MORNING CAME TOO soon, though when it did, it was beautiful. Lucky in the bed beside me. His hair inky black against the white linens. His handsome face relaxed in sleep. The light spilling into the room through the curtains we had never closed. Rising from the bed, I donned the robe I had laid out on the footstool the night before. I crossed to see the sunrise over the desert and the surrounding mountains. Pinks. Oranges. Reds. A blue canopy that reminded me of a certain someone's eyes.
"Morning." His strong arms wrapped around me from behind.
“Morning," I returned, leaning my head back against his shoulder. "Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you."
"I don’t want to sleep if you’re not with me." He went silent. "It’s a glorious view." I turned my head to glance at him. He wasn’t looking out the window.
"I miss the sunrises and sunsets in the desert. I had forgotten how majestic they can be."
"I’m sorry we have to leave. We can come back after LA. We have a small break before we start touring again."
"No apologies. No plans. No promises until this is finally through. Remember?"
"They’re just words Raven.” His arms tightened around me. “Just saying them or choosing not to doesn’t change the way things are. The way we are."
I held my breath. How quickly we swam into waters much deeper. I spun in his arms savoring the glide of his strong frame against my yielding curves.
"Tonight." I framed his face. "After tonight we can try to be normal. To see if normal will be possible at all."
“Fuck normal. I like us just the way we are. And you anyway I can have you.” He removed my hands from his face, his eyes hardening, even as his grip on my fingers tightened. "We work, Angel. The symbolism was finalized last night but the process started way before that. What are you afraid of?"
"The short or the unabridged version?" I blew out a breath. "Short it’s not you it’s me and my shit ton of baggage. The long version starts with listing my endless shortcomings."
"You have far more positives than negatives."
"Yeah?"
"Loyalty. Strength. Resiliency. Dedication. Love."
"But I hurt the ones I love. I disappoint them. I fail them when it matters most."
"How Raven?" He sounded exasperated. "If you mean your brother, it’s not fair for you to blame yourself. Your mother? You had no part at all in what happened to her. Your father? He said things in anger that he didn’t mean. You aren’t seeing things clearly. If you were you would realize how much your mother, the woman you so admire, was so much like you."
"How..."
"You don’t hurt the ones you love, Raven. You sacrifice for them. Time and time again. Your father. Marsha. Me. It frightens me how willingly you throw caution to the wind to help those you care for. Your only true failure is to yourself." He ran a hand through his hair. "Think about what I said. Accept yourself for who you really are. Then accept me and believe in us. Starting right now. LA's just an artificial deadline." He stared at me a beat longer as if he had more to say, but only sighed. "I’m going for the shower. I would ask you to join me but then we’d be late. With LA traffic we've got little leeway in the schedule and Morris expects the final version of 'She’s the One’ once we get there."
"WHAT ARE YOU doing?" Lucky asked, ducking through the threshold of the stabbin’ cabin.
"Nothing.” Dressed only in a shirt I had borrowed from him, I set aside the last of the blank sheet music I had purchased in New Orleans. "Just using your keyboard for a bit to string some notes together."
"Those are more than just random notes. I recognize the melody. You’re working on the composition you started in Boston. It sounds a little different now. I’m hearing new connections, more complexity.”
“Yes. Like threads inside a tapestry."
"It’s amazing. So are you. But you keep leaving my bed. What must I do differently to keep you there?"
"You don’t need to do anything. I just don’t need a lot of sleep.”
“We all need rest, Raven.” He gave me a look.
“Sometimes I hear my mother chanting,” I confessed. “I have to write the notes down." My voice turned scratchy. "I miss her."
"Of course you do." He crossed to where I sat, swept the sheets of music aside, commandeered the space he had cleared and lifted my legs to drape them over his lap. Wearing only his boxers, his skin was still warm from the bed. "Drop the defenses, Angel." He rubbed my feet in his large hands. "Let me all the way into your head and your heart." His expression turned earnest, his gaze narrowing as his eyes searched mine. "I want more than just your body. You realize that by now, don’t you?"
I nodded. “I want what you want, Lucky.”
"I want to know all of you. I want to see all the way to the place inside of you where the music begins."
