It was Monday. A new week.

I was sitting in Elle’s home studio, alone, cross-legged on the floor in front of the big, open windows, drinking coffee as the evening sun and the fresh coastal air poured over me. I was working on a new song, one of my favorite acoustics in my lap. I’d had Michelle ship it over from Boston, and had a few others shipped up from Austin and L.A.. My guitars were like the rest of my shit; strewn all over North America.

I’d played with Elle for ten days straight now, here in her studio. We’d spent most of that time working on new songs, and on the weekend, we’d started recording. Five nights ago, I’d shown her my test results, but she still hadn’t touched me. She hadn’t given me any indication that she wanted me to touch her. And even though it was silently killing me, not being able to reach out and draw her into my arms, I could hardly put pressure on her.

She said this was how she wanted it. That what happened was just sex. And apparently, “just sex” meant just one night of sex. And the morning after. And that was it.

I still didn’t believe that was all there was between us. But I was not gonna push it.

Elle was in a tough spot as it was.

I knew she still hadn’t told the guys in the band, or Brody, what she was doing here, at her house, with me. If I’d been a better man, maybe I would’ve bowed right out of her life, made it easier on her.

But I didn’t.

I’d crashed on Ray’s couch for a few more nights so I could spend time with him in the mornings, have breakfast, talk about sports and other shit I did not care about but Ray did. I cared about Ray, so I put that time in. But every day I’d been itching to get back here. I’d come over as soon as Elle texted me that she was up and ready to play.

Since I’d checked into the hotel, though, things had gotten harder. At least at Ray’s I felt like I was serving a purpose. Now, each night as I lay in my hotel bed, alone, I thought about just packing up and taking off. Just leaving Elle the fuck alone, the way I should’ve left Jessa alone all those years ago.

There were just too many uncomfortable similarities here.

The big ugly secret of it all.

The lies Elle was gonna have to tell the band because of me.

The fact that she’d probably be better off without me, without this major fucking complication in her life.

I just couldn’t believe she’d put up with this kind of complication if it was just to make some music and have one whirlwind night of sex. She could get that from a lot of other men, without the complications.

Which just left me lying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling with the question thudding in my head: Why me?

But each day, I shoved that question aside and enjoyed this for all it was worth—which was a hell of a lot. Because each day, the days I played with Elle in her studio, felt like the best days I’d had in a long, long time.

The best days since I’d lost Dirty.

I did not know how to give this up. This, the best thing I had going in my life.

Even if it was selfish. Even if it wasn’t the best thing for Elle.

I looked around her studio… This beautiful, white room with its high ceilings and the rainbow-colored portrait of Bob Marley on one wall, a couple of platinum Dirty albums lined casually, crookedly, on another. The big, fluffy chair covered in white faux fur. The girlie magazines and music magazines all mixed up on the coffee table, with random earrings and tubes of lip gloss and bottles of nail polish. The single photo, carefully framed and set on a shelf—of Elle when she was a teenager, maybe sixteen or so, with her parents and her little sister, all snuggled up together on a couch.

This room… it felt like Elle’s sacred space.

I was still amazed that she’d let me in here. Sometimes, it was easier to fathom that she’d let me into her bed than that she’d let me into this room.

Today, she was gone. Dirty had resumed auditions. Which meant I’d lost any chance I’d had with them, if I’d ever had any at all. They were officially continuing their search to replace me.

But I still had this.

I had the music Elle and I were making, the long days spent in her studio, sometimes right into the night. And today, while she was at the auditions, she’d let me hang out here while she wasn’t even here.

About an hour ago, she’d texted to let me know she was on her way home and wondering if I wanted to stick around. A little while after that, she texted again to say maybe we could order dinner in, but meanwhile, I’d already cooked her dinner. Figured it was the least I could do, since she’d let me be here while she was out—though it felt weirdly domestic. Weird because I wasn’t used to making dinner for anyone but myself. The few days I’d spent in Hawaii with Elle and her staff, I’d cooked more meals for other people than I had in years.

But it wasn’t a bad feeling.

