My Song for You: A Pushing Limits Novel (21 page)

This wasn’t the first time I had stripped Callie of her clothes, but she had been fully coherent those other times. This time it felt awkward, like I was violating her privacy. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she was fully awake, but she could barely keep her eyes open.

It didn’t help that I missed caressing her soft skin, exploring her body, tasting her. I couldn’t get enough of Callie, but none of that mattered just then. The only thing that was important was to get her changed and let her sleep off the booze.

After removing her dress and bra—my gaze on her shoulder so as to avoid looking at her breasts—I helped her with the T-shirt. I laid her on the bed and eased her cotton shorts up her legs. I was used to taking clothes off women, which was a lot easier than putting them on.

Callie murmured in her sleep, but I couldn’t make out what she said. I wasn’t ready to leave yet, so I watched her for a minute or two. Part of me longed to crawl under the covers and hold her to warm her up. To let her know that I loved her and that I meant everything I had said when I told her I wanted to marry her. But not because of Logan. I wanted to be with her and only her.

I leaned down and kissed her temple. She murmured again, the words still unintelligible. Even in her inebriated state, Callie looked at peace.

I kissed her again. “I love you,” I whispered against her temple. “I think I’ve been in love with you for quite some time now, but I was too much of an idiot to realize it until recently.”

She made a soft sound and shifted in her sleep.

When I returned a minute later with a bowl from the kitchen in case she was sick during the night, she hadn’t moved. I placed it on the floor near her bed, so she couldn’t miss it if she woke up. I set a glass of ice water next to the bottle of aspirin on her bedside table and sat in the armchair.

I spent more than an hour in her room brainstorming ways to show her how much she meant to me. Some were clichés. Others were outlandish. But when I finally snuck out of the apartment sometime after midnight, there was no question about what I had to do to prove to her that she was mine.

Now I had to hope the guys in the band would go for it.

“Mommy!”

Logan’s voice somehow broke through the hammering in my head. Whoever had invented alcohol needed to be shot. Although I guessed that by this time he was long since dead.

But that was a moot point. The sentiment was still the same.

I opened my eyes. The Sahara had more moisture than my eyes did after last night. Taking a chance that the pounding in my head wouldn’t worsen if I sat up, I gave it a try. My stomach made its presence known, but it promised to behave if
I
promised never to drink another drop of alcohol again.

That could definitely be arranged.

Logan signed that he wanted to watch TV. Since I wasn’t up for any Mother of the Year awards, especially after last night, I could get away with him watching it all day while I recovered from my hangover.

A glass of water sat on my bedside table, along with a bottle of aspirin. I was positive I wouldn’t have left them there last night before falling asleep. A vague memory slipped in of Jared walking me home from the lounge, of jumping in the puddle, of Jared helping me change into my pajamas. I glanced down. Yep, it hadn’t been a dream.

Unlike before, Jared hadn’t stayed with me during the night. He’d helped me into bed and left. But what did I expect? He had proposed yesterday and I’d rejected him.

But it wasn’t like he’d meant it. He’d done it for the wrong reasons. He would quickly get over it. I wouldn’t be so lucky.

I swallowed a couple of aspirins and downed the entire glass of water. Another memory paid a visit—Jared giving me a couple of tablets and a glass of water before helping me out of my dress. He’d saved me from an even worse hangover. He could have just dumped me on the bed, still in my wet clothes, and left, but he hadn’t. He might not love me, but he did care about me. Wasn’t that enough? I could have married him and remained Logan’s mother. I would’ve been able to legally adopt him, and no matter what happened between Jared and me, Logan would still be my son. Wasn’t that all I desired, to still be Logan’s mother?

Two months before, the answer would’ve been yes. Logan and I were family, the only family each of us had left. I had convinced myself that I wasn’t lonely. That I was perfectly happy being a single mom. Until a few weeks ago, I’d had everything I thought I wanted.

How wrong I had been.

