Dirty Past (8 page)

“Ella?”

“Hold that thought,” I tell Sofie, taking a big swig from my glass and getting up.

“What?” She spins on her stool. “Oh. Ohhh!”

Tate turns and storms away, his muscles flexing with his every step, and I follow him. This ends now, because our relationship isn’t supposed to be personal, but he’s making it that way.

He shoves open the door that leads to the private parking lot, and I catch it just before it swings shut again.

“Don’t even think about getting in that car!”

He stops and, in the waning light, turns to me over his shoulder. “Last time I checked, you didn’t give the fuckin’ orders around here.”

“And last I checked, Mila was the one with tantrum rights, not a twenty-five-year-old man.”

He spins and his eyes crash into mine. “Is your sassy side out to play tonight, darlin’? Scared little Ella gone back into hiding?”

His words jolt me, but I swallow the hit. “Yeah, the sassy side seems to come out around you if you hadn’t noticed. You obviously bring out the worst in me.”

“Shame. It’s pretty fucking hot.” He folds his arms over his chest. “What are you doin’ here?”

“Oh, sorry, am I delaying your next meaningless sex date?”

“Yeah, actually, you are.”

“I’ll make it quick, then.”

“Please fuckin’ do.”

I freeze. The words are on the tip of my tongue, ready to fall, but they won’t jump. Why won’t they come out? This isn’t the plan. No. I’m not afraid. He won’t hurt me. No one will.

“Well?”

I run my fingers through my hair.

“Informative.” Tate turns and unlocks his car. He opens the door, and then . . .

“You were right!” I yell, running my hands through to the ends of my hair. “Yesterday. On the bus. What you said. You were right.” He says nothing, and I swallow. I step sideways, closer to the tour bus, and clench my fists at my sides. “You don’t have a right to know, but I have to tell you because you’re stomping around like your mom didn’t give you any candy. You’re being awful over something that isn’t yours to be awful over.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it isn’t your business.”

He slams the car door shut and hits me with his red-hot gaze. “Yeah. It is my fuckin’ business, Ella. It’s every bit my fuckin’ business because you are.”

“I am not my past!” My voices hitches at the end as my words gain volume. “Do you know how hard it is to be honest? I can’t even say the damn words because I’m so afraid something bad will happen. Do you have any idea what it’s like to live in fear every single day?”

“No. I don’t have a fucking clue, but you’re not alone here. There are people here that can protect you from him!”

“Sofie already did it!” I wrap my arms around myself. “Security knows who he is.”

Tate’s jaw tics. “You should have told me. It’s
my
job to keep you safe, not Sofie’s.”

I laugh in disbelief. “How is it your job? Because you’d have no one to annoy if he finally got me? Because I’m your employee?”

“Because I fuckin’ want to!” He approaches me, each footstep echoing around the empty parking lot.

I back up against the bus, flattening my hands on either side of me. My heart pounds loudly in my chest, and I can feel so many things swirling around my body. Fear. Anger. Adrenaline. A thrill. They all mix and mingle into an indecipherable feeling that thrums through my veins at warp speed.

“It’s my damn job to keep you safe.” He flattens his hands above mine and leans down. He’s not touching me, but my skin is tingling all over. “I told you yesterday I’d never set a finger on a woman. I meant it. I’ll also never let anyone else fucking do it either.”

“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” I snap, raising my eyes to his.

“Hardly, but let’s move on, shall we? Make our way down a list? Let’s clear up how you’re drivin’ me fuckin’ insane,” he growls, his biceps tightening on either side of me.

“Excuse me?”

“I went out earlier to pick up some chick and fuck out my frustration. Guess what? I came back here, still frustrated, unfucked, and I got me a pair of blue balls for my trouble. Couldn’t pick up a single fuckin’ chick because some hot-and-cold, dark-haired PA and her pain was consuming me like a fucking disease.”

“I’m sorry my life is such a cockblock to you.”