In truth, if you set aside all the bullshit with Dirty and all the bullshit I was afraid I was gonna cause for Elle, I felt truly, deeply good for the first time since what went down with the band earlier this year. Cautiously good.

When I heard Elle coming into the house, I headed into the kitchen to check the chicken. I’d already told myself not to butt in. Not to ask how her day went. Not unless she brought it up. It was gonna kill me not to ask, not to have any idea what was going on at the auditions, but if that was the price I had to pay for being here, with her, I’d pay it.

The first words out of her mouth were, “Holy shit, it smells amazing in here.” She appeared from the main entrance hall and stood there, looking in at me, like she was afraid she was in the wrong kitchen, like this couldn’t be her house.

“I made some dinner,” I said, popping the lid back on the crock pot.

“You made dinner?” she repeated, like it was the most amazing and unbelievable thing in the world.

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Just some honey garlic chicken and wild rice. And a salad.”

She gawked at me.

“It’s… uh… kind of a thing of mine,” I explained. “Since getting clean. You know, a healthier lifestyle. Eating well.”

“You really didn’t have to do this, though. We could’ve ordered in.” She dropped her purse and came deeper into the kitchen. “You didn’t have to spend your day cooking when you’d rather be making music…” She stopped right next to me and peeked through the glass lid of the pot.

“It took me like fifteen minutes to throw it together,” I said, watching her. “The crock pot did the rest.” Her hair was smoothed over one shoulder in a long braid and her bared throat was so close to me, I could smell that warm, almost spicy smell of hers. Like coconut and rum. I almost pressed my lips to her smooth skin.

I didn’t.

She gazed up at me. “I didn’t even know I had a crock pot.”

“You didn’t,” I told her, feeling kinda stupid about it now. “I… uh… bought you one.” I wasn’t trying to kiss up, but now it felt like it. What kind of idiot buys a crock pot for a woman after sleeping with her once? “I just wanted to make this. You know, it’s so easy, and it cooked while I was in the studio…” Shit. What the hell was she thinking?

She probably knew musicians who had literal orgies of sex and drugs going on around them in the studio. And I was making her crock pot chicken like some fool in love?

“Is that my laundry?” she said, her eyes flicking to the pile of folded towels on the counter.

“No. I just… needed a dish towel and couldn’t find any clean ones, so I—”

“You did the dishes?” She looked around, and suddenly I saw the kitchen through her eyes. The clean dishes—the ones we’d dirtied over the weekend during our marathon recording sessions—stacked neatly in the rack on the counter. The open dishwasher, emptied. The little piles of her things tidied up on the island. The blinds over the breakfast nook window that had gotten stuck open, that I’d fixed.

Her eyes met mine again.

“Wow. I, uh… feel like an idiot.”

She shook her head slowly. “I feel like a slob. My cleaner doesn’t come ’til tomorrow. I usually pick up after myself a little better than this…”

“No worries.”

“I was planning to get the blinds fixed.”

“I didn’t mind…”

An awkward silence landed as she continued to stare at me like some alien had landed in her kitchen. Like she couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.

Then she bit her lip a little and cocked her head. “When will it be ready?” she asked softly.

“What?” My gaze had gotten stuck on her sweet lips. That perfect cupid’s-bow shape, made for kissing.

“The chicken.”

“Uh… it’s ready now, if you’re hungry.”

“Oh.” She looked… disappointed. “I mean… will it go bad if we don’t eat it right away?”

“Well… I can just put it on the warmer, if we need to talk…” Yeah. Clearly, we needed to talk. About how I was being a fucking weirdo cleaning up her kitchen and fixing her broken shit and buying her small appliances while she was out. As if imposing on her life wasn’t already fucking weird enough.

“I don’t wanna talk,” she said, and her gaze dropped to my mouth, her gray eyes darkening—like a stormy sky right before it explodes with thunder and lightning.

Oh. Read that totally fucking wrong…

As blood thundered suddenly to my awakening dick, I switched the crock pot to the warm setting. “It can sit for a while…”

“How long?” she asked, blinking up at me, somehow looking all angelic and totally fucking horny at the same time.

