Two Days Later

“Hey, Robyn. I promise I’m leaving the house in two,” I answered her call as I hopped into my shoe. “I know we’ve got a meeting today to go over everything I’ve missed and to plan—”

“Um, yeah, Gina, that’s why I’m calling,” Robyn interrupted. “I don’t think you should come in. In fact, I think we’re going to have to close today.”

I paused mid-hop, phone to my ear. “What are you talking about?”

“So I’m guessing they haven’t found out where you live yet. That’s good,” she muttered.

My stomach dropped. “Who hasn’t found out where I live?”

“The media. They’ve pretty much taken over the parking lot. I just called the sheriff’s office to see if they could get rid of them, but I’m thinking they might not have the manpower to do that.”

Yeah, they were down one police officer, since he’d been fired for attacking me two days ago.

“The media?” I repeated.

My eyes met Sam. He was shirtless in the doorway, his jaw hard and a phone to his ear. For once, I didn’t appreciate his abs, the way the ink slinked effortlessly over them. Or I didn’t appreciate it for as long as I would have.

“Yeah, I think she knows, brother,” he muttered to whoever was on the line.

“I guess they found out where you work,” Robyn said. There was a long pause. “I’m sorry, Gina,” she said. “You’re a great teacher, a great employee, a great person, but I can’t have men with cameras hanging out in the parking lot. Parents won’t stand for that. You can come back when it dies down, but for now, I think you need to take a vacation.” Another pause. “I’m sorry, Gina, I really am. This isn’t right, but I’ve got a responsibility to the kids, to my place.”

Her words sank in and my heart beat around my ears. “Yeah, Robyn, I understand,” I said meekly, my stomach churning with the cold pill of reality.

“You have two weeks’ paid vacation on the books, since you haven’t taken as much as a sick day in the two years you’ve worked here. I’ll put you down for that. And who knows? Hopefully in two weeks we’ll be back to normal.”

I thought about the circus that followed Sam. Remembered all of the girlfriends who were harassed well after they broke up.

The pill settled.

Reality.

It was finally here.

“Thanks, Robyn.”

“No problem, honey. Keep in touch.”

“Robyn?” I asked before she hung up.

“Yeah, Gina?”

I sucked in a breath, thinking of my kids and one in particular. “Take care of Conrad, won’t you?” I blinked through the tears that threatened the edges of my vision.

There was a long sigh. “Of course.”

I lowered the phone almost at the same time Sam lowered his.

We stared at each other for a long beat.

“Thumbelina, I’m so fuckin’ sorry,” he began, his voice as tortured as his face.

He sounded it. He meant it. I knew.

And I knew the score, meddling with this. With him. I wasn’t an idiot; I knew this had to come sometime. But I had been so deep in denial, so deep in Sam, so busy trying to figure out all the other disasters that kept popping up around me that I’d forgotten. Or made myself believe we were safe here in this boring little town in my boring little sanctuary.

“That was Robyn, my boss,” I told him. “Reporters are in the parking lot of the kindergarten. She has to close for the day.”

His face darkened. “Fuck,” he hissed. “Babe, I’ll take care of it. Mark and Jenna are doing everything they can to take care of it as we speak. I’ll fix it. I promise.”

Again, his words were sincere, strong.

“She told me not to come back,” I continued.

Sam froze, halfway through rapidly tapping at the screen on his phone. “What? She fired you? She can’t do that,” he declared hotly. “I’ll have a lawyer—”

“She didn’t fire me,” I interrupted. “Not yet, at least. But if, or more likely when she does, she has every right to. And I won’t put up any argument. These are kids, Sam. Kids. They’re innocent. I won’t subject them to any of this. I’m the adult. I put myself in this situation.”

I hadn’t intended on being so cold, but I was pissed off. Not at Sam. A lot at myself, but at the world in general for making it so fucking hard to be happy.

“We’ll figure it out,” he promised.

I wished we could. More than anything I wished that. But there had to be a time to face this.

No time like the present.

“I can’t work, Sam,” I said quietly. “Do you understand that? My boss doesn’t want me there because of all the reporters I’ve dragged there. Because they’re accosting the parents of the babies I teach,” I continued, my voice still tight and low. I was stretching it like a rubber band, getting close to its snapping point.

