CHAPTER 61

JARED

My mind was a clusterfuck of all the things I nearly said, should have said, and probably would regret not saying sooner rather than later. As it was, I'd given too much away with Alicia that night after the most intense, mind-blowing sex of my life.

Sex, fucking, making love, I didn't even know what to call it anymore.

Telltale blue and red lights flashed in front of Alicia's office building when I got there for a meeting, instantly focusing my mind on the here and now instead of the confused ramblings of a horny brain. I'd concluded the only thing that really made sense about the cascade of strong emotions I felt when I was with Alicia was probably only because I wanted her so damn much.

It didn't really make sense, but that was my story, and I was sticking to it. Tires skidding to a stop as I braked hard, I parked in the nearest available spot and jumped out of my car.

If the police were here, it was never good news for the band. Fuck, what could it possibly be now?

I sure as shit had been keeping my nose clean, and I was pretty sure the others had been doing the same, which begged the question, why were the cops here this time?

Two officers came walking out of the building as I was walking in, their hats underneath their arms as they spoke to someone walking behind them. Defenses on high alert, I walked right up to them. "Whatever you think we've done, we haven't."

One of the officers, an older man with a shock of surprisingly thick white hair, frowned and came to a stop. "I'm sure there's been a mistake, son. Who hasn't done what?"

I was about to answer when the person who was walking behind them pushed through from between the two officers and smiled up at me, shaking her head. Alicia.

A soft sigh of relief puffed from my lungs, and then I realized that the police were here and talking to Alicia. My blood turned to ice as I conjured up a million different possibilities about what might have happened to her to make her call the police.

Not giving a fuck that we were outside her office, I pulled her into my arms, my heart pounding against my ribs. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." She pushed me away gently, her hand lingering on my chest before she stepped out of the circle of my arms. "Remember all that stuff that happened to my car a while back?"

I nodded, keeping an eye on the officers. "Why are there only here for that now?"

All that shit happened weeks ago. Alicia smiled politely at the officers and shot me a warning look. "They're not here for that specifically. After everything happened, I reviewed some of the building's security measures, and I asked for a thorough security check to be done. These nice officers were helping with that."

I searched her expression and posture for any sign there was something wrong and came up satisfied she was okay. Worry over Alicia dissipating, I flashed the officers my famous grin. "Sorry about that. Usually, the police come because we've done something, and just this once, I knew we were completely innocent."

The older man was still frowning, but his much younger partner looked a little starstruck. Attempting to smooth over my assumption that either they were here wrongly accusing us of something or they'd only shown up weeks after being called out, since it never hurt to have the police not pissed at you, I trained my gaze on the younger officer.

"If you want, I can run inside and fetch you an autographed copy of one of our official pictures for the new album," I offered, keeping the cocky smirk on my face like I didn't have a care in the world. "Or, if you'd like to give me your name, we can arrange to have some copies sent over to the station."

"Oh. That would be—" the younger guy stammered, silenced when his partner gave him a look as subtle as if he'd stomped on the guy’s toe.

"That won't be necessary, Mr. Larsen. We're only doing our jobs," the older guy said. So he did know who I was. I bit back the urge to ask if he'd come here before to arrest one of us, choosing to stay out of trouble for once.

The officers and Alicia said goodbye, exchanging some final thoughts on what I assumed they'd been talking about before I arrived. Once Alicia wrapped up with them, she turned to me. "Must be weird seeing the police and not having them looking for someone in the band."

I laughed, throwing my head back. "I'd say. I was about to punch one of them just on the assumption that one of the guys needed protection from them."

Alicia rolled her eyes, giggling as she walked into her office beside me. "Did you ever think that maybe one of them had done something and deserved to be arrested?"

"No," I said firmly. "Even if they had done something, I'm sure there would have been a different way to make up for it other than for them to be arrested."

"What if one of them murdered someone?" Alicia asked, amusement in her eyes.

I grimaced and shook my head. "I would have known whoever is accused was being framed. For all the fights we get into, none of us are big fans of blood."

"There are so many questions I want to ask about that, but I won't." She laughed, pushing through the double glass doors separating the lobby from the staircases that led to the officers upstairs. "Let's just forget the cops were here, shall we?"

"We shall," I agreed, relieved I'd gotten out of that conversation with only one hypothetical question. If she'd asked about all the things the police had been here about before, she wouldn't still have been laughing.

She knew about a lot of the shit we'd gotten into in the past but not all of it. For good reason. She would have run for the hills screaming if she knew the kind of pranks we pulled when we first started out.

"I'm glad you're here. I wanted to talk to you about the tour," she said, ascending the stairs a few steps ahead of me.