“Not your life, darlin’.” He drops his eyes to my mouth, and I feel them tracing the shape of my lips. It makes me draw in a sharp breath. “You. Just you. Doesn’t matter who I look at or think would look good in my bed, ’cause they don’t have your hair, your eyes, your smile, your mouth. Doesn’t matter, because they ain’t you, Els.”

“Is that how you pick up girls?”

“You’re real feisty around me. You know that, right?” He leans in further and his breath billows across my mouth, heating my lips, his eyes searching mine. “You wanna know why you’re the biggest pain in the ass I’ll ever have?”

I purse my lips. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me, regardless.”

“Damn fuckin’ right I am.” His voice is low, husky, rough, and against my wishes, my body shudders. “Because I can’t stop seein’ you yesterday, cryin’, scared. Scared.
Of me
, when I ain’t him. When I’d never touch you that way
.
I can’t stop seeing what I saw and wonderin’ how the fucking hell someone could hurt the sweetest girl I’ve ever met in my life. I can’t stop bein’ mad that someone did hurt you, Els, darlin’.” He drops his hand to cup the side of my head and strokes his thumb across my cheek.

The soft touch sends a thousand lightning bolts across my skin.

“I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about you. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that the worthless piece of shit who did this to you could have walked past you in Charleston and I wouldn’t have known, or that he’s on his way here right now. And worst?” He pauses, his fingers tightening slightly on the side of my head. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how I couldn’t protect you because you refused to tell me the motherfuckin’ truth. And how I have to protect you because, yeah, I want to protect you.” He brings his face close to mine.

So close I can’t tell where my breath stops and his starts.

So close I’m shivering in the evening heat.

So close my body is buzzing.

So close I can feel each dip and bump of his muscled body, even though his hand is the only part touching me.

“Els, I gotta protect you because no other girl has ever fuckin’ bothered me as much as you do.”

“Well, thank—”

His lips—they’re on mine. Hot, soft, smooth. They taste like coffee and cinnamon, and he smells that way, too. His hand falls to my side and it burns me through my dress. Every little touch, whether it’s his lips working mine or his nose brushing mine or his fingers flexing against my skin, is more intense than I could ever have imagined.

My hands creep up his body to his neck. I wrap my arms around him, falling into his kiss, letting him prove whatever point he’s trying to prove.

It should be wrong. I should be running screaming. But I can’t move.

It isn’t wrong.

It feels a little right.

Like every word we’ve exchanged since we first saw each other has been building to this.

Like today, all day, every painful glance, has been foreplay for this kiss.

His hand slides down to my thigh and up, pulling my dress up with it, and I gasp, because, whoa. But it’s nice. His touch is like a gentle spring breeze ghosting over my skin, until his hand rounds to my back.

My bruise.

“Tate,” I whisper, every one of my muscles freezing.

His fingertips brush the edge of the bruise. “Say it again. My name.”

“Move your hand.” Every word quivers. “Please.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and drop my arms. No—he can’t touch that. He can’t touch where
he
did.

“Els.” He cups my face. “Ella. Darlin’, I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”

But I remember. The shove into the wall because I didn’t get a chance to pick up my wedding dress. The punch to my back, then the push against the table.

“Ella . . . Ella!”

I open my eyes and look up, shaking. All over. Everywhere.

Tate stares at me, every bit of anger gone. “Els?”

I push at his chest, because he needs to let go.

He doesn’t.

He wraps his arms around me.

Softly but strongly, wrapping me in his embrace.

He holds me until I stop fighting him.

Then he holds me some more.

And he whispers, “You’re safe with me, darlin’. Always.”

Tate

Fuck everything.

My name.

My kiss.

Her tears.

Her fear.

I rest my elbows on the dining table and run my fingers through my hair. I wasn’t supposed to kiss her last night. I’ve wanted to—fuck, have I—but I wasn’t going to. I was going to pull my big-boy boxers on, unravel my cock, and get the fuck on with it. Maybe I’d jack off once or twice, then be such an asshole she’d quit and leave.