After Logan had finished his breakfast, I left him to watch TV while I showered. Then I emailed a couple of friends in San Francisco I hadn’t spoken to in two years. At first, after I moved away, we had emailed regularly, but over time it became harder and harder to keep it up. They were all going one way with their lives, and I had gone in a different direction once I became Logan’s legal guardian.

I spent the rest of the morning studying my artwork and the pictures in Logan’s books. Jared’s suggestion that I should illustrate kids’ books sneaked into my head. But what did I know about it? It was one thing to create pictures to hang on the wall. It was something entirely different to illustrate books.

That wasn’t the only thing to sneak into my head and refuse to leave. I kept thinking about Jared. About his tongue exploring mine. About his warm, callused hands skimming across my skin. About how it felt when he filled me up, both physically and emotionally.

By lunchtime, my head and my body were on speaking terms with me again. My heart, not so much. I took Logan to the local playground, but everywhere we went, I kept thinking about Jared. It wasn’t just because Logan looked so much like him. It was the things he said that reminded me of Jared. It was the places we had visited with Jared.

I dribbled the soccer ball along the recently mowed grass, almost expecting Jared to steal it from me, like he had when we’d played a week earlier. The air even had the same sweet scent of freshly cut grass as back then. I had been edging closer to the goal, which Logan was guarding. Just as I was about to get into position to kick the ball, Jared had hooked his arms around me and swung me away from it. Laughing, I’d squirmed, attempting to escape, and lost my balance. That had resulted in Jared losing
his
balance. We’d landed on the ground with me straddling him.

I smiled at the memory. It was one of many that I had of Jared, with and without Logan. Not all involved making out or sex. I missed our talks after we’d put Logan to bed. Jared always knew how to make me smile and laugh. And even though he could have spent his evenings drinking with his bandmates or seducing groupies, he didn’t. He’d spent them with me—making me fall even further in love with him.

After I settled Logan into bed, I began work on a new digital design. I’d been mulling around ideas inspired by Celtic symbols for the past three days, but I hadn’t come up with the right idea. Until now. The memory of my puddle-jumping fun last night was exactly what I required.

I spent hours getting lost in the flow of the lines, the colors, the look of joy and wonder on the little girl’s face as she jumped in the puddle. Her fiery copper hair fluttered gently in the breeze. Surrounding her, the woods were a peaceful green, the dirt ground fresh and alive from the recent rain. Water. Fire. Earth. Wind. She was the inner circle of the fivefold Celtic design. She was the element required to bring balance to the picture.

Noticing how late it was, I checked my phone. The smile on my face waned. Other than a text to see if I was okay after last night’s drinking binge, I hadn’t heard from Jared. He finally sent me another text several hours later, telling me the band would be busy for the next few days.

And after that, who knew what would happen. Pushing Limits was about to begin their promo blitz for the upcoming album, and following that came the tour.

Jared was the center ring to my own personal fivefold design and I was losing him, but there was nothing I could do about it. My parents’ marriage had been solid because they’d been in love. I craved what they had, which meant I couldn’t settle for anything less.

Jared cared for me, no doubt about that—but it wasn’t enough.

After leaving Callie’s apartment, I returned to mine, grabbed my notebook and pencil, and spent the next four hours scribbling down words and phrases, imagery, and symbolism. This was my usual process when writing a song. I would brainstorm, sometimes for days, trying to figure out exactly what I longed to say.

Except this time I didn’t have days.

When the words stalled, I played around with the melody on my guitar. I kept going until my eyes were bleary and I had yawned for the third time in the past two minutes.

Sunlight streamed through the bedroom window. I had an hour and a half before the meeting with Remar, but before that, I wanted to discuss my idea for winning Callie over with Nolan. He’d been right when he’d said it had to be something big. Tired and clichéd wouldn’t win me any awards beyond the not-so-coveted participation ribbon.

I closed my eyes, only intending to rest them for a minute or two. It wasn’t until my phone pinged several times and then played Nolan’s song that I opened them. I glanced at the alarm clock, and it was like I’d been poked with a burning branding iron. I flew out of bed.
Fuck!

