“Hate is maybe too strong a word,” I say. “If my music is meant to be fulfilling, then that didn’t contribute to the feeling of fulfillment for me. It just didn’t.”
“You and I are so different,” he muses, still walking.
“How so?”
“When I played baseball”—Liam maneuvers me into one arm so he can use the other to unlatch a door—“I loved the crowd involvement. It was at least half the fun.”
“You like games more than practice?” I ask, and Liam hums his assent. “I like practice more than games.”
We’re in an unspoken-for dressing room that’s bare-bones and dimly lit. Liam drops me to my feet, pulls me deeper into the room with him.
“I see that now,” he says, voice rough. “I understand, Paige.”
“Are we…?”
“Yeah. If that’s okay.” He says it in a plea, eyes dilating while his gaze moves over me.
I nod, and he comes to me, coaxing his mouth against mine with soft hums, teasing bites. A spark of want flares between our chests like an Edison bulb. Liam finds a bare stretch of wall and pins me, his hands too capable by half.
We strip bare. He’s focused to the point of silence, and restlessly impatient. Liam maneuvers our bodies sideways along the couch and wastes no time.
“You’re being very quiet,” I whisper on a moan when he enters me, the fit tightening as he hikes up my leg.
“Because I’m having bad thoughts,” he grumbles against the back of my neck, rocking gently. “Selfish, awful, indulgent thoughts.”
“More eloquently?” I ask on an exhale.
He rolls into me once more from behind. Every atom in both our bodies concentrates around the connection. “Carnal instinct,” he says roughly, “of marking my territory.”
When I say nothing, floored and enraptured by his admission, Liam gets a little rougher. His thrusts are jumpy, and he trails one hand across my breast, the other between my legs. He rolls on top of me, my back to his chest, his hands slipping under my body to work me, his hips rising and falling. I come apart first; he’s undone in an instant-release climax moments later.
We lie tangled for a while before Liam swallows thickly and says, “I would have sucked it up if you came off that stage with any other attitude. I promise I would have, butfuck. The whole timeyou were out there, I was viciously jealous of every person in the audience. I wanted you backstage with me. I wanted to drag you back to the hotel room to sing only for me. Which is confusing, because I’m also proud of you, but all I want to do right now is remind you”—he twists me to face him, kisses my forehead once—“what it’s like”—a kiss to my nose—“when you and I are in private.”
One last kiss, this one to my lips. “I would have gotten over it,” Liam says eventually, a weak promise.
“I doubt it,” I say, remembering him on the pitcher’s mound. “I never did.”
There’s a contact form on my minimalist website that hasn’t gotten a scrap of action since I asked Folly to test it for me.
I wake up the next morning to a flooded inbox.
Chapter 30
August, Now
“For the love of all that is pure and good in this world,” Paul says the second the line connects, “which certainly excludes the music industry, but anyway. Tell me you signed a split sheet.”
“Hello to you, too,” I reply.
A beleaguered sigh comes through my phone speaker. “Hello, Paige. How are you?”
“Doing well. How about you?”
“The answer to that question mostly depends on whether you signed a split sheet.”
I smile down at the mattress, where my phone rests and my worn notebook lies open. The latest pages, freshly inked over the last twenty-four hours, are filled with notes from phone calls with other publishers. But no one else asked me that very important question in the first five minutes.
“Yes, I signed a split sheet for every single song.” Another exhale from Paul. “Penelope Parker keeps a basic version of the contract on hand for when she collaborates on the fly. We all signed them. Me, the twins, Penelope, and one of her band’s cowriters.”
