Worth the wait to see the awe in his expression. Worth more to note it wasn’t new. It was the way he always looked at her.
It became a blur then, the rocking motion Jay set up, the sounds they made; a common language without words. The responses in her own body; a softening before everything began to wind up inside her; the concentrated intensity of his body, until he couldn’t hold it all back.
She shook apart as he drove into her and when he lifted her,
and she straddled his thighs, she came again, riding a pleasure hit higher than she’d thought possible as he came, face buried in her neck, arms tight around her back, his chest seizing, holding her down to catch the aftershocks.
And to think she’d been worried old-fashioned intercourse might be boring. Nothing with Jay was boring.
And the next night, thousands of screaming fans in the half-full stadium were with her on that as he surprised them by stepping out on stage with Lost Property halfway through their very first set of the tour.
She nearly orgasmed again, leaping to her feet with the rest of the concert goers. Her first look at Jay on a stadium stage and it was to watch him shock the shit out of Abel, Isaac and Oscar, making Isaac stop playing and Oscar swear into his mic. Only Grip seemed to be in on it, grinning madly from his throne behind his drum kit.
They played together as if they’d never split and she couldn’t take her eyes off Jay. He was her man; a little intense, a little dorky, sweet and honorable, and yet he was someone completely different up there on that stage. His intensity dialed way up and manifested in a kind of god-like mastery of the performance, as if the audience transformed him from a more than competent musician and a striking man into a genuine rock king who exuded a dark sparkling energy; quixotic, exciting, unknowable, and whose every move she was mesmerized by.
Jay quit the stage like he’d entered it, without any warning, without any fanfare, in the middle of a song, with a wave to acknowledge the audience.
If she didn’t already love him with every atom of her being, she would have fallen irretrievably in the space of time he played three songs on stage supporting her brothers and Grip, when she knew his management were against it.
It might have been an anti-climax when he took the stage again with World’s End but now the stadium was full, and the fans were hyped-up and Jay was incandescent, lighting the air on fire with sound and sex appeal.
She was one person in a sea of fifty-thousand, but it felt like Jay played for her alone. Her heart was so full it was a wonder it didn’t spill out of her chest, splash all over her feet. As it was, her feet might not have even been on the ground, she felt so high.
Watching Jay was seeing her future tumble into bright relief. Nothing would separate them now. Not continents. Not his touring or her business. Tice Social was entirely portable. She could expand, hire an Australian market manager, work anywhere in the world, as long as she had an internet connection. She didn’t have to wait for Jay to be in one place. She didn’t have to give up any part of the life she loved. They’d work it out together, taking to the road as long as that’s where Jay needed to be and stopping wherever was most convenient.
She could hardly wait to begin.
It was as though they’d already had the conversation, made the decisions, chosen the path. Her backstage pass got her through security quickly enough that she was waiting when Jay came off stage, bathed in sweat, shaking from the exertion and shouting for her.
Their secret relationship was well and truly out when they collided, bodies crashing together, lips locking. Jay’s hand firm in her hair, his kiss insistent and urgent, softening into easy laughter as his bandmates, management and crew orbited about them.
“You’re here,” he said, forehead resting on hers.
“Where else would I be?”
“You’re mine.”
She pulled on his neck to reach his lips to whisper against them. “Always. And you’re mine.”
“I don’t even feel like barfing,” he said, which might’ve been a horror mood killer, but it was like a declaration instead. Everything was as it should be. And their life together started now.
That life was a plant-killing, rent-wasting till her lease ran out, suitcase-living, bike-battery-flattening, time-zone adjustment departure from the norm for Evie as she traveled with Jay. Lucky, she’d never gotten around to letting Haydn talk her into owning a dog. Luckier, she’d made some new hires and her people stepped up to the reality that they’d have to do ground support without Evie as backup.
She worked days while Jay slept, worked out, did interviews and attended to the business end of the tour. At night she was his most ardent fan, watching from the audience and sometimes the side of stage with Janina, who’d taken to hugging her often and making vague threats about what she wanted to do to Errol for breaking them up. Some of the threats were not so vague and sounded painful and embarrassing.
And later, after Jay was wrung out but still wired, they made good use of all the luxurious- surfaces of five-star suites to make each other’s bodies feel good. Sometimes they even had good old-fashioned stick it in sex. Sometimes they simply curled up to sleep, wrapped in each other’s fresh-faced happiness.
Jay didn’t barf after a gig and he claimed his pre-show nerves were more manageable, which Janina backed up. It made Evie feel even more comfortable they were going to get it right together this time.
It made her use her free time to mess about on Suzy Q and tinker with lyrics. Most of them were sad, bad and godawful embarrassing, but there were three new songs that had a little something going for them. More importantly, the whole process engaged her imagination and made Teela smug when she confessed to it.
Make that smugger, since Tee and Haydn we ready to move into their new home and Tee was sporting the largest diamond known to ever grace a finger. Evie was sure her left arm hung lower than her right.
And with all that peace, happiness and goodwill flowing through her veins, she made it up with Errol. He schemed and manipulated, caused real and lasting damage and none of that was forgotten. But he was her dad and he’d thought he was doing the right thing at the time, and since being with Jay had wrecked her tolerance for grudge bearing, she forgave him for being a dickhead.
Weeks later, back in Sydney for the final extra show, bags packed to fly out to New Zealand with Jay, she knew she’d miscalculated badly about her tolerance for grudge bearing.
Miscalculated catastrophically about everything.