Ella
I know they mean well, but my God, I’d love to, you know, at least pee without being shadowed to the bathroom. Never mind the three brawny bodyguards in the next room. They should just hook me up to a mic, then they can all hear my damn business.
It’s all for my own protection, but unless my ex-fiancé has turned into Spider-Man and can scale up nine floors and ninja jump his way into the room through the window, I think I’m probably safe enough.
“Are you seriously standing outside the door?”
“Just in case.”
“Tate! I can’t pee with you listening!”
“I’m not listenin’, darlin’. I’m standin’ guard.”
“You know, this is getting a little silly now.” I grunt and force myself to pee. “Like, for real. And you were totally listening because you answered me!”
I flush, wash my hands, and unlock the door.
He towers over me by a few inches and outward by several more, but that doesn’t stop me from narrowing my eyes in a challenging move. It’s been days since I got the email, and I’ve been on total lockdown since. Matthew isn’t shy, and he isn’t patient. If he knew where I was and he was here, he’d have pounced by now. Round the clock security or not.
“You know he was just trying to scare me into going back, right?” I put my hands on my hips. “Just like that chick faked your sex tape to try and blackmail money from you.”
Tate runs his hands through his hair and shudders at the reminder of Marc’s call yesterday on the way to New Orleans. “I know, darlin’, but it don’t stop me worrying. And the fact that she turned out to be a whackjob doesn’t make it better. I already know for a fact the whackjob train broke down at your ex’s stop.”
I look up and purse my lips so the laughter inside doesn’t escape. We are not having a banter conversation. We are having a serious conversation.
“Do you need to use the bathroom again to shit out that laughter you’re keepin’ inside?”
I slap his arm. This time I only freeze for a half second before Tate grins and kisses my forehead.
“Gettin’ there, darlin’. Getting there.” His grin widens and he backs into the bathroom. I swing the door shut with a huff and stalk into the main room.
“Ajax!”
“Yes, sweetheart.” The burly guard turns to me.
“He’s not here, is he?”
His eyes soften. “I promise you he ain’t.”
“Right. So I can come and go as I wish inside the hotel, correct?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’? It’s perfectly safe in here!” I cry in annoyance. Seriously. I bet even Jennifer Lawrence has less security than this. No, scratch that. I know she does.
“He could come in at any time. We have reception briefed on the situation, but they haven’t studied him the way my boys have.”
“So it looks like two or three of your boys can add customer service to their résumés.”
“Ella,” Tate sighs.
“No, don’t ‘Ella’ me. That means you’re annoyed, and you don’t get to be annoyed.”
“Is it, you know, that time?” Ajax asks. “Because she’s a little . . . bitchier . . . than normal.”
“Oh shit! You did not just say that!” Sofie exclaims.
“Mama! Yax! Dollar!” Mila hollers from the doorway, hands already outstretched. “Immy. Immy.”
I cover my face with my hands and shriek. “No, I am not on my freakin’ period. I am frustrated. Okay? I’m goddamn frustrated. I get what you all are doing, and I appreciate it, but, hell.” I run my fingers through my hair. “I feel trapped.”
Tate reaches for me, and I step to the side.
“All this, it makes me feel trapped, okay? Protect me, guys, please, but does it have to be so full on? For two years I was told what to wear, where to go, what to do, how to do my hair, how to eat my pizza, how many glasses of wine I could have a week, how to hide what was happening. He trapped me, and this, the reason I came, was so I could be free.”
“Honey,” Sofie says softly, taking my hands and standing in front of me. “You’re not.”
“I know, but can’t I at least pretend?” I implore to Ajax. “Can I go to the secure playground with Mila? Can I use the gym alone? Can I go to the bar with Sofie without being watched? Can I just . . . be?”
It sounds horrible. It sounds ungrateful. It sounds so very bitchy, and I’m not trying to be. I’m trying to breathe. To be something other than oppressed entirely. I promised myself I’d be free of him. I hold on to the belief that one day I will be, because I know that day isn’t today, but that’s okay. That’s okay because I’m so safe, but hell, I’m not a high-risk prisoner. I’m twenty-two-freaking-years old, I’m sleeping with a hot-as-hell bass player, organizing lives, and making a two-year-old girl laugh.
