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A Brother’s Best Friend Rock Star Romance

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Chapter 1 – Remi

Tonight, I told myself firmly, was the night.

I mean no, it wasn’t the first time I’d told myself that same thing. And yes, I’d been serious about it before. Deadly serious. Serious as a heart attack. But the conversation had never happened. The timing and situation had never been quite right. Someone else had come into the room the moment I was going to say what I needed to say, or the mood hadn’t been right.

Or I’d just chickened out.

The thing was, though, this time I had to follow through on it. Because I’d been pretending I didn’t have feelings for long enough that they were starting to feel like thorns embedded in my soul. My mom had always told me that if you kept a secret to yourself for long enough, it started to rot. And the moment it did that, it scarred you and became a curse rather than the blessing it might have been.

Well, this particular secret had gone thorn-like about a year ago, after I graduated from high school, and I was thinking I’d better get it out soon. Before it turned toxic and I lost my chance entirely.

So what was I waiting for, you ask?

The guts to tell my brother’s best friend, and the guy I’d known basically since I was born, that I’d been in love with him for years.

I mean how do you just bust out and say that sort of thing?

Before I could answer that the music started and I turned my eyes from the hands clenched in my lap to the stage, where Dean Simon was strolling his slow, broody way up to the microphone, his guitar in his hands and his dark, expressive eyes turned to the crowd.

God, he was hot. Long legs, narrow hips, and broad shoulders. A t-shirt tight enough to hint at the chest and abs underneath, and jeans that didn’t do one fucking thing to hide what he was packing inside his pants.

My blood heated at the thought, but I shut it down the moment I had the thought.

Because he was also my brother’s best friend, and had been since they were kids. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d known him since I was born, more or less. He and my brother had met in kindergarten, and since Dean came from a family made up of a mother who couldn’t take care of herself, much less her kid, and a father who was rarely around and was mean when he did show up, he’d taken to my family like a fish to water. He referred to my parents as his other mom and dad and my brother as his brother.

Which, I guessed, meant he thought of me like a sister. You can see how complicated it was, then, when I started to think Dean was way too hot to be my brother.

But could you really blame me? Dean Simon was everything. Dark, tousled hair and equally dark eyes. Tattoos up and down both arms, and around his neck. Tall enough to tower over you when he was standing next to you… but not so tall that he couldn’t bend down and kiss you when the moment was right.

Not that I’d know anything about that.

That wasn’t all it was, though. Dean was one of those insanely sensitive guys who could look right through you and see exactly what you couldn’t manage to tell anyone. He’d been ferreting out my secrets—and then keeping them to himself—for years, and had become my best ally whenever I felt like the world had it out for me. He’d sat up all night talking to me about boys and clothes and whatever else teenage me had thought was important, and he’d stood up for me at school when other boys had made fun of me for my overly curly, overly red hair and the freckles that came with it. He’d told me some of his secrets in exchange for some of mine and always had a secret smile at the corner of his mouth, hidden there just for me.

And he was the most talented musician I’d ever met.

The most talented I’d ever seen perform, in a city that basically specialized in turning out talented musicians.

He’d been on the fast track to the top of the music industry in Seattle ever since he picked up a guitar, and the moment he left school—four years ago, now—the bars had started asking him to perform. It had taken next to no time for him to gain a following of fans who came to every show he played, and I’d thought it was only a matter of time before he was signed to a Real Live Record Contract.

And I was going to be there to congratulate him when it happened. I’d been at every show, front and center, and I’d been sure that the moment an agent approached him and told him the good news, he’d turn to me and sweep me off my feet, elated to be able to celebrate with the girl who’d always been part of his life.

As his best friend’s sister.

Yeah, that was the big hole in my plan, right there.

He started playing right then, though, and I lost myself in the music and magic of the show. Whoever was doing the lighting here was really good, and had caught Dean in the hazy glow of a warm spotlight. The rest of the stage was dark, which gave Dean the perfect environment for his soft, crooning style. He lifted his chin and brushed the microphone with his lips as he sang, his eyes closed and his body rocking to the beat, and before long the entire audience was singing with him, all of our voices lifted up to join the man who was bringing the music to life in front of us.

When he got to the chorus, which was about finding the person who’s been in front of you for years, he opened his eyes and looked right at me.

And I felt the entire world go still and quiet around me, the tension between us so thick I could barely breathe.

Me. He was singing this song and looking at me. And for the first time, I started to think this might actually happen. He might actually feel the same way I did. Maybe he’d been feeling that way for years and hadn’t wanted to hurt my brother by admitting it. Maybe I was still in school had given him pause but now that I was graduated, everything could start moving.

Maybe he’d just been biding his time until he thought we could make a real go of it.

My lips parted and I stared back at him, trying to put everything I was thinking into my gaze. Yes, I screamed at him. Yes, let’s try this! Yes, I’m ready!

I saw that slip of a smile at the corner of his mouth as he ended the song, and saw it get bigger, his eyes never leaving mine. And I was on the verge of moving, getting as close to the stage as I was allowed, just to see what he’d do…

When Sasha Graham went running onstage and threw herself at him.

Fucking Sasha Graham. The girl he’d been quasi-seeing for years, but who he never settled down with. I’d known about her, of course, but I’d thought they were finished with each other. I hadn’t heard her name in months.

And now she was on stage with him, practically climbing into his lap, her lips all over his neck. His eyes went wide with shock and then darted back to mine like he was trying to figure out whether I’d seen what had just happened.

As if I could have missed it. As if anyone in the entire audience could have missed it.

I shook my head slowly, the hope in my heart going up in flames. Sasha Graham. He’d never been serious about her and I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard her name in months. Maybe a year. I’d thought he was single right now. I’d thought he might finally have room in his heart for me.

And now, instead of running up on stage and jumping into his lap—or something slightly more subtle—I was turning and walking away while another girl climbed all over him.

I’d never left a Dean Simon show early. I always stayed for the encore and the after party. Always. But maybe it was time I stopped putting myself out there for a guy who obviously didn’t appreciate it.

Maybe it was time I stopped promising myself that I was going to tell him how I felt… and start promising myself that I was going to live life for myself instead of some guy who evidently didn’t want me half as much as I wanted him.

Chapter 2 – Dean

My heart lurched in my chest, and I didn’t mean that in some musician-speaking-in-poetry sort of way.

I meant it as in my heart was actually fucking lurching. I could feel it jumping around in my chest like it had forgotten how to beat right. Like it was limping along rather than beating smoothly the way it was supposed to.

Like someone had just pulled out one of its support beams and left it floundering on the ground.

Probably because Remi James had just given me the most disgusted look I’d ever seen from her, and was now walking out of my show like she had a million and one places she’d rather be.

She’d never left one of my shows early. She was always front and center, cheering her lungs out as I sang. Always the first to congratulate me afterward. And sure, I knew she had a crush on me and that some of her enthusiasm might have had something to do with that. I knew, too, that I should have said something about that crush and how wrong it was. She was my best friend’s sister. A relationship between us would never have worked, and the truth was, I just didn’t feel that way about her. But she was also one of my best friends and someone who had always been there for me.

So yeah, watching her walk away from me now? It hurt.

Like, a lot.

I came back to the real world and shoved Sasha off my lap, wrinkling my nose in disgust. Where the hell had she even come from? And why had she been allowed on stage?

“Sasha, I’m in the middle of my set,” I said firmly. “Get off the stage.”

She smirked and sidled right back up to me. “You don’t want me to leave. You called me here, remember? I’m guessing that means you must miss me.”

I fought to keep from grabbing her and hustling her right off the stage at that. Yes, I’d called her here, but I hadn’t thought she’d take that as an invitation to maul me in the middle of my show. And I certainly hadn’t called her because I missed her. We’d been dating on an off for years, now—ever since we graduated—but it had never been serious. Sasha wasn’t the sort of girl you got serious with. She didn’t have a serious bone in her body, and she was the opposite of loyal. Every second time I saw her she was with some other guy, and I’d known even when we were together that she probably had another guy on speed dial, ready to hook up after she left me.

She was the sort of girl who looked good on your arm but never made it home to meet your parents.

And the moment I realized that, I’d dumped her and told her I needed to focus on my career instead of a relationship.

The truth, of course, was that I hadn’t wanted someone like that in my life when there were other people who’d actually be there for me if and when I needed them. I hadn’t needed someone who was only using me for a night out and the bump to her reputation she got whenever people saw us together.

I’d only invited her here tonight because it was my last show in town and I’d thought she might want to see it. No part of that, though, had included an invitation right onto the stage and into my lap.

“Go backstage, Sasha,” I told her firmly. “I’ll talk to you after the show.”

And I turned and started the next song like she hadn’t even been there. Turned to the music like I always had. Turned to the songs, which wouldn’t let me down when I needed them most.

Because if this was my last show in Seattle, I was going to enjoy it for all it was worth rather than wasting my time on one more person who hadn’t thought I was quite good enough to commit to.

***

I got to the end of the last song and stood for my bow, the way I always did.

But when I looked to the front row, center stage, I found an empty space where Remi should have been, and remembered that she’d walked out after the first song. Right after Sasha showed up on stage.

And wasn’t that just fucking ironic. I’d come out tonight with one thing on my mind: finishing my career in Seattle with a bang. Putting on the best show I could manage so that my friends and family and fans would have this final night with my music. I’d wanted everyone to see it.

And my best friend had missed almost the entire thing.

Though I guessed it was fitting, considering the music industry at large had never really gone the way I wanted it to. I’d come out of high school with my eyes full of stars and my heart full of song, thinking I was going to go out into the real world and knock it dead. I was going to stun everyone with my talent and my songs, and make my career in no time flat. Get an agent and win the record contract I’d always wanted. I was going to take the world by storm.

Instead, my career had been more like a light drizzle. And sometimes not even that. I’d played show after show in Seattle and the surrounding cities, and though I had a solid following here in town, it had never amounted to much. Hell, I didn’t even get paid for my gigs. I sometimes got free drinks or food, but I didn’t make a penny from my music and had been working in the local coffee shop to make rent.

My ‘career’ hadn’t been anything like I thought it’d be.

And the disappointment, the discouragement, had cut me up so much that I’d started having more and more trouble writing new material. The well of creativity I’d always been able to dip into had dried right up, victim of the lack of success. The moment I needed new music to play at my gigs—new music to maybe attract an agent—my muse had fled.

Like I said, the irony was thick.

I’d hammered away at it for nearly ten years, thinking something would change. Someone would show up to rock my world. Literally.

And then I realized, a few weeks ago, that it was all for naught. I was singing my lungs out and ringing my brain like a sponge for new music, and why? I wasn’t going to be discovered. I wasn’t going to play a show where an agent suddenly showed up with a contract conveniently in hand. I didn’t have enough talent to stand out in the thick crowd of musicians in Seattle, and I certainly didn’t have enough talent to make any agent pay attention.

I was wasting my time, just like my mom had always told me I was.

The moment I realized that, I realized something else. It was time to start on a real life. Maybe go back to school. Get a real job. Something that would give me a more dependable paycheck. Maybe start to figure out whether I wanted to settle down with some girl rather than spending all of my available free time with my guitar.

I hadn’t had a timeline in mind then, but when I booked this show at the first bar that had ever let me use their stage, I’d thought it was fitting for this to be the last show I did.

I hadn’t told anyone.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I’d tell them. Everyone who knew me had seen me fight tooth and nail to get into the music scene, and I wasn’t sure how to tell them that I was suddenly leaving it again. I’d thought Remi might understand. I thought she might be the only one who stood by me and gave me the moral support I needed right now, when I was leaving my first love for the cold, hard, corporate world.

And instead, she’d walked out on me.

Typical.

I shoved my guitar into its case and snapped the lid shut, wondering if I even had to go out into the audience and talk to them. Could I just go home? Could I pretend none of this had happened and that the Seattle music scene hadn’t rejected me? Could I just…

What?

Just what?

I groaned. I needed to figure that part out. But doing that felt a whole lot like just…

Giving up.

I stood and glanced around the small backstage area, wondering whether there were any cabs out back, and noticed a man walking quickly toward me. A slick man. One of those shiny, rich-looking people who had more money to spend on clothes than I’d ever seen in my life. His hair was gelled to within an inch of its life and his shoes were so shiny I wondered if he’d had them lacquered.

He didn’t belong here.

He looked like…

“Dean Simon?” he asked, taking my hand and shaking it firmly. “I’ve got to say, I’d heard you were good, but man, that show was everything I’d been promised and more.”

“Um… thanks?” I said, wondering who the hell this guy was and how he knew my name. “I do what I can.”

“You certainly do, young man. You certainly do.”

And he grinned at me, like this conversation was going exactly the way he wanted it to.

This was really, really weird.

“And who are you?” I finally asked, after having waited at least three minutes for him to notice how awkward this whole thing was.

“Oh!” He slapped a hand to his breast pocket, then pulled open the jacket of his suit and yanked a business card from inside it. “That’s right, I hadn’t even introduced myself. Name’s Morris. Morris Anderson. I work with Amaryllis Records. Came all the way from Nashville just to see you.”

Chapter 3 – Remi

I opened the drawer, shoved my hands in, and pulled out everything, then turned and tossed it at the suitcase lying open on the bed. I didn’t bother to look at what I’d grabbed, and I didn’t bother to go through it and figure out whether I wanted everything.

The truth was, I was sort of worried that if I paused for long enough to think about things like that, I’d rethink what I was doing. I’d try to figure out how many pairs of underwear I actually needed for this little trip and that would start me on thinking about how long I might be gone and whether I wanted to go at all.

I didn’t have time for that sort of shit.

My best friend had evidently already started thinking along those lines, though.

“You know this isn’t how it’s supposed to go,” she said from the armchair in the corner of my room.

I cast her the most jaded look I could manage with puffy eyes and a face no doubt flushed with emotion. “And how was it supposed to go, Taylor? Did you have something else planned out?”

“Of course I did. And I’m pretty sure you did, too.”

I scoffed and turned back to the dresser, yanking out the next drawer and repeating the process of emptying it into the suitcase. “Maybe.”

Now it was her turn to snort. “Maybe. Maybe you thought you’d been hanging around with Dean your entire life and at some point he was going to notice that you were head-over-heels in love with him. Maybe at some point he’d finally realize that he was in love, too. Realize that he leaned on you more than any guy should lean on his best friend’s sister. Maybe he’d open his fucking eyes and see what was right in front of him.”

I stalked toward the closet, trying to ignore the feelings that ignited in my chest at her words. Because she was exactly right. That was exactly what I’d been waiting for.

More fool, I.

“And maybe I would have thought that and then realized how stupid it was to ever expect it of him,” I snapped, yanking things off their hangers and hurling them toward my bed. “Maybe I realized that he was too busy making out with other girls to have time to look at me.”

A long silence from the armchair in question told me Taylor knew exactly what I was talking about. In fact, now that I thought of it, I was pretty sure Taylor had told me more than once that I needed to move on with my life and stop waiting for Dean to wake up and finally see me.

I emerged from the closet and pinned her with a look. “And I’m going to take it from your silence that you know exactly how much time he’s spent making out with every other girl in town rather than me. Maybe you’re even remembering all the times you’ve told me that I deserved better and that I needed to move on and find someone who appreciated me.”

She looked down and drew her nail slowly along the arm of the chair. When she looked up, though, she was on the edge of laughing. “I don’t think he’s actually made out with all the girls in town. Just most of them.”

It was a sign of how spent I was, and how much I appreciated Taylor herself, that I laughed at that line.

And what started as a quick laugh built and built, the emotions draining out of me like they’d been looking for a reason, and in seconds Taylor was laughing too, her wide mouth stretching into a grin that I couldn’t resist. My laughter got bigger and louder, matched by hers, and soon we were both sitting on the floor howling with mirth and clutching at our stomachs, the tears streaming down our cheeks.

By the time I caught my breath, I felt a whole lot better about what I was doing. I mean sure, I was packing up all my stuff with the intention of leaving Seattle tonight. I wasn’t even taking the time to think about what I was doing or figure out whether it was the best thing for my life or not.

I’d taken one look at Dean up there on that stage with Sasha and decided that I had to get out town. I didn’t want to be in a place where I might run into him at any time, and I definitely didn’t want to take the risk of being out to dinner and seeing the two of them together. I’d dedicated enough of my life to lusting after Dean Simon. I was going to get out of town and find a place where I could live my life for myself rather than always feeling like I was on the sidelines, waiting for the coach to call me into the game.

I was crushed at the thought of leaving Seattle. This was where my friends and family were, and the place I’d thought I’d live for the rest of my life. But I’d also thought the rest of my life would look like marrying Dean and settling down to build a life together, and if that wasn’t happening, then what was the point in trying to stay here?

Seattle with Dean would have been great. Instead, I was facing Seattle without Dean, and him coming around only when he needed to talk about some of the messy complications he always seemed to bring with him.

Well, I was finally ready to consider the idea that I might not need all those complications. Sort of like I might not need Dean himself.

The plan, though, was still pretty full of holes.

“You’re sure you won’t come with me?” I asked Taylor.

She huffed. “I wish I could, but my mom would kill me dead if I dropped out of college. And then you wouldn’t even be able to call me.”

“Unless you got a phone installed in your room in hell,” I pointed out.

She stuck out her tongue and threw a pillow at me. “What makes you think I’ll be in hell? I would be a terrific angel!”

“I’ve known you long enough to know you’d never make it as an angel. Way too boring. You’d start causing trouble on your first day just to have something to do.”

She made another face, but tipped her head back and forth. “Okay, that might be true. But that’s beside the point. The important question now is where you’re going to go.”

Right. That was the important question.

And so far, I didn’t have any answers.

I didn’t exactly have anywhere I wanted to live other than Seattle. I guessed that was probably due to the fact that I’d never thought I’d leave. I mean Portland seemed nice but it was way too close to Seattle. Too good a chance that I’d run into Dean by mistake there.

I needed someplace far away. Someplace he’d never go.

I pulled out the map I’d bought during US history when I hadn’t been able to visualize where the Civil War had taken place and laid it out on the bed. The continental US, right there. All the places I could go. All the cities I could choose.

None of them looked any better than any others.

“You sure you want to stay in the US?” Taylor asked. “I always thought it would be nice to move to Paris.”

“It would be nice for you to move to Paris,” I corrected. Taylor looked like someone who would live abroad. Taller than me by several inches, she had long blond hair and a face that could have taken her to the runway if she wasn’t more interested in breaking the rules than following them. She was flat-out gorgeous.

She’d have fit right in on the streets that brought us Coco Chanel.

But me? I was shorter, curvier, and a whole lot more American. Curly red hair, pale skin, and too many freckles.

Well, I guessed I could have been Irish. But I wasn’t, and I had no intent of moving overseas.

“I’d have to wait for a passport even to go there,” I pointed out. “And then it would be a whole citizenship thing. No thank you. I want somewhere at least a little bit closer to home. Even better if I have a contact there.”

“Right.” Taylor looked at me, squinted a little, and then closed her eyes and slammed her finger down on the map.

When we looked down, we found that she was pointing at Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee, to be specific.

I didn’t know anything about the town. I mean I’d heard of it, sure, but that was it.

“Nashville?” I asked doubtfully.

Taylor was bouncing up and down in excitement, evidently a lot more excited about Nashville than I was. “It’s perfect!” she chirped. “Far enough away that you won’t randomly run into Dean in the supermarket. Close enough that it’ll just be a flight back. I can come visit you all the time, and you can come see your parents if you want to. Plus…” She made big eyes at me, the way she always did when she had big news.

I gulped. Taylor’s idea of big news could sometimes mean she was about to get me in very big trouble.

“What?” I asked suspiciously.

She leaned forward and dropped her voice a bit. “Plus, I know someone in Nashville! Which means I can give you a contact. Maybe even get you couch to crash on until you get your feet under you. Bonus: He’s in music. Works for some big label back there. I bet he can hook you up with a job, pronto.”

I closed my mouth and stared at her, then dove into her lap and wrapped my arms around her neck.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I breathed.

Because I didn’t want to be leaving Seattle. I was scared out of my wits and didn’t know how I was going to carry this off. I didn’t have Taylor’s confidence or Dean’s ability to charm people into doing whatever he wanted, and I’d never been by myself.

But if Tay was going to give me a contact who’d let me crash on his couch for a couple weeks and maybe even get me a job…

And it took me hundreds of miles from Seattle and the complicated and utterly doomed situation with Dean…

God, this might actually work. I might actually get my own life on track and start figuring out how to live for myself rather than for a guy who’d never even noticed me.

Chapter 4 – Dean

I took a long sip of my coffee, trying to remember how to breathe, and of course doing those two things at the same time meant I managed to forget how to swallow.

I jerked forward, coughing, and nearly spat coffee all over the man in front of him.

The man currently talking to me about how far I wanted to take my music career and what my ultimate plans were. Morris Anderson, who worked for Amaryllis Records and had come all the way to Seattle to see me perform.

I coughed and hacked, knowing how ridiculous I had to look. I was betting my face was turning red and my eyes were getting bloodshot, and now everyone in the small coffee shop was probably staring at me like I’d been possessed by a demon.

Even better; these were the people I worked with on a daily basis. I’d taken Morris’ card and then realized that we needed to get out of the bar where I’d performed if I had a prayer of actually being able to hear anything he had to say. When he asked where we were going, my mind had gone completely blank, so I’d said the first thing that finally made its way through my thick skull.

The result being that we were now sitting in the coffee shop where I made the money that paid for my rent every month.

Look, it wasn’t the worst thing. I knew this place like the back of my hand and knew everyone in here, which meant I could not only supply the man with coffee while looking like I’d paid for it, but also know pretty much what to expect in terms of foot traffic. I’d never met an agent before—or any record company exec—but I was guessing they probably didn’t go places unless they had something important to say to the people they were going to meet there. And I wanted to hear what Morris had to say to me.

So a place that didn’t get a lot of foot traffic and wasn’t as loud as the bar sounded like a very good idea.

Of course now I had everyone behind the bar watching me with their breath held. Every single person in this place knew how hard I’d been working toward getting a meeting with someone like Morris. They might not know who he was, exactly, but it was easy to see he was important. They were most likely on pins and needles to see how the meeting went.

Honestly, it wasn’t the worst thing to know I had at least five people behind the bar cheering for me.

Though it was also making me even more nervous than I had been before.

“So what I’m saying,” Morris said, continuing the conversation we’d been having, “is that I’d like to give you a very special opportunity.”

“Opportunity?”

Did that mean contract? Wasn’t a contract an opportunity? Though if he’d meant contract, why hadn’t he just said so?

