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Jo scoffed, then called somewhere into the distance. “Daddy fox! You don’t think Kat’s distracted, do you?”
“By Beckett?” Derek called back.
“By the book events,” Jo clarified.
“Do the events, Kat,” Derek shouted. “My wife knows what she’s talking about.”
Jo laughed, her full voice returning to the phone. “I love when he calls me his wife.”
“You are his wife,” Kat said with a laugh.
“I will meet you in Kansas and we’ll decide together which appearances you want to make. Some of them won’t work for Beckett’s schedule, so those will be easy to knock off the list.”
Kat fumbled as she jabbed a straw into the top of her Dr. Pepper, as though she’d forgotten how to use her hands all of a sudden. “Beckett will be at the appearances?”
“You two are so good together,” Jo gushed. “You have this whole bickery banter thing going that people love.”
“What if I don’t want him to come to the bookstores with me?”
“Why wouldn’t you want him to come? He’s so good at connecting with the readers and talking about the stories. That man is going to sell thousands of copies of your books.”
“I don’t want people to buy my books because Beckett talked about them,” she said, aware that she sounded like a sulky teenager. “I want them to buy them because they genuinely want to read them.”
“They do,” Jo insisted. “Babe, you might as well ride this wave while you can. This won’t last forever. You have to make the most of it while you can.”
Jo was right. She might never get this kind of buzz again. She should take advantage of it, set herself up for success when this whole thing was over—not just the media and fan attention, but the engagement. She ran her finger over the band of her ring.
He’d read her books. He’d read them and he’d never told her. He recognized their story in the pages she’d written and he’d never reached out, never asked her why. He’d just kept reading, kept letting her pour her heart onto the page without knowing he was listening, without bothering to respond.
She grabbed his vanilla sweet cream cold brew from the order pickup window and jammed it into the cardboard tray next to her Dr. Pepper, balancing the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she pushed open the door to the coffee shop. She marched back to their hotel, the clomp of her heels against the concrete making her feel more certain with every step as she slipped into the persona of someone who didn’t care what Beckett Hayes did or did not read.
“I don’t want him there,” she said. “If the bookstores don’t want me by myself, then take them off the list.”
“Who’s a good boy? Who’s the handsomest boy in the world?” Nico said in a god-awful baby talk voice as he scratched behind the ears of a golden retriever wearing a polka-dot bow tie.
“You’re supposed to pose with the dog, not flirt with it.” Zach hoisted a maltipoo in a blue-and-white striped sweater onto his shoulders and posed for the photographer buzzing around the members of Midnight Storm.
“Look at him. Who wouldn’t fall in love with that face?” Nico puckered his lips and offered them up to the golden retriever’s seeking tongue, gleefully accepting the pup’s kisses.
“Disgusting,” Beckett muttered.
Every tour, each member of Midnight Storm chose a charity along the route to partner with—serving at a soup kitchen in Detroit, “building a house” (more like hitting their own thumbs with hammers) in New Hampshire, judging a music scholarship competition in Michigan. It was one of the traditions they’d all agreed to revive for this tour, right alongside requiring gaming consoles in their green room and having Kat as their tour manager. That last one had been the only tradition he insisted on.
The dog at the end of the leash Beckett held—an elderly pit bull and chocolate lab mix—unceremoniously lifted a leg and peed all over Beckett’s shoes. “Fucking hell,” he grumbled as urine soaked through the bottom of his jean pant legs.
“There are children present,” Logan scolded through a stiff smile, his own miniature poodle yapping as Logan awkwardly held it away from his chest.
“This is the last time we let you pick the charity event,” Beckett said, glowering at Nico.
“Come on! This is so much better than going to another gala. We get to play with puppies,” Nico said slowly, as though Beckett didn’t understand.
“At least the galas have an open bar,” Jackson mumbled.
Zach turned his toothpaste-commercial smile towards the photographer, posing with the maltipoo cradled like a baby. “Just wait until we get to Wichita. You guys are going to love the children’s hospital gala. I signed us all up for their bachelor auction.”
“You did what?” Logan asked, momentarily distracted from the dog nipping at his calves.
“No fucking way,” Beckett said, shaking his wet foot as if that might somehow dry it faster.
