After I sent her that note, Maggie avoided me like I was the motherfucking plague incarnate.

Like if she got anywhere near me she’d be struck dead.

I actually saw her turn and hightail it the fuck out of the room or the hallway or wherever we ran into each other, several times. And it was pissing me off.

Worse, I missed her.

Almost made me regret sending her the damn note.

But fuck it.

I meant every word I said. She didn’t believe me, or it scared the shit out of her or whatever, that was her deal. At least I was honest. At least I was willing to talk to her. Even if talking meant fighting.

Fighting was better than nothing.

The cold-shoulder bullshit had gone on all fucking day when I finally snapped.

It happened in the hotel elevator.

I’d just come back from a band dinner and got into the elevator with Shady; Dirty had a show tonight and I had to grab some things. Maggie got in on the next floor. She didn’t come to dinner, said she had work to do; at least that’s what Talia told me.

When the elevator door opened and she was standing outside the hotel spa in a robe and slippers, she saw me and her face totally fell. She stepped into the elevator and made fake-cheerful small talk with Shady—since she had to mind her professional appearance and all that shit—while my jaw ticked and I stood stone-silent between them.

When the door opened on our floor, Maggie was the first one off the elevator. I followed. I muttered something to Shady about waiting for me and caught up to her. Then I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her the rest of the way down the hall—to my room.

As soon as we were inside, I lit into her.

“The fuck are you gonna do? Just ignore me for the rest of the fucking tour?”

“No,” she said. “I’m not ignoring you—”

“Save it. You want a divorce? I’ll give you a divorce, if that’s what you really want.”

Yeah. I was annoyed enough, frustrated enough to say that to her.

Even if I didn’t mean it.

Maggie looked stunned.

“Unless that’s not what you really want,” I pressed.

She blinked at me, her mouth open, but she didn’t speak.

I got close, cupping her head in my hands. “Is that what you want, Maggie?” I softened my voice and got right in her face. “You want a divorce?”

She shook her head long before the words finally found their way out of her mouth. “No.” Her voice was small and fragile. “I don’t want a divorce.”

Fuck, but I was relieved to hear those words. It wasn’t like she was agreeing to be my wife. But at least I knew she didn’t really want to let this go. She didn’t really want an end to our marriage, as fucked-up as it was.

She didn’t really want to lose me.

And Christ, it turned me on.

“I want in you,” I told her. “Now.”

Her gray eyes widened. “Now?”

“Right now.”

Her jaw kinda dropped, but she didn’t say another word. When she didn’t protest, I fumbled around, opening my jeans and reaching up inside her robe to yank her panties down. I needed inside her, because when I was inside her it was the only time she got real with me, ever. It was the only time she let me actually get close. Let me see and hear and taste and feel how she wanted me…

I got her panties down around her ankles, hiked one leg up over my hip, and sank into her.

And fuck.

Maggie’s heat. So silky soft. Wet. Slippery and tight.

Fucking bare.

So intense…

“Zane… we can’t do this,” she protested, even as she clung to me and moved her hips to meet my thrusts. “You have to put on a condom.”

“I know.” I sucked on her neck as she clutched at my back, pulling me close. “I know, babe. I’m gonna pull out. Just… for a minute…”

“Oh, God…”

“Mmmm…”

Jesus Christ… so fucking good. We were both melting, fucking struggling to keep standing as we came together, right up against the door.

“I’m not on the pill,” she said. “You have to get a condom.”

I met her eyes, but I didn’t stop fucking her. My hips and my dick were on autopilot. She’d told me that before, that she wasn’t on the pill. But right now, my brain couldn’t process it.

Then someone knocked on the door.

Maggie froze.

“Shit…” I breathed.

She shoved me away, wiggling her way off my dick, and scrambled to cover herself with the robe.

I put my dick away, awkwardly, and that shit hurt. My jeans were still open; no fucking way was I trying to zip them up right now.

I could practically feel Maggie cringe behind me as I yanked open the door.

It was Shady.

“Uh, sorry,” he said, his gaze flicking from me to her. He looked genuinely fucking shocked that he’d just interrupted me feeding Maggie my dick. “Sorry. Uh… you didn’t answer your phone, and it’s time to go…”

“Thank you, Shady,” Maggie said in her all-business tone. “He’ll be right out.”

I shut the door. I knew I had a show to do. I had to get going, but Maggie wasn’t exactly dressed and ready to go, and fuck if I wanted to leave her like this.