He waved his silver-covered hand at me dismissively. “It’ll die down, babe.”

I glared at him, filled with the sudden and strong desire to wring his beautiful neck. “What if it doesn’t?” I bit out.

He leaned forward against the doorjamb, grinning.

Grinning.

I was surprised steam didn’t come out of my ears.

“Then it doesn’t,” he said simply, shrugging. “And you go somewhere that isn’t a town at the ass end of nowhere. Maybe somewhere that starts with my and ends with house.” He winked.

Winked!

The rubber band snapped.

“Are you fucking insane?” I screeched. “I know you’re nutty, but this is off the fucking reservation. “You think since I’m in love with you that, what? That means the fucking dissolution of my livelihood and my job isn’t going to matter? That I’ll happily pack up my home, the one I built for myself, by myself, because I’m getting run out of town by assholes with cameras? I know you consider the world to spin on its axis at your pleasure, but this world”—I twirled my finger around the room—“does not.”

I expected Sam to stand, to change expressions, to explode right back. He didn’t. He just stood there looking at me. Speculating. Like he was trying to analyze me. It was disquieting, such a focused stare, even in the midst of my fury.

“I’m not gonna pretend that I’m not a little bit happy about these leeches with cameras attached to their necks finally doing something for me that wasn’t orchestrated by my publicist,” he said. “I’m gonna say I fucking hate taking you out of the home. The one you built. The one you created. The one that feels like mine already.” His eyes flared. “I’m not asking you to give it up forever, but babe, you’ve got not one but two assholes who have put their hands on you in the immediate vicinity. One is locked up. The other is not.” His face went dark. Midnight, much as it had when he’d been yelling at lawyers on the phone yesterday when they’d informed him Simon had yet to be locked up.

If you were going to attack someone and try to get away with it, it paid to be a cop.

“If nothing else, getting you half a country away from him, from the proximity of that, is reason enough to sedate you and take you forcefully if necessary.”

I didn’t like the way there didn’t seem to be a joke in his tone.

Nor did I like the way he was beginning to make sense.

“Here, they can walk right up on your lawn,” he continued, throwing his arm in the direction of the window. The lawn was thankfully empty. At that stage. I didn’t expect it to stay that way for long.

Sam read my mind. “And they’re gonna find out where you live. And quick. And, babe, I fuckin’ hate that. Your man is meant to make you safe, not be the reason your safe place becomes a prison. A spectacle. I’m a fuckin’ spectacle, and I despise that. Can’t fuckin’ believe I used to love it. I wish we could live here, anonymous and alone forever, but we can’t. That’s not reality. I’ve got responsibilities back in LA—”

“I’ve got responsibilities too, Sam,” I snapped. “What, because I’m not earning millions, because everyone in the world doesn’t blindly worship me, mine aren’t important?”

He flinched as my words hit home, and I felt no satisfaction in that. “No, babe. You’re important. Every facet of your life is important. It’s worth ten of mine. That’s what’s fucked up about all of this. What you’ve built, what you’ve made is worth infinitely more than whatever I’ve stacked up. I want to regret yanking you into this, but that would mean I didn’t have you in my life. I can’t imagine that, Gina. I fuckin’ can’t. And it’s not fair, and it’s selfish as all shit, and if they didn’t already know maybe I would just leave you for your own good. But they do already know, and I’m not leaving you. Plus, you’re so ready to make this into a curse. Haven’t you thought it might be a blessing?”

“And how, Sam, is me being taken away from a job and life I love a blessing?” I snapped.

He regarded me. “You really love it, Gina? This life? And don’t you dare misunderstand me and think that I’ve said that because I find it lacking or because I find you lacking. You know that’s not the fucking truth. I’m saying it because you are not designed to hide away here. To waste away here.”

I stared at him. “What? I’m wasting away because I’m not fucking playing a part in front of thousands, Sam? Because I’m not a fucking spectacle?”

I stomped over to my coffee table, kicking off my shoe so I wasn’t limping like an idiot. It hit my glass door with a whack but luckily didn’t break anything. Although at that moment, I did feel like smashing something.