Now it won’t happen. That sassy, attitude-filled act she puts on is just that—an act. It’s fucking bullshit, a total performance so no one sees the scared-as-shit girl inside. So no one will get close enough to look into her eyes and see the pain there.

She ain’t broken, though. She’s strong and resilient, despite the odd switches to shyness. She’s like a knotted ball of my mom’s yarn waiting to be untied and unraveled, ready to spin into something beautiful.

Except she is already. Beautiful. Her smile, her eyes, her laugh—it’s all so fucking beautiful it pisses me off. She and her goddamn innocent beauty are fucking with me so bad, and she has no idea.

I want to protect her. I want to curl my arm around her, hold her against my body, and keep her safe from something as small as a goddamn bee sting. She’s so . . . small. She’s so delicate and fragile that if I flicked her, she’d crumble.

She’s nothing like what I like.

She’s not self-confident or flirty or extroverted. She doesn’t flaunt her tits with every shirt, and her skirts and shorts always cover some thigh. She doesn’t step in front of me and see dollar signs or how she can bag me.

She stands in front of me and tells me to go and fuck myself in the politest damn way I’ve ever heard.

She intrigues me. She astounds me. She winds me tighter than a fucking nun’s vagina.

And now she’s walking into the room, her head down. She tucks some hair behind her ear and slides into the seat next to Conner.

I stare at her. Like I’m begging her gorgeous ass to look at me. I am. I want her to look up at me and show me that damn sadness isn’t in her eyes anymore.

I want her to look at me so I can make sure her eyes aren’t ghosted with fear anymore.

But . . . she doesn’t. I can tell from her posture that her hands are in her lap, and the shifting of her shoulders tells me she’s fidgeting. Her hair falls on one side of her face, the side I’m looking at, like she’s leaving it there deliberately to obscure my view of her.

Obscured or not, I’m still fucking looking.

Kye nudges my side. “Y’all still fightin’?”

“Nope,” I reply, not taking my eyes from Ella. “Well, I ain’t. You’ll have to ask her if she’s still ignorin’ me.”

“Look like she is,” he chuckles. “The hair curtain, bro? Ouch.”

I cut my eyes to him. He raises his eyebrows and returns to his breakfast, and I take a long drink of juice.

The door slams. “Conner, take Mila upstairs. Now,” Sofie snaps.

“What—?” he says.

“Did I stutter, hon? Take Mila upstairs and call Ajax to watch her. Now!” she adds. “As in right the hell now, not in two minutes when you’re ready to.”

“All right, princess, keep your panties on.”

I turn in time to see her shoot him a death stare.

“Come on, baby. Let’s go find Uncle Ajax.” Conner lifts Mila out of her high chair.

“Yax! Yax! Yay, Yax!” She claps her hands together behind Conner’s head.

Sofie watches as they disappear and shut the door. Then she turns on me, a rolled-up stack of papers in her hand, and she steps forward and whacks me on the head with it.

“Fuck!” I scramble out of my chair and away from her. “The fuck was that for, you crazy bitch?”

“You!” she growls, advancing on me. She smacks the other side of my head with the paper roll, and I duck away from her. “You absolute fuckin’ dumbass, Tate Burke! You complete and utter fuckin’ idiot!”

“Shit! What did I do now?”

“Oh, it isn’t what you did. It’s what you allowed to happen because you can’t keep your snake in its cage!”

I hold my hands up. “Sof, I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

She unrolls the paper sheets and shows me the printed side. It’s a memo from Marc about a tip-off he’s had. I step forward to take them from her.

“A fuckin’ sex tape, Tate! Sweet Jesus! After the hooker thing, you’d think you’d watch your damn back!”

“You what?” Kye and Aidan yell, standing at my sides.

I don’t even have the energy to be mad at them for their mind-reading shit.

