Gage: BTW, if you need a fun way to pass the time, play “Guess my phone password.” Always enlightening.
I scowled and turned off the phone without replying.
I was confident he was mocking me somehow, but I wasn’t sure how. I’d had the same phone password for a year or so—my birthday, because I was clearly super security conscious—but I was almost positive Gage didn’t know it.
For the record, I didnotfeel good about being off Key this close to the Extravaganza. I knew how many people were counting on me, I knew my reputation was on the line, and I also knew my dad wouldn’t hesitate to throw me under the bus if things didn’t go right… especially if the “not right” meant losing his big-name entertainer.
But the mortifying truth was, when I thought of Jay sleeping mere inches away on the other side of the wall, closer than he’d been any other night in way too many years, I found it hard to care about any of those things. And for the first time in a while, I fell asleep the second I closed my eyes.
6
Jay
The sun had barely risen, and the air was still clammy-damp when Rafe met me on the concrete sidewalk by the van in the morning, carrying his suitcase in one hand like it weighed nothing.
He was wearing another outfit like the one yesterday—tight jeans, tighter T-shirt, and boots—and his hips rolled as he walked. The self-assured swagger was so damn attractive, I couldn’t look away even as he got closer.
Fortunately for me, the jerk was too busy thumbing a text to notice me standing there. Who was he texting? A girlfriend? Or a boyfriend? Wait, how did I not know if Rafe was seeing anyone?
JesusChristFuckingA,maybe possibly because it’s none of your damn business if he’s seeing anyone, Rollins?
As always, though, Rafe was theonlything I noticed. And adding insult to injury, he looked rested and refreshed, which so was incredibly unfair when I was so dang tired I could fall asleep standing. I felt my bitchy mood dip toward ultra-super-bitchy.
I crossed my arms over the front of my sweatshirt. “Nice of you to join me.Finally. I knocked on your door more than ten minutes ago. I didn’t remember you being such a prima donna.”
Rafe glanced up from his phone—finally—and looked mildly surprised to see me there, the fucker. “I’m sorry, did we have a specific departure time, Jay Don? I wasn’t given a copy of the kidnap itinerary, so I was unaware.”
Grr.
I was the cute and snarky one of the two of us. The sunshine to his grumpy. It had always been that way… until yesterday. And I did not approve of this change in the natural order of things.
“Drop it with the kidnapping bullshit.You’vegot the key to the van, which is whyI’mout here waiting with my stuff even though I could potentially be recognized at any moment.”
Rafe turned in a circle to inspect the precisely zero other people and cars in the parking lot. He lifted an eyebrow.
I flushed.
“I apologize for making a national treasure such as yourself beat back the crowds single-handedly for a whole ten minutes while I showered.” Rafe looked me up and down, from my shorts and flip-flops to my Jayd RollinsConstellationsTour sweatshirt. “But if you don’t wanna be recognized, maybe don’t wear your name on your clothing while you’rekidnapping people? Just a thought.”
My face got hotter. Like I hadn’t thought of that?
“I’ll have you know, my merch is comfortable and high quality! Not to mention, I had a few other things on my mind while I was packing.” I narrowed my eyes defensively. “And it’schilly. Andfurthermore, if thiswerea kidnapping, it’d be a fuck of a lot more efficient than this, okay? Like, you’d be tied up, for one thing. And probably gagged.”
Rafe lifted an eyebrow. “Kinky.”
“Ugh. Not likethat.” And getting kinky with Rafe was thelastthing I needed to be thinking about. “You have the maturity of a twelve-year-old.”
“I do seem to be regressing,” Rafe agreed. His lips quirked up. “Boy, a full night’s sleep makes someone a crankypants,” he remarked, throwing back my words from yesterday.
I huffed out a breath. My problem was, I hadnothad a full night’s sleep.
You know how they say no good deed goes unpunished? Well, if I’d stopped to think about the punishment for sorta-but-not-actually mercy-kidnapping Rafe—which I hadn’t—I would have told you that spending three sexually frustrated days in the car with a man who actively disliked me was punishment enough, especially since Rafe even managed tosleepin a way that made my blood hum, with this concentrated frown between his eyebrows like he was vigilant and responsible even in sleep.
I mean, my attempts to fill the awkward silences yesterday afternoon with friendly chatter, only to have him say, “You want me to talk, Jay? Let’s discuss all the things I hate about ‘Pretty Girl.’ For example, what’s with the overlaid harmony on the chorus?” was bad enough to make me seriously rethink ever doing a good deed again, so surely the Universe could see I’d learned my lesson, yes?
No.
No, no, no.
