Page 79 of Love You Like This

“Probably. You know how he gets.”

I nod. “Yeah, I stayed in her room. We, uh, slept together.”

Stone turns fully toward me, happiness painted on his face. “Finally.”

“Don’t get excited. Before I left this morning, she said it couldn’t happen again. She’s worried about it being unprofessional.”

He slumps. “She’s right.

I open my mouth to disagree, but he holds a placating hand up.

“I don’t mean that I think it would be unprofessional. Personally, I think it’s about fucking time. That said, from an outside perspective, you know how people would look at her. She’d have to deal with people accusing her of sleeping her way to the top and other misogynistic bullshit.”

“I don’t want it to be a dirty little secret.”

“So the impasse is why there was so much tension between you two this morning.”

“You noticed, huh?”

He looks at me from the side of his eyes. “I’m pretty sure a beetle on the street outside could have noticed.” He looks back down at what he scribbled on his notebook. “The good news is that all your pain and yearning really translates well to the page. If we wanted to thematically sequence the new album, we could start with your songs and then move to mine.”

The door opens, and Darren and Tobias enter. I watch with wariness as Tobias pulls drumsticks from his back pocket and sets them on the end table before taking a seat in the armchair. Every day he seems more and more unstable. I’m worried that he’s about to slip into either a manic or depressive state. We all thought he was in a good place with his current medications, but with the street drugs he’s been doing, who knows.

“Stop looking at me like I’m about to break,” he grits out, looking back and forth between Stone and me.

“You have perfect timing, actually.” Stone tosses his notebook to him. “Xander has written our next hit record.”

Tobias pulls his hair back into a bun and taps his thumb against the arm rest of his chair while he reads. His body rocks to a rhythm building in his mind. I know he’s got something when he looks up at us, a gleam back in his eyes.

“Let’s finish it.”

Stone stands and grabs his keyboard from the other room. “I think you should take lead vocals on this one,” he says to me.

“Me?” I point at myself in confusion. “I’m not the lead vocalist.”

“People love your voice.”

“Yeah, on background vocals.”

“Nope,” Darren calls from the table in the corner of the room where he sat down to work. “Check the post that Jade made on your account. It’s going crazy on all the social media channels.”

I grab my phone and open up one of the apps to find a video taken of me while I was at the piano in Phoenix. Over a million views in less than two hours, hundreds of thousands of likes. “Holy shit.”

“Yep,” Stone points at me. “You’re singing this one.”

By the end of the show, I’m a sweat-covered mess. Darren informed us earlier today that we’ll have half an hour to clean up and change before the meet and greet. The three of us strip out of our clothes and walk into the locker room showers, each taking a semi-private stall. At least the water is hot and the pressure strong. We’ve definitely used some that weren’t over the years.

I finish first and walk out to find Darren waiting. He’s brought our clothes in and leans against the wall, his head in his phone as usual. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t sleep attached to it.

Once we’re dressed and ready, he leads us upstairs to a suite. There’s a long table with three chairs and stacks of concert posters for us to sign. Each seat has a water bottle and sharpie waiting for us. Tobias takes the first seat, Stone the second, and I the third.

A couple of the station executives walk over and introduce themselves. We chat for a few minutes with them, laying on the charm. At least I was trying to until I noticed Jade speaking to a man in the corner. He says something, and her head falls back as she laughs. He takes the opportunity to sweep his eyes down her body. Which, fuck me, I did too earlier. But it pisses me off that he’s doing it.

She’s gorgeous as usual. Tonight she’s wearing a forest green dress that wraps around her body and ties at the side. It skims her body beautifully with the hem ending with a flutter around her knees. The fact that she picked a dress in my favorite color to wear today and is now flirting with another man irritates the fuck out of me.

Stone kicks my chair to get my attention. Apparently, the station president asked me a question I didn’t hear because I was too focused on her. I force myself to relax and answer him, apologizing for zoning out. From the corner of my eye, I see Darren walk over to Jade and douche bag.

Thank fuck.