He’s not here.
I’m safe.
“Els, you know we can’t—”
“Carlos, get the hotel manager to have a meeting with me within the hour and arrange for the rest of the hotel managers on the tour to call me at half-hour intervals after lunch,” Ajax orders, cutting Tate off. “Get the boys in the boardroom at lunchtime. Four of y’all are behind reception. Six-hour shifts. One of you at all times.” He turns to me. “We compromise. Someone stands at the end of the hall instead of outside the door. You can do all the things you asked, but someone will be within a hundred-foot radius of you at all times. You won’t know they’re there.”
“Are you fuckin’ insane, Ajax?” Tate explodes. “We agreed that if I ain’t there then someone else is glued to her motherfuckin’ side until I get back. This ain’t keepin’ to that!”
I rest my hand on his back and slip my fingers beneath his shirt. He stills, taking a deep breath. He’s completely rigid, and when I touch my fingers to his front, every muscle on his stomach is tensed and formed.
“Ella,” he growls.
“Tate,” I whisper.
His chest heaves with his heavy sigh and he drops his head. “What, darlin’?”
I step behind him, my hands now clasped at his stomach, my cheek resting against his back. “That girl who sold the threesome story,” I start quietly. “She trapped you, right? She backed you into a corner you couldn’t get out of no matter how hard you fought. Every time you left the house you were assaulted with questions, right?”
“It was relentless.”
“Right. You dealt with that for what . . . a couple weeks?”
“Yeah, Els.”
“Imagine dealing with that for two years, then finally, finally finding freedom, then having it taken away from you again.”
Tate sighs again, and I feel the breath leave his body. My fingers glide slowly as he turns in my arms and then envelops me in his.
“Ajax,” he says in a much calmer voice, resting his chin on top of my head. “Do what she wants, but the chance of her being alone is very fuckin’ unlikely. Even more so than before. But she can pee alone now.”
“So courteous,” I mumble into his chest.
“Done,” Ajax responds. “Lucas, end of the hall. You follow them into the Quarter but keep your distance. Tate?”
“Yeah?”
“Take a fuckin’ earpiece in your pocket if we’re so far away from you.”
“Got it.”
“Make sure it’s fuckin’ connected, all right?”
“Got it.”
“And you,” Ajax says, making me turn to look at me. “It’s a good thing you’re so damn cute, because I wouldn’t take these orders from any other five-foot-nothin’ chick.”
“I’m five foot five!”
“Precisely,” he retorts, folding his six-foot-five frame through the door and slamming it.
Silence settles through the room.
“Uh-oh,” Mila gasps. “Lotta dollars.”
I smile, looking down at her wide eyes and her hand covering her mouth. “Mhmm. That’s a lotta dollars, Mila.”
“Naughty,” she mumbles to Bunna, toddling over to the sofa.
Tate’s fingers are threaded through mine and his grip is tight. For all my protestations that going out in public, holding hands, and looking all too much like a couple when our current state of relationship is very undefined is a dangerous thing to do, he appears not to care.
I even tried to throw the safety thing back in his face. Hello, we’re out here, where everyone can see us, photograph us, and lead my delightful ex right to me. He dutifully reminded me that my family doesn’t read tabloids, so there we go.
Of course, I know Matthew knows I’m here, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he does know exactly where I am. A jolt shoots through my spine—he could be here. In New Orleans. Just . . . watching.
The French Quarter is so busy we could have walked past him ten times and not known about it. There are people everywhere, talking, laughing, bustling through the streets busily. The touristy types are holding cameras to their eyes and pointing excitedly, while the people who obviously live here duck and dive around waving arms.
I’ve been shoved this way and that a million times over, so Tate’s hand-holding doesn’t seem so dumb now. Especially not since I fell into a wall and scraped my elbow. “What do you wanna see?” Tate looks down at me, and I shuffle a couple inches closer to him. “All right?”
“Busy,” I mutter. “Um, I don’t know. Marie Laveau’s grave? Stop in every voodoo shop we see?”
