Chapter 6

SIX

RYAN

Bears are naturally protective of the things they value, and they’re not known for giving up their territory or their honey without a fight. But if the reward is sweet enough, a bear might just learn to trust and share.

—Bear Facts for Insomniacs, Episode 10

What the fuck was wrong with me that I’d forgotten something as simple as pushing the button lock on Zane’s bedroom door?

“Freeze,” I barked before calling Lou to come help me deal with these fuckers. “Everyone set your phone camera down on the floor right now and step back.”

Because they were stupid kids who didn’t know better and I happened to have an effective commanding voice when I chose to use it, all four of them did as I said. I holstered my weapon and stepped forward to pick up the first phone. “Were you recording?”

I didn’t wait for an answer, simply went into the girl’s camera roll and deleted what I found that looked remotely like it had been taken since they’d come onto the Hendley property today. I narrowed my eyes at her before handing it back. “If you take any unauthorized photos or video of Zee Barlo, do you have any idea what his record label will do?”

“N-no, sir.”

“I suggest you don’t find out,” I warned, mostly because she’d find out they’d do absolutely nothing to her.

I repeated the activity with all of the other phones, secretly appreciating the fact that Farrah hadn’t taken any photos or video of her cousin. “Go downstairs and stop bothering Mr. Barlo. This is his private bedroom, for god’s sake. How would you feel if a man had just barged into your bedroom uninvited?” I lifted an eyebrow and made eye contact with each of them, hopefully causing them to realize what a violation their actions had been.

As Lou arrived, the poor girls were shaking with fear. They muttered apologies as they backed away from the door and scattered down the hallway. Lou put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “Did you have to make them piss themselves? Jesus. They’re just kids.”

“They’re kids who violated someone’s most personal space. Would you react that way if it had been teen boys barging in on a young woman who was in her underwear in bed?”

Lou’s cheeks flushed as she looked away. “Sorry, Zane. Didn’t realize you were in your skivvies. And obviously it’s a breach, Ryan, but I’m not sure it required pulling your weapon.”

I met her eyes long enough for her to realize her mistake. She shook her head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to question your reaction. I know those decisions have to happen quickly, and you didn’t know who was barging in.”

“My finger never left the trigger guard,” I said. “And we had someone here earlier with an outstanding weapons charge, Lou.” I didn’t expound on the fact Zane’s extended family was full of questionable characters, and it was a constant challenge to keep an updated security profile on them because Lou knew all of that.

“You’re right. I was wrong. I’m sorry. Zane, you okay?”

“Yeah, fine, no worries.”

I glanced at him, wondering if Lou could hear the definite thread of “not fine” in his voice.

“Good,” she said. “Although, good luck getting any rest now.”

She closed us back in the bedroom, and I knew she would take a position outside the door for the rest of the time we spent in Zane’s room.

Zane threw himself back onto the pillow with a groan. “She’s right. My body’s full of adrenaline now.”

I stepped forward and clicked the button lock. “Sorry. That was my oversight.”

“Not your fault. Farrah knew better than to bring them up here.”

Zane got up and dragged on some clothing from his suitcase. While I hated that he felt uncomfortable being undressed—and, okay, slightly mourned the loss of all that smooth, tan skin on display—I had to smile when he turned around.

He’d chosen pajama bottoms and an oversized hoodie he’d bought years ago, the night he’d opened for Jude and the Saints. I’d overheard him telling an interviewer once that playing with Jude Marian had been one of the most surreal experiences of his life. Not many people knew that he’d since had Kenji scour the internet to buy up extras of the shirt—dozens of them, a lifetime supply—so he’d always be able to see his name appear in the same concert graphic as one of his idols.

When Zane’s first song had gone platinum, Zane’s brothers had tracked down the graphic designer, begged for a printable copy of the design to be made into a poster, and had gotten Jude Marian to sign it. The framed poster hung in his home studio in Malibu.

It was no wonder he’d pulled that shirt on now… and I loved that I knew him well enough to know this.

He flopped back down in the bed and curled his body around another pillow with his back to me. I wanted to move closer and rub his back, help him relax back into the drowsy state he’d been in before the girls had barged in, even turn on his stupid Bear Facts podcast to see if that would help him zone out.

Instead, I took a seat in the wooden desk chair and pulled out my phone. After a few minutes, Zane began to hum a tune under his breath the way he did when he was noodling through an idea for a song.

I could listen to him do that all day long. His voice was soothing and often soulful, depending on what he was working on. This melody was one I hadn’t heard before. It was light and playful… which surprised me, considering how much stress he’d been under lately.

