The real punishment had come last night, after we’d checked into the Tissue-Paper-Walls Motel. I’d lain on my exceptionally squeaky mattress, idly strumming my guitar, worrying about my sister and thinking about reworking the bridge in the song I was temporarily calling “Fuck, Kill, Marry,” when I’d heard the shower go on next door. Suddenly, my traitorous brain had conjured up an image from almost half a lifetime ago, reminding meexactlywhat Rafe had looked like with water glistening on the honey-gold skin of his shoulders while he smiled at me like I’d personally made his sky blue, becausefuck my life.
And though I’d valiantly tried to block this out and focus on my song, I’d heard something—it was a hand, I justknewit was a hand—hit the wall in the shower so hard my headboard shook, and the images that jumped into my mind were something out of my dirtiest fantasies.
Was Rafe Goodman jerking off just inches away from my bed?
The hoarse shout of pleasure-pain a few seconds later confirmed thatfuck yes, he had been. And best-worst of all? I would’ve sworn he shoutedmyname as he came.
I mean, he didn’t.
Rationally, I knew he couldn’t have.
But the tantalizing possibility of it was enough to have me weaving together a fantasy where I was in that shower, too, pushing Rafe to his knees—like the paparazzi photo that had upended my life, butreal—while my rock-hard dick and I had been trapped on a mattress that squeaked loud enough to raise the dead every time I breathed too deeply.
Fuckingtorture.
And realizing I had a hard-on for the guy who carried around a folded-up letter from my sister while she was in thehospital?
Torture of a whole other kind.
“Hello? Earth to Jay? Can you hear me?” Rafe stood by the sliding door of the van, holding out his hand in a gimme motion.
“Huh?” I rubbed a hand over my eyes.
“Would you like to put your luggage in the van, Your Highness? Or were you planning to just stand there all day? You’re the one with the schedule.”
He’d already loaded his rolling suitcase and my bag, so I handed over my guitar case. “Be careful with this, okay? Vega’s the most precious thing I own.”
“Vega?” Rafe repeated, stowing it behind the passenger’s seat. “As in…”
Shit. I did not want to open that can of worms.
“I said Vegas,” I informed him. “With ans. You know, as inLasVegas? As in… as in, what happens there stays there? Ha ha. Boy, could I tell you stories!”
Shut up, Jay.
“M’kay.” Rafe slammed the door shut like he didn’t give a shit either way. “Have you eaten?”
I shook my head. “I was waiting for you. Because I’m thoughtful. And also because I have a highly advanced metabolism that needs to be fed real food at regular intervals. No more fast-food vending machine junk. We’re eatingthere.” I pointed to the squat brick-and-glass diner on the other side of the parking lot. The sign over the door read “Tommie’s,” but the middle letters had faded nearly beyond recognition—unless you’d been standing on the pavement for ten minutes with nothing better to do than puzzle them out.
Rafe lifted an eyebrow. “We’re feeding your advanced metabolism at a greasy spoon called Toes?”
“Tommie’s! And it looks… very down-to-earth. Charming.”
Rafe made a skeptical face but turned toward the restaurant anyway. “Was that a euphemism for dirtyback in Alabama?”
I jabbed an elbow into his side as we walked. “No. Also, gimme your phone number while I think of it,” I said, extracting my own from my pocket. “That way I won’t have to come pound on your door tomorrow morning.”
Rafe lifted an eyebrow and rattled off a number I’d memorized a decade ago. “Same number I’ve always had.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “Really?” It was strange to think I could have called him all this time. Except, of course, I couldn’t have. Not after he’d fallen for Aimee. “I, uh, changed mine. A couple times.”
“Not a surprise,” Rafe said mildly. “You’ve changed a lot of things over the years.”
“Nuh-uh.” I frowned. Had I? Did he really think so? Because to me it felt way too easy to slip back into the way things had been before. “Somestuff’s changed, maybe. The phone number wasn’t really a choice, though.”
“No?”
“Nah. A few years back, right after I went on my first tour, my stepmother gave my number to one of her friends, who then gave it to her college-aged daughter, who gave it to allherfriends.” I rolled my eyes. “Cue her entire sorority sexting me on a daily basis. It was like fighting a freakin’ hydra—for every unsolicited boob pic I blocked, I’d get two more.”
