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Maybe because at least when she was mad at him, he knew she was thinking of him.

Maybe because he wasn’t sure he could ever have anything more than this. And yet…

She was jealous.

People didn’t get jealous when their ex was propositioned by someone else if they didn’t still have feelings for them. Right?

People also didn’t wear the jewelry their ex-boyfriend gave them if they didn’t have feelings for them anymore. But Kat had. He’d clocked it the second he’d come off stage, the diamond and pearl earrings peeking out from behind her curtain of chestnut hair. Earrings he’d given her when he’d been too chicken shit to propose all those years ago.

Earrings she hadn’t worn once on this tour. Until tonight.

So why now?

Beckett scraped his hand over his face and gently lifted the brunette off his lap. She shot him a confused look, but thankfully didn’t protest. Instead, she turned her attention to Zach.

Kat was jealous, and Beckett was a dick, and he had no idea how to fix it.

“Excuse me,” Beckett mumbled as he got up from the table, determined to find Kat. The problem was he hadn’t really seen where she’d gone. The restaurant was crowded, and the long line outside the women’s restroom meant it was unlikely she was in there. He spun around, unsurprised to see Rodney, a member of their security team, trailing at a respectable distance. “Did you see where Kat went?”

Rodney tilted his chin towards a side entrance that opened onto a dark rooftop patio. The chairs were still stacked on the tables, the overhead bistro lights dark.

Kat turned at the sound of the door opening. When she saw it was Beckett, she turned her back to him, looking out at the neon lights of the city below and crossing her arms over her chest. “I need a minute.”

“Why?”

She sputtered, repeating the question as she turned to face him. “What the fuck was that?” she asked, jabbing a finger towards the restaurant.

Beckett shrugged and hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. “You know how the Chasers are.”

“Since when do you indulge them?” She turned away, seemingly done with the conversation, but only for a moment before she spun back around, marching up to him as if she couldn’t help but keep arguing with him. “Is that your type now? Half-naked women who grope you in public?”

“It’s not not my type.”

It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it the second the words left his mouth.

She scoffed, looking away, but not before he caught the whisper of hurt in her eyes. Why the hell couldn’t he stop goading her?

“I never would have agreed to do this tour if I’d known it was going to be like this,” she said under her breath.

“Like what, Luna?”

Fire flashed in her eyes at his use of the old nickname. “Watching you with your hands all over some woman’s ass.”

“My hands were nowhere near her ass.”

“You never used to—” She cut herself off, pressing her lips together in a flat line and shaking her head as if she were talking herself out of saying more.

His own frustrations flared hot and impulsive behind his sternum. “Been a long fucking time since you knew me well enough to know where I put my hands on a woman.”

The wounded expression on her face lasted only a fraction of a second, but it was enough to dump cold water on any indignation he’d felt a moment before.

“What did you think it would be like?” he asked softly. Her mouth opened and closed again, as if she were going to speak but forgot the words. His eyes flicked to the diamonds in her ears. “Why’d you come back, Luna?”

“Why’d you ask me to?”

An impasse. He wasn’t going to answer that question, not here, not in the middle of an argument.

“I needed the money,” she finally said. “The label is worried about Jackson’s run-ins with the press. They think it’ll only take another bad headline or two for audience goodwill to turn. So they offered me a very generous bonus if we can get to the end of the tour without that happening.”