Stop thinking and listen, Dean, I told myself firmly. There was no reason to sit here guessing at what might be going on when the man was literally about to tell me.

Morris smiled like he knew exactly what I was thinking, and for about the fifth time I wondered whether all agents were this schmoozy. Seriously, the guy looked like he had oil running through his veins. I guessed he was good-looking, for an older guy, but I was guessing he’d used about half a bottle of hair gel in his hair, and unless I was much mistaken, there was actual metallic thread woven into the pinstripes of his suit.

He didn’t look like someone who’d want anything to do with Real Live Musicians.

Oh God, I suddenly realized, what if he didn’t? What if he wasn’t here for anything important or useful, but just some sort of salesman? Was I about to hear a pitch about the best knives money could buy, that could cut aluminum cans in one clean move?

Shit.

“Opportunity,” he confirmed.

Better not be an opportunity to join an organization that sold super-special toothpaste, I thought bitterly. This better be something more than a pyramid scheme. I’d been working too hard for too long. The universe fucking owed me.

“What sort of opportunity?”

The smile turned even smarmier. “Not a record contract. Not quite. But an opportunity to audition for one.”

“Huh?” I asked. Proving, I thought, how terrific I was with words and what great lyrics I wrote.

But I was confused. Why did I want to audition for them? What was that going to get me?

“An audition,” he continued, settling down and becoming more businesslike. “It’s not the same as getting signed, but it’ll give you a shot. See, Amaryllis is looking for the next big thing. Their next superstar. They’ve sent a bunch of us out into the cities to listen to local musicians and find the diamonds in the rough. When we find someone we think might actually make it, we bring them back and set up an audition. And if you impress them with that audition…”

He shrugged like the end of that sentence should be obvious.

“Then what?” I almost whispered.

“Then, a contract.”

Oh my God.

My heart started pounding so hard I wondered if he could hear it, and I tried to take deep breaths to settle myself down. A contract. An audition that could lead to a contract. If I was good enough. If I impressed them.

Holy fucking hell, this was it. This was the break I’d been waiting for. The agent who strolled into one of my gigs, liked what he saw, and decided to hand me the opportunity of a lifetime.

And I’d been sitting here cursing him out in my brain because I was sure he was going to pitch the next great pyramid scheme and tell me it was only $3000 to buy in at the bottom.

“So an audition, and if it’s good enough, a contract,” I confirmed, watching him closely for any sign that he was lying.

He pulled a stack of papers out of his jacket pocket and slapped them on the table. “Exactly. The thing about the music industry is that everyone knows what’s out there. Everyone is gunning for the same artists. But Amaryllis likes to find the undiscovered. They like to show up with something entirely new. It gives artists like you a shot at something big and gives Amaryllis the advantage of surprising the rest of the industry. Plus it’s great publicity.”

That… made a whole lot of sense.

I looked down at the stack of papers in front of me and then back up at him. “So what is this? I thought you said this wasn’t a contract.”

“This is the agreement for the audition. It says what you’re getting and what you can and can’t expect from them. Lots of fine print and I’d suggest you have a lawyer look it over before you sign. I can’t get you a lot of time, though. I’ll need this back by noon tomorrow if you want to go through with it.”

My breath grew a whole lot shorter at that. Not a contract, but a signed something for my audition. Legalese. I had a friend who was in law school, so it wouldn’t be hard to have someone look it over, but this was big. This was huge.

Like, way too big to all fit into my heart at once.

Though I didn’t think that was the sort of thing I could tell Morris Anderson.

“Right,” I said firmly. I took the stack of paper and stood up. “In that case, I guess I’ll meet you here again at noon tomorrow.”

He stood up as well and gave me a firm nod, his face serious now that he’d given his elevator pitch. “That works for me. And Dean?” He paused to make sure I was paying attention, then leaned closer to me and dropped his voice. “Don’t be late. This might not be a contract but it’s a very big deal, and I can’t wait. I have a little wager with a couple of the other reps, and I want to win. I’m going to take home the best act I can find. I’m hoping that’s you, but if you’re late, I’ll find someone else.”

He turned and left without waiting for an answer to that. Which was fine, really, because i couldn’t imagine what I would have said.

I knew this was a big opportunity, and I wasn’t planning to waste it.

But right now, I needed to get home and get advice from my team.

***

“A contract?” Sasha squealed, holding the papers to her chest and looking at me like I’d just become a million times more valuable to her. “Are you serious?”

“Not a contract,” I corrected, wondering how the hell she’d gotten into my apartment in the first place. “A chance to audition for a contract.”

She squealed even louder and started jumping up and down.

Which was pretty much the opposite of what I needed right now. I’d read through the paperwork on the bus home and knew what was in there. The company was in Nashville, Tennessee, and I had to do the audition in person. I also had to be there relatively soon. They wouldn’t send a rep here and they’d take the opportunity away if I wasn’t there within the next two weeks. I’d spent so much of my life praying for a chance just like this, but now that it was here…

I was going to have to get all the way to Nashville on what little savings I had, then put on the performance of my life in front of complete strangers.

No problem.

“An audition I have to go all the way to Nashville for,” I continued.

Sasha’s forehead creased. “Where’s Nashville?”

Oh my God. I tried to remember what I’d ever seen in this girl. It certainly hadn’t been her brain. “Tennessee,” I clarified. “It’s in the south. On the other side of the country.”

The frown got even bigger, then suddenly cleared. “You’re going to have to travel!” Her face turned crafty and flirty, and she sidled up to me and rubbed herself against my side. “Want some company? Every good musician needs a groupie or two to keep his bed warm at night, after all.”

I was going to throw up.

I’d just received the chance of a lifetime and instead of celebrating, I was going to throw up because my ex-girlfriend had just realized that I might get a contract and she wanted in on the action.

I pushed her gently away and shook my head. “No thanks. I’m not sure this is the sort of situation where I can take an entourage.”

More forehead wrinkling.

“A group of people to support me,” I clarified.

But her question had brought up a good point. Surely I wouldn’t be blamed if I took someone. It was a long trip and I’d need advice while I was there. Someone to help me prepare. It wasn’t out of line to want one person with me, was it?

The truth was, I did want someone with me. Sasha wasn’t that person, though.

Remi was.

I managed to convince Sasha that I wasn’t going to make any decisions tonight, and then managed to get her through the door and on the way to her own apartment. I told her I needed to sleep on it and that I’d call her in the morning to let her know what I’d decided.

The minute she was out the door, I grabbed my phone and hit the first number on my speed dial.

Because I did want advice tonight. I wanted to know what someone else thought of this whole thing. And I didn’t want that advice from my manager or the guys I practiced with or even the guy who’d been my best friend since I was born.

I wanted that advice from Remi.

Chapter 5 – Remi

I lifted my chin up, threw my shoulders back, and walked quickly out of the elevator and into the entirely too colorful lobby of the hotel in Nashville.

This place was way too much. Like, way too much.

It wasn’t glitzy like I would have expected if I’d spent a lot of money to stay in New York City or anything like that, but it was very big, the lobby’s ceiling several stories above my head, and very colorful, with too many couches, armchairs, and tables to count. The whole place was a combination of blocks of color and glass fixtures, and when combined with the overly bright lights, it made the whole place…

Too much.

I never would sprung for a place like this on my own, but Taylor had already hooked me up with her contact and between the two of them, they’d managed to get me not only a hotel but also a rental car, free of charge. I wasn’t using the latter, partially because I hated driving in cities I didn’t know and partially because it wasn’t necessary. The hotel, thank God, was within walking distance of everywhere I might want to go. I’d asked last night when I checked in, and it turned out that this hotel’s location—downtown Nashville—was right next to not only the financial and commercial district but also the Art District, where they evidently kept their restaurants and music venues.

Which meant, the guy at the desk helpfully told me, that I could not only walk to the building that housed the record company where Taylor’s friend worked but also places where I could eat, drink, and listen to music.

I’d never put much thought into what Nashville was like before, but I was starting to think this was exactly my kind of town. No, I hadn’t met Tay’s contact yet so I didn’t know whether that was going to lead anywhere or not, but if I could walk from work to a restaurant to a show all within a couple of minutes…

That wasn’t the worst thing.

I strolled through the lobby, trying to get my head around me actually even being here and what I needed to do next. I’d had breakfast in the room—room service was new enough to me that I wasn’t sure I’d ever get tired of it—and then showered and put on some makeup, plus my best jeans and nicest blouse. And now I was going to make my way out into the city itself and try to find Amaryllis Records, because my interview was this morning.

An interview with Tiger Williams.

That’s right, his name was Tiger. As in the animal that probably liked to eat girls like me for dinner, with a side of antelope.

It wasn’t his real name, Taylor had assured me, though she didn’t know what his real name actually was or why he was called Tiger instead. In fact, when I started questioning her, it turned out she didn’t know all that much about him. She couldn’t exactly place what school he’d gone to or how long he’d worked for Amaryllis, though she told me he was older than us by at least ten years. She also hadn’t wanted to tell me how she knew this guy.

That was the part that had struck me as odd, too, because Taylor never missed an opportunity to tell me how she’d met a guy. And what she’d done with him. And how many times and where, and whether she thought she’d be doing that again.

So basically I was going to an interview with a guy I knew nothing about, who my friend barely wanted to admit even knowing, in a city I didn’t know and with no one there to watch my back.

Sure, there was a chance I was about to be sex trafficked. But there was also a chance I was about to get a job in the music industry in a town far, far away from Dean Simon and all his complicated, broody non-feelings.

As long as we were meeting in a public place, I figured I was probably okay. Besides, what sort of sex trafficking ring operated out of an office building in downtown Nashville?

I knew the answer to that. I knew how those sorts of operations used places that were basically out in the open. And I was very specifically not thinking about that. Because potential career in the music industry.

I brushed through the sliding glass doors and out onto the sidewalk, and looked around, trying to get my bearings. The spot where I was currently standing looked pretty much like any other financial district in any other city. I mean, as far as I knew. But further down, I could see the old-fashioned buildings starting. Brown brick and paint, and more color. More artwork.

That, I thought, was where I was heading. Maybe not this morning, but once this meeting was done. That was where I’d find the Art District and all its restaurants, bars, and music venues.

That was where I might find my new home.

I took a deep breath and looked down at my phone, doing a quick mental map of what it was telling me. The record company I was about to interview with wasn’t here or there. It looked like it was somewhere in between the artsy district and the financial district—which made sense, I guessed. They were a business that made money off music. They needed to have a foot in both worlds.

I just hoped they’d have room for me to stand with them. Because now that I was hundreds of miles from home and currently without any form of income, I was painfully aware of how alone I was. And how broke.

***

Tiger Williams was terrifying.

I mean, not like I walked in and he threatened to kill me or anything like that. He was perfectly non-murdery. But he was probably the most intense person I’d ever met in my life. Shockingly handsome, he had dark hair and eyes and an expression that would have been at home on Lucifer’s face, if you’d ever met him on the street. The guy looked like he could stare with laser beams and had done so at least once before.

So okay, maybe he was kind of murdery. But not toward me.

He heard that I was Taylor’s best friend and that I was the one she’d sent for a job and laughed, saying something about her owning him a big favor and him counting on her to pay it. I didn’t know what that meant but it sort of scared me on her behalf.

Then he told me he did have a job for me and that I’d be working with one of his assistants. He let me out of his office—thank God—and introduced me to the assistant, one Lala Amos.

Honestly, my first thought when I met her was that this company evidently only hired people who were almost too beautiful to look at. Lala looked like a freaking supermodel, her long, dark hair framing a face that could have belonged to a Greek goddess. No wonder Taylor was involved with this company.

My second thought was that Lala’s personality did not match her face.

She watched Tiger walk away from us, having dropped me unceremoniously in her office and then turned to me and made one of those faces your mom always told you would stick if you made them too often. “He’s such a prick,” she said casually. “Did he try to kill you with his eyes full of fucking darts?”

I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to say at first. I was in Tennessee facing one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen. I’d expected her to be full of southern charm or something.

Instead, she cussed and insulted her boss.

I felt the smile creeping over my face without me telling it to. “I was thinking they were more like laser beams than darts.”

She nodded, impressed. “Laser beams. I like that.” Then she leaned in, her face turning crafty. “They don’t work, you know. He’s tried to use them on me before in a number of different situations and nothing ever actually happened. He’s all bluff.”

“I’d rather not find out, honestly. So what am I going to be doing for you?”

She laughed loudly. One of those big belly laughs that made you want to join in. “Your first job is to come to the bar with me tonight. Your assignment: Drink. Eat. Be merry. Listen to music.”

Okay what?

***

Lala, it turned out, believed in learning on the job. She was also wilder than anybody I had ever met in my entire life. And that included Taylor, who, although she liked to pretend to be wild and crazy, was at least a little bit practical when it came down to it.

Lala, on the other hand, seemed as though she had never fully gotten past that whole college-girl-drinks-too-much stage. The moment we walked into the bar where the show was happening, she directed me toward the bar and gestured to the tender. I hadn’t been planning to drink but I watched, fascinated, as he waved like he had known her for a long time and strolled over the moment he was finished helping the customer he’d been with.

“Two martinis,” she said quickly.

I opened my mouth to tell her that I didn’t actually drink martinis, but one look at her face, which was determined and excited, told me that it would be a lost cause.

So I guessed I drank martinis now. Honestly there were worse things than sitting here with a glamours record exec drinking a martini. Sort of sophisticated.

I’d definitely come a long way from Seattle.

When she turned back to me, drinking hand, she lifted it for a toast. “To your new job,” she said quickly.

Wait. I hadn’t even interviewed yet. “I got the job already?”

Lalo laughed. “If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have brought you out. Now here’s what we’re going to do tonight.” And she proceeded to outline the event and how it would go. My job, evidently, was going to be social media manager for a few acts signed to Amaryllis Records. I would be in charge of traveling with the band or artist, journaling their entire experience, and then parceling it out into quotes for social media, blogs, and the like. Even interviews if the opportunity arose. I would be managing the artists in their day-to-day life, but not having to deal with anything as complicated as contracts. Those were the actual managers’ problem.

So essentially, I would have all the fun and none of the responsibility.

I liked it.

Honestly, it sounded like what I had been doing for Dean for years. I’d always tagged along with him and handled any reporters who showed up. And I’d basically created his entire social media presence all by myself, and then fielded any questions that came through those routes. He’d been so useless at all of it that the one time I’d tried to turn it over to him he’d gotten into several fights with other people and gotten himself kicked off one of the biggest platforms around.

I hadn’t made that mistake again.

At the thought of the boy I had left behind, my heart sank just a little. I missed him. We had grown up together, and he had always been my best friend. The one I had confided in before I told any of my other friends. The one I had gone to for advice, and the one I had turned to when I needed someone to save me. Being here without him and experiencing this wild nightlife, and all the music flooding the bar, felt like I was trying to enjoy it with only half my heart.

Of course, he probably wasn’t thinking of me at all. He was probably back home doing something with Sasha, having forgotten entirely that I even existed. He certainly hadn’t been worried about me when he let her climb into his lap the last time I saw him.

The thought brought me back to earth, and I felt my heart go cold. Sasha. Of course he had her on the stage with him rather than me. Of course she had been the one he wanted to share that with. Because why would it be me when I was just his best friend’s sister? The girl he thought of as family, and nothing more?

I put him out of my mind and turned toward the stage, where the band was going through its soundcheck. A traditional three-piece, and from the look of them, they were country artists, all cowboy boots and plaid shirts, hunky man chests peeking out from beneath them.

Exactly my type.

I grinned at the thought and reached into my back pocket to grab my phone, which was vibrating. When I looked at the screen, I saw that it had been vibrating for some time. I had twenty missed calls, all of them from Dean.

Because now, evidently, he’d decided he couldn’t leave me alone.

I switch the phone off and put it back in my pocket. Dean had chosen Sasha over me. And now I was choosing my future over him.

Chapter 6 – Dean

I pulled the phone away from my ear and scowled at it, then growled for good measure.

Like that would do anything to fix the problem. It hadn’t done anything the last twenty times I’d tried her. And yes, a part of me knew that I was acting like a fucking caveman and wasting my time with growling at a harmless tech device.

But it made me feel better to growl.

Where the fuck was she? I’d been calling her since I got home last night, on the edge of my seat to tell her my news, and my calls had gone straight to voicemail every single time. At first, I’d been really worried about her. Remi always answered her phone, even if it was the middle of the night and she was in bed. She never put anyone straight to voicemail.

Especially me.

Look, I didn’t want to sound all full of myself or anything but she’d been answering my calls on the first ring ever since she got her first phone. She ducked out of whatever she was doing just to take my call, even if she knew I couldn’t possibly need her for much.

And I guessed I’d gotten too used to that. Because this whole thing where she didn’t take my call? It didn’t make any sense to me. I knew it was happening, but it didn’t compute. It didn’t make sense. My brain refused to believe it could be happening.

So for pretty much all of last night, I’d been convinced something must have happened. It was the only possible answer. She’d been in a car crash or something. She’d been walking home and had been kidnapped by some guys wearing masks. Forced to run away with the circus. Sent overseas to become some exotic belly dancer for a foreign prince or something.

Okay, okay, thinking about it with some distance, I realized how insane that sounded. How overdramatic.

I mean Remi didn’t dance.

But that didn’t change the fact that I was worried about her. I’d barely been able to sleep all night, and had even called one of my friends in the police department to check and see whether they had her in lockup or something.

They didn’t, in case you were wondering.

I also called her brother. Sam and I had been best friends since we were basically in the womb. We’d gone through everything together, from first soccer matches (great for him, terrible for me) to first girlfriends (basically the same), and we told each other everything. I couldn’t image ever having a secret that I didn’t tell him.

So I led in with the fact that I’d been offered an audition with a record company in Nashville. I told him about the agent I’d talked to and the deal we’d made, and how incredibly excited I was. I told him that I’d planned the show I just finished to be my last one, having given up on the music scene, but that I now had the light at the end of the tunnel. The one I’d been looking for.

He’d been over the moon with excitement for me. Like, shouting and jumping up and down. I knew, because I could hear the sound of him crashing around in his room. He’d been even more excited than I was.

And then I told him that I wanted to tell Remi all about it, but couldn’t find her, and asked if he knew where she was. And he stopped jumping and shut up so quickly I thought the call might have dropped.

“Samuel?” I asked hesitantly. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

Right. This was weird.

“Okay good. So… your sister? Do you know where she is?”

He paused for a long moment. “Yep.”

My frown deepened. I’d never had a conversation like this with him before, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. “And…?”

“And honestly, Dean, I think it’s best if you leave her alone for a bit. She needs to find her own way, and she’s never going to do that if she’s constantly following you around like a lost puppy. Especially if you’re going to treat her like a puppy you wish someone else would adopt.”

Now my jaw dropped open in absolute shock. Sam thought I needed to leave her alone?

He thought I treated her like a puppy?

A puppy I wished someone else would adopt?

Nothing could be further from the truth. After all, if I wanted someone else to adopt her, why the hell would I be so desperate to get in touch with her right now? She was one of my best friends and the only person I could count on to be really honestly with me about this whole record contract thing. She’d been with me since the first day I picked up a guitar. I needed her feedback and advice, here!

But when I said all that, thinking that surely Sam would come around, his tone just got even firmer. “This is exactly what I mean, Dean. I haven’t said anything for a long time because I thought she knew what she was doing, but she can’t keep putting her life on hold for you. It’s not her job to just be there for you whenever you need a warm body. Let her go, man. If it’s meant to be, she’ll find her way back.”

And he’d hung up on me.

He hadn’t been answering his phone ever since. It was like the entire James family had decided to block my calls. I’d lost both of my best friends in one blow, and I didn’t even understand why it had happened.

Worst of all, I hadn’t had time to stick around and try to figure it out. Morris had only given me until noon to get the contract approved by a lawyer and back to him, so my morning had been taken up with my pre-law friend—who thought the contract looked just fine—and a trip back to the bar, where I met with Morris, thanked him again (possibly too much) and signed the paperwork with him.

Then he’d given me the even better news: I only had a week. A week to get to Nashville, do the audition, and win the record contract I wanted.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. That’s the prime opportunity for some good old-fashioned panic, right? I had to get to Nashville in time to practice and get comfortable there, come up with audition material, and play the audition of my life. In a city I’d never been to before and one in which I didn’t know a single living soul.

But I didn’t panic, because that just wasn’t my gig. I’d known from a young age what I wanted to do with my life and had learned early on that working toward that goal with single-minded drive was the only way to get things done. I’d trained myself to keep my focus on the end goal and squash any and all panic that came my way. Find the solution. Find the path to the goal. That was what I did.

This couldn’t be any different.

So I’d shaken Morris’ hand, thanked him again—pathetic, I know—and asked if I’d see him in Nashville at the audition. He’d told me he wouldn’t miss it—after all, he had to collect his winnings from the other reps—and handed me another card with the name and address of the recording company. He’d also told me who to ask for and what day and time to be there.

And then he’d turned and walked out of the bar like he hadn’t just dropped a bomb at my feet and left before it exploded.

I picked up the bomb, snuffed out the spark, and started figuring out how the hell I was going to get to Nashville in a hurry, and for as little money as possible.

***

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned, sitting up taller in my seat to try to see further on the road. Of course there was traffic here, when there almost never was. Of course there was some blockage on the road ahead of us. Probably a landslide or something equally rustic and stupid.

Fucking Oregon.

I had an hour until the flight left Portland and was still at least half an hour from town, and I was kicking myself. The only flight going to Nashville from our area today was from Portland, not Seattle, and though it hadn’t been convenient, I’d decided to just drive the three hours to get here rather than waiting until tomorrow and taking the flight from Seattle.

Now I was questioning that decision. Because if I missed this fight and had to go back up to Seattle for tomorrow’s flight, I’d lose not only a full day but also the $500 I’d shelled out to get on this flight in the first place.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” I said, smacking the steering wheel. I couldn’t afford mistakes like this! I needed to be in Nashville like now, already in a hotel room and practicing! All this stress…

Honestly, none of this would have happened if Remi had been with me. The girl was superhuman at things like organization and could magic any situation to smooth it out if you gave hr five minutes of quiet space. She’d solved more problems for me than I could count, and I was guessing that if she’d been in town—or answering my calls—she would have found us a flight out of a closer city that required almost no driving.

Hell, she probably would have had us in First Class, drinking champagne all the way to Nashville.

