“No,” she said. “I didn’t.” She took a breath, like she was fortifying herself, then she turned to go.
She still hadn’t told me to delete the photo.
I caught her arm, stopping her.
She looked back at me, and I held on when I asked her, “What if you were with both of us? Would you be okay with the world knowing? The band? Your parents? Everyone?”
Danica’s whole face softened. “If I was with two men, and we were all together, and happy… I could be open about that, Matt. If I love someone, I’m not doing it from the shadows.”
I let her go.
“Goodnight, Matthew,” she said, and I watched her turn and stride through the glass doors of the lobby, disappearing in a soft blur of color. My eyes were watering again, and I knew Ash was right.
I’d be sadly, fucking stupidly mistaken to think he’d let anyone get in bed with him and that woman who didn’t own it. Who didn’t stand up for it—like they’d live and die for it. Who didn’t own every part of what it meant to be his and to be hers, no matter who was looking.
To betheirs.
ChapterSix
Matt
Pro tip: never get shit-faced on tequila with your lead singer if you’re secretly in love with him.
A few weeks after Danica told meIf I love someone, I’m not doing it from the shadows, I sank an ill advised amount of tequila with Ashley at a bar, then headed to Summer and Ronan’s house with him for a party.
Unfortunately, there was a fine line between elation and total shit show where me and too much tequila were involved.
As we walked into the party, I was definitely elated. Why not? I’d just had Ash to myself for a few hours. Well, Ash and his bodyguard, Haz. But now the reality of having to share him with a room full of people and not behisset in, as it always did, and the tequila-fueled shit show was pretty inevitable.
Summer, ever the party queen, had decided to throw an informal,We’re-getting-married-soonishcocktail party rather than have a traditional wedding shower. Her and Ronan were glowing, and seeing all the happy couples cuddled up together, dancing, making out in the corners? Was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be. I actually hadn’t thought about it at all.
But when Danica arrived with Taylor moments after we did, and Ash took his wife in his arms and kissed her in front of whoever cared to look?
No one was hiding here… except us and our dirty little secret.
Me.
I was the fucking secret.
Ash and Danica were together at the party, husband and wife. They weren’t with me. But my heart was with them—and their hearts were kinda with me, too. I knew it, ever since that talk with Danica in my car. She’d all but admitted it to me.
She sure as hell wouldn’t have given me that careful warning if she didn’t feel, in her heart, that there was a reason to.
And she was right, there was a reason.
It was dawning on me, gradually, that it was totally fair that anyone who got seriously involved with me demanded more from me than what I’d been willing to give them.
My ex-fiancée had asked more from me, and I’d refused her.Thatwas why she left me, not because I liked men. I’d been dishonest with her, with myself, and with Ash and Danica, too.
They were in the right. I was wrong.
We all knew it.
Ash hadn’t said a thing about it since the end of the tour, just leveled me with heated looks whenever weweren’tin the studio, including tonight, at the bar.
And Danica, despite the gentle warning, was sweet to me when she greeted me, as always. I was sweet to her. But it felt like a lie, a half-truth. I could feel myself doubling back on anger again. Self-pity; was that a phase of grief?
I couldn’t even remember what life had ever been like before I fell for Ashley Player and Danica Vola. I knew things had changed deep inside me, like an irreparable seismic shift. I would never be the same again.