The meeting was scheduled to start in five minutes.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck
.

Nolan had left several texts. The basic gist was
Where the hell are you?
and
You better be walking your fucking ass through the door any second now.
I assumed he wasn’t talking about my apartment door.

Traffic bad. Will get there as soon as I can
.

Now I just had to hope I didn’t actually get stuck in traffic.

Despite what I had told Nolan, traffic wasn’t an issue. I showed up only fifteen minutes late. And yes, I was lucky no cops were trying to get in their month-end ticket quota.

I’m in the parking lot,
I typed, then raced to the main entrance.

The elevator wasn’t interested in doing me any favors. I arrived at the reception area five minutes later. The receptionist, a young woman with a short skirt and long legs, led me to the conference room. “Would you like some coffee?”

Fuck yeah!
“Yes, please.” In my sleep-deprived state, my voice sounded like I was aiming to seduce her out of her panties. I cleared my throat. “Black, no sugar. Thanks.”

“My pleasure.” She blushed and quickly darted away.

I opened the conference room door and entered. Everyone else was already here, even Mason, who was notorious for being late. Remar sat at the head of the long polished table, like he was royalty and we were just the peasants. Everything about this room made me think of royalty—the expensive decor, the exotic plants, the framed platinum albums on the walls from the kings and queens of music. The only thing missing was his throne. But maybe he just saved that for his office.

“Glad you could find time in your busy schedule to join us, Mr. Leigh,” Remar said, raising a gray eyebrow. Everything about this man smelled of money, including his black suit from a designer whose name I probably couldn’t even pronounce. “Given this meeting was partly due to your dalliances that resulted in a child, I would’ve thought you could have at least been here on time.”

“Sorry. Bad traffic.”

Nolan shrugged an apology to me. He hadn’t known about this any more than I had. We’d assumed the meeting was about the upcoming promo blitz. I should’ve known better. Our publicist and the marketing department were taking care of those details. Remar wouldn’t have called us in for something as mundane as that.

I sat in the empty seat next to Mason. Even our drummer looked less than thrilled to be here. Remar had that effect on people. He could drain the life from you faster than a vampire could drain blood from his victim. But the man was a freaking genius when it came to running the highly successful record label, so everyone put up with it.

“Now that everyone is here,” Remar said, “I wanted to share the great news with you.”

Under any other circumstance, Mason would’ve made some sort of wisecrack. This time he wisely held back. His fingers twitched on his lap, eager to do a drum roll for Remar’s announcement. He wisely held back on that too. Remar wouldn’t have found it as amusing as the rest of us.

Remar’s gaze scraped over each of us, gauging our reaction. “Endless Motion will be commencing the extensive US leg of their world tour April fifteenth. They’ve asked for Pushing Limits to open for them.”

No. Fucking. Way.
Endless Motion was currently the biggest-selling rock band in the world. Opening for them was huge. Our audiences were similar, if not the same, which was a definite bonus. There was nothing worse than opening for a band whose music was such an opposite fit that fans actually threw objects, including chairs, at the stage while you performed.

“Depending on how things go, you could also be joining them for a large portion of their world tour. The early reviews of your album have been very positive, and we want to hit hard while we can. We’ve lined up Björn Ekstrom to direct the video for your first single. We were extremely lucky to get him on such short notice. He heard ‘Tangled’ and was so impressed, he insisted on directing the music video.”

The conference room door opened and the receptionist entered with what I hoped was my coffee in an oversized mug. At this point, I definitely needed it. Behind her, a skinny bald-headed man with a red goatee stepped into the room. He could’ve easily been one of the band (minus the skinny part), with his military boots, jeans, and T-shirt. A complete contrast to Remar.

“And there he is,” Remar said, beaming at the man. “We were just talking about you, Björn.”

We all stood and shook hands with the director.

