Sacha?

I eyed myself in the mirror and shrugged. “Coming!” I called out, hustling toward the door as I wrapped a towel around my wet hair.

The lock had barely been flipped when Sacha asked from the other side, “You hungry?”

Pulling the door wide, I smiled at the fresh-faced, wet-haired man leaning against the door with his hands in his pockets. “I’m always hungry.”

The words had barely come out of my mouth when Carter and Julian walked by. “Come eat with us, Gaby.” That was my fellow merch salesman inviting me out.

I almost asked where they were planning on going, but really? It wasn’t like it mattered. “Are you guys leaving right now?”

Sacha nodded but his attention was focused lower. On my pants. And he was grinning.

“Okay, give me two minutes to change,” I said already taking a step back and pulling the towel off my head.

He lifted his gaze, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement. “Why? You look adorable.”

My cheeks went warm, but I groaned, pushed the compliment out of my head and took another step into my room, holding the door with my hand. “Yeah, yeah. These pants aren’t warm anyway. All I need is one minute, I promise.” I dashed inside, stripped off my leggings, threw the towel over a chair and put on a clean pair of jeans. Slipping Sacha’s hoodie on and my shoes, I grabbed my purse and room key. I opened the door and found my friend where I’d left him. Down the hall by the elevators, some of the other guys were waiting around.

“Ready?” Sacha asked, dragging the hood part of his jacket over my too-damp hair.

“Ready.” It was right then that I noticed he was only wearing a long-sleeved shirt since I had his jacket on. Guilt poured through my veins. What if he got sick? He was the most particular singer I’d ever met; he was always trying to take care of himself and his voice. Hell, his warm-up routine alone before each show took an hour. “Do you want your hoodie? I don’t mind staying, especially if someone brings me food back.”

He took my elbow, his fingers so long they wrapped around it with length to spare. “Keep it until you get one. You don’t need to be getting sick, Princess.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, looking up at him and eyeing his own not-so-dry hair. “No one cares if I lose my voice, but I might get stabbed if you lost yours.”

Sacha looked down at me and sort of frowned. “I’m positive. I’ll be fine.” He blinked. “Have you always been this short?”

That had me groaning. “Yes, Captain Obvious.”

“Are you sure?” He reached over and patted the top of my head through his jacket. “You’re so cute. I can put you in a carrier—”

I hit him in the arm with a cough. “Stop. God, stop it.”

Sacha laughed, squeezing the elbow he was still holding. “I’m joking.” He dodged my next hit just barely. “But really, how tall are you? Five feet?”

Tipping my head back, I glared at him. “I should have pawned you off on that flight attendant when I had the chance…”

---

“Flabs, let me get a bite of that,” Mason said, his hand already extended across the table as he wiggled his fingers.

I didn’t even bother responding before passing my burger over in mid-chew. The Australian promoter had pointed out a restaurant on our drive to the hotel that was within walking distance. We’d all met up in the lobby and made the three-block trip like we were training for a marathon. Needless to say, the last time we’d eaten had been on the flight hours ago and everyone was starving.

Without bothering to ask for permission as usual, Eli took the opportunity to grab my glass and take a big gulp of water just as Gordo, who was sitting on my other side, snagged a few fries off my plate. In the seat across from my brother and next to Mase, Sacha raised his eyebrows as he watched Mason hand me back my food.

I smiled, taking another bite. “I’d offer you some…”

He snickered. “Yeah, thanks. It looks like everyone else is eating half your food anyway.”

I shrugged, popping a fry into my mouth. “It’s why they tell you not to feed stray animals—“

My brother pinched the back of my arm hard.

“Oww, E, you ass,” I cried, rubbing the spot where he’d gotten me.

From the other side, Gordo pinched my other arm.

“Damn it, Gordo,” I hissed.

Down the long table, some of the guys were turning around in their seats to look at something, but I was too busy trying to pinch Gordo in revenge to notice what it was.

I’d just got him back when I overheard one of them say, “Look at those monsters.”

It was Miles whose voice that I recognized that answered. “How big do you think those things are?”

There were murmurs as replies that I couldn’t hear clearly, but I wasn’t an idiot. I knew exactly what they were talking about. Which was why my spine went a little rigid without conscious prompting. I tried not to listen.

Then they started laughing, and I swear it was like reliving that moment two years ago when I’d overheard my loved ones talking to our tour mates about boobs—specifically mine.

“I’d motorboat them—”

“Motorboat? I’d love to—”

I scratched at my eyebrow and blew out a breath, telling myself to ignore the conversation. They weren’t doing it around me, technically. They weren’t talking to me. It also wasn’t like guys didn’t talk about women like that all the time either, because they did. Not to be a hypocrite, I’d willingly admit I ogled half-naked hot guys from time to time.

