“Nix?”
“I’m okay. Go back to sleep, babe.” He walked out of the bedroom without another glance my way.
I sighed, then slipped a robe on and headed downstairs for what had become a little too routine. He already had the teakettle on.
I took out the box as he grabbed the mugs.
Neither of us spoke until the tea was steeping.
“You’re not okay,” I whispered across the island, breaking the silence.
“I’m fine,” he argued, running a hand over the scruff of his beard.
“You just woke up screaming.”
“Won’t be the last time,” he muttered, stirring honey into his tea.
“That’s not fine.”
His jaw ticked as he slid the honey over the granite so I could use it.
I caught it, then added some to my own cup, shaking my head. “I hate this—”
“You don’t have to sleep next to me.”
I drew back, despite the soft tone he’d used. “Let me finish. I hate this for you. What happens in the nightmares?”
Terror flashed across his face before he managed to mask it. “Let it go.”
“If you don’t talk about it, you’ll be a wreck by the summer.” I rounded the island and put the honey back into the cabinet.
“I’ll handle it.”
I leaned against the counter, facing him. “No, we’ll handle it, because that’s what people do when they’re in a relationship. But I won’t be on tour to make you tea, and I can’t help you if you don’t let me in.”
He turned, folding his arms across his chest. “I let you in.”
“No, you don’t. You let me skim the surface, but you never let me in.” I was starting to wonder if he ever would, or if this was as close as he’d let me get.
“I bought you a house!” He backed up a step.
“Nixon.” I groaned, putting my hand on his chest. “Baby, that’s not what I mean.”
“How much more in do you want?” he challenged, pain mixing with leftover fear in his eyes. “I bought you a house. With me. You want my bank account? I’ll get you a card. You want a key to the penthouse? Wait. You already have that. You want your name plastered on my chest in front of a hundred thousand fans—”
“I want you to tell me why you have nightmares!”
“I want you to tell me why you can’t ignore your email for twenty-four goddamned hours! Neither of us sleep, but mine is an issue and yours is what?”
“Work!” My head snapped back, but I kept my hand on his chest, right over his pounding heartbeat.
“You promised to take the week off,” he reminded me.
My mouth opened and shut a few times before I sighed. “You’re right. I did. I’m sorry. But that still doesn’t touch the reasoning behind your nightmares.”
Deflect. Deflect. Deflect. I’d gotten pretty used to Nixon’s go-to move in a fight.
“Let it go,” he begged, his voice dropping.
I glanced at the powerful chest under my hand, the physical proof he was healthy. Then I blinked at the clock inked beneath my fingertips. 7:12. “I thought you said this was your first tattoo?”
His brow puckered. “It was. Why?”
“Huh.” I lifted my eyes to his, but I couldn’t see much in those dark depths in this lighting. Go figure, even his eyes are hidden from me. “That’s the day you went to rehab. Talk about a coincidence.”
The way his muscles tightened told me it wasn’t. “Zoe. Baby.” He took my face between his hands. “Let it go. Please.”
“I don’t understand.” I was missing something. A piece of a puzzle that was all one color and mixed in with a thousand just like it.
“You don’t have to.” He shook his head gently.
“Yes, I do!” I snapped, the frustration bubbling over and pricking my eyes. “That’s part of being together. Helping each other. I’m supposed to understand. I’m supposed to help you.”
“Why?” He retreated again. “Why can’t you just accept that there are things about me you don’t get to know? Things I don’t share with anyone?”
“Because I love you!” I shouted, my voice breaking.
His face slackened.
“Because I love you,” I repeated, this time softer as my vision blurred. “Because I fell for you, and now I’m yours. My family is yours. My hometown is yours. My entire career has been wrapped around yours. And it hurts, Nixon. It hurts to know I don’t even merit a visitor’s parking placard in your head when you own me, body and soul.” I batted away the tears that streaked my cheeks.
“God, Zoe.” He moved toward me, tense with an emotion I couldn’t name.
I stepped back, but he followed, holding my face between his hands and brushing the tears away with his thumbs.
“Don’t cry. Fuck, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“I can’t help it.” I blinked rapidly, hoping to make the tears stop. “I love you. You have to let me in. This won’t work if you don’t let me in.”
He pressed his lips to my forehead. “I know. I know. I know.” The words came between kisses as he moved down to my temple. My cheekbone. The corner of my mouth.
Then he took my mouth like it was…his. And the little alarm of logic flared in my brain. Deflecting.
But I didn’t care. I’d told him I loved him, and he hadn’t run. Hadn’t laughed. Hadn’t made a quick joke and rolled his eyes. Hadn’t declared this all some sick joke he’d been playing since August. He was kissing me like I was the most precious thing in the world to him. Like I was more necessary than air.
He kissed me like he might love me, too, and I let him.
He lifted me to the counter and stepped between my thighs, kissing me over and over, tangling his hands in my hair, then sweeping them down my body. My breasts, my waist, my thighs—I felt him everywhere, as though he couldn’t touch me enough.
He untied the satin belt at my waist and parted the fabric but didn’t slide it from my shoulders. My head rolled back as he pressed openmouthed kisses to my neck, lingering on every spot he knew would make me gasp as his hand slid up my thigh.
