Chapter 20 Home, Heat, and Holding On
HOME, HEAT, AND HOLDING ON
ZANE
Los Angeles looks different when I’m bringing Ruby home. Not home in the metaphorical way she thinks I mean. I mean my home.
My house and my walls and my space.
My bed and my fucking rules.
I carry her bags in myself because I don’t want anyone else touching her things.
She trails behind me, half-protesting and half-pretending she still isn’t impressed by the three-story glass-and-stone place I bought before Riot Saints had a platinum record.
But I see her eyes flicker toward the bedroom where I first fucked her.
Where I fell ass over asshole for her tight pussy.
Where I fell for her, period.
“We agreed, remember?” I tell her when she tries to backtrack, to coax me into returning her to the shoebox apartment she called home before she met me.
Like fuck that’s happening.
I drop her bags in the foyer. “It’s part of your contract.”
She folds her arms, defensive and adorable, like she’s bracing for war but also melting at the same time. “It said ‘accommodation provided,’ not ‘I get held hostage in a rockstar mansion.’”
“Baby.” I cup her jaw gently. “If I wanted to hold you hostage, I wouldn’t need a mansion.”
Her cheeks flush a shade I’ve come to crave, and she mutters something Ruby-snarky under her breath about me being “one psychiatric evaluation away from the Discovery Channel.”
I should be offended.
Instead, I’m hard, and really I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve been hard for weeks. Harder than I’ve ever been for any woman before her.
And the more she protests, the worse it gets. I push my stone-hard cock into her belly, laugh when she lets out a soft whimper. “Yeah, you’re right. But only if you do the evaluation, baby.”
Over the next two weeks, I build a routine without meaning to. Or maybe meaning to a little too much.
Morning: I wake up with her in my arms, my dick still inside her, because she’s warm and soft and her body calms me in a way nothing else ever has.
And also, I can come inside her anytime I want, even when she’s asleep.
And if that isn’t a fucking ace plan to get her bred asap, I don’t know what the hell is.
She mumbles complaints every time she realizes I’ve nutted inside her while she dreamt of me but I’m suspecting it’s because she’s missed out on screaming her head off when I make her come.
“It helps settle me,” I say.
“Does everything ‘help settle you,’ Zane?” she grumbles one morning, throwing an arm over her face.
I shrug because I don’t lie to her. “I know what I want. And you love having me inside you. I don’t see a better win-win than that.”
She groans. “I don’t know if I want to kiss you or commit a crime.”
“Both,” I tell her.
She rolls her eyes, which only makes me kiss her harder.
Afternoon: I watch what she eats because I care about her body getting everything it will need soon. So I track her vitamins and her hydration.
I track her cravings with the precision of a surgeon.
Ruby snarks through every moment of it. “I can feed myself,” she snaps when I bring her a plate I made myself.
“I know,” I say. “But I like doing it.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Because it helps settle you?”
“Exactly.”
She throws her napkin at me.
Night: I take her on moonlit drives with the top down.
I like late hours because there’re fewer fans to deal with and piss me off.
Fewer disruptions and fewer people trying to get close enough to breathe her air.
Fewer people to accidentally catch us when I pull onto a dirt road and fuck my girl on the hood of my Porsche 911 Carrera 4s.
She leans her head on my shoulder as we glide along Mulholland Drive, the city glowing below us. “This…is actually nice,” she admits quietly.
I grip the wheel harder because the part of me that is always one breath from snapping wants to stop the car, pull her onto my lap, and tell her this is ours, this entire life, this entire world, every minute of it.
But I keep driving.
Barely.
The next industry event becomes necessary when Freddie threatens to “chain me to the mic stand” if I skip another appearance.
I only agree because Ruby is coming with me.
I wear black.
She wears something that makes my breath halt for a full second when she walks out of the wardrobe I stocked for her. She sticks close to me instinctively, overwhelmed by the flashing lights and the buzzing noise of Hollywood hunger.
I keep her pressed against my side, arm around her waist, hand on her hip, palm resting exactly where her body curves prettiest.
Everyone stares and I glare back.
When a reporter asks, “Is this your girlfriend?” I answer before Ruby can even form a syllable.
“Yes.”
She chokes. “Zane!”
I ignore her and pull her close enough that our bodies touch from chest to thigh.
“We’re together,” I say loudly enough for every camera in the room. “Officially.”
Ruby tries to pull away for appearance’s sake, but her pulse jumps under my fingers, and I know she likes it.
