When the doors closed, I leaned back against the elevator wall and closed my eyes, fighting tears. Damn it. I blew out a long, emotionally filled breath. Last night had been so amazing, but also stupid. Having sex with Devlin had done nothing but make things even worse. And now…

My hands covered the flatness of my stomach as a tear spilled free. And now I could be carrying his baby.

As I left the hotel, with my purse finally in hand, I was so emotional I didn’t even notice the stares. Knowing stares that were a mixture of disgust and interest. I took a cab and asked him to stop at a little pharmacy just a few blocks from my apartment. I had no shoes on and when I asked the tech for the morning-after pill she gave me a pitying look. My cheeks filled with shame as I handed over my credit card.

By the time I got back to the apartment, Linc was standing by the front door waiting on me. My promised hour was nearly up. When he saw me his eyes widened, taking in my borrowed clothes and trembling chin. I tucked my purse with the little package from the pharmacy tighter under my arm and brushed past my best friend, not wanting him to know that I was about to kill any chance of having the baby of the man I loved.

“Nat…”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Linc.”

Natalie

End of May

Jean Pierre lifted the ponytail full of my hair and gave a sad shake of his head as he lifted his silver scissors. From the chair across from me, Marissa bit her lip as she watched with glassy eyes. Both acted like I was committing a crime punishable by death, but to me it was like getting rid of the heartache that constantly felt like it was choking me.

The stylist lifted a brow at me in the mirror, silently asking me if I really wanted him to continue. I gave one firm nod and he tut-tut-tutted at me as he cut away my hair. At the first sound of the scissors slicing away my hair, I felt a stab to my heart and blinked my eyes to keep the sudden burning of tears from falling. I was not going to cry, I wasn’t.

Cutting my hair had to be done. Maybe then I would be able to move on. Maybe then Devlin wouldn’t want me. Maybe…

There was a fuck-load of maybes that I was hoping would become actualities with this haircut. And the biggest one? Maybe cutting my hair would make Devlin hurt as much as I’d been hurting for the last six weeks. The man had loved my hair; it was probably the only thing he had ever loved about me. And with each snip-snip of the scissors, I envisioned the pain that would fill those aquamarine eyes when he saw that all that hair he had worshipped like a holy man worshipping his lord was gone.

It took less than a minute and Jean Pierre was handing me the ponytail of hair. Fourteen inches of silkiness. I’d been prepared to let the hair just fall to the floor, but Marissa had told me about Locks of Love and I’d decided to donate my hair to them so that some little girl would get to feel pretty as she placed on a wig made of the hair that had once been desired by a rock legend.

I ran the ends of the hair through my fingers a few times before clenching my jaw and handing it over to Marissa who already had a large brown envelope ready for the locks. She sealed it up while Jean Pierre finished my cut, going for a pixie kind of style rather than the shaved head that Marissa had talked me out of just ten minutes ago. When the stylist was done I glanced in the mirror, saw the same blue-gray gaze that was filled with the pain I’d been keeping bottled up for the last two months and grimaced.

I’d thought that with the end of my hair I’d also have an end to the choking pain around my heart. But it had only left me feeling even sadder than I’d been that morning. For just a second I let my chin tremble, let my weakness show, and then I squared my jaw, nodded my head and stood so that Marissa could have her hair trimmed.

While Marissa had just an inch cut away, leaving her hair in all its long glory, I paid for both our cuts, added on a generous tip and walked out onto the busy New York City sidewalk to wait for my friend. Pulling out my phone, I took care of the fifteen emails that I’d gotten in the thirty or so minutes I’d been inside the salon, as well as the three text messages I’d gotten from various people that needed my immediate attention.

Being Emmie Armstrong’s assistant was a twenty-four-seven job and I was starting to feel the strain. I needed a vacation. To get away from New York, away from the craziness of stupid rockers, and especially away from the constant emotional pain that I was in.

I was still answering emails when Marissa came out of the salon. She hailed a cab for us. I quickly finished up by the time we got to the exclusive boutique across town where we spent a few hours finding the right outfits for the big dinner party Emmie was throwing tonight downtown. After one more stop, where Marissa took her time picking out the perfect stud to put in her nose, we arrived at the club where the party was.

Marissa stepped out of the back of the cab first and stiffened. That was my first clue that something was wrong. When I stepped around her I saw exactly what had caused her to pause. Damn it! I’d known that there would be a line of fans outside the club that I’d rented out for the evening for Emmie, had been expecting it.

I hadn’t, however, been expecting to see the sign three stupid bitches were holding up. My blood began to boil as I read the filth that was on the sign. ‘I Can Give You A Baby Shane! Drop The Wife And Come Be With A REAL Woman!’ For fucking real? My brother and Harper had just gotten back from their trip to Germany, where they had gotten new news on Harper’s inability to have a baby. Neither of them had mentioned what the doctors had told them, I didn’t even think Emmie knew, but some sleazy tabloid had gotten a picture of them leaving the élite fertility clinic and some lower level staff member of the clinic had given them the bits and pieces they had needed to start a round of scandalizing daily reports on how the ‘biggest playboy in rock was getting his comeuppances with a wife that couldn’t give him a much desired child’.

Harper had been having her inability to have children thrown in her face by countless trash magazines for two weeks now and I knew it had to be wearing on her nerves. She was already one of the most hated females in the rock-n-roll fan world because she had taken Shane off the market, and now she had to face bitches like the ones standing in front of me right now? No fucking way.

I ripped into the three bouncers keeping the line of fans from entering the club. I made them get rid of the three bitches with the sign and gave them strict orders to make sure that no one else with the same idea was around in case my brother and sister-in-law came out and saw them. If Shane happened to see something like that I was sure I would need to bail my brother out of jail before the end of the night.