Chapter 25: Bad Girls Are Not Made Of Glass

Mac, Three Weeks Later

"I'm not riding today," Adam says with a stern finality, as he gathers my hair back into an elastic while I kneel on the bathroom floor. He hands me down a wet, cool cloth.

I rock back on my heels and rise. I stand very still, wiping my mouth, waiting to make sure. Yes, all better now. Fortunately the nausea goes away, as soon as I puke breakfast up.

I lean over the sink, spit, rinse, spit again. I can't put a toothbrush in my mouth just yet. I made that mistake a few days ago.

"Adam—" I do my best to smile at him in the mirror and avoid my rather gray reflection, "You're riding. Have some fucking pride. The guys will think you are totally whipped if you come on the bus with me instead of riding bikes with them."

"I don't give a good goddamn what they think."

I rinse the cloth, wipe my face. "Liar."

"Alright fine, I care, but I care more that you're sick. Three mornings in a row. What— I'm supposed to just kick it with the guys while you suffer alone on the bus? Fuck that."

I move into the bedroom and sit back down on the bed. Adam moves with me.

"Adam, I'm okay. We agreed, we aren't going to tell the guys I'm pregnant yet. So we don't need to call attention to my morning sickness, right? And you're fucking hovering."

He sits down on the bed beside me and rubs my thigh. "I can't help it, Shortcake. I hate that you have to go through this to grow our baby."

"Well, maybe when I tell you I can't eat, you shouldn't pitch a bitch and try to guilt me into it. Maybe then I won't throw up, and you won't have to feel bad for breaking condoms while fucking me like a convict on a conjugal visit," I grumble. "With an expired condom no less." I spew, just for good measure.

"Is that the story you're going to tell our daughter one day—that she was conceived while we were trying to out-porn prison porn?" he asks with a smile.

"No, but it's maybe the story I will tell our son so he knows to check the goddamn expiration date on the condom," I smirk.

"You're evil," he whispers, kissing my temple.

I am.

"Evil makes me feel better."

I rest my head on his shoulder. He rubs my back. "You're doing so good, Shorty," he murmurs. "So fierce."

"You're not so bad, in the baby-daddy department." I tell him. I can't resist... "Better than being knocked up by some random, anyway..."

That one does make him laugh. Which was the whole point. Adam is kind of tense lately.

He's so worried about my PTSD, even though my symptoms are much better than normal.

He's the reason. Adam is exactly what was missing from my recovery.

When I was first diagnosed, the doctor said I needed a support network. That support network consisted of Leed, Tamara, Bodie. Sometimes, Ashlynn, too-we sort of co-supported each other. At least for those four months she was clean and living a block away with Trace. Trace knew about my PTSD, but he needed to be Ash's support network and also Adam's buddy after our break-up.

Trace and I never talk about my PTSD, even though we spend a lot of time together songwriting and in the studio. I actually like it better, keeping my emotional stuff out of my song-writing partnership with Trace. It gives me a separate space—and a person to work with that isn't hovering. Trace and I read each other through the songs we write...we don't have to talk about our problems.

Adam wasn't there during that first year I struggled with PTSD. He's here now, though,  and it makes all the difference.

I feel how much he loves me in the way he's supporting me. He runs with me, when we have time, and he's even trying to eat a little cleaner with me. He's also learned the breathing techniques that I was taught—the ones that Leed coached me through when I had my flashback. I haven't needed them since then, but Adam practices them with me, so he will know how to coach me if I lose my shit again.

He's also on top of my meds without being too terribly annoying about it. Whenever I've talked to my psychiatrist in LA, I've let Adam join in on speakerphone. I think he feels a little better about the med management now. The doctor is monitoring my anxiety meds to make sure they are at safe levels for pregnancy, but  I had to stop my medicine for insomnia and nightmares.

There were a couple of long sleepless nights, until Adam found the trick to helping me sleep: more sex.

Turns out Adam is way better therapy than pharmaceuticals for my insomnia. With my body and brain blissed out from Adam's lovin', and him holding me tight, I sleep a lot better.

It's not just the sex or the way he takes care of me that makes me feel more normal. It's the little, normal couple things. The stuff we never did before.

We are having a lot of fun. Binge-watching Netflix on the bus and arguing over the shows, because I'm always trying to predict the plot and Adam says that I miss the feeling in the character interactions. We post to each other's social media. We play games together on our phones. We pull practical jokes on the guys—we sent Bodie a cross-dressing stripper last week at a hotel after-party. It was hilarious.

Also hilarious—teasing Trace, about his new monogamy situation.

Okay, that one's just me. I find it extremely amusing to watch Mr. Cool-As-Fuck sweat. The fangirls are all tryna take a bite out of him. They are hearing the rumors about him having a girlfriend, and they are all busting ass to prove that their favorite rock star would never forsake them. At parties, Trace has maybe one drink and then trades his bourbon for Red Bull, just to stay vigiliante against their flirtations. He tries to use me, Adam, and Tamara as shields from the prowlers.

