Page 125 of My Three Billionaire Rockstars

“Strangers,” he repeats, looking at me.

I ignore the way that lands.

Nina, because she’s a menace in a cute cardigan, steps right into the silence. “We were just heading through the market.”

“I gathered,” Xander says.

“Do you come here often?” she asks.

I close my eyes briefly.

When I open them, Xander is looking at her intently.

“Sometimes,” he says. “Depends how much time I have.”

Nina nods, like this is all very normal and she isn’t currently conducting a soft interrogation in front of me. “And the peaches?”

He lifts the bag. “Yup. I needed the fruit.”

Nina nods. “Were you heading home?”

Xander looks at me before answering. “Eventually.”

“Well,” Nina says brightly, “you should walk with us.”

I snap my head toward her. “He absolutely shouldn’t⁠—”

“I’d like that,” Xander says.

Nina beams like she’s personally brokered peace between nations.

That’s how I end up wandering through the farmers’ market with my sister, my dog, and the man I had sex with in a lake and then with two other guys, all while acting like this is somehow a reasonable way for a Saturday to unfold.

Daisy trots between us as if she arranged the whole thing.

Which, maybe she did.

Nina asks Xander questions like she’s trying not to make them obvious and failing beautifully.

What’s the studio like? Do artists really want to work in a small town? Did he really grow up here? Does he miss performing?

He answers all of it more openly than I expected.

He tells her the town feels smaller than it used to, that artists are tired of being treated like products, that yes, he grew up here, and no, he doesn’t miss every part of being on stage.

“Just the parts that mattered,” he says.

Nina looks at him like she heard something in that I’m not sure I wanted her to. Then she nods and steers us toward the flower stall.

I hang back for half a step, watching him reach down to keep Daisy from tangling her leash around a display of lavender.

He notices me looking and lifts a brow. I look away first, because I’m weak, apparently.

At the bakery stall, he buys Nina a cinnamon roll before she can protest.

At the coffee stand, he replaces mine because it’s gone cold.

At the honey table, he pays for a jar Nina picks up “just to look at,” then hands it to her like this is the most ordinary thing in the world.