by James, Vicki
God, I could taste her forever.
Her desperate kiss slowed until she began to peel away with a littering of tiny kisses left behind before she pulled back an inch.
“We have gone and got this so… damn… twisted.” She grinned brightly.
For the first time in weeks, I saw true happiness staring back at me.
It felt like I’d been holding my breath this entire time and was only now just realising it.
“Making a mess of things is my speciality,” I assured her, raising my hips and poking her arse with my dick.
Jules laughed quietly, and the sight of her future happiness made my chest swell. “I’ve always liked your mess, but this is my favourite.”
“You’re my favourite.”
“You’re mine.”
“Awesome. We’re on the same page. No more tears allowed unless they’re tears that tell me you’re so fucking ecstatic, you’re going to burst unless I let you cry. No more sad eyes unless I croak it in some Hollywood type car crash that makes me a hero when all I’ve ever been is a loser who knows how to play a crowd.”
“Rhett!” she scolded, rolling her eyes.
“I mean it.” I chuckled, brushing a thumb over her cheek. “No more fucking tears.”
“How about in labour?”
“Jesus. I think I’ll be the one crying during that.”
“It’s me who’ll be in agony. What do you have to go through that’ll make you cry?”
“Seeing you in pain and knowing I can’t hurt the person who caused it because I’ll be too busy loving him or her for the entirety of our forever.”
Chapter Fifty-One
I never knew what I was going to become but becoming what I was for her had been my favourite surprise.
During life on the road, I’d always gone to Jules for her strength.
Knowing that the tables had turned left me more than satisfied.
That void I’d always tried to fill with the band, women, drugs, alcohol, and bad decisions was finally full. My heart didn’t skip a beat every few hours, begging me to go searching for something it needed to find. My mind didn’t hold me prisoner anymore.
Even with news of a baby on the way, I was absent of fear.
Just an incredible desire to finally live.
I was almost twenty-seven when I found out that life isn’t at its best when filled with accolades, screaming fans, and your name in lights. Life is at its best in the quiet of the night when there are no worries or regrets plaguing your mind. When there’s a warm, familiar body holding you tight, and when you know that tomorrow isn’t going to be a test, but a fucking gift.
Except for this day, which definitely was going to be a test.
After staying up all night talking about the situation we’d found ourselves in, I’d urged Julia to be upfront and honest with Sarah. If this scandal came out in the press while Jules let her sister grieve without knowing what was happening, the shit would most definitely hit the fan.
I was no publicist, but even I had a decent amount of common sense tucked away in the vault to draw upon.
I’d taken a walk down the beach. Just me, my thoughts, a packet of cigarettes—a habit Julia had told me I had to quit before the baby came along now, apparently, for fuck’s sake—and the wind in my hair. I sat on the sand, throwing stones into the water, reflecting on how life had already changed, and how much it was about to change even more so.
My thoughts drifted to Ma, and how happy she’d be when I told her a grandbaby was on the way. My baby! And how it had been born from love, not some seedy hook-up with a woman like Candy or JJ Jones. How I’d escaped that kind of disaster in the last three years was anyone’s guess, but a crazy warm feeling suffocated my chest when I began to realise just how goddamn lucky I’d been to love a woman like Julia. One with morals, values, and decency to keep me on the straight and narrow should I begin to drift, rather than someone who would have tied me to the back of a one-legged horse for the next eighteen years and dragged me through the mud.
Somehow, after all the wild nights, pointless highs, and endless women, I’d been blessed with contentment.
A settled rock star.
Who the hell knew a thing like that existed?
I lit a cigarette, pulled my phone out, and stared at the ocean. I needed to speak to someone I could count on to always give it to me straight. Someone who wouldn’t bullshit me about what was to come.
It rang twelve times before the lazy fucker answered.
“Getting your dick sucked or something?” I asked through a smirk before I took a drag of my smoke and blew it out into the wind.
“Nah, man, I’ve been put on rations. Apparently, asking for it more than three times a day is giving her a funny shaped jaw.”
“Tess is a lucky lady.”
“You ain’t kidding,” Presley chuckled. He grunted, as though he was repositioning himself somewhere, and I thought I heard Tess scurry away in the background, which told me he probably was getting his dick sucked. When he came back to me, he blew out his breath and I heard him relax. “Everything okay with Jules?” he asked carefully.
“Yeah.” And I couldn’t control my shit-eating grin for any amount of money. “She’s great.”
“What’s that?”
“What?”
“That smile in your voice. Have you just nailed her to the bed?”
“Something way better than that, bro.”
“Consider me intrigued.”
“Julia’s pregnant.”
Those two words floated around me, and the wind seemed to pick up, the waves crashing harder, and the birds going crazier above. Or maybe that was all in my imagination. It was the way I saw the world now. Me sitting on some crazy merry-go-round version of my life. A ride I didn’t want to get off.
“Did you just say…?”
“Yep. My woman is carrying my child. We’ve done four tests, each one positive. She’s having my baby, man.”
