Unstoppable (Fierce) (7 page)

“Do you like it? Tell me you like it.”

I forced a smile as I looked back up at her. “It’s beautiful. Thank you. But you didn’t have to do this.”

“It’s the least I could do,” she said as she stated unpacking her goodies.
“Now you get to help me decide what to wear tonight.” She spun around to face me with a cute lace tank top. “What do you think?”

“Looks perfect,” I gritted through my rigid smile.

It was another half hour before I made it back to the stage, where Jace had already joined Vanni onstage for an audio check.

I sighed before turning back to
find Terrell, the stage director.

That night I threw myself into my performances, channeling all the inner yuck I was feeling about myself into the music. My normally bombastic voice ripped down the rafters as I tested the boundaries of my vocal gymnastics, especially during my song to introduce Jace.

I was holding out for my hero, so the performance was easy to sell.

The crowd easily forgot about me once he skidded to a stop, center stage, on his motorcycle. He launched into his song with renewed confidence, something I instantly attributed to his photo shoot earlier in the day. He looked the part in T&L clothes, which included a new T-shirt design proclaiming the wearer was FIERCE in fiery red font superimposed over a bold black background. He wore a matching red hoodie and loose fitting jeans, cut to feature his artificial leg and its trademark design.

“He looks great, doesn’t he?” Shelby asked as she came up from behind me.

I turned to face her only to catch a dreamy, lovesick smile on her face.
“Perfect,” I found myself saying again.

“He was hopeless trying to decide what to wear,” she confided with a giggle. “I had to pick out all his outfits. Men,” she added with a nudge.

I mumbled something that passed as agreement before turning back to watch him perform. Shelby glued herself to my side until we joined everyone back on stage for the encore song.

During the after party, she made a beeline toward Jace. Media outlets wanted to capture the two new models for T&L with their new clothes, so photographers kept hounding them for pictures together. I tried not to take notice of how easily his arm curved around her tiny waist as he pulled her next to him for photo after photo.
He’d lean into her with a big smile, and she’d balance on her tippy toes and preen like she had just won the lottery.

I turned back to the buffet, where I spied the various finger foods heaped in dish after dish. It looked glorious, so I grabbed a plate and dug in.

I was sitting in a corner, knuckle-deep in shrimp cocktail, when Yael sauntered over my direction. “You look as miserable as I feel,” he said as he took a seat on the barstool next to mine. “God, I hate these things. Some of us were made to be front men,” he said as he indicated toward Vanni and Jace, “and some of us weren’t.” He grabbed a shrimp from my plate and tipped it toward me in a toast.

I didn’t know how true that was. I’d wanted to be a superstar from grade school, when I was singing into my hair brush for an imaginary crowd of my greatest fans. “I don’t know. I make it to the spotlight every once and awhile,” I commented.

He gave me a knowing smile. “And you hate every minute of it,” he declared. “That microphone is your force field, just like my guitar is mine. You have to gear yourself up to go out there because you know you can only plug into them if they’re digging you. If that happens, it’s magic and it’s worth it and it’s fucking addictive – but not a minute goes by that you don’t worry they’re going to turn on you and leave you hanging That’s scary as hell and you’re just gritting through the terror of it all.”

I had to laugh. “I’ve never given it that much thought before,” I admitted.

He shrugged. “It’s all I think about. The surest thing about success is that it has a short lifespan. Eventually failure will come. It has to. No one can be on top forever.”

I toasted him with another bite of shrimp. “You certainly are a ray of sunshine, Yael.”

He chuckled. “But I speak truth. It’s easy to love someone when they’re on top. It’s when they flounder that they find out who truly counted. That’s why it’s right to resist the urge of the spotlight, but those who need to fight it the most are the ones most susceptible to its lure. The bitch of it is, those people in the audience can only give so much. The rest? That’s all up to you.” He glanced over at Vanni. “He made that mistake for a long time. He chased after the spotlight to fill this emptiness the world left in him. The one we all have, really, but some are deeper than others. I fill mine with music, but he needed something more. He wanted to be adored. That’s where the groupie thing came in and nearly spoiled everything. He got this ego that said he was the most important guy because he was the one in front. It nearly ended us as a band.”

I listened intently. I didn’t know why this notoriously quiet man was confiding in me, but it felt important. I knew I should pay attention.

“The more he was loved, the more he needed to be loved. When that didn’t happen he started punishing himself with booze and pills. It took a mighty big fall for him to realize that the stage is an illusion. Success is an illusion. And the truest artists seem to know this. They know how fleeting it can all be. They keep expecting it to rip apart like tissue paper. All that shit,” he said, motioning to the press flanking Vanni, Jace and Shelby, “is fake. The only thing we can ever count on for sure is my guitar and your voice.”

“So we’re smart to be so miserable,” I filled in.

“Fucking geniuses,” he nodded.

Well, fine. I had a 19-year head start on the suffering.

That night, Jace was already in my bed when I emerged from the bathroom after another fragrant, bubbly, glittery bath. He was perusing through the T&L catalogue as I climbed into bed, wearing a flannel night shirt.

“This is beyond me,” he admitted as he gestured to the glossy pages. ‘I’m not a model. This was a bad idea.”

I shrugged. “Shelby didn’t seem to think so.”

“Shelby is in her element. I’m not.” He sighed as he swiped all materials into a pile on the floor. He took me into those strong arms. “I would have rather spent the day with you.”

Such sweet words. They should have been a balm for my spirit. Instead I just got pricklier. “You looked like you had a good time with Shelby. It couldn’t have been all bad.”

