That right there was another relationship that I was jealous of. Shane and Harper had their Carl and Ellie love life—their words to describe their relationship, not mine. It was adorable the way Shane loved Harper so fiercely, and their sex life was… Porn-star worthy was the only real way to describe it.
“Dallas?”
At the sound of Axton’s voice I couldn’t help but smile. Rolling over I pulled back the curtain that provided privacy for my roost. He stood there with his pillow and blanket, and yeah, my heart melted all over again. Stupid fucking heart, but I’d already promised myself I wasn’t going to fight this. He was with me now, not the troll bitch.
“Hi,” I murmured.
His brow wrinkled as he grinned at me. “Hi, yourself. Changed your mind yet?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “We should discuss the terms and conditions again.”
Hazel eyes narrowed on me. “Let’s hear them.”
“I must have kisses. Lots and lots of kisses. Before bed, every morning, and in between the two. Should you go five minutes in my presence without giving me a kiss, then that’s grounds for dismissal from my bed.”
“Done.” He placed his pillow on the bed. “Anything else?”
“Not for now. But this is an open contract. I can add other conditions at any time.” I grabbed his hand and tugged him closer. With his grumbled “agreed” I sucked his pierced bottom lip into my mouth and nipped on it before releasing him. “Welcome to Casa de Dallas. Make yourself at home.”
Axton
Rock On The Range.
It was only one of the few events that brought rock fans together for a three-day event that celebrated everything rock-n-roll. One hundred thousand plus people. Three stages of some of the best bands in the rock world? Check. Mosh pits? Check. People crowd surfing? Check. People passed out drunk on a wet lawn or in a dark, cool corner? Double check. The smell of marijuana in the air? Of course. Chicks walking around topless, no matter the size of their tits or the fact that they didn’t exactly have the body for it? Fuck yeah! Why the hell wouldn’t they? It was Rock On The Range, bitches.
And OtherWorld was closing Saturday night on the main stage. It was something that announced how fucking awesome a band was to be closing on Saturday night. Closing on Friday was okay, because it got everyone pumped for more, and Sunday was when everyone was fighting their hangovers and just ready to make the trip home so the crowd was only a small fraction of what it should be.
Saturday? Saturday was perfect.
Demon’s Wings had closed on Saturday the year before, so I was more than stoked to be part of the closing this year. With Nik on board my tour bus with his very, very—VERY—pregnant wife, I was sure he was going to make sure that I didn’t live down the fact that he had closed a ROTR first. The fucker.
The bus pulled to a stop late Saturday morning and everyone was wide awake and ready to party. Especially Mia. She knew most of the bands that we were friends with and wanted to say hi immediately. Those we didn’t know personally? She would no doubt wrap them around her pretty little finger in no time. And the ones that were pricks? Her daddy and her Uncle Axton would kick their fucking asses until they played by Mia’s rules.
For OtherWorld, today was not just about performing that night. We had obligations. Monster had their own booth and we would have to go over and make an hour-long appearance. Wroth and Liam were expected at the Fender tent, to sign guitars and meet fans. Then we would all take turns at our own merchandise tents set up outside the arena, signing anything that fans happened to buy or bring. It was going to be a long day. And I planned on eating lots of junk food, drinking plenty of Monster, and listening to some kick-ass music with Dallas.
Of course, I had one more obligation. One that I didn’t want to mention to anyone, especially my girlfriend.
Gabriella was performing today on stage two. She’d already emailed me twice about it, using it as an excuse so that she could check on Liam since the tabloids had stopped following his recovery process over six weeks ago because it just wasn’t entertaining enough now that he was doing so much better. I was supposed to perform the song we did together back when we first started dating.
That song alone should have told me that Gabriella hadn’t been the one for me. She’d written “Shatter Me” about her cousin Alexis. Alexis had gone through a bad breakup with her now husband and she had fallen apart emotionally. After recording the song with OtherWorld, Gabriella had rushed to get the video shot so that she could use it to break Alexis and Jared up again. It had worked.