And I wouldn’t have been doing this on my own. I wouldn’t have been in my crappy old Forerunner with a list of my songs running through my head as I tried to figure out which one would be best for this audition. I certainly wouldn’t have been humming the songs to myself, trying to remember whether any of them brought out better emotion and depth into my voice.

Remi would already have told me which song was best and why, and given me several backups. She would have made suggestions about how to act at the audition and who to befriend, and I would know that she was going to be right there with me as I put on the biggest performance of my life.

Instead, I was stuck in traffic just north of Portland, a big audition on the horizon, and a brain that seemed to be incapable of doing anything but wondering where the hell Remi James was and why she wasn’t answering my calls when I needed her.

Chapter 7 – Remi

“Are you serious?” I asked, staring at Lala. She was standing over my desk like some sort of avenging angel, a ridiculous grin on her face.

Or… Well, ‘avenging angel’ wasn’t quite right, I guessed, because she wasn’t avenging anything. She was giving me the best news of my life.

“Girl, do you think I’d say it if I wasn’t serious?” She slid into the chair on the other side of my desk, propped her elbow on my desk, and rested her chin on her hand. The grin didn’t slide. In fact, if I wasn’t mistaken, it was getting bigger.

“Honestly, I don’t think so, but I also don’t exactly know,” I told her, trying to keep calm. “I mean I’ve only known you for like a day. Maybe you’re the kind of person who tells mean jokes for fun.”

She made a face at me. “Stop it right now. I need you to be serious about this, because it’s a big fucking deal.”

That seemed like a pretty big understatement, honestly. Because she’d just told me that I had my first assignment. Amaryllis was a big enough company that they not only signed the artists they wanted whenever they wanted to but also held auditions for new talent. They weren’t exactly open auditions—no chaos and public embarrassments—but they did mean someone was coming in that hadn’t really been vetted yet. And those auditions happened a lot. The reps and agents went out on the road and handpicked the talent they found out there, providing them with the chance to come in and audition for Amaryllis. If the audition went well, the artist or band had a shot at a recording contract.

That was a chance most musicians would sell their souls for. I knew enough of them in Seattle to know that for a fact. Those people loved the music and the art of it all, but almost across the board, their lifelong dream was to sign a recording contract. Make a record. Go out on the road and tour, courtesy of a music label.

It was the dream.

I couldn’t imagine how they felt when a rep from Amaryllis approached them after a show and gifted them with that sort of opportunity. They would go insane. And most of them probably didn’t have the right team around them to give the advice they needed. It would take legal advice, for one, and friends who would tell them the truth about whether someone was a good idea or bad idea. And that was before they even got to the auditioning part.

My mind was still spinning at the fact that Amaryllis did this at all. And now Lala was telling me that I was going to be involved in a couple auditions coming up. They needed to put together a variety of listeners to give the talent scouts a better idea of whether they’d struck gold with a musician or not. No, I wasn’t high up in the company—yet—but word had evidently spread that I knew what I was talking about when it came to music and independent artists.

Honestly, that word spreading had probably been courtesy of Lala, who’d been asking me nonstop questions about the Seattle music scene since we met.

And now she was giving me my first shot to impress the higher-ups.

I was not only going to get to go to some of the auditions and give my opinion, but also choose which of the artists I’d want to work with, if they were signed to the company. Basically, I got to listen to the auditions and help decide whether we’d sign each act, and then decide which of them I wanted to work with.

This was an amazing opportunity.

And man, did I want it.

I’d only been here a day and I already loved the company. Most of the people working here were on the younger side and I’d yet to meet someone I didn’t think was a genius. Lala had walked me around the very colorful, very vibrant floor on which we worked, and everyone had been whip smart about the music industry. I’d heard theories on how to find good acts, what to do with them once you found them, and how to make sure they got the publicity they needed. I’d had an hour-long conversation with a girl who did the same job I’d been hired for, who was moving up to management, and she’d filled my head full of ideas for both social media and blogging. Ways to get more attention for my artist.

Ways to make sure they succeeded.

“The thing is,” she’d said, totally serious. “If they succeed, you succeed. If they get to move up and go on bigger tours, that means you’re going with them, and you’re both getting noticed by the people who sign the checks. They’re producing music that draws an audience and you’re making sure the audience knows what’s going on. You might start out not knowing the person at all, not even knowing their name, but within the first week you’re partners. You’re soul mates. You’re in it together. And there’s nothing like that. Being out on the road with someone who’s fighting just as hard as you for the same thing…”

She shook her head like she didn’t have the words to describe it, and I tipped my head.

“If you love it so much, why did you take the promotion? Why give up that feeling?”

She gave me a cocky grin. “Because when you’re offered a promotion in this company, you take it. I have my eye on the top floor, Rem. And this is how we get there.”

I’d left the conversation even more excited than I had been before. I loved the idea of going on tour with an artist and teaming up with them to make sure we were both successful at our jobs. And I loved even more the thought of moving up in the company. Sure, I’d asked her why she’d taken the promotion if she loved the position so much, but I could see exactly why she’d do it.

This was the sort of company where you spent your entire career, and if you were lucky enough to move high up in the company, it meant you could spend the rest of your life influencing the music industry itself. Deciding who to put out and where they’d get to tour. You’d spend your career surrounded by music and art and talented people. Helping them get their music out there to the public.

There was nothing better than that.

And it would all start with those auditions. I didn’t know how many I was going to or what sort of artists I’d see, but I could already see how important this was. If we found some good talent and signed a couple different artists, I’d get my pick of who I wanted to travel with. That would be my second test; not only helping the scouts decide who should get a contract but also making my own decision about who I thought would be most successful. That was the person I’d want to hitch my wagon to, so to speak. For me to succeed, I needed someone who was going to blow the socks off every audience they came across—and who would work with me on the social media stuff to make the most of our publicity opportunities.

They’d be counting on me to get that publicity, and I’d be counting on them to be good enough to deserve it.

Choosing the right act was going to be important.

But I was positive I could do it. After all, I’d been doing that for years in Seattle. I just hadn’t been getting paid for it.

Chapter 8 – Dean

I can do this, I kept telling myself.

I mean it was just music. Just me and my guitar and a microphone—at least I assumed there would be a mic—and an audience. I’d been doing that since I was fourteen. Younger, if you counted me performing for my friends and the James family. I’d had people watching me for years. This was nothing new.

This was nothing complicated or scary or stressful.

And yet.

I’d never, ever performed in front of music execs and scouts, at least not that I’d known about at the time. And I’d never been literally singing for my supper—or, in this case, the chance to win a record contract. I’d never been pulled across the country to a completely new city and given three days to get ready for the biggest performance of my life. I’d definitely never walked into a building as big as this one and gone to the security desk with my guitar case on my back, to ask for Morris Anderson.

“I think he’s expecting me,” I said, trying to get my voice under control. God, was it actually shaking right now? What the fuck was going on here? I was acting like a kid on his first day at a brand new high school.

Maybe because I felt like a kid on his first day at a new high school.

Worse than that. I felt like a fish out of water. I’d grown up in the Seattle music scene and knew all aspects of it, including who ran the best music venues and how to get in touch with the bouncers you needed at your shows. What was more; people in Seattle knew me. I didn’t have to introduce myself or hope they’d give me a chance. I knew they would. I had history there, and a solid record.

I’d been known.

Here in Nashville, I was nothing but one more artist trying to get a record contract with the biggest game in town. And all the confidence I’d felt since Morris handed me that contract had evaporated in the wind.

God, I wished Remi was with me. I would have given anything to have her at my side, her body lending its warmth to my cold skin. Her bright eyes laughing with me at the security guard who looked like he didn’t believe me about knowing Morris Anderson.

Her quick brain stepping in to save me when I froze.

I wondered where she was, and what she was doing. Why she still hadn’t returned any of my texts or phone calls. God, I hoped she was okay. I hoped she was safe and happy and doing something she loved.

I mean, not all of me hoped that. Part of me definitely hoped she was missing me just as much as i missed her, and that a piece of her heart was broken and empty with my absence.

But mostly I hoped she was okay. And safe.

The security guard, who had definitely been looking at me like I might be casing the joint to try to rob it later, picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Mr. Anderson, I’ve got a man here asking for you.”

His eyes didn’t leave mine.

It would have been funny if I wasn’t feeling so stressed.

“What’s your name?” he asked me sharply.

Oh, right. “Dean Simon,” I said, feeling pretty fucking stupid for not having led with that.

“Dean Simon,” he said into the phone, sounding like he thought that was probably a fake name, given by someone who was obviously up to no good.

God, if security was this tight, what was it going to be like when I was face-to-face with someone who actually had power?

The guard’s eyes got narrow and his brow wrinkled, his lips growing tight. He nodded and hung up without saying anything else, and then turned his eyes back to me. “Right, I guess you’re expected after all,” he said, looking like this was the worst news he’d had all day. “Elevators are on the right. You’ll want the twenty-first floor. Ask the receptionist for Morris.”

“Thank you,” I breathed.

And then I turned and left before he could decide that he didn’t want me going up, after all.

But as I walked toward the elevator, I started to smile to myself. I was in the lobby of the world-famous Amaryllis Records building. I was here to meet with a scout. And I was going to play my fucking heart out, because I wanted the contract that might be at the end of this particular rainbow.

I mean I’d gotten past that dick of a security guard. Surely it would just get easier from here on out.

***

It didn’t get easier. It didn’t get simpler, and it definitely didn’t get any less complicated.

Because I wasn’t auditioning in front of Morris by himself. I was auditioning in front of at least twenty people. They were all sitting in two rows of seats that made up a sort of amphitheater in the room the receptionist had shown me into, and though I had a stage and a microphone, just like I’d hoped for, I also felt like I’d showed up to that first day of school at a brand new high school wearing nothing but fluorescent yellow boxers.

I sat down and tried to focus on the guitar in my lap and the microphone in front of me. I didn’t know who all those people were but I couldn’t think about them right now. It would just get into my head and make me nervous, and I had a very bad habit of forgetting lyrics when I was nervous.

Humming along with my own music would not win me my contract.

Still. I knew what I was doing. Just focus on the guitar. Focus on the chords and the strings and the feel of the breath in my lungs. This wasn’t my first rodeo. Sure, there were a lot of people in that audience I didn’t know. But really, was that any different from any other show? An audience full of strangers?

Easy.

I almost snorted with the thought, and everything came back online so quickly that it nearly made me dizzy. All the confidence I’d been missing snapped into place, and my fingers started to find their places on the strings of my guitar. I knew how to do this. I’d done it about a million times. I knew these songs like I knew how to smile or love, and as long as I started off correctly, the music would come to me the same way it always had.

This might be a more important show than any I’d ever performed, but that didn’t change the music or the process. I just needed to focus on that.

I looked up at the audience and started making eye contact with some of them, remembering that this audition was about more than just the music. They wanted to see if I had what it took to be a star and make them money. Well, I’d had about a billion fans in Seattle—or at least several hundred—and I’d charmed them every time they saw me. I would simply do the same thing here. I picked one twenty-something girl out at random and stared her down, lifting one eyebrow and giving her my sexiest smirk. I know exactly what I’m doing, I told her with my eyes. Watch me prove to you that I can be a rock star.

I watched her mouth quirk and her cheeks start to flush, and the smirk on my mouth grew into a grin. Oh there it was. The inevitable reaction to a guy with a guitar and tattoos smiling at you. Girls couldn’t seem to resist it. They always blushed and acted like it was a huge compliment to be singled out.

Including, evidently, girls who worked for big music labels like this one. Maybe the charm of a musician never actually wore off.

That, I thought, could be very, very convenient. I might have to try out the theory later on.

I switched my gaze to an older woman and tried the same tricks, and she lifted her own eyebrow and gave me a approving look. Not quite as good as a blush, but it was something. My confidence grew even more at the sign that this audience wasn’t going to be as tough as I’d feared. They were open to me. Waiting for me to charm them.

They wanted to believe in me.

Which was good, really, because I needed this audition to go well. I’d thought I was ready to quit the music business but now that I was here, in a real live record label’s office and within inches of having a contract of my very own, I realized that I’d never really let go of the idea. I’d told myself I could quit and be fine with it.

I’d been lying.

And now I knew it, which meant I wouldn’t be able to lie to myself like that again.

I was just about to reach up and adjust the mic to start singing when someone slammed through the door to my left.

“Okay I think I’ve got all the wiring figured out, so everything should work. I’m warning you, though, that I’ve never been a sound tech. That’s the wrong side of the stage for me. I’m in the talent-and-management realm, not the making-the-equipment-work realm.”

She’d said it with a smile that lit up her words, like she’d been laughing about this with someone else before she delivered these lines.

I should know, too, because I’d heard that laughing voice more times than I’d heard my own. And I generally took pride in making her sound like she’d just been laughing at something.

I turned, open-mouthed and thinking I must be dreaming, but saw within a nano-second that I hadn’t heard wrong.

The girl who’d just busted into the room was Remi James, all curly red hair and flashing brown eyes, freckles across fair skin and a flush of laughter in her cheeks. She was wearing business clothes—where did she even get those?—and had at least tried to corral the mass of curls with some sort of clip. It hadn’t worked, of course. Curls had come loose and were rioting around her face, framing those wide brown eyes and lush, pouty lips.

She was even more gorgeous than I’d remembered. And then her eyes turned toward me and I felt like the entire world had jerked sideways.

What the hell was she even doing in here, and why is she dressed like that? Why was she handling the sound equipment? She was right; that had never been her forte. She ended up shocking herself more than helping anything. What was she doing with this company, and why was she…

Oh my God. For the time she’d been refusing my calls and texts and I’d thought she was hurt or in trouble.

Instead, she was in Nashville, working for Amaryllis Records in some job that required her to dress like a grown-up and do whatever she’d been doing with the sound equipment.

She’d walked out of my last show in Seattle, come to Nashville, and started a whole new life without me. And she hadn’t even bothered to leave me a note telling me that she was okay and that she’d call me later.

She’d left without saying goodbye.

The confidence I’d been building curdled in my belly and I lost the cocky smile I’d been wearing. The words to the song I was about to perform disappeared. My fingers became clumsy and acted like they’d never played guitar in their entire life.

“Dean,” she whispered, her face telling me she hadn’t expected to see me any more than I’d expected to see her.

And why would she have? Really, I was just some anonymous audition. I was betting they didn’t even bother to learn the names of the people who were coming in here to try out until and unless they decided to sign them.

Holy fuck, was Remi part of the team who was going to decide my fate?

Cold, hard anger rushed through me at the thought, and I felt me eyebrows crease into a frown, which she immediately echoed. I didn’t like that she was here without telling me and I really didn’t like that she’d changed her entire life in the time since I’d last see her.

I downright hated that she’d left without even saying goodbye.

I stared at her for a moment longer, trying to read the expression on her face. And then I turned, strummed my guitar, and started singing. Remi could listen from the sidelines if she wanted to. I was going to hit this audition out of the park and I wasn’t going to let her sudden appearance derail me.

We could talk later. If I decided to let her tell me what had happened.

Chapter 9 – Dean

“What?” I gasped into the phone.

“You’re in. I thought you’d be more excited than this. Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for?”

I held the phone back and stared at it for a second, trying to get the words to make sense. Not the fact that I was in—I’d understood that part—but what he’d said before it.

“I’m ecstatic,” I said. “Really. But repeat what you said before that.”

Morris sighed. He’d called me practically screaming with excitement and had obviously expected a reciprocal response. But he didn’t know what I knew about what he’d just said.

“They liked your audition. Loved the song. They want you to start with that one as your first single, and write at least ten more for a record. But the record is going to go on the back burner. First, you’re going on tour.”

“Yeah, I got all that. What did you say about who was going with me, though?”

“Kid, you’re really starting to annoy me. I just won $10,000 when I bet on you, and I was calling to take you out for a nice steak. What does it matter what else is happening?”

I almost growled in frustration. “Morris, you called me with a bunch of information and I only caught about half of it. I think you can probably understand why. I want to know what you said and what it means for my career. Then we’ll go get steak.”

He chuckled in that way older men do when they think you’re being ridiculous, but had evidently decided to humor me. Maybe because I’d just won him $10,000, plus whatever bonus he got for scouting the newest talent.

“I said that the whole audience took a vote and you were the winner, out of all the contestants today. I also said that the deciding vote was one of our other new kids, Remi James. She’s in development and social media. And the deal she was given when she signed on was that she’d get to vote on who got a contract. And then take them on as her first project.”

Yep, that was the part that had stopped me from running around the room screaming like I’d just won the lottery when Morris called. Because I’d definitely wanted to. I’d just won a contract with one of the biggest record companies on Earth, and I was going to get to tour first and do a record second! That meant I would be playing all the music I already knew, performing in front of brand new audiences and seeing how they felt about everything, while writing new music to make sure my record sold like nothing had ever sold before. It was the perfect situation. Completely brilliant.

Except.

Except for the fact that one, Remi James was evidently in a position to get to decide my future in this business. She’d actually voted on whether I should win the contract or not, and had evidently voted in the affirmative because she’d then chosen to take me on as her first project.

Project.

I’d gone from best friend to nothing more than a project for her. And she’d gone from being someone I would have sold my soul for to someone who…

Well, I didn’t know what she was to me anymore, and that was something I’d never been able to say about her.

How the fuck had that happened?

The answer was simple. She’d walked out of my last show in Seattle without so much as a glance over her shoulder and then walked out of my life with no forwarding address. She’d ignored my calls and texts and started a new career, then turned up in my audition like she’d been planning it the whole time.

Sure, the rational part of my brain knew that she hadn’t actually been planning it. Remi was good, but she wasn’t a fucking witch, able to force the universe to do as she pleased.

But that rational part wasn’t exactly driving the bus anymore. She’d hurt me, and I was having trouble getting over it. So when I found out that she was going to be the one going on the road with me to handle my socials, it sort of put a damper on the excitement over the contract.

“Kid, you there?” Morris asked, his voice a little bit impatient.

“Here, yep!” I said quickly. Morris, it turned out, was going to be my manager, which meant I had to keep this guy on my side. He’d be the one booking all my gigs and making sure I had press coverage.

“So about that steak…”

Honestly, going out to dinner with Morris was the last thing I wanted to do right now. I wanted to take a long, hot shower and process the buckets of news he’d just given me. But please see what I said above about keeping the guy on my side.

“Steak sounds perfect. Are you coming to get me or do I need to figure out where to go on my own?”

***

By the time I got back to my hotel room, I was feeling a lot more excited about the whole thing. Morris was beside himself with glee, and he had a way of letting his excitement bleed all over the people around him.

I felt like I’d been dunked into a pool of excitement juice over and over again over dinner, and though I’d tried really hard to stay broody, I’d eventually given in.

Hell, I’d just won a record contract! One that I’d had to fight against other people to win! The chances of Morris having found me at all were so small, and when you added in the fact that I’d managed to get across the country—by myself—and then find this place and nail that audition…

Yeah, I was starting to feel pretty fucking proud of myself. I wasn’t going to lie about that.

I skipped into my hotel room, emptied my pockets, and headed for the shower, grinning. This was going to be amazing. My own contract. My own album. A tour where I was the only musician appearing.

Okay, sure, there were difficulties. The tour had to go perfectly and be well-attended. If I didn’t bring in enough money, according to Morris, the company wouldn’t give me time in the studio and I’d end up an artist with a record contract and no actual record, always on the road and never getting to settle down. It was most musicians’ worst nightmare because it meant eternal traveling. They wouldn’t let me out of my contract but they also wouldn’t give me any studio time, and I probably wouldn’t be making enough to rent a studio of my own.

So the tour had to make money, and that was going to be a little bit difficult when I was only going to be doing small bars and venues in Nashville and the surrounding area. not exactly high-flying gigs.

But I’d always been good at performing. I knew how to get an audience on my side and show them a good time, and if one audience saw a great show they’d talk, which meant another audience would show up, and then another. I didn’t have to have a big name to become a decent draw. I just had to put on good shows and get a reputation here in town as someone who could show people a good time.

I’d done it before, and I could do it again.

And once I did, I’d get time in a recording studio and put out all the amazing music I’d written while on the road.

Easy.

The bigger problem was the other piece of that deal. A piece named Remi James. She was the wild card here, and no mistake. She’d actually been at dinner with me and Morris, for like ten minutes, to do a little meet and greet.

Ironic, considering I knew everything about her, from the time she’d tried to dye her hair brown in the 8th grade to what color underwear she liked best.

I cocked my head and grinned at the thought, letting my mind linger on that a little bit longer than it should of before yanking it away. That was, after all, my best friend’s sister I was talking about. I’d never thought of her as sexual, and this wasn’t the time to start. I shouldn’t have been thinking about her underwear.

Of course in our new lives, she’d evidently decided to pretend she wasn’t friend, or anything at all for that matter. She’d acted through the whole dinner like we didn’t even fucking know each other, and that had been the worst part. She’d shaken my hand and said hello while looking right through me like she had five million other things on her mind. Then she’d gone through and explained what she’d be doing for me—running my social media and making sure the press had enough material to write their stories, while controlling my social calendar and appearances—and had told me she hoped we’d be able to become partners on this, since we’d both move up if we could prove we were worth it.

She hadn’t given me one hint that she’d been affected by the fact that this was me she was talking to. That we’d been partners in crime since before she could walk. She’d straightened her fucking blazer and said no thanks to a glass of wine when Morris offered it. Just asked me if I had any questions, told Morris to send her the calendar for when the tour was going to happen, and then left.

Like this was nothing more than a business meeting, and she hadn’t scheduled quite enough time for it in her calendar.

I had watched her walking out of the restaurant, torn between furious and heartbroken, and hadn’t gotten my head back in the game until Morris asked me if I was okay. No, I wasn’t fucking okay. I wasn’t even in the same city as okay. The girl I’d always thought of as my Girl Friday was treating me like a stranger she had to coddle.

Three days ago, if you’d asked me who I’d want at my side in this sort of situation, I would have said Remi. My best friend and best advocate, and the girl who always knew exactly what was going on.

And yet here she was, at my side. She was going to be by my side through my first tour. Just like I should have wanted. Hell, this should have felt like the luckiest thing in the entire world. She’d helped me land a contract—and she must have, as her vote evidently counted so highly—and then assigned herself to my tour. She was watching out for me, I was sure of it. I should have been relieved and beyond excitement to have her along for the ride.

Instead, I felt a quickly growing disappointment in my gut at having her here but not here. I didn’t want Remi The Amaryllis Rep. I wanted Remi My Friend.

But it looked like I didn’t even have that option.