"I thought we had a big meeting scheduled about the tour next week?" I only remembered it because she'd mentioned it before leaving my house this morning. We'd spent the last couple of nights together, and though I was still beating myself up over what happened after our date, I still hated knowing there were so many things unsaid between us when she was for sure going to go home to her house tonight.

A part of me kept convincing myself we'd only hit pause on that conversation until later, but it was now so much later that I couldn't think of an excuse to keep her around for another night, and still, I couldn't think of what or how to tell her.

"We still have that meeting," Alicia was saying as we reached the landing and turned to her office. "But I've been putting out some feelers, and I have confirmation now of a few performance dates before the official tour starts in a few months."

"Like teaser performances?"

"Exactly like that." She grinned, pulling down on her door handle and letting us both into her office. "I know how much you like to tease, so I thought you might enjoy trying your teasing game on a larger scale."

Catching her wrist, I spun her to my chest and grinned down at her. "I'm always up for a challenge."

"I was hoping you might say that." Humor danced in her bright blue eyes, the color of the sky outside on a cloudless day like today. "I didn't want to say anything in case nothing came of it, but I hope you're ready to go."

I bumped her nose with mine, a surprisingly intimate gesture I'd never tried before and found I liked, so I did it again. "I'm always ready to go. I thought you knew that by now."

Leaning back to create a few inches of space between us, she swatted my bicep and pressed her lips together. "Good. I hope you're ready to go in the actual sense of the word as well since you have a concert in Seattle on Saturday."

"Wow." It was already Wednesday. Luckily, I really was ready to go in every sense of the word. "That's soon, but I'm ready to leave. I'm sure the others are too. We're used to keeping go bags packed for album promo after we finish recording."

"Good to hear it. I thought you might want to talk to the others about the set list. You're slated to play three songs. At least one of them has to be from your new album. All three of them could be, but I thought I would leave that up to you."

"I'll talk to Dom about it, but there's no way he agrees to drop three new tracks on one preconcert. None of us will."

"That's why I left it up to you." She pressed a soft kiss to the underside of my jaw and then let go of me, sashaying to her desk. For a moment, I was transfixed by her back as she walked away from me.

She was wearing a pale pink dress that showcased her porcelain skin. Her blond hair hung in loose waves to her waist, the ends pointing like an arrow to her delectable ass.

Turning to face me, she placed her palms flat on her desk, and my mind went straight to the gutter. It would be so easy to round the desk and go stand behind her, bending her over and lifting that dress to—

Alicia snapped her fingers repeatedly right in front of my face. "Earth to Jared. What are you daydreaming about?"

"You," I told her honestly, but she rolled her eyes.

"Did you hear the part where I told you that you're not only performing in Seattle?"

I didn't, but I'd been doing this long enough to know that a performance like the one she scheduled usually went hand-in-hand with an interview. "We're sitting down with someone too."

"Yes. There’s a magazine that’s going to be doing an article on the band pre-tour."

"Have they sent over their list of topics to discuss yet?" That was my favorite thing about print interviews. They were much easier to prepare for and much easier to clean up a little after.

Alicia dug through a stack of papers on her desk and clearly found what she was looking for when she pulled an email out from the stack and slid it over to me. "They want to talk about everything that happened with Caleb. It doesn't look like they know any more than what was published in that one speculative article, but they're going to ask about his hospitalization, so we have to be ready for that."

It didn't come as a surprise that they wanted to discuss my brother being admitted to the hospital. It would have been naive to think we would have gotten away with the whole thing scot-free. We were just going to have to very carefully construct the way in which we spoke about the reasons for his hospitalization.

"We'll be ready for it. Anything else?"

"The usual. The band's image right now, your new album, tour stops." Alicia rattled off the list, looking as bored about the topics as I was, but both of us knew every interview we did right now counted.

"Okay, so the usual spiel. Got it."

"I can cancel the interview if you don't want to talk about Caleb, you know," she said after a brief pause, understanding in her eyes.

"Don't worry about it." Caleb's stint in the hospital had happened. It didn't matter whether we got out of this interview. There would always be a next one.

Eventually, we were going to have to deal with the questions. As much as I appreciated Alicia's offer, it would be easier to just get the first interview since over and done with. "Don't cancel. It will help with the sales."

I could see she still wanted to talk about it, but I didn't. All I wanted to do was to kiss her for genuinely being more concerned about whether we were ready to talk about Caleb's hospitalization than about the publicity an article that finally revealed what it had been about would bring.

Planting a hand on each of her chair's armrests, I lowered my head and did just that.