Big time.
Fortunately, Alexis and Jared had finally gotten back together and now had a beautiful son. If nothing else, Gabriella wouldn’t change that one little thing. Jordan was her favorite person in the world. It was for Jordan’s safety that she had ended things the way she had with Liam in the first place.
I didn’t want Dallas to know about performing with Gabriella and her band. Things were perfect with us for a change. Neither one of us had actually said the words ‘I love you’, but I could see them in her eyes. And while I hadn’t been able to voice them myself, I tried to show her with everything I did for her how much she meant to me.
The fact that I was adopting Kenzie? It had brought us even closer. All of Dallas’s walls were down, and had stayed down from the moment I had told her that I was adopting the girl who had touched my heart in just a matter of minutes after meeting her.
With Emmie’s help, the paperwork was being rushed through, and by the time the tour was over in a few days, I—and hopefully along with Dallas—would be going back to Baltimore and picking up Kenzie. The kid had no idea about the adoption, but I had emailed her a few times to see how she was doing, and I was hoping to surprise her. I’d promised her that things were going to get better that night at the little mom and pop restaurant, and I meant that completely.
I didn’t care that Kenzie was going to be eighteen soon. That poor kid had no one when she did turn eighteen and I wanted to make sure that she was okay. Ever since that night I’d met her and she had told me about her parents, I couldn’t help but think in some way her parents had sent her to me. They had known that I would meet their precious daughter and immediately want to protect her.
Mostly I just wanted to make sure that she was safe, eating enough, and getting everything that she needed. Dallas and I had actually talked about Kenzie’s future. I’d told her my plans for Kenzie—the same plans that I hoped would include Dallas too. Once Kenzie had graduated, which would be in just a few short weeks from what Kenzie had told me in her last email, we would head out to California and Kenzie could pick whatever college she wanted to go to. I didn’t care where it was. I’d get her an apartment, a few credit cards and fix her up a trust fund. I wasn’t expecting her to call me Dad or any shit like that. I was thirty-four years old to her seventeen. NO, I didn’t think I was going to want her to call me Dad.
Unless…she wanted to. I mean, I was okay with that if she wanted to.
As we stepped off the bus, the doors of the second bus opened and Wroth and the others climbed down. Like good little soldiers, we lined up in front of Natalie and a very pregnant Emmie. Since she was eight months pregnant, she wouldn’t be able to fly home next week when the tour was over so she, Nik and Mia would be taking the bus back to their home in Malibu.
I was going to miss her like crazy just like I did every time we were on opposite sides of the country. I was hoping that once Dallas and I picked up Kenzie we would all go back to California and find a house there. I had a penthouse on both sides of the country, but a house for the three of us would be much better. A place that we could call ours.
Nik, with Mia riding on his shoulders, stepped up beside his wife. As soon as Demon’s Wings’ obligations were done in the UK, Nik had been on the first flight out. The moody Emmie had disappeared the moment she had seen Nik when he had surprised her at our Delaware show. Of course, moody Emmie had come back with a vengeance a few days later wh
en she had to separate Liam and Wroth on the buses just as she had Zander and Devlin, switching out Linc for Liam on my bus, because of Wroth and Marissa’s breakup from a relationship that Marissa insisted hadn’t been a relationship after all. Confusing females.
Confusing females that were tearing my damn band apart. If things didn’t change and in a hurry, I didn’t know if we would even be a band by the time our fall tour started with Demon’s Wings. The paps had gotten wind of the stressed relationship between Z and Devlin, and the rumor mill was going bonkers over if the tour would take place in the fall, or even if we would last the rest of this tour.
I was seriously starting to wonder the same things.
Natalie stepped forward with a stack of papers in her hands. As she stopped in front of each of us, she picked out an itinerary that had our names on them. I saw mine and noticed that Emmie had already scheduled my time with Gabriella on stage two later. I shot her a look and she shrugged before nodding toward Dallas who was getting her own itinerary.