But I couldn’t afford it to be my door since I was now seriously looking at unemployment.

Sam’s gaze darted from the rogue shoe to me. “What’s wrong with it? The limelight? You’ve been hiding here in the dark with your stories and your quiet, and you’re wasted. Your beauty. Your everything. It’s not made to be lived without witnesses. It may have its downfalls, but a life where the world gets to see you, and more importantly you get to see the world, that’s a life. Not this. What’s that stupid fucking quote?” He paused. “‘A reader lives a thousand lives’ or some shit? Well, a thousand lives are all well in good, but you only get one. And that’s yours. You can live a thousand lives being someone else, but that’s never going to measure up to the one being you. Because that scale is always going to be feathers and fucking diamonds, baby. Little hint, you’re the diamond. And diamonds are made to shine.”

I stared at him. At the words that had become corporeal. Flavored the air with their poetry. Poetry that wasn’t labored from a long-dead artist, immortalized on weathered papers in a dusty book. No, this was poetry living, breathing, electrifying the air.

I picked up my weathered copy of The Handmaid’s Tale that I was rereading for the hundredth time. I didn’t know what to say, to explain to him what I felt. Who I was. So I let Offred say it for me.

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gap between stories.”

When I’d finished reading, I looked up at him. “I know you think I don’t live my own life enough. That I use these”—I held up the book—“as excuses not to live it.” I paused, chewing my lip. “And maybe, in some ways, you’re right. But you’re also wrong. I don’t use them to stop me from living. Sometimes I use them to understand this thing called life.” I glanced down. “You were born for the spotlight, Sam. That was the truth from the moment I first met you. Before you picked up drumsticks, before you painted your nails black, wore more jewelry than my mom, before you did all that to set yourself apart from the crowd, you were already there, standing in a place where only a few can stand. Where few were born to stand. To make stories, to help people understand their own. To become something bigger than themselves. Because you were always bigger than yourself. It didn’t take long for you to realize it.” I gave him a small smile. “You’re not exactly humble,” I teased. “But it’s because that’s who you are. You live in stark color in the middle of it all.” I looked down. “Maybe not the best book to draw life lessons from, or perhaps the best. But I can’t explain beyond the obvious,”

He kept silent, marble, so to fill the horrible silence that accompanied my honesty, I continued to speak. “You said it, this”—I shook the book at him—“is my stage. This is my haven. And now, what, you’re trying to take it away from me because it’s all too quiet for you now? Because life with me is too slow?”

I said it with anger but it came from a place of fear, as most things said in anger did.

He stared at me and the book, then advanced.

He threw the book out of my hands so hard it smacked against the wall and clattered to the floor.

“This is your fucking problem,” he roared, advancing on me.

I scuttled to the couch in retreat, all my affirmations about remaining strong obliterated in the face of pure male fury.

It hit somewhere deep when someone so easygoing and so relaxed unleashed it all. The dragon. The one you knew was there, the one that had to be there, because no one looked like that, smiled like that, was happy like that without a dragon inside.

The only way someone was truly happy like that on the outside was because they were hiding something truly ugly on the inside.

I should know.

My stuff was ugly, and I wasn’t even as happy as Sam.

The happier the person, the worse the demons. That was my theory anyway. And it was being proved right as the dragon breathed fire.

Sam took no notice of my fear. Dragons didn’t mind mice, did they? “Instead of living, you read about other people doing it. Clue in, babe—they aren’t real.” He waved his muscled and tensed arm at my bookshelves. At my treasures. At my thousand lives I would never live and my thousand friends I would never meet. The thousand people I would never be. “None of that fucking shit is real.” His eyes glowed as they fastened on me, the mouth of the dragon threatening to swallow me up.

As if I hadn’t already been swallowed when I was fourteen years old.

“We are,” he murmured. “Real.”

I stopped, not because I wanted to, but because some idiot had put a wall in my path, hampering my escape.

I blinked rapidly, like the little mouse I was. “You’re scaring me,” I whispered.