Chapter 10 – Dean

“What. The. Fuck.” I slammed the palm of my hand down on the table in front of me, hoping it would get my mind to actually turn on.

News flash: It didn’t. Because my mind was evidently broken. Along with my fingers and mouth and everything else about me.

And no, I wasn’t talking about sexually. That aspect of things had always worked just fine for me. I was talking about playing music.

Tonight was my first show in a long line of shows booked in small bars across Nashville and a few other cities. It wasn’t a real tour, it turned out, but a situation where I could play a gig and then go back to my small, un-decorated apartment to sleep. But the label was calling it a tour, so I was going to go with that. When it came right down to it, it wasn’t much different from what I’d been doing in Seattle.

Only now I had a record deal and a whole lot of pressure to make sure every single show was sold out and as entertaining as possible. In a city where I’d never played and had no reputation.

That wasn’t even the biggest problem, though. When it came right down to it, the label was in charge of managing my reputation and making sure people at least heard about me. All I had to do was make sure the shows themselves were good. But to do that, I needed to make sure the set was right for each audience, and right now—at my first show—I was completely failing.

I had about fifty songs under my belt, and I knew all of them by heart. I could have played most of them in my sleep. But part of the problem with knowing them so well was that I’d started to lose the ability to tell how good they were, and when they might be right for an audience. I’d been out to the front of the house already, to see what the audience had looked like, and based on the people here I’d decided on a more country/western flavor to the night. Easy. I’d just perform the songs that spoke to that sort of feeling.

Only the moment I sat down to figure out which songs I should play, my mind went blank. I couldn’t remember which songs I had that were country rather than rock or even rockabilly, and I damn sure couldn’t remember which ones were my favorites. I was sitting here trying to figure out a set list at the last minute, having decided that this was the way to specialize the set to the crowd, and now I was well and truly fucked.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I put my head in my hands and massaged my scalp, like that would somehow get my brain to start working again. Because seriously, who forgot their entire catalogue when they needed it most? Who sat down to write out a set list and came up empty-handed?

An amateur, that was who. Someone who didn’t know what they were doing or how to get themselves organized.

I looked at the door that led out of the backstage area and into the alley outside, wondering if I’d feel any better if I went out there. Probably not, I realized. Sure, I’d be outside, but I’d also be in an alley full of guys smoking and people throwing up, if Nashville was anything like Seattle.

Not exactly a big step up, and definitely not an improvement when it came to trying to get my creativity to turn on.

I turned my glare from the exit to the doorway that led into the bar itself, wondering where the hell my team was. I was supposed to have a backup band here with me—drums, at least—and Morris had promised he’d be here. I was also expecting Remi, as much as I hated to admit it. Though she might not even come back here. I still wasn’t clear on exactly what her position was in this whole thing. Taking care of my social media was great and all, but did that really count as a full-time gig? What else was she going to do? Handle the press, I remembered, and make sure they had everything they needed for the stories they wanted to write. Handle my social engagements.

What would she be doing, setting me up on dates with photographers following us around?

The thought was so ridiculous that it almost made me laugh. Then I remembered that I had a show in half an hour and still hadn’t come up with a set list, and went back to brooding.

Really, I should have figured this out last night. This wasn’t the sort of thing I was good at when I tried to do it at the last minute this way. I also needed paper and a pen. Which I didn’t have.

Hey, organization had never been my bag. That was Remi’s area of expertise.

The thought made my heart squeeze the way it had been doing over the last couple of days, and I didn’t mean ‘squeeze’ in a good way. It wasn’t a happy, full-of-butterflies sort of experience. It was more like it was so empty it didn’t know how to stabilize itself. Like whatever was inside of it had been scooped out.

And put into a business suit and sent to work with the big wigs at a music label.

I closed my eyes and tried to get a handle on that train of thought, because I knew from experience that it wasn’t going to take me anywhere good. Remi was finished with our friendship, from what I could see, and no amount of me sitting here brooding was going to change that. I’d thought she might get over it, once she’d had some time. Like, maybe call me the day after the audition to congratulate me. Suggest lunch. Tell me she’d found the best milkshakes in town and I had to come with her to try the chocolate one.

I felt the twitch of a smile on my lips at that. Remi had always loved milkshakes more than she should, though she would have told you straight up that malts were better. She always got vanilla and I always got chocolate, and then we sat and argued about whose was better while eating them. It was a tradition we’d started when we were only eleven and I’d taken her for her first malt at the ice cream shop in town. I’d been fourteen, nearly fifteen, and had thought I was tough shit. In high school, playing music every weekend, and a few short months from getting my learner’s permit. I’d already had girls asking me out on the weekend and groupies hanging around the stage, and had big plans to become a glamorous and incredibly popular rock star when I was older.

Hanging out with the sister of my best friend should have been ridiculous.

And yet I’d ditched him and taken her to get ice cream because I’d wanted her advice on something. I didn’t even remember what it was, these days, but the point was the same.

Even at fourteen-almost-fifteen, I’d known Remi was something special.

And now…

“‘New Amaryllis star Dean Simon likes to sit backstage and smile to himself before a show. No one knows why, but it seems to work for him.’”

My eyes flew open at the sudden presence of someone else and I found Remi herself standing in front of me, her head twisted as she stared at me. She’d attempted to tame her hair into something resembling a braid but had on more casual clothes tonight: jeans and a graphic tee. Bright red lipstick that should have clashed with her hair and somehow didn’t. Mascara.

The Doc Martens she’d made me go with her to buy.

God, I wanted to take her in my arms and squeeze her. Ask her how the hell we’d gotten here and whether she could believe I actually had a record deal. I wanted my best friend back. I needed her advice.

I needed her support.

And instead, I had this weird adult version of Remi that had a job and a title and acted like she didn’t know me.

“You writing a story about me in your head or something?” I asked.

She shrugged. “More like wondering what our star is doing back here with his eyes closed like he’s trying to block out the world.”

I stood to my full height, annoyed that she was starting right off with making fun of me, and glared down at her. “Well, manager, I’m back here trying to get my set list ready. By myself, since the label hasn’t exactly sent the band they promised.”

“Oh, they’re not coming,” she said quickly. “Morris thought he’d like you better as an acoustic act.”

All the air went out of me at that. They’d made a change in the lineup without even telling me? Decided I was going to be acoustic without even asking if that was how I wanted to perform?

Remi’s lips twitched. “Don’t worry. I told them you performed that way all the time back in Seattle. And that you were brilliant on your own.”

The last line was softer than the first, and for just a moment, she let her mask slip. The adult version of Remi—the girl who tried to tame her hair and worked for people who made six figures—disappeared and I could see the girl I knew. Her eyes were shining with excitement and faith, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

And God, I wanted the entire world to stop spinning so I could stand here in this moment forever. Just stand and see my Remi, telling me I could be brilliant.

Then she shook her head and everything went back into real-time and the moment was over.

“What are you doing for real?” she asked. “Is this something I should write a post about?”

Well, she was at least trying to be helpful. I guessed.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I was trying to get my set list together. I need to figure out what I’m going to play.”

She made a face, confused. “And why didn’t you do that last night?”

“Because I thought it would be better to wait and see what the audience was like,” I admitted. “I thought I’d be able to look at them and get an idea of what sort of music they might like to hear. So I could sort of… specialize the set list.”

I’d thought it was such a great idea. Now that I said it, of course, it sounded really stupid. Only an idiot would wait until the last minute to decide on something so important, and I was positive Remi was about to tell me so.

Instead, she narrowed her eyes in her classic ‘thinking’ face and stared at me, the ghost of a smile on her lips. “You know what? That’s not a bad idea. And what did you come up with?”

“They look like they’ll want country.”

Again, I waited for her to tell me how stupid this was, and that I was screwing everything up. I waited for the ‘you’re going to lose your chance, you fool!’

It never came. One minute she was standing and staring at me and the next she was grabbing paper out of her bag and a pen from inside her hair—what??—and sitting down at the table across from me.

“Let me guess. You had that brilliant idea but now you’re here and can’t remember your catalogue, which is making it impossible for you to put together the set.”

“Yes. Exactly. How did you—”

She cast me a very sarcastic look. “Because I know you, Dean Simon. And I know words go right out of your head when you’re nervous.”

“I”m not—”

“Right,” she interrupted again. “And yet I’m not seeing a set list laying around here. So do you want help or not?”

I dropped back down into my chair, feeling like I’d just been run over by a Remi-shaped truck. “Help would be nice.”

“I thought as much. So I would start with ‘Tell Me,’ I think, and from there…”

And Remi James proceeded to sit there and write out my entire set list like she’d already had it planned in her head before she stepped through the door.

Taking care of me the way she always had.

“Thank you,” I said when she handed the sheet of paper to me. “I… I don’t know how to do this on my own.”

She reached out and touched my hand. Just once.

It was enough to send fireworks shooting through my blood, though.

“You’re not on your own,” she said softly. “You’re just on a much bigger stage now than you were back in Seattle.”

She got up and left without another word, and I clenched my hand into a fist, trying to remember the feeling of her skin on mine.

And then I got up and walked onto the stage, the set list gripped in one hand and my guitar on the other. And I got ready to play my first label-endorsed show in Nashville. With Remi James in the crowd watching.

And probably writing a whole lot of very unlikely posts about what I was thinking and feeling in this moment.

Chapter 11 – Remi

Damn, he was good.

I set my phone down on the bar behind me, the fifteen unfinished posts about the show still in their draft phases, and watched him as he walked the stage, singing his guts out. He had on a hands-free mic so he could keep his guitar with him and looking like a tall, smoky drink of water—if that was even a thing—with his long strides and tight jeans. The t-shirt that had to be at least a size too small for his muscular frame.

The cowboy boots. The tattoos. The scruff on his jaw and messy hair.

I swallowed heavily and looked down, trying to get my thoughts under control.

Unfortunately, that had been getting harder and harder with all the time we’d been forced to spend together. It had all started when I walked into that audition room, my mind half on the sound equipment I’d been trying to fix and half on the coming audition. I’d turned from closing the door and frozen in my tracks. Because the man sitting on the stool—the man who was evidently auditioning in front of us—had been so familiar that I could have drawn him in my sleep.

Dean Simon.

My fingers had twitched with the need to touch him, my body yearning to run toward him and throw myself into his arms. I’d been beyond excited to see him, and not only because I’d missed him like a flower misses the sun. The fact that he’d been in that audition room at all, and getting ready to play for the audience, had meant that a scout from Amaryllis had someone found him.

Found him and talked him into coming all the way to Nashville to play for his chance at a record contract.

It had been everything he’d always wanted, and I could think of at least fifty conversations where we’d talked about how he might get a contract and what we had to do to make that happen. Hell, we’d been planning this particular adventure since I was about fourteen and he’d started realizing I had a head for business. And now there he was, sitting on the stool with his guitar cradled in his arms and his fingers hovering over the strings…

Looking furious.

I’d shaken my head slightly, trying to figure out whether he’d even seen me yet or not, but he definitely had. His eyes were boring holes right through my own. Like he was not only mad at me, but also furious that I had dared to be in the same room as him when he put on what had to be the performance of his life.

And through the confusion at that look, I’d realized one thing: I couldn’t run to him and throw myself in his lap, laughing madly about the coincidence of him being in this room where I was. I couldn’t babble—probably incoherently—about how happy I was to see him and how excited I’d be to hear him play in front of all these people. I definitely couldn’t tell him that I knew he was going to be absolutely brilliant.

Because from the look on his face, we were evidently now enemies.

A second later, I remembered that he hadn’t wanted me jumping into his lap in the first place. No; he’d invited Sasha Graham to do that instead. And his expression in that moment had told me that right then, he wished I were her rather than me.

I’d wiped my face and heart clean right then and there and treated him like just another audition. Just another artist I had to judge. Not my former best friend and definitely not the guy I’d been in love with my whole life.

That hadn’t stopped me from making sure he was the one that got the contract. It also hadn’t stopped me from claiming him as my first artist.

But I’d been going out of my way to make sure I just treated him as a job, rather than my long-lost partner in crime. And he hadn’t done anything to make me think he wanted to change that relationship. As far as I knew, we were just two people being forced to work together.

I bit my lip, reminded myself of that, and looked up onstage again, knowing that I had to watch to do my job. If I didn’t see him performing, how would I write the posts and blogs that would convince people to come see him at the next show?

When my eyes found him again, through the gloom and soft lighting of the bar, I found him looking right at me. Looking at me and singing to me.

Singing like he was saying the words right to me.

Wait. What the fuck was going on, here? Why would he be singing to me? I drew myself up and listened to the song, identifying it as one of his first ballads, and one that I’d helped him write the lyrics for. I knew this song. It was about discovering that the girl you loved was right in front of you.

Why the fuck was he looking at me while singing this song? He should be looking out into the audience, connecting with them as he sang about true love and how he’d almost missed it. This was the perfect song for grabbing at people’s heartstrings and sucking them right in, and over the years he’d perfected the ability to make his voice crack at exactly the right spots, to make people—particularly girls—think he was caving under the emotion of the song.

This was his bestseller. If it ever got onto a record, it would be his first single. I could feel it.

He had no business wasting it on me.

I shook my head sharply at him, sending him that thought, and then turned my stool quickly toward the bar, giving him my back. I wanted a drink, and I wanted it now. Okay, so maybe that was a cowardly thing to do. Maybe I should have sat and stared at him while he sang to me, just to see what he’d do about it.

But the truth was, I didn’t like watching him sing to me. I didn’t like how it made me feel, or the squirming it started in my stomach. And most of all, I didn’t like knowing that it probably didn’t mean anything to him except that he was tired of looking at people he didn’t know.

Which made me a conveniently friendly face in the audience, and nothing more.

Just like I’d always been.

***

By the time Dean got off-stage, I’d had about five shots of whiskey and was having trouble remembering whether I’d finished the posts I was supposed to do or not.

By the time Dean changed and the crowd emptied out, I’d had at least three more. Though honestly, by that time, I’d mostly stopped counting and started trying to figure out, through the whiskey-colored haze in my brain, how I was going to get back home.

I jumped when someone slid into the bar stool next to me, and turned toward the person with what I already knew was more than a slight wobble.

Dean was sitting there next to me, his eyebrows nearly at his hair, and the judgement on his face was…

“You don’t need to look at me like that,” I mumbled. “I’m in a bar. I’m allowed to drink.”

He reached in front of me and carefully slid the half-full tumbler toward himself. “Actually, you’re not. You’re past the serving limit.”

“What? Were you counting fromo the stage?” I asked with a groan and an eyeroll so dramatic it made my skull hurt as I drew myself up to my full 5-foot-three height. “I can do what I want!”

“Maybe,” he said softly. “But are you?”

I scowled, suddenly annoyed by the condescending, protective tone of voice. “No. For your information…” I wobbled on my feet but his arms caught me and helped steady me before I fell, easing me back onto the barstool. “Wait. What were we talking about?”

He sniffed at that, reached down, and turned my bar stool so I was facing him. “You, Remi James.” he said quietly.

His eyes scanned my body, from my eyebrows down to my lips. His gaze paused there before traveling lower. I was suddenly intensely, achingly aware of how close he was sitting to me. Our knees were bumping and one of his hands was still resting on the seat of my bar stool. His face was way too close to mine. And around us…

Nothing. The bar had emptied out and someone had turned the house lights down, trying to encourage everyone else to leave. The place had the empty, echoing quality of a building that was nearly empty, because it was time to close.

Nearly empty except for the guy sitting in front of me. The guy staring at my mouth like he was a man dying of thirst and my lips were offering him his only chance at survival.

My heart jumping into my throat and I suddenly forgot how to breathe, my entire focus on Dean and what he was doing right now. Not that he was doing anything. I mean, other than throwing off pheromones that had me melting and catching fire at the same time. Every inch of my skin felt like it had become ultra-sensitive, my body leaning toward the man in front of me, even when I definitely hadn’t told it to do any such thing.

My heart was stuck in my throat, trying to get out of my mouth and throw itself to the floor in between us.

I felt my lips opening on a sigh, and watched as Dean caught his own lower lip between his teeth. My eyes flicked from his lips to his eyes as he leaned toward me, his expression telling me that he only had one thing on his mind.

One thing.

One thing he’d never wanted before.

Wait.

He was always way, way too cool to think of me as anything other than my brother’s sister. And he’d barely spoken to me since we both found ourselves in Nashville. Now he was leaning toward me, all hot, tattooed rock star, like he wanted something from me?

I was drunk, but I wasn’t so drunk that I was going to fall for that one. I didn’t know what Dean was playing at, but I wasn’t willing to let my heart get caught up in it.

I put my feet on his bar stool and shoved, sending my own bar stool scooting back and away from him. And of course, because this was me, my stool couldn’t just scoot. It had to get caught on something and fall sideways, sending me sprawling to the floor like an awkward teenager who’d just had her first drink.

I lay there for a split second, trying to figure out whether I could sink through the floor and come out in the basement without Dean seeing me, but then realized that the laws of physics would never allow that. Next realization: I was laying on the floor in a bar, with Dean Simon standing over me.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” he asked, dropping to his knees at my side.

I shoved him away. “I’m fine.” I got to my feet—okay, so I used his knee to help me—and stumbled toward the door. “I need to go home.”

“Home? How do you think you’re going to get anywhere in this condition?”

I gave him the sternest, most sarcastic look I could summon up. “It’s called Uber, Dean. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

He yanked his phone out of his pocket and started looking for the app. “Hold on, I’ll get one for you. Um, what’s your address?”

I hesitated for a moment, not wanting him to know where I lived, but finally decided that in the larger scheme of things, him having my address was probably bound to happen at some point anyhow.

Dean typed the address I gave him in quickly, then nodded at his phone like they’d accomplished something spectacular together. “The car will be here in five minutes. They must have a line of them waiting just around the corner.”

I turned again and headed for the exit. “They must.”

To his credit, he insisted on walking me to the car and grilling the driver before he let me in. Then he asked if I wanted him to ride with me.

I told him no. Of course.

He gave me a long, searching look, then brushed my lower lip with the pad of his thumb. “Okay,” he sighed. “Text me the link to follow your trip.”

I snorted, but didn’t answer, choosing instead to duck into the car and close the door.

Because if I’d stayed there for one minute longer, with him looking at me like that, I would have kissed him.

And the buzzing in my blood, the butterflies in my stomach, told me that I absolutely, positively couldn’t let that happen.

Chapter 12 – Dean

I woke up in a rush the next morning, feeling like I’d forgotten to do something important. And then I proceeded to punch my brain trying to remember what it was. Where was I? Still in the stripped-down version of an apartment I’d rented when I found out I was going to be staying in Nashville. Who was here?

No one, because I’d come here by myself.

In a plane, so I didn’t have a car.

And without any of my friends, because my best friend and the person I would have trusted the most in the world had been…

I sat straight up, my memory rushing back like a fucking flood. Remi. Remi was why i was waking up feeling like there was something I needed to do. I’d put her into a cab last night and let her go home without any supervision, like a fucking idiot, and then hadn’t heard from her.

No matter how many times I called to make sure she’d gotten home safely.

And I know what you’re saying; she gave me her address for the Uber and I should have been able to go over there and check to make sure she’d gotten home safely. Come to that, I should have been able to follow the link she was supposed to send me for her trip, to make sure she hadn’t been stolen on her way home. But when I checked, she hadn’t sent me a link, and when I checked again, Uber had done one of those insanely stupid updates where it erases all the information you had stored in the app.

Including the addresses you’ve recently searched.

I spent the night tossing and turning, cursing Remi and worrying about her in turn until my head was so screwed up that I’d fallen asleep in pure self-defense. And now…

I reached over and grabbed my phone, praying that she’d texted and I just hadn’t heard it or something. But of course she hadn’t. There was no text. No phone call. No email. And if I looked outside, I doubted I’d see anything like a carrier pigeon on the front stoop with a message tied to its leg letting me know Remi had made it home safely.

Growling, I hit the number I’d been calling more than any other since I got into town, and waited the 1.5 rings it always took Morris to answer.

“What’s up, kiddo?” he asked, instead of saying ‘hello.’

I forced the second growl down. I hated that he called me kiddo. It made me feel like a newbie or something, and I’d been performing since I was half my current age. Not that I was going to tell him that.

After all, he was still essentially in charge of my career.

“Have you heard from Remi?”

“Remi?”

The blankness in his voice told me that he didn’t think he’d ever even met the girl. Which meant, if I knew Morris, that he didn’t find Remi attractive. Because he’d been listing the girls he wanted to bang pretty much since the moment Amaryllis signed me to a contract.

Good. If he started thinking Remi was sexy I might have to kill him. And that would be inconvenient.

“Remi James. She’s my social media manager person. Short girl, works in Development, I think. Her boss is Lala Amos?”

More silence.

“Big red hair?” I finally said. “Curves from here until next—”

“Oh, the curvy girl with the curls!” Morris interrupted. “I know who’ you’re talking about. Yes, she’s… quite good with sound equipment, isn’t she?”

Oh my God, I was going to kill him. Not because he wanted to screw Remi but because… Because…

Because he didn’t know anything about her when they were literally both in charge of my career. And that was really stupid. I would have been mad if he’d noticed her too closely and now I was mad that he didn’t know who she was?

Typical Remi. Always making me contradict myself.

“That’s the one,” I said.

“Why would I have heard from her?”

“Because you’re one of the higher-ups in her department. She left the bar pretty drunk last night and I haven’t heard anything from her. I’m worried.”

Morris chuckled condescendingly. “Kid, she’s a young woman, but I’m sure she can take care of herself. Besides, it’s her job to take care of you, not vice versa. I’m sure she’s fine. Get up and get dressed. I have some press lined up for you today and they’ll want photos.”

He hung up before I could say anything else, and I almost threw my phone at the wall.

I was going to put a tracking device on Remi. That was all there was to it. She evidently didn’t know how to keep in touch with anyone, including the people she should have been reporting to. And though Morris thought she could take care of herself, that wasn’t good enough for me.

It never had been, and her moving to Nashville and starting a new life wasn’t going to change that.

***

News flash: I didn’t put a tracking device on Remi. I didn’t even ask her if she’d share her contact with me on the tracking app we both had on our phones. Because the next time I saw her she’d evidently forgotten all about those moments we had at the first show, where she let her walls come down and started acting like my friend again.

Instead, she was All Business Remi again. You know, the person who pretended she’d never met me before we shook hands in that audition room back at Amaryllis.