Dallas frowned at the single sheet of paper that Natalie handed her. “What’s this?”
“The medic tent is short on staff. I need you to take an hour shift to let a few of the paramedics take a lunch break,” Emmie explained with a straight face, her hands rubbing over her distended belly tenderly. “That isn’t a problem, is it?”
Dallas shook her head. “No, of course not. I’m more than happy to help out.”
Emmie gave her a beaming smile. “Thanks, I really appreciate it. Other than that little bit of time, the rest of the day is yours to do with as you please.” The smile dimmed as her gaze went to the rest of us. “I expect you to be where you are supposed to be in the timeframes listed. They know when you are supposed to appear and have been instructed to let me know if you don’t follow through.”
Her gaze went straight to Devlin as she said it. He hadn’t shown at his last signing duty two days ago. Instead he had gone to some bar and gotten shit face drunk before trying to push his way onto the other bus where Natalie had been asleep. If Linc hadn’t been there to keep Dev out, who knows what kind of shit would have hit the fan. My drummer was a freaking ghost of the man he had been at the beginning of the tour. Not only had things turned ugly between him and Zander as well as Natalie, but Dev’s relationship with his son was tense. As close as Dev and Harris had been since the death of Harris’s mother, it was heart wrenching to see how things were now.
“If I get a call from anyone, no one will be able to protect you from my wrath.” The nostrils of Emmie’s cute little nose flared. “So don’t go crying to Nik or Axton thinking they can save you.”
With the last of the itineraries handed out, Natalie stepped back next to Emmie. “If you need anything, Natalie will be on hand to assist at each tent. Except for the merchandise tents. You will have the roadies to help you there. I will be over at the Monster tent most of the day if you need me for anything.”
“And I get to crowd surf with my daddy!” Mia exclaimed, effortlessly putting an end to any other admonishments we might have gotten.
“The hell you say?” Emmie narrowed her eyes first on Mia then on Nik, who was trying to look innocent but not able to pull it off with his three-year-old enthusiastically nodding her head. “Let’s have a talk.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him away, already muttering curses under her breath so that Mia wouldn’t hear.
Dallas turned to glance at my schedule. Thankfully the time marked off for Gabriella wasn’t titled as such. It just said TB, which I was pretty sure meant Troll Bitch. Emmie was subtle like that. “Looks like we both have something to do at five. What do you want to do until you have to go over to the Monster thing?”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and started stirring her toward the smell of food. “I want to pig out on the best noodles in the freaking world, grab you a Jack Daniels punch, and me a Monster. Then we are going to check out some bands with the other fans, before I take you over to the merchandise tents and buy you a bunch of crap that you don’t need but that I want you to have anyway.”
She stopped and glared up at me. “Really?”
“What?” I hoped she wasn’t going to get mad at me for wanting to buy her things again. A few weeks ago we had had a fight over my buying her random things that she didn’t need. I didn’t want to start this day off with a fight when our relationship had been so blissfully fight-free for so long.
“The best noodles in the world? Not possible.” She smirked and grabbed my hand, entwining our fingers. “But I’ll let you try to convince me.”
“You’re such a bitch sometimes, you know that?”
“I know. What’s your point?” she asked with a sassy wink.
I sighed with mock exasperation. “I really enjoy that part of you, baby.”
“My bitchiness?” She raised her brows. “But just the other night you said you enjoyed-”
I jerked her around and sealed her lips with mine, stopping the very inappropriate words that were about to come out of her saucy mouth in front of my bandmates, roadies, and God. After a long moment I pulled back a little. “I enjoy them both equally. Now shut up and let me feed you.”
“Ah, babe. You’re so romantic.”
We were in the middle of the crowd around stage two, listening to Thousand Foot Krutch and sharing a beer. The crowd was getting a little rowdy so I arranged Dallas in front of me and wrapped my arms around her waist from behind. Around us, fans were watching the stage intently or crowd surfing. If they noticed me they didn’t show it, and for that I was glad. I just wanted to relax with my girl for a little longer.