His eyes darkened, the glow gone, his arms coming to either side of me, boxing me in as his palms flattened on the wall. “Good. That’s part of it. Life. Being scared. ’Cause life—real life, not the shit in the pages of a book—it’s fuckin’ scary, babe. It’s unpredictable, it’s uncontrollable, and you only get to do it once.”

In a puff of smoke, all of the fury left his frame as one of his hands, lighter than a feather, came to my face and tucked my hair behind my ear. “I’m here to make sure you do it right. That I do it right.”

His words, the way he ripped apart my life to show me the bare bones of it, to show me what I’d been denying all along, they hit me somewhere. It deflated all that fury I’d been sure would carry me through to my forties. It didn’t suit me, anyway, that anger. It felt wrong in my skin. So I went with something harder to channel—my truth.

“I can’t, Sam. I don’t know how,” I whispered. “I shelve them all.” Trailing my hands across the spines, I glanced up at him, in his extraordinary brilliance, standing in my ordinary living room. The image was so painful, so conclusive of just how much we didn’t fit, would never fit, that I looked away. “My feelings. My hurt. Dreams that will never happen. Places I’ll never go. Pounds I’ll never lose.” I stopped when I came to the edge of them, rather unsure of what to do. So I just kept speaking, words tumbling out of me in a heap. “They were neatly stacked away, ordered, manageable. Until you.” I glanced up again, finding my courage. His eyes were glittering, muscled arms tense, hands that were covered in silver balled into fists. Yet his face was blank. He was silent. Still.

It unnerved me. He was never still. Never.

For someone who lived in solitude, quiet, it was uncomfortable. Unbearable.

So I filled it.

“But you, all of that out there.” I gestured to the window. “The world that came rushing in like a tornado, it broke them. All of them. And now they don’t have order, no place, so they fly through my mind. I need them back in their places.” My voice was moving up and down, shaking with the tears I refused to shed. “I need my shelves back, Sam. I need them or I don’t know who I’ll be without them. I need them back because I need my life back. What I had before you.”

“I’ll give you anything but that. Everything, in fact. And in case you haven’t heard, I’m a rich and famous rock star, so I have a lot.”

I frowned. “I don’t want any of it.”

He smiled, but it wasn’t like the others. It was sad, full of vulnerability and empty of that confidence and bravado that had seemed so real until this moment shattered it.

“I know. It’s why I love you so much. One of the many, many reasons. You don’t want anything from me. Problem is I want everything from you. You want your life back? I didn’t even know what living was until I looked at you. I mean really looked at you. You want to know who you are? You’re mine. And I didn’t know who I was either. Until I figured it out. Until you figured it out for me. I’m yours. This shit is complicated. Life gets like that, and I know mine’s more fucked up than most. But can you give fucked-up a try? For me?” He waggled his brows. “You might even like it.”

Yeah, that was the problem. I’d like it too much.

“Okay,” I whispered. “I’ll give fucked-up a go.”

* * *

It was like the moment I invited chaos into my life, it decided to come knocking. Literally.

I’d been packing my bags and trying to figure out how I went insane enough to let Sam talk me into leaving Hampton Springs and going to LA with him for an undetermined amount of time. LA, where I wouldn’t be able to escape the spotlight and be invisible as I had been all my life, considering I was dating the most visible man in the world.

Maybe I’d agreed because he was right. About it all. How I hid away and convinced myself I was okay with living through the pages of a book, reading about great experiences instead of having them.

And Hampton Springs didn’t really offer much for me right then, the forced vacation excluded. There was still the whole Wayne thing, for one. It may have been sorted with him behind bars and me somehow not having to testify, thanks to whatever strings Sam’s scary lawyers had pulled, but it was still there, in town memory.

Small towns were like elephants—they never forgot.

And then there was the whole Simon thing. Sam had taken care of that too, first by pulling whatever strings he had to get him on unpaid suspension—he hadn’t technically lost his job when he’d attacked me. But he had now, thanks to that. Getting him locked up was still a little complicated considering Simon was the town’s golden boy, even after an attempted rape, it seemed. Plus, he was well liked amongst his coworkers—don’t ask me how—and they were all keen to look out for their own, much to Sam’s disgust.

