“Yes, Avery. Please,” he rasps, sending a spray of goose bumps over my skin.
“So polite. I didn’t realize my husband was such a good boy. Or are you only that way for me?” My hand slips lower, cupping him through his pants for a moment before busying myself with his belt buckle. I spit in the palm of my hand and slip it into his pants.
“Just for you,” he grunts. His mouth hangs open as if he is about to say more but his eyes roll back as I wrap my fingers around his length and start to stroke.
He bends over me, teeth clamping down over the juncture of my neck and shoulder. The act muffles the sounds of pleasure escaping him, though it only serves to urge me on. It’s vampiric. This ancient need that verges on a drive for survival that ties us together. The feeling that, without him, I am a husk of the person I could be.
“I’m going to—” is all the warning I get before he comes against my hand, body jerking in a final weak hitch of his hips.
It takes us a long few minutes to collect ourselves and find the car waiting for us.
“Mr. Hart and Ms. Sloane, your room number is written on the back of the card. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to make your stay better,” the woman working the front desk of the hotel says as she slides our key cards across the polished wooden counter.
Our hotel for tonight isn’t the nicest around. Distinctly plain, really. A chain location a few miles from the airport that looks like it was plucked from a stock photo. Normal and perfect.
“It’s Mrs., actually,” Wes corrects with a smirk. He may be having a little too much fun with it. But I like it, and how happy he looks reaffirms that I made the right choice, no matter how impulsive it was.
Still that choice is why, an hour later, I’m sitting on a hotel bed talking to Lydia while Wes goes out to get us food.
Between a few clips from our impromptu concert and catering staff members who took videos of Ivy, Wes, and me fighting, the news has spread like wildfire. It’s the top trending story everywhere with endless speculation of when and how our marriage happened.
Lydia and Derek know the truth, and if that got it out it would be a scandal that would make what happened between me and Jamie look like nothing. The simple solution was to say that we eloped during the tour, caught up in our old feelings and new romance.
“Okay, you need to pass along the story to Wes, make sure he’ll either say the correct shit or keep his goddamn mouth shut.” She pauses, and then speaks again, but this time it's muffled, likely talking to someone else in the room with her. “How fast can we get them here? Of course.”
Her voice comes back louder again. “We’ll have a plane ready for you in two hours.”
“Have them get us in the morning. We’ve got a place to stay.” I like this. Wes and I never got a honeymoon, never had a reason to have one. And this mid-range hotel with mass produced art prints on the walls makes it feel like we’re an everyday couple on a trip. I want to cling to these moments we’ve found before we’re launched back in front of the world.
It’s been giving me a bit of whiplash really. How quickly I settle into soft moments and then am tossed back under the spotlight. I wish I could have this longer instead of mourning the end of the respite before it’s even over.
It’s not that I don’t love performing. I do. But I’ve done it for so long that it’s almost like I forgot there were other ways to live my life. Softer, slower ways that feel more like sipping lemonade on a porch swing in the summer and less like slamming back a tequila shot.
“Fine,” she relents. “But you’ll need to be ready to go early tomorrow. We have a few more shows before the holiday break. Then you need to lie low during that time.”
“We have plans to go to Tennessee and visit his mom. It’s out in the middle of nowhere so we should be good on that front.”
“God, you really like him, don’t you? This wasn’t a mistake?”
“I do and it wasn’t.” I smile, flopping onto the mattress and looking up at the swirling, textured ceiling of our suite. I’ve changed into the set of silk pajamas I packed for the trip. The gold dress is now stuffed in a trash can, scratchy tulle puffing up over the lip of the bin. “You saw the video?”
“If I wasn’t so exhausted, I’d be impressed.”
“Sleep at least two hours tonight,” I urge.
“Not a chance. You owe me a coffee IV drip,” she says before hanging up, and then my screen lights up with texts.
Jared
Congratulations!!! But also why didn’t you tell us?
Ev
Because it happened a billion years ago and didn’t invite us
Me
Thanks
