Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (100 page)

---TWO YEARS LATER---

MONICA

T
he crowd wasn’t for me that night. There was a relief in that. No pressure. I fluffed my dress and tucked my hair into place, fixing the web of pins and curls. The lights on either side of the mirror washed out my face, but I noticed it was rounder, healthier, happier than even that morning.

The dressing room at the Wiltern Theater wasn’t the cleanest I’d been in during the previous months, hardly the most glamorous. The table was new but had the same half-eaten fast food crap that I’d known musicians to eat my whole life. The couch was worn but not ripped, the mirror was clean, and the counter had been wiped and replaced some time in the last decade. But I wasn’t there for the dressing room. Darren blew in, sweating and panting.

“What the fuck?” I shouted. “You’re in the middle of a show!”

“We’re between sets. I had to make sure you were here.” He pinched half a dozen French fries and stuffed them in his mouth.

“I’m here. I’ll be out to do your encore with you, then I’m outtie.”

“Is that what you’re wearing?” He pointed at my wedding dress, a sleeveless silk and satin number that hugged me on top and went wild on the bottom, folding in on itself in twenty yards of lace and polish.

“It’s dramatic. Everyone knows I got married today. When I get up on that stage—”

“They’ll think you’re nuts for doing a song between your reception and your honeymoon.”

“I am. And I love you. It’ll be a show that lives in infamy. Get out,” I said.

“Your husband’s roaming the halls looking for you.”

“Get out!”

He grabbed his burger and kissed my cheek before slipping out. The door didn’t click closed, and I rolled my eyes. Boys, even the sweet, bisexual ones, were careless. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

My name is Monica. I stand almost six feet tall. I walk like an ocean wave, and I sing like a storm. My voice is a force of its own, and I let it loose like a hurricane. I am safe. I own what I make. I am a creator. I am an artist.

I felt movement behind me and knew from the scent it was my husband. He put his hands on my neck, where every nerve ending in my body was now located, following his touch as he stroked me, like the little magnet shavings under plastic I’d played with as a kid. When the pen moved, the shavings moved, and I arched my neck to feel more of him.

He kissed me at the base of my neck. His lips were full and soft, more than lips; they were the physical manifestation of every taste of longing, every tingle of desire, every scorch of ambition.

“We said we weren’t going to do this until we were out of the country,” I said.

“Do what, goddess?” he whispered, and I groaned in response, opening my eyes to watch him in the mirror as his mouth caressed my neck and shoulder. “No one knew where you were until I asked for Monica Faulkner.”

“You have to give the name change a little time.” It was a lame excuse. The fact was I’d been too busy touring, recording, and taking interviews to do simple tasks like changing my name. I could have done it at any time, and he knew it. We’d stayed married in the eyes of the law, but to us and the world, that day was the day. Next came the name change. We finally could call each other husband and wife in public.

“Take your hair down,” he said.

I smirked. “I don’t think we have time.”

“I won’t wait.”

Demanding Jonathan.

He’d left that operating room a different man. A person doesn’t just walk away from a heart transplant and continue as before. He was confused about who he was. He was vulnerable, testy, physically weak, and overly cautious. He was also sexually vanilla, which I tried to accept. I didn’t think it would last, but with each passing day, I feared my kinky Jonathan would never return. I stood by him, helping him manage his recovery. I loved him. I hated him. I wanted to beat and kiss him. But I needed him as much as he needed me.

Though we’d agreed our union wasn’t genuine because of the circumstances surrounding it, we never suggested our love was anything but real. I renovated my place on the second steepest hill in Los Angeles and rented it out to one of Brad’s colleagues. Jonathan bought a house in the Hollywood Hills, and we moved into it. Two years, we said. If we could live together for two years, we’d get married for real. If we couldn’t, I was taking my ass back to Echo Park.