“People will love that,” she tells me.
Reed sits criss-cross at her side, and as he tries to take her phone to take a cuddling selfie of them despite Wren’s fake annoyance, I hear Mads address Gemma.
“I heard you say something about us not doing stupid shit, and I have to tell you, none of us can promise that,” Mads says to her.
Andi sits at my side and gets close enough that I smirk at her.
“Oh, morning cuddles. Yes. I needed this,” I say, rubbing her thigh.
Andi laughs and leans closer, her words coming out in a hushed whisper. “So how isthisgoing?” she asks with a glance to Gemma, who’s now chatting with Mads, arms crossed over her chest. “Mads says things are already tense between the two of you.”
“Oh, he did, did he?” I ask, shaking my head. “None of you have patience.”
“So we actually like this one then,” she says suggestively.
I glance at Gemma, butterflies swimming in my stomach. “We could,” I admit, even if there’s a nagging curiosity in the back of my mind that’s holding me back from going all in.
“I like it. Building some tension first. That’s new for you, isn’t it?” Andi asks me.
I chuckle and flip her off, not because it’s an insult, but because it’s fucking true. I haven’t wanted more than a one-night stand since I was nineteen.
Fire clouds behind my eyes, and I clear my throat to keep the past from creeping too far in.
“—you’re staying out of trouble for the next hour, I’m going to clean up,” I hear Gemma saying to us. I turn my attention to her, catching her gaze as the rest of the guys wave her off, Madssaying he’ll text her details of our locations once we leave the grass.
It’s a small exchange, the look between us, but it’s enough of a moment that I’m going to think about it later, possibly even imagine it while some masked stranger is touching me tonight.
And as she leaves us, each of my friends look at me just as they did yesterday.
“Get over it,” I tell them.
“When are you going to ask her out?” Reed asks.
“Honestly, I thought you would have texted her last night to catch up,” Andi says. “You all were in such a high after the show.”
Mads smirks at her, and she nudges him with her knee.
However, I’m playing with another flower and thinking about Gemma. She could be good for me—so good, that she might be completely out of my league.
I wonder how I might fuck something that good up.
“It shouldn’t happen, right?” I ask them, watching Gemma disappear toward the trailers.
“Why not?” Reed asks.
“She’s our bodyguard. Isn’t that mixing business with pleasure?”
“So much pleasure,” Reed says, lying down on the blanket in front of us so that his head is in Wren’s lap.
“I don’t think any of us are in a place to tell you not to have a workplace romance,” Mads says.
“It’d be a really cute story,” Andi says.
Wren’s staring gaze catches my eye, and even though she doesn’t speak, I can see the fear in her gaze. She’s had her own stalker situation in the last few years—one much worse than mine, with people who thought they owned her.
And I know she’s thinking the same thing that’s been nagging the back of my mind.
CHAPTER SIX