After taking a sip of the beer in her hand, Dallas handed the bottle to me with a grimace. “I’m not feeling so good all of a sudden,” she yelled to be heard over the music.
I downed the rest of the beer and tossed it in the closest trash can before taking her hand and leading her out of the crowd. When I reached a more private spot I turned to check her over. Her face was pale and she had sweat on her upper lip and across her forehead, even though it was only in the sixties today because of a rainstorm that had been working its way across Ohio and West Virginia the last few days.
“Was it the noodles?” Had I fed her one of my favorite things at ROTR only to give her food poisoning? But wouldn’t I have been sick by now too if that were the case?
Dallas shook her head. “This doesn’t feel like food poisoning and you aren’t feeling bad, are you?”
“I feel fine. Let’s go over to the medic tent and get you something for your stomach.” I tugged on her hand, but she shook her head again. “Baby, I don’t want you to be miserable. They have Pepto and other things that will make you feel better.”
“I have some on the bus. I’ll go grab some and maybe lie down for a little while.” She hugged her arms around my waist and leaned her head against my chest for a moment. “You have to be over at the Monster tent in a little while, babe. Don’t worry about me.”
“I don’t want you to be alone if you aren’t feeling well.” My heart clenched at the thought of having to leave her when she was sick. What if she started throwing up? Damn it, I wanted to take care of her.
Dallas raised her head, and I could see that she was starting to feel worse by the way her eyes were looking. “I’ll text Linc and he will come take care of me until you can, okay?” She kissed my cheek before stepping back. “Go. Don’t make Emmie have to hunt you down,” she said with a small smirk. “I don’t think you want to get on her bad side.”
Emmie was the least of my worries right then. My girl needed me, and I wanted her to pout and ask me to take care of her. If she did, then I would blow off the entire rest of the day for her. Fuck everything else. Fuck ROTR. Fuck Gabriella and anything else that needed my attention.
But Dallas just kissed me on the cheek again and pushed me in the direction of the Monster tent. “I’ll text you if I need you, Ax.”
“I’ll have Nik check on you,” I fina
lly conceded. Nik would let me know if she was okay and he’d dealt with sick chicks before. The only time I’d had to deal with a sick chick before was the night Emmie had passed out from dehydration. My hands started to shake at the thought of that happening to Dallas. “I want to go with you, Dallas,” I said, changing my mind quickly. My heart was pounding like crazy. She just had an upset stomach and I was freaking the fuck out.
She stared up at me for a long moment before her lips twitched in a small smile. “Okay. Walk me back to the bus. But when Linc shows up, you need to go meet the others. I don’t want to be the cause for you disappointing your fans.”
I would have disappointed the fucking world for her. Nothing was more important to me than her. Nothing.
As soon as we got back to the bus, I sat down on the couch with her head in my lap after she had taken a dose of Pepto. I started to wish that Linc wouldn’t show up, but he did and I had to kiss Dallas goodbye. Linc took my seat, and started combing his fingers through her hair like I had been doing. As I stood there, looking down at her, I nearly choked on the words ‘I love you’ in an attempt to keep them from spilling out. This wasn’t the time, though. I didn’t want her to remember the first time I told her how I felt by also remembering how sick she was.
With one last kiss to her forehead I told Linc to call me if Dallas got worse and reluctantly headed back out into the masses.
Over the next few hours I did my job, but my head wasn’t in it. Every five minutes I was checking my phone to make sure Linc or Dallas hadn’t texted me. I sent Nik over to the bus to check on her, and when he didn’t come back or call right away I got worried. My mind flashed with images of having to take her to the hospital because she was too ill to lift her head.
Someone nudged my shoulder from behind and I turned to glare at the culprit only to find Emmie standing there frowning up at me. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Dallas isn’t feeling well. She’s back at the bus and I want to be there with her.”