by Hazel Jacobs
Mikayla feels tears building up at the corners of her eyes and a lump growing in her throat. Her mother’s words are a low blow, and she feels them settling under her skin despite the mantra she’s repeating to herself that her mother is drunk, that she’s talking shit, and that Mikayla knows better than to listen to her.
“It would be even worse if you had a child,” she said. “One who worships you even if you’re never there, and then gets stuck with your ex when your useless heart finally gives out.”
“Mama, you’re getting close to crossing a line here.”
“If I were your father you’d be hanging off of my every word,” her mother replies. “But you always were blind when it came to him.”
Mikayla feels a tear rolling down her cheek. It falls off of her cheek and lands on her thigh, right next to the spot where Logan had licked her a few days before.
A knock sounds at her door. She wipes the tears away from her cheekbones and sniffs. The lump in her throat is still heavy and painful, but she puts on a falsely cheerful voice as she says, “I gotta go, Mama. Someone’s at the door.”
“Of course, go and do some work. Your family doesn’t matter.”
Mikayla hangs up, clutching the phone to her chest so that she doesn’t fall into the temptation to throw it at the wall across the room. She takes a moment to center herself and then push herself into work mode. She’s on the job right now. She can’t let her mother’s drunken ramblings affect that.
She pushes herself off of the bed. There’s no mirror to check if her face looks splotchy, but she hopes that the person at the door won’t be able to notice.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me.”
Damn, she thinks. It’s Logan, and he’ll definitely notice that she’s upset. She considers telling him to leave, because she sure as hell isn’t in the mood to fool around now.
She opens the door, ducking her head so that her fringe hides her eyes. Logan pushes his way through the door.
“Dash thinks I’m going to the pool,” he says. Then he looks at Mikayla, and his face instantly freezes. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit,” he says. The corners of his eyes are scrunched up with concern.
“Everything’s fine,” she says. “Let’s have sex.”
Because that might distract him. Maybe if she hadn’t been so listless about asking for it, it might have worked. All he does is raise his eyebrow at her.
“I’m not Slate, sex won’t distract me,” he says. He steps in closer, crowding her against the door, and reaching up to run his thumb under her eye, collecting the tears which are still falling from her eyes. “Mikayla… what happened.”
She closes her eyes, allowing the scent of his cologne and the warmth of his body to sink into her mind and body. “I just got off the phone with my mother.”
“Is everything okay?”
“She was drinking,” Mikayla says. “She told me that she hopes I die alone so that no one will be left behind to miss me.”
Logan’s hand tenses on her cheek. When she opens her eyes, she sees his jaw working furiously, as though he’s chewing on his tongue.
“I don’t think your mother and I are going to get along,” he says finally. His voice is tight, and there’s a firm frown in his warm brown eyes.
“She was drinking.”
“As if that’s an excuse.”
“It’s just—” Mikayla’s voice is swallowed with a sob, and she has to take a moment, squeezing her fingers into fists so hard that she can feel her fingernails digging into her palms. Logan leans in to rest their foreheads together, bringing his other hand up to wrap around the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair. “I just wish that she wouldn’t drink.”
“You don’t deserve this,” he says. She can feel his breath on her lips. “Tell me what happened. From the beginning.”
So she does. She tells him about how her parents divorced when she was a kid. How her father worked all the time and hardly ever had time for her, but when he was around he always made her feel special. Like she could become something special. About how his heart gave out, about seeing her mother marry man after man, and about how Mikayla fears that her father would have been disappointed in her. She tells him things she’d never thought she would tell anyone else. Tears fall steadily down her cheeks and she tries vainly to brush them off.
At one point, Logan guides her over to the bed, sitting them both down and holding her close to his chest, running his fingers through her hair. She likes the way it feels, it’s not sexual in any way, but it makes her feel safe and… loved.
But he can’t love her, can he?
It’s too soon for that, isn’t it?
When she’s finally all cried out, she quickly rubs her cheeks to get the last of the salt water away. Logan is watching her grimly.
“She’s wrong, you know that right?” he asks.
Mikayla wants to say that she does. But she just shrugs. “I mean, she has a point. I spent all that time working to be an events manager, and now I’m a PA. All that work down the drain. Dad would have been disappointed.”
“Then he was an asshole,” Logan says viciously. She pulls away from him to give him a startled glare, but he doesn’t back down. “No, anyone who thinks you’re a disappointment for not doing that one thing that you decided you wanted to do years ago, then they’re an asshole. Goddammit, Mikayla. You’re so… you have no idea how incredible you are. How hard you work for us. It might not be what you wanted, but you’re still doing an amazing job. He would have been proud of you, and she should be proud of you.”
Mikayla groans when she feels the lump rising in her throat again. She buries her face in her hands. Logan runs his fingers over her back and kisses her lightly on the shoulder. She lets herself lean into his warm chest.
“Do you think we can sit like this for a while?” she asks. She knows that when her mind catches up to this conversation that she’ll have a lot to think about, but at the moment, she’s numb. She just wants to sit quietly, leaning against Logan’s chest, feeling him breathe. “I know you probably don’t have long—”
“I’ll stay as long as you need me to,” he says.