“We’ve probably got time for both of those,” he laughs quietly.
“Damn, I don’t know.” My stomach rumbles, and I blush.
“I think you need food,” he mutters into the side of my head, still laughing. He kisses my hair and guides me over to a café. “Beignets?”
“I . . . I’ve never eaten beignets?”
He stops me, turns me, and stares at me. “Excuse me?”
I lift one shoulder. “I’ve never eaten beignets.”
“Oh shit.” He guides me to a table and sits me down, then goes to the counter. He exchanges some words and money with the guy behind it, then joins me at the table with two cups of coffee. “Wait for this,” he tells me. “Best. Thing. Ever.”
“Um, okay.” My lips twitch at the enthusiasm in his voice, and I turn my head to people watch. And find Lucas. Okay. I am determined to find Lucas. It’s like my own personal challenge, despite the throngs of people that are undoubtedly hiding him.
“What are you doing, darlin’?” Tate asks, stroking his thumb over the back of my hand.
I crane my neck. “Trying to see if I can find Lucas.”
“Why?”
Sighing, I turn to him just as the plate of beignets is placed in front of us. “I’m interested to see how well you can hide a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound man of muscle outside a dainty café.”
Tate nods his head toward the building opposite us. “You hide him in the bar across the street.”
“Seriously? That’s where he is?” I peer through the windows, grateful that he really is out of sight but still close.
“Yep. Why, you worried?”
“I already told you I’m fine. I was just curious.” I tear a piece of the pastry off and put it into my mouth.
Tate raises an eyebrow, his amusement showing in the upturn of his lips. “All right, darlin’.”
“Oh. My. God.” I stare at the pastry then at him.
“What?” Tate’s smile grows.
I hold up the sugar-coated bundle of heaven that just got placed in front of me. “These. I need all of them.”
Tate tears a piece of his beignet off and pops it in his mouth. “Done.”
“Come with me,” Sofie whispers, grabbing my hand and waving to Lucas across the bar.
“Wait, what? I wanted wine!” Eight hours of stumbling around New Orleans with Tate and my feet hurt and my liver is begging for Moscato.
Okay. So maybe not begging, but it’s close enough, and I don’t want to be tugged around anymore.
“Soon! Come with me!” She laughs and pulls me through to the lobby. “Come onnnn, Lucas!”
“Sof!” I complain, too tired to fight her tug.
“Miss Sofie, what are you doin’?”
“Good question,” I mutter, allowing her to drag me out of the hotel and toward the parking lot.
“Miss Sofie!” Lucas snaps. “If you leave the hotel I have to notify Ajax.”
“Then tell him. We’re with you, big guy. I’d like to see some pretty rich boy take your ex-RAW ass down.”
“You used to be on RAW? As in WWE RAW?”
Lucas just winks.
“He used to be on RAW?” I ask Sofie, climbing into the backseat.
“Yeah. Won’t tell us his name, though, the boring shit. And he apparently dropped off the radar long enough ago to not be recognized.” She scoffs.
“Seat belt on, please, Miss Sofie. You, too, Miss Ella.”
I like Southerners. They’re way politer than New Yorkers.
“Thank you. Where are we going?”
Sofie grins and leans forward between the seats. “To the tattoo parlor down the street.”
I stop. “Wait. What?”
Her grin just widens, and Lucas pulls away.
Aw, hell.
I can’t believe I did it.
“I can’t believe you did it!” Sofie gasps over her wineglass. “I thought you’d tell me to fuck off and watch me do mine.”
“It really hurt!” I roll my shoulder. “Ouch. Still does.”
Sofie stares at her wrist where Mila’s name is covered by a dressing. “Yeah. This kinda stings, too.”
“What kinda stings?” Conner asks, walking across the bar.
“Oh shit!”
“Didn’t you tell him?” I shriek quietly. Kind of.
“Tell me what?”
“Nothin’, hon. Nothin’.” Sofie shoves her wrist under the table.
“Are you kidding? He’s going to find out. Man up, chicken!” I point my—much-loved—wineglass at her.
“I, er, I got a tattoo.”
“You did what?” Conner asks slowly, staring at her with disbelief radiating from his eyes.
