“Maybe.”
“And.”
I sighed. “And… she’s so inexperienced. Surely I need to let her go explore the vanilla side of life, rather than get with a jaded man whose babysitter abused and possibly raped him and now has developed a love of orgasm denial and is dancing with the idea of letting a woman fuck him in the ass.”
Archer grinned. “You should man. It’s so much fun. Honestly, the prostate rules.”
A laugh spilled from my lips.
“Call Fern. Lay your cards out. Tell her the truth. Trust me, when you can be a hundred percent honest, it makes all the difference.”
“Okay. And hey, how are you and Nee since you found her again?”
He smiled. “It’s going slow, but there is no way I’m letting her go again. I will make her remember me and fall in love with me again. I’m taking her on a date tonight.”
“Oh yeah, fancy dinner?”
“Erm, do you remember her at all? No, Segway, aquarium, and then a trip to a deserted island to watch the sunrise.”
“Romantic bugger.”
“It’s not romantic. It’s a simple equation. She gave me the world. Now I owe her the same in return.”
“And if she doesn’t remember who you are?”
“Then I make her fall in love with me again. She’s my happy ending.”
Fern
“Hey, Sweets. I brought you a coffee,” Neo announced as he walked in through my open office door, dressed in black jeans and a dark gray v-neck sweater, leaning on his silver cane.
I pulled my glasses off and rubbed my temples.
“You’re working too hard, Fern. You have an assistant to help. You know that, right?”
Taking the coffee and swallowing down a mouthful, following it with a loud groan, I pointed to the chair across from my desk. “I’m used to knowing everything about every band. It’s hard to take a step back, is all.”
“You regretting the promotion?” he asked, his eyebrows pinching.
“Are you kidding? I love working here. I would have stayed doing my old job forever, but this job… it’s everything I didn’t know I wanted.”
Neo offered me a wide smile, but his eyes looked tired and sad.
“Are you okay?” I asked, placing my coffee down.
Neo and I had become really good friends over the years. He used to be one of the Cosmic God’s bodyguards, which was how he’d ended up on the plane that day. When she knew how injured he was, Addi brought him in to help run the label.
“I don’t want Addi to know yet, because she’s meant to be on parental leave…” He paused.
“Neo, what is it?”
He stared out of the window, avoiding my gaze. “The pain in my back… you must have noticed… it’s getting worse. I saw the specialist the other day and they want me to have surgery.”
I reached for his hand and he twisted his head to look at me.
“The pins in my spine are unstable. They want to build a cage around it to help give it some additional support and they’re talking about fusing my discs together as well.”
“Shit, that sounds painful.”