He wraps his arms around her and she is enveloped with his scent. Breathing in deeply, she allows herself to close her eyes.
After their last show in London, the band and Mikayla climb onto a plane and settle in for a long-haul flight back to the states. Slate can’t get Mikayla a seat in first class no matter how many flight attendants he flirts with, but she doesn’t mind walking down the center of the plane toward economy. She needs some time away from the high life of being in Black Lilith’s entourage.
Jack and Finn are with her, sitting in the middle and in the aisle, so that she can press herself up against the window and rest her cheek on the glass, watching the plane roll down the tarmac and away from Gatwick airport. They don’t talk to each other, or to her. Mikayla doesn’t think she’s ever heard either of them speak.
She and Logan never did manage to get more time together. Two nights ago, she had fallen asleep in his arms, exhausted from crying so hard, and woken up alone in bed with a note on the nightstand. She’d memorized it before slipping it into her purse.
Hope you had sweet dreams.
– L
A sweet sentiment, but probably a bit incriminating. She wondered if he had expected her to throw it away.
As she sits in her economy seat, pressed against the window with the man in front of her already reclining his seat despite the automated message playing on the screens in front of them telling him not to, Mikayla knows that she’s probably going to spend the next ten hours worrying over everything. If she were in first class, she would need to force herself to smile and make small talk with whoever she’s sitting next to. At least here, next to the perpetually silent Jack and Finn, she can let herself wallow properly.
The plane shifts, the engines whir, and she feels the li
ft in her belly as it takes off into the air.
Mikayla feels as though she’s been on edge ever since the tour began. First, it was the tension between her and Logan, compounded with the lack of purpose she felt when she considered how she’d wasted her degree. Now that they are together—if you can call their one night and morning together—she has to consider how the band will feel when they discover the deceit. And they will discover it. No secret stays buried forever.
She’s still reeling from the conversation with her mother. She hasn’t heard from the woman—Mikayla wonders if her mother can even remember calling her that night.
How drunk was she?
Mikayla wishes that she could forget it.
There’s some shuffling next to her, and Mikayla is pulled out of her thoughts by Jack and Finn moving.
“Everything all right?” she asks.
As soon as she speaks, she realizes what’s happening. In the aisle, Tommy and Dash are standing there with grins on their faces. Jack and Finn get up, and the two boys take their seats.
“We decided to give Jack and Finn an upgrade,” Tommy says, slipping into the middle seat and leaning in conspiratorially.
“You guys don’t have to do this—”
“It’s not a problem,” Tommy says. “We weren’t always rockstars, you know.”
“Termites in the Toothpaste is based on mine and Logan’s first apartment,” Dash says, leaning over so that he can see Mikayla from where he’s sitting. “We legit slept with roaches.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Mikayla says.
The two men settle into their new economy seats. Mikayla looks up and sees Logan and Slate walking toward the middle of the plane carrying their bags. Logan’s eyes fall on Mikayla, who’s still leaning into Tommy so that she can hear what he’s saying, and his eyes darken. Mikayla wants to roll her eyes at him. Really? She wants to ask. You’re so amped about us hiding our thing, and you have the nerve to get pissy when I talk to other men?
It isn’t even as if Tommy could be a rival for Logan. Tommy is a wonderful man, but he’s more like Mikayla’s brother than a potential lover.
Mikayla feels a shot of warmth when she realizes that she thought of Tommy as her brother. Come to think of it, Slate and Dash are like younger brothers as well. When did she start to think of them as family? She doesn’t remember. It must have been a while ago, maybe before they arrived in London?
Logan and Slate negotiate to trade seats with the two women behind Mikayla. It’s a very short negotiation. Slate sends them a wink as they head toward first class. There’s a free space in their aisle, so Slate puts his feet on the seat next to him and leans over so that he’s leaning between Tommy and Dash. Logan leans between Tommy and Mikayla, perhaps a little bit more aggressively than Slate.
“What movie should we watch?” he asks, keeping his voice deliberately light.
The band argues back and forth, before deciding on Inside Out. All five of them set up their screens so that their films are in sync, and then they fall silent as they watch the cartoon feelings sort their issues out. Mikayla thinks it’s a bit too deep for her state of mind.
About halfway through the movie, she gets up to go to the bathroom. She has to climb over Tommy and nearly kicks him in the face, but he just laughs and helps her over. Dash does the smart thing and gets up and out of her way.
“Thanks,” she mutters, heading toward the empty bathroom at the very back of the plane.
When she comes out of it, Logan is waiting for her.
“Tell me you’re not here to join the mile-high club,” she says in a deadpan voice.
He rolls his eyes at her, but there’s a glint in his eye that makes her think she isn’t entirely off base. She glances down the aisle toward the rest of Black Lilith. They’re all still engrossed in the movie.
An old woman comes down the aisle toward the bathroom. Logan rests his hands on Mikayla’s hip and maneuvers her around so that they can still talk without obstructing the door.
