Chapter Four

Beautiful War

Kings of Leon

Easton

Hit me back. I need to talk.

Joel doesn’t reply, as he hasn’t for the last three weeks since I forced him to take some time off to clear his head. His distance and refusal to talk has everything to do with Rian and their rocky relationship. He won’t voice what happened with her at all.

I can’t figure it out. Like Natalie and me, they were happy and inseparable one minute and done the next. Instead of going behind his back, I’ve been patiently waiting for him to come clean. So far, I’ve gotten nothing, and I have a good idea Benji has everything to do with it. I dial him next, more out of concern for Joel than myself, and get no answer. Benji has been more absent in my life than ever, taking long sabbaticals from his tattoo parlor and traveling all over—mostly to the east coast. He only checks in when I’ve demanded some proof of life.

With my wife in tears, and our situation, I’m only more fucked in taking the time to figure out what the hell is going on in the lives of the people closest to me.

The sad truth is, I’ve been just as hard to reach, and know, even to the woman I’ve dedicated my life to.

Natalie is right in many respects but so goddamn wrong in others. I did bring her here to get back to the place we were before my career snatched some of her peace of mind away. A consequence I knew we would eventually face but nowhere near the nightmare we endured. Something I felt so goddamned helpless to fight against and made me resent ever sharing a single song with the world.

The end of our last trip here brought us together and solidified us in a way I believed miscommunication would cease altogether. That we would never let things unsaid get between us again. But telling her the whole truth would only put her through more. She’s endured so much from the media and paparazzi in the last year, and I didn’t want to add to it. I swung back hard to no avail because unless I hang it up and purposefully disappear, it won’t end.

Chest burning with the need to repair us—to do as she asked—I spend hours thinking it out. Hearing her hurt echo in my head. I wander back into the hotel by way of the pool and hear my mother scream before a peel of laughter leaves her. I look over to see Nate and Addie lying in the same lounger, talking intimately as Dad tosses Mom around in the pool. She lifts from the water, her hair a mess, and she gives him a playful smile.

Jealousy eats at me briefly in the thought that should be us. Just after, the state of the four of them comforts me.

My parents used to fight like cats and dogs at times. I’ve witnessed a dozen or more fights over the years. Not that they intentionally let me lay witness, but sometimes their love and need for the other overshadowed their need to protect me from it. I can’t see Nate and Addie fighting, they vibe so well, but I’m sure they’ve had it out much the same way. My wife and I have both seen examples of fruitful and long-lasting marriages and know it’s what we collectively want. The notion of why Natalie and I are at odds right now strikes me.

We’re fighting each other for our parents’ type of future.

Confident in that, I walk through the gate. It takes only a second for Mom and Dad to notice me.

“Hey, East,” Dad greets first as Mom hops onto his back, arms wrapped around him.

“Hey, you guys having fun?”

“Hell, yes.” Mom pipes up breezily. “Want to join us?”

“Sure.” I rip off my shirt, and Dad orders us a few beers from the pool attendee as I discard my shoes and step into the water, putting my selfish shit aside and mustering a grin for Nate and Addie.

Dad wastes no time when he approaches. “So, I’m going to be a grandfather, huh?”

“At some point, hopefully, sooner rather than later,” I say. “But let’s not mention that now in front of Natalie until I give the okay.”

He gives me a nod as Mom frowns, unlatching from dad’s back to stand next to me. “It’s just a fight, Son.”

“I know,” I say, leaning against the lip of the concrete.

“Seems like so much more than that when it’s happening, though, doesn’t it?” She adds.

I nod.

“Well, don’t be too hard on her. She’s had it rough this past year.”

“I know,” I say, taking my beer and thanking my waitress with a nod.

Mom hesitates, and I immediately tense up. “What?”

“No, you really don’t.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s not my place, and I promised I wouldn’t.”

Dad pinches his features and opens his mouth to speak.

“Not our business, baby,” Mom says. “But only to a point. This is your marriage. I’m just asking you not to forget she’s had to deal with a lot, and on her own.”

I take a long pull of my beer. “Jesus, Mom, I feel guilty enough, but we just had it out for this very reason. Please, give me something.”

She hesitates again.

“Mom.”

“Fine. Did she tell you about the woman who came into Austin Speak and attacked her verbally?”

My whole body tenses. “No. What the fuck?”

“She berated her, called her a white trash whore that was too fucking selfish for you in front of her whole staff before security got to her. It was bad, son, really, really bad.”

“Why the fuck didn’t she tell me?”

“For the same reason you didn’t tell her about the naked women Joel’s had to continually drag out of your hotel bed before you got back from a show. To protect you.”

“Jesus.”