“They look fake. Don’t they look fake?” someone whose voice I couldn’t pinpoint asked, and that had me really sitting there uptight.

Eli nudged my hand with his, meeting my eyes. He had this weird little tilt to his lips, and I knew he was well aware of what was bothering me. He nudged me again.

“Every girl I’ve ever met with fake—”

I started shaking my leg beneath the table, telling myself to keep my mouth shut. Not your business, Gaby.

“—slut—“

I dropped my fork on the table, at the same time my face got hot. Really, really hot. Even my ears heated up enough that they began to ache a little.

When I was a kid, I grew up watching an actress on television with huge breasts and equally magnificent blonde hair, become a sex icon. While, on the other hand, magazines portrayed women with small chests, slim frames and narrow hips as a standard of beauty. But I was short, had wavy dark hair, a little chubby and had my poor, irregular-sized chest. I didn’t fall anywhere close to either of those body types.

I’d had an A-cup and a C-cup for almost ten years, from my final growth spurt at fourteen to my surgery at twenty-three. No one could ever understand what it was like for me to deal with that or the lengths I went to hide it. I only wore shirts made out of certain materials. Never anything even remotely low-cut despite how much I would have loved to if only because I knew I couldn’t. None of my tops had ever been tight.

I wore T-shirts over my one-piece suits because there was special, waterproof padding on my ‘small side.’ Picking out my prom dress had been a nightmare. Bra shopping gave me severe anxiety. Wanting to mess around with my boyfriend in the back seat of his car in high school had been an awkward experience of telling him not to touch my chest when he’d obviously really wanted to, and I’d really wanted him to as well.

There were so many times I cried because of how I detested my body.

It wasn’t as if I wanted much. All I wanted was to be normal. I’d hated what I’d been born with and wondered why me. Why did I have to grow up to be shaped like that? I’d fucking hated it with every fiber of my being.

So what was I supposed to do? Was I going to live like that the rest of my life? Sure, I could have, but it was such a debilitating fear that someone would notice the imperfection that I would never be comfortable in my skin. As much as I didn’t want it to bother me, it did.

I didn’t want guys staring at my breasts. I didn’t want to do porn or make money off my body. All I wanted was to feel better about myself. To get an even tan. To wear a bikini for the first time in my life because I didn’t have to worry about padding coming out. I wanted to be with a guy and not worry about what they would think, or who they would tell if they found out one of my breasts was so much bigger than the other. I wanted to be confident with myself.

So I made it happen.

No one had tried to talk me out of it. No one shamed me into feeling like having implants made me a bad person or a floozy. My loved ones had been behind my decision from the beginning.

I saved up as much money as I could while on tour with Ghost Orchid to pay for the best cosmetic surgeon in Texas, and it had been worth every single penny. I would go through the initial soreness, pain and fear all over again. The first bikini I bought four months afterward had probably been the most conservative bathing suit on the planet, but I’d cried anyway when I put it on for the first time.

Who was anyone to make me feel bad about what I had done? And while every woman had her own reasons for doing what she wanted to do with her body, I was a firm believer that people needed to mind their own business. If you weren’t hurting anyone and weren’t asking for handouts, no one had a right to open their traps.

Just as soon as I opened my mouth to tell the TCC guys I had implants and that they should shut the hell up, two people beat me to it. Two totally unexpected people.

My brother.

And Sacha.

They spoke at the same time, making it was hard to figure out what exactly was said, but it sounded like a mix of “Would you shut the fuck up?”

I blinked. Then I blinked some more, totally caught off-guard by the ugly, unyielding tone in both of their voices. A knot formed in my throat, and I swear, for one long minute I just sat there absorbing the fact that they’d said something. Finally, quickly, the moment clicked and I remembered what was going on.

“Why?” That might have been Mateo asking.

It was Sacha that leaned across the table to glare at his bandmate, a no-nonsense expression on his face that made the corners of his mouth go tight. “Because you sound like ignorant assholes. My mom had surgery done. Are you calling her a slut?”

The silence that came over the table was deafening.

And so, so, so fucking awkward. Holy shit.

But it was the anger and loyalty radiating off the TCC singer and how it made me feel that shocked me the most. Did he know he was standing up for me? Of course not, but I took the victory to heart anyway, like he was my champion too.

I tipped my head to glance in Eli’s direction only to find him already looking at me. He gave me a wide-eyed and more than slightly impressed look that said, “what was that?”

I told him with my eyes, “I have no idea.”

His gaze said, “that was bad-ass.”

Mine replied, “I know.”

