“I did,” Winter said.
“No you didn’t,” Leo pressed. He peered at him through his mess of thick curls. “Because they dropped off a sleep mask for you to my room by accident and I walked it over to your room, and you weren’t there.”
“I was probably passed out,” he said.
“Not the way I was pounding on your door, you weren’t.” Leo pointed a finger at Winter. “You went off to that girl’s place,” he said. “Mercedes. Our opening act. Five in the morning, and you left the hotel on your own, came back in a cab. Iknewyou were still seeing her back then. Every time you’re in Mexico City, isn’t that right?”
“I didn’t go to her place,” Winter said with a glare. A pause. Then he muttered, “I didn’t want people finding out where she lived.”
Leo clapped his hands in delight, like a little brother who’d just solved a mystery. “Rented a private estate somewhere with her, then.”
“How is any of this like what happened in Mexico City?” Winter protested.
“Because you couldn’t stand Mercedes either during practice. You two were practically screaming at each other. And then that turned into you both shoving your tongues down each other’s throats.”
Dameon laughed a little, but his eyes were still following Winter, studying him in that quiet way of his. Winter tried to ignore it, but he could feel the heat on the back of his neck. Dameon always had that way about him; it’d been part of the reason they’d gotten so close so quickly.He could sense all the small disturbances in Winter’s mood—when he’d had a bad conversation with his mother, when he didn’t get enough rest on tour, when he wasn’t up for a press junket day. It both unsettled and comforted him, made him want to confess his secrets.
Winter knew Dameon could sense something off about him now, too. But when he spoke, he just went along with Leo’s train of thought.
“Damn, boy,” Dameon said. “You had it bad for her. Can’t blame you.” He nudged Winter, making him spill a bit of the soju he was sipping. “Just like in New Orleans. Who was that girl you brought to my mama’s barbecue?”
“Aleksa,” Winter said, putting his glass down and wiping his shirt.
Dameon snapped his fingers. “Aleksa,” he said. “Hottest human I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Really?” Winter nudged Dameon back, hard, in the ribs. “What about that guy who came with us to Italy?”
“Jinhai? I guess.” Dameon lifted an eyebrow at him. “Almost as pretty as you.”
Winter rolled his eyes at the way his friend skirted around their past in front of Leo. He could still remember the first night he visited Dameon in his hotel room. It was on their second tour together, when the pressure on Winter was keeping him up at all hours. Before Dameon opened his door on that sleepless night, Winter had only meant to have a heart-to-heart with him, had been looking for a kindred soul—or, at least, a sleeping pill. Instead, he’d taken one look at Dameon still dressed in a crumpled, half-buttoned collared shirt and ripped jeans, his dreads tied casually up, his expression unsurprised as if he’d been expecting Winter to show up all along… well, in the end, they had ended up in bed together. They’d carried on every night for several weeks before ending it, both too stressed out by the weight of a secret relationship interfering with their work. Since then, they’d settled into friendship, the kind you could only have with someone who knew you like no one else.
Now he could feel Dameon still studying him, trying to figure outhis mood. “You keep in touch with him?” he asked, as if trying to change the subject. “It’s been years.”
“Nah.” Dameon shook his head. “It’s too bad. My mama liked him.”
“You know why you two aren’t in long-term relationships?” Leo said, unaware of the secrets being passed back and forth between them.
“Because we’re never in the same city for longer than a month?” Dameon suggested.
“No, because you don’t know how to cook.”
“You’re not in a long-term relationship, either,” Winter said.
Leo ignored him blithely. “You can’t even make toast.”
Winter jabbed a defensive finger at Leo. “That was only because I didn’t have a toaster and I was making it in a pan.”
“You did set off the entire hotel’s fire alarms,” Dameon admitted.
Leo shook his head. “All my tías would be disappointed in you both.”
Winter smiled winsomely at him. “Your aunts absolutely love that we don’t know how to cook for ourselves.”
“More than they love me, that’s for sure,” Leo retorted, although there was a small grin on his lips, too, knowing that wasn’t true. Winter had seen for himself how Leo’s family fussed over him, and the suitcases of gifts he’d bring home for them in turn.
“I’m going to teach you both how to cook a good stew on our next tour,” Leo went on, eliciting groans from the other two as if this conversation had happened before. “No, listen—trust me. My mama always said, you learn how to make a good pozole, you’ll get anyone to commit.”
As Leo and Dameon fell into an argument about pozole, Winter allowed himself a slow breath. At least their brief interest in Sydney’s relationship with him had been sidetracked; at least Dameon had finally spared him and turned his curious eyes away. And at least Sydney wasn’t here tonight—she wouldn’t start guarding Winter until tomorrow, when they left for London. But it bothered him how easily Leo had been able to read him, how Dameon had known immediately that something was different, even if he couldn’t guess exactly why.
