MY FAVORITE BAND, page 117
She’s a little drunk, and I’m here with my girlfriend, and even though I want Ruby, even though I want to see where that tattoo starts and ends and I want to feel her lips under mine and I want her fingernails digging into my shoulder blades while all that silky, dark hair whips around us, I can’t.
I can’t do it to Sierra.
“I’m here with someone,” I say softly.
“I know,” she says.
I look down at her, and when she looks up at me, I very nearly buckle under the seduction I see there. She couldn’t send me any clearer signals than what she’s firing at me.
“I can’t do this,” I mutter as the person in front of me gets his drinks and turns to leave. “Not here, not tonight, and not in front of my girlfriend.”
I order another glass of wine for Sierra, but I change to beer for myself.
Ruby doesn’t seem deterred. “But tomorrow, when she’s back home in San Diego?”
“I don’t know where she and I stand right now, but I can’t throw away seven years because of one fight. I won’t do it to her.”
“I understand that,” she says with a nod. “And I know I said I wouldn’t wait around forever, but you’re different. Last night told me you are worth waiting for.”
“There’s nothing to wait for,” I murmur. “I’ve been with Sierra for the better part of a decade.”
“Don’t you think there are holes in there, though? I’m not even inside your relationship with her and I can see them.”
I clear my throat a little uneasily, but I don’t say anything. There’s no defense, anyway.
“Maybe this whole bachelor auction was meant to be. Let’s even back it up to this whole thing with Colt and Dakota. Maybe that was meant to be, too. Maybe you coming up to LA and playing with me was your out, and maybe Colt cheating on me was mine.”
The bartender hands me my drinks.
“Maybe.” Before I turn to walk away, I add, “Or maybe it was all just a coincidence.”
I hate leaving things like that with her, but I need her to know that I’m serious.
I’m here with Sierra, and I love her. I’m not sure where we stand, but I need to do the right thing. Ruby may have given me something to think about, and I might have been happier on that date last night than I’ve been in a long time, but despite all that, I’m not quite ready to give up on the person I’ve spent the last seven years of my life loving.
CHAPTER 16
When I set down the glass of wine on the table in front of Sierra, she doesn’t say anything. I glance over at her, and her lips are pressed together. She’s angry, and I don’t know what I did other than fend off another woman’s advances while I defended what we have.
“What?” I demand.
“Have a nice conversation with the woman you kissed last night?” she hisses.
The conversation at our small table falls silent. I glance at Rascal, who’s looking at me with wide eyes, and then Brody, whose expression matches Rascal’s.
I blow out a breath.
This affects more than just me. Not Brody, so much, but at least Rascal for the time being since we’re playing together with Ruby.
“You kissed her?” Rascal blurts, and Amber smacks him in the chest with the back of her hand even though she’s staring between Sierra and me with wide eyes like she wants to know the answer to that, too.
“It was barely a kiss,” I practically yell. I want to say it was meaningless, but it wasn’t.
It meant something to me.
But I have to pretend like it didn’t.
Brody whistles between his teeth in surprise.
“It was just a friendly way to say goodbye at the end of the date. A thank you to her for throwing in the extra cash that allowed me to get the highest bid,” I say.
“Wonder what he would’ve done if she would’ve kicked in another grand,” Brody says to Zoey, and Sierra looks fucking livid.
“Thanks, man,” I mutter. “Real helpful.”
Zoey smacks him in the arm, and he just gives me a wide-eyed, innocent look. Clearly he was trying to lighten the mood, but it didn’t work. Instead it drove home the point that more could have happened between the two of us last night even though it didn’t.
Thankfully I’m saved when Mark Ashton takes the microphone and tells us to start moving toward the screening room.
“What did you talk about?” she whisper-yells at me as we start the walk next door.
“I told her I’m here with you, that I love you, that you’re the one I want to be with.”
She purses her lips like she doesn’t believe me, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep defending myself without pulling my hair out.
I want to pull her aside, to get out of the line heading toward the screening room, to talk about this somewhere other than the middle of a crowd. But I can’t. Not right now.
Just like last night when I had to walk through the door.
I have obligations, and I need the woman I’m with to understand that without issuing ultimatums when I don’t have a choice.
“Look, if you don’t believe me, you can ask her,” I hiss at her.
She crosses her arms over her chest while we walk. “Whatever,” she says.
We walk in awkward silence the rest of the way. We take our seats. I know Ruby is somewhere in this room, but I have no idea where. I’m sitting next to Rascal, and Kylie is on Sierra’s other side.
“You really kissed her?” Rascal mutters to me.
I turn to him with a glare. “Like I said before, it was barely a kiss.”
“How’s this going to change things?” he asks.
“It isn’t.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Of course it is. You think she wants to bone you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I insist. “I’m with Sierra.”
“Of course it matters.”
