“Nope.”

“Not even a little?” I raised my eyebrows, searching his face.

“Well… maybe a little.” He smiled.

“But you’re gonna do it anyway?”

“Yeah.”

“Good man.” I gave him two thumbs up and he laughed.

I leaned my head against his shoulder as we waited, feeling so very blessed.

I knew I was the luckiest girl in the world to have such a good man in my life.

And even if I had to share him with fifty-thousand screaming fans, he was all mine.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sex on a tour bus was impossible if you wanted privacy. It was easy, though, if you didn’t. Rick climbed up into his bed every night with his headphones, pulled the curtain, and went to sleep, and even though we didn’t get along very well, that kind of thawed me toward him a little. He had a wife and kid at home and he went to bed alone every night. I knew that couldn’t be easy, given that there were hundreds—literally, hundreds—of girls who would have been happy to hop on the bus with him after the shower.

The groupies lined up near the backstage door, just to catch a glimpse of the band. It was Dale they were all after, of course. But he was taken. I thought it would be Terry who would benefit most from the groupie runoff. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but he was interesting-looking, and I could see how his white-blond spiky hair (peroxide in the sink, I discovered) could be appealing. And he did bring a few girls on the bus at first, but I think he must have either sworn off it or he just got bored, because he, too, started going to bed at night with his headphones, curtain drawn.

And headphones were necessary, because Eddie “Bear” Allen was getting laid. Just the first two venues alone, one in Florida and the other in Georgia, I think he’d had sex with more girls than he’d ever been with in his lifetime. And I didn’t quite know how it was happening, because our beds were pretty small. They were average twin size, pretty luxury for a bus, but Dale and I were used to a double. And Eddie? He was two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of man flesh. It defied the laws of physics.

Granted, the girls he was bringing back were model skinny—he’d discovered he could pick them out in the crowd and one of the crew would give the girls he liked a backstage pass. Of course, Eddie was behind the drums for the whole set, so he scoped them out before the show. His tastes seemed to trend toward those toothpick girls with long limbs and jutting hipbones. From the sounds coming from his cubby—and we’d all quickly learned from experience to avoid the bus right after the show—the girls were all having a good time. I was afraid he was going to hurt one of them—not on purpose or anything, but they were so little and he was so big, and our beds were kind of high up.

Mostly the girls would leave after the sex, but he picked up a girl in South Carolina during our fourth show on the road who just stayed. I didn’t know what her name was but Bear called her Pixie, which could have been reference to her stature—probably not quite five feet—or her short, dark haircut. Or maybe it was her real name, who knew? Pixie made it clear she was available to all the guys, if they wanted her. Especially Dale. When he told me that, I made sure I had a little talk with Pixie when none of the guys were around. After that, she didn’t talk to Dale much and me not at all. Which was fine by me.

But I admit, I was a little shocked when Pixie would join Bear after every show on the bus. He continued to pick out girls—he was like a kid set loose an ice cream store and he wanted to try every possible flavor—and Pixie would just join the party. Sometime I woke up to go to the bathroom and I’d find limbs poking every which way out of Bear’s cubby, the sound of the big guy’s snoring filling the bus.

Black Diamond had their own bus, thank goodness. I loved the crew—they were great guys—but I wasn’t sure I wanted to share close quarters with them. Of course, sharing close quarters with three band members who had mixed feelings about me wasn’t that fun either. It’s exactly what I’d been worried about when I’d expressed my reservations in the first place. I hadn’t anticipated the sex.

When I asked Chelsea about the groupie-sex thing, she laughed. She said it was common practice on the road. She was surprised the rest of the guys weren’t doing it too. Maybe they were taking Dale’s lead, or maybe they were just too shy, given the close quarters. But Chelsea devoted one entire drawer in our little kitchenette to condoms. It was packed full of every size and flavor known to man.

“Is this what you’d be doing on the road if I wasn’t here?” I asked Dale one night after we’d been treated to a particularly loud sexual symphony from across the aisle. I felt bad for Rick, because Bear was right next to him, just on the other side of a thin wall—if you could call it a wall at all.

“I’d be sleeping with headphones on,” Dale replied, kissing the side of my breast. We were all tangled up post coitus, having taken advantage of the noise across the aisle to drown us out while we were having sex. “And jerking off, thinking about you.”

“You think about me when you jerk off?” I smiled. That was a nice thought. “Not all those women out there throwing their panties on stage?”

And here I’d believed that was just a metaphor.

Silly me.

Bear had actually started a collection.

“Baby, I can barely concentrate on anything else when you’re with me,” he murmured, nuzzling my breast. “When you’re not? I can’t think about anything but you.”

“So no Pixies for you, even if I’m not on the tour?” I eyed him, only slightly doubtful.

