By the time we get outside, Norma is there waiting at the curb with the car. “I can drive,” Jason says.
“Get in the fucking car, Jason,” Norma says as she holds the door open. She kisses Fin quickly and looks at me like she’s wondering who I am and why I’m shirtless. She jerks a thumb toward me. “He’s hot, Finny,” she says. “Nice catch.”
I see Fin mouth I know, right?
“Can you take her home?” Jason asks me.
“Of course,” I rush to say. He looks fearful, so I try to reassure him. “We’re only a few blocks from home.”
“Don’t let anything happen to her.”
“I promise.” I try to assure him, but he’s still worried, I can tell. I think he truly cares about her.
“Can I go with you?” she asks him. “Please?” She’s talking to Jason, not to me.
“Go home, Finny. I can’t protect you tonight.”
“I’ll call you later, sweetie,” Norma says. “I promise.”
“You swear it?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Jason says.
“Well, don’t die,” Fin says. “I’d feel terrible. It would take me minutes to find Norma a better man.”
Norma laughs and gets in the car. I watch as their taillights fade into the distance.
“Thanks for helping,” she says quietly.
My breath makes little puffs in the cold night air. “You’re welcome.”
“So, what were you doing there?”
“Oh, shit.” I thump the palm of my hand against my forehead. “I came to get you. They’ve been calling you for hours but you weren’t answering.”
She pulls her phone out of her pocket and scrolls through the texts.
“I totally forgot we go on tour tomorrow,” she says on a groan.
I nod. I didn’t forget. Wren says it’s going to be a short tour, but we’ll all be gone.
She starts walking quickly toward her apartment, her heels clicking on the concrete. She jams her hands into her pockets and I follow her.
“Finny,” I say, after we get in the elevator at her apartment building.
“What?” She looks everywhere but at me.
“I thought we were going to go visit your mom this morning, but when I woke up you were gone. Did you change your mind?”
She shakes her head. “No. I went.”
“By yourself?”
She nods.
“You were supposed to take me with you,” I remind her.
She takes in a deep breath and lets it out. “She’s fucking crazy, Tag. Totally mental. Like, locked-up-so-she-can’t-kill-anybody mental. I don’t like to take people to see that.”
She’s acting like this is new information for me. I already met her mom. I know what she’s dealing with. “Was she okay today?”
She shakes her head. “No. She was herself.” Her voice is quiet and I can barely hear her. She lays her head back against the wall of the elevator and closes her eyes.
Suddenly she opens them and looks at my bare chest. “Tag, can I tell you something?”
I cross my arms, because she’s appraising my chest like she wants to have me for dinner. “I guess.”
“You’re fucking hot,” she says. She licks her full lips, and I find myself going hard again.
Then the elevator dings, the doors open, and she steps out. I take a second and try to collect my wits, because they’re scattered like a pocketful of dimes strewn around the floor. She reaches back and holds the door open.
“Bring your fine self inside,” she says. She grins at me.
I wonder what she’s like when she’s not hiding her pain behind her sexuality. I suppose I won’t have a chance to find out.
Finny
When I don’t know what to do or how to comport myself, I flirt. It’s how I’ve always gotten by. And watching Tag’s face turn red, it’s totally working. He’s thinking more about kissing me than he is about my crazy mother.
I step into the living room and stop short. All four of my sisters are here.
Peck’s sitting with her baby on her knee, and her husband Sam is next to her on the sofa.
My sister Star is sitting in her new husband’s lap.
Wren and Lark are sharing an armchair, and Emilio and Marta are standing by the kitchen counter. “Where the hell have you been?” Emilio demands.
I look around at them all. “Dancing,” I say slowly. “Why? What’s up?” I go and get a bottle of water from the fridge.
“Why didn’t you answer our calls, mija?” Marta asks.
I shrug. “I couldn’t hear the phone over the music.”
Suddenly, Emilio notices that Tag isn’t wearing a shirt. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I say. I sit down on the arm of the couch. Tag goes and gets a shirt, and he’s still pulling it over his head as he walks back into the room. As his most magnificent six-pack disappears, I see a streak of red, raw, angry skin disappear beneath the fabric. Was he hurt? I’ll find out when the interrogation is over. “Where’s the rugrat?”
Wren jerks her thumb toward Tag’s room. “He’s asleep.”
Benji sleeps in tiny sprints, I’ve learned.
“His name is Benji,” Tag reminds me.
“Benjamin Taggert the Third,” my sisters all say in unison. Then they laugh when Tag scowls at them.
“Why are you wearing his shirt?” Emilio asks me again. He’s not going to take no for an answer.
“Hers got torn off by an overzealous fan,” Tag blurts out.
I mouth the word traitor at Tag. “It was nothing–”
“Jason is on the way to the hospital,” Tag goes on to say. If he was two steps closer to me, I’d kick Tag in the nuts. “He was hurt. His wife picked him up.”
“Are you okay?” Star asks Tag.
He waves a hand at her in dismissal. “I’m fine.” Apparently, she didn’t see the gash on his belly. The one that disappears into the sparse thatch of hair that leads to his rather impressive nether regions.