"You’re on your way when you peer into my eyes so deeply like that," I admitted. "To the Navajo the body is just a shell. The eyes are the windows to the soul. It’s considered a very intimate thing to stare into them." He had given me an unimpeded view of his in Boston. Now it was my turn. Maintaining his gaze, I brought one of his hands to my chest and plunged it under the neckline of the tee placing it directly on the skin over my heart to make that point. "But there’s more." I pointed to my bare feet with my chin. "Without my shoes on, I’m in balance with Mother Earth." I withdrew our hands from inside my shirt. "The swirls on the pads of my toes connect me to her. Those whorls on the top of my head connect me to Father Sky. I separated our hands and wiggled my fingers. “My fingerprints connect me to the world around me. To you. That’s why I pressed our hands together in Boston before I left. I was saying more than goodbye. I was saying that I was there. That I had given you my true self. I was commemorating that moment, marking you in a way. Like you did to me the other night. "These hands belong to you.” I lifted them to him. His lips curling into a tender smile, he matched our palms together, pressing his much larger hands firmly to my smaller ones. Warmth filled me. "My heart. My head. You aren’t just inside those places now. You are the master of them. I want to please you. I want to inspire you. I want to always be yours."
"Angel. You are..."
“But I want to give you everything I am without it being tainted by my past. Only when I’m free, only when I’m right, only when the future is spread open without restriction in front of us."
"That’s now, Angel."
Not quite yet, I thought watching the miles speed by outside the bus window. But soon, I hoped.
A WAITING CAR whisked Lucky and the guys away as soon as the bus arrived in LA. With hours to spare until Marsha’s plane landed, Sky and I checked into the spa at the JW Marriott hotel. Pedicures. Manicures. Waxing. The works. They had it all within the LA Live complex. And we partook of it all, relaxed and aglow by the time we finally returned to my room.
"You went to the spa without me?" Marsha had arrived, and she wasn’t happy.
"You were arriving too late to come with." I set my plastic glass half full of cucumber flavored water on the dresser.
"Is she really mad?" Sky shuffled her slippered feet and pulled together the lapels of her terry cloth spa robe looking unsure.
"She’s joking." I pulled the brunette close. "You promised to do our makeup tonight before the band. Do hers first."
"Sure." Sky's sapphire eyes sparkled. "Can I use the flat iron on your hair?"
"Sky, honey,” Marsha said. “You can do anything you want to me. You’re a beautician savant. Beautify away. Just let me lay my outfit on the bed first." She went to her bag unzipped it and gave me a glance over her shoulder. “What are you wearing? Tonight's kind of important."
I hooked my head toward the other bed. Both women’s gazes gravitated toward it as if I were Cinderella revealing the gown my fairy godmother had conjured prior to the ball.
"When the hell did you get all that King Baby bling?"
"I messaged them. They answered. Patrick sent over a delivery from the Santa Monica store. What do you think?"
"It’s so you." She lifted the black leather double wrap around choker. The silver capped ends would dangle at the center of my chest complimenting my brother's chain and my mother's turquoise ring. "I’ve never seen this piece before. Is it custom?"
I shook my head. "It’s their new Heartbreaker line."
"I’m not even gonna ask where you found the traditional Navajo dress. I love the zigzag black and the silver weave. You need to part your hair down the middle and braid your hair to go with it. Your unique beauty should be the focus. Your face. That necklace. And those rockin' dangly skull earrings.”
"My brother is going to be pleased,” Sky decided. "I’ll do your hair when I’m done with hers."
"I love you." I hugged her.
"I love you, too,” she said softly, then added when I looked surprised. "But I thought for sure you already knew."
MY BESTIE AND I walked to the venue feeling like belles going to the ball after Sky got through glamorizing us. The crew filmed as we traversed the sidewalk. It felt awkward when we had to stop and start and repeat poses but once inside the Staples Center we were treated like celebrities and escorted to a cordoned off area just to the right of center stage. I saw a couple of girls who recognized me. I shook hands with them and signed some pictures they had downloaded from the internet. They tried to get me to tell them who my choice for fuck number ten was, but I pretended I didn’t know.
The first band to take the stage was a sister and brother unplugged duo that was new to me. Had I bothered with the bios, I would have been more interested because the woman turned out to be Avery Jones the guitarist for Brutal Strength, a rock band that had been huge before they went into semi-retirement. Her red headed counterpart was her twin brother Justin Jones, but they seemed nervous, or maybe I was just nervous and those feeling projected onto their performance in my mind. The next band got four songs to win over the audience instead of only two. Free Wave, a SoCal band had been the first group to sign with Outside, Ashland Keys' and Lincoln Savage’s new label. My fuck number seven had done well. Free Wave with the relative novelty of a woman on bass rocked a very retro Beach Boys slash The Cure vibe...very danceable, very cool.