“Well, fuck me.”
Presley West was, for the first time in a long time, shocked to the point of being almost silent. His words were barely a sound, which only made me smugger as I took another drag of my cigarette.
“How long have you known?”
“Not even a day.”
“Did you fuck it up?”
“No. I held her. Told her I was happy. I promised I’d take care of her forever, and then I fucked her something good.”
“Jesus, Rhett. And you meant it?”
“It surprised me, too. I knew I loved her, but I didn’t know this was how I’d feel if she was to tell me I’d become a father soon.”
“And how do you feel?”
“Like this is the biggest gig of my life, and I’m pumped to see how much I can make this the gig I’m remembered for when I’m six-feet underground.”
“Love maketh the man,” he said through a smile I could tell was smug. “You get it now. I’m happy for you, bro.”
“Cheers, Pres.” I blew more smoke out and watched as a wave hit the shore. “Do me a favour and don’t tell anyone else, okay?”
“I’m the first to know?”
“Always.” I flicked the smoke under my boot and crushed it down before I picked it back up and looked around for a bin. “Gotta go.”
“Be steady. I think that sea breeze is turning you into one of us.”
“One of you?” I scowled.
“Yeah.” Pres laughed. “A pussy-whipped mug.”
“Can’t say I mind.” I laughed with him.
We ended the call after a few more jokes, and another satisfied feeling settled in my chest. All those times I thought I’d been alone had had nothing to do with the people around me. They’d always been friends. I’d just been too lost in that damn void to realise it.
We were more than just a band. We were brothers in all of this.
The beach I was sitting upon was becoming my place of solitude, and I revelled in it for a few minutes before I saw a familiar body walki
ng towards me.
“Sarah?” I called out. Her long, blonde hair swam in the direction of the wind, and her eyes were red raw. I couldn’t see Jules chasing after her sister, so I assumed they’d talked, and Sarah now knew what was happening.
She wore a chunky woollen jumper, and just like the way her sister stood, she curled her arms against her chest and looked out to sea. Her body was a little rounder than Julia’s, but it wasn’t much different. Two people who looked the same yet were bizarrely worlds apart.
Twins baffled me.
Twins.
The thought struck me like lightning.
What if Julia was carrying two babies? Not just one?
Sarah caught my eye just as I swallowed down the thought, and she stared at me like I was the last person she ever wanted to see.
I stood immediately, dusting down my jeans and hooking my thumbs into the back pockets.
Sarah looked around, perhaps for an escape, before she bowed her head and reluctantly came closer. The tear stains down her cheeks were obvious. Her emotions were over spilling, and today’s were, quite possibly, the worst of all. She came to stand beside me before she turned back to look out at the ocean with her swollen eyes narrowed.
“Do you love her?” she asked me after a minute of nothing.
“More than anything.”
“If you ever hurt her or the baby, I’ll kill you. You know that, right?”
“I’d want you to.”
Another minute of silence was swept away by with the winds, which were picking up. It felt like the whole world was getting faster, forcing me to face things I’d never had the chance to face.
“Are you… happy for her? For us?” I asked with more caution than I was used to.
“Right now, I’m being selfish and focusing on my own pain. Eventually, I’ll be happy for you both.”
“I know it’d mean a lot to her.”
Sarah turned to me slowly. “And you?”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks but Jules.”
“Especially not me?”
“You can be happy for us in time, when it feels right, or you can hate us for it. It makes no difference to the way I’m gonna love her and the baby.”
“Nice.”
“Honest,” I corrected her.
“Seeing you two together in the papers and all over the news was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she said like that was painful to set free.
“Why?”
“Because it’s always been easy for her.” She sighed heavily, her chest stuttering on the inhale. “Even the hard stuff. She’s always been so composed, so in control.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s been easy. It just means she’s good in a crisis. Everyone’s different.”
“But when you look the same, those differences seem unfair.”
“Everyone’s in control of their own lives, sweetheart.”
“As someone who went off track so easily, I thought you’d be a little more understanding. I thought you’d relate to someone like me. Someone who finds it easy to fuck up and then blame everyone else for their mistakes.”
I couldn’t blame her for that one. My brows rose as I took the hit of her truths, and I gave myself a moment to do this right. “I do understand. That doesn’t mean it’s right.”
“I just want…”
“What do you want?”
“Everything she has. Even some of it would do.”
“Have you always felt like that about her? That envy?”
Sarah swallowed her shame and offered me a small nod of confirmation.
I took a step closer. “I know you’re going through hell right now, Sarah. Jules knows it, too. We can’t do anything to change that. But her happiness shouldn’t upset you in the long run. It just means you’re missing something within yourself if it does. Believe me, I know. I’ve been there—where another person’s fortune made me angry. Like I was the only one allowed to breathe, feel, hurt, lose, and live. Before Julia, I wanted everyone to feel as empty and as lonely as I did.”