“I’ve dealt with that shit more times than I can count,” Mom adds. “It never got easier. She reached out a lot this year. I was just thankful I could help give her some perspective on some of it, having been there. But this world is getting much harder to navigate, and your fandom goes far beyond anything I’ve seen in a very long time.”

“If you weren’t such a talented, good-looking son of a bitch,” Dad jests in an attempt to lighten the mood while ruffling my hair, “but the genes are strong, Son. Honestly, I’m hoping it’s a boy.”

“As if we need another Crowne man.” Mom sighs in exasperation before offering up an excuse for him. “He’s had a lot of tequila.”

“Yeah, that’s my excuse,” Dad utters, “what’s yours, Grenade?”

I can’t help my smile as Addie bursts into laughter, and Nate’s chuckle follows. I look back at my parents. “It’s all good. I’m glad you’re all having a good time.” I down the last of my beer. “You should be, and so should I.”

Mom looks at me earnestly. “Easton baby, can I be straight with you?”

“When are you never not straight with me?”

“Always, but what I want to say is going to seem a little harsh.”

I nod.

“You’re both twenty-something idiots who think you’re something special in the world of marriage, but you aren’t the first people to promise each other you won’t make the same mistakes as others. That you’ll do it right, better, or differently. You are special because your love and connection make you special, of course. But you don’t get to do marriage right, better, or differently than any of the rest of us. Sure, every marriage is unique, but you’re still both going to break promises, protect each other, and sometimes gut each other. You’re going to fall apart and come back together. Maybe even consider divorce a time or two, or twenty, and it’s just the fucking journey of marriage. The question you need to ask yourself is, when is it too much? When do you walk away? If you can answer that, then you know all you need to.”

I sit in contemplative silence for a few as Mom lets me have it.

I nod and wade toward the stairs. “I’m going to go find my wife.”

“That’s a good idea. And while you’re at it, tell her to stop treating a vacation like it’s supposed to be some perfect postcard memory. You two can fight this entire vacation and make good memories doing laundry. It’s not about time and place. There’s hope and expectations, and there’s just fucking living.”

I grin. “You’re a walking fortune cookie today, Mom.”

“I’m a wise woman who’s lived it. Ambitious journalist, married to a rock star. Sound familiar? I believe I’ve earned an opinion.”

“Modest, too,” I retort.

“Not a day in her life,” Dad adds. In reply, she palms his face.

“Go,” Mom urges. “Be young and make mistakes. Guess what. Old people do, too. I’m making one right now by ordering another drink. I’ll probably piss your father off twice before midnight. Tomorrow we’ll still be married.”

“Doing a good job of it now,” Dad mutters beneath the fingers she’s smashing into his face.

I shake my head and chuckle as Addie, who’s somehow snuck up on me, speaks up from behind me.

“We saw her wandering through the art gallery when we got here a half hour ago.”

“Thanks,” I say, lifting from the side of the pool and using one of their towels to dry off.

“East,” Mom says, wading toward me from the pool.

“Yeah?” I ask as she comes closer, out of earshot from Dad, who’s animatedly talking to Addie and Nate.

“I know how much you love her. It’s so clear. But the reason why none of us are worried is because we all know how much she loves you too.”

I pause my towel. “You think I’ll be absent, Mom?”

“I think that trying to realistically live out your dreams and to expect too much in doing so sets you up for failure. Make a baby, and don’t at all expect to be a perfect parent or husband. Don’t declare you’ll be the best anything for that matter. Doing your best is enough. And you and your wife’s combined best is a hell of a lot. That child will be loved beyond belief, and we as a family, will be there, good and bad.”

“You did pretty okay,” I grin down at her.

“Well, so did he,” she nods toward Dad.

Dad chooses that moment to turn back to me, his tequila-induced smile amping up, clear love in his eyes as he darts them between Mom and me.

“Fight like hell, always,” Mom urges with parting words.

I can’t help my chuckle. “Oh, that’s definite.” I look between them all and lower my voice. “This really did work out. Between you guys?”

“I don’t lie to you, and I swear I never in a million years thought this would be possible. But it wasn’t Addie or me. It was Nate and Reid. They…made it happen. Make sense?”

I nod.

“Go get her, Crowne, and hurry up on that order.”

“For a boy?”

“Yeah.” She smiles and then drops it. “But don’t tell your father I agreed with him. Get to work.”

“Enough already. It’s weird enough that I invited you guys to my third honeymoon and am taking marital advice.

“No, it isn’t,” she says before turning and wading her way back to dad.

After searching the art gallery and the majority of the bottom floor of the resort, I sort through my picture archives and find the one I want, shooting it out to Natalie. It’s the shot of our feet on the Space Needle just after our first kiss, along with a text.

Where are you, Beauty?