She’s right.

Some girl I fucked in Charlotte apparently has it on tape, and she’s threatening to release it.

Adrenaline is pounding through my veins—and not the fucking good type. It’s burning, searing every part of me.
Fuck.
I’m no reality star. I don’t need some sex tape to make it big. I already did that. I need to keep it that way.

This won’t help.

“What’s goin’ on?” Conner comes back in, and Sofie shrieks the news. My baby brother stares at me from across the room, shocked. “This for real?”

“Apparently.” I throw the paper on the table. My fingers scrub at my scalp relentlessly.

“How could you be so fuckin’ stupid?” He storms across the room and stops right in front of me, squaring up to me. “Again, Tate? Really? Are you fuckin’ fifteen? Do you have a goddamn brain cell in your brain or is it full of air?”

“Fuck off.” My jaw tenses.

“Y’know what? No. You spent so long tellin’ me that Mila bein’ public knowledge would fuck everything up. Turns out that’s your job,
brother.
”

“You think I like this shit, huh? You think I like these chicks coming out with this stuff?”

“Obviously you do.”

“You want me to sit them down with an NDA before I ask them to pull off their panties? That it?”

“Yeah!” Conner yells. “Because we should be more fuckin’ important than getting your rocks off! We should matter more than those easy girls you drag back to your hotel room, because we’re your fuckin’ family, Tate! We’re the ones who got here, and we did it together!”

“What are you sayin’, little guy? If I wanna go down I’m doin’ it alone, huh?”

“That’s exactly fuckin’ it!”

“Enough!” Ella’s voice cracks and she slips in between us. “Stop. Now. Please.” The last word is quieter, but it seems louder than every yell we just gave.

“Ella,” Conner warns, “this is between us.”

“No. It isn’t. It affects everyone. You, Tate, Kye, Ads, Sofie,
Mila.
Hell, even me. Everyone, Conner. And yelling at each other isn’t going to make it better. It’ll just make it worse.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you won’t get through this alone,” she says softly. “The only way you are all coming out of this is if you stick together.”

“She’s right,” Sofie agrees, stepping up and taking Conner’s hand.

“Yelling at each other won’t fix this. Calling your manager and your lawyers will,” Ella continues. She swallows and steps to the side. To the table to be precise. She collects the papers and sits down, flicking through each one.

“What’s she doin’?” Aidan asks.

“I’ve done a few summer internships at law firms. Learned enough,” Ella replies, reading.

“And she went to Harvard,” I add.

Ads shakes his head and looks at her. “Shit! What’re you doin’ here?”

“Saving your brother’s behind, apparently.” She looks at me for the first time today. “There’s no proof here. If she really, really had one and she wanted to exploit you for it, she’d post an image that would put you in a compromising position, or she’d post the whole video. It’s a stunt for fifteen minutes of fame.”

Conner relaxes. The others do, too.

“So what do we do?”

Ella rolls her eyes. “I just told you. Call Marc and your lawyers. They can enforce a gag order and possibly a defamation of character, depending on what she’s actually said. The media will have been careful not to post any quotes that could damage your image, but they’ll have the full transcripts of the conversations.” She comes to me and slaps the papers on my chest. “Get them. It’ll cost you, but it’ll help. Somewhere she’ll have said something incriminating. And in the unlikely event that the video exists and she posts it, you can sue her for damages.”

I stare at her. We all do. Because, fuck. In the space of one minute she’s taken us from angry to calm, from flailing to planned.

“You, Els,” I murmur. “Are a motherfuckin’ gem.”

She raises her eyebrows. “And if I’m gonna have to give you all legal advice regularly, I need a pay raise.”

With that, she turns on her heel and walks away from me.

“Wait,” I call after her. “You gonna get Marc on the phone or what?”

She glances over her shoulder at me, then pulls something out of her pocket. She turns, clicks on the phone, then throws it to me. “I’m sure you can tap the little green button to call him.”