“I just wanted to… say hi,” Logan says. His eyes flicker to the band before he darts forward and presses a soft kiss on Mikayla’s lips. “Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” Mikayla replies.
He kisses her again. And again. Then he leans back and rests his head against the emergency exit door, which is right behind him. Mikayla’s body leans closer to him without her permission. She knows she’s in trouble when she starts to consider the logistics of a quickie in an airplane bathroom.
“You’re not seriously worried about Tommy, are you?” she asks.
That does it. The glint disappears from Logan’s eyes, and a soft frown graces his lips, making them look less kissable, and helping her to get her head on straight. If only for a moment. Then she’s thinking about how she could kiss him back to smiling, and she wants to smack herself.
“No, I’m not,” says Logan. “I know it’s stupid for me to get jealous like that.” He rubs his hand over his chin and smiles wryly. “One thing you should know about me? I’m a bit clingy.”
“Oh,” she replies. “I wouldn’t have thought that.”
But then she remembers how he’d reacted when Tommy had come out of her hotel room. Maybe it’s not such a big surprise after all. Still, Mikayla would usually associate a clingy boyfriend with low self-esteem, and no one could ever accuse Logan of having low self-esteem.
“I’m not very good at trusting people,” he says.
Mikayla swallows hard. “Oh.”
“It’s not your fault,” he says. “It’s my problem.”
“So… you don’t trust me?” she asks.
Logan hesitates for just a beat too long. She wishes that she’d never asked.
“I trust you,” he says. He seems sincere, standing there with his brown eyes fixed on her and his arms at his sides, his tattoos looking bright and beautiful even in the dim airplane light. “It’s easy to trust you. But then, you make everything easier.”
“It’s my job,” she says, ignoring the still-sinking feeling in her gut at the way he’d hesitated before speaking.
“I guess I’m just a little jealous that he gets to sit next to you for the next… however many hours we’re going to be on this plane for,” Logan says. He smiles a crooked smile that makes Mikayla want to return it. “Does that make me greedy?”
“A little,” she says. But she’s smiling. She can’t help but smile when he is smiling as well. “We need to figure out how to get a night together when we get back.”
“Definitely,” he replies. His eyes go dark as they run down her figure.
Mikayla does roll her eyes at him then. She’s wearing her regular blazer and blouse, with a pair of sneakers instead of heels. She’s hardly dressed to kill. But he’s looking at her like he wants to eat her alive. She wouldn’t mind letting him, just not in an airplane with the rest of Black Lilith within hearing range. If he insists on keeping their relationship a secret, then he needs to stop looking at her like that in public.
“Don’t you look at me like that unless you’re planning to do something about it,” she says.
He’s grinning. The bastard. “Oh, I have so many plans.”
“You’re all talk, Logan Todd.”
“I’ll show you ‘all talk’!”
She’s goading him deliberately. Hopefully, he’ll make good on his threats. She thinks she might be having actual withdrawals from him. One night together, and she’s already addicted.
But he still doesn’t trust her.
Mikayla returns to her seat, climbing over Tommy, who takes it all graciously, and puts her headphones back on. She doesn’t listen to the movie. It’s gotten to a sad part anyway.
If Logan still doesn’t trust her, then why the hell is he still pursuing her? What was he expecting her to do? Cheat on him? Mess up the schedule? She wonders how long she can walk the line before a misstep gets her fired. It’s one thing to do a job that isn’t in events management and doesn’t use all of her skills, it’s another thing
to be fired from that job. She can only imagine the kind of vitriol that would come out of her mother’s mouth if she heard that she had been fired from her band babysitting gig. The thought reminds her of the phone call, and that makes her throat close up, and tears settle in her eyes again.
She jumps when she feels a hand on hers. She looks over to see Tommy watching her with sympathetic eyes.
“This part always gets me, too,” he says.
It takes her a moment to realize that he’s talking about the movie. Next to him, Dash is trying to discretely wipe tears away as well.
Mikayla offers Tommy a heavy smile and squeezes his hand back. She hates that she’s lying to him, even if it’s a lie of omission. She wishes that she could come clean about what she’s really crying about. She wishes that she could tell him all about her fears—to share with him the way that he shared with her that night they spent together in London. Maybe even giggle with him over Logan’s jealousy. She is half-convinced that Logan’s jealousy would be funny if Tommy knew about it. That Logan’s mistrust wouldn’t be as painful if she had Tommy to remind her that it is unfounded.
But she doesn’t. So she squeezes his hand one more time and settles in to watch the last part of the movie as they fly closer and closer to their next destination.
Mikayla and Logan didn’t get a night together until they’d been in New York for a week. The Beacon Theater was a small venue, but the crowds were more intimate, and Mikayla found herself watching from the side of the stage as Logan belted out sultry lyrics as the women and men in the audience leaned into him, breathing in every word. Logan would occasionally send Mikayla looks while he was performing, though he was careful to make them look natural. The smaller crowds meant fewer groupies vying for the band’s attention. On Thursday night, after their third gig in New York, Dash meets a girl who is sober and excited to get to know him better and Logan and Mikayla share a look.
