Epic (25 page)

“Extraordinarily,” I answered with a smirk of my own. “But what can I say? The character is a kangaroo. The actor needed an Australian accent.”

“Racist,” he accused with a cockeyed grin.

I smacked him on the arm as I headed back out to the stage.

By the time the curtain rose that Friday evening, I had never been more prepared, or relaxed, for a performance. Diego and I dedicated the performance to our mother, who had made her own long journey home to the east coast. Tears poured from Maya’s eyes as she watched us perform from her seat right in the front row of a balcony box seat. She struggled to stand with everyone else when we were done.

It was the most important performance of my career.
It really was about my long journey to collect my scattered pieces, and for once I had most of them in one place. I was still teary-eyed when I got to my room that night. I opened the door and found a trail of red rose petals. My brow furrowed as I followed it toward my bedroom. I gasped out loud as I opened the door and found Jace Riga lounging naked on my bed. He had silk red petals all over his lap and a smug, triumphant look on his face.

“Jace!” I squealed as I kicked off my shoes and sprinted across the room to the bed. I wrapped him in my arms
, and he laid me gently on my back as he kissed me long and hard. “What are you doing here?” I asked breathlessly between kisses.

“I wanted to give my superstar a bouquet of roses,” he murmured against my skin.

I ran my fingers through his hair as I stared deep in those bottomless green eyes. “I’d rather have you.”

“You’ve had me from the moment we met,” he assured before he kissed me again.

He spent the rest of the night staking his claim, sliding that one missing piece to my perfect night right into place.

New York City, NY

July 21, 2012

I might have thought I dreamed the entire night before had I not wakened to find Jace’s beautiful naked body next to me on our rumpled bed. I stretched like a cat before crawling up his body to kiss him awake. His arms snaked around me as he roused beneath my fingers and my mouth. I squealed with happiness as he flipped me around his body and pressed me into the bed.

“Good morning, stranger,” he offered with that sideways smirk I loved so much. “I wanted to be here for the concert,” he said as he traced a finger down my arm. “But I was tied up in the studio, finishing that last track.”

My eyes flew wide open. “You’re finished?”

He nodded as his head bent towards mine. “Finished with the album,” he said as he kissed me once. “Finished with the auditions for the tour,” he continued with another kiss. “Finished with promotional photos,” he murmured before his third kiss. “The way I figure it, we have a two week vacation until you start filming
Black-Eyed Pete
. We can be together every minute of every day. If you can stand it,” he grinned.

I let out another squeal before I pulled him down to me. “Stand it? I may never let you go again.”

His mouth covered mine and my body came alive under his kiss. He groaned deep in his throat as my nails trailed down the solid muscles of his back. He fit so perfectly against my soft curves I could hardly hate them. He worshipped every square inch with his tongue or his fingers, until I writhed underneath him, begging for him to slide inside my body and put me out of this exquisite misery.

He teased me mercilessly, taking his sweet time with each carefully placed kiss. I was incoherent by the time he slipped his hard body into mine. My legs crossed behind him, urging him deeper. He lifted my knees up in both hands as he buried himself within me. We exploded together in muffled cries, before collapsing against each other, sweaty and sated.

He gathered me into his arms as we lay cuddled together in the afterglow. I luxuriated in how real and solid he felt in my arms. I almost envied those who could share every night together like this with their lovers. While it was extraordinarily helpful that Jace was in the same business that I was, so he could understand the weird rules that came with our world, our careers had kept us apart more than they had brought us together. But neither of us would have ever asked the other to forfeit his or her career. It was as important for us to perform as it was for us to be together.

It made us who we are.

The biggest complication, aside from the loneliness, was how the public around us filled in all the missing pieces. They saw what they wanted to see, and it usually had very little to do with us. We could either get mad about it or respond to it with humor, which was generally Jace’s M.O. When I murmured that I wished we could stay like that forever, he quipped, “That could cut into your boy toy habit. Up to two at a time now, is it?”

I responded by tickling him until he begged for mercy.
“Sorry! Sorry!” he said through helpless giggling until I finally stopped. He gave me that playful side-eye glare. “One at a time?”

I pounced with more giggling, which led to more kissing, which led to Round Two. After he wilted beneath me a helpless puddle of goo, I informed him that he was the only boy toy for me.

His hands cupped my hips as he arched deeper inside me. “Then maybe we should make it official,” he said.

I traced his face with my finger. “You know I want that more than anything, right?” I asked softly.

“But?” he filled in.

I slid from his body. “But I’m not even twenty and I already have one divorce under my belt.”

“That marriage didn’t count,” he said as he traced my back with his fingertips.

My eyes met his. “To the world it did.”

He propped himself up on one elbow. “When are you going to stop letting public opinion drive how you live your life?”

“Seriously? You can see what these people do to me and still ask me that question? They manufactured an affair between me and my underage brother, for Christ’s sake.”

“I actually have a theory about that,” he said as he reached for his phone. He scrolled through the phone until he found what he was looking for, then handed me the device. It was opened to an article that said Shelby Goddard had been hospitalized for “exhaustion.” It was dated a week before.

“Is she OK?” I asked immediately.

He shrugged. “We’ll never know, because that story got buried under your being ‘busted’ with a sixteen-year-old kid staying in your hotel room.”

My brow furrowed. “Are you saying that they did it on purpose?”

“It just seems a little convenient. And look at this,” he said as he pulled up another news article. It was regarding Coy Goddard, and some racist comments he uttered at a private fundraiser.

