Only The Beginning (Rockin' Country) (33 page)

D
ay two in Vegas was turning out to be one of Hannah’s favorite days ever, she realized. Shell had arrived two hours ago and had been introduced to Stacey, and then the three of them had commandeered Garrett’s rented SUV for a shopping excursion.

“I’m so excited to have women to hang out with.” Stacey clapped her hands as Shell maneuvered them through traffic. “Don’t get me wrong, I love hanging out with my brother and the guys, but there’s only so many fart jokes, noises, and smells you can take.”

“They’ve had girlfriends before though, right?” Hannah asked. She knew that Vanessa had toured with the guys.

Stacey snorted. “Yeah, you could say that. None of them were ever as nice as the two of you, I can promise you that.”

Hannah wanted badly to ask about Vanessa. Garrett didn’t like to talk about his ex-girlfriend, and Hannah didn’t like to pry, but she did want to know. “Vanessa wasn’t nice to you?” She could have bitten her own tongue off when those words came out of her mouth.

“Vanessa was all about doing whatever Garrett wanted her to and servicing to his needs. If you get my drift.”

“Really?” Hannah had never taken him for the kind of man who would demand that.

“Oh don’t get me wrong, it’s not because he wanted her to, that’s just how she was. She wanted that diamond ring, car in the driveway, and her name on the deed to Garrett’s house. Luckily, he saw right through it. I’ll admit, he strung her along for a lot longer than he should have, but she deserved it.”

“Did she cheat on him?” Hannah blurted out.

“Towards the end, yeah. I’d venture to say they cheated on each other. Garrett did try to do right by her, but it wasn’t there between the two of them. Like,” she licked her lips and looked at Hannah, “I can see the two of you together, and I know that my brother would do anything for you. You can see it in the way he looks at you and the way he treats you. He almost treated Vanessa like a groupie towards the end.”

The word groupie made Hannah flash back to the argument the two of them had, but she slammed the door on that conversation. “So there’s absolutely no shit that Vanessa can just show back up and Garrett will go running to her?”

“Are you for real?”

“She is,” Shell piped up from behind the wheel. “It’s a sickness with her, to be honest with you. She is the only person within a thousand mile radius of that man who thinks he’s going to find someone better.”

“Hey, I’m still here you know?”

“I do, and I’m just telling you like I’ve been telling you the whole damn time. You have nothing to worry about.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Stacey agreed. “Garrett’s not going anywhere. In fact, he told me he’s going to invite you to stay at the house, but he’s not sure if you’ll say yes because you haven’t been home in a while.”

That made Hannah very happy. “We’ll see,” she shrugged.

“You are so full of shit.” Shell threw a piece of paper at her. “Stop playing hard to get and just let the man get you. He’s hot, you’re hot, go have a houseful of hot kids.”

“Oh my God, don’t say that around my mother.” Stacey held up her hands. “She has grandchild fever. She’s extremely excited that Garrett has a nice, normal-looking girlfriend. I heard her talking to her friends about it the other day.”

They had arrived at the mall, and Hannah hopped out of the backseat. “Can we please go shop and stop taking about babies? Don’t think I’m ready for that yet.”

*     *     *

Garrett and Jared lay poolside, watching the rest of the guys swim. It was probably going to be another long night on the strip, so the two of them were trying to catch up on some sleep while the women went shopping. Garrett had drifted off, and Jared was trying to follow behind, but Garrett’s phone was blowing up.

“Man, you might need to check your phone.” Jared poked his friend. “It’s been going off consistently for the last fifteen minutes.”

“Even though I know this phone is my lifeline, it sometimes pisses me off,” Garrett yawned, clearing his throat as he picked it up and started scrolling through the messages.

“That motherfucker.”

The way he said the words caused the hair to rise on Jared’s arms. “You okay?”

“Not in the very fucking least. I’m gonna kill that asshole with my bare hands. Swear to God,” he was mumbling as he punched in numbers on his phone.

“What are you talking about?” Jared was thoroughly confused, and the only one who could answer a question at the moment was completely pissed off.

“Ashton Coleman.”

“I thought you and Hannah were over that little piece of shit.”

“Me too, but obviously, he isn’t over her.” He flashed his phone at Jared who opened his mouth, then shut it, opened it again, then shut it again. “Am I gonna need to bail you out of jail?”

“I don’t know, keep your phone by you.” Garrett was gone in two seconds flat. Jared wasn’t sure where he was going, but he didn’t like the look in his friend’s eyes, and he hoped against everything he held dear that Ashton Coleman was not in Las Vegas.

*     *     *

Hannah let herself into the hotel room that she and Garrett were sharing, hoping that he was already there. She held a new dress in her hands to go with the new shoes she’d gotten on her shopping trip with the girls. They were pink and sparkly, something that had become a bit of a trademark for her. Excited didn’t even begin to describe how she was feeling. They were going out tonight, and she wanted to look good for him. It made her happy to look good for him and to make him see her as a woman. Not to mention, one night with him hadn’t been enough. She needed many more. Her soul needed to be around his to breathe, and it had been too long since she’d let out a good, long breath.

“Babe?” she called as she put her stuff down in the hallway. He had surprised her yesterday by booking a large suite for the two of them. She enjoyed the space and hoped that maybe they’d get to christen most of it before the next few days were up. Her face burned as those thoughts crossed her mind. They were out of character for her, but Vegas held great memories for the two of them. She had missed him in the few hours she had been gone.