He propped up on his elbow to look down at me. “What’s wrong, Jordi? You’ve been weird since we got to San Francisco.”

I shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“You keep asking me that,” he pointed out. “If I ask, it matters.”

I let out a long breath as I covered my eyes with one hand. “Shelby is beside herself with this T&L gig. I get to hear how amazing you are, how sweet, how thoughtful. Those were pretty flowers, by the way,” I added coolly.

“Thank you,” he responded, and I could hear the humor laced in his voice. “Pink is her favorite color.”

At that I shot up out of bed. “Do you know what this is doing to me? Do you have any idea?”

“Yes,” he stated flatly. “Every time your asshole husband shows up
, pissing over everything to mark his territory.”

I sighed, and then dropped my head into my hands. “God, I wish we could just be open about what we are.”

He untangled me to look deep in my eyes. “We can. Just tell the fucker you’re done and you want a divorce. We’ll deal with everything else together. Anything that happens in the press, anything that happens with Graham or the tour… and anything that happens with Shelby.”

“She thinks I’m her best friend,” I admitted tearfully. “And I’m lying to her every day.”

He gripped my hands in his. “Only one way to fix that. Let’s stop lying.”

I stared into those remarkable green eyes and considered what might happen if I called Eddie’s bluff.
A sex tape, starring me. Distributed worldwide.

I couldn’t even lie to myself completely and say it was all for
Jace’s reputation or career. I knew I couldn’t face the world again if those tapes were ever released. They’d see the awful truth about how I looked beneath all these clothes meant to camouflage me and make me more palpable for the fans.

I could barely go to the store without someone at PING snapping a picture of me, denigrating my sweat pants or mocking my shopping choices. Releasing a sex tape would not only tear me down, but it could punish Jace who had been nothing
but good to me from the moment we met. His shooting star would get blown out of the sky when people realized he settled for someone like me.

You’re a joke. And you always will be
.

Those were words I battled every time I stepped into the spotlight. Being on that stage, being in front of that crowd, hearing that applause – it helped dull the way life crapped on me otherwise.
If I lost it all now… if I had to start over from scratch… I just didn’t know where I would find the strength. Maybe Yael was right. Maybe it was all an illusion. But it was an illusion I needed, right or wrong.

CHAPTER FOUR

Los Angeles, CA

January 22, 2012

The next stop on our tour was our home base of Los Angeles, and we were all quite happy to return to it.

Well, most of us.

While other folks were able to go to their own homes, those who didn’t live in Los Angeles – say, Shelby – ended up even more lonely and isolated than any other time on the trip. I decided on the flight back home to invite her to stay at my house, even though I knew it meant I’d have to play nice with Eddie for the duration. She’d never understand why I still preferred to room with my gubby Corey, so I’d have to finally darken the door of the cottage in Venice Beach that, as far as the lease went, was my official home.

It was a rental, an expensive one at that, but since I had not pulled in the half mil Jace did wi
th his
Fierce
win, I had to make certain economic compromises. With Eddie’s caviar tastes, this wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. We found a hip little pad about a half-mile or so from the sand, a teeny, tiny house with bedrooms so small you could barely turn around in them. I paid the year lease in full at a fraction of the cost it would have taken to own something in that area that Eddie had been so insistent upon living. He loved the location and the house so much that he was pacified enough not to make a fuss that it wasn’t more permanent.

Maybe he didn’t need it to be permanent. One could only hope.

I left him to it most of the time, which didn’t seem to bother him much. I knew he had turned it into a little love nest for all the girls who were going in and out of the revolving door of his sex life. And I knew there was an ongoing supply thanks largely to my bad press.

Girls
far and wide wanted to console the long-suffering (and gorgeous) husband as his imperfect wife continued to humiliate him in public. And he had the money to treat them all like queens, which made him even more attractive.

I, frankly, welcomed his philandering. It kept him off my back. He got to live like a king, worshipped by women a
nd respected by men, and we barely saw each other at all.

But we’d both have to turn over a new leaf with Shelby staying with us. I would have never considered it at all but I knew that the only other person she could possibly spend that kind of time with was Jace. I couldn’t take a repeat of San Francisco, so I invited her to join me.

I hoped, mostly, it would be a good buffer between Eddie and me. I was still reeling after that kiss in New York. The last thing I wanted was time alone with him.

Eddie was overjoyed when I informed him we had a house guest. By the time we arrived that Sunday afternoon, I could tell he was going to give an award-winning performance as husband of the year. Flowers overfilled the tiny living room, and Eddie popped out from the small adjoining kitchen. “Welcome home, baby girl,” he said as he approached me with open arms.

I didn’t resist as he pulled me up into a tight hug, nor did I duck away from the passionate kiss he planted onto my tightly closed mouth. He grabbed my jaw in his strong hand, squeezing until I parted my lips and allowed his tongue to penetrate.

When he pulled away his eyes were victorious. “I’ve missed you, baby,” he said softly, but loud enough for Shelby to hear. He then turned to our guest. “Hey, beautiful,” he said as he welcomed her into a hug with his other arm. “How are my
two favorite
Fierce
females?”

“I bet one of us is better now,”
Shelby said with a coy, little grin.

He glanced back down at me. “Aw. You
missin’ me, baby?”

“You’re my husband,” I stated pointedly.

“Good point,” he said as he let go of Shelby. “You’ll excuse us while I help her ‘unpack.’”

Shelby giggled as she watched Eddie lead me toward the only bedroom in the cottage. When he shut the door behind us, there was no room to step away from him.

“Eddie…” I started, holding out my hand to keep him at bay.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” he sneered. “This is for appearances only, right?”