“I got a tattoo.” She holds her wrist up and smiles weakly.
Conner rubs his hand across his forehead. “Okay. You, Sofie Callahan, who whimpers when she gets prodded by her two-year-old’s finger, got a tattoo? The same Sofie Callahan who cried for an hour when she broke her arm?”
“I was nine!” she snaps indignantly. “And I fractured it in four places, no thanks to you.”
“Tate pushed you out of the tree, not me.”
“Tate pushed you out of a tree?” My mouth drops open.
A deep chuckle sounds behind me. “Man, that was fuckin’ hilarious until her brother gave me a black eye.”
“No, that’s when it got real funny,” Sofie retorts.
“Can I see it?” Conner asks.
“Huh?”
“Your tattoo?” His tone clearly asks if she’s drunk or not.
“Oh!”
“You got a tattoo?” Tate laughs. “Oh shit.”
Sofie narrows her eyes and pulls back the dressing to reveal the simple script spelling Mila’s name with a tiny heart below the “a.”
“Cute,” Tate says. “Not for me, but cute.”
Sofie pokes out her tongue and turns to Conner at the same time Tate turns to me. “Does that mean you got one, too?”
“I was forced into getting one,” I correct him.
He stops. “You got a tattoo?”
“I’ve heard that question way too many times in the last two minutes.” I sip my wine.
“Seriously? Did you?”
I glance at him sideways and notice the upturn of his lips. “Yes.”
“Can I see?”
“I guess.” I ease the shoulder of my shirt down and hold it while he slowly peels back the dressing.
“Oh, Els,” he breathes softly.
I glance at my shoulder blade, but the black letters are a blur to me. It doesn’t matter, though, because I know the words perfectly.
Fear nothing.
“So I can remember when I get scared,” I whisper.
Tate stares at the ink for a long moment before gently covering it back up. Then he takes my shirt from my grip, eases it over my shoulder, and turns me into him.
“Good thinkin’, darlin’,” he says softly, cupping the side of my face and bringing me into him.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it. It’s also sexy as fuck.”
I look up at him through my lashes. Of course, to Tate, it is.
I rifle through my purse to make sure I have everything before I get in the car and go to the arena with the guys. Since New Orleans is a midweek concert, something they don’t do very often, every rehearsal is at the stadium instead of at the hotel. Really, they should all be at the arenas, but as they’ll tell you, they’re garage-boy dreamers at heart still. So no one argues.
“Pen, paper, phone, wallet, water, gum . . .”
“Shit, Ella. You got the kitchen sink in there?” Aidan peers over my shoulder.
“Maybe the bathroom one,” I reply, rifling through it. “Shit. I forgot my tablet with your schedules and stuff on it. Here.” I thrust my open purse into Kye’s arms and step back. “I’m just gonna run upstairs and get it.”
“Ella . . .”
I stare at Ajax. “Literally two minutes, okay? It’s on the coffee table. I forgot to grab it. Straight in, straight out.”
“I forgot Mila’s binky,” Sofie cuts in. “I’ll go up with her.”
“Oh, yes, Ms. Tough Girl,” Aidan snorts.
“Your balls, my hands, a blender,” she shoots over her shoulder, jabbing the elevator button.
“All right,” Ajax sighs. “But I’m standin’ here and timing your asses, so move.”
I give him a sassy salute just before the elevator doors shut. Sofie giggles and digs around in her shorts for her room key and I spin mine between my fingers.
“Here. One minute.” She grins, swiping the card.
“Deal.” I swipe mine and push the door open. Tucking the card into my back pocket, I walk toward the coffee table, where I can see the tablet sitting.
The door swings shut.
The harsh scent of cologne wafts toward me, and the air inside me shifts from free breath to a constricted gasp.
I freeze.
“Ella.”
No. No. No. This is impossible.
“Aren’t you gonna turn around and say ‘hi, babe’? Or have you forgotten me already?”
“Like I could,” I whisper, standing up straight and slowly turning. “How did you get in here?”
