Buzzing. Confusion. Light.

Yeah, my brain was kind of fuzzy right now. Please call back and try again later when Mia isn't suffering from a world-class case of confusion and maybe just a little bit of a hangover from just waking up.

Only that buzzing kept right up. The bright light kept flashing in my face. That was odd. Usually the sun didn't flash in my face in the morning when it was streaming through my apartment window which was conveniently located at a perfect angle to catch the sun greeting the world for most of the year.

What the hell was going on here?

I opened one eye. That seemed like a fair enough compromise. Just one eye. I could still be half-asleep if I could only see half of what was going on in the world, right? At least that was the kind of half drunken/half hung over logic that was playing through my brain.

So I opened my one eye. I looked down. The buzzing was my phone. The flashing light was my phone.

Of course it would be my phone. The only question was who was calling?

I squinted at the screen. It was refusing to resolve into a clear picture. Why was it refusing to resolve into a clear picture?

Oh, right. All the booze I had to drink at that after party. After the concert. When I'd gotten a little close and personal with…

Shit.

I have a couple of friends over the years who swore by their personal hangover remedies. One said that drinking Tylenol with a bunch of water would take care of things. I knew one girl who swore by tomato juice as a cure-all for what ails you when you had a little too much to drink the night before. She claimed it sobered you right up.

It didn't. All it did was leave you with tomato breath and a hangover.

I just mention that by way of comparison, because in that moment I discovered the perfect hangover remedy. The one thing that was guaranteed to sober me up in a flash. Waking up and seeing my friend calling me when I'd fallen into a drunken sleep in the back of some pop star's bus after I had one hell of a naughty tryst with him.

Damn!

I sat bolt upright and immediately regretted it. I might've thought I'd sobered up, I might've thought I'd gotten rid of the lingering aftereffects of getting drunk, but sitting up proved that wasn't the case at all.

No, it just made the headache that was threatening just behind my temples come roaring to the surface. It made me regret ever even considering putting a drink of alcohol to my lips. It made me wish I could crawl back up next to Grant and go to sleep, but the insistent buzzing on my phone, Kayla's name flashing at me in the darkness, meant that wasn't happening.

I swiped my phone and it opened.

Kayla's call disappeared. My phone helpfully told me I'd missed about twenty calls from her. Great. She probably knew exactly where I was, and she probably had a pretty good idea of exactly what I was doing.

No, I corrected myself. She probably had a pretty good idea of exactly what I'd done. The fun part was over. Now it was time to deal with the hangover. Damn it.

I shifted around and saw him there. My breath caught as I saw his muscular body. It was perfect. He was perfect.

Light was streaming in from that giant window along the back of the bus. It was illuminating him through the blinds. Horizontal bars of light ran up and down his body showing off his perfect form. His handsome face that looked so incredible as he was lying there asleep.

In short, he looked absolutely perfect. And all I could think about was how the hell was I going to get the hell out of here, and fast? I couldn't believe I'd actually let myself become a one night stand for a member of Twenty Promises, and my knee jerk reaction was to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

Was it stupid? Maybe, but I was still slightly buzzed, dealing with one hell of a hangover, dealing with some pretty damn confusing emotions, and generally not thinking straight.

I glanced around the room. I looked down at myself. No clothes. A blush crossed my face at that. Why would I be in clothes? I'd only just had sex with one of the most famous front men in the world. I'd fallen asleep right next to him. Preferred attire for that sort of social engagement was the birthday suit, after all.

I frantically looked around the room for any sign of my clothes. I saw a slightly darker spot along one side of the wall. I thought he'd maybe tossed my clothes over that direction earlier. I couldn't really remember. Everything was sort of a lust fueled haze that ran together in my memory, and I figured one lump of potential clothes was as good as another when I was already stumbling around blindly in the back of a tour bus where, oh did I mention? I'd just had a one night stand with the "sexy one" from the most famous band of a decade ago. A band that I despised. I’d acted no better than a common groupie throwing herself at him!

How had I let myself get into this situation? Damn it, damn it, damn it!

I fumbled at the dark pile on the floor, desperately hoping it wasn't his clothes. And a smile played across my face as I thought back to how much fun it had been getting Grant out of those clothes. I shook myself. I needed to stop thinking like that. I needed to get the hell out of here. I'd had my walk on the wild side, but I was not a groupie for some rock star!

Okay, so maybe I totally was a groupie for some rock star. No matter how I tried to slice it, what I'd just done was groupie behavior. Still, I was going to get out of here before he could gloat over his conquest. Worse, I was going to get out of here before he woke up and did something like profess his undying love for me which I wasn't equipped to deal with right now.

Not that there was anything about our time together that made me think he was the type to do anything like gloat over a conquest. Not that there was anything about what he was that made me think he was the type to profess his undying love for a one night stand.

I stopped and turned back to look at him again. I thought back to meeting him in the diner. I thought to how he'd been while we were backstage together. And I felt a warmth rising inside me as I thought about that.