Emilio turns his back to me and starts to talk on the phone. He’s probably getting the whole story from Jason right now, because he doesn’t believe that it was nothing. But it was. It’s normal when you’re in a famous rock band. We’re used to it. Sometimes the fans get too exuberant. It happens.
Emilio gets off the phone and goes to Tag. He holds out his hand for him to shake. Tag stares at it for a moment and then finally takes it in a handshake. He looks startled, though. “Thank you for bringing her home,” Emilio says.
“No problem,” Tag mutters.
“So, what’s up with the group meeting?” I ask. I take a bag of chips from Lark and drop a handful of greasy goodness onto my shirt.
She snatches the bag back from me. “Get out of my chips,” she snarls playfully.
I pick one up, lick all over it, and then hold it out to her. “Want it back?”
She pretends to heave and then tries to ignore me.
“So, the meeting?” I prompt again.
Emilio and Marta make eye contact with one another for a beat too long. “It’s your mother,” Emilio says.
I look from one to the other. “What about her?”
“She’s worse, Finny,” Emilio says, his voice so gentle that it’s seriously pissing me off.
I snort. “That’s nothing new.”
“No,” Emilio clarifies. “I mean she seriously hurt someone this afternoon. Another resident. They want to move her to a facility with more security.”
I pop another chip into my mouth. “So?”
Marta huffs out a sigh. “So, mija, they need your permission to move her.”
My mother has been in a long-term care facility since I was a little girl. They have to keep her in a place where they can regulate her meds. Usually, she’s fine. Apparently, she now has more to worry about than her mental illness.
“You’ll need to go and make some decisions about her care,” he goes on to explain.
I shrug. “Why me?”
/>
Marta comes to stand beside me and runs her hand down the length of my hair. “You’re the only family she has left.”
“So which one of you is going?” I grin at them. I have no desire to go and see my mother again. She was frantic today when I looked at her through the tiny glass in the door to her room. She paced from one side of the room to the other, wringing her hands, mumbling to herself.
“This is something you need to do,” Marta says softly.
“Hire someone to go and evaluate my mother,” I say with a shrug. “No biggie.”
“We can’t do that for you,” Emilio says. “They also want to do some counseling with your mom and they would like for you to be present.”
“No.” Hell no.
“Finny–”
“No,” I say again. “I’m not going. Besides, none of you can go with me, because we’re booked for the tour. And Jason is in the hospital.” I shrug. It seems so simple to me. I raise my finger in the air. “Speaking of which, if my personal security guard is injured, who’s going to travel with me when we’re on tour?”
Emilio and Marta look at one another, perplexed.
“I could go and help,” a male voice says from the side of the room. I look up to find Tag leaning against the wall, his shoulder hitched in the doorway.
“You would do that?” Star asks.
He nods. “I was going anyway, to be a roadie.” He laughs lightly.
“What about Benji?” says Wren.
He shrugs. “What about him? We’ll take him with us.” He points at Marta. “Marta said she was going to watch him while I worked. Now she won’t have to. He can just hang with me.”
“No.” I say it quickly, and Tag’s head spins around to face me. He’s confused, but I can’t have Tag following me everywhere for six tour dates.
“I can take care of you,” Tag says.
The room goes quiet. You could hear a pin drop, if one should happen to do so.
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” I rush to say.
“Then it’s settled.” Emilio stands up and dusts his hands together.
“It’s not settled!” I hiss.
But everyone is getting up from their seats. This is so not settled.
“Why aren’t you listening to me?” I practically yell.
“You’re going on tour and you have to have someone to protect you,” Emilio says firmly. “Tag is going with you. Marta will help take care of the baby.” He holds up his hands to stop me when I would interrupt. “That’s all there is to it. Get your shit packed. You leave in the morning.”
He’s using the dad voice again. Damn it, I hate it when he does that. Emilio let us get away with a lot, but when he brought out the dad voice, we knew we had better listen.
“But–”
“No buts!” he says loudly. “It’s settled, Finny. Go pack your shit.” He points toward my room.
I get up, and I think about throwing the pillow I’m holding in my hands directly at his head, but I would never do it. I have too much respect for Emilio. But damn if it doesn’t cross my mind.
Emilio chuckles as I stomp past him. “Don’t even think about it.”
I stick my middle finger up where he can’t see it, just because I’m feeling defiant.
“I saw that!” he calls to my back.
I slam my bedroom door behind me and lean heavily against it. Then I start to pack my shit, because apparently I’m going on tour and I’m taking the man I had one night with along as security. Then I have to deal with my mother when we get back.
Fuck my life.
Tag
Finny slams her bedroom door and I scratch my head. Peck and Star take their husbands and go home, and Marta and Emilio hang out in the kitchen for a few minutes. Benji is stirring, so I go and fix him a bottle. He has been asleep for a while, and he’s going to wake up hungry.
Emilio leans on the kitchen counter on his elbows and glares at me. I look behind me, because I can’t think of any reason he would be staring at me like he hates me. I cough into my closed fist. “Is everything okay?” I ask him.