I almost feel bad for him. He's pretty tense, what with not getting any on tour, and having to work over-time to keep fangirls from falling onto his cock.

Then again, it's no fun for me to be one of the only completely sober people on tour while I pretend to be drinking. Giving Trace shit about his self-imposed abstinence is pretty much my favorite pregnant past-time.

Thank god we have the shows. They are still the most fun part of the tour. That, and sharing space with Adam, is making my good times. But it's just not like the tours of old--where we all were raising hell and getting drunk and getting high and screwing around.

Nope. I'm knocked up, Adam is locked down, Trace is a monk, Leed's in a funk...

Bodie might actually be the last rock star standing.

The rest of us might be growing up already.

While Adam is still rubbing my back, and I'm philosophizing and  making sure my stomach is settled, the door to our suite bangs open, and laughter follows.

Riley and Tamara stroll into the bedroom. They look crisp, cheerful and neither of them smell like vomit. I hate them. Especially Tamara. She looks great, and I look like crap right now.

"Hello, preggo," Riley chirps to me

"Good morning, Riley. You know, my name is Mac, I'm not just a pregnant person," I grumble.

I liked Riley's little nickname at first, but I'm beginning to feel a little like nothing more than a Babycakes Oven.

The thing that really bothers me about that-only four people know I'm pregnant—Adam, Riley, Tamara, and my doctor—and they still manage to make me feel that way. I'm happy about the baby, but I'm still a person, too.

"Lighten up, love." Riley. "No one will call you that when you win your next VMA..." He grins at me. "Nominations came out today. Seven Minutes is up for song of the year."

Adam puts his arms around me and kisses my cheek as I grin into my hands. An MTV Video Music Award is maybe not a Grammy, but it's still a big deal. "Congratulations, it's your song, too," I tell him.

He shakes his head. "It's your song. You wrote it." It's true in a way—it's the only solo writing credit I've ever had on any of our albums.

"Yes, yes, there will be time for Soundcrush celebrations at the larger meeting this afternoon," Riley claps his hands together and straddles a chair, pulling out his phone, going into manager mode. "All right. Time for our  Babycakes Breakdown. First order of business--getting Mac's morning sickness under control for the bus ride." He holds out a box to Adam. "This came, to help with that..."

Since Riley strongly suspected I was pregnant anyway, Adam and I decided to recruit him to help us keep the secret. He loves being in on shit. I couldn't really hide it from Tamara, either—for a number of reasons, but the main one being she knew that I might be pregnant because I had already confessed about the condom breaking. Tamara is my friend, she definitely expected to hear the outcome of the maybe-baby saga. I couldn't lie to her face and deny Babycakes.

So I had to tell Adam that I spilled my guts to Tamara and Kat in the hot tub. I thought he would be irritated, but he was relieved to know he wasn't the only one that had confided in a friend. Fortunately, Adam mistakenly told Trace the maybe-baby was a no-go the day Trace got back on tour, so we are able to hold off making the announcement to the band and label management for now. We just need a few weeks to make some decisions and also, to make sure everything with the pregnancy is...stable.

"Thanks, man." Adam rips open the box and pulls out a long skinny sleeve of what looks like dirty ice. He tears the plastic off one end with his teeth, and offers it to me.

"What's this?" I ask suspiciously, sniffing it.

"A morning sickness popsicle," Adam says. "From that little juice bar in Calabasas that you like? I sent them to my sister Brett when she was pregnant last year. She said they really helped. I had them over-nighted for you. All natural, organic, no sugar—they check all the healthy boxes..."

It tastes like ginger and mint. Only mildly disgusting. I'm trying to eat healthy like I always do, but since Adam's spawn burrowed into my uterus, all my taste for green things is gone.

All I want is to do is gnaw some part of a cow.

"It's good," I lie to Adam about the popsicle. Even if it doesn't help, I'll pretend like it does, for Adam's sake. He's just...the best. Operation One Day At A Time has been going great for the last two weeks, except for these little bouts of morning sickness the last few days, and the way they make him hover.

Tamara slides me some crackers, too. "For the bus," she says with a wink. I nod in thanks.

"Right then, next." It's funny how Riley is all business, even about Babycakes. "Mac, you should know, Leed is watching you, trying to catch views of things you are looking at on your phone."

"Really?" Leed is not a nosy kind of guy. He's usually too concerned about himself to worry much about what other people are doing. "I thought he was happy that my PTSD is under control..."

"I'm sure he is, love, but he's got a feel that something is up, and he's got his eyes on you." Riley makes the two-finger-watching-you gesture.