I wasn’t exactly happy about it either, but Simon didn’t have a chance at being a cop again, so there was that. People like him didn’t deserve to be anywhere near positions of power. I already felt sorry for his future girlfriend.

Mulling that over while I was packing my bags, I was considering the truth in Sam’s words and why I’d been so violently against leaving a town that hadn’t exactly been kind to me.

I guessed, until then, I hadn’t had anywhere else to go.

The knocking at the door jerked me out of my stupor. I glanced down at my entire wardrobe strewn across the floor. What did I take with me to LA when I was going to be hanging out with his famous and fabulous friends who would most likely be wearing Chanel’s latest fall line?

The best I could do was Target’s latest fall line.

“I’ll get it!” Sam yelled from the living room.

He was very forceful about me not opening the front door anymore, considering my track record. Not that it was my fault.

But I let him because I liked the simple domestic bliss of such a gesture. Whether it be a deluded domestic bliss or not.

I was expecting it to be the reporters, finally finding my house. I braced for it.

But I didn’t hear the door slam, nor any angry shouts from Sam, so I was curious. I put down my toiletries and headed for the living room.

Crowded in my very small living room were all the members of Unquiet Mind.

Even though I was sleeping with one of the members and had seen the rest at the wedding last year, not to mention went to high school with all of them, it was still a little—or a lot—disquieting to see them all.

In my living room.

Plus Killian.

He didn’t need to be famous to be disquieting. He just needed to be… him.

“Gina!” Lexie squealed, detaching herself from her husband’s side to rush over and yank me into her arms.

I hugged her back out of reflex, though I hadn’t expected such an enthusiastic greeting.

“I can’t believe this,” she exclaimed, letting me go and darting her eyes between Sam and me. “This is so fucking awesome.” She paused, frowning. “Well, not the ‘you getting attacked… twice’ part of this. That is so not fucking awesome.”

The room thickened with all sorts of male fury when she uttered those words.

“Not fucking awesome. At all,” Sam seethed.

“It’s okay. I’m fine,” I reassured Lexie. And Sam.

Mainly Sam.

“Fine means the opposite of fine,” Sam snapped at me.

“At this juncture, it means exactly what the dictionary defines it as, me being fine,” I snapped back.

“And the dictionary defines it as a woman’s way of saying the apocalypse is imminent,” Sam retorted.

I huffed out a frustrated breath and rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”

“There’s another one!” he exclaimed. “Brace positions, everyone. Fine and whatever used in the same vicinity means that we are fucked. And not in the good way.”

Lexie grinned. In fact she, and everyone else in the room—including Killian—had been grinning since Sam and I started bickering.

“We’re not fucked, bro,” Wyatt said. “You’re fucked. In the best way.”

Sam flipped him the bird. “You didn’t actually say what all of you were doing here. I know you missed me and I’m the glue that holds this family together, but I’ve got a life.” He looked pointedly at me. “Couldn’t you survive without me for another four hours? I told you we were on the way.”

Wyatt punched his arm. “We decided we’d pick you up. Figured you might need some extra muscle when we heard the vultures had descended.”

Sam screwed up his nose in faux confusion. “Well, that explains why Killian’s here, not you.”

Wyatt punched him again, and the thud of flesh against flesh told me it was hard that time.

Sam didn’t even flinch.

Lexie continued to grin at me. “I’m so glad to have another girl in the family. Sometimes I worry I might choke on all the testosterone,” she stage-whispered. “And don’t worry, you’ll love LA. We’re going to be there for a while recording the album so we can hang out all the time! Plus Emma’s flying in from Prague tonight, so we can do girls’ night.”

“No girls’ night,” Killian and Sam growled almost in unison.

Lexie rolled her eyes. “Once. Killian. Once I get kidnapped. That does not mean it’s going to happen every time.”

I could taste Killian’s glare. “Not fuckin’ funny, babe,” he snapped.

“No girls’ night,” Sam repeated.

Lexie winked. “Don’t worry, we’ll wear them down.” She stepped back on her wedged heels. “Have you packed? I’ll help.”