She replies within seconds, hers a picture of the Teddy Bear sporting the Edgewater Sweater, which is currently sitting in our hotel bed. My chest aches at the idea she brought all of the relics of years past in an attempt to remind me of us. Like I needed one. Truth is, I’m scattered and fucking exhausted from the whirlwind of the last few years. I need to take my part in the blame and stop punishing her for it. Rushing upstairs, I close the door behind me to find her propped against the headboard, reading a large, thick hardback, a warning coming from her.

“I refuse to fight, okay? I can’t cry right now, Easton…please. I really can’t.”

I stand at the edge of the entryway. “Then just let me talk.”

Silence…then “okay.”

“We have been acting like idiots. Me more so than you. You’re right. I’m fucking terrified to let you down, to let our baby down. I’m just getting started in a career that, at times, I’m still not sure I want. But I will take the time off. I will be there. More importantly, I want to fucking be there—with you.”

“I know you will. It’s—”

“Baby, let me talk.”

“Okay.”

She keeps her book up, and the ache only increases. She can’t even look at me.

“From the second we fought last night, it’s like everything I’ve been feeling, that we’ve been through the last year hit me at once in the biggest imaginable bitch slap. Between the pressure of my manager, the PR, and just doing the job, I’ve been dealing with other problems…having a lot of issues with my fans. Women managing to get into my room. It’s baffling, but they’re slick and manage to find ways to get in despite heavy security. Joel’s made necessary changes, but they always find a way. In my fucking dressing room, outside venues, it’s been a nightmare. I’ve never ever entertained them and never will, but it’s a huge problem. I should have told you when it first started happening, but you were dealing with a lot.”

“I wish you would have told me.”

“Me too, but you haven’t been honest with me about some things that went down, and that needs to end here. Okay? Because I don’t ever want you searching for my hand again.”

Her reply is shaky. “Okay.”

“I love you so goddamned much, Natalie Crowne, and I’m sorry for the space. You’re right, I feel it too, and I thought coming here would help rectify it. A few days in Mexico won’t solve it all, but I won’t ever stop wanting you to be the first to know anything. Protecting each other is fucking up what we have, so we need to live out whatever is going on in both our lives together, no separation.”

“I’m sorry I made you feel like you weren’t present—”

“Baby, I wasn’t. I have been absent, and you have every right to call me out. It hurt like hell the way you did it, but I can forgive you for anything. Fucking anything, because we’re both in new territory here, and neither one of us will ever have all the answers. The same goes when we do become parents, which I want so fucking much.”

A sniff. “Me too.”

“Please don’t cry, Beauty.”

“I’m trying really hard not to.”

“Last night, I hurt you purposefully, but today was different. I didn’t want to make a baby when I was mad and you were buzzed on tequila. In hindsight, it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“No.”

“And I’ve always been a goddamned possessive fool for you, and I’ll continue to be one. Maybe one day we’ll reach that level of maturity, but today isn’t that day for me.”

“Same.”

“Nat, can you please put the book down and look at me?”

“I really can’t.”

“What?” I approach the bed as she lifts a hand.

“Don’t come any closer, Easton. Finish what you were saying.”

“What the fuck? Why?”

“I-I made an emotional decision that I’m regretting really badly at the moment.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Don’t freak out.”

“You’re shit at making that possible, especially right now.”

Worst-case scenarios flit through my mind, and panic sets in until she slowly, so slowly, lowers the book. I jerk back in horror at the sight of a ghastly red rash covering her swollen face. I rush to her side at breakneck speed.

“Jesus Christ! What happened?”

“I-I had a vampire facial. I was feeling low, and I wanted to do something for myself. It was impulsive, but I read about it and saw the results, but not the after photos. I know it was stupid.”

“This is a fucking facial?”

“An expensive one…and to make matters worse, no sun exposure for three days. Like, why even offer it here?”

“For three days you’re going to look like a horror movie extra?”

She shrugs. “I told you it was an emotional decision.”

I press my lips together.

“Don’t you dare laugh.”

I turn away, as my body shakes, and I palm my face, slowly shaking my head.

“You dick.”

Unable to help myself, I turn back to look down at her. “You,” I chuckle, “Jesus, there’s not a woman alive that will ever compare to you. Not ever.”

“Thanks a lot. I told you I’ll be wrinkled and ugly one day, and you said, ‘bring it,’ so you just made yourself a liar.”

Laughter bursts out of me, and she sinks into the bed, raising her book back to shield her face. I pull it from her hand and toss it behind me.

“No way, Beauty, you did this. You don’t get to place the blame on me. So…three days. Is this the length of my punishment?”

She quirks a brow. “As far as I know, my lower half isn’t off limits.”

“That so?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“You testing me, wife?”

“Don’t find me so irresistible now, huh?”

“On the contrary, I’ve never wanted you more.”

“Horse shit.”

