Deep (Stage Dive, #4)(34)

“You want me on tour?” But he didn’t want me in his place. How confusing and disappointing both. Or maybe he wanted me on tour to keep an eye on me, the old silly-young-Lizzy-can’t-look-after-herself standard. Christ, it hit me: I was going to be a mother. Apparently, I was going to be a single parent, no matter what soothing noises he was making. Come what may, I could only depend on myself.

“Figured with Anne planning on going, and Lena being pregnant too, that you might come,” he said. “People will pack you up, all you’ll have to do is get on and off a private jet every couple of days and then relax. These places have masseuses and whatever. There’ll be doctors available to keep a check on you. I’ll make sure you’re looked after.”

“I don’t know.…”

To stay behind with Anne and the other girls gone wouldn’t make me happy. I guess making friends wasn’t really my forte. After the early-teen nutso period, I’d pretty much kept to myself. Anne and I had perfected the art of putting on a normal home front. Anyone looking beyond it would not have been good, because clearly mom wasn’t functioning as the responsible adult. When Anne left to go on tour, I’d basically be alone. But there was more than me and my lonely girl ways to consider. There’d been so many dubious tales about what happened on tour. Him and other women. I didn’t need to see that. Not this year, or the next. The Sasha thing had hurt enough. Wonder why he’d dumped her?

“I don’t want to be in your way,” I said, hands twining in my lap. “It might get awkward if we were in each other’s faces every day.”

I got a caveman grunt. It sounded serious, of the deep thoughts variety. Didn’t clue me into shit, however.

“What do you think?” I asked.

The face he gave me was complicated, brows drawn together but lips slightly apart. It seemed he was on the verge of saying something.

Waiting.

“Speak, Ben.”

He tensed. “I want you to come.”

“Why?”

“To make sure you’re okay, so I can keep an eye on you, so you’re not here dealing with all this on your own. Lots of reasons.”

As reasons went, they weren’t bad ones. But as Mal had pointed out, Ben had issues with follow-through. History dictated he would eventually change his mind and leave me high and dry. What sort of father would he be? Lord help him if he ever pulled that shit with my child. No matter his size, my rage would be epic.

“Come on,” he said, voice firmer. “We need to start figuring this out together. How to get along and be parents and everything. I don’t want to be the guy Mal’s accusing me of being. Give me a chance here, Liz.”

“I honestly don’t know what’s best.”

He hung his head. “Look, if you want to stay here, finish up school for the semester, I’ll organize security for you. Take care of everything. It’s your choice. I don’t want to push you into anything.”

“Security?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.” I patted my stomach, my smile not quite staying in place. “I keep forgetting I’m carrying a famous person’s baby. The next-generation Stage Dive.”

He spread out his hands, a helpless kind of look in his eyes. At least he was here trying.

It was up to me. “All right, I’ll come. I was thinking of dropping out of school. I’ve missed so much, with morning sickness, and days can still be hit or miss. I don’t like my chances of catching up with everything going on.”

A nod and a smile. His thick shoulders slumped like he’d finished fighting a war.

“You want me to stay with Lena and Jimmy?”

“I want you and the baby safe and looked after. Not that I’m not willing to be the one looking after you. It’s just—”

“It’s fine. It’s complicated with us not actually being a couple and everything. I get it.” I leaned back in my seat, turning it all over inside my head. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer.”

His serious gaze revealed nothing. “Liz…”

“Mm?”

I waited, but he didn’t continue. Thank goodness Bean would be a girl. (I could just feel it. Mother’s intuition, etcetera.) Men were such a mystery. Not one I particularly cared to figure out at this point in time. Life had become busy enough. At least there’d been no further mention of lawyers. Baby steps—all puns intended.

“I’ll sort things out for myself. I’ll go to Mal and Anne’s,” I said. “It’s not long before the tour starts. He shouldn’t be able to drive me crazy that fast.”

His brow furrowed. “You sure?”

“Yes.” I nodded.

“’kay. But you’ll let me support you financially, right?”

“Look, I ran some figures through my head today. Given that the rent on this place is paid up, and with my work at the—”

“Wherever you’re going with this, the answer is no.” The man leveled me with a look. Or tried to.

“Excuse me?”

“No, you can’t go it on your own. More important, you don’t have to. You’ve got me.”

“But I haven’t got you, Ben. That’s the whole point.” I sat forward in the seat, willing him to understand. He opened his mouth, but mine was faster. “Please, just listen. I’m going to have a baby, and that is huge. It’s so big, when I try to think about it I feel like my head is going to explode. But I’ll deal with it all because I have to, because this baby is relying on me to. What I can’t think about or deal with is you—you and your life and how this all affects it. Because I know, no matter what you say, that having this baby is never going to be your first choice. So then I feel guilty, and then I feel angry because I feel guilty, and then it’s just a big ugly mess that I don’t know how to deal with.”