Then, like she’d been here a million times before, she strutted down my hallway in the direction of my bedroom, to help me finish packing, presumably.

Wyatt winked at me. “Welcome to the family, darlin’. There’s no getting out now.”

Noah didn’t say anything, he rarely did, but he smiled at me.

I sensed Wyatt was right.

I couldn’t decide whether that was an incredibly good thing or an incredibly bad thing.

I did know it was off-the-charts terrifying.

Sam’s words echoed in my mind.

“That’s part of it. Life. Being scared…. It’s fuckin’ scary, babe. It’s unpredictable, it’s uncontrollable, and you only get to do it once.”

So I decided not to focus on whether this part of life was good or bad. I decided to just live it.

I didn’t really have much of a choice anyway.

* * *

The stewardess was barely finished pouring the clear liquid into his glass before he tipped it up and drained it in one easy swallow. He slammed the glass down on the table in front of him, not letting it go as one would expect, instead clutching it tighter, his knuckles whitening with the intensity of his grip.

I stared at Sam, a grin tickling the corner of my mouth. “Oh my God, you’re afraid of flying.”

I got why people were afraid of flying. I didn’t do it often, but when turbulence got a little too rough and lasted a little too long, I got scared too. But that was because I was flying in coach, being jostled against some sweaty guy with body odor who thought he was being sly when snatching glances down my shirt. That put a person on edge to begin with.

We were not in coach.

We were in a private jet.

Yeah, people actually flew in private jets.

Well, maybe not people. But world-famous rock stars did. In jets with impeccably dressed and impeccably polite stewardesses. With leather seats and a full bar and bedroom at the far end. And a sofa on which Mark, Sam’s manager who I’d met and spoken to between phone calls, was rapidly typing away on his laptop.

I was too busy being awed by the sheer luxury of it all to remember we were even on a plane, let alone be afraid of flying. Then again, I was sure that was the norm for him.

For all of them.

I tried not to let the huge gaping chasm in our socioeconomic statuses get to me.

I focused on Sam.

He scowled at me. “I’m not afraid of flying,” he snapped.

“Yes he is,” both Wyatt and Noah said in unison, as if this was a practiced routine.

I grinned at both of them across the aisle.

Sam directed his scowl their way, that one deeper and a lot more hostile than the one he had treated me to. “I’m not afraid of flying,” he repeated. “I’m afraid of crashing. Any rational human being would have a healthy dose of fear being in a metal box thirty thousand feet in the air at the mercy of a fucking computer. Pilots don’t even fly these things anymore, you know.” He raised his brows. “The machines will turn against us at some point. I’m just being logical.”

Wyatt smirked. “Yeah, I guess any rational or logical person might be afraid of flying if they thought about it too hard,” he agreed. “Which is why it baffles me that you’re afraid, since you’re neither rational nor logical, and you never think too hard on anything.”

Sam flipped him the bird.

I let out the snort I’d been holding in. And as with such things when you’re holding them in, it exploded through the pressurized cabin, turning into full-on giggles I couldn’t control. Perhaps it was because I’d had a lot to smile about in the middle of this big mess that I currently called my life, but I hadn’t had a lot to laugh about. Or I hadn’t let myself laugh. Because an outward gesture of happiness, one that went beyond a smile, was just taunting fate, drawing attention to this crazy situation. I was scared some benevolent force would realize how out of place I was here in this craziness and wrench me away from it to balance the universe or whatever.

And for someone who treasured solitude and quiet, I would have to be dragged away from this crowded and busy life kicking and screaming.

When you’re thirty thousand feet in the air, your chances of plummeting to your death are always there, but it’s still peaceful knowing you’re in a metal box, shut away from all the bullshit below.

Instead of flipping me the bird as he had with Wyatt, which I half expected Sam to do in his current state, his glower dissipated with the echoes of my giggles. Instead, the moment his eyes touched mine, then lowered down to my mouth, his entire body softened like he’d had a shot of muscle relaxant dosed with Valium.

I stopped giggling and tried to subtly wipe my lips. The way he was staring at me had me scared I had something on my face, like I’d drooled or something while I was laughing uncontrollably.

