Interlude (Rockstar #4) (18 page)

As Lucy walks off
the stage at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas, I pick her up and swing her around. "That fucking rocked."

"Hell yeah," Xander says and fist bumps us all.

"I've got to say, I'm looking forward to the larger venues now. That was so much fun," Lucy says, her excitement palpable.

I nod. "You say that now, but the minute you set foot in the venue or do sound check, you're going to want to puke. Once you go on for real, you'll calm down fast just like tonight."

She nods. "We really did okay?"

"Jesus, Lucy," Cage says. "If you did any better, they'd have had a riot in here."

"I'd hug you, but I don't want to get your pretty suit full of my sweat," she tells him.

"To hell with the suit," he says, and pulls her in for a hug. "You do me proud," he whispers in her ear. She does me proud too.

"You can't know what that means to me," she tells him.

"I do know. You deserve this. Two weeks until the tour. Practices and PR every day until then, except for tomorrow due to travel," he tells us all. We nod our agreement.

"All right, boys and girls," Xander shouts. "Let's go party!"

Lucy laughs. "Shower then party."

We walk down the
strip, drinking, gambling, and being outrageously obnoxious. Amazingly, me and the guys only get recognized a couple times.

We're all so hammered, stumbling around laughing. Around two in the morning Lucy gets the brilliant idea to scour the
entire
city of Las Vegas to find the
real
Elvis, because everybody knows Elvis isn't dead. When Xander jumps on the bandwagon, there's no stopping them.

"Oh my God. Jesse!"
Lucy screeches, shaking me so hard I feel like I could throw up. Shit, didn't we just get to bed?

"Jesse, get up!"

"Wha?" I groan, my eyes still closed as I lift my head off the pillow.

"Wake up! You… Me… We… Oh my God!" she screeches again and son of a bitch that is piercing my brain.

"Stop screaming, Luce. What's going on?" I ask, scratching my chest. I look over at her and pause. Her eyes are wide and she looks freaked out.

"What is it?"

"Unh," is all she says and I know it's something huge.

"Luce, why are you 'unh'ing?"

"Married," she whispers.

I pause, frozen.

"What?" I ask, a little freaked out myself.

"Left hand. Ring.
Married
," she whispers.

I look at my left hand and freeze again. What the fuck? I bolt upright and reach for her left hand.

"How did you get that? That was in my…" pocket, I think, as flashbacks of Lucy and I saying our vows flash through my mind. Fuck me.

"Tell me. What…"

"Unh," I say and she starts to panic.

"That about sums it up. Do you remember what happened?" she asks, taking a deep calming breath.

"Parts of it. It's coming to me slowly. How much do you remember?" I ask cautiously.

"Nothing after chasing fat Elvis through Caesar's Palace."

I laugh at the memory. "That was fucking awesome."

She shrugs. "I only wanted to search him for drugs. It's not a good way to die, overdosing on the toilet for the world to make fun of."

I snort then moan. My fucking head is pounding like someone's got a jackhammer going in my brain. "God, I think we drank bottle upon bottle of liquor last night."

"Tell me about it. Why are we wearing wedding rings, Jesse?"

"Uh," I say, rubbing the back of my neck, not sure how to do this. Is this one of those rip-the-band-aid-off moments? Or is it one of those peel-it-off-slowly moments? I've never been good at this shit. "We hit a couple more hotels and casinos looking for your Elvis and then we found a skinny Elvis. You insisted on telling him all about his fate. We headed to breakfast at Denny's."

"All of us, or just me and you?"

"All of us. When we got there you were so serious telling Elvis his fate. He was so grateful he asked if he could officiate our wedding."

She groans. "I don't remember any of this."

Damn.

"Anyway, Elvis got permission from someone at Denny's to officiate our ceremony there. Apparently Denny's in Las Vegas also has a 24-hour wedding chapel."

"Huh. I guess that's convenient. Drunk people going for breakfast to sober up but don't quite get there before they decide to get married," she laughs.

I laugh with her, relieved at her reaction. "God, Lucy. I thought for sure you were going to be pissed off."

"I'm not pissed. Shocked, stunned, freaking out a little bit, but not pissed."

"Yeah. I was so fucked up I'm surprised I remember any of it. We laughed through the whole thing. You licked skinny Elvis's cheek."

"What the hell?"

I shrug. "Who knows. We were hammered."

"Hammered doesn't begin to describe it."

"Fucking skinny Elvis was a riot."

"Where did you get this gorgeous ring?"

"Ah, that ring I've had for a while now."

"What?" she whispers.

Fuck it. I'll tell her it all. Might as well, seeing as she's my wife. Holy fuck.

