My mind trips over his words. Did he expect to see me here? Wait, does that mean?
“I can’t believe it’s really you,” he says, voice cracking a little like he’s just as astonished as I am, except he somehow knew that I might be in the crowd? “I saw you on TV. I thought I might be hallucinating, but there you were, after all these years.”
“You remembered?” It comes out softer than I mean it to, which might as well be a confession of my own.
“I never forgot.”
My eyes snap up to his, and I really look at him. The careful part of me wants to look over my shoulder for cameras, or teammates, or paparazzi that probably follow his every move,but the rest of me is twenty-one again, sunbaked and stunned by beautiful green eyes and self-assured charm.
The ache of the memory could melt me into a puddle if I let it. My fingers dig into my palms to steady the feeling inflating in my chest, growing larger than what my rib cage can hold in.
My silence seems to worry him.
He takes a small step closer. Close enough that I can smell something sweet and spicy on his breath. It kind of reminds me of Christmas sweets.
“Luc.” The way he says my name this time is quieter, softer. More serious. “Can we–” He glances back to the door where his bodyguard is pointedly not looking at us, then up at the ledge of the building, where a security camera is mounted. He winces. “Do you want to come back to my dressing room?”
The question blindsides me. My stomach tightens. “Look, Jesse–”
He lifts both hands, palms out, eyes wide. “I didn’t mean… Not like that. I swear. I just thought we could sit down and talk. Privately. Five minutes where it’s just us.”
Just us.
It feels a little forward, but the honesty in his voice strips away any suspicion. I don’t think he’s trying to drag me into a room to put the moves on me. He just wants some privacy, which I can appreciate.
I nod once. “Okay.”
“Yeah?” He says, looking hopeful.
Before I can overthink anything, he reaches for my wrist and pulls me behind him. The bodyguard opens the door for us, giving me a quick once-over before following us in. Another guy in a similar outfit leads us down a hallway and through a backstage area cluttered with large cases and equipment. Staffers and roadies run around, but no one pays us much attention.
“Thanks Cory,” Jesse says to another bodyguard, who opens a door for us.
The dressing room is larger than I expected. There’s a sitting area with a small sectional and recliner and a kitchenette. The room opens into another section that has racks of clothes along one wall and mirrored desks along another.
“The rest of the band is probably still with your team,” Jesse says, reaching into a refrigerator and pulling out a few bottles of water. He holds one up, offering it to me.
“Yes please,” I say, reaching for it. “Thank you.”
“Still so polite,” he says, a mischievous gleam in his eyes.
My face warms, and I look for something to distract him from my embarrassment. “Shouldn’t you be out there, too?”
He shrugs and drops onto the couch, hair damp, shirt still hanging open. It seems like he’d be too wired to sit still, but his shoulders sag with relief. He pats the space beside him, inviting me to sit.
“Maybe. But the whole point of inviting them was to get to talk to you.”
I take a seat on the arm of the opposite side of the couch, facing him. “Seriously?”
“After six years, I’d almost thought I’d made you up,” he says softly. “I went a little nuts when I saw you on TV. Thought I might be hallucinating or something, so I looked up your team schedule and saw that you were playing nearby. I thought my manager was going to burst a blood vessel when I asked him to invite a whole football team to a sold-out show.”
“No one could figure out why we were here, but you made a lot of guys really happy.”
“And you?”
I blink back at him, not sure what to say. I decide to go with honesty. “I don’t really know how to feel.”
“That’s fair,” he says. “It’s been a long time, and I kind of…”