COY GODDARD’S APPROVAL DIPS AFTER “TAR BABY” COMMENT

“
Tea Party favorite, Republican Coy Goddard from Tennessee, was videotaped making a provocative analogy using Uncle Remus’ “Tar Baby” character to describe how dangerous it was to get too close to the “wrong” element in Washington. Given the pejorative ways the characterization has historically been used, detractors immediately jumped on the usage as a direct insult to the 44st President of the United States, however Goddard further expounded on his analogy by saying ‘the friendlier we are with those who advocate an alternative to more traditional family values, the more we muddy the waters with destructive, liberal mindsets that would tear conservative America asunder.’”

“What an idiot,” I muttered.

“Check the date,” Jace suggested.

“Yeah, so?”

He pulled up PING’s website and pointed to the date of Coy’s “explanation” for what he had said. It was the very day I had been photographed arguing with Griffin in the restaurant in my hotel.

I still wasn’t sold. “Potato, potahdo. Like voters care about what some reality TV star is doing.”

“You think not?” he challenged as he pulled up a graph of Coy’s popularity among voters in his district. Every time I fucked up publicly, he enjoyed a boost in his approval rating. “Face it, Jordi. He’s constructed his entire campaign around you. Ever since Shelby went into the hospital, he’
s deflected his own failure as a parent by blaming the entire entertainment industry for the downfall of traditional America. He went on every talk show that invited him and cultivated this very specific message. That wasn’t an accident, Jordi. People began to raise money to get him to Washington, to fight against the social change they find so frightening. And here you are, the perfect poster girl for alternative America. You don’t fit into any handy, little box. He has something to gain by seeing you fall. If you succeed, it proves that their fear mongering is baseless.”

I shook my head, even though much of what he said echoed what Griffin had told me about publicity sleight of hand. I just couldn’t buy that it was that calculated… or pre-meditated. “These are the same bullies who used to make fun of me in school. There’s no diabolical master plan, Jace.”

“No?” he asked as he pulled up his Twitter. Once again #jordiwho was trending, which surprised me given my triumphant and completely uncontroversial performance the night before. I scrolled down the feed to piece together what was going on. After a smattering of congratulatory posts, I finally realized, with a sinking heart, what had happened.

FIERCE TRAGEDY TURNS TRIUMPHANT! REALITY STARS ENGAGED!!

“
Coy Goddard, the father of Reality TV sweetheart Shelby Goddard, announced that his daughter would be marrying her steady boyfriend, and soon-to-be-ex-husband of her Fierce rival, Jordi Hemphill. Sources say Eddie Nix popped the question in New York City, where Shelby is recording her first album under Jasper Carrington’s label
.
The patriarch of the Goddard clan beamed with pride over the pairing, saying that with a bride who could honor him in a more traditional marriage, he expected great things for his future son-in-law. Nix has worked tirelessly in Goddard’s campaign, and is expected to be Coy’s right-hand-man once he wins his seat and heads to Washington
.”

“Oh, no,” I groaned as I threw the phone onto the bed. “Oh, Jace.”

He pulled me into his arms. “Sorry, babe.”

“We can’t let this happen,” I muttered against his chest.

“How can we stop it?” he asked.
“She’s so far buried in that life and with those people that she’ll never hear the truth even if you tell her.”

“I’m not going to tell her,” I said as I disentangled myself to grab my own phone. “I’m going to show her.”

The enormity of what we were going to do filled the room. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked softly.

I scrolled through my contact list. “I don’t think we have a choice anymore, Jace. She’s already been in the hospital once. You think either Coy or Eddie will care what kind of strain she’s under? They’ll keep using her for their own selfish gain until it drives her right into the grave.
I can’t live with that on my conscience. And neither can you.”

He couldn’t argue.
We showered and dressed while we waited for Jacob and Iris to arrive for lunch at our hotel suite. Jace detailed his theory to both of them, and they both nodded that it made perfect sense. “When Jasper began his affair with Lourdes, he was quick to invent a romance between Vanni and Lourdes to keep all the gossipmongers at bay,” Jacob said. “It helped get his new band in the headlines and it kept the heat of speculation off of him. He’s a master of smoke and mirrors.”

“Well, they only have one big arrow left in their quiver,” I pointed out. “And that’s the sex tape. Aside from the obvious humiliation of something so private going public, it reinforces the relationship I have with Jace, and invalidates all the other manufactured affairs they have
created to keep me in the headlines. I think releasing the security tape first is our best defense. Best of all, it does more damage to them than it could ever do to me.”

“It will still do its share to you,” Iris pointed out. “You know that I totally support your going public with this information, but you need to be completely aware of the consequences that will follow. You can probably kiss any kids’ movie goodbye. And who knows what it will mean for
The Journey Home
. All buzz has been positive so far. I’m not sure how Angus will feel about a scandal, even this far out from the premiere.”

“One way to find out,” I said as I texted Griffin to join us in my suite. He was there within five minutes, with Diego in tow.

I didn’t want to discuss such personal matters in front of my little brother, especially since we’d finally turned the corner in our relationship. But if Coy and Eddie retaliated by releasing the sex tape, I figured he deserved to know about it sooner than later.

Both of them were thunderstruck by the information we shared, but were surprisingly supportive… even Diego. He pointed out that our mother hadn’t paid much attention to all the Internet or celebrity gossip that had plagued me ever since I hit the national stage.
He assured that she had never believed anything bad about me, even when he had thrown my bad reputation in her face. “She told me that she knew that you weren’t that type of person. She said that no matter what, you were her daughter… and she’d know the truth.”