No one said much for the rest of dinner. Whether it was because we were all tired, too busy eating or if someone was feeling crabby because of how Sacha had reacted, I had no clue. I fell into the first two categories; I was also busy thinking about what he’d said about his mom. The curiosity was killing me, even though I knew full well it wasn’t any of my business whether it was true or not. Everyone finished eating and we all lined up to pay for our meals individually, with me paying for Eli’s when he happened to disappear. I waited by the doors for Sacha.

One of the last few people to pay, he was busy stuffing Aussie currency into his wallet when I said “Boo.”

He smiled faintly as he stuffed his wallet into the pocket of his jeans.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Sacha rolled his eyes and raised a shoulder. “Nothing that matters.” He reached up to tug the hood over my head again. “I’m glad you’re at least talking to me.”

I smiled at him, hoping the pleasure and pride I was feeling over what he’d done radiated onto my face. “I think you’re pretty wonderful right now.”

He had a funny expression on his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I bumped my shoulder with his. “That was really nice of you, you know. Saying something to them,” I explained just in case he didn’t know what I was referring to.

Sacha glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, getting to the door first to hold it open before waving me forward. “Let’s go before everyone else finishes paying. I don’t want to deal them right now.”

Nodding, I went into the cool night with him following behind.

We walked in silence for a little bit before he suddenly said, “They’re real assholes sometimes.”

I shrugged my shoulders so that I wouldn’t outright say, yeah they are. “Well, you’ve known them for a long time and you’re together constantly. It happens.”

He nodded, his attention on the sidewalk as we made our way toward the hotel a few blocks down. “You know from experience?”

Another flashback of the incident so many years back flashed through my brain, and I had to fight the urge to snort. “You have no idea how mad those three have made me. I can feel a headache coming on just thinking about it.”

Sacha let out a soft little snicker.

Sensing he was still frustrated, I kept going. “Once, I went five months without talking to any of them. Before that I’d never gone more than a week without seeing them since kindergarten.”

“What happened?” he asked, and why wouldn’t he? If he’d mentioned the same thing to me, I would have asked too because I’m nosey.

“Well…” Damn it, what the hell could I say? I wasn’t exactly ready then—or possibly ever—to tell him about my boobs. I’d told Brandon about my operation the night I decided that I was ready to sleep with him for the first time. The three idiots knew because we’d been friends forever. There were no secrets between us. I’d been talking about getting the surgery done for years, but they knew mainly because it was them: my twin and the two guys who were pretty much skin tags I couldn’t get rid of.

But Sacha wasn’t a lifelong friend, and we weren’t about to strip down or make him my third boyfriend, so he was only going to get a small part of the story.

“They all got pretty drunk one night a few years ago and said some really mean stuff about me behind my back to the other guys on the tour.” I blew out a breath and bit the inside of my cheek. “I didn’t take it too well.”

He visibly winced. “Is that why you stopped touring with them?” he asked, obviously remembering our conversation from a month back.

I nodded. “They really hurt my feelings.”

“And that’s why you don’t like being around your brother when he’s been drinking?”

Damn, he was perceptive. “Bingo.”

“But you forgave them.”

“Of course. Besides my friend Laila that you met, they’re my best friends. Eli’s my twin. I’m kind of obligated to forgive him for all the stupid shit he’s ever done, but I told him before coming on this tour that I wasn’t going to do it unless he promised he wouldn’t drink around me like that again. It’s fine now. They’ll always get on my nerves and drive me a little nuts. It’s normal. I’m sure you know that.”

Sacha made a little humming noise in the back of his throat. “I go months without seeing them when we’re not on tour. Mat and Isaiah are roommates. Julian lives a couple blocks away from where they do, so they see each other often. I start to miss them sometimes when it’s been a while, but after a few weeks on tour, I remember why I don’t hang out with them when we’re home.”

He shook his head with an exasperated sigh. “There’s only so much you can take, being around the same people all the time.”

Well. Okay. That hurt a little.

I nodded, lowering my gaze to the ground. “Yeah, I get it,” I replied as the burn of what he’d said sizzled along my skin. I mean, he’d asked me to sit with him on the flight to Australia, hadn’t he? And he’d invited me to the soccer game, right? It wasn’t like I’d been chasing him around. No one had ever accused me of being terribly clingy or needy before.

But still. His words stung. A lot.

“Ah shit.” He sighed. “Gaby.”

“Huh?” I crouched to fiddle with my shoelace, trying to blink the rejection coursing through me away. Really, I hadn’t been trying to be a leech.

“Hey.” His voice was soft.

“Hmm?” I untied my shoelace and retied it, oblivious to the fact he was lowering himself to ground in front of me until his knees bumped mine. I could smell the spicy, clean scent of his shampoo and body wash. Why did I do this to myself? Why couldn’t I be attracted to someone that saw me as more than a friend?