Then the Dragons appeared or from my point of view, Lucky arrived with his mates. His stage presence shone megawatt high. Three thousand or thirty thousand, he blindingly lit up every corner of every single venue I had ever seen him perform in. My heart leapt out of my chest, and he reeled it in. Eyes ablaze in their frame, half smile firmly in place, I couldn’t find a safe place to set my eyes on him that didn't make me flush. Silky hair my hands loved to tangle. Lush lips I loved to feel anywhere on my body. Long fingers on his guitar strings ditto to anywhere on me, but I did have certain preferences.
He crouched down right in front of me. He introduced, "She's the One." He stared at me a long meaningful beat while Rocky laid down the rhythm on his snare. I rubbed my fingers over the left side of my chest and kissed my fingertips. How could I deny him? I stalked him with my eyes as he straightened and backed away. Crooning the lyrics into his mic, strumming on his guitar, he won over the rest of the audience in mere moments. Headliners everywhere needed to beware. Lucky and the Dragons were a band taking flight.
"Miss Winters." My breath caught in my chest as I locked eyes with the event security. It was time. I followed him, my bestie at my side.
"He’s going to love it. Love you. Don’t sweat it." She squeezed my chilled fingers. "I’m happy for you."
I stopped outside the after-party door. This last one. After tonight I wouldn’t have to go inside one anymore unless I wanted to. "You keep me sane." I pressed my forehead to hers. "You know this. Right?"
"Yes. And right back at ya, honey." She pulled back to kiss the center of my braided head. "Do what you need to get ready. Since the headliners aren’t even a consideration. We’ll start the music and begin recording you as soon as he enters the room."
“HE’S THE ONE,” I sang turning his music and his lyrics around. “He’s the one I’m certain. No more foolin’. No more flirtin’.” His blue eyes burst into flame. He grabbed me. I noticed Ignacio and the rest of the film crew smiling as Lucky steered me toward the exit. But I didn’t get to sing anymore of the song, and I didn’t care. Once upon a time I thought that I needed the attention of the skits, the affirmation that I was sexy and that guys wanted me, but now I only wanted those things from one. The crew would have to work with the limited footage they had gotten tonight to close out the series. My bestie had talent. WMO was lucky to have her. I trusted her to make the abbreviated ending a perfect one.
Lucky threw open the door. Sky stood out in the cinderblock corridor, Rocky beside her. She acknowledged her brother, her eyes dancing when she noticed his fierce expression and the death grip he had on my hand. She kissed my cheek. The Welshman lifted his chin. They seemed like the start of a reception line to wish the bride and groom well after the wedding. Alec appeared next just before we turned the corner at the end of the hall. His hair was ruffled and his makeup was smudged. Cody just grinned. I could guess why they were a little late. Alec slapped his best friend on the back. Cody gave us a nod of approval. Then we boarded a cramped venue elevator on our way up to who knew where, but alone finally without the RFC hanging over us anymore. Lucky reached for me at the same time I reached for him. We had our arms wrapped around each other when the elevator opened. Security staff stood at the ready.
"Mr. Spencer?"
"Yes." Lucky nodded, taking a step back. He half grinned when he saw me frown at the men for the interruption.
"Follow us, please. There's a crowd outside, but we've got a plan to avoid them." A team of four escorted us onto an escalator, out an emergency exit and across an outdoor plaza. One hand low on my back, Lucky held my hand tightly again. A Ritz Carlton bellman met us underneath a side entrance awning. He discretely acknowledged us and led us into the building and down a long hallway. He gave Lucky a keycard. The lead singer released my hand long enough to take it and tuck it in his jeans pocket. “Have a good evening, Mr. Spencer. Miss Winters." He tipped the brim of his hat.
"Finally," Lucky exhaled as soon as the elevator closed. He grabbed me and drew me to him, hard sculpted muscle to my curves. Delicate feminine lips to plush heavenly ones. I exhaled shakily and wobbled when he broke the connection between our mouths and bodies.
"Where are we?" I asked, following Lucky out of the elevator and into a suite that appeared to be all windows with very little furniture.
"Morris' latest penthouse investment. He let me borrow it. He was very pleased with the changes to 'She's the One'. I mentioned your input."
"I did very little."
"You inspired the sentiment of the entire song. You fine-tuned it when the rest of us were stuck. You are a ray of genuine light in a world that is too much tinsel and trick photography."