I feel it in the way she unconsciously leans into me a second later.
She swats my shoulder. “You can’t just announce—”
I shut her up by kissing her.
In public. Hard and possessive. And fucking final.
Long enough that someone says “Jesus Christ” under their breath and someone else drops their champagne.
Ruby is breathless when I finally pull back.
“You’re insane,” she whispers.
“I know.” I kiss her again. “But at least I’m honest about it.”
She snorts, but she kisses me back.
A lot.
Guess she doesn’t totally hate being a rockstar’s girlfriend after all.
And next on my grand plan?
I can’t fucking wait to make her a rockstar’s wife.
If there’s one tiny upside to having a mansion where band mates and managers and crew walk in and out all fucking day long—and yeah, that’s about to change pretty damned soon—it’s that Ruby doesn’t know what fills the hours she isn’t looking.
The hours when she’s squirreled away in the guest room, writing her fanfic.
So she has no clue I buy things.
A lot of things.
Things she’ll need when the next phase begins.
Things she’ll need when her body starts changing.
Things I’ve researched at three in the morning on private tabs I delete before she wakes up.
I’m not ready for her to see any of it yet.
But I hide them around the mansion in closets, cupboards and storage rooms anyway. As if I can build the future in pieces and tuck it away until the right moment.
Freddie would have a stroke if he knew.
Jude would laugh until he couldn’t breathe.
Mama would approve so violently she’d probably start knitting baby socks infused with moonlight.
Ruby?
Ruby is the only unpredictable part of this plan.
But if I can perform myself out of a soul-destroying trailer park and a life doomed with flaws and demonic rages, then I sure as fuck can drag every part of my life into order for the one miracle I didn’t deserve but got anyway, the one woman whose existence rewired everything broken in me.
We fall into a rhythm that feels so good it’s a little terrifying and dangerous. And damn exhilarating.
She writes. She curls up on the couch with her laptop, humming under her breath, and I sometimes stop mid-conversation to just watch her.
She cooks once and burns half of it, then laughs so hard she drops the pan.
I eat it anyway.
And we fuck. Often.
Slow sometimes, rough others, wild more often than not. And she hums for me every time, even when she tries not to, and the sound runs under my skin like a pulse that isn’t mine.
We sleep tangled together and sweaty, wrapped up like we’re afraid the world will try to pry us apart.
And every morning, when I wake up inside her, I feel something that scares me far more than rage ever has.
Hope.
The Week Before Europe
She sits at the edge of the bed one morning, her beautiful blonde hair tousled from my fingers and tumbling over her shoulder.
I tense when I see her fingers worrying the sheets.
“I want to go home for a few days,” she says softly.
Something in my spine locks. “What do you mean? Where?” I ask, even though I know.
“Oregon.”
My body goes stiff enough she notices.
“I want to see my family before we go to Europe,” she continues carefully. “Just for a few days.”
I breathe slow.
Ruby notices every breath I take now. She knows when I’m on edge. She knows when the first sparks of mania flicker in my skull. I’m gearing for the mother of all fights if she…if she—
She reaches for my hand. “We can go together,” she offers quietly. “If you want?”
It disarms me and I forget to exhale.
“Breathe, baby,” she urges softly.
My lungs expand painfully. “Yes, absolutely,” I rasp. “We’ll go together. I’ll get Carl to organize the jet.”
Her face softens and she smiles, then she leans in and kisses my jaw. “You sure?” she echoes. “It’s not very exciting.”
“I’d follow you to a kingdom made entirely of week-old porridge.”
She giggles. “Eww, hope that’s not a new lyric for a song, Draven,” she says, but I can see the mixture of relief and resignation that hits her.
She thinks this is compromise.
It isn’t.
It’s strategy.
If she’s going to Oregon, I’m going too. If she’s seeing her family, I’m standing beside her. If she’s stepping back into her old world, I’m going to make damn sure she doesn’t stay there.
I kiss her once, long and steady, and she melts against me like she always does.
But when she sleeps that night…I don’t.
I sit at the piano in the dark, fingers gliding over keys I’ve touched a thousand times. And I write.
For her.
For us.
For the child she doesn’t know I’m already writing for. A lullaby, a promise and a future. Each note lands heavy, certain, inevitable.
Oregon won’t change a thing.
Ruby is mine.
And she will stay mine.
Even if she doesn’t know how close she is to the truth.
Yet.