Silence. Then: “Well, you like something about her.”
I looked over at him, stretched out on the other couch. Tall and sculpted, like the statue of some god, in the flickering light of the TV… wearing nothing but sweatpants. Dylan Cope looked hot as fuck in sweats, pushed down over his hip bones… a beer dangling from his hand.
My rock-star-drummer-turned-underwear-model best friend was a giant slab of gorgeous.
I still liked looking at him. Even though I probably wasn’t supposed to?
He looked like he probably needed to sleep, actually, but wasn’t doing it because of me. We were both aware that he was leaving tomorrow morning, and even though he was looking forward to the rest of the Dirty tour, he’d be gone a while. A long while. And not gone like a few-hour-flight-away gone. Gone like on the other side of the globe.
I figured I had maybe a few more minutes, at best, before Amber came to collect him.
“You ever feel like you missed your chance with something,” I asked him, “then fate just kinda dangled it in your face again, and you couldn’t stop thinking about it?”
“Nope. I pretty much just take what I want out of life, and forget about the rest.”
“Yeah. You’re a real prince that way.”
He grinned and looked over at me. “So what is it you missed out on?”
“I don’t know. If I knew, maybe I wouldn’t have let it slip by.”
“Huh,” he said, like that was food for thought. “Then maybe you should just go out and find it.”
“Right,” I said. “Because that thought never occurred to me.”
Dylan drank his beer, ignoring my sarcasm. He was used to it by now. “Maybe it never occurred to you that it’s not too late.”
Yeah. That beautiful bastard was always full of wisdom.
I looked up into the shadows of the ceiling again, and I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to tell him about it, after all this time… but then the words just fell out of my mouth.
“She’s the girl from the tattoo.”
I felt him staring at me. “What tattoo?”
I sighed.Here we go.“You know.Danny 4Ever.”
“SHIT.” Dylan sat up and turned off the TV in one blur of movement. Then he was on his feet, looming over me in the dark. “Are you shitting me?”
“Nope. Not shitting in the slightest.”
“What’s going on?” Amber wandered down the stairs, because as usual, shit timing. She flicked on a lamp.
“Nothing.” I locked eyes with Dylan, willing him to keep his mouth shut. Normally wouldn’t have been a problem, but with Amber it was different. He told her pretty much everything.
And just because I used to fuck her, he seemed to think that meant I wanted her to know everything.
He lasted all of three seconds before blurting, “Ash took out a classified ad to find the girl from hisDanny 4Evertattoo.”
“He did?” She blinked at me. “Wait.Girl?”
I sighed again.
“You know who she is?” Amber prodded.
“I don’t know who she is,” I said, getting up to forage for a beer. This conversation really called for alcohol.
They followed me into the kitchen.
