Page 25 of My Three Billionaire Rockstars

Good.

My boots smack the pavement hard enough to make my ankles ache. I don’t look back. I don’t stop. I pass the windows of The Lamb without glancing inside because I refuse to give myself the chance.

By the time I get home, I’m breathless.

Daisy hears me before I’m even all the way through the door and comes skidding across the floor like I’ve been gone for three years instead of one infuriating dinner.

“There you are,” I mutter, dropping my bag and crouching down so she can launch herself into me. “Congratulations. You remain the most stable thing in my life.”

She licks my chin with distressing enthusiasm.

“I know,” I say. “I also think he’s annoying.”

I kick off my boots, peel the hoodie off, and collapse onto the couch with my puppy, Daisy, sprawled across my lap like a scruffy weighted blanket.

“Well,” I tell her, “that was a disaster.”

She blinks at me.

“He takes me to a restaurant where the butter definitely went to private school, orders enough food to feed a small board meeting, looks at me like I’m some kind of puzzle, and then, surprise… he’s also pretty famous.”

Tail thump.

“Yes, exactly.”

I lean back and stare at the ceiling. Because now I have to know.

I reach for my laptop from the coffee table and Daisy shifts with a wounded sigh but allows it.

“This is your fault, too,” I tell her. “You should’ve looked more judgmental when I left.”

I type in Xander Harlow and hit search.

Then I stare.

“Well,” I say. “That’s irritating.”

Articles. Interviews. Images. Videos. Entire pages of results. The Lonely Ones. There’s Xander on old magazine covers, onstage with a guitar, hair longer, tattoos more obvious, mouth at a microphone, looking like trouble in an entirely different genre than the one currently sitting in my head.

Wow, I really am out of the loop. Then again, I grew up three thousand miles away. I guess this band didn’t make it to our shores.

I click on a video. Music floods the room.

Daisy lifts her head.

“Okay,” I admit after a minute. “That’s actually good.”

I click another. Then another.

He’s really good.

The music is rough with grit. Weight. The kind of sound that feels like it belongs to people who’ve broken things on purpose and written songs with the pieces afterward.

I click a live performance and there are the other two from the diner. Julian with the dark hair and leather jacket. Gabe behind the drums looking focused and stupidly composed. There’s someone on the keyboard too, but I can’t really see him. Together they have the kind of chemistry you can feel through a screen, which is just offensive.

I close the laptop halfway, then open it again, because apparently, I’m committed to my own suffering tonight.

Another song starts.