Tears pooled in my eyes again, but I blinked until they cleared. “Think what you want. I didn’t have a choice, not a reasonable one anyway.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “And now?”
“What about now?”
“You gonna let him keep thinking it was all in his head?”
“What good would telling him do? We set boundaries this time for a reason. Neither of us wants it to get messy again.”
“Zane deserves to know.”
“Know what?” Zane leaned in the doorway, looking between us warily.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
I raised my chin and smiled. “I don’t really want to go to the party later.”
It wasn’t untrue. Their first show was the next day, so for days I’d heard nothing but talk of this party. The drugs, the drinking, watching people throwing themselves at Zane. It wasn’t a situation I wanted to be in.
Zane wasn’t buying it as the answer to what he overheard, but he looked between us one more time and then nodded to the exit. “You’ll be fine.”
He doesn’t want to go there any more than I do.
39
ZANE
Now
* * *
“I’m just going to go back to the room. You should go enjoy your party,” Maia said, pretending to be more tired than she was.
Something weird had been going on between her and Kelly, but it hadn’t been the moment to question them. Weird was better than tense, and it felt so good to see her in the audience when I was playing that I hadn’t been ready to break the spell.
Now she was trying to avoid me, like it would get her out of me asking about it.
Or maybe she was avoiding what happened between us at the show. She felt it too. There was no bullshitting this was just about sex anymore, but I wasn’t going to be the one to call it out.
I’d only been a kid before, but I’d been just as sure she was feeling the same thing I was. What if I was wrong again?
What if she needed more time and pushing her made her bolt?
“We can stop by the room if you want, but you’re coming with me,” I said.
She hesitated. “Parties aren’t really my thing.”
I didn’t want to tell her how excited I was to introduce her to my crew, so instead I said, “I’m the client, remember?” It was a shield she was always willing to hide behind, like she didn’t have a choice. “Besides, it’ll be different than it was before. You might enjoy yourself.”
We got into the elevator and Dan followed us in.
Usually level to the point of being monotone, he elbowed me in the ribs. “You ready to get annihilated?”
I grinned. “You first, man. It’s been too long.”
Maia eyed us warily, clearly getting the wrong idea. She had preconceived notions of what we did on tour and I’d learned that if I wanted her to believe me I was just going to have to show her.
At the room, I gave her just enough time to run to the bathroom and drop her purse off before tugging her back out into the hall. If I let her overthink it, she was going to dig her heels in and we’d miss it.