“In here.” His voice was deep, and her stomach did a somersault. That’s how excited she was to see him. Kicking off her shoes, she took off at a run for the living area.

He sat on the couch, looking out over the strip, the glass wall that made up the suite allowing him to do so. She ran over, throwing herself into his lap and holding on with both arms around his neck.

“I missed you so much!”

It took a moment for it to sink in, but it did when she realized he hadn’t put his arms around her in return. He had barely even acknowledged that she had launched herself at him. Even more oddly, he sat with his sunglasses on, she couldn’t see his eyes.

“Is something wrong?” she questioned, backing up off of him and standing so that she could look down at him.

He cleared his throat and grabbed the iPad that sat next to him. Her stomach continued to flip as he turned it on and then tapped it a few times. Within minutes, he turned it to face her, and what she saw there made her stomach drop like she was on a roller coaster.

“You want to explain this?” he asked, his voice different than she had ever heard it before. He was obviously pissed, but she couldn’t tell if it was at her or not.

Reaching down, she grabbed the iPad and scrolled through the website. It was a gossip site, famous for busting all celebs for anything that they might have done. It seemed that this time, they’d busted her. Pictures that she had taken and sent to Ashton towards the end of their relationship, all in her underwear, thank God, were up for the world at large to see.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she told him, throwing down the iPad. “Why would he do this to me?”

“Why wouldn’t he? He’s an ass; I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”

Garrett’s voice was hard and lacked emotion. She had never heard him like this before, and it left a cold spot where she was normally warm around him.

“Those were for his eyes only…”

“You’re about three more words from really pissing me the fuck off,” Garrett fumed, getting up to pace around the room.

“I’m sorry,” she started, running her hands through her hair.

“Goddamn it, Hannah. Why are you sorry? You didn’t leak these pictures to the press. That fuckin’ piece of dog shit did.”

He was aware that his voice was getting louder the more he talked, but he couldn’t help it. The woman in front of him was his; he didn’t want others to see her the way he did. Just the fact that she had done this for Ashton, of all people, pissed him off. He wanted to rip off the kid’s dick and shove it down his throat.

She turned around to face him, tears in her eyes. “This is so embarrassing. I never meant for others to see those.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” the tone of his voice was so smart, she couldn’t help but let the tears fall.

“You could be a little bit nicer about this. It’s not like I’m the only one you’ve ever slept with. Do you want me to tell you about these?” she asked, her voice becoming shrill. “Do you really want me to tell you what these represent?”

Pushing his hands out to the side, he turned his palms upwards towards the sky. “Please enlighten me baby, because this doesn’t seem like your shtick.”

That hurt, but she refused to let him see it. “This was the end of our relationship. We hadn’t seen each other in a few weeks, and to be honest with you, it had more than a month since he had kissed me, since he’d made any kind of advance towards me. I wanted him to want me. I wanted to feel pretty and sexy and loved. You know, all of those feelings that women want. It started out as a joke.” She walked over to the glass window and looked out at the strip. “I had gotten a new bikini, and I wanted to see what I looked like in it, so I asked Shell to take my picture. When she did, she told me I looked hot and I should send a naughty picture to Ashton.”

She could hear him breathe deeply behind her, but she wasn’t going to stop this now. He wanted to judge her; he could know everything about what had transpired.

“Stupid me, I went back to my hotel room that night and did just that. Only, those pictures of me wearing a bra and panties was as naughty as I got. I sent those to him.” She turned around to face him, pointing at the iPad. “And do you know what he said?”

Garrett refused to answer. He just hitched his chin up further and glared at her. She assumed he glared because he still wore the sunglasses, not allowing her to see his expression.

Her chin trembled. She hated to admit this to anyone, much less to this man who had her heart and could make her day better by just smiling. “He said maybe if I lost a few pounds, they’d be enough to get him going.”

She crumbled into herself then, tears flowing, sobs gushing out of her body.

His heart was breaking as he watched her, but Garrett couldn’t make himself turn off the fury he felt, and it wasn’t even at her—it was at Ashton. At the same time, he wanted to shake her and make her see what a horrible piece of shit Ashton was, but she continued to make excuses for him. She refused to see the bad in people. Shaking his head, he fisted his hands over his chest, tucking into himself.

“Never mind that at that time I was puking up everything I ate and working out three hours a day,” she continued, tears rolling now. “I still wasn’t good enough. I’m never going to be good enough.”

She used present tense, and that got him back in the game. “Stop Hannah, no one said you aren’t good enough.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. That’s like him.”

He saw red. “Do not ever compare me to that shit for brains, ever. Do you understand me?”

She didn’t answer, and he advanced on her. For a split second she was scared. “I said, do you understand me? He liked you a certain way, I don’t. I like you just the way you are. He didn’t like to have something to grab onto when he’s fucking you, I do. Don’t change who you are because of his narrow-minded ideas of how women should look.”

“I hate when you talk like that,” she whispered, a tear dripped down her cheek, over her lip. “We aren’t like that—it’s not crude like that.”

“Sometimes it is what it is, Hannah. It’s not always fucking rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes real life gets in the way.”