A dangerous warmth. A warmth that made me want to ignore my phone and climb back into bed. Into the rock star fantasy that I'd been able to live for just one night. A rock star fantasy that was so dangerous precisely because it was that: a fantasy.

No matter how nice, no matter how hot he was, the truth was plain. He was a star, and he was constantly traveling from city to city where girls who were a hell of a lot hotter than me would be throwing themselves at him. There was no chance for something long-term, and that's not what I needed in my life right now. I needed to remember that.

The night had been fun, but I needed to get out of here before he woke up and things got really complicated.

Because I'd realized something in that moment while I was looking at him. While I was thinking back to all the fun we'd had. To that moment we'd shared in the diner. Nothing in our time together had made him seem like the love'em and leave'em type even though I didn't see how he couldn't be given who he was and what he did. No, he seemed very sincere, very real with his emotions and how he was feeling even if there was more than a little bit of booze involved which made it questionable to begin with. And that scared me. I was terrified that he might want a relationship, and I don't think that was something I could handle. Not with him.

I finished slipping my clothes on. I must've looked a sight but I didn't care. It was too dark to see in a mirror anyways. I moved to the door leading out into the bus, and prayed there wouldn't be any security people waiting on the other side.

Before I left I did turn to look at him one final time. I stared at his gorgeous body. I stared at his beautiful face with just a hint of stubble that I knew was there even though I couldn't see it in the darkness. And I felt a profound ache in the pit of my stomach. I felt a fire burning in between my legs.

I shook my head. This was dangerous sitting here and staring at him like this. It made me think dangerous thoughts. The kind of thoughts that would have me crawling back into bed with him and waking up in the morning to see where things fell. I turned and quietly made my way out.

I hated myself for doing it, but it had to be done.

The lights were out in the living area as well. I started towards the door from memory and immediately banged my ankle against something. It was hard not to curse, and then I realized I was an idiot. I still had my phone with me! I definitely wasn't thinking straight.

I flicked the screen on and ignored the missed calls from Kayla. I made my way to the door. I finally saw my first security guard when I stepped out. The same one from earlier. He seemed to be having a quiet but rather heated argument with somebody. Somebody who was waving a phone in his face and looking particularly hostile.

I smiled as the glow from the phone passed across her face. That was an angry whispering face that I recognized. Kayla. Her eyes fell on me as the door opened and she rushed around the guard, pushing him to the side and ignoring his protests. She wrapped me in a hug.

"Kayla! What's going on here?"

"I was so worried! You disappeared and then you weren't answering any of my phone calls and they said he went in there with a girl but I couldn't go in there to try and find you and…"

Her breath was coming in quick gasps and I realized she seemed like she was on the verge of bursting into tears. Damn! That definitely wasn't the reaction I'd been expecting. Not that I'd been expecting to see Kayla at all when I stepped off the bus.

"What happened with your guy?"

Kayla sighed. "It was fun," she said. "But let's just say that after we finished having that fun time he was more interested in drinking and playing video games than hanging out with me."

I felt a pang of guilt as she said that. The way she was sighing made it clear she would've loved it very much if he did want to cuddle up with her. Maybe fall asleep together. Maybe sit and talk about things. Exactly what I'd gotten from Grant, and here I was running away from it like a stupid idiot.

"What about you? You slut!" Kayla said.

I shrugged. "More or less the same thing."

The lie caused another pang of guilt to run through me, but whatever. Let her think what she was going to think. Given her recent experience she probably wouldn't have too much trouble imagining that I'd had a love'em and leave'em one night affair with Grant in much the same way that she'd enjoyed her time with her guy. That would be a lot easier to deal with than the inevitable questioning that would follow from telling her that I had a brief glimpse of something very special developing between me and Grant and now I was sneaking away in the night like a coward rather than confronting it. No, she wouldn't like that at all. I’d never hear the end of it.

The lie was easier.

Kayla hooked her elbow in my own and pulled me away. She gave a pointed dirty look to the guard who'd refused to let her into Grant's trailer, though it's not like I could blame the guy. That was his job, after all. He shrugged and went back to his ebook when it looked like we weren’t going to try and get back in.

"Come on Mia," Kayla said. "Let's get out of here. Away from these rock star users!"

I was surprised at the heat in Kayla's voice. From the way she'd been talking on the way over here, hell from the way she talked about the band over the years, it seemed like a one night stand with her favorite member of the group wouldn't be entirely unwelcome. Only now the way she was reacting made me think that maybe there was a little bit more to her rock star fantasy then a slam bam thank you ma'am one night stand.

Interesting. Very interesting.

And that just made me feel all the more guilty that I'd achieved the dream and now I was leaving it behind. Yeah, I definitely needed to never tell Kayla about that. On the bright side, if Kayla was this pissed off then there was a good chance I was never going to have to hear her lecturing me about Twenty Promises ever again.