“How could you?” she hissed, smacking me on the shoulder.

“How could I what?”

“Open the fucking door, Zane! It could’ve been anyone. You didn’t even look through the peephole. Or give me a chance to hide. Or do up your fucking pants.” She growled in a way that normally would’ve turned me on, but right now, just pissed me off. “And you didn’t even put on a condom!”

I swiped my hand through my hair, fucking aggravated. My dick was aching, my balls were throbbing, and she was pissed at me again? “Hide? What are we, fucking teenagers? Why the fuck do we have to hide?”

“Zane, don’t start this shit.”

“Why?” I repeated. “Why do we have to hide from everyone that we’re fucking? Everyone else can fuck, but we can’t?”

I was ready for her to yell at me, but instead her shoulders dropped. “I just… I can’t bear the risk, okay?” Her voice was small as her gray eyes gazed up at me, all watery and soft. “I’ve told you this before. I can’t bear them finding out.”

Fuck me. Her pretty face looked all scared and sad, and it broke me. “Shady’s not gonna tell anyone, babe.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Shady doesn’t give a shit that we’re banging.”

“But someone else could see me leaving your room,” she said. “One of these times, someone will see us. Brody could see us. What if—shit! Were we loud? We were right up against the door. What if someone heard us?”

“No one heard us.” But I didn’t know if that was true.

And Maggie looked so fucking horrified at the thought. Kinda like the way she looked when she found out the wedding we’d had was real—and not just some elaborate hoax for her dad’s benefit.

Best and worst morning of my life.

“That’s not gonna happen,” I told her. “With Brody. He’s not gonna find out. And if he did—”

“Zane—”

“If he ever did, I’d put him straight. You can count on me for that, Maggs. No matter what you think, I’m telling you, there’s no way I’d ever let him hold this shit against you or let it fuck with your job. Ever. You get that?”

She didn’t say anything. Because she didn’t get it.

She didn’t believe me.

And I knew she had her reasons for not trusting me.

Good reasons.

I knew she was afraid of risking her job over this—risking pretty much everything that mattered to her. Which meant she’d cut me way more slack than I’d ever deserved.

I got that.

I knew I’d disappointed her, hurt her, and in her mind, betrayed her.

But fuck no. Whatever she thought of me in her darkest Zane-hating moments, I’d never fuck with her job. I’d never fucking do that to her. And I’d never let Dirty lose her.

How to convince her of that, though?

The woman was stubborn as shit.

“If Brody or anyone else has a problem with you fucking me,” I told her, “I’ll deal with them.”

“Who cares about the fucking!” she half-yelled. “It’s not about the sex, Zane.” She took a breath and lowered her voice. “Don’t you get that? No one gives a shit who you fuck, because you are always fucking someone. If it’s me, they might be a little pissed or concerned, for about a minute. But it’s not about fucking. It’s about us. This fucked-up shit between us.”

“I know that, Maggs.”

“No,” she said. “You don’t. You just think it’s all some stupid game—”

“It’s not a game.”

“Everything to you is a game. Life is a game. You get arrested, you break someone’s heart, you end up in the hospital getting stitches, it’s all the same to you. The next day you’re onto the next thing. You’re completely fucking ignorant about the trail of crap you leave in your wake, everywhere you go, because me and Brody and Jude are always cleaning it up for you. You don’t have the first fucking clue how this will affect anyone else, because the truth is, you don’t actually care how it affects anyone else. But it matters, Zane.”

“I know it matters, Maggie—”

“Do you? Do you know how much it matters? Because I’ve been managing Dirty for years, and I’m telling you, this is gonna totally fuck with the tour and the band. Like some cancer. Like that ugly thing you can’t see and can’t quite make sense of but it’s always there, festering at the corners of your mind, out of your control, until you totally fucking resent it and you just want it gone. Want things back the way they were before. But it’s not about the sex. It’s the secret that’s the problem.”

“So? If the secret is the problem, then let’s just fucking tell them.”

Maggie sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Whenever you want,” I said, moving closer to her. “However you want.”

“Telling them won’t make it any better. When are you gonna see that? Whether they know about it or not, this thing between us is fucked.”

“No, Maggs. It won’t be a secret anymore, and we can work out our shit in the open.”

“Are you listening to me? There’s nothing to work out, Zane.”

“That’s bullshit, Maggie, and you know it. And don’t fucking tell me all you want from me is my dick, because if that’s all this was about you could’ve had it years ago. You could’ve had it every single day since we got married. But you haven’t. It’s been almost two years since our wedding night and you’ve let me have you like a dozen times. So you’re right. This is about way more than fucking. Let’s just call it what it is.”

