“Load up, people. We have to be in Dallas by noon.”

“Are you kidding me?” Simon turned around with a bright red plastic cup in his hand and a girl on his arm. “The party just started.”

Gordo stepped off the bus, his ever constant iPad in hand. “I sent itineraries to you this morning.”

Deacon unearthed his phone. Sure enough there was an email and a text outlining their schedule for the day. And as usual, there were so many alerts that he’d missed an important one. “Gordo, you gotta lighten up on the notices. We get so many a day that we stop looking at our phones.”

“Or it drains our damn battery,” Nick said with enough acid in his voice that Deacon winced.

He’d taken to carrying his charger and a backup battery pod with him. Between the social media blasts they did and the crappy signal they had in the remote parks, their phones were about as useful as a paperweight.

He sighed and downed the last of his own cup of beer. Well, that was why he couldn’t find Harper. The food trucks packed up with the equipment to make sure they were in place before everyone else.

“It’s the only way I can keep you informed. Since you love to ditch me.”

Nick smirked and tucked his hands into his jeans. “We wouldn’t do that, Gordo. That’s just mean.”

Jazz socked Nick in the stomach. “Don’t be an ass.”

“What?”

She plucked a drumstick from her hip pocket and twirled it idly. “Looks like we’ll be getting a good night’s rest for once.”

“If you’re not tired, you can climb into the bunk with me.” Nick waggled his eyebrows.

She shoved him back a step, but couldn’t quite stop a smile. “Pig.”

“Do we get to bring company on the bus?” Simon asked.

Nick snorted. “Like you’ve ever asked before tonight.”

The girl on Simon’s arm linked her fingers in Nicky’s belt loop as well as Simon’s. “I’m not ready to stop partying.”

Simon’s sleepy eyes sharpened, and the trio loaded onto the bus.

Fucking awesome. It was going to be a damn long drive.

By the time Deacon climbed inside, Simon and Nick were sitting on the couches with the music on, and the girl was straddling their lead singer.

She shifted toward Deacon and trailed her fingers down his belly to his loose cargos. “The more the merrier.”

“Nah.” Nick hauled her off Simon’s lap and deposited her on his own. “Deak has eyes for only one girl these days. Maybe if he finally gets the good chef on all fours he can finally relax.”

Deacon hauled Nick off the couch by the collar, pulling him up until his feet dangled. “You do what you want with the women of your choice, but don’t fucking disrespect Harper like that.”

Nick gripped Deacon’s forearm. “Jesus, I was only kidding. Get off!”

Deacon dropped him to his feet and stumbled back. “I’m sorry.”

Christ, what the hell was wrong with him? Getting stirred up by a woman was one thing, but this? He swiped Simon’s flask and belted back a fiery mouthful. He hissed as the vodka tore down his throat and burned like gasoline fumes in his lungs. “Fucking shit, Simon. How do you drink this?”

Simon grinned. “Take another belt, and maybe you’ll calm down.”

“Maybe I’ll drop into a coma.” But he took another slug. The haze would be welcome, but he’d have to drink a helluva lot more than was in the palm-sized silver flask.

He leaned over to the small fridge under the couch and pulled out one of his craft beers. When he washed away the vodka with the smooth stout, he evened out.

His back felt like an army of fire ants were feasting on him, and his adrenaline was still kicking from the show with no outlet. “She’s making me crazy.”

“Just fuck her, would you? For all of our sakes.”

Deacon finished off the beer. He knew Nick was right. But he wasn’t entirely sure that fucking her would end the tight skin. When he went to sleep, she was the last thing he thought of. In the morning—well, like this morning. He’d like that to be every morning.

Seven fucking days.

Seven days shouldn’t do this much damage. It had to be the sex. He’d cut himself off for the last few months. The club dates around California and Washington after the single broke had been one mindless fuck after another.

Not every night, but more than once, he’d let their newfound fame lure him into a bed that didn’t mean anything other than the physical release.

He understood that. It wasn’t healthy, but at least it made sense.

With Harper, he didn’t feel any of that. The urgency matched the sense of rightness. And it scared the hell out of him. Everything was changing so fast, and all he could think about was hanging onto something.

Was it wrong to want it to be her?

He reached for the six pack under the seat and stalked back to the bunk area.

He woke a few hours later thanks to an insistent bladder. His head was still a bit fuzzy. After a trip to the bathroom, he wandered into the front of the bus and dropped onto the couch to watch the landscape go by. Joe had the radio on low; the classic rock anthems were replaced with the perfect lyrics that always crawled inside him.

Not because he had a mother that gave him good advice. Because he sure as shit hadn’t had that. But the lyrics to “Simple Man” had always lined up with his own theories.

As shitty as days could be, there were good ones to be found. Being patient was his stock in trade. He’d waited out the band, he’d waited out the growing pains of replacing Snake with Jazz and the added bonus of Gray.