She was at the photo shoot Morris had lined up, live vlogging the whole thing for my channels, and she was at my show that night, too. She didn’t come backstage to help me with my set list, though, and she didn’t stick around afterward to talk to me at the bar. In fact, if I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought she’d been intentionally avoiding me. Except that wasn’t Remi. I’d never known her to avoid any confrontation, probably because I’d never known her to lose any argument. She sharp as a tack and twice as intelligent as most other people, and that red hair of hers came with a temper that bit people before the saw what was coming. No one expected it, either. She was too small and cute to have a temper like that.

But she had it and used it when the situation arose. She’d never shied away from anything, for that reason.

So if she’d had something to say to me, I was betting she’d have said it.

There had to be some other reason for her running out of the show so quickly. But what? I stood on the stage and stared at the spot where she’d been during the last show, wondering. Could she still be hung over? Maybe, but she’d looked awfully healthy for someone nursing a hangover. Maybe she was sick? Maybe she had other plans?

My mind snagged on that last thought and within moments, it was throwing possibilities at me like fucking hand grenades. She’d been here longer than me. Maybe she had friends she went out with. Girls who took her to clubs and other bars. A social circle that didn’t include me.

A social circle that did include other guys.

The ice started in my stomach and spread so quickly that I had to sit down in the chair I’d been using for my ballads. What if she was out with another guy? Was that why she’d left so fast without saying anything to me? Was that what she’d been doing here before I got to Nashville.

Oh God, what if she’d moved here for another guy? What if this had been happening for a long time—some sort of long-distance relationship—and I just hadn’t known about it? It could be true. I’d been so caught up in my career and in Sasha that I’d never bothered to ask Remi about her love life. Hell, I’d never even thought of her having a love life.

Because she was just my friend, I remembered suddenly. She was just Samuel’s sister. I’d never thought about her having a love life because it was exactly none of my fucking business. She was off-limits anyhow. I’d seen her with braces, heard from her brother about her first period. I’d watched her kiss her first boyfriend, for God’s sake, courtesy of the elaborate spying game Sam and I had been playing at the time.

And none of that had bothered me.

Because she was just my friend. The girl who’d been annoying me my entire life.

I shook my head, trying to throw off all the feelings crowding themselves into my heart, and got to my feet. I needed a beer and then my bed. I needed to turn my brain off and let Remi have her life.

Because this wasn’t Seattle, and we weren’t kids anymore. If she wanted to have a love life that didn’t include me, that was fine. It was none of my business.

Hell, maybe I’d get a love life that didn’t include her, just to prove to her that I didn’t care.

***

Another news flash: I didn’t run right out and get a girlfriend. I didn’t even start seeing anyone. Because I was in the middle of a mini-tour with my new record label and I had more important things to worry about than girls. Even if the girl in question was Remi James. I went about the business of playing music almost every night to audiences I didn’t know, and the truth was, I was getting pretty good at it. I got better and better at reading an audience the moment I got up there on the stage and figuring out what they were going to want to hear. I worked hard to sing to a different person, every ten seconds. So I was getting good coverage of the audience, and that right there was already reaping results. I’d signed more autographs than I ever had in Seattle and had people swearing that they were lifelong fans. I realized how great it was to get an audience to sing along with me, even when they didn’t know the lyrics, and I started adjusting my music to include long spaces where I could talk to them while I strummed my guitar.

By the time I’d played ten shows, I was starting to see some regulars. And those regulars knew my music. They’d sing along in the chorus and clap and stomp when they didn’t know the words. They’d call me by my first name like we were old friends, and laugh and joke about things that had happened at other shows.

And you know what?

It was fun. I’d always thought I might rather just stay in a place that was familiar, with people I knew and who would always support me. I’d been half-afraid that I’d never make it out of Seattle for that reason. But I was starting to realize that being out here in a new atmosphere with people who were just getting to know me could be great, too.

Especially when they wanted to get to know me.

I was starting to get a reputation as someone who interacted with his audiences, and people were really into that. We were playing sold-out shows at this point, the house always packed with people who wanted me to sing just one more song. And I didn’t think I’d ever been happier.

The thing was, it was only partially because of me. Remi was working her butt off on the socials, making sure I sounded approachable and funny there and keeping the backstage constantly crowded with bloggers wanting to do a story on me. She gave them everything they needed and then sent them back to do a personal interview with me, and the blogs were really good. I’d read a lot of them.

They had Remi’s fingerprints all over them.

I, however, didn’t. She’d spent the last two weeks pretending we were nothing but business acquaintances. And thought it was working for the tour and for my career, I had to admit that it was really starting to rub me the wrong way.

Hell, it had rubbed me the wrong way since Day 1. And that rub was just getting worse. Every time I saw her, my heart did a little somersault. If she was looking at me, I tried to catch her eye. Tried to give her the smirk I’d always given her when I thought something was funny. But there was nothing behind her eyes.

I mean nothing.

I missed the girl I’d known in Seattle. I missed my Girl Friday, my partner in crime.

And I flat-out hated that I didn’t know why she’d disappeared, or how I could get her back.

Chapter 13 – Remi

I glanced at the calendar in my favorite planner—one I’d built myself so it fit the specs I needed—and groaned to myself.

This was a short-cut tour that hadn’t even seen us leaving the county where we’d started. Bars and smaller venues but with oversight from Amaryllis itself, which meant if it went well then we’d both move to the next phase in our careers. And I knew the artist personally and knew exactly how he’d answer questions, which made the social media a completely cinch.

This whole thing should have been a cinch. I should have been able to do it with my eyes closed, and the tour itself should have flown by.

And instead, I was counting the days. Counting the fucking seconds. I wanted this tour to be over and done with so I could go back to my regular life of trying to figure out how to fit in—and rise to the top—at Amaryllis without Dean Simon. I had my eye on one of the executive positions, now, as my ultimate goal, and I had a plan for how I was going to get there. If I did it, every one of my dreams would come true, and Lala had told me she thought it was within my grasp.

I mean, after like ten years.

And as long as I got through this tour with Dean and proved I could be trusted to develop talent and represent them when they were thrown in my lap.

I groaned again and let my forehead bang down on the desk in front of me. I’d been telling myself right from the start that this should have been easy and straightforward. Hell, it was one of the reasons I’d insisted on taking Dean on after his audition. I’d made sure he was selected for the contract because I’d known how bad he wanted it and had wanted it for him, despite the shock of suddenly seeing him in front of me.

And then I’d volunteered to be his social media handler because I’d thought that knowing him so well would make it easy. I’d been sure I would be able to make the best impression possible.

I hadn’t stopped to think about how awkward the whole thing was going to be. Yeah, I got to go home to my own apartment every night, thank God. No tour busses or roadies or anything like that. But I was still stuck with Dean every day thanks to the stupid high-intensity schedule and that meant having to come face-to-face with him all the time.

In dark corners and backstage alleys.

After he’d come off the stage, his face wet with moisture from the lights and his eyeliner smudged.

His lips swollen from the way he constantly bit them between songs.

His hands reaching for me like he wanted to pull me into a hug the way he’d once done.

And every time, I’d turn and practically run the other way, not wanting anything to do with him or his reaching hands or those swollen lips or soulful eyes.

Wait, scratch that, because you’ll know I’m lying. I wanted everything to do with those hands and eyes and lips. I wanted everything about him. I wanted to be the girl he gushed to when he got off that stage, high with the applause and ideas busting out of him about what he wanted to do with this song or that one. I wanted to be the girl who dragged him to the bar for three glasses of water so he’d rehydrate. I wanted to be the girl who helped him break down the show and see what went well and what needed some work.

I wanted to be the girl who went home with him afterward and fell into bed with the man I’d loved my whole life.

Not that I could tell him any of that.

Not that I was even admitting it to myself, these days.

Because I’d put a hard stop to those feelings when I saw him on stage with Sasha Graham. And I wasn’t planning on letting them back in again. I needed to grow up and go my own way. Forget about the girl who’d followed Dean Simon around like she was some puppy who couldn’t stop obsessing over her master.

I needed to live my own life.

I sat back up and glared at the calendar, counting the days again. We’d been on tour for three weeks and hadn’t had any major mishaps yet. One more week and we’d be finished, and if I was careful, I could get him on at least four more blogs during that time. I’d been saving up some of my best connections for this last week, when we got into the heart of Nashville and could get the biggest crowds. I had most of the social media posts already written out and just needed to specialize them according to what happened at each show.

I was going to prove that I could do exactly what I’d set out to do. And I was going to do it while withstanding Dean’s magnetism and those eyes that kept trying to catch my own.

I scribbled one more note in my calendar, glanced at my watch, and stood up. We still had an hour before the show was going to start and I had several phone calls I wanted to make before we got there. I wanted a couple additional reporters in the crowd tonight, and I happened to know that two of them were actually in a bar down the road. If I could convince them to come to this bar instead…

It could be big, and not only for me. For Dean, too.

And at the end of the day, despite everything, that was what I wanted. If he was successful, I was successful. But even more importantly…

If he was successful, he’d finally get the record deal he’d always wanted.

And I wanted to hand that to him. Even when I knew he’d never bother to say thank you for it.

***

The moment I stepped through the back exit and into the alley, phone to my ear, I knew something was wrong. There were people back here and they sounded…

Unfriendly.

They were speaking in low, guttural tones and laughing harshly, like whatever they were saying was dangerous and funny for all the reasons. And it was dark out here. There was supposed to be at least one light out here, per the contract we had with the bar for the safety of the fans but it was pitch black in the alley. It smelled of beer and piss and something even worse, and some instinctive part of me, something deep down in my belly immediately told me that I needed to get out of here.

I turned on a dime and reached for the door again, but found that it had closed and locked behind me.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. What sort of door locks the moment it closes? What sort of door just shuts you out in an alley like that? Probably one that’s only supposed to be an emergency exit, I realized, glancing up to the see the dented sign above me.

I took a split second to wonder what I should do about that, and then turned again and started walking toward the front of the building as quickly as I could, breath short in my lungs and my eyes on the street lamp in front of me. Get to the main street. That was all I needed to do. I could see people up there and I knew there was a line starting to form to get into the show.

I suddenly realized that I couldn’t hear whoever had been in the alley anymore, though, and a split second later I realized why. There were footsteps behind me and they were getting louder, the sound echoing through the alley around me. I increased my pace, barely breathing now as I strained toward the light on the street ahead of me. I just had to get there.

I just had to—

Hands grabbed my shoulders and jerked me backward, and I found myself thrown back against the wall. I couldn’t see whoever had pushed me, but I could hear them. Harsh breathing rattled in my ear, accompanied by the smell of something rotten and a hoarse chuckle.

“What’s a sweet little girl like you doing in an alley like this all by herself?” he rumbled.

My stomach lurched and I nearly threw up right then and there. I had no idea who this guy was or how many others there were, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he meant trouble. Men didn’t corner girls in alleys so they could give them some bubble gum and talk about their favorite songs.

I jerked against him but his fingers tightened on my arms, squeezing so hard I knew he was going to leave bruise.

“Tsk, tsk,” he clicked. “Don’t be rude, little girl.” He jerked me away from the wall and slammed me back against it. “Just be still and this’ll be a whole lot less painful.”

Then his hand was at the waistline of my jeans, searching for the buckle to my belt. I was fighting with all my strength, but it wasn’t enough. all hope of rationale gone. I had to get out of here now, before he could do anything that I’d regret. I had to get away from him and make a run for it to the mouth of the alley, where I’d find the first big guy I came to and stand behind him. I jerked and kicked and bit anything that I could get my teeth on, not even caring that the man was roaring in pain and anger now and that I might be making the whole thing worse. I wasn’t going down without a fight. I wasn’t—

“Hey! What are you doing?” a familiar voice called out. “What the—”

Suddenly the guy in front of me disappeared, and I heard an “Ugh” and a thump against the other wall of the alley. New hands grasped my shoulders, one arm sliding under my legs and lifting me up. I fought these new hands just as hard as the first pair, horrified at the idea of someone else having their hands on me. But these hands didn’t feel like they were going to leave bruises behind.

“Shh, girl, you’re safe now,” a voice whispered in my ear. “Remi, I’ve got you. Shh. I’ve got you.”

Wait.

I knew that voice.

I knew the familiar scent of that very specific mixture of cologne and musk suddenly surrounding me.

I knew the feeling of that raspy, scruffy jaw against my cheek.

Dean.

Dean was here.

I almost cried in relief. I think maybe I did cry a little bit. I turned my face into his neck, inhaled sharply and let him carry me forward, knowing I was going to be okay.

Dean wouldn’t let anything happen to me.

Dean would make sure I got to safety.

And with that thought, my consciousness, evidently feeling as though it had dealt with quite enough for the moment, fled, and everything went dark.

Chapter 14 – Dean

I had an unconscious Remi James in my arms when I entered my hotel room.

Let me repeat that: an unconscious Remi James.

My blood started boiling again at the thought—not that it had stopped since I’d found her in that alleyway with another man pressed up against her. I didn’t know who the guy was or where he’d come from. Honestly, I hadn’t bothered to stick around to ask. I’d seen him throw her up against the wall and get way too close to her and all I’d been able to think about was getting to her and saving her.

Getting her to safety.

It had been a fluke that I was walking by at all, with how close we’d been to the show starting. I’d been nervous tonight for some reason, though, and had decided to take a walk down the sidewalk in front of the bar before we started. Getting through the door, I’d looked right and then left, and had chosen left.

It had taken me ten steps to get to the mouth of the alley, where I’d noticed a scuffle going on a few steps down. I’d turned and looked, and shone the light of my phone down that way. I hadn’t known what to expect but the beam had caught the hint of red curls and that was all I needed. I was running for her before I was even conscious of having sent the command to my feet, but once I started I couldn’t stop. That was my Remi down there fighting against the man trying to do who-knew-what to her, and it didn’t matter that she hadn’t spoken to me in weeks and was pretending we didn’t know each other. It hadn’t mattered that the last time we’d really talked, she’d blown me off and gone home alone. Then not called.

It hadn’t mattered that she’d left Seattle without saying goodbye or answering my calls.

All that had mattered was that she was my girl, and someone had been hurting her.

I’d never been a fighter. It just wasn’t my style. But I’d pulled that guy off her like I was one of those action stars who did that sort of thing all the time, and hefted her into my arms before he could say a single thing. Yeah, I probably should have called the cops right then.

But I’d just wanted to get her out of there.

I’d stumbled to the front of the bar and had a quick word with the manager there to tell them that I’d had a family emergency and wouldn’t be going onstage tonight. I’d apologized profusely, knowing that I was putting my fledgling contract at risk with my actions.

And then I’d turned, whistled for a cab, and brought her back to my hotel room. I did call and left an anonymous tip on the ride back.

After we arrived at my hotel, I carried her upstairs and laid her gently down on the bed then stared at her for a moment, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now. I’d been around this girl her entire life and knew her better than I knew myself. There was a time when we’d slept in the same bed without so much as a second thought, if we were tired enough.

But right now, looking down at her, I was…

I didn’t know what I was. Hesitant. Nervous. Scared. We’d lost that ease between us, and I didn’t know if I was allowed to lay down next to her anymore. Would she want me to, or would she shout at me if she found me there with her, and tell me that we weren’t in that place anymore?

She’d left Seattle without even saying goodbye.

And you know what? I didn’t give a single damn. Because that was my girl and she’d been hurt. When she woke up, she’d want someone she could trust next to her. And I was going to be that man.

I slipped her shoes off and then removed mine. I took off the shirt I’d been wearing, knowing that it smelled like cigarette smoke and probably beer. And then I slipped into bed with her and took her in my arms, breathing against her soft red curls and closing my eyes in silent thanks that I’d found her in time. God knows what would have happened to her if I didn’t find her.

God knows what I would have done if I’d lost her.

She turned her face into my chest and murmured softly, pressing against me until her nose was buried in the spot where my neck met my shoulder, and I nearly cried from the realization of what could’ve happened tonight.

Yeah, I was going to be here for her when she woke up. Because I wanted to be that guy… and because the moment she’d realized I was here, I’d felt all the tension drain out of her body.

She wanted me here, whether she would admit it or not.

And that right there was enough for me.

Scenes Redacted

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Chapter 15 – Remi

I woke up slowly, feeling deliciously sated and very, very sore.

And then I realized I was in a room that definitely wasn’t mine, and that I most certainly didn’t recognize.

See, my room was small but carefully decorated. Bright and sunny and full of shades of yellow, flowers, and gingham. It was the opposite of what you’d expect from a girl who worked in rock music and had grown up hanging out with bands and staying up all night listening to the Beatles.

I felt the mattress shift and when I looked to my side, I saw Dean still watching me, his eyes darting from my left eye to my right as he probably tried to figure out how I was going to react to the memory of what we’d done together.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

I knew what he was asking. Was I sorry we’d done it? Did I want to take it back and pretend we hadn’t?

Not a fucking chance.

But did he?

“I’m… okay,” I answered. “But how are you?”

A slow grin spread across his face that told me exactly how he was. He was just as surprised—and elated—as I was feeling right now. If he was anything like me, he was going through all the reasons we should never have done anything like that and coming to one basic conclusion: That none of those reasons mattered.

Because we were together. And for the first time, we were going to do what was best for us rather than what everyone else expected.

And when he reached for me and pulled me to him, pressing his lips to mine and humming in approval when I kissed him back, I turned my brain off and let it happen.

Because I’d been in love with this man for longer than I could remember. And if we were going to try this being together thing…

Well, I wasn’t going to let my brain stop us.

***

The next three days made me feel like I was actually walking on air, and yes, I realize how stupid that sounds.

I mean anyone would think I was writing some stupid love song or something.

See what I did there? Raise your hand if you spotted it.

But back to the point. Dean and I were on the road—well, in Nashville, at least—and hitting a new bar every night, and we were working together like we’d never had any time apart. He went on stage every night and gave the audiences exactly what they wanted, and I was making contacts like I never had before and getting him on every blog available to us. It was like we were so in sync that we knew what the other was thinking before they even thought it, and though that also sounds insane and cheesy, I swear it was the truth.

Honestly, it felt like everything had finally fallen into place. I’d been hitting high after high since I got to Nashville and got the new job, but I’d always felt like something was missing. Finding out that Dean was in town and hooking up with him as his manager had made me feel even more wrong, because the guy I’d always loved was right there in front of me but still so far out of reach, the things that had happened too damaging for me to get over.

But now we were back together and it was like old times. We spent our lunch hours planning future shows and appearances and spent the dinners before every show going through his social media accounts and having him add some personal touches to them. He was getting some very good exposure on some of those platforms and I was explaining to him how great that was for his future. The more the people liked him, the better his chances were at landing a permanent contract with Amaryllis.

And that would be the start of an entirely new life for him.

“But not without you,” he said, bumping my shoulder with his.

I grinned down at the phone in my hands, reveling in the feeling that we were exactly where we belonged.

Then I looked up and he captured my face and kissed me soundly, and the world around me disappeared and he became the only thing I could feel.

Chapter 16 – Dean

I played the last chords of the final song in the show and grinned out at the audience, wondering if anything could ever be as good as this. The fans were screaming their heads off after having sung the entire song with me, and now they were jumping around and shouting for an encore. After several weeks of touring through the small bars in town and playing the same songs again and again, I was starting to get a real following in Nashville, with people showing up every night to see the show again. I knew my social media was blowing up—thanks to Remi’s magical fingers—and the lines for my shows were getting longer every night.

I thought again of what she’d said about my following, and how it would make the execs at the record label more likely to sign me to a more permanent label, and my smile grew even bigger. This might actually be it. This might be what I’d been dreaming of for years. And I had Remi to thank for it.

My eyes swiveled to the bar seat she always sat in when I was performing—the one on the far right of the bar, no matter where we were—and I found her there, all riotous red curls and big blue eyes. And I felt my smile turn into something a whole lot more gentle and satisfied.

Remi. This was all because of her. She’d fought to keep me performing back in Seattle and then fought for me here in Nashville, telling the other execs in that meeting that I should be the one they signed. She’d thrown herself on the bonfire that had been our relationship at the time and essentially sacrificed her own happiness to make sure I got that contract.

And now I had her, and I didn’t think I’d ever felt better about anything in my life.

She smiled back at me, then motioned for me to pay attention to the crowd itself, and I knew what she was actually saying. I needed to give them the encore they were waiting for rather than staring at her.

Which was fine. I’d focus only on her the moment I got backstage and had time away from prying eyes.

***

When I got backstage, my skin hot from the lights of the stage and my ears still ringing from the cheers, I leaned back against the wall and breathed out, trying to get my head to come down from the high of being onstage.

I felt someone stop right in front of me and let the smile grow across my face, happy to have this particular person invading the small moment of quiet I’d managed to create.

But when I opened my eyes again, expecting to see Remi there smiling, I saw an entirely different face. No red curls or freckles, pert nose and cupids-bow mouth. No eyebrow raised in preparation for some teasing comment. No tiny hands slipping into mine.

Instead, I saw a blond with far too much makeup on, her chest practically exploding out of her top and a brand new cowboy hat that probably still has the price tag on the inside sitting on top of her head.

My stomach dropped to my feet and I nearly groaned out loud.

“Sasha,” I said, knowing I sounded less than pleased and not caring. “What are you doing here?”

She gave me a sly smile and crawled her fingers up the buttons of my shirt while I fought to keep from squirming away from her.

“Well, you left Seattle without saying goodbye,” she said, pouting. “And I knew something must be up. That’s just not like you. So the moment I heard you were down here touring I knew I had to come down and see you. Offer you moral support. I mean, I’m sure you were missing me. Right?”

Wait, what? How had she heard I was down here? What was she doing, taking the local Nashville newspaper or something?

“Yeah,” I stuttered. “I got a really good opportunity and had to leave in a hurry.”

And didn’t bother to call to let you know, because I’d decided to leave Seattle and everyone there behind, and I was too busy trying to figure out where Remi was, I didn’t add. Or that when I got to Nashville and found Remi, Sasha had been the last thing on my mind.

Her pouting became even more obvious. “And you got here and didn’t call?”

“Yep. I got here, auditioned and they put me on tour immediately and it’s been… sort of a whirlwind.”

I sounded like an idiot.

“Look, Sasha,” I said, grabbing her hands and pushing them down. “What are you doing here, really? Nashville is a long drive from Seattle.”

She brought out that sly, flirty smile again, and took another step toward me. “I wanted to see you,” she whispered. Then she shrugged. “And I have an uncle that works at the label you signed with. He told me you’d signed and that you were here alone. I figured you probably needed a friendly face on your side.”

Okay, that was almost sweet of her—which was odd, in and of itself. Sasha had never done anything for anyone else, that I knew of. So the idea that she came here to support me was…

Weird.

