Darkness engulfed the room. The curtains were drawn to prevent any city lights from filtering through. When a draft crept up my nakedness, I pulled the sheets closer, turning to see Hawke was not beside me.

Hawke had strolled into our penthouse after his rock-star obligations with flowers and duck confit, a famous Parisian meal. It had been the best night to start off my short European vacation, and I was missing the absence of his warm body next to mine.

Wrapping the satin sheet around my body, I swung my knees over the side of the bed. A tiny sliver of light was peeking through the bottom of the bathroom door. I knocked on the door before turning the knob and walking in.

When I approached, Hawke flipped around.

His eyes widened, surprised at my arrival. “What’re you doing up?”

When I took a step forward, he brought a fist to his back, hiding something, and awareness prickled my skin. The ringing in my ears, coupled with the increase in my heart rate, had me feeling dizzy, but I pushed through it.

Doing drugs—any type of drugs—was a deal-breaker.

“What’s in your hand?” My voice trembled, showing my fear. I’d been here before, years ago with my own mother. I didn’t want another repeat—a repeat of my past.

“What?” he asked, blanching. “Nothing.” His words matched his face, blank as a white canvas, unreadable.

“You asked me once”—I swallowed hard—“if you didn’t write your songs, if that would’ve been a deal-breaker for me.” I tipped my head toward his hand. “If you’re doing drugs, I’m done. I don’t care how much I like you.” I had to step out of this situation before I got in too deep, before I liked him more—or worse, before I fell in love…before I could love him and then feel the need to save him.

The hardest part of retelling an agonizing story was the first few words. I bit my cheek and forced myself to start speaking, “You know about my disappearing father, but my mother…I watched her slowly kill herself with prescription drugs.”

“It’s Tylenol, Sunshine,” he insisted.

My eyes narrowed, and disappointment flooded my insides. The red needle on my bullshit meter was teetering on the far end. “Show it to me then.”

His eyes grew hard. “I’ve watched my mother battle her addiction with coke and heroin and prescription drugs for as long as I can remember. It’s the reason she keeps coming back for money that she is not entitled to. Like I told you before, I’m not going to let anyone or anything control me. If you haven’t figured it out, I am very much a control freak.”

My eyes dropped to his fist. “What’s in your hand?” Naturally, I was too trusting, but I wasn’t naive enough to think that he didn’t have everything at his disposal.

He stepped toward me, reached for my hand, opened my fist, and dropped a pill in my palm before storming out to the bedroom.

My stomach nosedived to the marble floor. Shit!

It was Tylenol.

Great. Just great.

I guessed my bullshit meter was broken.

Anxiety crept up my throat, and I entered the bedroom, ready to beg for forgiveness. He was slumped over on the couch, turning something over and over in his hand. When I stepped closer, I realized it was a guitar pick.

“I got hurt a while back. Fell off a stage.”

I remembered. It’d happened two years ago, and it had made front-page news.

“So, yeah, sometimes, I feel lower back pain and take Tylenol with codeine for it. But I’m not addicted to meds, and I don’t take hard-core drugs. That’s not me.”

His fingers dug into the guitar pick, and he blew out a breath. “I don’t believe in blind trust.” His voice was low and strained and hurt. “I don’t trust very easily. My circle is small, intimate. I don’t even trust all of the band members. I mean”—he shook his head—“not with anything real. Cofi, I do, and Tilton. Everyone else…” His voice trailed off.

“I’m sorry.” I was a step away from him, but he still hadn’t lifted his head.

When I ran my fingers through his hair, he lifted his head, his eyes tired, sad even.

“And you, Sunshine. I trust you. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the fact that you haven’t sold our story to the tabloids yet, or maybe it’s because you don’t push me about my mom. I don’t know what it is, but I trust you, and I just wish you’d do the same for me.”

I inhaled deeply. I’d hurt him, and I knew exactly why. It was the simple things that money couldn’t buy that mattered to him, and trust was one of them.

Our eyes locked, and I swallowed the guilt down.

“Sunshine, I’ve never lied to you,” he said, eyes intensely locking with mine.

“You can trust me,” I promised him. “I’d never betray you. Ever.”

From the look on his face, the way his eyes peered into mine, I knew he believed me. I sat down next to him, and our thighs touched.

“Want to hear the latest one?” He let out a sadistic laugh, one that felt like tiny spiders were nipping at my skin. “Alan paid her off again.”

I’d gathered that much from what I heard on the plane, and I was curious, but I didn’t want to pry.

I rested my chin on his shoulder while he stared blankly in front of himself. “She’s suing me again. Nothing new.”

“For what?”

He exhaled deeply. His exhale was frustrated, tired, defeated.

“Shit, she was so high on our first tour. I doubt she even remembers what went down. When she lashed out at the President of MCA Records, I thought we were toast. That’s when Alan stepped up. He was part of MCA, assigned to us. He knew my mother was the one screwing up our gigs.

I’d emancipated myself from her when I was sixteen. What else was I supposed to do when she’d depleted our accounts to fund her lifestyle?

Now she suing us for unpaid wages because she had originally been our manager.”

I snuggled closer, hating the coldness in his stare, the hate in his eyes, the bitterness in his tone. “What does she want now?”

“The same thing she always wants—money. Now, she’s suing for emotional distress.” He flexed his fingers, forming a fist.

“Maybe you should countersue for the same thing.”

The side of his mouth lifted into his signature crooked smile. “I should, shouldn’t I? But then she’d use the money I’d already paid her to pay me if I won the suit.”

When he rested against the pillows, I followed and lay down. Facing each other, we were so close. I felt the warmness of his breath against my face. The vulnerability in his eyes were laid out for me to see.

“Alan paid her off last week,” he said quietly “I only found out through Cofi. I know Alan keeps me in the dark sometimes, but all I want from him is the truth.”

“Understandable.”

“I mean, I know why he does it. I just hate paying the bitch off all the time.”

Silence engulfed the room, and we stared at each other, his tormented eyes to my understanding ones.

I shifted with unease, needing to break the silence, to make him feel better. That was what I did. It was what I was good at—fixing things.

I unclenched my fists and noticed the tiny pill was still in my sweaty palm. “So, yeah…you still need this?”

After a soft chuckle escaped him, he plucked the pill from my hand and popped it into his mouth, swallowing without water. Then, his look turned serious. “Stay for the rest of the tour. It’s only for the next few weeks.”

If only the world worked like that, where I had no bills to pay and no school application process to worry about.

“You know I can’t. They only gave me three days off.”

He pinched my side, and I yelped.

“No, seriously, I can’t. I have to fly back home the day after tomorrow to make it back to work in time.”

He nodded, but it didn’t lessen the unsettling feeling between us, this feeling that our short time together was already coming to an end.