My body melted under his.
His fingers swept between my thighs, and we both groaned.
“You want me.” His voice was a step above a growl in my ear.
“I always want you.” There was no use denying it. Whether it had been an hour or a day, it didn’t matter. My body responded to his the second he touched me.
“I don’t deserve you,” he said against my mouth.
“Yes you—” He stopped my words with another kiss, this one deeper and hotter as his fingers set me on fire, ceaselessly building that tight coil of need within me until I was ready to snap, ready to scream, clawing at him for more because it was right there.
He slid a finger inside me, then two, and I whimpered. It wasn’t enough.
“I need you.” I shoved at his waistband.
“I’m here.” He dropped his shorts, and a second later, I felt the head of him against me.
I grasped greedily at his back as he drove home, sliding to the hilt and filling me with one smooth thrust and ripping a cry from my lips.
He stilled, tensing unnaturally.
“What’s wrong?” My hips rolled, and he moaned but held tight, pinning me to the counter.
“I’m bare.” He rested his forehead against mine, clearly fighting for control. The condoms were upstairs.
“I’m on the pill,” I reminded him. “It’s okay.” It was a hard line for him, but in that moment, I didn’t care. I’d just given him my soul. He could break his rule for me.
“Zoe.” His eyes squeezed shut. “Fuck, you feel too good.”
“Either you trust me, or you don’t.” I would never trap him with a baby or set my career back by starting a family before I was ready with a man who clearly didn’t want one.
His eyes snapped open. “I trust you.”
“I love you.” Then I was the one kissing him to keep from answerin
g, because the statements weren’t equal and I knew it. There was no equal footing here.
He tangled his fingers in my hair and moved, taking me hard and slow, both of us straining for the other as we came together over and over, each thrust better than the last. The kiss broke, both of us breathing heavily, sweat beading on our skin as the pleasure wound tighter and tighter.
I fought it, holding his gaze as I held his body, knowing that, in this moment, our need for the other was equal. Then his hand glided across my thigh, then between them, and he used his thumb to tease me to the edge.
My body trembled, my muscles locking tight around him.
“Yes. God, yes. You’re right there. So beautiful.” It was the look in his eyes as he said it that shoved me into bliss.
I unraveled, coming so hard I lost my grip on him, but he held me tight, finding his own release just a few thrusts later.
After we were cleaned up, he carried me to bed, then stripped my robe off and curled his body around mine, fading quickly to the deep even breaths of sleep.
The clock changed number after number before I realized we hadn’t even drunk the tea that had taken us downstairs in the first place…yet he was passed out and at peace.
The nightmares. The buzz. The constant refusal to go back to Seattle—to real life. The insatiable need with which he reached for me in the middle of the night, often pulling me from sleep with his mouth and hands…
You naïve little fool.
He’d replaced one addiction for another.
I’d become his fix.
My sleep was restless, and when I woke for what felt like the hundredth time and the sun was already up, I slipped from the bed, careful not to wake Nixon. He looked younger when he slept, peaceful in a way he never was while awake, which only seemed to make his nightmares even less fair.
I dressed in my own room, though it really wasn’t mine anymore. It was just where I kept my clothes. Nixon and I hadn’t spent a night apart since October.
How could I have been so complicit I didn’t think to press pause—to pump the brakes? I’d challenged the house, sure, but I hadn’t refused it. I’d accepted everything he’d given and thrown my heart into these last few months with the knowledge they’d come to an end.
I’d tortured myself with the question of whether Nixon wanted me. If he needed me the way I did him. I’d never asked myself if he should.
The full cups of tea were the only evidence of what had happened last night, and within a few minutes, I had them in the dishwasher, my body on autopilot while my mind raced.
“I didn’t hear you get up,” Nixon said as he came up behind me and enveloped me in his arms, and like the lovesick girl I was, I pressed a kiss to his bicep, just beneath where his sleeve began.
The doorbell rang.
“What the fuck? It’s seven o’clock in the morning. I’ll get it.” He kissed the top of my head, then headed for the door.
I put my coffee mug under the Keurig and pressed brew.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Nixon shouted from the entry hall.
I abandoned my coffee and raced for the door.
“I’ve got it,” he called over his shoulder at me, his back filling the majority of the doorway.
“Is that her? Maybe she can talk some sense into you!” a woman shouted.
My stomach pitched.
“You don’t get to speak to her. Not now. Not ever,” he snapped. “Get the hell off my property.”
“I’m not going to hurt her, for Christ’s sake,” the woman argued.
“Mr. Winters—” a deep voice interrupted.
“I’m not giving you a chance to hurt her. Get. Out.”
I eased to Nixon’s side, getting my first clear view of the porch. A tall, well-dressed man grimaced behind a middle-aged woman with curly blond hair.
“Tacoma,” I whispered, then looked up at Nixon.
Blatant horror stared back at me.
16
ZOE
“Zoe,” Nixon begged.
I wasn’t sure what for. Did he want me to walk away? To ignore that the very fan who’d tried her best to claw her way past Chris was now standing on our front porch in the middle of Colorado?