Then the first half of what she’d said connected with a bang.

“Your uncle works for Amaryllis?”

“Yeah. He’s in the development department, I think.”

I fought to contain my shock and the sense of betrayal rioting through me. “And you never thought to tell me that?”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Why would I tell you that?”

“I don’t know, because you knew I wanted a music contract like I wanted oxygen?”

Had she ever listened to me at all? How did she not know that?

Another lazy shrug. “Oh I know, but I figured you probably wanted to achieve that on your own rather than by me calling my uncle.”

Oh. My. God. Remi had thrown herself into helping me get a contract and this girl, who’d I’d spent so many years with, hadn’t even thought to mention that she had an uncle in the music business who might have been a really good contact for me.

Then another thought occurred to me.

She frowned at me. “What are you thinking…” Suddenly a look of dawning understanding came over her face. “Oh. You want to know if I can put in a good word for you.”

I didn’t want to tell her that she was right. I definitely didn’t want to admit that my current contract was more of a probationary contract and that I needed everything to go exactly right if I wanted to get a permanent contract. I didn’t like the idea of Sasha having that much information about what I was doing.

And at the same time, if her uncle could influence whether I got that contract or not, I’d be a fool not to take advantage of it.

She was watching my face with more intelligence than I’d ever come to expect from her and must have seen the answers in my expression, because her smile went from sly to victorious.

“You know, he is pretty high up,” she crooned. “And I’m betting he would help you out. If I put in a good word with him.”

Right.

Sasha had never been subtle, and the hint she was dropping was so heavy I was surprised it hadn’t gone right through the floor. She could ask her uncle to help me out, and that would probably lead to me getting my full contract—which would be great. Remi had thought I’d already have it, given how hard I’d been working and how much the fans seemed to like my music, but Sasha’s uncle could probably make that an even better possibility.

If I was nice to Sasha.

Because the threat inherent in her statement was that she could quite easily make it go the other way, too. One wrong word from her and my contract would be washed down the drain. No matter how hard Remi and I worked to save it.

So I didn’t really have a choice. Not if I wanted to salvage my shot at this contract.

I held out my arm and forced a smile onto my face. “That would be amazing, Sasha. In the meantime, how about a drink? I happen to know there’s a bar right on the other side of this room.”

She giggled and slid her arm through mine, looking up at me like she’d never heard a better idea in her entire life.

And God help me, I smiled back and led her out to the bar like I wasn’t screaming inside about her holding something like that over my head and pretending she was doing me some sort of favor.

Scenes Redacted

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Join here to claim your COPY

Chapter 17 – Remi

I came through the door into the bar, my mind reeling with the interviews I’d just lined up. I’d had several pretty high-up reporters in the audience tonight to do features on the show itself, and most of my time during the show had been spent making sure they were having a good time and getting enough alcohol. After Dean walked off-stage, I followed the reporters out onto the sidewalk to keep talking to them and pitching the idea of getting Dean on his own with them. He was an up-and-coming artist and they’d all be able to get out ahead of the game by doing interviews with him right now, I told them. They could be among the first on this particular train. That had led to long conversations where I actually went into details and told them how long I’d known him and the sorts of things he’d been doing back in Seattle, which had then led to a series of funny stories from when we were young.

Look, I hadn’t necessarily wanted to tell a bunch of reporters about the time I got my braces stuck in the couch and he had to come cut me out, but this was the sort of thing you did to get reporters’ attention. Humanizing the artist made it easier to like them and relate to them, and it would give the reporters something to give to their readers. That was the sort of thing you did to get reporters on your side and make them great contacts.

Are you appreciating how much I’d learned in my short time with Amaryllis?

Honestly, though, I’d been doing this sort of thing for years, just on a smaller scale. I’d always run the merch booth for Dean and had ended up talking to his fans and making sure they’d be at the next show and knew how much Dean appreciated them. This was really no different. I was just doing it with people who could literally make or break his career.

I grinned as I entered the bar again and let out a quick breath of relief. That had gone a lot better than I’d expected it to. Everyone had seemed really interested in him and I had some numbers in my phone of people who wanted to do interviews with him. They might not be big interviews and they definitely wouldn’t be front-page stuff but they would be in print, and that was a big deal. Real Live Reporters.

Real Live Press.

It was more than I would have expected, with us only a few weeks into his first tour. But I’d been working my ass off all night to keep those people happy and then I’d given up some very personal stories to amuse them. I was beyond please to know that it had worked.

Now to tell the man himself.

I glanced through the bar, my heart racing with thoughts of how excited he was going to be, but didn’t see him there. Frowning, I walked through the tables to the bar itself, thinking maybe he’d settled in there to have a beer and wait for me. I hadn’t told him what I was doing tonight—I’d wanted it to be a surprise—so there was a chance he’d been confused at my absence and had stayed out here to visit with his fans while he waited for me to show up. Another scan of the bar itself, though, showed me that he wasn’t here either.

Okay, this was getting weird.

I walked over to the bartender and got his attention.

“What can I get you, gorgeous?” he asked, sliding over.

I felt my skin turn hot at the attention and shook my head at him. “Sam, you know you can’t talk to me like that. I’m working. As I told you earlier.”

His eyes went to the stage and back to me in an exaggerated movement and he smiled a slow, sexy smile. “Looks to me like the show’s over. Which means your shift is probably done.”

I returned the smile, despite myself. Sam was hot and tattooed and messy-haired—exactly the way I liked them—and attention from him didn’t feel like the worst thing.

When he leaned over the bar and got closer, I started to wonder whether I should take a step back. After all, I was still working. And I had a thing going on with Dean. No matter how hot Sam was, it didn’t change the fact that Dean and I had been spending every waking moment together. And a lot of non-awake moments in between. I cocked my head and gave Sam my best ‘are you serious right now’ look. “I’m looking for Dean. Have you seen him?”

The flirty look stuttered and died on his face, and I thought for a moment it was because I’d mentioned Dean at all. Fuck, did everyone know we were seeing each other? Did they know we were sleeping together? Because I hadn’t read my contract closely but I was guessing fucking the talent was against the code of conduct.

Even if the talent was a guy I’d known since I was born.

If I was about to be outed as the biggest groupie ever to group, and one of the only ones who’d found her way into Dean Simon’s bed…

“Yeah, he was here for about an hour,” Sam said carefully. “Came out right after he finished the show. I thought he was probably looking for you, but…”

“But what? I was outside with the reporters. He didn’t think to come look? Where’d he go?” I turned to look through the bar again, wondering if he was backstage with his guitar. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d gone to work through some idea he’d had while on stage.

“Um… No, I don’t think he was looking for you.”

I turned back to Sam, confused. “What’s going on? Why do you sound like you don’t want to tell the teacher your best friend was the one who put a frog on her desk?”

His mouth twitched at that, and the tension that was building inside me eased for a moment.

Then he answered me.

“The thing is, he wasn’t alone, and I’m not sure he’d thank me for sending a label rep after him while he has a girl with him.”

Every drop of blood froze in my veins.

“A girl?”

“Yeah, they were here for about an hour. Went through two bottles of my best tequila and were getting pretty sloppy by the time they decided to leave. Didn’t pay the bill, either, so I’m going to need you to sign this to put it on the label’s tab.” He slid the ziosk across the bar at me.

Right.

I swallowed three times as I signed and before I managed to ask the next question. “Where did they go?”

Sam was evidently over his guilt about turning Dean in, because he immediately pointed to a door just to the side of the stage. The door that led to Dean’s dressing room.

“Went in there,” he said. “Didn’t see them come back out again.”

The fuck?

“Thanks, Sam,” I said quietly, trying very hard to contain the avalanche of betrayal crashing through me right now. I mean maybe nothing was going on. Maybe some girl had just been at the bar and they’d gotten to talking while he was waiting for me.

While going through two bottles of tequila.

And then heading right for Dean’s dressing room.

I got up and walked toward the door, my hands opening and closing at my sides as I walked. I didn’t want to open that door. I didn’t want to know what was going on inside the room. And yet I had to, and I knew it. As his manager, I needed to make sure he was behaving himself out here on the road—especially when there were reporters right outside. We’d been working so hard to give him the reputation of being a bad boy with a good heart, and if he was screwing around with his fans, that would be a very big deal.

A big mess, publicly speaking.

As for whatever we had going on between us…

I shoved that thought into a box and locked it, then pushed it as far into the corner of my mind as it would go. I couldn’t afford to think about that right now. I had to be a professional here and do my job. Which was to make sure Dean wasn’t screwing up his reputation too badly.

I was here as part of my job. And that meant managing him and his bullshit. No matter what he was doing.

That was all.

That was it.

I got to the door, put my hand on the knob, and took a deep, heaving breath, trying to inject steel directly into my spine and reminding myself that I didn’t care what was going on on the other side of the door. I was a big girl with an adult job and I didn’t need Dean Simon.

I didn’t need Dean Simon.

I put my best mask over my face, gritted my teeth, and opened the door.

Scenes Redacted

Yeah, this is one of those scenes I had to pull to comply with ad policies. If you’d like to access the FULL version then you can read that inside THE BACKSTAGE PASS tier on Patreon

(or you can buy it as a single ebook)

Join here to claim your COPY

I slammed into the first coffee shop I came across, ordered my favorite drink—a latte with gingerbread syrup—and asked them to bring it to me when it was done. Then I went right for the back of the cafe and found a table that hid me from the front door and the windows that lined that side of the shop.

I felt like I was going to be sick.

I also felt betrayed and horrified and yet somehow numb at the same time. Look, I don’t know how that worked. It was like someone had shoved a knife right into my stomach and then turned it for maximum effect and my body had gone and shut down on me in response. I could remember every second of what I saw. Her fingers busy at the belt buckle I’d bought him. His fingers tangled in her hair as he watched her.

The shock of seeing the man I thought I loved in that position with another girl.

I relived every moment.

And yet my brain was in some sort of fog where it could feel the pain and kept telling me that I should be screaming and breaking things, and yet refused to give my hands the signal to do that. Refused to tell my lungs and throat to start screaming in rage and heartbreak.

I’d never been through this sort of situation so I had no idea if that was normal or not. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing right now or how I was supposed to be feeling.

What I did know was that Dean had started dating Sasha and completely dropped our friendship in favor of spending time with her. The moment she’d come onto the scene he’d forgotten about me and everything I’d thought we meant to one another. And though we’d still kept our friendship, he hadn’t really had time for it. Not until I happened to hold his career in my hands.

At which point he’d started really liking me again.

So I guessed I was feeling something, after all—namely that I should have seen this coming, because it was who he was. He was out for himself, first and foremost, and I’d always been an afterthought. And he’d liked Sasha too much to sacrifice her in favor of keeping something with me.

Which…

Okay. Okay.

Fine, I could handle that. I could do this. I didn’t know ‘this’ was, exactly, but I knew what my next steps were going to be. Evidently my time as Dean Simon’s manager was finished. And he was going to be on his own when it came to handling his social media and press. Hell, maybe Sasha could help him. He seemed to like her better than me for everything else. Though honestly, I doubted whether she’d be any good at getting reporters to do more than wonder how the hell she’d graduated high school.

That thought made me at least smile, and I took my latte from the barista when he brought it, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and started typing notes to myself about what I wanted to do next.

Chapter 18 – Dean

I woke up slowly, my head trying to roll right off my neck and bash itself against the floor.

Honestly I didn’t think that could hurt any more than what was already going on inside my skull. My brain felt like it was beating itself with a drum, my heartbeat echoing through my skull and the pounding reaching a level that made me think I could actually hear it happening. Every beat made my stomach flip, too, and I was pretty sure I was going to be sick.

God, how much had I drank last night? And why? I wasn’t a big drinker. I hated the way it made me feel after the fact. Sure, I’d have a beer or two, but I never went all out, and the pounding in my head made me think that I’d definitely gone all out.

What the fuck?

Then something shifted in my bed and I frowned. Looking up at the ceiling, and then over the room, I confirmed that I was in fact in my hotel room and not someone else’s. That was good news. But there was definitely someone in my bed with me.

Remi, I remember. It had to be Remi. We’d been spending the nights together and though it would have been weird for us to choose to sleep in this broken-down motel instead of her apartment, that must have been what we’d done.

Why the hell had we gotten so drunk before we did it?

I turned my head slowly, trying to cause as little disturbance as I could, and then froze. Because those weren’t rioting red curls on the pillow next to me.

That was bleached blond hair, and way too much of it.

Now I felt like I was definitely going to be sick, and I rocketed out of bed and aimed for the bathroom, rushing toward the toilet and the momentary relief it offered.

***

Two minutes later I stumbled back out of the bathroom and leaned on the wall next to it, staring at the bed and what it contained.

Not Remi. That wasn’t my girl in bed with me, and I didn’t see how I could avoid the logical conclusions. I wasn’t naked, but I could see from the curve of her back that the girl in my bed was. The sheets and bed spread were messed up and falling to the floor, and though that could have been just from sleep, it might also have been from something else.

Something a whole lot less innocent.

Oh my God.

This wasn’t some random girl I’d brought home, and she definitely hadn’t just found me in the hotel room. We’d also been hanging out in my dressing room at the bar. And that girl…

That girl was Sasha Graham. The bleached blond hair. The outrageous curves. The longer legs.

Holy fucking shit.

Everything came rushing back to me in a wave, then, and I saw the whole night happening again. Remi disappearing somewhere after the show and not letting me know where she’d gone. Me standing backstage and waiting for her, then opening my eyes to see Sasha standing in front of me instead. Her casual observation that she’d come all the way from Seattle to offer me support.

Her other casual observation that she had an uncle who worked for Amaryllis, and he’d told her that I was on tour with a probationary contract.

The idea that she could have told me about this uncle at any time and landed me a record deal years ago—and the further idea that if I wasn’t nice to her, she could sink the chance I now had, which would mean sinking all of Remi’s hard work.

Me suggesting that I wanted to buy her a drink.

Two bottles of tequila and me getting so drunk that I could barely walk, much less think. Though I’d held onto the idea that I had to be nice to Sasha. I’d suggested we go into the dressing room so we could have a more private conversation. Really I’d just wanted to get away from the tequila. I’d known I’d had too much to drink and that I was going to pay for it, and I’d wanted to get Sasha into a more private place so no one took pictures of us together. I’d known that Remi might come upon us at any moment, and I didn’t want her doing that, but I hadn’t known how to get rid of Sasha. I’d been thinking I was doing the right thing, the responsible thing, but the moment we got into that fucking room, she’d turned, pushed me against the wall, and started kissing me.

And God, it had been so familiar and easy that at first, I’d just kissed her back. It was like my brain turned off and let my body drive the bus, and my body had chosen pleasure over responsibility. She’d kissed me like she always kissed me, with single-minded intent, and by the time she dropped to her knees in front of me I’d been so hard I could barely stand up. Her on her knees in front of me had been a temptation I almost didn’t refuse.

Then my brain had kicked in and overruled my body, and instead of letting her do what she wanted, I’d jerked her up and told her I couldn’t. This was my ex. This was a girl who I’d decided wasn’t right for me, and who I’d left behind.

And now Remi was in the picture.

Remi.

Oh. My. God.

Remi had barged into the room and seen us together. I’d been struggling with Sasha and the door had opened next to me and someone had gasped. I’d looked up, still conscious enough to know I was probably in trouble, and seen the last person I’d wanted to see.

Flaming red hair. Wide, shocked eyes and a mouth opened in horror and betrayal.

Remi.

She hadn’t said anything. She’d seen me struggling to get Sasha off me, that was all. But she couldn’t have known that. She would have seen my hands in Sasha’s hair and her fingers on my belt and jumped to all the wrong conclusions. She’d turned and run, leaving the door wide open. And though I’d pushed Sasha away and run after her, she’d been long gone by the time I got into the bar, and Sam hadn’t been willing to tell me where she’d gone.

And no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t remember anything after that. Someone must have gotten us into a taxi, though, and decided that Sasha was coming with me, because she was in my bed rather than at her own hotel.

Sasha was in my bed.

And I had no fucking idea where Remi even was.

Chapter 19 – Remi

I kept my phone off for most of the next day, partially to hide from Dean and partially to keep myself away from temptation. I wanted to call him and scream at him. I wanted to text him and tell him I was more finished with him than anyone had ever been finished with anyone in the history of man (or woman). I wanted to text Lola and let her know that I was off the account and never wanted to hear the name ‘Dean Simon’ again.

And yet I knew I wouldn’t do any of that, because riding above the anger and muffling it was a deep sorrow that had me numb and unreactive. I hated him and wanted to scream at him and yet I also felt almost nothing. My body had gone into some sort of protective shock and I felt sort of like I was wearing emotional bubble wrap.

Which was how I came to the very logical decision that my best protection would be to take a date to the next show.

We had shows every night, more or less, so I didn’t have a lot of time to procure said date, but a quick and very shallow run-through of the night before told me that I had the perfect candidate. And he wouldn’t even be that hard to contact.

Because Sam had given me his number early in the night, to use in case I needed help.

Well, I needed help now, didn’t I? I needed protection. And a large, tattooed body sounded like exactly the sort of protection I liked.

I spent the day working hard on any project other than Dean’s—including a few Lola didn’t even know about—and getting my list of excuses prepared—because I knew I’d have to answer to Lola for not doing as much with Dean’s accounts as I should have—and then grabbed my things and left for the show. Tonight was going to be an easy one. Dean had already performed at this bar once on this tour, and though we were hoping for a bigger show tonight, I wasn’t sure how much better it could actually go. The venue loved his style and the crowd had been crazy for him the first time he played. The neighborhood was perfect for his style of music and the bloggers who frequented this particular bar would show up for him again.

It was the perfect storm, really. I’d worked so hard for him up to this point that the foundation was laid. I basically just needed to coordinate things. And with luck, avoid Dean like he had the plague.

Which he might actually have. I mean, who knew?

When I walked to the courtyard in front of the bar, I found Sam already waiting for me, tall and tattooed and messy haired and smiling at one of the other girls in front of the bar.

“Excuse me, that smile is mine tonight,” I joked, walking up to him and slipping my arm through his.

He looked at least a little bit abashed. “You have indeed claimed it for yourself. For the night. But it’s only on loan, Remi. And something tells me you’re not actually interested in keeping it for yourself.”

I gave him the wryest of grins but didn’t answer. Evidently Sam could read me better than I’d realized. And unfortunately, he was right; this wasn’t a long-term need. Though I was hoping it might become a friendship.

He wasn’t Dean. Not even close. He didn’t make my blood run hot or my skin rise up in chills, my belly flipping and my heart pounding and my brain becoming immune to anything but his charm. But that was the whole point. I’d had Dean for three short days and then he’d found someone else.

Sam might not be any more consistent, but at least he was honest about it. Besides, any bartender who gives you his number and tells you to call him if you need help is worth keeping around. Even if it was just as a friend.

We walked into the bar arm-in-arm, still smiling and talking about how the night was going to go. I had a schedule I had to keep to but was going to hang out with Sam whenever I had a chance, and he’d already said he wanted to pick up some of the tricks the tender from this bar used, so had a schedule of his own. It was going to be a fun night. I could feel it.

I just had to get through the Dean Simon part of it whole.

The moment we got into the main part of the bar, I saw him. He was at one of the chairs working on some music, a pen in his hand and his guitar in his lap. Doing exactly what I’d told him to do: letting his fans see him working as an Every-man rather than some big star. Giving them a chance to walk up to him and talk to him. Making himself accessible to any of the music bloggers that might show up early.

Good boy.

And yet highly inconvenient for me as I’d hoped to come in and have at least five minutes to settle in before we saw each other.

I froze for only a second, and then let Sam led me toward the bar to talk to the tender there. Once we were in that section of the bar I pulled out my phone and my schedule and started working. I wasn’t here to moon over Dean Simon. I was here to do a job. And I was going to do that job regardless of who was here and what they were doing.

Though another quick glance told me he hadn’t brought Sasha with him.

And that made me grin a little bit.

***

Dean didn’t bother looking up from his table until people started filtering into the bar, getting ready for the show, and the crowd finally got his attention. By that time I’d worked through my entire list of contacts and made sure the people I wanted to see here would be here, and I’d also lined up several after-show interviews for him. Now I know what you’re thinking, and no, I didn’t want to do that much work for the guy who’d recently broken my heart in two, but I had other plans that included me being able to say I’d done my job and done it well.

So really I was working for myself, not him. And I couldn’t see anything wrong with that.

I was watching him, wondering whether he’d be able to handle the interviews himself, when he suddenly looked up and met my eyes. The world around me, which had been growing noisier with the crowd, suddenly disappeared, and all I could see—all I could feel—was his dark gaze on mine, full of sorrow and regret and something I couldn’t quite read. His face was haggard. Pale, like he’d barely slept and definitely hadn’t eaten, and lined with tension.

And for a long moment, I wanted to rush to him and make sure he was okay. I wanted to tell him everything was going to be fine and that he was going to be terrific up there.

Then I yanked myself out of that mindset. Everything might be fine with the show and he would definitely be great on stage, but he didn’t need me to tell him that. He’d done this enough times that he already knew it. And as for the interviews and such, he’d done enough of them to have the process down pat.

He didn’t need me.

As he’d proven last night.

I kept my face neutral and my lips relaxed and turned back toward Sam and the other bartender, who were now talking about the best shakers they’d ever used. It wasn’t a conversation that interested me, honestly—I wasn’t into making drinks that required shakers—but Dean didn’t interest me anymore either.

Or rather… Well, he did. He probably always would. But I couldn’t afford to give into that anymore. I’d moved on when I left Seattle, and slipped backward here in Nashville. I just had to take the those steps away again. For my own good.

***

The rest of the night passed in a series of awkward situations, with Dean staring at me from the stage and me doing my best not to notice. His show… wasn’t great, honestly. He was obviously distracted and didn’t spend much time interacting with the crowd. Instead, he sang to some space above their heads, his face mournful and his tone lacking any emotion. He did manage to make a few jokes about how he was trying on his country western persona, and that he needed to crash his truck and lose his dog, and though those made the audience laugh they certainly weren’t going to bring them back for another show.

The bloggers I’d invited trailed away before long and I didn’t think any of them made it backstage for their interviews.

Officially, as manager, it would have been my job to get Dean whipped into shape and tell him to pick it up and start entertaining people the way he was supposed to. But I wasn’t really feeling up to marshaling him tonight. I’d set everything up and maintained the posts on social media for the show.

I’d done my job.

