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“Zach didn’t seem convinced there was a problem. Logan and Nico are concerned, I think. I… He’s my brother.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to handle this alone.” She pushed his hair out of his eyes. “You can ask for help. We could talk to Derek—”

“No.”

“The label has resources. They have ways to—”

“No,” he repeated, pushing to his feet. She didn’t miss the way he winced as he straightened his leg, how he favored his right knee as he paced away from her. “This doesn’t concern the label.”

“I think they’d disagree.”

He raked his hands through his hair. “Drawing more attention to the problem isn’t going to fix it.”

“Acting like it doesn’t exist isn’t working either,” she fired back.

He stopped pacing, staring at her like she’d shot an arrow through his heart. Kat scrambled to her knees, crawling to the other side of the bed so she could reach out and grasp his hand.

“Beckett, he’s sick. And he’s getting worse. It’s time to stop pretending everything’s okay.”

Beckett focused his gaze on the way she traced her thumb over the hummingbird tattooed across the back of his hand. A thousand things flashed across his face that she couldn’t place, flickering by too quickly to parse. At last, he swallowed hard, gave a single tight nod.

“Don’t call Derek. Please.” He lifted his eyes to hers, his mouth contorting as he fought to keep his emotions in check. “I know that’s a shitty thing to ask you. I know it’s your job–”

“I’m not having this conversation as your tour manager. I’m having it as someone who cares about you. Both of you.”

“We’ll talk to him. Me and the guys. It should come from us. If he still doesn’t agree to get help, then we’ll call Derek.”

She squeezed his hand, tugged him closer again. “Where is he now?”

“Still out. Gideon and Rodney are with him.”

She nodded. Those were her best guys. They would make sure Jackson got back to the hotel safely.

Beckett sat on the bed beside her, worry and exhaustion tugging at the corner of his mouth. He scraped a hand over his jaw, turned tired eyes her way, the corners crinkling with the softest smile. That smile wrapped a lasso around her heart, squeezed.

“How was your book signing?” he asked.

She crawled into his lap, careful to keep her weight supported on her own knees where they bracketed his hips. “Good. Strange. Half the people couldn’t have cared less if I was there. They just wanted to put these plastic gems on the book covers. And the other half wanted to talk my ear off about when your next album will come out.”

His hands settled low on her back, rough fingertips against the sliver of skin between her shorts and camisole. “What did you tell them?”

She shrugged, brushed a piece of hair from his forehead, dragged her finger down the line of roses on his throat. “That right now Midnight Storm is focused on the current tour.”

“Jackson wants to write another album.”

“Do you?”

He sighed, those fingertips sliding just beneath the waistband of her shorts. “I don’t write the albums. I just sing what I’m told to.”

“You wrote for one album.”

He brushed off her comment. “That song was never a hit.”

Kat gripped his t-shirt in both fists. Tugged. “I liked it.”

Despite the lingering worry in his eyes, his lip quirked up in a teasing half smirk. “I liked your books.”

She smiled, giving his shirt another tug that rocked her hips against his. “Imagine all the art that never would have been if we’d just been able to talk to each other.”