THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER
The rain came down hard, pattering on my roof.
I sat curled up on the chair in my living room listening to raindrops hit the gutters with a metallic clang and break open.
An addendum to the Sony contract I’d signed sat in my lap, Grant’s plain-English translation of the legalese scribbled along the margins.
A tour addendum. They wanted me to go on a two-month, fourteen-city tour.
It didn’t look so bad on paper, especially with Grant highlighting all the perks and riders in bright yellow.
Three different kinds of sparkling water in every dressing room?
It sounded like waste, not a perk. Touring meant I’d be cut loose like an astronaut, floating far away from home base.
All the fancy bottled water in the world wouldn’t keep me from missing my house. And Yvonne.
And Teddy.
I already missed him. We’d both been so busy. His client roster had become a mile long since the Inked feature. Soon, the market would turn, and he’d buy a place in Vegas, just as I embarked on my career. A tour would only pull us farther apart, and we were already stretched to the breaking point.
I missed him. My chest was hollow with it.
My phone rang, showing the Olsens’ number. “Hey,” Grant said. “So. Any closer to putting your pen to the dotted line?”
“Sony Records tour,” Phoebe drawled in the background. “No dinky little side shows. It’s the big time, girlfriend. Big, big time. Like Peter Gabriel ‘Big Time.’”
“Okay, okay, she gets it,” Grant said, and cleared his throat. “So, Kace? What do you think?”
“I don’t do well on tours.”
“So, you keep saying. Is it nerves?” Grant asked.
“Booze,” I said. “I’m just starting to have a sense of settling down. I don’t want to be uprooted already.”
Phoebe snorted. “It’s only a two-month tour. Hardly the stuff of uprootage.”
“That’s not a word,” Grant said.
“Yes, it is,” Phoebe said. “I just used it.”
“Well, shit, can’t argue with that logic.”
“Guys,” I cut in. “I just…give me some more time.”
“We can try,” Grant said. “But with no new album on the horizon, a tour for Shattered Glass is the next big thing. We don’t have the clout of a high-end lawyer to negotiate.”
“Don’t say that,” Phoebe hissed at her brother. “She’ll replace us with some high-end lawyer.”
“Guys, I’m not replacing anyone. Give me a week, okay? I know it’s a big deal to you two, I haven’t forgotten.”
“Sure, sure,” Grant said. “One week. No problem. Take your time and think it over.”
“Don’t think too hard,” Phoebe said. “Mardi Gras is in two days. Jump on that tour, and we can pretend the whole city is throwing us a party.”
I hung up, feeling shitty for making them wait.
As my de facto agents, they stood to make a hefty percentage of a tour’s ticket sales.
The Olsens had never tasted success like this before.
I had. Like any sugary treat, it tasted heavenly at first, but if you gorged on it, you’d be sick. And I was a recovering glutton.
Yvonne was working a graveyard shift that night, and I didn’t feel like going out. I put on sweatpants, a T-shirt, ordered a pizza and vegged out on the couch. A cable channel was playing a marathon of the Vacation movies.
It was after one a.m. and I was on Christmas Vacation, chuckling as Randy Quaid emptied his RV’s septic tank into Chevy Chase’s sewer, when my phone rang.
Teddy…
“Hey,” I said. “It’s late.”
“Did I wake you?” he said.
“No. I’m sitting around, watching silly movies. Missing you.”
“I miss you too,” he said. “So much.”
A short silence fell, and I knew this conversation couldn’t be like the others we’d had—rushed and nervous, with neither of us telling the other what we felt.
“God, Teddy… I feel like I’ve been hiding out here. We haven’t really talked, and now the label wants me to do a tour. I’m scared.”
“Of what, Kace?”
“When I was with Rapid Confession, all we did was tour. I had no home base, no foundation. I drank all the time…” I shook my head, sucked in a breath.
“I’d be gone from my home, and I can’t help but feel that it would be the end of us.
Whatever us is. More phone calls. More distance.
More miles. I can’t do it anymore, Teddy. I can’t…”
“I can’t either, Kace,” Theo said. “Fucking hell, I’m tired of living life on the phone.”
“God, me too.”
“Good. Then can you open the door? I’m getting poured on.”
For one heartbeat, I sat frozen. Then the phone slipped out of my hand as I tore off the couch, crossed the living area and opened the front door.
He stood there, rain dripping off his leather jacket, sparkling in his hair like diamond dust.
“Teddy…” I gasped and in the next instant, I was in his arms, his mouth pressed to mine.
We didn’t make it to my bedroom. We didn’t even make it to the couch.
I barely had sense of mind to kick the door shut to keep the rain out.
The words we needed to speak were lost in a confusion of aching need.
We fell to our knees, stripping clothing and kissing hard, then tumbled to the floor where he slid inside me with one perfect motion.
“Teddy,” I cried as he brought me quickly to the threshold, then sent me crashing over. I held him tight as his own climax shuddered through him, warming me from the inside out.
“God, don’t let me go, Kace,” he said against my neck.
“I won’t,” I said. “Never again.”