He’d just have to find the patience to figure out Harper. Rushing her wouldn’t do anything to help his cause, but the sense of urgency wouldn’t fade.

Making her his, holding on to her as if she was going to fade out like the last strains of a song wasn’t a smart move. Instead he had to trust that if she was truly that important, then things would fall together.

Fate wasn’t something he sat around and waited for. But in this case, he was pretty sure he had to sit on his need to fix and work a problem around to his way of thinking.

And that sucked.

Jazz padded out and dropped to the sofa next to him, Nick following a few minutes later. The rest of the bus was silent for a few snores.

After a bit, Jazz sighed and levered herself off the couch. “I know I’m just the drummer, but I’ve got all this stuff knocking around in my head. And we’re on this damn bus for hours…”

Deacon sat up straighter. “Okay. Show us.” When she went to the small compartment under the instruments, he glanced at Nick. He just shrugged.

“Can I?”

Deacon returned his attention to Jazz. Her fingers were wrapped around the neck of his acoustic. “Sure.”

She settled on the couch, and his oversized guitar made her look like a little girl. But she quickly tuned the Takamine like it was her own.

“You play guitar too?”

“Yeah. The guitar was actually my second instrument after the piano. I can pretty much play anything.” She stretched her fingers. “I got bored easily, so I just kept learning instruments.”

Deacon could feel Nick tensing behind him. Compromise and lyric writing were hard things to share in Nick’s world. And this woman who’d changed so much of the band was going to insert herself into another of his spaces.

He just hoped that Nick would keep an open mind.

She strummed, the piece a simple three chords, soft as a spring breeze off the water. Her bell-like voice tripped over the words at first. She cleared her throat. “Let me try again.”

Nick stood and Jazz stalled. But instead of walking off, he unhooked his own guitar from the opposite closet and sat across from her. “Again,” he said simply.

So she repeated the song and the chords, and Nick built off the acoustic tones and layered them until her voice blended with the notes.

Deacon grabbed Simon’s Gibson and sat next to Jazz. He wasn’t the guitar player that Gray and Nick were, but he knew his way around a composition.

He adjusted the rhythm and the tempo, and Nick followed suit easily. They were in tune whenever he did small changes to a song. Like they linked up at a basic level.

The three of them played with the words, scribbled down a basic cord progression so they wouldn’t forget and hashed out eighty percent of a song by the time they came into the Dallas venue.

When Jazz looked up, she smiled. Deacon followed her gaze to find Gray in the doorway. The naked longing on his face shimmered hot and bright before slipping under his usual mask.

The question was, did he want Jazz or to write with them?

Maybe it was a little bit of both.

Joe’s voice boomed over the bus’s inner speakers. “Lady and asshats, we are pulling into Dallas’s premier attraction.”

Jazz scrambled up to look out the window. The eye-searing blue sky was cloudless. The pavilion looked like any other. Half concrete jungle, half forest in the middle of nowhere. This time, all the accent colors were stone gray, white, and Crayola blue.

The arches were a little rusty and the cement gave off rays of heat like coils in a stove. This part of Texas, he didn’t miss.

“It will be a cool one hundred and two today, so make sure you have water and SPF nine hundred. I’m talking to you, Nick, my boy.”

Nick shifted toward the window and scrunched down in his seat, his chin resting on the cushion as they rolled to the back of the venue. Jazz hopped forward as they parked and did her usual spiel with Joe about the venue and the highlights of the day’s scavenger hunt.

“We’re changing it up today. We’re sending our very delicious, very clever boys out to hide tickets in a few of Dallas’s hot spots. Well, in this freakish weather everything is a hot spot. More details to come as we pick hunting grounds. Happy scavenging!” She flicked through settings and set the video to upload.

The doors to the bus opened, and Gordo in his typical khakis and Oblivion blue polo shirt with their logo on the right breast climbed on. His soft-soled shoes were immaculate and his blond hair had been shellacked into its usual dome. He carried a messenger bag. “Hey, people. I have your scavenger hunt items. Great job with the video, Jazz.”

“How the hell did you see it already?”

“The video hit your Cloud account. Our phones and iPads are linked, remember?”

“How could we forget,” Simon grumbled.

“I sent you itineraries for today. Simon, you have three interviews in the city, so why don’t you go shower and change. Maybe we can do something for the scavenger hunt at the radio channels.” Gordo started typing with his stylus on the iPad.

“There’s a pretty impressive golf course around here, isn’t there?” Deacon asked.

Gordo tapped on his tablet. “Yes, about fifteen minutes away from here.”

Deacon remembered there were a lot of small parks on the edges of Dallas. “I’ll see if I can borrow one of the trucks and take a ride out.”

“Make sure you’re back for soundcheck at—”

“Yeah, yeah. Five as usual.” Deacon checked his watch. That gave him four hours with Harper.

He’d make them count.