Page 70 of Dirty Rock

“What is it about?” I dared myself to ask, a weird part of me hoping he was going to say it was about me. She was in love with me. She was as strung up on me as I was on her. I could work with that. I could work with some emotion or attachment, rather than her bullshitI don’t owe you anything, Rhett,response she’d thrown at me in her kitchen.

“She’s running out of time,” Dicky answered.

There was that word again. Time.

“For what?”

“A life of her own. Love. Dare I say… a family.”

I frowned, sitting upright and staring straight at an old poster of Green Day on my wall. I thought about her Disneyland dream and the visuals she’d sold me of her and some guy, drunk in love, smiling brightly as their child toddled towards Cinderella’s castle with mouse ears on their head.

“You’re telling me all this is because Julia wants to settle down?”

“I think she may be over chasing after you boys and telling you to keep your dicks in your trousers. I’ve sensed she’s been looking to get off the road, cosy up with a stand-up man, be responsible, and maybe, I don’t know… think about kids.”

I laughed out of shock, a little humour, and a lot of panic. “You’re wrong. She could never be with a normal man now.”

“I never said—”

“Unless I’ve missed something. Unless I don’t know her at all like I thought I did!” I practically shouted, pacing back and forth.

“Rhett,” Dicky said firmly, more authority in his voice now. “Calm down.”

“You really think that’s what this is about? That she wants the suburban, two-point-four family instead of the music? Instead of the life I—I meanwecan give her? The bright lights? The thrill of success? The travels? You think she’s done with what she has with us because it’s not enough for her?”

“I said I think it’s a possibility. Not a certainty.”

“Well, you can’t just go around blurting shit out like that, Dicky. You can’t just put her in a nice little cottage with a fucking German Shepard, two doe-eyed kids, and a slow cooker for the rest of her life because you have a hunch.”

“What the hell has gotten into you?”

“That woman is made of fire, and she deserves a blazing life. Not an average one where she writes in her diary at 8:00 p.m. every night or plays sudoku because there’s fuck all else to do.”

“I agree, but what do we do about it? That’s what I’m asking you.”

“I don’t know.” I sighed heavily. “I don’t fucking know.”

A million ideas flew through my mind, but none of them would stick. It made sense for her to want that, I guess, given her quaint little home on Mersea Island away from the bright lights of the city and the oceans of the world we flew across.

I thought about her perfect little living room. Her brochure-ready bedroom. The seafront she loved to escape to, and the idyllic little kitchen she had where she could don an apron and bake mini Julias their favourite cookies. I thought about a guy—maybe older—walking in from work, loosening his tie, kicking off his shoes and going over to grab her arse with a smug smirk on his face.

Fuck. That.

The thought of Julia getting with anyone made my stomach twist up.

Another man’s head between those thighs? No.

Another man’s tongue around her swollen nipples? No.

Another man’s heart beating against hers? Hell, to the fuck no.

Another man not knowing he had the world’s most kickass, badass publicist who could achieve anything she wanted for a wife.A man making her feel like she was worthless and needed caring for, when she was capable of scooping up the whole world in her arms and taking care of it because she was that strong—that much of a leader.

I stood taller, not knowing what I was about to say, or what the hell I was doing, only knowing that I had do something to convince Julia that, whether she felt something for me or not, she belonged with us. She belonged with Youth Gone Wild. She was a vital part of it. Without her, a piece of the machine’s heart would be missing.

She belonged around me… in whatever capacity I could have her. “Or maybe I do know,” I said calmly. “Dicky, I can’t explain where I’m going with this, but I need you to do something for me. I need your help.”

“With what?”

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