“Can we talk about this later?” I mutter. Sierra’s right the fuck next to me and Ruby is somewhere in this room. There are people here I trust, but there are also people here who’d be willing to sell this gossip to the highest bidder, and I’m not taking my chances.
Mark and Dax say a few words, and then the premiere begins. It’s a short season, sort of just a bonus for viewers that’s only six episodes long but will include Dax and Kylie as they celebrate their wedding, Brody and Zoey as they start planning their own wedding, Adam as he embarks on married life with Emily, Rascal and Amber as they take a road trip across the country, and Sierra and me as we remain the steady couple who has been together the longest.
Viewers won’t see our struggles. They won’t see the fact that Sierra wants to get married and I don’t, that she wants kids and I don’t, that she wants that stupid fucking house that I don’t.
They won’t see Mark Ashton approaching Rascal and me at Dax’s wedding reception with the opportunity to temporarily play for another band while MFB takes a break.
They won’t see the instant attraction I had when I met Ruby a little over a month ago.
Instead, just like half the other guys in my band, we put on an act for this show.
Adam was faking his relationship with Emily at the beginning.
Rascal and Amber were faking, too, for a while.
And I guess that somewhere along the way, Sierra and I started faking it in front of the cameras as well. Only we never signed a contract forcing us to do so. Instead we did it because it’s how we want the world to see our relationship.
But you never really know what goes on inside a relationship unless you’re one of the two people in it.
And that’s never rang truer than when I see Sierra laughing as I tickle her ribs in the opening scene of the show. I stop tickling her long enough to kiss her, and the camera pans over to Rascal and Amber on the couch, both holding beers as they watch some movie.
I lose interest after that.
It may be our reality show, but there’s not much that’s real about it.
And that was the whole point in the first place...to give viewers a real inside look at what we do and who we are. Dax was on a reality show that completely misrepresented who he was, and he vowed our show would be different.
But how could it be when we’re trying so goddamn hard to show people that we’re all getting our happy endings?
Sierra reaches over and links her fingers through mine. I snap to attention long enough to recall the scene we’re watching.
It was December, those days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and I watch on screen as we’re talking about our upcoming tour which is long over now. We’re discussing which stops she’ll fly in to see me. She still had to work, but I remember the feelings I had as we looked ahead to the short, six-week US tour. To some degree, I remember the nerves that always come with going out on the road, but the excitement transcends the nerves in those memories.
“You’ll always come home to me, right?” she says to me on screen, and for the first time, I see her vulnerability.
Has she always been that way, and I’m only noticing it now because of her jealousy over Ruby?
“Of course,” I say softly, and I watch as I press a kiss to her lips.
I wonder what Ruby’s thinking as she watches that.
And then I realize it doesn’t matter. I made that promise to Sierra months ago, and I still mean it today.
I love Sierra, and I want to be with her.
That means something different to me than it does to her, but the feelings start to hit home when I see how vulnerable she is up on that screen.
How right we are together.
Our relationship was so easy for six and a half years, and suddenly...it’s not.
But we can get back to where we were. Love is enough to save what we have. It’ll take some work and some compromise, but it has to be enough.
As I watch us on that screen a mere six months ago, all I can see is how much I rely on her, and how she looks at me with love in her eyes.
We can get that back. I know we can.
And I know the first step I need to take to make this right. While the thought of it makes me uneasy, I’m starting to realize that I might have to feel that pinch of compromise if I want Sierra in my life.
I need to drop the stubborn act and give her what she wants.
When you compromise with someone, you’re supposed to meet somewhere in the middle.
This isn’t my middle.
This is dangerously all the way on her side...but if it’s what I have to do to keep the girl I’ve been with since before MFB became a household name happy, then so be it.
CHAPTER 17
We’re both quiet on the ride home.
She’s quiet because she’s still a little mad at me.
I’m quiet because I’m anxious as I talk myself into actually doing this thing, into actually saying the words that will promise her everything she’s been asking for.
To say I want to just do it and get it over with sounds negative, but if I don’t just do it, I’ll lose the courage I’ve built.
I’m not prepared.
When we walk in the door, we’re alone. Rascal and Amber went with Brody and Zoey to the after party. I asked Sierra if we could skip it and just go home.
She agreed.
She said she wasn’t in the partying mood, and I get it. It would’ve just been more time with her and Ruby in the same room.
We stand in the kitchen.
“I should head home,” she says.
“Tonight? It’s already eleven. You won’t get home until one.”
She lifts a shoulder. “I know. But I could go into work tomorrow instead of taking the day off.”
“Stay,” I insist.
“Why?”
“Because I love you,” I say. I take her hands in mine, not sure whether this is the right time. “Because I want to make this work. Because I want you beside me for another night before I have to go through the week without you.”
I chicken out.
“You’ll have her by your side all week. You’ll be fine.”
I squeeze her hands and blow out a breath. I’m not sure if it’s in frustration or fear.
