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A beaming grin rips across my face as I pluck his phone out of his hand and hold it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Raleigh,” Lenny says. “I trust you’re enjoying your birthday.”
“Sure am,” I tell him. “But you know what would make it even better?”
“What’s that?”
“If you take that contract that’s sitting on your desk with my name on it, and add an extra zero to the end, because if I’m expected to deal with Ezra Knight and keep a smile on my face, then Sir, you better make it worth my while.”
Lenny laughs. “Okay, Raleigh. Consider it done. Are there any other negotiations you’d like to make?”
“My hotel room while on tour. I want the good rooms with the pretty city views and food packages. Like, I wanna eat well on your dime. Actually, I wanna eat well on Ezra’s dime,” I amend, feeling all too proud of myself. Take that Ezra! “Oh, and those skanky dancers, they have to wear more clothes around the boys. This is a professional setting, after all.”
Rock groans beside me, clearly enjoying the way the dancers like to keep their tits hanging out. Hell, I know Ezra did. “Anything else, Miss Stone?”
“Uhhhhh . . . drugs.”
“You want drugs?” he questions, clearly confused.
“No. The opposite. I want no drugs. But if you want me to somehow snap your lead singer into gear, then he needs to have no drugs. The occasional drink is fine, and maybe something to help him relax every now and then. But he’s not falling down the addict rabbit hole on my watch.”
“Understood,” he says. “Does this mean you’re in?”
“I’m in,” I say. “Consider me your new favorite marketing exec.”
“Sure thing,” he laughs. “Be ready to leave for Europe in two days.”
“Wait. What?”
My eyes widen, not having realized just how soon the start of the tour is, but before I can ask anything else, Lenny ends the call, and I’m left with a chorus of deafening cheers around me. As I hand the phone back to Dylan, I grin at the boys. “You want the good news or the bad news?”
“Hit me with the good news first,” Rock says.
“I’m basically going to be like . . . one of your bosses,” I tell them.
Dylan laughs and shakes his head. “That’s really not how it works, but it’s your birthday, so I’m gonna let you have it,” he says. “But go on, give us the bad news.”
I stand from the booth with a laugh and scoop up one last shot of tequila, throw it back, and slam it down on the table, grinning at the boys. “You two assholes are officially in charge of breaking the news to Ezra.”
“Fuck.”
15
Raleigh
15 YEARS OLD
The soft sounds of Ezra’s guitar fill the house as I make my way into the kitchen to find him sitting up on the island bench, softly strumming a sweet acoustic melody. “Is that new?” I ask, opening the fridge and pulling out a soda, unable to keep from glancing back over my shoulder and taking in the way his shirt gapes open, showing off the defined pecs beneath.
“Mm-hmm,” he murmurs, tracking my every step across the kitchen with eyes so dark they hold me captive every time I look his way. “I think I’ve almost finished the melody, but I haven’t worked out the lyrics yet.”
My brows furrow. Usually, he works the other way around and fits the music to the lyrics he’d already spent hours slaving over. “Everything good?” I ask, cracking my soda and dropping a straw in the top before taking a sip.
I lean back against the counter, my eyes greedily raking over him. He’s eighteen now, far from the boy I first met two years ago, and while he’s still exactly the same, he’s also so different. He was tall then, but now he towers over me, and when he pulls me into his warm arms, I’ve never felt so protected. His jaw is sharper and his voice even deeper, but the stubble that grows across his jaw brings me to my knees. He’s simply gorgeous.
Ezra Knight is my whole world, and it only gets better every day. However, now that the band is starting to get a little more traction, they’re getting fans, and they’re not just the kind of people who sit back and listen to their music while nodding along. They’re screaming girls who desperately try to throw themselves at the boys, and my patience is wearing thin . . . as well as my self-esteem.
The girls are always gorgeous, model-like beauties who are naturally older than me, more developed than me, more experienced, and definitely more suitable for Ezra than his best friend’s fifteen-year-old sister. It’s bullshit. I hate it and for the most part, I think I do a pretty good job at hiding my insecurities, but I know he knows. He knows everything about me. It’s as though he can read the thoughts entering my mind before I’ve even had a chance to decipher them for myself, and despite those girls and their frantic attempts to get his attention, his eyes are always on me.