“Ah, so you’re Jared Leigh,” Björn said, after I introduced myself. “Cute kid.”

“Thanks.” I could feel the weight of Remar’s glare directed at me. With the way he was reacting to the news that I was a father, you’d have thought Logan’s existence meant the band was facing a dramatic drop in sales compared to the first album.

Once the introductions were over, we sat at the table again, with Björn at the opposite end to Remar. His gaze appraisingly swept over us. “This video will be hot, no?” he asked in a watered-down Swedish accent.

Mason and I exchanged looks. His lips stretched into a wide grin, his teeth super-white against his light brown skin. You didn’t have to spend a year on the road with Mason to know what he was thinking. He was that transparent when it came to women and sex.

“If we get to make out with a lot of hot babes,” he said, “then I wholeheartedly agree with you. This video will be epically hot.”

Aaron and I burst out laughing. “Isn’t it usually the lead singer who gets to score with the hot babes in videos?” Aaron pointed out. Kirk chuckled.

“No way, man,” Mason said. “Nolan already has a girlfriend. And I’m sure Hailey would rip his balls off if he even thought about kissing a girl in the video.”

“So let me guess,” Kirk said, smirking. “You’re volunteering to take his place for the sake of preserving his balls?”

“Damn straight. And I’m sure both he and Hailey will thank me extensively for making that level of sacrifice.”

The only person not laughing at that was Remar. Even Björn was chuckling. I was surprised steam wasn’t whistling out of Remar’s ears. The guy seriously needed to lighten up.

“Let me make this clear,” Remar said. “The song has the potential to catapult to number one. This video will help it get there. So if Björn wants to shoot Nolan having sex with a woman who isn’t his girlfriend, then he and his girlfriend will have to suck it up.”

If what he was implying hadn’t been so serious, I would’ve laughed at him saying “suck it up.” The phrase seemed foreign coming from his mouth.

Nolan blanched, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. The label had already tried to manipulate who he was romantically linked with. He didn’t need them doing that again. He and Hailey had been through enough as it was.

“Does this mean we won’t be playing unplugged for the song’s debut?” I held my breath. Part of my plan to win Callie’s heart involved us playing unplugged on the entertainment show as originally planned.

“No,” Remar said, “ ‘Tangled’ will still debut unplugged. It was what the show requested.”

I needed to send whoever had made that request a bottle of wine. An expensive bottle of wine.

We spent the next ten minutes listening to Björn’s vision for the video. Fortunately for Nolan’s sake, his nuts weren’t at risk. While “Tangled” might’ve been a love song, the video wouldn’t be too explicit.

“It’s not like you haven’t kissed a girl in a video before,” Mason pointed out after Björn mentioned that while there would be no sex, Nolan was expected to kiss the actress.

Nolan folded his arms across his chest. “I was single back then. I don’t want to give girls the idea they can kiss me whenever they want.”

None of us bothered to claim it wouldn’t happen. We had long since learned that some fans confused make-believe with reality when it came to music videos. If Nolan kissed a girl in the video who wasn’t his girlfriend, then some females would consider it open season when it came to kissing him.

All gazes shifted to me.

“Sorry, not happening. Nolan’s the lead singer. He’s the one who gets to be in the spotlight, not me.” Well, most of the time. There were a few exceptions, but this wasn’t one of them.

Mason opened his mouth, probably to tell Nolan and me that we were pussies. Or to once again offer his services as Nolan’s replacement. We never found out which one.

“As I’ve already pointed out,” Remar said to Nolan, “you don’t have a choice. But if you want, I can always have Björn rethink the video and we’ll go back to the option of making it super-sexy. Remember, over fifty percent of your demographics is female, and they buy into the sex fantasy. And that’s exactly what we’re selling.”

And here I thought we were selling music. Silly me.

Nolan grumbled about this all being fucked up, but that was pretty much the end of it. He agreed to be the sacrificial lamb.

“All right,” Björn said. “Filming starts tomorrow morning. At six a.m.”