“As long as you want,” I said, though I really had no idea. Who the fuck cared? I’d eat the chicken bone-dry and ice-cold if I had to.

“Good,” she said. Then she took me by the hand, laced her fingers gently through mine, and led me upstairs to her room without another word.

She walked me there slowly, but when we got there and she turned to me, our clothes disappeared in a flurry. We were naked in her bed, and I was on top of her in seconds. My dick was rigid, aching, my body tense with the strain of holding back as she writhed beneath me, rubbing her body against mine, her hands straying over me. I felt restless, unhinged, totally undone by this unsated desire for her… the desire that had been building ever since I last fucked her.

As I leaned down and skimmed my lips over her neck, the last few nights at the hotel flashed in my mind—my dick in my hand, masturbating in a frenzy to the thought of her… her long, white-blonde hair, her steel-gray eyes, her firm tits, her pretty pussy… her smooth, tanned skin against mine, and that sweet, heady smell of her… not knowing if I’d ever get to have her again.

I was struggling, really struggling, to savor it and not blow it in a rush—Elle, wanting me in her bed again—as her hand slid down between us and grasped my cock, giving me a slow, tight stroke… as she spread her legs for me and I settled between her slender thighs.

She hadn’t even kissed me yet.

She was breathing soft and fast against my face—and she was rolling a condom onto me with deft fingers. “Oh, God, I can’t wait anymore…”

I kissed her throat, licking my way up her neck to her ear. “What do you want, Elle?” I asked her, my voice tight and hoarse.

“I want you,” she said, and when I met her eyes, the storm in them was about to burst. “I want it hard. Give it to me hard…”

I kissed her then, deep, as I sank into her, and I gave it to her how she asked for it. Hard. Unrelenting. I didn’t even throw in any finger work or a hip roll, anything at all to get her there but straight-up pounding her clit and nailing her with my swollen dick. I pinned her hands down on either side of her head and fucked her while I kissed her, ravaging her mouth with my tongue.

Soon, both of us were panting so hard we couldn’t keep up the kissing. I had to let her hands go so I could brace myself and give it to her harder. The harder I fucked her, the louder and more appreciative her ragged cries got. She dug her nails into my ass as I pumped, pulling me into her.

After a while, she slowed my pace with her hands and threw her ankles up on my shoulders.

“Don’t hold back, Seth,” she said, her voice a ragged gasp between the other sounds of helpless pleasure she was making. “Give it to me…”

I kept pounding her until her pussy squeezed the life out of me and she screamed in climax—and then I pounded her even harder. Faster again. The instant she started to come, it was like a trip-wire was pulled; I went off like a fucking cannon, blowing into her so hard… the lightning ripped through my body and my head smashed apart with stars.

* * *

Later that night, I was wrapped around Elle when she asked me, “When did this start for you? Was it Hawaii?”

We were lying on a couch in the den just off her dining room, naked, wrapped up in a blanket. We’d just had sex again and I was spooning her, playing with her hair, running the long strands gently through my fingers. I wasn’t even sure if she was still awake until she spoke.

“No,” I confessed. “I thought about it long before that.” I hesitated, then added, “I always thought about you.”

“Always?” She rolled onto her back to look at me. There was a fire burning in the fireplace and candles were lit all over the dining room table from our dinner; the firelight flickered over her face, making her look timeless, ageless, golden. “Back then?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Back then.” Because I’d be fucking lying if I said the thought of pounding her pussy was a new concept to me.

She was silent for a long moment as she just stared back at me. Then: “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because… you had that rule about not getting involved with the guys in the band,” I said, still playing with the ends of her hair, like soft-spun white-gold. “Zane warned me about it before he even introduced me to you. So I always had that in my mind. Didn’t want to fuck things up, or disrespect you. Had a lot of respect for you. For all of you.”

“Well… thanks, I guess,” she said, all sarcasm. But she smiled a little, and Elle’s smiles, these days, were far more rare than gold.

“But Jesse got around your rule,” I said.

Her smile faded. “Yeah.”

