Money For Something

29 - Wannabe

**Ace**

The entire situation was wank. Complete and utter wank. And avoiding Willow just made things worse, because being with Willow, spending time with her, sleeping with her, was the only thing that made the guilt over lying to my friends and family feel remotely worth it.

The rehearsal room was one of the main reasons we'd rented this monstrous LA mansion and I'd begun to hate it. That sucked bollocks, because usually I loved rehearsing, but lurking about, beating the shit out of my drum kit in that vast room, until I knew that Willow would well and truly be asleep made me feel like a coward.

The best part of my day was sliding into bed beside her and wrapping my arms around her as she curled into me. Or it would have been if the fact that I'd been neglecting her gave me a new source of guilt. Of course, then I couldn't sleep so I was out of bed lurking around in soundproof rooms when it was time for Willow to wake up.

All in all, I was a sleep deprived guilty mess and I had no one but myself to blame.

Spending the day with her cousins hadn't helped alleviate my angst one bit. They were good kids, the kind that you'd choose to be part of your family if you got an option. They were more like Willow's brothers than cousins. For someone who'd grown up only with sisters the idea of having Willow's cousins as surrogate brothers was a heady thing. It would be easy to start thinking of them as my family.

And so, the guilt kept piling on.

"What are you doing Ace?" Zoe had me cornered in the rehearsal room. There'd been no threat spoken but the way she filled the doorway told me that I had no chance of leaving until she was good and ready. Probably once she'd finished what appeared to be an interrogation.

"Working on a song while I wait for the lads to finish getting ready." It wasn't totally a lie; the lads were still getting dressed and I was holding the acoustic guitar I was able to play with enough competence to get by without threatening the actual guitarists in our band. Did I use it to contribute to the songs we wrote? Yes. Was I doing it right then? No. I was hiding from Willow again.

And maybe my mother.

Mum had told me on the day after she'd arrived that it was time she and I had a little chat. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant. Whatever it was, it didn't sound good for me. I'd managed to avoid being alone with her ever since.

"Looks like you're hiding to me," Zoe said, folding her arms across her chest.

I focused on the guitar in my lap avoiding both eye contact with my sister and the sight of her tits in the low cut top she was wearing. No one needed to see that much of their sister. If I told Zoe that, she'd be just as likely to scoop my eyes out of their sockets, then tell me I wouldn't need to worry about her lack of modesty offending my delicate sensibilities anymore, as she would be to put on a cardigan, which would have been my preference.

She was all dressed up because Willow and I were having belated stag and hens' nights before our belated wedding reception in a couple of days. Zoe had dressed to kill. I doubted that I'd ever be comfortable with the sight of my sisters showing their assets, not because of any antiquated notions of modesty but because I was under no illusions about the kind of perve I'd been before I met Willow. In my experience most men were the same.

"I'm not hiding."

"Really? Then why aren't you upstairs zipping your wife into her dress like all the other idiots you spend time with?"

Of course my friends were off fondling their significant others, and just a few days earlier I'd have been doing the exact same thing. Now I was wondering if Willow would grow to resent me for forcing her into this lie with all the hate that seemed to go along with it.