That’s how he found himself in a booth at Brek’s Bar with his original two bandmates, laughing about the time Linx got his ass stuck in one of the equipment storage bins. God, they’d had to grease him up to get him out. The guy had totally been covered by Crisco.
“You miss it?” Linx asked. “The crazy shit we used to do?”
“Nah.” Bax shook his head. “We get to watch Tanner and Mach go through it through the lens of experience.”
“And I don’t have to work on my pick-up game anymore since Becca already agreed to hang out with my ass for life.” Linx took a pull from his beer bottle.
Linx didn’t drink beer, though. Not anymore. He had the bartender replace the beer with ginger ale so no one would know he preferred life without the buzz of liquor, and he still got to hang onto his rock star card.
“You ever think about what you’d do if you didn’t have her?” Knox asked, purely for scientific purposes.
“Why would I do that?” Linx shivered. “Life got good when she showed up.”
“What about you?” Knox asked, eyeing Bax. “You ever wish you and Courtney could go back to hating each other?”
Bax shook his head and set his beer—the real thing—back on the table. “Nope. I prefer kissing her to fighting with her. She’s a great kisser.”
Linx slid him side-eye. “She’s my sister. Let’s not, yeah?”
Where did that leave Knox? It left him with a marriage to a woman who only saw him as a ticket to where she wanted to be. And where she wanted to be was in a future where he was disposable. He couldn’t be pissed about that either, because he’d agreed that she was disposable, too.
Though now he realized there was no way he could continue thinking that about her.
“I think I’m falling for Irina,” Knox said, peeling at the label of his beer bottle with the edge of his thumbnail. “Not like we’d talked about with the pretend bullshit, but like I think I might actually really have feelings for her. The don’t-want-to-be-with-other-women kind.”
Voicing it out loud didn’t sound as bad as he thought it might.
“You seriously don’t want to be with other women?” Linx asked, lines forming between his brows. “Asking for clarity.”
“Right.” Knox nodded. “I don’t know what that means for me. Not really.”
“Because the thought of being with the same person for forever makes you want to peel off your skin with a toothpick?”
Knox may have described his aversion to all things long-term with that analogy at one point.
“That’s the thing. When Irina was with me on the plane, I started to wonder if it’d be so bad with her. The whole forever thing would blow, but maybe notallthe time.” Which majorly messed with his head.
“This complicates things,” Bax said, even though he didn’t need to because it was already clear as all hell.
“She talks way too much, but I enjoy being with her anyway. Her eye color changes every day, but I like the surprise. And she kisses…” He dropped back against the leather of the booth. “God, the woman can kiss.”
“Better than a seven-point five?” Linx asked, clearly trying to lighten things up, but Knox was too serious for that.
“Yeah.” Knox grinned. “She’s a ten. If Becca wanted to give up her title, I’d make her Queen of the Tens.”
Tens being the pet name they gave their groupies. Justin had his Beliebers, Lady Gaga had her Little Monsters, and Dimefront had their Tens. Linx’s wife, Becca, decreed herself Queen of the Tens after being their numero uno groupie one summer.
“Then I guess the question is”—Bax plunked his bottle on the table—“what are you going to do about it?”
That was the problem.
Knox had no idea if he should even think about it.
Which meant he wasn’t going to doanythingand hope like hell they’d let it alone.
Chapter Twelve
IRINA
