Chaos

“Can I tell Rowan and Dee?” I ask, needing to tell someone, anyone, that Shawn and I are together. Really together. Shawn shakes his head, and I pout.

“They’ll tell Adam and Joel,” he reasons, “and they’ll make these last two days on tour hell.”

“What about Leti?”

“He’ll tell Peach and Dee, and they’ll tell Adam and Joel.”

“Okay, well, what about Kale?”

“Your brother?” Shawn slows to a stop just before we reach the parking lot that the bus is in. His smile is gone, and when I nod, he says, “Let’s . . . let’s just wait, okay?”

“Why?”

A beat of silence passes, then another and another, before he says, “He’s friends with Leti, right?”

“Yeah . . . ” Friends . . . sure.

“So he’ll tell Leti, and Leti will tell Peach and Dee, and—”

I sigh, and Shawn squeezes my hand.

“Later,” he promises. “Just not yet, alright?”

He kisses me before I can answer, a soft touch of his lips that magically puts a smile back on my face. “Okay.”

Just before we enter the parking lot, he drops my hand, and I force myself to ignore the way that makes my chest pang. I follow him to the bus, and when he holds the door open for me, I climb up onto it.

The guys immediately jump on us, and each thing they accuse us of is a truth or damn close to it. We snuck off together. We’ve been having secret hookups for weeks. We’re in “looove.” We banged each other’s brains out on the roof before Mike found us.

Shawn rolls his eyes, and Joel laughs. “We got locked up there, asswipe.”

“Uh-huh, sure,” Joel teases.

“Kit was drunk and determined to get up there. What was I supposed to do, let her fall over the edge?”

Shawn lies easily, and if I didn’t already know the truth, I wouldn’t even doubt him. The deception melts on his tongue like sugar, and I’m sure I would’ve eaten it right up.

When Joel looks to me, I rub my temple like I have a hangover. “Don’t ask me. I don’t remember shit.”

I’m no stranger to lying myself, especially when it’s convenient, but this one . . . this one tastes sour.

“I almost fell off a roof once,” Adam offers as the bus merges onto the highway, carrying us to a new day, a new city, a new show. “Actually”—his brows furrow—“I think I did fall off a roof once. Shawn, do you remember that after-party in Cold Springs?”

Shawn chuckles as he gathers his things for a shower. “Yeah, man, you definitely fell off the roof.”

Adam nods to himself and rubs a phantom lump on the back of his head. “Yeah . . . I thought so.”

When Shawn slips into the bathroom, Joel’s attention snaps to me. “So you guys seriously just got locked up on the roof?”

I stick to Shawn’s story, and Joel pouts, but he lets it go—and so do the rest of the guys, even the roadies. After another round of harassment at soundcheck, the entire morning gets discarded and forgotten. And I don’t text Rowan. I don’t text Dee. I don’t text Kale. I don’t text Leti.

At soundcheck, Shawn resumes our covert flirting, and even though all of his touches are secret and fleeting, they still make my heart rush just as fast as it had this morning when he was . . . when we were . . .

My cheeks flush fire-red at the memory as we perform that night for a sold-out crowd, and when I glance across the stage at him and his eyes are already on me, I giggle. I giggle in the middle of a damn song, with muscle memory being the only thing that keeps my guitar pick hitting the right strings. Even though it’s still a secret, he’s my boyfriend. My freaking boyfriend. The smile on my face is a living thing, sneaking there at inopportune moments and threatening to tell all my secrets to every single face in the crowd.

I hate that we didn’t tell the guys about us, but I get it . . . I guess. Yeah, they’d be annoying. Really freaking annoying. We wouldn’t hear the end of it until the tour was over and we were home. But the girly part of me would’ve welcomed that. She would’ve stoked the fire with an unrivaled level of PDA that would’ve embarrassed the hell out of everyone—herself most of all. Because Shawn was finally, finally her boyfriend, and she didn’t want to hide that—ever, at all, from anyone.

But he was right about there being only a day and a half left of the tour, and I get that too . . . I guess. I’m sure he doesn’t want the guys giving him a hard time. Or maybe he doesn’t want them giving me a hard time. Or maybe he just wants to be able to steal another quiet morning in the kitchen with me without everyone hooting and hollering at us from the bunks . . . and after what happened on the roof? Yeah, I can live with that.

I smile at him across the heads of fans in the parking lot. The show tonight was incredible, and when we finally walked out to the bus, it was surrounded. I’ve taken so many pictures, spots dance behind my eyes as I leave Shawn, Adam, and Joel behind and step up onto the bus.

Mike is already on board, and I follow him to the kitchen in the back. Shawn mentioned that he’d talk to him about this morning, but after being caught like a rebellious teenager about to do the walk of shame, I feel the need to say something too—even though I have no freaking idea what that something is.

“You had a lot of fans tonight,” I tease in spite of how nervous I’m feeling. I plop down on a leather bench, careful not to steal Mike’s usual gaming spot, and wait to see if he brings up this morning. He grabs two beers from the fridge and closes it with the toe of his shoe.