A moment later, my sister was back on the line. “Keep me posted on how things go with Mason, okay?”
“You’re the second person to say that to me in the past twelve hours.”
“Glad to hear you have someone else watching out for you. Talk soon, alright?”
“We will. Love you.”
“Love you too, Mol.”
We hung up, and my gaze drifted back down to where something was definitely crawling very close to my foot. A cockroach.
I sighed and crushed it with a flipflop. I may be afraid of my neighbor, but at least I wasn’t afraid of bugs.
7
MOLLY
At two forty-fivein the afternoon, I parked my car across the street from the Culver City address Kaz had programmed into my phone. It was a one-story bungalow in an ordinary-looking residential neighborhood that seemed blissfully unaware of the up and coming rock stars living next door.
After talking to Piper and Ade, and sleeping on the situation, I woke up feeling mildly optimistic. Mason hadn’t gone through with kicking me off their team, which meant he didn’t completely hate me. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced I’d overreacted.
Sure, our friendship didn’t end on a great note, but it’s not like I backstabbed the guy or did something horrible. Yeah, I said mean things to him, but he was the one who kissed me out of nowhere. If anything, I’d been far more rude to Kaz, and I doubted the singer had taken my words to heart. If he wanted to torture me a bit, I could take it, as long as I could still do my job and keep Trinity happy.
I grabbed my bag and the DSLR camera I got from our tech team and got out of the car. Trinity had sent me an email this morning with exacting instructions around the content I needed to capture, and it was a long list. She wanted me to get a variety of candid shots and videos—the kind of stuff fans would be sure to eat right up. It wasn’t a glamorous task, but despite the tricky circumstances, I was excited to do it. Even though I was just an amateur, photography had become a genuine passion of mine over the past few years. Getting paid to do it, even if it was only temporary, set off a spark of excitement.
I knocked on the door and waited.
After a minute, I knocked again, louder this time.
Just as I was starting to wonder if they were going to ignore me until I went away, the lock clicked open, and the door swung open to reveal Mason on the other side.
My stomach did an annoying little flip at the sight of his mussed-up hair, still wet from a recent shower and dripping onto his clothes. He wore a powder-blue T-shirt that brought out the color of his eyes and showed off the outline of his muscular chest. Unfamiliar tattoos ran over his right biceps before disappearing under his shirt.
Everywhere I looked, I saw something I liked.
“Hi.” Why the hell was my throat suddenly dry?
“Hey,” he greeted me in a disgruntled tone of voice that finally made me snap back to my senses. “Come on in.”
I followed him inside, allowing my gaze to slide to the curve of his butt for a short moment before I forced it back up. I needed to get a hold of myself. I thought after all this time, my attraction to him would have faded, but it was as if it had buried itself inside of me at an atomic level. All it took for it to flare back up was having him around me once again.
He led me down the hall and into a large living room. The space was warm with the afternoon sun streaming through the curtained windows. I glanced around. The house looked like it hadn’t been redecorated in at least twenty years, but everything was clean and well-maintained. Simple and functional.
“Do you want some water?” Mason asked.
“Sure.”
He disappeared through a doorway I presumed led to the kitchen, and I placed my things on the dining table.
“Have you been living here for a while?” I called out over the sound of running water.
“About six months. Moved in when our royalty income was enough to cover the higher rent. Before that, we had a place closer to downtown, but we kept getting noise complaints.” Mason reemerged holding a glass of water.
“Drummers must make the worst neighbors,” I said, taking the glass from him.
“Yeah, especially when you share a wall with them.”
I winced. “Ouch.”