I held her gaze. She said nothing.

I leaned in close, so she couldn’t ignore it.

“Maggie, I love y—”

“NO. We’re not doing that.”

I took a deep breath, in through my nose, out again. “Why not?”

“Because we do that, I lose my job, Zane.”

“I told you. I’ll talk to Brody. He’s a brother. We’ve been friends since I was fourteen. You think he cares more about the business than the band, than me, you’re dead wrong.”

“That’s not how it works, Zane. You think we tell everyone and the next day we just… What? Start dating? Your groupies bounce in and out of your bed, and on the side you buy me flowers and court me, take me to dinner, ask me about my favorite color and my girlhood dreams?” Her gray eyes held mine, cool and unflinching. “Or maybe it’s the groupies who’re on the side.”

I didn’t even respond to that. I tried to keep my cool, when I really wanted to slap her upside the head for the first time in my life.

“It’s pink,” I said calmly. “You pretend your favorite color is lime green, like that suede jacket you always wear, but it’s pink.”

She frowned at me.

“And your girlhood dream? You wanted to be a genie. Like the girl from that old TV show. Because you wanted to live inside the magic bottle with the wraparound couch, and you had a thing for the astronaut guy.”

She frowned deeper and crossed her arms over her chest. “So? He looked hot in his uniform.”

“So you said.”

“I didn’t know you were listening.”

I took her by the waist and pulled her to me, but she wouldn’t let me get close; her hands went to my chest and held me off.

“You wanna date, we can date,” I told her. “You want flowers, I’ll get you flowers. Whatever the fuck you want.”

“Until what? I catch you in the middle of your latest fuck-bunny orgy?”

“That doesn’t have to be the way it is.”

She shoved me away, and I let my hands drop.

“You forget who you’re talking to,” she said flatly. “I’ve seen it all before.”

“Seen what before?”

She shook her head. “It’s an old, old story,” she said, “and it’s fucking boring, and I know how it ends.”

Old story?

It hit me then, what she meant.

She wasn’t even talking about us.

“I’m not Dizzy,” I told her. “I’m not your fucking dad.”

“Maybe not.”

Jesus. The girl was fucking stubborn. “So why don’t you tell me, then. How does it end? Because I’d really like to know, since you’re able to see into the fucking future.”

“It ends,” she said, “when we get a divorce. And after that, if I haven’t already, I lose my job. I get dumped, phased out. Whether it’s fast or slow, however you want to look at it, you’re the rock star, and I’m gone.”

Fuck. I could see why she’d think that. I really could.

But that was never gonna fucking happen.

“It won’t be like that, Maggie.”

“It will.”

I clawed my hand through my hair. We were standing a few feet apart. Other than fucking her a few minutes ago, it was the closest I’d been to her in days and it was still way too fucking far. I just wanted to hold her. Grab her and throw her down and squeeze all the fucking bullshit right out of her. Shake it out. Kiss it out and suck it out and fuck it out.

But that had never worked before.

“So that’s it? We’re doomed to failure? That’s all you wanna see?”

“I want you not to tell anyone. So that means you won’t tell anyone.”

We stared at each other for a long minute.

Then I turned away. I looked at the door, and I thought about just walking straight out. For the first time in my life I actually had the urge to walk out on Maggie.

But I turned back to her.

“And then what? I get you six times a year, when I manage to get you alone?”

“No, Zane.” Her gray eyes held mine, tight and cool; I could practically see the wall going up between us. “Even if we fuck six times a year, you don’t get me at all.”

I just stared at her. Couldn’t really believe she’d fucking said that.

But she did.

I did up my jeans. Slowly, so she had time to stop me if she wanted to.

She didn’t. Unfortunately for me and my aching dick, didn’t seem like there was any chance in hell we were gonna finish that fuck.

So I grabbed my leather jacket and some weed, and I went for the door. “For the record,” I said as I opened it, “I am not always fucking someone.” Then I paused, half-in and half-out, and looked at her again, totally fucking pissed that it always had to end like this. That one of us was always walking out.

Actually, she was always walking out. That was the bullshit pattern.

We fucked. We fought. Maggie got pissed. Maggie walked out.

This time, it was finally my turn. Because I’d never been so pissed off at her in my life.

“And if all I get is six times a year,” I told her as I left, “maybe I’d rather have nothing at all.”