“Finny’s special,” he says.
I nod. “I’m sure she is.”
“No, I mean really special.”
I nod again, and pop Benji’s bottle in the microwave.
“Finny’s afraid of commitment,” he says.
“Aren’t we all,” I mutter.
His brow arches, but he doesn’t respond to that. “You’ll take care of her while they’re on tour, right?” he asks.
“I promise to do my best.”
“I believe you.” He points a finger at me. “But if you fuck it up, if she comes home with a single scratch on her body, I will murder you with my own two hands.” He grins, but there’s no humor in it. “You feel me?”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “I feel you.”
I shake the bottle, waiting for Benji to start making those little mewling noises.
“There are two things you should know about Finny,” he says.
“Okay…”
“One, you have to listen to what she doesn’t say, if you want to figure her out.”
I nod.
“And two, never get between her and a coffee pot. She’ll chop your balls off.”
This much I already know about her, but I instinctively bend my back a little, and my nuts draw up. He laughs.
“Call me if you need anything,” he says. He claps me on the shoulder and follows Marta to the door, after kissing his daughters goodbye.
“Night, Melio,” Wren calls to him.
He waves at them and leaves.
Benji makes a noise from my room, so I take the bottle and go to him. I look down into his crib and see that he has kicked himself free of his swaddling blankets, and his skin is moist and rosy. I pick him up, talk to him as I change his diaper, and go back out to the rocking chair in the living room to sit with him.
Lark goes to bed, and Finny is still in her room, but Wren comes out to sit with me.
“So…” Wren says.
“So…”
“Do you think you can take care of Finny while we’re on tour?” She bites her lower lip, worrying it.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Try not to fall in love with her, okay?”
I jerk my head up. “I won’t.”
“Oh, you will. But try not to, okay?”
“I can guarantee you that I’m not ready for a new relationship, Wren.”
She heaves a sigh. “Neither is Fin. But seriously, Tag, don’t fall in love with her. You’ll just get hurt.”
I look up at her. She’s totally serious. “I can handle it.”
She nods, but she still looks worried. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She gets up and goes to her room. She comes back out carrying a bank deposit receipt. “I put some more money in your account,” she says. She tosses it onto the table.
“I don’t want your money, Wren. Not now. I’m doing odd jobs for the Reeds and I’m okay. I really am. I just have to figure things out.”
“Well, I don’t want my nephew doing without while you figure it all out.” She bends down and kisses Benji on the cheek. Then she shoves the side of my head with the heel of her hand. She reminds me so damn much of Mom right then that tears fill my eyes.
“You do look like her, you know?” I say. I sniffle back a tear.
“She was beautiful,” Wren says softly.
“Yeah, she was.”
She goes to her room and shuts the door.
As soon as she does, Finny’s door opens and she stomps into the room. “Take off your shirt,” she hisses.
“What?” I am startled by her bluntness.
“You were injured. I saw it.” She points to my stomach, where Benji is resting. His mouth is slack around his bottle, so I pull it back and lay him on the couch beside me.
“I’m fine,” I say. But I get up anyway.
“Show me.”
I don’t move, so sh
e reaches out, lifts the edge of my shirt and draws it higher, exposing my stomach. “Oh, it’s not bad,” she says.
“Just a scratch, I think.” I lower my shirt.
She goes to the bathroom and comes back with some antiseptic and cotton gauze. “Let me clean it.”
I hold out my hand for the bottle. “I can do it.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll do it.” She motions for me to take my shirt off, so I pull it over my head and toss it onto the couch beside us.
She pours antiseptic onto the gauze and starts to gently clean the area, but it burns like a bitch. I hiss loudly drawing in a breath.
“Oh, quit being such a baby,” she chides. She bends down and blows across it, and I suppose she’s trying to ease the sting. But the gentle feel of her breath on my skin starts a brand new kind of ache. My dick starts to press against my fly.
“I can do it,” I say. I try to turn, but she grabs my belt loop and holds me still. I close my eyes and think about cheeseburgers. Warts. Ice. But then my ice turns into a drop of water melting and sliding down her skin in my lust-filled mind. Oh, holy hell. “I can do it,” I say again.
Suddenly she notices the bulge behind my fly. “Oh,” she says, her cheeks turning rosy. “Whoops.” She giggles and shoves the first aid supplies into my hands. “Didn’t, um, mean to, um, cause that.” She waves a hand toward my dick. “I mean, we can’t do that again.”
“We totally should,” I tell her, my voice gravelly. “I mean, if you ever drop your moratorium against sleeping with someone twice.”
She nods at me, her gaze once more falling to my dick, which is still standing at attention. “Tempting,” she offers. She grins at me. “You might need help with that.”
I roll my eyes. “I can handle it, thanks.”
“If you say so.” She turns and goes to her room. At the last moment, she turns back to me. “What time do you want to leave in the morning? I need to go talk to my mother’s doctor before we leave, and I guess you’re going with me.”
“Whenever you get up.”
She nods. “I guess we can’t say whenever you get up, since, well…” She grins at me.
“Beautiful and funny,” I mutter.