She turns again, and this time she walks right through the door.

“Dayyyuuuum,” Kye laughs, pushing off the wall and dropping back onto his seat.

“Really?” Sof wrinkles her nose. “Bacon? After all that?”

“Shut up, idiots,” I say as Marc answers. “Oh, not you,” I say into the phone. “The guys.”

“Right. You wanna explain to me what the fuck is going on there?”

I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and explain the situation. From beginning to end. For the next ten minutes, I listen to my manager rip me a new asshole. My nether regions will never be the fucking same after this conversation.

“I want your ass in rehab for sex addiction.”

“Are you kiddin’ me?” I explode. “Fuckin’ rehab?”

“Damn right I am, Tate. This is getting out of hand. I’m all for a bit of a scandal—it’s awesome marketing. But a sex tape? A year after the prostitute story?”

“I didn’t pay her!”

“The world doesn’t know. You gotta sort yourself out now.”

“I’m not doing rehab, Marc. That’s a dumbass idea. We’re in the middle of the tour!”

“Then I don’t wanna see you in the headlines, in the tabloids, front pages, trending, whatever, until after it. And if I do, I want it to be because you killed a fucking performance. If I see your face on there for anything but, I’m hauling you into rehab and canceling the tour quicker than you can make up a damn excuse. Are we clear?”

I grit my teeth together. “Yes, sir. We’re clear.”

“Good. I talked to your lawyers. They’re goin’ to call.”

“Got it.”

He hangs up, and I drop the phone onto the table.

“He wants to send you to rehab?” Sofie whispers.

I shrug and drop onto a chair. “I gotta behave myself.”

“What are you gonna do?” Aidan asks.

I take a deep breath and shake my head. I don’t have a damn clue what to do about this dumb plot twist in the craziness of my life, much less my manager’s demands, but I know exactly what I have to do to try and behave.

I’ve gotta give in to temptation. I gotta stay close to Ella—try to unravel her past without giving up what’s left of my own secrets.

Failing that, it’s time to get a PornHub subscription.

M
y fingers strum over the guitar slowly, and I lean into it, feeling the relaxing hum of the music flood through me. It’s the only thing in this world that can calm me, and given that my ass has been chewed out more times than a dog chews a bone, calming is the exact thing I need.

I don’t even know what I’m playing. Just . . . notes. Random fucking notes that have no sense or rhythm or pattern. It’s just me and the music, each chord vibrating off the walls of my suite.

I pause for a moment to sip my water, then I readjust my position on the sofa and go straight back to it. This time I lean back into the plush cushions and close my eyes. And I fall—into the music. I fall down and down and down until I’m lost in the motion of my fingers against the strings and the pounding of my heart.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I look up, and at another, quieter, knock, I set the guitar down on the floor and walk to the door. It opens to reveal Ella, holding her purse to her stomach, her dark eyes traveling up my chest to meet my gaze. “Can I come in?” she asks, somewhat hesitantly.

“Stupid question.” I step to the side so she can pass.

She stands awkwardly in the room, her eyes traveling through it, examining everything. Eventually they fall to my guitar and she pauses. “Oh. Were you practicing? I can come back later.”

“No—just messin’. What’s up?” I drop onto the sofa and eye her.

Her dark hair is twisted into a braid that hangs over her shoulder, and her dress hangs loosely, stopping at mid-thigh.

“I spoke to your lawyers,” she says quietly. “They’re going to try and see if they can silence her and forbid her from releasing the video, but they’re not hopeful. Now that it’s out there—and being clamored for by your fans, I might add, check Twitter—she may release it for financial gain. And if you approach her with money, it may seem as if you’re bribing or blackmailing her, which will get you in trouble.”

“I thought you said it didn’t exist.”

She chews on the inside of her cheek. “There’s evidence to the contrary.”

Fuck.

“Sit.” I move the guitar to the side and motion for her to sit down.