I started to protest, but checked myself. He believed in me. I would accept his praise and become it and everything he needed me to be to the best of my ability. He was certainly the reality, the stability in a mad world for me. I shared my thought aloud. He sealed his approval of my statement with his mouth on mine. I swayed when he broke the kiss. No bus movement. No earthquake to rock my world, just him.
The panoramic view with the twinkling lights of the city blurred behind his form but the three words meant only for him were crystal clear. "I love you," I told him, and he swept me off my feet.
"I love you, Raven," he returned, rearranging my entire world. Carrying me, he crossed a hall, passed through a threshold and dropped me on a huge bed inside a room that must have jutted out from the rest of the building to maintain the view that I had seen in the other.
"Stay." He wore no shirt, just a black vest, and now he took that off. "The dress goes but keep the jewelry on. It’s nearly worthy of you." I removed my silver belt while he unbuckled his leather one. He pulled off his boots, and I came up on my knees to whip my dress over my head. He lowered his pants. I unclasped my bra only losing eye contact with him for a moment as I fell to my back and wiggled my panties down my legs. Propping myself on my elbows, I watched him take off his boxers. My mouth parted. He grinned. "You've seen this before."
My gaze lifted. I licked my lips. "We've never made love before."
"Yes, we have Angel. I’ve been making love to you from the beginning. Are you ready to admit you've been doing the same?"
I nodded.
His eyes flared. He stalked toward me, his cock an unsheathed blade with a purpose. My pussy was wet and ready. The mattress dipped beneath the weight of his knee. I parted my thighs eagerly. He crawled over me and caged me in with his arms. He made more room for his hips between my legs. He positioned. He slid inside, and I lifted my hips to take him deeper. His inhalation was broken. My exhalation was smooth. Broken and mended. Two individuals. One whole. We started to move together. He thrust. I parried. He circled. I followed. He slammed in deep. I ground my clit into him. Thrust. Parry. Circle. Grind. Repeat. My breaths shortened. His deep groans lengthened. He withdrew until only the crown of him remained inside of me. I protested until I felt his thumb swipe across my swollen nub. A careful caress. A little kiss of cold from the silver on his ring, a lot of heat from his flesh. His touch was a key that unlocked my pent up desire.
"Lucky. Please."
"Raven, yield. Open." He fastened his lips to mine as he surged in deep. The friction. The angle. The glide of his hot cock inside of me. His wet tongue. His flavor. Him. He was perfection. He unleashed me. He completed me. Pleasure rushed through me. His crashed over me. I arched. I shuddered along his length. He plundered. Pounding. Possessing. Providing. Surcease to my every single need.
Afterward when we were both replete and our heartbeats had slowed, he succumbed to sleep. I watched his steady breathing and I knew. Hell or high water. He had me. I would do my utmost to accommodate him. To support him, to love him in a way that built him up without any more compromising. But first I had to be worthy. Preparation needed to be done. The path had to be laid. Symbols were important to me. I wanted the beginning of our lives together to be blessed. I carefully peeled back the sheet. I returned to the other room. I sat at the piano. I played. I jotted down notes on sheet music. I worked until the sun came up. I wrote the final section of the symphony I had started in Boston. I titled it. “Becoming Me”. But I dedicated it to him. There was no me without him. I left my work beside his pillow along with a note and quietly tiptoed from the suite.
"WHERE IS SHE?" The power of indignation in his raised voice, even over the phone could separate flesh from bone.
"She's driving,” Marsha informed him. “Her golden eyes are glaring daggers at me for taking your call and your sister is smiling. No one’s in danger. Everything's ok, Lucky. You know our girl. She’s in the zone. This is spiritual. It’s important to her. You are important to her. She feels like she needs to do this. We'll return her to you soon, safe and sound."
I cringed at the litany of curse words that followed.
"I'm hanging up now. We'll be back in LA the day after tomorrow." Marsha ended the call. She let out a breath. Her eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. "You sure about him? I don't think he’s very supportive of this Thelma and Louise and Louise dash the three of us are on. Kinda high strung. Isn’t he?"
"And I’m not?" I raised a brow.
"Good point. Never mind." She let out breath. "So how much further?"
I told her.
She cursed colorfully.
Sky giggled.
"Pull over at the next cactus. I’m driving," Marsha insisted. “You and Louise Two can take a turn in the back together. I’d like you to see the first season of RFC in its entirety. Well, what we submitted to Smith, anyway. She might change it some, but I think she’ll like it."