And after I saw the last blogger leave when the show was over, I cleaned up my things and left as well. Dean was a big boy. He could get himself home.

I had things to take care of. We only had a week left of this tour and I was hoping I could organize a lot of that from my home or office, rather than from the bars themselves. Because seeing Dean tonight had told me one thing: That bubble wrap I’d used to protect my heart was already starting to rip, and I wasn’t sure it could live through any rough handling.

Hell, I wasn’t even sure it could live through gentle handling.

I missed my friend. And I didn’t know how to deal with the fact that he’d hurt me so badly.

Chapter 20 – Remi

Lala raised her eyebrows until they almost met her wild hairline and gave me a look that told me she didn’t believe a word of what I was saying. “So let me get this straight,” she said slowly. “You’ve done everything you can throughout the entire tour to keep him happy and make sure he’s getting all the support he needs?”

Dammit. We had a few days left of the tour and Amaryllis was thinking about stretching it out even further. They liked the way the audiences were responding to Dean in the city and wanted to see whether he would have the same appeal out in the countryside. They wanted to send him on a real tour rather than one that only focused on Nashville’s music district.

And they wanted to send me with him.

But first, they wanted to talk about why the press had fallen off so much over the past week. They’d noticed that there were a ton of posts and stories in the first couple weeks of the tour, and that those stories and posts had fallen off pretty significantly in the past week.

And that still wasn’t all. There had also been reports—from who, I didn’t know—that Dean and I weren’t getting along. Someone had told the higher-ups that there was a ton of tension between him and me now and that we hadn’t been seen conferring or doing any strategizing lately whereas we’d been working well together up to a certain point. Someone had told someone that it looked like something had happened between us and that it had ruined whatever chemistry we’d had going on between us. They’d said it was affecting my ability to do my job and Dean’s ability to really connect with his audiences and that all told, it was killing the tour and something needed to be done.

I don’t know who would have reported something like that, though, because Dean and I had never been public about our meetings. We’d tried pretty specifically to not interact with each other in the public eye, partially because we weren’t sure where we stood and partially because it wasn’t good for his status as a sex symbol to constantly be seen with the same girl. He and I might not have been on the same page about our personal connection but we’d talked about that part early on and decided it was better for him to look like he didn’t have a tight connection to any one girl.

Our meetings and brainstorming sessions had always taken place behind closed doors.

So who would know that they weren’t going on anymore? Who would have reported us for having tension between us? We’d barely even talked since I found him with Sasha, and though I missed him like crazy and knew he wasn’t exactly happy with the situation, I also knew that we hadn’t had enough contact for anyone else to have seen tension between us.

If Dean hadn’t reported me and I hadn’t reported him, then what was going on, here?

Whatever it was, the company had decided something needed to be done and had sent Lola to pin me down in my office and ask me what the hell was going on—and more importantly, what I could do to fix it. They wanted Dean out on the road and they wanted me with him, but not if I couldn’t fix whatever was wrong.

“Of course I’m trying to keep him happy,” I said, maybe too quickly. “He’s the talent, right? And I chose to work with him.”

More of that look that said she didn’t believe me. “You did. You also never told anyone why you walked into the room where he was auditioning and looked like you’d just seen a ghost from your past. Or why you voted for him without even considering any of the other artists. You had your choice of anyone in that group and you chose the artist from Seattle. The city that you happen to have come from.”

Well, shit. I hadn’t realized she knew where I came from—or where Dean had come from.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said quickly. “A lot of people come from Seattle.”

“And end up in Nashville?” she asked doubtfully.

“What do you think happened? My best friend-slash-boyfriend and I split up in Seattle and I moved to Nashville alone, landed a job with your company, and then called my best friend-slash-boyfriend and told him to come on out? After he’d happened to get an invitation from a talent scout? I’m good, Lala, but I’m not taht good. That would take way more planning and luck than I have.”

Right, okay, I’d just told her exactly what had happened. But it was such a ludicrous set of coincidences that no one would believe it was the truth.

Except, evidently, Lola, who gasped and grabbed my wrist. “Oh my God, is that what happened? Do you know him from Seattle? Did you know him already? Is that why you two had that immediate…” She did jazz fingers in my direction. “I don’t know, that insane chemistry between you?”

She looked at me expectantly and took in the disbelieving look on my face, which was meant to be ridiculing the fact that she thought any of that was true.

“Oh don’t look at me like that, Remi, it was obvious from the first moment. He caught you off-guard somehow and he looked like he didn’t know whether to shout at you or hug you. I actually thought he was going to do a whole lot more than hug you. Until you walked away from him.”

Dammit. I’d thought I handled that first meeting a whole lot better than I evidently had.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped. “I was surprised he was already there, that’s all. As for his reaction, can I help it if he immediately wanted to jump me? I mean look at me.”

I gestured to my not-so-glamourous appearance, which included worn jeans and a ratty t-shirt, and Lola looked me up and down once and then cracked the start of a smile.

“So you don’t know him? You just have this insane chemistry with him that you two have refused to act on because you’re working together?”

“Exactly. There might be chemistry but he’s also a musician and needs to maintain a specific image that does not, at this time, include dating,” I said, hoping I could override her surprisingly good instincts with business. “Besides, he’s a musician. I’ll work with them but I’m way too smart to actually date them.”

“But not too smart to date bartenders, it seems,” she observed.

Now that brought me up short. I’d only seen Sam twice since the night I took him to Dean’s show, and neither of those times had been serious. He’d known exactly what I was doing in trying to protect myself from Dean, and that didn’t exactly make for the best romance.

Which was beside the point. I hadn’t told anyone about him.

“What are you doing, having me followed?”

She shrugged. “Not on purpose. I happened to go to a show and happened to see you there with a guy I happened to recognize. And I have to tell you, Remi, if you’re trying to fight the rumors that you and Dean hooked up and then fell apart again, dating another guy is actually a pretty smart way to do it.”

Wait.

“What?” I gasped. “I didn’t… We didn’t… Are people actually saying that?”

She leaned in close, her tone even more serious now. “They sure are. Because he was seen rescuing you from some guys in an alley and then hustling you into a cab. A cab that he also got into. And after that, the reports are that you two were so hot for each other that you didn’t notice the other people noticing you. Then I show up to see it for myself and I find you with another guy and barely speaking to Dean, and suddenly the blogs are few and far between and the social media is falling off.”

I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t think I could say anything to make this any better, but if I said the wrong thing, it would definitely make things worse.

“That’s right,” she continued. “I’m doing my best to protect you right now, but Remi, if the execs find out about this you’re finished. If they find out you’re making him uncomfortable or unhappy, even worse. It’s bad enough that you might have gotten him this contract when you already knew him, and it’ll be hell for all of us if you fucked him. But if you’re making their newest golden boy unhappy…”

“Right,” I breathed.

She didn’t have to say anything else. I’d already broken rules—first to get him the chance at a contract and then by sleeping with him—and if I didn’t fix things, I was out. This dream job would be a dream job of the past, and Dean would be going on this next tour on his own.

All the work I’d put in, all the heartbreak, and I was going to lose it just because Dean hadn’t been able to keep his hands to myself and now I couldn’t stand to look at him.

Chapter 21 – Dean

“Are you kidding me?” I asked, too shocked to come up with anything any more original than that.

Morris shook his head. “I wish I was. I don’t like drama like this any more than anyone else, and the truth is, you two made a great team for a moment. I’ve never seen press like that on a tour this small—even with established artists—and you were garnering so much praise from the fans. Everything was on the right track. I was positive you were going to get your contract nailed down and that she’d be rewarded for all her hard work with a promotion.”

“A promotion?” What did that mean? What was her position right now? We’d never talked about it, but she’d somehow managed to keep her office job while spending a ton of time on the road with me and I’d sort of assumed that was the ultimate job for her. Hell, she’d been training for that since we were kids and she first started managing my appearances.

What sort of promotion would she get?

Would it take her away from me?

“Of course,” Morris said, grinning. “Word on the street is she has her eye on the executive offices. This talent management position is just where she got in because that was what we were shopping for when she interviewed. And she’s great at it, obviously, but I don’t think she ever meant to stay in it.”

My heart did a weird twisting thing and I gulped, trying to get it to go back to where it was supposed to live. Why did I care what her job was? It wasn’t like we were going to stay on tour, and even if we did, she hadn’t spoken to me in days. In fact, she seemed to have become some sort of professional Dean Avoider. Every time I thought she’d be in the bar where I was performing, she was leaving, and when I arrived at others I found her already there and working and way too busy to talk to me.

And no matter what, she never once looked at me.

Not that I could blame her. I still couldn’t believe what I’d done with Sasha, and I definitely didn’t remember the logic I’d used on that night. Whatever it was, it had been really stupid. I’d finally found a way to patch things up with Remi and actually get into some sort of relationship with her, and instead of just sitting still and savoring the fact that I was allowed to touch her whenever I wanted, I’d…

I’d let Sasha back in.

God, I was stupid.

“What did you do, kid?” Morris asked, watching me closely. “You two were working so well together that we had a bet about whether you’d known each other before. Good press, full houses, lots of action on the socials. And then suddenly it all went to hell. No more stories and your performances became… Well, ‘lackluster’ is putting it mildly. And now Remi is in trouble and they’re talking about moving her to another department or out of the company altogether. What happened?”

What happened? I’d rescued her from those guys in the alley and then managed to keep her. Had her in my hands in a way I’d never imagined I’d wanted, and been too afraid to think too hard about it because I was afraid of losing it. I hadn’t wanted to talk to her about what we were doing because I didn’t want her to think too hard about it and pull away again. But I’d loved every second of it. The whispered conversations at midnight, discussing what it was going to be like if I got the contract. The brainstorming sessions backstage as we discussed things I needed to work into the interviews I was doing. Stolen moments between shows when we got drinks together, away from the public eye.

Stolen kisses in the back room. Long, lingering looks when I was onstage and she was at the bar.

And the rushing feeling of knowing that I’d get to take her home at the end of the night and kiss her the way I wanted to.

“Kid?” Morris said, and I snapped back to the present, where Morris was looking at me like he’d said my name more than once. “What happened between you two?”

“Nothing,” I said, knowing that it was the only answer. “We just ran out of steam. It’s my first tour, man. I got tired and cranky, and she took the brunt of it.”

“That’s not what I’m hearing,” he said quietly.

Then why the fuck did he ask me?

“What are you hearing?” I asked. I didn’t know if I wanted to hear the answer, but something told me I needed to. If Remi was in trouble because of me, I needed to save her, and to do that I needed to know what exactly she was in trouble for.

“I’m hearing you two were fucking,” he said bluntly. “I’m hearing you knew each other in Seattle and she sold her soul to get you this contract, and then you got on tour together and starting sleeping together. And then I hear she caught you with another woman and decided to undermine you.”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I was too horrified. Too shocked.

How the fuck would anyone know any of that? We were so careful! We never did or said anything where anyone else would be able to see or hear us, and we definitely didn’t kiss in public. I made sure no one saw us leaving together—hell, sometimes we met up at the cafe down the street, just to make sure no one saw us leaving together—and I was flat out positive no one else had known about Sasha being there or what Remi had seen in that back room.

No one except Sasha.

Oh, fuck me.

I started racking my brain, trying to remember exactly how much I’d told the girl in the hour we were together, but that was all a blur now. And did it really matter, anyhow? She would have seen Remi at the show, and even if she hadn’t, she could have asked her uncle about my contract and he would have told her that Remi was managing my tour for me.

She might have put two and two together and realized that Remi and I were actually working together and not in town on accident. And then she might have gone one step further and decided that we’d actually come to Nashville together. Sasha had always been jealous of Remi when we were together. She hadn’t liked that I’d spent so much time talking about Remi’s ideas and opinions, and no matter how many times I told her that I’d always thought of Remi as a sister, she’d never believed me.

It was why we broke up, in the end. She wanted me to stop talking to Remi and I told her that was never going to happen. She’d cried and shouted and screamed and threatened and I’d told her that I would never choose her above Remi. Not in a million years.

And now Sasha had come to Nashville and seen that Remi and I were here together and working on the same tour. And it had probably taken her about thirty seconds to come up with a plan to get back at Remi—or me—for what she’d always seen as us ganging up on her.

Holy fucking shit.

The kiss. The tequila. Sasha trying to seduce me. Remi’s sudden appearance and me pushing Sasha away to run after Remi.

I bet she got on the phone right then and called her uncle and told him everything, making up any details that she didn’t actually have. I was betting she’d done everything she could to get my contract pulled, and that she’d thrown Remi right under the bus in order to do that. She wouldn’t have cared that she was lying or telling them a story she didn’t actually know.

I hadn’t seen her since that morning after, and I’d been so busy trying to get Remi to talk to me that I hadn’t even bothered to wonder where Sasha had gone or whether she’d talked to her uncle about me before she left.

It sounded like she had talked to him. Just not in the way I’d wanted her to.

“None of that is true,” I told Morris firmly. “But how much trouble am I in? Because I’m guessing you wouldn’t be here telling me all of that if everything was fine and dandy.”

He sighed and gave me a grim smile. “You’re in enough trouble that I came here to tell you personally,” he admitted. “I’m not even supposed to be here. But I like you, kid, and I don’t want them to drop you.”

“Well we’re in agreement there,” I replied. “So what do I have to do?”

“Get your ass back in gear. Get Remi doing her job again. Show the execs that you’re good enough to overcome this and make them change their minds about dropping you both. They don’t like scandals or the rock star cliches. That’s why they set up their own label in the first place. To get away from that shit. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Remi, kid, but you’ve got to fix it. And you’ve got to do it fast.”

Fix it.

Right.

I wasn’t sure how possible that was, but he and I were in agreement about one thing: I wasn’t ready to let Remi James go. I’d just found her again and finally taken things to the next level, and yes, there were some complications—named Sasha Graham—but they weren’t what she thought they were.

And Remi and me? We were meant to be together.

I just had to remind her of that fact.

While making my shows everything they had been during the first weeks of the tour.

No problem.

Chapter 22 – Dean

I got to the next venue three hours early, and I wasn’t there because I needed a change of scenery from my dingy hotel room.

It was because I was intent on catching Remi out. She’d been arriving to the venues earlier than me lately and doing all the scheduling she needed to do, then cutting out either before I got there or right after the show started. And up to this point it had worked. I’d missed her again and again, and I’d mostly been too busy getting onstage and entertaining the people to have time to chase after her.

I mean it’s nearly impossible to chase someone out the front door when you’re in the middle of a set. I wanted to speak to Remi alone, but I was also responsible for holding up my end of the bargain with the label, and that meant actually staying on stage and doing that whole. performing thing.

Today, though, I was going to beat her there. I was going to be in the bar working in a place where I could see every single person who walked through that front door, and I was going to look up every time someone walked into the place. I’d see her come in and I’d corner her the second she set a foot on the hardwood flooring this place had down.

And then we were going to talk.

I wanted to tell her what had happened and that it wasn’t what she’d thought it was. I wanted to ask her if she was really in trouble with the label and if they’d bothered to tell her so, or if she was in the dark. Because if she didn’t even know, she needed to hear about it. Hell, if she did know, we needed to game plan for how we were going to fix everything, because I wasn’t going to have her losing her job because of fucking Sasha Graham.

I needed her at my side. I wanted her at my side.

And that was the other thing we needed to talk about. I needed to tell her how I was feeling about the whole having-Remi-ripped-away thing. I wanted her to know how much I’d loved discovering what we could be together and how much she’d touched my heart. How she’d suddenly taken over my whole world and turned it Remi-colored.

And how colorless everything had gone since she’d stopped talking to me.

I needed to tell her that somewhere in the midst of everything, I’d fallen in love with her. Hell, maybe I’d always been in love with her and had been too stupid to realize it until I lost her.

In short, I needed to talk to her about a number of things, and the moment had come. We were out of time for chickening out or avoiding the issue. Her job—and mine—were on the line, and as for our hearts…

I was guessing I wasn’t the only one hurting, here. At least I hoped I wasn’t.

I stalked into the bar, found the right table, and sat my ass down in the chair that faced the door. And then I started to work. Or at least I got my notebook and pencil out and pulled my guitar from its case. I had the tools I needed for working.

Though the truth was I sat there and stared at the door, waiting for her to walk through it.

***

Two hours later, she still hadn’t appeared and I was starting to get worried. I glanced at my phone again and again, checking the time, and even started calling people that we both knew, asking if they’d seen her or knew what she was doing. Because she should have been in the bar by now, even if she hadn’t been talking to me. At any other show, she would have been here going through the schedule with the crew and taking pictures of the venue for posts. Talking to the bloggers who had shown up, making sure they had what they needed, and calling anyone who wasn’t here to line up interviews for later. On a normal day she would have already talked to the house about the lighting that worked best for my show and then talked to the bartender to make sure I had a constant supply of iced tea—my favorite—while I was on stage.

And she probably would have been thinking the entire time that I didn’t have a fucking clue about how much she did for me that she didn’t get paid for. But she’d be wrong about that. Because I’d watched her go through the same steps every night, and once I’d even gone to the lighting crew and the bartender and asked what she’d been talking to them about.

And it had turned out she was taking care of me even when I didn’t know it, and when it certainly wasn’t her job. She’d been making sure they used the most flattering lighting and kept me hydrated.

She’d been doing that even after the whole thing with Sasha happened. I knew, because I was still getting iced tea while I was on stage.

I just wasn’t getting her sitting at the bar watching me anymore.

“Kid, you ready for your sound check or what?” a voice suddenly shouted in my ear.

I jumped and pulled myself back into reality, looking around and remembering where I was and what I was doing. Another glance at my phone told me we had half an hour until the show started. I had to get ready. It was time to tune my guitars and talk to my band. Make sure the sound was all good. Get into the clothes I was actually planning to wear tonight.

“Yeah, of course,” I said, casting a glance toward the sound guy. “I’ll be right there.”

I looked around the room again first, though, wondering if Remi had appeared yet.

But she hadn’t.

And that made me both worried and suspicious.

***

Thank God my fingers knew the chords by heart at this point, and that I could have sang my songs in my sleep, because I spent the entire show focusing on where she might show up rather than the songs or the audience. I watched the bar and the door to the sidewalk, and when I wasn’t watching them I kept an eye on the backstage area. Maybe she’d come through the alley at the back of the bar rather than the front door. Maybe she was laying low and doing her work from back there.

I took three breaks during the show itself and walked the hallway in the back of the bar, just to check, but I never saw her back there. And when I asked some of the crew if they’d seen her the answer was always no. They hadn’t seen her all day and as far as they knew, she’d never shown up to work tonight.

Hearing that had made it harder to go back onstage every single time. I didn’t know what was going on but this felt all wrong. Remi always showed up if people were expecting her. It was like a superpower for her. No matter how sick or worn out or broken down she was, if people were counting on her, she showed up—even if it was to tell them she wasn’t going to be able to do whatever she’d promised she was going to do. She just didn’t believe in leaving anyone hanging. I mean look at what she’d done for me at that audition, and I still wasn’t sure we’d even been friends at that time.

If she considered you one of her people, she went to the ends of the earth for you, no question.

So it made zero sense for her to just not show up to a gig where she not only had an artist performing but also had a job she was getting paid to do. She took work seriously enough that even when she was just a barista in a coffee shop, she’d showed up every day, on time and ready to work. Now she was working her dream job—or at least in her dream industry—and was about to lose the job, and just decided not to show up?

I didn’t think so.

I mean discounting the fact that our situation was complicated right now, it just didn’t make any sense. She’d been mad at me for a week and it hadn’t stopped her from coming to work or doing an at least okay job.

I had that realization during my last break from being onstage, and it made it almost impossible to go back out there. Because I could only think of two reasons she might have flaked tonight: One, she was in some sort of trouble, or two, she’d run again. She’d seen something she didn’t like—that maybe even broke her heart, though that felt a little bit presumptuous—and she’d run.

She’d run like she did when she left Seattle.

Neither of those options were any good. Either she was hurt or in trouble or she was running away from me again. I couldn’t stand the thought of either of those things.

So I cut the end of my show short. Instead of playing the five songs I had left, I jumped right to the final song, telling the audience I had something I had to take care of and wasn’t feeling up to sticking around. I asked them not to ask for an encore—something I’d never thought I would do—and then told them I’d make it up to them in the next show, if they came around.

“I’ll play for an extra hour if they’ll let me,” I said fervently. “I swear.”

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” someone shouted back.

I paused. Morris probably would have told me to make something up to make myself sound important, so I could maintain my reputation.

Remi, on the other hand, would have told me to tell them the truth. Make myself seem human so they could cheer for me.

And for the first time, I realized how good Remi was at this, and how great her instincts actually were.

“I’m in love with a girl, and she was supposed to be here tonight,” I said simply. “She’s not. So I’m going to go find her.”

There was a shocked silence, like no one had expected me to be so honest, and then one of the women in the audience sighed.

“That’s about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” she murmured.

“So you’re saying you’ve got to see about a girl?” some other guy shouted.

I chuckled at his use of the phrase, which was the name of one of my best songs. “Well played, sir,” I told him, grinning. “And yes. I’ve got to see about a girl. So if you’ll all excuse me…”

At that, they broke into riotous applause, and started cheering so loudly I almost felt bad about leaving them. Then I remembered Remi and jumped off the stage, leaving my guitar behind and making my way quickly toward the exit.

The crowd shouted good luck to me as I went, and I sent their wishes up to heaven.

Because if she’d left, I was going to need all the luck I could get to find her again. I’d found her the first time by luck alone. I was guessing the second time was going to be a whole lot more difficult.

Then again, now that I’d realized I was in love with her, I had much better motivation.

Chapter 23 – Dean

I went to her house first, because that was the only thing I could think of. If she was sick and hadn’t been able to make it to the show because she couldn’t even get out of bed, then she had to be at her apartment. It was the only logical place to find her.

Was I hoping she was just sick and laying in bed hating that she was missing a show? Yes. Did I also stop on the way there to get her chicken soup, just in case? Also yes.

Was I jumping at the straw man idea of her just being sick rather than having blown out of town to get away from me?

Absolutely.

But can you blame me? This was the girl who’d always been there for me when I needed her, and who had always turned to me when she couldn’t handle something. When she hadn’t had a date to her prom and needed someone to help her make the guy she had a crush on jealous, it was me she’d come to. When I’d done a big gig and had only a handful of people show up, she was the one I called. If anything bad ever happened to her, she climbed the trellis outside my window and came in to hang out in my bedroom and drink hot chocolate.

If anything ever went wrong in my life, she was the one I wanted to tell about it.