Matthew leans against the doorframe casually, as if he hasn’t broken into Tate’s room. My room. “Tried to get into the hotel in Atlanta but they refused me instantly, and I knew your new buddy had his security all over it. So I drove here. Didn’t shave for a few days, did my hair a little different, put on some glasses, and checked in before you did. Wasn’t that hard if you’re not an idiot.”
My mouth is dry, and my heart, oh god, my heart. It’s pounding frantically, threatening to spill from my chest.
“Didn’t expect to find you fucking that bastard though, did I, Ella? I didn’t expect to find your fucking bag in his bedroom and your fucking toothbrush next to his by the sink.”
I step back, my arms going around my waist. His jaw is tight, and the vein on the side of his neck is bulging, and oh, I know this look, and it doesn’t end well.
“I didn’t expect to come here to get my motherfucking fiancée back home and find her whoring herself to some fucked-up white-trash asshole.” He advances toward me, his fists clenched at his sides, anger radiating off of him and bouncing from surface to surface until it’s suffocating me. “I didn’t think my fucking girl would stoop so low as to shack up with a lowlife piece of shit!”
“I’m not yours!” I snarl, backing away from him. “Not anymore. I’m not your girl, I’m not your fiancée, and I’m sure as hell never going to be your fucking wife!”
His fist flies at me faster than I can blink, and I fall into the wall.
Several beats pass, and then, “You wanna fucking rephrase that, Ella?” Matthew pins me to the wall by my upper arms. “You wanna reiterate who you belong to?”
My eyes travel from the door to his steely, light brown gaze. “Never in a million years.”
He slams me against the wall, and I cry out at the sharp jolt of pain that radiates from my shoulders to the top of my backside.
“You sure, babe? Because I don’t give a shit how many times he’s had his dick in you, you’re still fucking mine.”
“I never slept with him!”
“Liar!” He hits me again, and this time, I taste a drop of blood from inside my cheek. “Your fucking panties are on the floor!”
“He stays on the sofa. I changed and forgot to pick them up,” I lie again, keeping my eyes on the floor.
I’m trembling, everywhere, because I’m falling back, back into the past, back into fear. Back into submission and subordination, into what he wants to hear, because he scares me. He fucking terrifies me.
He shoves me against the wall again, but my head slams into the hard surface, and I scream as the pain radiates across my scalp.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find you?” He grabs my jaw and holds my face still, keeping my hands clasped in his tight grip. “Did you really fucking think you could run out on me four days before our wedding and I’d let you go? That I’d let some fucking dickhead touch my girl? Fuck her? Make her his?”
I stare at him, shaking, because my jaw is hurting so much I can’t speak.
“Did you?!” he roars, sliding his hand to my neck.
I shake my head the tiniest amount.
“Good. Because now you’re gonna call that bitch who came upstairs with you and tell her you’re feeling sick and you’re gonna have a nap before you meet them. Then you’re gonna pack your worthless shit, and you’re gonna get your worthless slut ass the fuck downstairs and into my car so I can take you home, where you belong.” He leans in close. “The world will think that trash you shacked up with beat you and I saved the fuckin’ day, then you’re gonna marry me and we’ll live happily ever fuckin’ after, but not until you’ve got a bruise for every time you let his cock inside you.” His breath heats my cheek, and I cringe, turning away. “So tell me, how many do I owe you, babe? One? Two? Five?”
“Didn’t you hear me earlier?” I whisper, ignoring the sting in my jaw and looking into his eyes defiantly. “I’m not marrying you. Ever.”
He releases my hands and his fist connects with the side of my head. I wince at the searing pain running through my forehead, and before I even realize it, my hands.
I lash out at him with everything I have, ignoring every ache and sting and slice of pain. Ignoring the burn spreading through my body and the tinge of blood in my mouth. I fight. I shove at his chest and scratch at his face and struggle in his hold.
With everything I’ve got, I fight.
“You’re mine and you are fucking marrying me, you dirty whore,” Matthew growls, his hand once again at my neck, but this time, it’s tighter.
And I can’t breathe.
“Not in my fuckin’ lifetime, she ain’t!” Tate bursts through the door, and in half a second, Matthew is dragged off of me. “Get your fuckin’ hands off Els, asshole!”