Of course I’d be the one who drooled while I was in a private jet with my hot-as-shit rock star boyfriend and his hot-as-shit band.

Classic Gina.

“What?” I asked uncertainly, glancing toward Wyatt and Noah for a second. Though they weren’t looking at me, thankfully, inspecting Sam’s change in demeanor with interest instead.

He smiled lazily, setting his glass down to grab my hands.

His were dry and warm and comforting with their callused palms and tattooed fingers. My small, untattooed and uncallused fingers looked both out of place and completely natural in his grasp. The cool metal of his rings rubbed against my palms.

“Thumbelina, though you’ve got a beautiful smile, I’ll get into one of these death traps every day of the week if that’s what it takes to get you laughing on the regular. I’m used to making people laugh. I’m a hilarious guy.” He shrugged with a sly grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “But you, you smile plenty, and it’s plenty beautiful, but it’s that laugh I’m feeling in my dick.” He paused, leaning in as if he needed privacy for the next thing he needed to say, though he’d near shouted the ‘dick’ part of his sentence. “And my heart. My fuckin’ soul,” he murmured, his breath hot on my face. “See, people are so quick to give me shit: their attention, their shallow fucking adoration, their smiles, their panties, their laughs. But you don’t give any of that unless you mean it. Unless it’s real. And it’s like diamonds. But ones I can’t wear or purchase. Priceless, all of it. Rarest shit I’ve ever held in my hands. And you don’t give it to me because of who I am on stage or on camera. Because of who Sam Kennedy is. It’s because of who I am. Who I was. And that’s something no amount of money, of Grammys, or platinum records can buy.”

I blinked at him. Once. Twice. Three times. Each time my vision grew steadily blurrier as tears obscured my vision. His gaze didn’t waver. Neither did his grip. He stared at me while I got my emotions under control, like he had all the time in the world just to stare, like we weren’t just the only people on this plane, but in the whole darn world.

I managed to get myself together and not cry like I felt like doing. Because I knew if I let myself, like my laugh, my tears would explode out of control and it would not be as cute as the laugh seemed to be. My laugh was even worse than Kim Kardashian’s. I had a lot of reasons to smile and laugh lately, but I had a heck of a lot to cry about too. That was the way of the universe, I guessed; you couldn’t be extraordinarily happy if you didn’t also have the capacity to be extraordinarily sad.

It was a matter of choice between the two. I got that now. You picked one and you lived with it. That’s what I saw in Sam. He didn’t smile and laugh easily because his life was cushy and easy. No, he did it because he’d experienced the terrible ugliness life could give, and he chose to be like this.

That was one of the reasons I was done for.

That and the gaze that was searing my soul. I may not have been inked, but tattoos of his ownership of me covered my entire body.

“I don’t recall giving you my panties,” I croaked finally, deciding that talking about that forever love stuff might not be appropriate for the small space we were occupying.

He grinned, yanking me into his body for a rough closemouthed kiss. He pulled back only slightly so I could see his wink. “Ownership is nine-tenths of the law,” he teased.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not right,” I argued.

“You complaining?” he asked against my mouth.

“No, I’m not complaining at all.”

“Good, and I’m here to make sure it stays that way.”

“Dude, she’s dating you. If she doesn’t complain about you in the near future, you’ve gotta check her pulse,” Wyatt cut in.

I kind of forgot we were in a small confined space where everyone could hear every word. My cheeks flushed.

“I know you’ve always been jealous of me, and now you’ve got a reason to be immensely more so, but you don’t look good in green, bro,” Sam retorted. “Oh, and that reminds me. Find somewhere else to stay. Me and Gina are taking over the Batcave until my new place is ready, and I can’t have you being you and ruining the romance.”

“Fuckin’ hell,” Wyatt muttered.

“There’s always Emma’s place,” Sam offered with a glint in his eye.

The air in the cabin changed once more.

Then I realized Sam was not the only member of Unquiet Mind with girl troubles.

Though I did hope that I stopped making trouble for Sam.

But hope didn’t exist.

It was easy to forget that in the happy moments.

But they didn’t last forever in this cruel and ugly world.

And I’d be reminded of that very soon.