Merry Ever After

Someone stepped on m

y foot and I stumbled into a wall of pointy elbows and flying shoulder slams. I caught a glancing blow to the jaw and saw stars. Hands hit me high on the back, shoving me hard enough that my head snapped forward. And down I went onto the sticky floor, into the sea of boots and feet.

A scuffed Doc Martin stepped on my thigh. Someone’s stiletto—who in the hell wore stilettos to a standing room only punk concert?—caught me in the forehead. Pain was blooming everywhere. I wondered what Addison and Shane would say about their mother being trampled to death in a mosh pit.

They’d probably be embarrassed and blame a midlife crisis. But was it really a midlife crisis when I was just trying to finally live my life the way I wanted to live it?

I felt hands lifting me. Strong arms enfolding me. I wasn’t on the floor anymore. I was definitely already dead because I staring into Vonn Barlowe’s blue eyes as he cradled me in his arms, muscling his way toward the stage.

“You really don’t have to do this,” I said for the ninth time as Vonn eased up to the curb in front of urgent care. The windshield wipers whipped back and forth as fat snowflakes pelted down in the dark, the roads already boasted a thick coating.

I wasn’t sure how he’d gotten the short straw of chauffeuring me into town after the venue medical staff insisted I needed to get checked out officially. But here I was, in the passenger seat of a badass black Tahoe with Vonn Barlowe behind the wheel. The man who had both crushed a dream and starred in a few of my naughtier ones. The man who had much better things to do than drive me around my hometown in a snowstorm.

I shifted in my seat and winced.

My entire body ached, and all I wanted to do was go home and lie on the couch.

Alone. On Christmas Eve.

It was a side effect of having a healthy relationship with my ex-husband. I couldn’t blame the kids for being excited to spend Christmas Eve and morning with him, his—significantly—younger wife, and their adorable baby.

“Stay,” Vonn barked in the rough rasp typical of his post-concert voice.

“Stay,” I mimicked as he rounded the hood. After spending the last two weeks with the band, it was clear that the bassist was a man of few words. An introverted rocker. How novel.

He opened my door and plucked me off the seat. He had me on my feet on the snowy sidewalk supported by a swarthy arm around my waist.

“You really don’t have to go inside with me,” I insisted. “Everyone’s overreacting. I’m fine.” As I said it, my right knee gave out, and I would have gone down if it hadn’t been for his arm holding me to his side.

“Do me a favor, babe.” His voice was low, gruff.

My feet shuffled toward the clinic’s automatic door as he took more of my weight. “What?”

“Shut up.”

He sounded pissed off, which was more emotion than I’d managed to pry out of him on the northeast leg of the tour.

I couldn’t blame him. Spending Christmas Eve at urgent care was a special kind of depressing. Kind of like spending it at a strip club. Besides, he had better things to do than make sure I wasn’t concussed. The entire band was flying back to the West Coast tonight for a few days off before kicking off the final leg of their farewell tour.

Everyone stared at us when we walked into the waiting room. It had nothing to do with my head wound. Vonn, still wearing his Santa coat over a low-cut black tank that did everything for his muscles and ink, was the attention grabber.

A nurse practically galloped out from behind the desk. “Mr. Barlowe, your manager called ahead; you two can follow me.”

I glanced around the waiting room. There was a harried mother with a toddler who was vomiting into a bucket. An elderly man mid-coughing fit was sandwiched between what I guessed were his two worried adult sons. On the other side of the room was a twenty-something guy wearing sunglasses and lying across three chairs. Holiday hangover, I guessed.

Vonn steered me toward the door the nurse was holding for us.

“I don’t think I should jump to the head of the line,” I hissed.

He stopped and stared down at me. “Babe, you’ve got a bleeding head wound. Trust me, you’re priority.”

My fingers flew to the bandage on my forehead and I felt the dampness through the gauze. Gross.

The mom with the barfing kid was holding up her phone, mouth agape, and taking pictures of us. The thing about Sonic Arcade was they weren’t as big as, say, AC/DC, but they’d been reasonably popular for thirty years. And the older he got, the hotter Vonn got. He wasn’t the most gregarious member of the band by a long shot, but he was easily the sexiest.

As annoyed as I was by him, I knew he valued his privacy and would hate being splashed all over social media.

“Ugh. Fine. Let’s get this over with,” I grumbled.