Dirty Past (17 page)

I uncap a beer bottle and drop onto the sofa next to her, resting my arm over her shoulders. “Who wants to be the queen of England? You’re like the queen of Dirty B., and that’s the most royal anyone can get.”

She rolls her dark eyes and attempts to hide her twitching lips behind her glass. Unfortunately for her, the glass is see-through. “I don’t see a crown.”

“Darlin’, we’re in New Orleans. You want a crown? I’ll find you a crown.”

“Condom crowns don’t count.”

My mouth teases into a smirk. “Fuck. Back to my drawin’ board.”

“If you can draw anything beyond a stick man and/or a penis, I’ll be very impressed.”

“Blow job kind of impressed?”

“Tate.” Ella rests a hand on my thigh softly. “Can you draw anything other than a stick man or a penis?”

I run my tongue over my lips slowly and deliberately and grin when her eyes flick down. “I can probably draw an all right pair of tits.”

“You want a blow job, then it looks like you’ve got to get yourself art lessons.”

“Fuck. Shoulda known.” I shake my head and clasp my bottle between my thighs so I can grab the remote. No sooner have I pressed the Power button than Ella’s stolen it, changed the channel to TV Land, and there’s three hours of
Friends
blinking at me on the guide.

“Fuckin’
Friends
?”

“Yeah, you got a problem with that?” She looks at me challengingly.

“Damn. Can you stop talkin’? Your attitude is turnin’ me on.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Not helpin’.”

She knocks the remote onto my thigh gently. “Tate!”

“See, now I’ve got a boner and I’m thinkin’ about you under me, very fuckin’ naked, sayin’ my name that way.”

“Ta—shut up!” she squeaks, dropping the control and holding one hand and her wineglass up between us. “Wait. Crap.” She puts the glass down on the table.

“What are you doin’?”

“You’ve got that look in your eyes,” she explains, waggling a finger in case her words weren’t clear. “It’s that one that says ‘I’m Tate fucking Burke and you’re turning me on, and I’m gonna make sure you know it and leave you a hot fucking mess in two-point-five seconds.’ ”

I lean forward and lower my voice. “And don’t I follow through on that look, darlin’?”

Ella swallows, her twitching hands flattening against my chest. “Um. It maybe takes five seconds sometimes, but—”

I cut her off by sealing my mouth over hers. She squeaks a fruitless protest, because she grips the collar of my T-shirt and pushes against me. Winding one hand into her hair and flattening the other at her lower back, I tease her lips with my tongue. She opens her mouth and flicks hers out. Our tongues meet in something that’s half-dance, half-battle, and she hums into my mouth.

“You a hot mess yet, darlin’?”

“Um.” She blinks at me, her eyes glazed and her lips swollen.

“You’re a fuckin’ good-lookin’ mess.”

“Uh . . . Are you asking me or my vagina?”

“I’m askin’ you, Els. If I wanna ask your pussy, I’ll demand an answer with my fingers.”

“Mila’s in the next room.”

“She’s sleepin’,” I murmur. “And if you keep it down, no one will ever know.”

“You’re obsessed.”

“With you? Yes. I’m so fuckin’ obsessed it’s dangerous.”

Ella stops. Her eyes find mine and search them endlessly, asking questions I can’t answer in words. Hell, I just answered every fucking question her eyes are asking.

“Tate,” she whispers, brushing the backs of her fingers down my cheek.

I turn my face into her touch and kiss her knuckles, closing my eyes. It’s true. This girl—I’m obsessed. Completely and utterly fucking obsessed with everything about her. Her past, her present, her future. I wanna know every goddamn thing about it all. Why she allowed that bastard to treat her that way. How she feels right now with me. What she wants in a day, a week, a month, a year.

If she fucking wants me.

“You never told anyone, did you?” I pin her with my gaze. “Your parents, your friends, the police. You kept it totally secret.”

“You know that,” she replies in a small voice. Her gaze falls away, but I grip her chin.

“Eyes on me, darlin’.”

She pulls them back to me.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

Ella laughs bitterly and grabs her wineglass. She finishes it in one long drink, but she doesn’t let go of the glass. She sets it in her lap and twirls the stem between her fingers and thumb. “My mom wouldn’t have believed me. All she cared about was that her imperfect baby girl was marrying the perfect man. The degree I insisted upon would become useless, because no man likes a woman who can support herself, and I’d be reduced to exactly what she is—a trophy wife, pretty on a rich man’s arm, there to charm investors and business contacts at fancy dinners and cocktail parties. As long as there were no bruises that could harm the perfect image the world would get, she wouldn’t have cared.”

“Your dad?”

“I’ve seen my father four times in nine months. He works constantly. So although I lived only a few blocks away with Matthew and was around every weekend, he wasn’t there. I doubt he would have cared.”

“His parents?”

“Think he’s a golden boy who can do no wrong.” She fiddles with the glass again, and I can see she’s fighting to keep her eyes up and on me. “Just like the rest of society. When I arrived here, I threw my phone in the river by the hotel. I had two kinds of messages from him. The voice ones were everything a girl wants to hear—declarations of love and all that bullshit. The texts, well, you can imagine from the email what they were.”

My grip tightens on her. Asking her about the past is a bastard of a catch-22. I wanna know it all, every damn second, but that pathetic little boy makes me so fucking mad it scares me.

I still don’t understand how he could hurt my sweet girl.

“Did you love him?”

“Once. Maybe.”

“Do you now?”

She looks at me and shakes her head. “Don’t be mad,” she whispers, sliding her hand up to her neck and touching my hand. “I don’t want you to be mad.”

I take a deep breath and rest my forehead against hers. “I’m not mad, darlin’. You’re confusing that with . . .”

“Annoyance? Frustration? Anger?”

“Mmph.”

“I know, Tate,” she says softly. “I know because I felt it toward myself for so long. I’m mad I can’t go and tell anyone now. But I’m really mad that I can’t be free, that he still thinks I belong to him, and that he’s still coming after me like I do.”

“He’s fuckin’ delusional, Els. He’s totally fuckin’ whacked. You never belonged to him. You don’t own people with fear.”

“But he did.”

I dip my face and brush my lips over hers. “No, darlin’. No. He doesn’t own you. I don’t even think I do. You’re mine, sure, but, Els? You own me, baby. You own every damn bit of me, so you’re mine because you decided that, and it ain’t because you fear me. Now don’t take that to mean I’d let you walk out of this room and decide you ain’t mine anymore, because that ain’t how it works, but you get me.” I pull her into me until my lips ghost her earlobe. “You’re mine and I’m yours because there’s no other fuckin’ possibility. So he can take a long walk off a short fuckin’ pier.”

She drops the wineglass to the floor and wraps her arms around me tightly. I circle her waist with my arm and hold her against me. She nuzzles the crook of my neck with her nose, and I bury mine in her hair.

She’s always so fucking tiny in my arms, and it just makes me want to protect her more.

No. It ain’t even a want. It’s a need. I need, desire, crave, to protect her. Every second.

M
y pen glides smoothly over the thick pad of paper. This ain’t my domain, this shit, but I’m gonna try it anyway. Just like Conner said to me once, if you’ve got the words inside you, somethin’ you gotta say without actually saying it, then this is how you do it. You live it, breathe it, feel it, play it, and then you sing it. You sing it to the whole goddamn world, while knowing the whole time the words you can’t really say are meant only for one person.

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.

T
ate’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.”

“C
ome 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
RA
W
? As in
WWE RA
W
?”

Lucas just winks.

“He used to be on
RA
W
?” 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.