"Takes one to know one," Adam murmurs with a smile.

"Right," Riley grins.

"Don't worry," Tamara says with a tense look, "After the big band meeting today, Leed won't be so focused on you, Mac."

I give her a sympathetic smile. I'm actually really worried about our lunch meeting. The guys are going to be blindsided, in general...but Leed. I honestly don't know how he's going to take this.

Riley smirks. "Yes, that's going to be one helluva meeting."

"We'll get through it," Adam says confidently, smiling at Tamara. "Life changes. People adapt."

"The good news—Mac—all your news clothes are ordered. It will be trial and error in the fit for a while, but we won't really need to worry about trying to conceal a baby bump for at least another month or two. I think we'll have enough stuff to keep you looking non-pregnant on stage til maybe about five months..." Tamara says confidently. I sigh. I'm very thin and very short and she thinks I'm going to show  early. All my stage clothes were skin tight before I got pregnant. My leather pants are already uncomfortable at only seven weeks pregnant, and so are a couple of my really tight bustiers. My belly isn't the only thing slightly expanding...my boobs are already starting to get bigger, too.

"Great," Riley checks that off his list. He looks between me and Adam. "Any decision on the Great Debate?"

I reach for Adam's hand. We've been having a difference of opinion about a care provider for my pregnancy.

Adam has been researching the best baby doctors in LA, and the best hospitals. It's a no-brainer to him that Babycakes should have state-of-art care.

I know he only has the best intentions, but I have a different plan for how I want Babycakes to come into this world.

Adam forgets, I was raised by hippies.

Part time, at least. Leed and I  lived with my dad in Atlanta during the school years, but it was a very precarious home life.  Every  few  years, he had a new job, a new wife, a new house, a new life. We had a new school, a new stepmother, new rules, new attitudes. So in a way, even though my mom was not our main parent, over the long haul, her lifestyle was the more stable element in our life.

She's a hippie midwife.

There's a midwife school and a birthing center on the commune where my mom lives—I've been around that kind of environment my whole life. I even worked as a helper/receptionist there during the summers when I was a teenager. Pretty much all I did during the summers on that commune was play music and shuttle pregnant women to the centers bedrooms for their check-ups or births. The summer after I graduated, I even attended a few births as my mom's assistant.

All of Adam's sisters go to  hospitals and have their babies like society tells them too, so that's what he's used to. But that's not what I want. I know what this pregnancy stuff is about, because of my mom's job. I can't imagine having my baby in a hospital with a million doctors and nurses invading the experience. Maybe I'm just a rebel at heart—like my mom. We don't always have the best relationship, and I don't think it's the best idea that she is my primary care-provider, but I do want her input, and I want to go with a midwife for taking care of me and my baby. That's what I feel comfortable with. Maybe even a home birth.

I guess Adam and I both have more perspective on this baby stuff than most people our age—but like always, we are coming at it from different sides.

"Uhhhm, we've decided to compromise and meet a doctor and a midwife in LA, but also visit a birthing center with midwives in Nashville."

My first choice would be to have the baby on the commune where I grew up, and have one of the other midwives be my main care-provider, with my mom helping as a mom and mid-wife. Adam flipped out at the idea of our baby being born on a hippie commune an hour and half away from Nashville hospitals. I get it. It sounds crazy if you didn't grow up there.

He's a little more comfortable with the idea of the birth being assisted in Nashville—close to his family. He even said, maybe we could talk about a home birth at the farm, because there's a great hospital only twenty minutes away, but I'm not anywhere close to comfortable with that. That's his home, not mine.

So we are looking at a birthing center in Nashville, too. If that's what we decide to do, we'll probably buy a place in Nashville to nest for a few months before and after the baby is born. I'm trying not think about his whole family hanging around, but the fact that my mom will be able to be there seems strangely comforting, considering the fact that I normally don't even think about my mother.

I haven't told her yet that I'm pregnant. I have no idea how she's going to react as my mother, but I know she will do a great job supporting me as a midwife on my birth team.

All that birthing-a-baby stuff seems like a long way away, but we have to make some decisions about a care-provider now. With all the stuff going on—the tour, my PTSD, Adam insists I need to start having my prenatal check-ups...like now.

"Riley, we have a full day and a half off next week. Make the LA appointments happen then, okay?" Adams shoots him a text with the doctor's name. "And front us a cover, please."

"You bet. I'll speak to Marcy...finesse a Madam interview that needs to have you guys fly home to LA for the day," Riley says, "And the birthing center in Nashville? When do you want to do that?"

"The week after—actually the day after the Nashville concert, if we can." I squeeze Adam's hand.