I PULLED THE rental car into the parking lot at our destination. The View Hotel in Monument Valley. Ten hours. Two stops. Ten episodes of the RFC later. I had mixed emotions after watching the entire season. Nostalgia wasn’t one of them. Mainly relief that it was over. Reflection about the men I had been with and the one woman. A common thread ran through each encounter, at least the way Ignacio had filmed it. Desire was beautiful, whatever form it took. And finally recognition at the end with Lucky, who he was to me, what we had found together and respect to each individual along the way for their part in the journey that led me to him.
I needed to hug my bestie and thank her again for all her hard work but right now I was dying for water. I had consumed way too many salty snacks on the drive between LA and Monument Valley. But I forgot my thirst as stepped out of the car and took in the view. It had been years since I had been here. My memory hadn’t done it justice. My heart thudded, and my lips parted in reverential awe. Monument Valley wasn’t really a valley but a vast flattened landscape accented by clumps of blue tinged sage grass and populated by red sandstone buttes, mesas and spires that rose as high as two thousand feet into the sky. At sunset, the horizon looked like someone had tipped over russet water colors and let them spill lengthwise over a canvas of blue. I snapped a photo inside my mind deciding not to wake Sky and Marsha. They were slumped over sound asleep in their seats, thoroughly exhausted. They would be able to better appreciate the park in the morning.
I checked us into the hotel and returned to the vehicle. Waves of arid heat accompanied me as I woke my friends reminding me of my thirst. No luggage, our dash had been too impromptu for anything but mere necessities. A little short of breath because of the altitude, we trudged into the building and up the stairs to our room. After sucking down glasses of water from the bathroom tap, we fell asleep as our heads hit the pillows.
Well before dawn the next morning, armed with bottled waters under each arm, I tiptoed across the room. Marsha lay in the bed I had just vacated. Sky rested in the other. Both had their hands tucked under their pillows. With the air conditioning on maximum whirring, they didn't even stir when I opened the door and slipped outside. This part of my mission was for me alone.
I met the guide I had prescheduled in the parking lot. He didn't even bat an eye at my request to be taken to the arch I had seen the night before, the one that looked like a supernatural doorframe for a giant. I imagined he had encountered plenty of eccentrics like me or maybe it was just the couple of hundred dollar bills I gave him that made him so accommodating at such an early hour.
The lightning started as we left the parking lot. The rain began to fall as we descended the hill. The guide’s jeep got stuck a couple of times in old ruts on the gravel road, but after the second time of me refusing when he suggested that I turn back and give it a try on another day, he gave up attempting to talk me out of my mission.
"I’ll go alone," I told him when we reached our destination. The heavens were releasing their full fury. The arch was barely visible in the headlights as we parked beside a tangle of sun bleached petrified wood. He let out a relieved sigh as I popped open my door. Yeah, not exactly touring weather. Outside the jeep, my feet immediately sank into the wet sand. Determined, I pressed forward. The rain stung as it pelted my skin. The wind whipped my hair into my eyes but I wouldn’t be deterred. I reached the fifty five feet high fiery colored sandstone arch just as the sun broke turning the darkness from pitch black to dusky grey.
Swiping wet hair out of my eyes, I slogged through the rivulets of water running down the hill and stepped under the arch slash portal for my purposes. I chanted my love for Lucky like Mother Earth had done for Father Sun in the Rainbow’s End tale. I did this four times just like in the myth. The rain ended as I finished. The sun rose filling the horizon. A rainbow appeared, and so did he.
Lucky.
He strode up the hill toward me kicking up a splash as he stomped in a puddle. I felt a chill like a finger trailing down my spine. The feeling could be explained away as could the frontman’s sudden unlikely appearance. He had probably taken a flight from LA to Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix where he had probably secured his own rental car and driven the five hours from there to here, but to me the moment seemed supernatural, like Lucky had transversed the cosmos to get to me.
"Fancy meeting you here, Angel," he quipped while a sudden gust whipped slashes of ink into his glacial blue eyes. A glacier in the desert. The landscape surrounding us might have been shaped by one in distant times. Or maybe it had just been the rain and the wind. But the man before me had certainly carved his mark irreversibly deep inside of me.
"Lucky." I breathed. The answer to my prayers. My hope for a blessed benediction. He had arrived. Atoned, I was free to receive him.
"I came to rescue you, but you seem to be doing fine without me."
"I didn’t need a rescue."
He gave me a pointed look.
"Ok. Maybe I did a couple of times. Thank you. But I also needed to figure things out for myself, and I needed the freedom to do that. I needed your support. I needed your love. I needed you."