I’d always been best friends with her brother, and he was the one I went out with. But when it came down to it, she was the one who’d had my back through thick and thin. And I’d been more of a support to her than her own brother had.

So hell yeah, I was hoping that she was just sick rather than missing or in trouble. I couldn’t handle the thought that she’d run out on me again.

Just like she probably couldn’t handle the thought that I’d gone from sleeping in with her on a Sunday morning to letting Sasha go down on me in a back room in a bar.

My stomach clenched at the thought and I grasped the bag with the chicken noodle soup tighter. God, I’d been so stupid. Why hadn’t I tried harder to get her alone in the days after that stupid situation? Why hadn’t I cornered her and forced her to listen to me, so I could tell her that nothing had happened?

Okay, I wasn’t positive nothing had happened. I had, after all, woken up the next morning with Sasha naked in my bed. But I was hoping there was nothing there. If she’d been drunk enough, it would have made sense for me to take her back to my hotel room just to make sure she was safe, and once we got there, the bed was really the only place to sleep. I’d kicked her out the next morning without bothering to ask what had happened between us, but I was assuming that was a big fat nothing.

I was in love with Remi, and I’d been in love with her already when I saw Sasha. Surely my better nature would have kept that in mind rather than letting me do anything I would regret.

I’d realized that as I was shoving Sasha out the door, and that was what I was going to stick with. Hard stop.

Now I had to find Remi and share that information with her. Including the love part.

I darted up the steps to her building and through the front door—which didn’t have a lock, which drove me nuts—then made for the stairs. Remi was on the third floor and I’d learned quickly that it was a whole lot faster to take the stairs than wait for the elevator. Moments later, I was on her floor and walking quickly toward her apartment.

Please let her be there, please her be there, I chanted to myself, my grip firm on the bag of chicken soup. And please let her be sick enough that I get to say what I need to say.

Would it be romantic confessing my love to someone who might be sneezing their head off? No. But I’d do it, and we’d be laughing about it for the rest of our lives.

If I was lucky.

I got my keys out of my pocket, thanking Past Remi for thinking I deserved to have a key to her apartment, and slid the key into the lock. Taking a deep breath and still chanting to myself, I turned the key and pushed the door forward.

The apartment was empty.

And by empty, I mean the furniture was still there, but every trace of Remi herself was gone. The curtains. The vases full of flowers. The guitars on the stands in the corner that she collected but had never learned to play.

The place looked like Remi had never even lived here.

I dropped the chicken noodle soup, spun on my heel, and made for the stairwell, my phone out and my mind spinning through who I should call first to find out where the hell she’d gone.

***

“What do you mean she moved?” I gasped, trying very hard to keep my tone even and knowing that I was failing. I was aiming for an even, rational tone of voice and instead I sounded as panicked as someone who’d just found out they were losing their house. “She just moved? Where did she move to?”

Lala Amos, Remi’s manager and also somehow one of her best friends in Nashville, stared at me like she didn’t even know who the fuck I was.

“Lala. I need to know where Remi is. Please.”

“You need to know where Remi is, so you somehow find out where I live and show up at my front door in the middle of the night?” she asked, sounding like she was about to tear my head off. “You don’t think to call first, or try her phone?”

“I tried her phone. She’s putting my calls right to voicemail. Please, Lala. I’m desperate or I wouldn’t have come here.”

At that, her mouth finally quirked. “I think you must be a whole lot more than just desperate to show up here at this hour.” She narrowed her eyes at me and seemed to think about it for a moment, and finally nodded. “Come on in, lover boy. I guess the least I can do is listen to your story.”

She turned and walked back into her house, leaving the door open behind her, and I darted in and shut the door behind me. Right, I was in Lala’s house. It wasn’t the same as knowing where Remi was, but it was a start. Honestly, I was probably lucky Lala hadn’t called the cops on me. I’d gone right to Morris’ house and demanded Lala’s contact info and, too sleepy to know what he was doing, he’d handed me his phone and told me to find it myself.

Which was how I’d gotten not only her number but also her address.

Sure, coming to her house without calling first was probably pretty risky. But by that time I was running on increasing panic at the idea of Remi getting further and further away from me, and I’d been grasping at straws.

Lala had walked into her kitchen and was waiting for me at the counter, already working on pouring coffee.

I frowned and glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight.

“A little late for coffee, don’t you think?” I asked.

Then again, she didn’t exactly look like she’d been in bed when I arrived. She looked like she’d just gotten home from a club, all tight jeans and cowboy boots, her hair up and her makeup flawless. Remi had told me Lala was a night owl, but I hadn’t expected to find her looking like she was barely mid-evening.

Something to remember, I thought, if she kept giving me a hard time about coming to her house so late.

She smirked like she knew what I was thinking. “Well I’m not going to bed any time soon, and if you’re about to do what I think you’re about to do, you’re going to need the caffeine.” She slipped a mug of coffee over to me and then lifted an eyebrow. “So what is it, Boy Wonder? And I’m warning you; I’m on Remi’s side here. So your story better be fucking amazing.”

Fucking amazing.

Right.

Guess that meant I was going to start with the big item.

“Lala, I love her. And I didn’t realize it until I lost her. I know how stupid and cliche that sounds and I know I should be capable of a lot more than that—I write songs, for fuck’s sake—but I can barely think without her here. God, I can’t even breathe. And I had this big plan to tell her all of that tonight but then she didn’t show up for the gig and I went to her house and all her stuff is there and I—”

Lala’s hand shot up, stopping the word salad I was serving mid-sentence. “You do know why she’s mad at you, right?”

“What she thinks happen didn’t actually happen,” I said, not needing to know the details. “She thinks she saw something and what she was actually seeing was me trying to get rid of my ex.”

Now both her eyebrows lifted. “By letting her give you a blow job?”

Shit.

“No.”

I told her the story as quickly as I could. How Remi and I had been How Sasha had come around after I graduated and come between us, and how Remi and I had grown so far apart that I hadn’t even known she was considering leaving Seattle.

And then how she’d left Seattle without telling me and stopped taking my calls.

I told her about how I’d met Morris the same night and set out for Nashville wishing for nothing more than to have Remi at my side the way she’d always been, but how her brother wouldn’t tell me where she’d gone.

“And then I got here and she was in that room,” I finished. “And I know we should have said something to someone. I know we probably broke about a million rules. But it was so good to see her again, and I felt like everything was going to fall back into place, and I… I realized how much I cared for her, and I didn’t want it to end,” I finished. It sounded lame. I knew it sounded lame.

And yet it was all the truth.

“So this brings me back to the part where you let another girl suck your cock…” she said, frowning.

“That never happened! Sasha showed up and I was trying to get rid of her. She thought she was invited to do whatever she wanted with me because she’d told me she had an uncle who worked at Amaryllis, and I was fighting her off when Remi saw us. Look, I know you have no reason to believe me about that, but it’s the truth. I wouldn’t have done anything to mess up what I was building with Remi. I’ve been in love with her my entire life. And I didn’t even realize it until I came to Nashville and found her again.”

Lala pressed her lips together and stared at me for so long that I thought she might be having some sort of stroke.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine. Just thinking about what I want to do. For the record, Mike Graham doesn’t mean shit in this company, but he does have an awfully big mouth.”

Right. So it had been Sasha that had sold us out, then, and her uncle who had helped.

He also hadn’t been big enough for me to be worried about—or hopeful over. Which meant this had all been… totally unnecessary.

God.

“Do you know where she went?” I asked breathlessly.

“I do.”

“And are you going to tell me?”

Another long silence, leaving me on tenterhooks, and finally she leaned forward and gave me a stern, almost angry glare. “I am. But you’re damn lucky I like you, Dean, and you’re even luckier that I want to see Remi happy. That girl is one of the best, and she deserves the happy ending. She deserves for you to finally see her for what she is. She deserves everything. Can you give her that?”

I had to swallow three times before I could get my voice to work. “Just give me that chance.”

She nodded once. “She’s in Nashville interviewing for Atomic Records,” she said quietly. “I set her up with one of my friends there and she took all her things. I know where she’s staying and I can text you the address. But Dean.” She reached out and grabbed my wrist, squeezing so hard I almost jerked away from her. “Fuck this up and I’ll come for you myself.”

I pulled carefully away from her, my brain already running through the door and calling a ride to get me to Nashville. “You don’t have to worry about that, Lala. I just want her back. I want to keep her for the rest of my life.”

“Then go get her. Her interview’s tomorrow morning and it’s not until 11. If you get there early enough, you’ll be able to catch her in her hotel room.”

Chapter 24 – Remi

I stood in front of the mirror and gave myself another once over, trying to figure out whether I was dressed too formally for Nashville. This town was… nothing like Nashville, honestly. I’d thought that coming to the home of country western music would mean I had to look as professional as possible. I mean yeah, I had an inside contact here and Lala had thought I was basically guaranteed the job.

That didn’t mean I just wanted to waltz in there without looking like I belonged. I had a solid resume and had good results to show from my last tour, but I also had my eye on moving up in the industry. It would be really nice if I could land a bigger job this time around. Something closer to the exec suites.

But did I look like I belonged?

A lot of the people I’d seen when I went into the office yesterday to spy had been super casual, all jeans and button-up shirts, cowboy boots and the occasional cowboy hat. It was totally different from the Amaryllis office, where people were dressed to impress.

God dammit.

I sighed and closed my eyes. This wasn’t the sort of thing I’d normally even care about, but I was definitely off my game. I’d driven eight hours to get here from Nashville, and I’d done it all in one go because I hadn’t wanted to wait. I’d been in town now for a solid twenty-four hours but still felt like I’d just arrived. I wasn’t sleeping well and I could barely eat, and there were a couple pretty simple reasons for that.

Dean Simon.

And Dean Simon.

I hated that I’d run out on him. Hated that I’d left him again without any explanation or goodbye. And yeah, there had been a really good reason: Namely that I’d caught him with Sasha Graham on her knees in front of him. But even then…

The guy was my best friend, and he’d been part of my life ever since I could remember. I had a whole lot of him in my heart, and that made it really hard to just cut him out again. I had a big Dean-sized hole in my soul right now, and no matter how much he’d fucked up, a large part of me wanted to call him up and tell him what I was doing and why I’d had to leave town. I wanted to get his thoughts on what I should wear and how much I should talk about myself, and whether I’d even fit into country western, which I’d never really dealt with before. i wanted him to make me laugh the way he always could and to tell him that he was going to be brilliant.

I wanted to tell him that one of the reasons I left was so he could keep his contract, because when it came down to it, it was a whole lot easier for me to take the fall about the sudden tension between us. I told Lala that I was the one at fault—though I gave her the reasons behind it—and that I was going to give up my job in exchange for him getting to keep the contract and stay on tour.

It was the right thing to do, and I didn’t regret a second of it. Come to that, I didn’t regret any of the time I’d spent on tour with him. I was proud of what we’d done together, proud of how well he’d been connecting with his audience.

And I’d never give back those few days when we finally figured out how to really be together.

I wanted to talk to him and relive all of it. Make it all okay again. Forget that he’d hurt me.

The problem was, I couldn’t. I’d already left again without saying goodbye and without telling him where I was going, and I doubted he’d ever get over that. So the damage was already done. The decision was already made.

Now I had to live with it.

I decided that the business suit was going to have to do and that it would give me a good opening to make a joke about my appearance, which would get them laughing in the interview, and then went to get my bag and my resume. I would be an hour early for the interview but I was tired of sitting around here, waiting and thinking too much.

I needed to get moving before I drove myself crazy.

Giving myself one last smile in the mirror, I smoothed my curls and then headed for the door.

And when I opened it up, Dean Simon was standing on the other side.

He scared me so much that I dropped my bag and the resume and stumbled back. I caught the heel of my shoe on the carpet and tripped, my feet going right out from under me, and in that moment where everything freezes, right before you do something really embarrassing, I had the thought that of course I was falling on my ass in front of Dean Simon.

That was just how my relationship with him had always gone.

A hand reached out and snagged me, though, and moments later I found myself up against his chest rather than sprawled across the floor. And for just a moment…

God, for a moment I just let myself stand there and feel him. Take him in with all his warmth and strength and familiarity.

And then I got a hold of myself and forced myself to disentangle myself from him and step back, my face schooled to be neutral and my eyes on his.

“Dean. What are you doing here?”

Because I thought I left you in Nashville, with Sasha, I didn’t add.

He closed the door quietly behind him. “I came to get you.”

“You came to get me? For what? Because the last time I checked, you didn’t actually need me for anything,” I said. Then, because I couldn’t seem to stop talking, I added, “Last time I checked, Dean, you had Sasha seeing to all your needs. Including…”

My voice broke and I stopped talking, horrified. What the fuck? Was I about to cry? Over this asshole? Over this boy who’d been there through thick and thin but then had preferred some other girl when it came right down to it?

And who’d then come all the way to Nashville and picked her over me again?

“The last time I saw you,” I told him in a broken, hoarse voice, “you were choosing Sasha over me again. And I’ve already left because of that once, Dean. What did you think was going to happen this time? Did you think I was going to be okay with it? Think I was just going to blow it off and think everything was okay? Why did you come here?”

He reached out and caught my wrist. “That’s not what happened. She showed up and told me she had an uncle who worked for Amaryllis, Rem. And I didn’t know where you were, and I was waiting for you and told her we should get a drink. But then I didn’t want you walking back into the bar and seeing me there with her. I took her into the back room to put her someplace and she thought…” His voice drifted away and his eyes turned glassy. “She thought she had the right to come on to me. I was shoving her away, Remi. If you’d stayed ten more seconds, you would have seen that. You would have seen me pushing her away and coming after you. Because I would never choose her over you. Never.”

Look, I know what you’re thinking. I would have to be insane to believe him about that. How convenient, that he was supposedly pushing her away.

But then I started thinking about it.

He’d still had his pants on and hadn’t exactly looked like he was enjoying it. Sure, his hands had been in her hair but he’d been yanking back at her, fighting the hands that were scrabbling with his belt.

And I hadn’t seen her around after that.

“Why should I believe you?” I whispered.

Instead of answering, he stepped forward, took my face in his hands, and gave me a long, lingering kiss that was so sweet it almost made me cry. He was all questing lips and worshiping tongue and soft fingertips stroking at my skin and God, it was so perfect that I almost melted.

And when he pulled back, he looked at me with his entire heart in his eyes. “Why would I lie to you about this?” he whispered. “Why would I track Lala down at her house just to figure out where you’d gone, and then come all the way from Nashville just to find you before you made the biggest mistake of your life? Why would I be standing in front of you begging you to hear me and telling you that I would never, ever choose anyone else before you, Rem? Why would I tell you that I’ve loved you my entire life and was too fucking stupid to realize it until I looked up and you were gone? Would I be standing here telling you that those days I had with you were the best days of my life and that I don’t want any of it—not the record deal or the music or the performances—without you? Would I be telling you any of this if I didn’t mean it?”

He dropped to his knees in front of me, tears now leaking from his eyes, and looked up at me. “Remi James, I love you. I think I always have. You’ve been my Girl Friday since we were kids, and it turns out… I don’t want to do any of it without you. I know I’m an idiot and that I’ve screwed up more than anyone has a right to screw anything up, but please say you’ll give me a shot. I want to be your man, Remi. Forever.”

It was a good fucking speech.

Almost too good.

“That’s quite a speech,” I murmured.

“It better be. I was working on it for eight hours. All the way here.”

I almost laughed. “Is any of it true?”

He looked like he was going to cry. “All of it. Every fucking word. You know I’ve never been able to lie to you. You see right through me.”

That was true. He couldn’t lie to save his life.

Which was why I dropped to my knees in front of him, took his face in my hands, and stared into his eyes. “If all of that’s true, I’m going to have some big expectations.”

“Anything,” he breathed. “Anything you want. And more.”

“More?” I asked, pretending to be shocked.

“All the more in the world.”

And at that, the tears started to come. Because this was the man I’d loved all my life, on his knees in front of me and telling me he loved me too, telling me that this was going to be for the rest of our lives and that he was choosing me.

I kissed him, half laughing and half crying, he pulled me sharply to him and kissed me back, long and delicious.

“God, I love you,” he murmured against my mouth, moving so slowly I thought he might be trying to make me cry again.

“Good,” I whispered, running my fingers across his lips. “Don’t forget that ever again.”

He bent to kiss me, and we didn’t talk any more for a very long time.

Chapter 25 – Dean (Six months later)

Six Months Later

I couldn’t believe this was happening. I stared out across the audience, trying to contain my emotions. I wasn’t in some small bar or venue on a side street in Nashville or even another music-hungry city. I wasn’t staring at the bartender trying to ask him with my eyes to bring me something to drink or looking out the front door at the sidewalk, wondering how many more people were going to try to fit into the small building.

I was staring at an entire stadium full of screaming fans.

Okay, stadium full might have been an exaggeration. The place was only about half full. But still…

It was a fucking stadium.

And they were all here to see me. I’d been on the road for a solid three months on that first tour, then taken a month off—a whole month!—and done some writing. Another month of recording and then a month of publicity. And now I was opening my own tour that included almost all stadiums.

And some sold-out shows.

I had a record contract—a real one—and a stadium tour that included some sold-out shows. This couldn’t be my life. Eight months ago I’d been about to quit music and get a day job, sure that my time had come and gone.

And now…

I stepped to the microphone and looked out at the million and one faces, most of them blurs against the backdrop of the crowd. I couldn’t make may people out, but maybe that was a good thing, because it kept me from getting distracted.

I had some things I needed to say.

“Hey everyone, thanks for coming,” I said, and the crowd immediately went silent.

Good. They were a crowd that was willing to listen. That would help.

“I can’t tell you how much it means to see you all here. This is like a dream for me. I don’t know if you’ve heard the rumors, but eight months ago, I was on the verge of quitting music entirely. I’d played the Seattle music scene for so long it had become part of my blood, and I thought I’d hit the top. I wasn’t getting any bigger and I sure wasn’t making any more money. I decided I was going to play a final show and then hang up my guitar pick. Because I guessed people just didn’t want to come see me anymore.”

At this, the audience booed, and I smiled at them, impressed by their loyalty to someone they hadn’t even known at that time.

“Then,” I said, and they quieted. “My best friend—actually my best friend’s sister, but that’s a small detail—who had always been my Girl Friday and my pseudo-manager, disappeared. She up and left town without even saying goodbye to me, and she forbade anyone from telling me where she’d gone. That same night, I got an invitation from a talent scout at Amaryllis Records—” I paused for the inevitably screaming. “—To go to Nashville and audition for a chance at a record contract. I didn’t want to go without my best friend, and I nearly didn’t do it, because I didn’t think I could manage it without her. I didn’t think I had what it took.”

More boos, but this time I shook my head.

“I didn’t have what it took. So it was pretty fucking lucky that I got to Nashville, got to Amaryllis, and found her in the audition room. Turned out she was one of the people in charge of deciding whether I got a contract or not. Well, she did everything she could to make sure I got that contract, and then she did even more. She took me on as her personal client, to run my social media for me on my first tour.”

There was cheering, and I waited for it. This was the part where they always cheered. I’d told this story so many times, and people always thought that was the happy ending.

Of course, they didn’t know the half of it.

“I know what you’re thinking: that we hooked up right then and there and it was all HEAs, but you’re wrong. She went on tour with me but she wouldn’t talk to me. And then something happened and we had three wonderful days where we were actually together. Actually a couple. Then I screwed it all up. My ex-girlfriend came to town and my best friend thought I hooked up with her. She thought she saw something between us. And she split again. Drove all the way to Nashville to try to outrun me. But I followed her. Because I’d realized something important during that first tour. I realized how much I loved her. And I realized that I’d always loved her, and I’d been too stupid to admit it.”

The crowd was so quiet now you could have heard a pin drop, and that was saying quite a lot for a crowd that size. They had to have been holding their breath.

And to be honest, so was I.

“Remi James, will you come up here?” I asked, glancing to the right, where I knew she was probably sitting. She’d been backstage when I saw her last and I didn’t think she would have moved, but suddenly I was afraid she had. God, I’d been planning this for weeks. What if she’d left? What if something had happened and she’d decided not to hang around for this one show?

Impossible, I knew.

Remi James never flaked on the people who were counting on her.

Within moments I had my answer. Remi herself was walking hesitantly onto the stage, her forehead creased in a frown and her hands shoved into the pockets of her ratty old jeans. She looked like someone who had thought she wasn’t going to have to make a public appearance tonight.

And she looked completely beautiful.

“What are you doing?” she asked when she got close enough. “You’re supposed to be pretending you don’t have a girlfriend. Remember what your publicist said?”

I knew what the publicist had said. I also knew that I was done with it.

“I’m tired of pretending I don’t have a girlfriend,” I told her, making sure the microphone caught my voice. “I’m done pretending my heart doesn’t belong to you.”

I dropped to one knee in front of her and reached into my pocket, my fingers closing around the box I’d been carrying with me since the day after I found her in Nashville.

The day she’d agreed to give me a chance.

I pulled the box from my pocket, flipped it open, and adjust the mic so it was facing downward. I wanted every single member of that audience to be a witness to this.

Because I wanted the entire world to know that I was Remi’s for the rest of my life.

“I promised you once that I would rather have you than anyone else. And I promised you I’d feel that way for the rest of my life. But then I realized that I didn’t make that a formal commitment, and I started to worry you’d forget what I said. But I figure if you have a ring on your finger, you can’t forget. And you can’t get confused or scared or think that I’ll ever want anyone else. So here it is, Remi James. I want you for the rest of your life. What do you say? Will you be my Girl Friday for the rest of my life?”

Please say yes, please say yes, I chanted in my head.

I was taking a really big risk doing this. I hadn’t told my publicist or my managers that I was going to, and it could really go badly for me if she didn’t agree to this whole thing. I thought she’d say yes, but now that I was right here doing it, I realized I wasn’t as sure as I’d hoped.

She stared down at me, her head tipped and her eyes wet with tears, and for a long moment I thought she was going to say no. She was going to say she didn’t trust me or didn’t believe me or didn’t want to be married to someone who was constantly getting screamed at by thousands of teenage girls.

Oh God, I’d made a mistake.

Oh no.

Then she gave me a ghost of a smile, tipped the microphone up toward the sky, and knelt down with me. “Yes,” she whispered. “A thousand times, yes.”

And she kissed me right there on stage for the entire world to see.

Though I didn’t hear—or see, or feel, or choose—anyone but her.

I would never see or feel or choose anyone but her, for the rest of our lives. And that was a fucking promise.