“There’s my mouthy Texan.” I lean over her. “Can we toss on the bonnet to top this look off?”

“Perhaps.”

I brush a lock of hair away from her neck. “I’ve missed you so much, so much, Natalie, and I just want to be here with you—just us—where I find my true peace, even if we fight every day and your face looks like road rash.”

She grins, and it’s downright scary. I discard my clothes and climb into bed with her, taking a pillow and placing it at her feet, where I situate myself before pulling hers into my lap and massaging them.

“Remember this?” I ask.

“The chalet,” she says, positioning herself so she can do the same, taking my feet into her hands.

“It’s time to make new memories,” I whisper. “So you don’t have to keep trying to remind me of our old ones.”

Her eyes water. “I just wanted to remember the good.”

“Me too, but it’s time we sort through the bad. Past time. I’m right here, baby. Tell me.”

“What?”

“What I’ve missed, everything. I’ll do the same. We won’t leave anything out. Deal?”

She begins massaging my feet. “Deal.”

We spend the day in bed like we did when we used to hide our relationship from our parents and the world. Mostly talking, heads on our pillows. Some of her confessions about what she’s endured cracking my chest. Some of mine infuriating her. We fight a little about the things we both knew better than to keep from each other. We nap, and I rouse her to wake her up to do it all over again. As selfish as it is to keep holed up in our room, knowing our parents are slightly worried and are here for us, we need it more. Because they’ve traveled their roads, and we’re just hitting new mile markers. As she talks, I stroke her hair and skin, trying to imagine fighting with and for anyone else, and it’s impossible. I signed up for a lot marrying my wife, twice, but so did she. So as we start to successfully close the space we created, every bit of my stretched life begins to narrow to the focal point I lost sight of and am hellbent on refocusing on, feeling some of the burden, the guilt lift as we just…talk. She pauses and rears back a little, reading my eyes.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m listening, baby.”

She grins. “I know. Stop walking on eggshells, Easton. We’re past that.”

“It’s nothing bad.”

“Okay, tell me,” she murmurs, running her finger along my jaw.

I turn to fully face her on my pillow. “I know we said we would stop making promises a long time ago.”

She nods. “Yeah, the last time we were here.”

“Well, I’m breaking that,” I whisper hoarsely as pieces of our life together flit through my mind. “Because it’s more of a certainty for me.”

Her eyes glisten with the love she feels, and I feel it too, as I bring her palm to my chest. “We can plan every year and every big decision, and I can tell you anything you might want to hear during that time, but neither of us has any fucking idea how life will alter those plans or change us as people. It scares us both, but that’s the gamble that comes with the ring. What I’m certain of is that I never want to be the fool of a man who recognizes the perfection in his life a day too late. That’s the promise to myself and to you I’ve kept from the beginning and will always keep. So, the answer to the question you never outright asked me is that when you think you’ve pushed me too far, or this space threatens to get in our way again, is ‘when will I walk away?’ The answer is always going to be the same…never.” Her tears further redden her face, and I gently pat them away with a cool rag she’s been using on and off for hours.

“I love you,” she whispers. “Forever.”

“Beauty, I have to, need to fucking touch you…”

“I want you to.”

“So uh, what’s off limits, just the face?”

“God no, Easton, no pity bang,” she turns to lay on her side, away from me, “let’s just wait it out until I’m back to somewhat normal. I don’t feel sexy at all.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Uh…probably not.”

“You do realize this backfired, for you, epically.”

“I’m aware. Shut up.”

Chuckling, I kiss along her back and feel her arch into me as I run my palms over her perfect tits before sliding one down and into her panties.

“Easton,” she murmurs, and I close my eyes, unable to help another chuckle.

“Pretty drastic emotional decision, baby. What in the hell made you think you needed something like that?”

“I was curious,” she arches into me as I bite down on her shoulder.

“Good thing curiosity didn’t murder this pussy,” I murmur, running a finger through her slick entrance. She moans and spreads for me, and unable to handle another second, I pull her shorts and panties down just enough to push inside. We both moan at the feel as I wrap an arm around her and begin to gently pump my hips.

“Beauty,” the feel of her surrounding me starts to diminish every fucked part of the last twenty-four hours as my pulse speeds up, and I let go and get lost in her. It’s only when she calls my name, grinding on my cock in the middle of the bed, her equally as naked and wrapped around me, that I start to come back to earth. In losing myself in her, I feel found. Laying her on her back, I hook her leg around my waist. “Please, baby, tell me you still want it.”

“So much, Easton, so much.”

I exhale against her lips, eyes stinging, heart raw. Only she can draw this from me. It will always be her. Always. I ease in and out of her as we exchange whispers of devotion until she again pulsates around me. Just as she comes apart, I go with her and start a new future for us both—inside her.