“Zoe,” the woman said with a shaky smile, a plea in her eyes.
Guess everyone wanted something today.
“Ms. Shannon.” The man stepped forward with an outstretched hand. “I’m Richard Howell.”
Attorneys at Law. A mental picture of the envelope flashed before my eyes—the envelope I’d never finished opening.
Nixon’s jaw flexed. “Get. Out. You’re trespassing.”
“What can I do for you?” I asked the man, avoiding the woman’s beseeching stare as my brain gave me rapid-fire answers I didn’t want.
Nixon had lost his shit when he’d first seen Ashley. He’d denied knowing this woman even though he’d clearly met her. Same hair.
“Do you have a kid?” I asked Nixon, my eyes narrowing.
His flew wide. “No!”
Wide but honest.
“I’m his mother,” the woman blurted, earning my surprise.
“Stepmother,” Nixon corrected through gritted teeth.
What the hell?
“If we could just come in for a moment,” Richard addressed me, not Nixon.
“Over my dead body.” He moved to shut the door.
I stepped forward, blocking him.
“I represent his father,” Richard told me.
“His father is dead,” I retorted, only to be met with two very confused faces…and one very guilty one. My stomach did a dive roll and my cheeks heated. “His father isn’t dead, is he?” I asked Nixon’s stepmother.
“No.” She shook her head, her gaze darting between Nixon and me. “Please, Nixon. It’s been ten years—”
“I don’t know how you found me, but you’re not welcome, and the answer is no.” Wrath shone from his eyes as he moved, positioning himself slightly ahead of me.
Putting himself between us.
I stepped back into the house. If Nixon truly hated this woman that much, there was a good reason.
“It was the guitar strap,” she said softly.
“I’m sorry?” Now she had my attention.
“It said Zoe’s,” she replied. “All you have to do is google Nixon’s name with Zoe and Berkshire Management comes up. You’re his manager?”
This just reached a whole other level of creepy.
“Not exactly.”
“We ran a property search, and you came up in title with an LLC,” she explained. “So, we flew out immediately, just hoping you might listen.”
“I think you’d better go now.” I took Nixon’s wrist and tugged. I wanted answers, and I wanted them now. But I wanted those answers from him.
I tugged at Nixon’s wrist again, and this time, he came.
“I know you hate him, Nixon, but it was an accident!” she begged, moving forward.
“An accident? Like the time I accidentally hit myself in the face with the edge of the table?” Nixon sidestepped, putting himself between us again.
Holy shit. My heart stopped.
“Nix—”
“Or how about that time I accidentally broke my wrist falling off my bike? Or wait, shit, that was the nonexistent tree house, right? Isn’t that what you told the doctor?”
“He was drunk,” she said softly. “He’s been sober for—”
“He was sober when he blackened my eye at eleven, and again at twelve, and—”
“Enough!” she shrieked.
The nightmares. I sidestepped enough to see them both, bracing my hand on the rigid muscles of the small of his back.
“What happened to Kaylee—”
“You don’t get to say her name!” Nixon roared, and I flinched.
“It was an accident,” she repeated. “He’s waited ten years—”
“What do you want me to do, Cheryl? Want me to go visit him? Absolve him of his sins? Becau
se that’s not going to happen. And it’s not like Washington State has a parole board, so at least I know he’ll do the time.”
“We actually managed to get a hearing with the Clemency and Pardons Board,” Richard said slowly. “It’s very rare, and it’s why we’re here.”
Nixon’s head snapped back like he’d been slapped, and silence filled the entryway for a handful of heartbeats.
“Nixon, please,” Cheryl begged. “He’s so sorry. You should talk to him. He’s changed. And if you would just speak at the hearing—”
“You have to be fucking kidding me. It will be a cold day in hell before you get me to speak for that son of a bitch. I hope he dies in there. And if you ever come near Zoe again, I’ll dedicate my life to ruining yours. Do you understand me? The only reason I haven’t is because I thought you were weak, not cruel, and we both paid the price for it. His price isn’t paid yet.” Nixon swept me behind his back, retreating into our house and slamming the door.
My heart galloped.
“If they’re still there in five minutes, call the sheriff.” Nixon threw the deadbolt and strode off, headed toward the living room.
“Nixon!” his stepmother screamed.
I glanced between the door and Nixon’s retreating back. Only one path guaranteed answers. Problem was, I didn’t want them from strangers—I wanted Nixon to tell me. Wanted him to let me in.
Steadying my heart with a deep breath, I followed Nixon into the living room where I found him pacing in front of the windows, tapping a message out on his phone.
“Let me guess, you want know what that was about.” He didn’t even look my direction as he finished and tucked the phone into his pocket.
“Of course, I do.” I wrapped my arms around my middle. “Why did you lie to me?”
He stilled, turning to look at me with the flattest eyes I’d ever seen. “I never lied to you. Not once.”
“You told me your father was dead.”
“No, I told your parents my father died. You read it in a magazine or in the troves of whatever file you keep on me with my damned SAT scores. For all intents and purposes, he’s dead to me. I never lied to you.” He dropped his hands, then walked past me, headed for the stairs.
MUSES AND MELODIES Page 19