That day is Adam's twenty-fourth birthday, and we built in a few days off to celebrate when we scheduled the tour. Adam's family is planning a big home-coming/birthday party on the farm, and the whole Soundcrush crew will be invited. It seems like the right time for me to meet his family. I've met them before over the years, but this time it will be different. He'll be bringing me home as his girlfriend. We are NOT planning to tell them about the baby yet.

"Consider it done. Anything else?" He looks up brightly with a grin.

"Just...this." Adam tosses Riley a set of keys. Riley catches them automatically and examines them curiously.

"The keys to your bike? Does it need to be serviced?"

Adam gets a huge grin. "No. Those are keys to your new bike, man."

I think Riley is embarrassed but he hides it under his cool British demeanor. "That's lovely, but I can't accept. I'm just doing my job."

"No, you're going way above. It's not just from me...it's from all of us. It doesn't feel right, us guys out there riding without you. You don't just work for Trace, and you're not some outsider like Dawes, either. You're Soundcrush Inner Circle, man."

Riley's expression goes blank. Then he smirks slightly. He gives the chin tip. "Thanks very much, Heartley."

They get up to leave, and I hold Tamara back. I hug her. "You know I have your back, right? And no matter what gets said at this lunch meeting today, you are SCIC. Me, Bodie,...and this guy, too—" I slap Adam's abs, "we have your back."

Tamra's eyes mist up a little bit. Her bracelets jangles as she wipes her cheek. "But, Leed..."

"Leed is a grown-ass man who had his chance," I assure her. "I know you care about him, but you have to do what's right for you."

She nods, and clears her throat. Her tone changes, "Trace, though..."

"Will compromise," Adam says sternly. "He'll have to." Adam gives Tamara a hug. "It's the best thing to be up front, Tam. We are getting far too divided into camps in SCIC. The sooner we get it all out in the open, the better," he looks at me wistfully.

He wants Babycakes out on the table at the meeting today. But I'm not ready. I'm like 99% sure that the course of this pregnancy is set in my mind, but I'm just not ready to deal with the band's reaction. Adam and I both know I can't tour Europe eights months pregnant, but what we don't know is how the band is going to adjust. We barely coped with Trace being gone ten days, not a whole leg of the tour.

I don't want to have this discussion with Adam again right now. "Go get your bike ready, Preacher. The popsicles work great. I'm fine."

I try to back away when he tries to kiss me goodbye—I still haven't brushed my teeth—but he chases my mouth around with his, giving me a soft closed mouth kiss as I laugh behind my lips.

Thirty minutes later, we are all loading up in the parking lot. I took a little extra care with my appearance—just to make myself feel better, since I'm still near the edge of nausea. I have on makeup and real clothes—black bandana print shorts and a white white crop top and jewelry and sandals.

Adam is sitting astride his bike, one helmet stowed behind him, laughing with Trace as I walk toward the bus with John. He wolf whistles as he raises his sunglasses.

"Lookin' good, Shortcake," he says. It's not the words but the shine of pride in his eyes that makes my heart flutter. Still. After all these years of him checking me out.

I walk over to the bike and climb between Adam and the driving forks, facing him. He puts his arms on the forks, trapping me there as he stares at me intensely. "Every time I go without seeing you for a few minutes, it shocks the hell out of me, all over again. How much I love you."

He kisses me fully now. He holds the bike steady as I wrap myself around him, enjoying the softness of his mouth and the hardness of his body at the same time.

"Just because I have given my blessing, does not mean I want to watch you two fuck on a bike," Leed complains as he rolls his bike down the trailer ramp. We ignore him and keep kissing. "It's just...more unfun, man. Unfun," he grumbles and he starts his bike and roars away.

Bodie rolls forward on the other side of Trace. "Trace, what the fuck is wrong with the Universe? I think Preacher is getting more play on this tour than the rest us combined."

"I guess nice guys  finish first...and frequently," Trace says with a grin, and he follows Leed, Bodie flanking him.

"You should go," I say, not moving from his lap.

Adam tips his head, toward Riley, who is on his new bike, but is also on a call. "I'm gonna ride with Riley," he smiles. "But you..." he traces the bare skin of my stomach between my crop top and shorts. "you two...have to get on the bus."

I pout. "I feel much better. What if I want to ride with you?"

His lips tighten. "You aren't really dressed for a long ride." Almost reluctantly, he adds, "But if you want to change into jeans and boots ...of course. I love for you to ride with me."

I see it in his eyes. He doesn't really want me to. Not now. Precious cargo, all that. I don't push it. He won't the enjoy the ride at all if he's worried about safety—and he needs to relax. "Maybe next time," I say with a smile, and he nods, as I steal one more kiss and slide from the bike. He puts on his helmet and gives Riley the signal, and they ride away.

I trudge onto the bus. It's crazy how fast my moods can change. Minutes ago, I felt so happy under Adam's gaze of pride. Now I'm feeling a bit brittle, like the glass he thinks I am.