Twenty minutes later Axton gave me one last kiss and helped me into the back of a carriage pulled by a man with a ponytail and a hoop through his nose on a bike. When I sat back, Wroth lifted Marissa up by her waist and set her next to me.
I tried not to bite my lip at how cute that was. Marissa wasn’t a little girl, being at least a size fourteen and very curvy. But the little extra weight looked really good on her. I’d seen one picture of her when she was a teenager, having just fought hard against her cancer. She had looked like skin stretched tight over a skeleton. Since then her thyroid had slowed down and she fought hard to stay in a size fourteen, watching every bite she ate and exercising as much as possible. But when your thyroid was hypo it was hard to keep the weight off no matter what you did. Still, she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Inside and out.
Once she was comfortable, Wroth leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. He whispered something that had her cheeks filling with an adorable shade of pink and then he was tipping the cyclist and we were on our way.
As soon as we were out of hearing range of the guys, I turned toward her in my seat. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to embarrass you at all, but that was really melt-worthy back there.”
The blush in Marissa’s cheeks deepened. “The last few days have been really melt-worthy. Oh my gosh, Dallas! I can’t believe the change in Wroth. I’ve waited for so many years for him to get his head out of his ass and just do something. Anything. Then the other night at the club…” She broke off, her eyes shying away as she glanced at the lush greenery along the path on our way to the Mandara Spa.
I let her have a moment. If she didn’t want to confide in me I wasn’t going to push. But as we grew closer I reached for her hand. “I’m happy for you, Rissa.”
Her face lit up with a beaming smile. “Thanks, Dallas.”
The rest of the day was spent in comfortable companionship. We were split up for our massage and facials. But when we had our hair and nails done we sat side by side, gossiping like we had been friends all our lives. It was fun, but made me miss Harper and Lana. Especially Harper.
“Can you believe that Devlin punched Zander last night?”
Marissa’s question caught me off guard, and I glanced at her with my mouth gaping open. “What?”
Marissa lifted her mimosa to her lips and took a sip. “Yup, that was what I said when Li told me this morning when I had breakfast with him. He didn’t go into details, he never does. Between him and Wroth you would think I was a baby the way they try to protect me from the real world. But from what I pieced together, Z was running his mouth about Natalie and him sharing a suite. Devlin didn’t say a word, just punched him in the mouth and walked away.” Her face clouded over. “I’m not stupid, Dallas. I know what happened between Dev and Tawny and my brother all those years ago. I might have just been a kid at the time, but I still knew what was going on…”
She broke off as a different stylist walked by. Leaning forward, Marissa lowered her voice. “Tawny worked a number on both of them, and it tore them apart. Dev and Liam were closer than Dev and Z at the time. They were inseparable and she ripped them to shreds. Natalie, she isn’t like Tawny, I know that and I’m pretty sure that Dev and Z know that. But this is kind of history repeating itself. Two best friends, both of them interested in one girl.”
I could see exactly what she was talking about. Natalie definitely wasn’t like the bitch that Liam had told me about. Sure she was feisty and stubborn, but she wasn’t vindictive or a heartless whore. I had seen first-hand that both Zander and Devlin were interested. One didn’t want to be. The other was more invested in the idea of something than actually romantic feelings. And while Natalie was obviously infatuated with Devlin, I could see disaster approaching for her from five miles away.
“Could you try to talk to her? Tell her to distance herself from both of them?” Marissa grimaced. “I don’t want her to get hurt, and the way things are looking, she could be annihilated. I’ve known Dev and Z all my life and they can be more than a little intense when it comes to something they want.”
“I’ll speak to her, Rissa,” I promised. “But that doesn’t mean she will listen. I’ve only known Nat for a few years now, but I can tell you that she is one of the most stubborn women on the planet. She’s emotionally invested with…” I sighed, not wanting to give too much away even to Marissa. It seemed disloyal to Natalie. “…one of them.”
“I’ve noticed,” Marissa assured me. “Dev is just as stubborn. He wants her just as much, and while he fights it in front of her, he doesn’t when Z is around. That man gives me whiplash watching him.”
“Do you think I should talk to Lana and Harper? Maybe her brothers should be aware of what’s going on.” I didn’t want to seem like a tattle-tale, going to Natalie’s sisters-in-law like that. But we were only into day three of a three-month tour. If Devlin Cutter was throwing punches already, then what did that mean for the rest of the tour? Shouldn’t her brothers be aware of the situation and maybe have words with their two friends before someone got their heart broken?
Marissa shook her head. “Natalie is an adult; let’s let her sort her own life out.” She rolled her eyes. “I wish Wroth would let me do the same thing, but hey, he is who he is. Just talk to her and let her make her own decisions.”
I nodded, accepting that piece of advice but my stomach twisted in trepidation for what could happen to my friend.
Axton
“You have gotta be fucking kidding me!”
I raised my brows at Zander as he tossed his Xbox One controller against the wall near the flat screen he had just died on. I didn’t know how to take either him or Devlin lately so I didn’t say a word, just kept moving across the map on the screen.
Call of Duty was the game of choice today. I was playing because there was nothing else to do as we rode toward Charleston, West Virginia for tonight’s show. Dallas was on the other bus, where she had firmly stayed. I fucking hated the distance that our buses put between us. The only alone time I had with her was when we happened to be in a town for more than one night. Then she was all mine for the duration of our stay in whatever hotel we happened to be booked in. It wasn’t enough time for me.
Sure, I wanted the sex. It was mind-blowingly amazing. Each time taking my breath away and leaving me dazed because it should be illegal to feel that alive. But it was also when Dallas really let herself open up to me, because afterwards we would just lie in bed and she would tell me something about her childhood that I hadn’t already known. Or I would tell her about my own life growing up with Sharon Huntington as a mother. We would laze around our room, ordering the most expensive things off of the menu and order movie after movie until I had to leave for that night’s show.