“You have me all figured out, don’t you?”
“I don’t even have myself figured out yet.” I rested a hand on her shoulder. “All I know is that there comes a time when someone wakes you up. I hope it happens for you soon, and when it does, I hope you let your big sister shine the way she’s always been scared to.”
Sarah looked up into my eyes and searched them. “I always thought you’d be a real arsehole.”
“I am.” I smiled.
She laughed softly, despite her pain, and she looked back out to sea. “Life is fucking scary, Rhett,” she whispered, as though the thought shouldn’t have been shared or may get lost in the wind.
I squeezed her shoulder and followed her gaze. “Not when you have the right people around you. Then, despite what you think, it can be pretty fucking great.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Here’s the thing:
You only have to give up control once and survive it to recognise how freeing it can be.
A week later, Jules and I were in a hotel suite in the middle of London again. We’d decided to stay in the city for the night instead of driving back to the cottage on Mersea Island after a full day of recording.
We’d had a special visit from a very expensive doctor in our hotel suite to confirm that the eleventy-billion tests she’d peed on weren’t wrong, and that Jules was pregnant.
She couldn’t stop pacing the room, her hands gesticulating everywhere as she went through scenario after scenario with the band and how they were going to take the news. She talked about Dicky and how she was going to deliver the news to him. She talked about meeting my parents properly, which I couldn’t wait to happen at the weekend, and she panicked about how best to announce all this to the media.
Okay, so maybe giving up control wasn’t that freeing for her.
For me, it was fucking beautiful.
I feared nothing as I laid back on the bed with my hands behind my head and my legs crossed at the ankle, with nothing but a white sheet over my groin. She was in black lacy underwear—which she’d already mentioned wouldn’t fit her soon, so I had to stop giving her ‘that’ look apparently—and I couldn’t take my eyes off the way her tight arse moved around with every stride, or the way her swollen breasts pushed against the material, begging for me to set them free.
Mostly, I couldn’t stop my gaze from drifting to that goddamn stomach that now carried my everything inside of it.
“And then next week, if I survive the meeting with your parents—”
“Which you will.”
“We have to fly to Belgium to meet up with Evan Goldberg for—”
“Something unimportant.”
“And after that, I’ll need to speak to Dicky about signing Youth Gone Wild over to another publicist because—”
“Wait. What?” That had my attention.
Jules ignored me as though I wasn’t there, pacing back and forth even faster now as her thoughts struggled to keep up with the amount of words she was able to set free in a single minute.
“... and I can’t do that all the time. Not with a baby around…”
“Jules?”
“They deserve more than I can offer when I’m knee-deep in nappies, bottles, and—”
“Jules!”
“I can’t expect them to accept changes I push on them—”
“Julia Speed, stop what you’re doing right now before I leap off this bed and force you to be quiet.”
Her eyes popped, and she turned to me like she was seeing me for the very first time.
“Are you with me?” I asked carefully.
She nodded once, her lips parted, and her innocence was a sight to behold.
“Focus,” I warned. “And repeat what you just said about leaving the band and handing Youth Gone Wild over to another publicist.”
“Did I say that out loud?”
“You sure did.” My brows rose. “Expand, please.” I was trying
my hardest to keep my cool, when all I wanted to do was jump off the bed and cry to the skies, Oh HELL no.
We were nothing without her. She’d put us in front of the right people at the right time, and kept us from the wrong people, too. Talent only got you so far. Julia had taken us where we were always meant to go.
“Okay,” she eventually said, holding her hands up in surrender and making her way over to the bed. My damn gaze drifted down to her stomach again, and I already knew I wouldn’t be mad about whatever the hell she had to say. I couldn’t be.
Perching her perfect arse on the side of the bed next to me, she held my attention. “I want you guys to be about the music for as long as you perform. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. But, just like when Tess and Presley hooked up, you and I have become gossip now.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do, and it’s going to stop.”
“How?”
“By me taking a step back.” She placed her hand on my chest. “Do you remember that band who played with you guys at TriFest last year? Front Row Frogs?”
My nose curled instantly. “Those arseholes.”
“They play good music, Rhett.”
“Good. Not great.”
“I think they could be great… with the right team behind them.”
It took a second for the penny to drop, and when it did, I shook my head wildly. “Fuck. No. Not happening. Never. Think again.”
“Rhett.”
“You’re not ditching us for them.”
“Don’t be dramatic. I’m not ditching you for anyone. I’m choosing you over everything. That’s the difference.” Her palm pressed harder against my skin, and she leaned forward. “I want to be with you as your woman now. Your girl. Not your publicist. I can do that work anywhere for anyone. I’m good at it. I grew up being it my entire life on the road with Pops and his band. Let me go and be it for someone else now, Rhett. You’ve got the best of who I am. Let them have a turn at seeing what I do.”
“But we need you,” I whispered. “Youth Gone Wild needs you.”
“You don’t need anyone anymore. You just need to enjoy the ride now.”
