“He says he’s who, again, Rachel?” Emmie asked, her eyes darkening when she paused to listen again. “Okay… No. Don’t worry about him. I’m just surprised it’s taken him this long to figure out where she was. If he’s smart, the man will catch up with us before much longer. No… Just get me more candidates for nannies… Because once he shows up, Felicity might decide that she wants to go home.”

My own eyes widened at the mention of Emmie’s nanny’s name. Felicity was like one of the Demon’s Wings’ family. Everyone seemed to love her. So who the hell was going to show up and take her away? As soon as Emmie lowered her phone with a frustrated sigh, I stepped forward. “Is Felicity okay?” I liked the chick myself. She was sweet but also feisty. She didn’t take shit from anyone. Not even Emmie.

“She’s okay. Just someone from her family is looking for her.” She stuffed her phone in her back pocket, muttering under her breath. “Fucking bikers,” I thought she said but wasn’t sure.

“What?”

Another sigh left her. “Nothing. It was nothing.” A small smile lifted the corners of her lips. “So, what can I do for you, big guy?”

It took a little while, but I finally told Emmie everything I needed her to get and do for me before we made it to Kansas in a few weeks. After my talk with Liam that morning, I wanted to make Marissa’s experience at that particular stop on our tour something she would remember for the rest of our lives together. She wasn’t happy about at least one of the things I’d asked of her, but she was grinning up at me when she walked away.

I made my way back to the OtherWorld bus, hoping to find Marissa on board and alone. Of course she wasn’t and I gritted my teeth when I saw that it was full of rockers that weren’t my bandmates. All I wanted was a quiet night, damn it. A few of the Trance guys were sitting around the living room while Bishop and Drew from Alchemy were standing in the kitchenette fixing themselves large paper plates of pizza, wings and breadsticks. Zander was sitting at the kitchenette table with Linc, Liam and Kenzie. Marissa, however was nowhere in sight.

“Rissa not back from watching the kids?” I asked as I grabbed a slice of meat lovers’ pizza and taking a hungry bite of it.

“She said to let you guys know that she would be a little longer. She was still talking to Lana and Dallas when I left,” Kenzie let me know.

I picked up another slice of pizza and turned without another word, heading back off the bus. I wasn’t sure which bus the kids had been taken to tonight, but I would knock on all of the doors until I found my girl. I’d been away from her for long enough as it was.

I reached Lana and Drake’s bus first and knocked once before someone called for me to come in. I climbed up the steps and stuck my head into the living room. Shane, Drake, and Nik were sitting around the room with cartons of Chinese in their hands. “You fuckers seen Marissa?”

“She’s over at Jesse’s bus,” Drake informed me with a mouth full of chicken and broccoli. I nodded and started to leave. “Hey, wait. Don’t rush off. The girls were still deep into some conversation about who the fuck knows when we left them over half an hour ago. Sit and eat with us, man.”

I stuffed the last bite of my pizza into my mouth and shrugged. I was still hungry enough to eat an entire pizza by myself, and knowing Marissa she would be over there talking for half the night. It wouldn’t matter if I showed up to take her back to our bus or not, she would be there until the girls got talked out. I took the carton of noodles that Nik held out and dropped down onto the couch beside him. Sports Center was on and I accepted the bottle of beer Shane handed over before settling in to have a little guy-time with my friends. “You okay with this?” I asked Drake as I tipped the bottle at him.

Drake shrugged. “Dude, I haven’t touched a drop of booze in years. I can control myself if you fuckers have a beer or two.”

Marissa

Lana hid a yawn behind her hand before rubbing it over her stomach. “Okay. I really need to get back to my bus. Neveah is probably already asleep and Drake is going to throw a fit when he realizes I’m not in bed with him. I’m really surprised he hasn’t been blowing up my phone or come over here to get me.”

Dallas, sitting across from me, glanced down at her phone. “Shit, is that really the time?” She groaned. “Axton and Cannon left hours ago and I told him I’d be right behind him.”

I laughed, noticing how late it was for the first time in several hours. It was nearly three in the morning and we’d been sitting in Layla and Jesse’s bus since before eleven talking about random things. It felt good to just sit and talk to my girlfriends—something that I hadn’t had a lot of when I was growing up. “I’d better head back too. I bet OtherWorld’s bus is a disaster.” I knew that Natalie had ordered enough pizzas to feed an army and then told everyone that dinner was waiting for them on our bus. I was just surprised that security hadn’t come knocking because they had gotten too rowdy. They must have been good little rock stars over there.

Layla stood, pulling her hair back into a messy bun after stretching tired muscles. “It’s been a long day, ladies. Love you little bitches, but I’m going to bed.”

“I’d have headed to bed when the bald beast had if I had that waiting on me, Lay,” Dallas said, smirking up at her.

The smaller, curvy woman sighed. “I’m mad at him at the moment so he hasn’t been getting any.”

I gasped along with the other two women at Layla’s confession. “What the fuck?” Lana exclaimed. “What did he do?”

She grimaced. “I want to have another baby and he won’t even talk about it. He can’t get over what happened with the boys’ birth. But he won’t listen to me when I tell him that that was just one of those things. For the love of gods, did you see what I had kicking around inside of me when they were first born? Of course I went into labor two months early. And that electrolyte thing can be monitored. I’ve talked until I’m blue in the face about it and he ignores me. I can just say the word baby and he gets up and leaves.”

Lana stared at her sister as if she had lost her mind. I’d only heard about how crazy things had been when Layla had gone into preterm labor with the twins. She had been out for more than two days and the doctors had been worried that she wasn’t going to wake up after having to be put under for an emergency C-section. It turned out that she had had a major electrolyte deficiency and once the doctors had gotten that straightened out she had woken up soon after. But I could honestly understand where Jesse was coming from. That must have been a nightmare.