More than anything, what I wanted in that instant was to not care that he’d just said he was tired of being around the same people all the time.

People like me.

I wished I could just walk off, give him the space he wanted, and not have it hurt my feelings. Because if it was Mason saying he was tired of having me around, I’d tell him to screw off and eat shit. Then an hour later, he’d probably give me a hug and ask me when we were going to have kids together.

But it was different with Sacha. Of course it was different with him, and that sucked.

“Hey.”

His knees kissed mine and I told myself to shake it off. To not let it bother me. I shouldn’t let his words matter.

“Gaby, baby,” he said in that same soft voice that was so different from the one he used onstage every night to sing to his fans. Those big palms curved over my shoulders unexpectedly, and I made sure to keep my chin down. “I didn’t mean you.”

Fighting the urge to clear my throat, I nodded and forced myself to glance up, a tight smile framing my mouth. “I know,” I said, but the words sounded as forced as they felt.

The smile that came over him said he knew exactly how full of shit I was. Those harsh features that made his face so attractive, softened instantly. “Hey, I’m serious. I put my foot in my mouth. I didn’t mean you.”

“I know.” My chest… my chest felt weird. “Have you seen Eli?” I blurted out, anxious to get away.

“Fight Club,” he sighed. “Don’t look at me like that and make up some shit about your brother. He left when everyone got in line to pay anyway.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted. “I know what you meant, Sacha.”

“Sacha?” His thumbs drummed over my collarbones as he tipped his head down. “Now I know I really fucked up.”

“I’m fine. Really.” He shook his head, his expression an agitated one, and I forced a smile on my face. “Come on. Make sure no one kidnaps me on the walk back,” I said.

“You look like I just kicked you in your invisible nuts, and I feel like shit for saying something so stupid.” He slid his hands down my shoulders to my upper arms and finally to grip my hands, which were on my knees. He wrapped them in his before standing up, pulling me to my feet. He slid his hold until he had his fingers around my wrists, giving them a light squeeze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you. Pinky swear.” He squeezed again. His tone was gentle and low. “I would never mean you, honey. ”

I didn’t say anything, settling for a nod, and he sighed again. His thumb stroked over the sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist, over a long vein that stretched on forever. Then he released me. “Let’s go.”

Keeping my eyes on the cement directly in front of each of my steps, I called myself an idiot for letting his words bother me and also for letting him know that they did. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why was I being so dumb about this? About him?

We had only walked a few feet in silence before he suddenly stopped. “How could you think I’d get tired of you? I’m the one always following you around. And—you’re so fucking cute, I can’t stand it half the time.”

Yeah, I was so distracted I didn’t see the curb.

I busted my fucking ass and almost ate concrete.

My knees thought they were competing in the figure skating national championships for first place, and my hands tried to win second.

Sacha shouted something, but I was too busy laughing at what happened—and telling myself to ignore the fact that he’d called me cute—to hear exactly what came out of his mouth. There were tears in my eyes as his hands went to arms to help me. Rolling onto my butt and then plopping it on the curb so that I wouldn’t get hit by a car—because that would be my luck—my chest shook.

“Are you okay?” he asked even as he sat next to me and flipped my palms up to take a look at them. “Oh, Princess,” Sacha hissed as the side of his thigh pressed against mine. Red scrapes with the barest hint of pooling blood marked the meaty parts of my hands.

“I’m okay,” I said on a shaky laugh as I peeked at the hands he was still holding in his. It was my knees that really stung. Pulling my leg close to my chest, I squinted and took in the two tears on my jeans between my shins and knees.

Honestly, I could have cried from the holes alone, damn it.

“Oh my God, these were my favorite,” I moaned.

“What happened?”

“My jeans are torn.”

Still holding my hands, his light gray eyes met mine. His mouth twitched. “You just fell on your face—”

“Not on my face—”

“—I thought you might have broken a wrist, and you’re worried about your jeans?”

Well, when he said it like that, it made me sound like an idiot. I coughed. “Yes, but I’m not hurt and these were my favorite pair,” I explained.

Sacha blew out a breath as he closed his eyes and shook his head.

I closed my fingers over his and snorted, taking in his features since he looked like he was praying for patience or something close to it. I guess he wasn’t lying about being worried. I nudged him, ignoring the pain coming from my knees and palms. “It was pretty funny though, wasn’t it?” I used the same words he’d chosen when he’d kicked the ball at my face.

He didn’t reply for so long that I thought he really had been too worried to think that me missing the curb and falling to my hands and knees was hilarious.

Then he finally glanced up and the entire side of his mouth was screwed up high in the cutest expression I’d ever seen, and he shrugged one muscular shoulder. There was also a chance his eyes glittered. “It was pretty damn funny.”