“No Pixies for me.” He laughed. “Besides, she scares me.”

“She’s only this big.” I held up my thumb and forefinger and he eyed the space between.

“Yeah, but didn’t you hear her yelling at Bear backstage?”

I shook my head. Dale treated me to the gossip—Pixie went off on him for taking a girl back to the bus alone. All by himself. No Pixie invited. That, apparently, hadn’t gone over well. But from the sounds across the way, they’d made up—I knew the high-pitched sound of Pixie’s climax and hadn’t heard any other girl’s voice.

While I’d been thinking about Pixie and Bear, Dale drifted off, his breathing deep and even. I watched him sleep for a while, thankful things seemed to have quieted down over there. There was about a fifteen minute respite and then came the sound of Bear snoring. I was used to it by now and could sleep through it, but for some reason I felt wakeful.

Tomorrow was our first show in New York. Finally, home. We had worked our way up the coast, getting closer and closer. We played a lot of shows in New York, so there would be time to visit. I was looking forward to seeing John—even if I dreaded facing Chrissy. And I was desperate to see Aimee and how big her belly was getting!

But I was worried about Ben. I’d left things… well, I’d just left them. And I hadn’t called to talk to him either. Somehow he got Chelsea’s number—the man would have made a great private investigator. Or con man, Dale said. Chelsea was the only one with a mobile phone so we relied on her for communication. That was the number John had in case of emergencies. I gave it to Aimee so she could call if something happened—I wouldn’t even say “with the baby,” out loud. Dale’s manager, Greg, had called on it several times to talk to Dale and the band to check on him and see how the tour was going.

The first time she told me someone named Ben called for me, I froze. Dale explained who he was while I ran to the back of the bus to the bathroom. I’d just shut the door and locked it and sat there, shaking. I knew I had to face it—him—eventually. I was so afraid he was going to try to manipulate me again. How could I trust him now?

Just thinking about it made me cry. It was better not to think about it. So I told Chelsea if he called again, I didn’t want to talk to him. She did as I asked, but she continued to tell me every time he called—and he called often, usually at least once a week—giving me a long, steady look, like she expected something from me. I would just say, “Okay, thanks,” and leave it at that. But she looked at me like she didn’t want to leave it.

I liked Chelsea—everyone liked Chelsea—but I hated when she looked at me like that.

I glanced over at the map I’d tacked up to the wall, tracing our route from Florida. Time was strange on the road, and everything blended all together. The venues were all the same, big stadiums, big speakers, big crowds. But for the band, it was like living in a tunnel. They were herded from place to place, down hallways, sitting backstage, waiting for the lights to go down.

It was, surprisingly, a lot of waiting. You would have thought it would be far more exciting. These were big rock stars—or, at least, they were on their way to becoming big rock stars—where was the booze, the drugs, the girls? Well—Bear had the girls covered. And there was booze, and they did get drunk a few times after the show, but it wasn’t a constant or even a usual thing. Drugs I never saw—although I did hear Chelsea tell Dale once they were available upon request.

The best part of being on the road, for me, besides being with Dale, which was a given, was having front row seats to every show. And it never got old. I asked Dale if he ever got bored, playing the same songs over and over every night and he looked at me like I’d just sprouted three heads and was speaking Latin. I’d only asked because you would think it would get boring—but it didn’t. The time between shows got boring sometimes, but never the shows themselves. They were the whole reason for all the miles, all the tunnels, all the hotels, all the waiting. The shows and the fans. And as excited as I knew the fans were—I remembered being one—for the guys in Black Diamond, it was like Christmas every night they got to go on stage.

New York was no exception, although there was a little more excitement in the air because for most of us, this was home—or close enough to it. I woke up tired to the sound of Chelsea’s voice as she opened the door and stuck her head into the bus. We’d been rolling the last time I remembered, the miles ticking by on smooth asphalt in the dark, the wheels on the bus, round and round like that kids’ song, a lullaby that finally put me to sleep.

Dale was gone—so it was already a bad day. He’d taken to waking up early on the road, putting on a pair of headphones, strapping on his walkman, and going for a run. He’d never been a runner before, but he said it cleared his head in the morning. And that was a new thing too. Dale was not a morning guy. He and sunshine didn’t get along.

“Team meeting in half an hour!” Chelsea called. “Rise and shine, gentlemen and ladies! Whatever it was, you’ve had enough time to sleep it off, if not, too bad. This is your only notice before I come in with a bowl of ice water!”

I put my head back down on the pillow, looking at my little map and thinking about Dale. We spent most of our time together, except when he was on stage. Even during radio interviews, I went with him and watched. I couldn’t begrudge him time alone. I just hated it because I didn’t like being alone with my own thoughts. But that was my problem, not his.