Page 45 of Wild

It's too late to take back the question she shouldn't have asked. Knowing the answer hardly matters unless Mia tells her she ran a marathon and wore herself out even more than she already was—but the singer has just fixed those blue eyes that follow Erin everywhere directly on her.

"I was here, thinking." Mia nods toward the armchair in the room, which Erin only now notices is turned to face the window.

She wants to ask if she was alone while she was thinking, or if the woman from the dressing room was there helping her concentrate. Erin chokes on her own saliva and decides the woman doesn't matter right now. It doesn't matter whether she was between Mia's legs or simply wasn't here at all—what really intrigues her is knowing what Mia was thinking about, what kept her sitting in that armchair for hours. But she closes her mouth the moment she opens it.

"What?" says Mia, who has caught the dazed, restless look on the doctor's face.

She's dying to know how Erin's night went too, and she wants Erin to give her an opening to ask, because she doesn't want to fight either—and she knows that if she asks whether Erin had a good time with Lexie Farhall, a fight between them is unavoidable.

The singer has a knot in her stomach she hasn't been able to unravel since last night, a suffocating feeling that presses against her throat and shoots bursts of anxiety into her chest every few minutes. She'd left her dressing room a little late, after the woman had come twice and she hadn't at all—and not for lack of trying on her lover's part, but the version of Mia who used to blank her mind and enjoy every woman she chose, without anything getting in the way of a good time, had not been in that dressing room last night. The woman kissed her and she felt foggy-headed and numb all over. At first she panicked, thought maybe her brain was about to shut down and leave her on thefloor in front of her stunned lover, but she quickly realized that wasn't it: the problem was her own mind—because even though she was turned on, it wasn't that person's hands or mouth she wanted on her body.

After she showered, she'd walked out to the hallway with her bodyguard and made her way to the car, where Noah was waiting along with a guy he was spending the night with. Her assistant had introduced him, but Mia doesn't remember his name, because right after that she'd asked about Erin—who usually rides with her after an event—and her best friend had answered quickly, like the subject made him uncomfortable, that the doctor had left over an hour ago with Lexie Farhall.

Mia had nodded and turned to look out the car window, because she didn't need to ask anything else. She knows Lexie only sleeps with women—she herself has slept with the journalist a couple of times—and she felt so suffocated thinking about Lexie getting what she herself is denied and wants so badly that she'd had to unzip her Wild tour hoodie and tug at the collar of her shirt, hoping it would help her breathe.

"Nothing," Erin says, almost in a whisper. "We have the day off today. I'd like to ask you to use it to rest. I'm not saying lock yourself in here, but…"

"I was thinking about hitting the gym after. I've still got energy left over from last night—if I don't do something, I'll have trouble sleeping tonight too."

"Fine, but no cardio. Stick to weights and don't go heavy." The doctor takes a step back.

Mia wants to stop her, ask her not to leave, ask her to stay a while and tell her if she feels something for Lexie, if she'll see her again, or anything at all that doesn't leave her with this bitter feeling of knowing she could be anyone except the one.

"I'll behave," she says, and Erin looks at her again.

In some ways, with that almost-shy posture so unlike her usual self, Mia reminds her a little of Noah and his lost-puppy expression, and she feels uneasy because she senses the singer needs something from her that she doesn't dare give. She can't even afford to be her friend, because she knows herself, and she's starting to realize there's a very thin line between what she thinks she feels and what she actually feels. She keeps insisting it's nothing, that it's just curiosity, but the more time she spends with Mia, the more uncertain she becomes—because sometimes it's hard to put the brakes on the pull she feels toward her.

Chapter 17

After lunch, Erin puts her headphones on and heads down to the gym. This is one of her favorite perks of staying at hotels whose nightly rates she'd rather not know — they always have a private workout room. She wants to make the most of it, because there's nothing on the schedule today, not even a meeting, but tomorrow they leave for Philadelphia, and she finds herself wondering if she could keep up this pace year after year. She takes the stairs for the extra exercise, and when she finally reaches the gym, she stops the moment she walks through the door. Four members of the crew are there, and one of them is Mia, on the treadmill, doing the exact opposite of what she was asked.

