Zane tipped his chin at me, a little proudly, I think. “Good for you, Maggs.” He considered me sidelong, his head cocked in a dangerously sexy way that made my guts clench.
No, not my guts. A little lower than that.
“I gotta say, though,” he added slowly, “even if you begged me, with my cock in your mouth, I don’t think I’d ever record a song with that fuck.”
“If I begged you with your cock in my mouth,” I replied dryly, “I don’t think you’d hear me.”
His gaze held mine, something dark and twisted at work behind those ice-blues, but I refused to look away.
“Maggie,” he said. “You know you deserve so much better than he ever did for you, right?”
“Well… yes,” I said. And I did know it. Deep down.
Of course I did.
But holy hell, did I ever need someone to say that to me right now.
Okay. Not just someone. Him.
Hearing those words out of Zane’s mouth and knowing he meant them made everything go kinda blurry around the edges. And as his gaze held mine, a familiar chaos began to unfurl inside me.
The thing about this was, I did not do chaos.
I did neat and orderly.
Zane Traynor was the last thing from neat and orderly, and I knew this. Zane Traynor was messy. Hence, why I did not do Zane Traynor.
Still, I’d tried my best over the years to keep our relationship neat and orderly. No matter how I tried that, my feelings for Zane were not neat and orderly; they were, in fact, a complete and total mess.
They were not rational.
They were complicated and, at times, utterly confusing.
Most of the time, they were not in my best interest.
Which was why I usually pretended they didn’t exist.
What I’d learned from that? Denial was a powerful survival mechanism.
Until it wasn’t.
“So how did you two leave things?” he asked, still studying me. “And don’t tell me you ate more of Dizzy’s shit, or I really will have to kill him.”
I blinked at that, feeling kinda blindsided by this clusterfuck of emotion I had no idea what to do with.
One giant downside to being a tough girl who generally avoided getting the feels over every little thing? Kinda made it hard to process the feels when they showed up, and when they showed up large… yeah.
Cluster. Fuck.
But it was hard not to get the feels just now. Because, in a neat and orderly and even objective sort of way, the fact of the matter was that when Zane wasn’t acting like a total madman and trying to get in my panties, and I wasn’t avoiding him because I secretly wanted him in my panties but knew it was a very, very bad idea to let him go there, he was a great friend to me. Yes, Zane Traynor was without a doubt the most frustrating, perplexing, and maddening person I’d ever known. He was also hilarious, patient, steadfast and smart, and he always had my back. He always nailed the one thing that truly mattered.
Zane was always there for me.
Always.
And I’d been there for him, too. At least, I’d tried like hell to be, no matter how many sleepless nights it cost me. I’d lied for him, against my better judgment, to countless women, covering for him so he didn’t have to reject them in person. I’d picked him up, literally, when he fell down drunk. I’d bailed him out of jail when he got himself in trouble. I’d held Dolly’s hand in the hospital waiting room when he got himself in worse trouble.
I’d been at the front of the line to kick his ass when he got out, too.
And if that was true, if we had that kind of friendship, I should be able to tell him everything, right?
All of it.
Right down to the honest and the ugly.
“Well… I, uh, told him politely yet firmly, again, that I couldn’t help.” I paused to clear my throat. I really didn’t do so well with the heartfelt, emotional stuff, and this was getting dangerously close to a Hallmark moment. Time for a cold, hard bitch slap in the face, courtesy of my dad. “At which point he looked me in the eye and asked me what the hell I was managing for you guys if I wasn’t actually managing your careers, which is when I told him he was out of line, and he told me I was a slut.”
Zane’s face hardened. “The fuck he did.”
“He did. So then I told him he was a washed-up has-been with no real talent, and he told me I was nothing but a glorified groupie, of no more use to him than my mom, and I was a, quote, ‘lousy fucking daughter.’”
Did I just say that out loud? God, it sounded so much worse coming out of my own mouth.
How could he say those things to me?
I mean, I’d said some harsh things too… but shit.
A whole world of crazy was going on behind Zane’s blue eyes, and I looked away. It was more than I could handle just now, with my dad’s words hanging between us. I felt utterly exposed, admitting all that shit to him. My dad thinks I’m a loser and he hates me, and I have no idea why. I still fucking love his crazy, mean old ass.
Life’s a bitch, right?
I helped myself to some jellybeans, scooping up a handful and tossing several in my mouth. “Sweet family reunion, huh?”
It didn’t end there, though.
Nope. My dad Dizzy was a class act. As I’d gotten up to leave, he’d tossed another pretty little nugget my way. He’d offered me his suite. The penthouse suite.
He’d been checked into it, but said he’d clear out, thus solving my room problem. It was two bedroom and two bath, and he’d take one of our single suites in exchange. So now we had the two bedrooms we needed, and all I