Then I forge ahead with the words I’ve been rehearsing in my mind for all of a couple hours. “I won’t be fine. I won’t be okay without you here. I’m never okay without you. And that’s why I want to give you what you need...because I think I’ve finally realized it’s what I need, too.”
Her brows dip down, and I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing as I draw in another breath.
“I’m sorry for hurting you, and I’m sorry for our fight last night. I want to spend my life with you. I don’t have a ring or anything, but I know what I want, and that’s you with me. Forever. Let’s get married.”
Her eyes widen, and she lets go of one of my hands to cover her mouth as her eyes fill with tears.
As I look down into her watery eyes, I see the woman I’ve loved for so long, and I realize that any other attraction, any other woman, is merely an indiscretion. This is love and support. This is the right thing.
I wouldn’t call it a proposal. It’s my way of telling her that marriage is on the table, that someday down the line we will get married, that I’m committed to us.
“Of course I’ll marry you,” she says, and she tilts her head back as she waits for my lips to meet hers.
She takes it as a proposal...and I don’t bother trying to correct her, because even though I didn’t technically ask her to marry me, the sentiment is there.
So I don’t feel tingles racing down my spine anymore. I don’t feel my chest tighten with anticipation. But I do feel comfort. I feel familiarity, warmth, and security.
And those things are more important than tingles and excitement. They’re stable. They’re everlasting.
We had those things back when our relationship was shiny and new, and over time, those fleeting feelings wane as life together turns into a routine. And that’s one part of our relationship I love the most—knowing she’s always there for me, waiting with her open arms and her calming nature.
And her sweet, sweet body, which is currently pressed to mine.
My mouth crashes hungrily down to hers, and I realize I haven’t kissed her since yesterday before the bachelor auction.
The last person whose lips moved under mine was Ruby...not Sierra.
I hate that Ruby flows so freely through my mind as I’m kissing this woman who thinks we’re engaged.
My chest tightens as the word moves through my thoughts for the first time.
But it isn’t the good kind of anticipatory tightening. It’s the nervous kind, the kind that makes me feel a little ill.
The kind that makes me question whether I’m doing the right thing.
Of course I am.
I love Sierra, and I’m doing what I have to do to be with her and to make her happy.
I force the thoughts away. I can deal with them tomorrow when Sierra heads home and I have time back on my hands.
Right now, though, it’s time to celebrate what we have.
Naked.
I push my tongue aggressively into her mouth, and she responds by deepening the kiss. Her hands move to my arms, and she squeezes around my biceps before moving her hands around me, stroking up and down my back. This is the woman I’ve kissed for the last seven years, and she’s the woman I’ll kiss for the rest of my life.
I haul her a little more tightly against me, if nothing else to ward off the feeling I get when I think of the rest of my life.
I’m turning thirty in a few months, and that milestone raises certain thoughts and fears about the future, about how much time we have left, about what I really want out of life.
But I don’t want to think about those things while I’m kissing Sierra.
I run my fingertips down her spine and stop on her ass. I grab two handfuls before I hoist her up. She links her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, and we walk that way toward my bedroom.
When we get there, I kick the door shut behind me and we kiss some more before I lower her onto my bed. I stare down hungrily at her as I unbutton my shirt and toss it to the ground.
She sits up on her knees and unhooks my belt before she unbuttons the top button of my dress pants. She used to give me blow jobs all the time when we first started dating. I often joke that her skills are what made me fall in love with her. But the truth is, between time apart and falling into a comfortable pattern, intimate moments like this have become fewer and farther between.
But when you tell someone you want to get married, I guess that means you get a blow job, too.
She pushes my pants down and takes my boxers with them, and then she strokes my shaft a few times, her innocent blue eyes looking up at me and my gaze locked down on her. There’s passion there, but it’s not the lust of something new. It’s love and it’s the desire to make the other person happy—because that’s what Sierra and I strive to do.
She sucks me in, and I refrain from thrusting my hips wildly toward her mouth even though it takes every single ounce of my restraint to do so. I’ve learned over the years what she likes and how she likes it, just as she’s done for me.
And that’s what makes this so easy. We’re familiar with each other, and it’s in that comforting familiarity that we find our rhythm.
I stretch back, my neck corded and my eyes aimed toward the ceiling but shut tightly as I give into the pleasure. My balls start to tighten, and before I get too close to coming, I pull my hips back and fall out of her mouth. Her hand still grips me, though.
She looks up at me, her lips a little puffy and red from what she was just doing to me. She gives me a coy little smile, and then she lets go of her grip on me, stands, and pulls her dress up over her head.
Beneath the gold dress is a nude colored lingerie set. It looks silky and soft and like I could rip it off with my teeth, but I don’t. Instead, I stare down at her, realizing for maybe the first time that this is the woman I’ll get to spend the rest of my life with.