Erin had been sure the singer came down this morning, but clearly she hadn't — and she doesn't even want to think about the possibility that Mia has been here twice.

She takes her headphones off and walks over to the machine. Mia has her back to her, running in those same shorts from this morning and a tank top. For a moment, the doctor just stands there, telling herself she's admiring the tattoos when she's actually letting her gray eyes travel the full length of Mia's body. She bites her lip and takes a step closer, then stops again, because one of Mia's tattoos catches her eye. Mia has so many that Erin hadn't noticed it before — not that she's seen them all, though she'd like to — but this one is identical to the tattoo Noah has on his arm, only much smaller and right above Mia's elbow:Danny.

Erin is dying of curiosity. She's almost asked Noah about it more than once, and something has always stopped her, but seeing it now on the singer's arm, her curiosity doubles. She circles the machine and positions herself on the other side, right in front of Mia, who is flushed and sweaty and blinks and raises her eyebrows when she sees her.

"Dooley, what a surprise," she says, still catching her breath.

Erin bristles at the sarcasm but decides to swallow her response rather than make things more complicated between them.

"Can you stop, please? Hit the button." She points to it, and Mia, after holding her gaze for a few seconds in a way that feels like a challenge, hits it. The belt slows gradually until the singer is standing still on it.

"I just wanted to run for a few minutes, I needed to—" Mia stops when she sees Erin's expression, aware that an excuse will only make her angrier. "Sorry. The machines bore me."

Erin picks up the water bottle sitting on top of the treadmill, opens it, and hands it to her.

"Then walk," the doctor concedes, "but today it's better if you don't push yourself. These no-rehearsal, no-concert, no-hundred-things-to-do days are rare — it's important to use them to rest."

"All right," Mia says, pressing the button so the belt starts moving again.

Erin leaves her there and heads for the weight machines. She feels tired today, maybe from the stress of these weeks on tour with the singer, because she still hasn't adjusted to this constant moving around with barely a break. The ER had felt easier, even when it was chaos. She had known every space she moved through, and had always known exactly what needed to be done. Here she controls nothing — not even her patient — and she doesn't have time to get used to one room before they'reswitching hotels and moving to another. Her muscles feel heavy, but when she sits down at the first machine to do leg presses, what she feels is relief — the kind that comes from being able to push out whatever it is she's been carrying inside.

She spends the next half hour moving through the machines, following her usual routine and keeping an eye on Mia. The singer stepped off the treadmill a while ago, did a bit of elliptical, and is now off to one side talking to one of the sound technicians who travels with them. He's a tall guy with a well-built frame and a certain attractiveness, plus a nearly permanent smile that makes it impossible not to like him. Erin moves to another machine and sits down on a weight bench.

Mia turns around at the exact moment Erin lies back to grab the bar, and she gets so absorbed that the guy she was talking to understands the conversation is over and goes back to his workout. The singer's mouth goes dry and her pulse is racing so fast now that her heart is beating harder than it was when she stepped off the machine. Erin is lying on her back with her feet flat on the floor and her legs apart, pressing the bar up and down. Mia sees those lines she loves so much standing out in sharp relief along Erin's arms, the tension in her entire body, and starts imagining things she shouldn't — though she shuts them down quickly when she thinks again about Erin spending the night with Lexie.

That uncomfortable feeling that's been pressing against her chest ever since Noah told her surfaces again, and Mia runs a hand over the back of her neck, still surprised by how much it's affecting her. She struggles to make sense of all the tangled thoughts in her head — she can't even begin to sort them out, everything blurring together — but she knows one thing for certain: she's falling for Erin Dooley, and the doctor wants nothing to do with her. She knows she has to keep living her lifebecause there's nothing else she can do, but she can't even enjoy herself with other women anymore, and Erin slept with Lexie.