"Yeah, I got the ring because I knew I wanted to ask you to marry me—eventually—and if I had the ring handy and inspiration struck, well, I could ask you."

"Why didn't you ask me?"

"Would you have said yes?"

She hesitates, thinking. "I think I would have. We'd have had to talk about a lot of things and I think I'd have wanted to have a
little
longer of an engagement, at least through the tour." She groans again. "Oh God. The tour. The media. Shit. Cage."

"Yeah, about Cage. He was there."

"Seriously?"

I nod and grin. "He was all for it. He kept shouting
'True love prevails'
. Then he and Xander would fist bump."

"Wow. Cage Nichols?"

I nod again and grin. "Hammered. He was hilarious."

"I think I remember a little bit of that. Wow. Where did the wedding bands come from?"

"Elvis knew a jeweler down the street who opened for us to pick out bands."

"Skinny Elvis or fat Elvis?"

"Skinny Elvis. You freaked out fat Elvis so bad I thought he was going to get a restraining order."

"Oh come on. It wasn't that bad."

"Luce, you tackled him."

She runs a finger along her rings. "Well, he ran away and I didn't tackle him
hard
."

I laugh, I can't help it. The memory of Lucy flying through the air and landing on top of fat Elvis is fucking classic.

"Anyway, the jeweler came in very handy. At least I helped pick out wedding bands. I remember that part," she says.

"You did."

"I can't believe we got married—drunk married in Vegas with skinny Elvis at Denny's."

I nod, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Jesus Christ, my mom is going to have a fit. Oh God. She's going to go on and on about how we don't have a prenuptial agreement and how it was irresponsible of us to get married without family there."

And there it is. Damn. As much as I don't want to, I'm going to give her an out if she wants it.

"Well, if you wanted to, I suppose we could get the marriage annulled."

She gasps. "What?"

"I'm just saying, it's an option."

"From the looks of this room with my bra hanging from the lampshade and my panties on top of the TV, I'm pretty sure we had sex, which means annulment is out of the question."

"If you wanted an annulment, we could pretend that didn't happen."

"Is that what you want?"

Fuck no. Hell no.

"Truthfully? No. I wouldn't have gotten married this quickly but really what do rings and a piece of paper change between us?"

"I don't want to annul the marriage, Jesse."

Thank Christ.

"I wouldn't have wanted to get married this soon but if you'd asked me to marry you, I'd have said yes. We could have been engaged for six months or a year. In that time we'd have gone on tour and got married after that."

"Since when do we do anything normal, Luce?" I ask her with a chuckle.

"Valid point. I need ibuprofen and water. Then a pot of coffee. No prenup. You better not screw up, Mr. Rockstar."

"You either, Blush Baby."

"Ugh. That nickname needs to go away."

I grunt. "Not going to happen."

"Who came up with that, anyway?"

"Your Vegas crowd and I guarantee that's going to catch on quick."

"Gah. The room looks like a tornado hit it."

I grin and wiggle my eyebrows. "Not a tornado, just us. Wild drunk crazy monkey sex."

"Monkey!" she sings and I laugh. "I kinda figured with my bra on one side of the room, my panties ripped on the floor, and my jeans on the other side of the room, that it was a wild one. I do remember part of that." She gasps. "And I do remember you calling me ‘wife’."

I nod. "I love you, Lucy, more than I ever thought I could love anyone. Each time I think I couldn't love you any more than I do at that moment, my heart goes and proves me wrong, you go and prove me wrong. I'm not sure how we'll handle this with the press or your mom, but I can't say I regret it."

"You say that now. Wait until I'm old and gray with saggy boobs and arthritis."

"You'll still be beautiful to me."

She throws herself at me and hugs me tight, so damn tight. "God, you're so amazing, Jesse. I love you so, so much—husband."

I chuckle. "I love you too, wife."

"It's kinda weird."

"We'll adjust."

"We will. If I can adjust to living in the same house with Xander who is constantly panty-checking me, I can adjust to this."

"I'll be honest. I kinda like that you're wearing my ring and you've got my last name. Luciana Kingston."

"Mrs. Jesse Kingston. Do you know how many times I wrote that on my notebooks in high school?" she laughs.

I make a face. "That's not weird at all."

"What? Maybe my writing it sealed our fate. I did make a list of wishes one day."

"What did you wish for?"

"I wished I'd meet you and we'd have a special connection."

"Came true."

"I wished we'd make music together, write songs, and sing together."

"Came true."

"Wow. Yeah. I wished you'd kiss me and, uh, we'd have crazy insane sex."

"Came true, but wild drunk crazy monkey sex."

She nods. "Maybe my list was magic."