“You regret that?”

“No.”

“You still have feelings for him?” I didn’t even want to ask, but I knew I had to.

Because I knew I had feelings for her.

And ever since our conversation on the beach in Kauai, I’d been wondering. Ever since we’d first fucked, I’d been dying to know, not only where I really stood with her, but where Jesse stood.

“He’s not here right now,” was her answer.

I didn’t love it. It didn’t tell me what I wanted to know.

Jesse was married now. Happily, from what I could tell. But if there was any possibility that Elle still wanted to be with him, I needed to know it. So I could figure out how to deal with it.

I knew I couldn’t exactly hold it against her; if my recovery had taught me anything, it was that everyone had a right to their feelings. Actually allowing yourself to feel shit and facing the shit you felt was one of those key things you had to do when you lived sober. That meant Elle had the right to feel however she felt, and so did I. If she still loved Jesse… I didn’t know how I’d handle it. But I’d have to fucking try, no matter how I felt about it—whether we were going to be friends for the rest of our lives, or something more.

“I will always care for Jesse,” she went on, maybe sensing I needed a little more from her on the subject. “But no, I’m not in love with him anymore. Or in love with the idea of him loving me. In the end, I couldn’t make him do that.”

I took that in.

Clearly, she’d loved him, but I believed her that it was over. It just kinda blew me away, though, that he hadn’t loved her back.

“What about Jessa?” she asked me.

I considered that, shaking my head a little. No, I really couldn’t blame her for falling for Jesse, when I’d fallen for his sister. “The Mayes family has some kinda magic, huh?”

A small, surprised laugh burst from her. “Yeah. Beautiful assholes?”

I smiled a little.

“You respected her,” Elle said, growing serious again. “She was part of the band, and you still got involved with her.”

“Yeah. But Jessa was fucked up, Elle,” I said. “Not like me, but she was lost, and she’d grown up without money, just like me. She had no parents, just like me. She didn’t intimidate me like you did.”

Elle rolled onto her side, facing me. “You’re seriously telling me that my rule kept you from flirting with me?”

“No, I’m saying your rule gave me a convenient excuse not to try to flirt with you and get shot the hell down.” She still looked skeptical at that. “You were the platinum goddess of rock, Elle. I was an orphan and a junkie.”

“And a fucking rock star,” she said. “I shared the stage with you. I saw the fans all over you. You could’ve had any girl.”

“Didn’t want any girl,” I said.

Her steely gray eyes studied me, searching for signs of bullshit. “You’re serious?”

I couldn’t have been more serious.

“Elle… you had everything. Nice family. You were gorgeous. Talented. And then you had the fame, to top it all off. Your legions of adoring fans. You had the keys to the fucking empire. Why would you open that door to a guy like me?”

She just stared at me.

Then she kissed me.

I kissed her back, and soon we were going at it, all passion and hunger, like we were trying to make up for all the years we’d missed out on when maybe we could’ve been doing this… and at the same time, like we both knew that any given moment might be our last moment like this.

I knew that I did not want this to end. But I also knew that what we were doing, in secret… it wasn’t right.

It would hurt Dirty, again, and I didn’t want to do that. It would hurt Elle, and I couldn’t stand to do that.

But I still could not put the brakes on.

I knew I should stop fucking her. Give her some time to figure shit out, to decide if she wanted to tell the band about this or not, if she really wanted this complication in her life or not.

But every time she touched me, wrapped her body around me, looked at me like she was doing now—like she fucking wanted me, now, with that storm brewing in her eyes—as she pushed me onto my back and slid on top of me… Elle, a woman who could’ve had her pick of men… but she wanted me… I lost any ability to resist this thing that kept building between us like a tsunami, unstoppable, and smashing the world to senseless rubble around us.

I wanted to be the kind of man who could walk away from it, who could step aside and wait it out, see where things landed with the band and step back in, if and when it was right. When it was safe for her, and everything was on the up and up.

But I just wasn’t that kind of man.

I wanted her, and when I was with her… when she had me, deep inside her… I didn’t care what it was going to cost either of us.