty tips and apologies.

  From the kitchen, he heard her talking to Wally and then her car started in the garage. The refrigerator made a sick sucking sound, and Wally gagged. Wally, who had dragged ODing guys out of bathtubs and done CPR on them, was grossed out by his fridge. He had let things get way too out of hand.

  In the bedroom, she had stripped the bed that now smelled of bleach. He touched it to make sure it was dry, and then found some fresh sheets to make it up. When he finished that, he had to sit down for a minute because the world was spinning. When was the last time he’d eaten anything? Of course, there was nothing edible in the house. That was why Suzi was out shopping and Wally was gagging in the kitchen. In the closet, he found some clothes he’d managed to not destroy and put them on. Wally was on his knees in front of the fridge, pulling everything out and throwing it away. All the windows were open, but the stench lingered. Logan located the baking soda in the cupboard, took it upstairs, and sprinkled it on the carpet.