“You keepup that attitude and they’re going to take away my asshole card to return it to you,” Mach said, standing beside Knox, making rock ’n roll devil horns while the photographer clicked away.
Knox grunted in reply, but didn’t say anything.
He hadn’t said much since he’d left Irina’s bedside and gone back to work.
Now everything tasted like he’d eaten a pack of cigarettes, and he wasn’t sleeping. Since he wasn’t sleeping, he had lots of time to think about her.
They took about a million more pictures with the VIP crowd, before Hans finally called it and sprung them so they could go back to the hotel.
Usually, staying at a hotel was a highlight of the tour. A break from the buses, room service, a shower big enough to actually stand up in.
Tonight, the hotel was just another bed in another city. Another night that didn’t matter.
“You wanna grab a bite together?” Bax asked.
“Or a beer?” Linx added.
They were only being nice to him because they felt bad. Their wives were both meeting them at the hotel. He hadn’t asked how Irina was doing, how she got along after the fall, and they hadn’t offered.
“Nah. I’m gonna crash,” he said. Maybe he’d clean out the mini bar and binge on whiskey and pretzels before he hit the bed. More likely he’d just lie there and stare at the ceiling, wondering what Irina was doing. Where she was. If she was okay.
The crew had already dropped his suitcase in his room on the top floor across the hall from the other guys. So he used his keycard, figuring maybe he’d hit the bar downstairs and talk to someone who didn’t feel bad for him. But immediately tossing that option, because he didn’t really want to talk to anyone.
The lights already burned in his suite, and there were candles lit.
“What the fuck?” he said. Everyone knew a guy in the middle of a breakup didn’t want candles in his hotel room.
“Hi.” A voice he recognized immediately, but didn’t expect to hear sliced through the space between them.
He didn’t want to turn around, because she was there, and she was probably there to be his friend. But the masochist he was to himself had him turning her direction, wanting to hop over all of the furniture between them to wrap her up in his arms.
“Hi,” he said, instead of the other things he wanted to say. The things about missing her, loving her, and worrying about her. Or even a simple hello.
“I don’t want to be your friend.” She’d kept his Whitesnake shirt and had it on.
He hated how good she looked in it. The woman could pull off jeans and a Whitesnake tee like nobody’s business.
“Okay.” He headed to the mini bar, making the decision on the fly to get slithered and pass out.
“Knox,” she said his name in a way that made him go still. “I love you, too.”
His throat clogged, and the light from the candles bounced off the walls. The woman he loved stood across the room, and she loved him, too.
“I’ve been baking for two days straight,” she went on, the large room feeling smaller. Comforting. “And getting this number of pies through customs was not a small thing.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, really looking at her this time. Letting himself savor all the parts of her.
“I screwed up. I got scared. I didn’t want to be another person you love who takes advantage of it.”
“You didn’t want to take advantage of me?” That was the stupidest thing he’d heard all year, and he’d spent a solid amount of time with Mach and Tanner, so he’d heard a ton of stupid shit.
“It doesn’t make sense, I know.” She held up her hands. “But it’s the truth. And I didn’t want to admit that I love you. That I need you. Because I think I need you more than you need me, and that scares me.”
“I haven’t slept.” He didn’t dare take a step toward her, but the room still seemed to shrink between them. “The guys make me eat and nothing tastes good. I think about you and my brain goes numb. But you think I don’t need you?”
“I think I got confused.” She licked at her lips, wetting them. “Because now I know we need each other.”
“Where does that leave us?” he asked, afraid of the answer, but needing it all the same.
