“A healthy one.”
“Yes, fries.”
“Your heart attack.”
“I worked out for an hour this morning. I can handle some deep fried potatoes.”
“You should have told me. We could have worked out together.”
“It was dark when I got up.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Okay, thanks for not waking me up.”
“You can thank me by not judging the fries.”
“We should be WhisperSnipping this conversation,” Jackie said, curling up on the bed next to Liana.
Right in the middle of Dean’s line of sight. And then she winked at him.
Grown men don’t blush. If he kept telling himself that, maybe he could fight off the painful awareness that the guitarist saw right through him.
Instead of looking away, he leaned back and returned Jackie’s inspection instead. She was his age, maybe, late thirties, early forties. Fit and attractive in an intense kind of way. Her blonde hair was streaked with grey, but she had an interesting combination of youthful vitality and jaded cynicism that would normally be right up his alley.
And it was—as a friend. He’d immediately liked Jackie, and hoped he stayed on her good side. But he wasn’t attracted to her.
Not the way he wanted Liana.
And the comparison, right in front of him, was like a bomb going off in his head.
Jackie would normally be exactly his type, because she promised no strings, no expectations, no demands. A friendly affair would be right up her alley, he’d bet. He could profile her in a heartbeat. Divorced, self-sufficient, comfortable with her body. A woman who enjoys sex.
But Liana…
Jesus, he needed to stop this.
First of all, everything he thought about the singer was probably wrong. She was going through a shit time, that didn’t make her needy. And if she was needy, he wasn’t the man to take care of her.
But he wanted to.
Except he knew he’d let her down—so he needed to remember she wasn’t his type for a reason. He wasn’t good enough for someone like Liana. Not whole enough. Not nearly capable enough of the feelings that women like her deserved.
He thought of Jake and Dani. Of how Rafe looked at Olivia. The way Zander and Faith couldn’t stop touching each other in the sweetest ways. How Ryan had stumbled out of his grief and found Hope—and how the other man would now do absolutely anything for the woman he loved.
Dean wasn’t that guy. It wasn’t in him to be that selfless with a woman, because he knew it would always come to an end.
He wasn’t dumb enough not to see it. He was emotionally stunted at twelve years old.
Liana didn’t need that bullshit piled on top of everything else.
He kept telling himself that fact through lunch and Liana’s WhisperSnip broadcast. At one point the video feed caught his arm, when he reached past her phone for some napkins, and Jackie and Andrew snickered over the fan guesses as to who the arm belonged to.
“They like your arm,” Jackie said before sticking out her tongue.
“And now they want to know who Jackie is talking to.”
Liana rolled her eyes at her phone and gave her unseen fans a teasing smile. “Let me have some secrets, okay?”
Dean told himself that next time she did this, he’d get the app and watch it for himself.