He reached for his phone and started making notes in his songwriting app as he continued to hum the new tune.

The sound of his voice wove in and out of the sound of people downstairs. Periodic shouts of victory interspersed with collective groans of defeat came from the group in the family room, while women’s laughter came from the kitchen and a few shouts from younger kids accompanied the rhythmic, hollow-sounding bapbap of a basketball being dribbled on the driveway outside the bedroom window.

I understood why Zane craved being here. It made him feel as close to “normal” as he could get these days. But he was so desperate for that normalcy he refused to see how many of those “friends and family members” were mercenary users. Almost every single one of them, with the exceptions of his grandmother and one aunt, was desperate to trade on his celebrity image or take advantage of his wealth.

I hated it for him. The man wanted to be loved for who he was on the inside—as Zane Hendley—when all of the people downstairs only wanted to see Zee Barlo, the megastar.

“You’re brooding,” he teased without looking up from his phone. “A big, broody Bear.”

“ Mpfh . I do not brood.”

Zane chuckled. “You hate it here.”

“I don’t,” I insisted. “There are things I like here. And people.” Namely, Zane himself.

“You’re itching to leave.”

I hesitated. “I’m itching to boot most of those jackasses out,” I admitted. “Your gran and Rinny can stay.”

Zane laughed again. “Generous of you.”

“Sorry. That was unprofessional.”

He flicked his eyes at me. “Bear, pretty sure we passed professional about ten months ago. We’re friends, aren’t we? Or do you want to go back to the days when I called you Ryan and you tried really hard not to swear in my presence because it was unprofessional?”

My lips twitched. “No. I fucking don’t.”

He laughed lightly. “Good. Then don’t censor yourself with me. I have enough people in my life who only tell me what I want to hear.”

I let out a huff. “None of them are downstairs.”

Zane tossed his phone down and turned over to prop himself up against the headboard. “Not true. Farrah’s friends would be more than happy to tell me what I want to hear.” I could tell by his grin he was enjoying arguing with me.

“Your cousin JK needs to take a long walk off a short pier.”

“My cousin JK will never get out of Barlo, Georgia. And that makes me feel sorry for him. I love that he’s dreaming about starting his own business. Growing up poor in a small town means you don’t have a whole lot other than dreams of something better, Bear. Nothing wrong with him trying to make his dream a reality.”

“You sound like an inspirational poster sold at the dollar store.”

Zane barked out a laugh. “Since when have you been to a dollar store?”

I couldn’t hold back a matching grin. “Since King Asger wanted the royal family and their entourage to experience, quote, ‘the real America’ on their tour here six years ago. I took them to all kinds of places. We even went bowling and had those upside-down ice creams at Dairy Queen. The kids loved it. I think the king did, too. Crown Prince Gerhard and the rest of the staff… less so. Distinct lack of formal protocol here, let alone Ventdestinian mysticism. When the ‘winds of fate’ don’t blow as predicted, it ruffles their feathers.” I gave him a half smile. “But I liked that the king tried.”

Zane chuckled. “I can only imagine what the royal chef thought of a set of yellow-and-green-painted corn handles.”

“And the bendy straws,” I added.

“And the off-brand Tupperware whose lids never fit right, even from day one.”

I shook my head. “The worst were the chip clips. He was fascinated by them, even though I’m not sure the man had ever seen a bag of chips in his life.”

Zane’s smile softened. “We always used wooden clothespins. You could get a pack of a hundred for five bucks at the Walmart over in Tipton. Gran used to share them with the neighbors like she was royalty. She would have done the Ventdestinian royal family proud.”

I thought about the stark difference between the way the Ventdestinian princes and princess were raised compared to how Zane had been brought up here in Barlo. I’d joined the royal guard when Asger’s oldest grandson was only ten, and I’d seen just how stifling his upbringing was.

Money didn’t always solve everything, as Zane… and the royal children… well knew.

“You know, every time I see that horseshoe over the front door, I think how your gran would actually get a kick out of the superstitions in Ventdestine,” I said. “The royal family in particular are a little over-the-top with certain things.”

Zane lifted his eyebrows as if asking for an explanation, so I continued. Zane always loved hearing about Ventdestine. He said my stories seemed like fairy tales.

“Asger used to tap his toe on the rug every time he entered his bedroom. Apparently, there was a several-hundred-year-old superstition that had something to do with a previous king who had commissioned a tapestry for the royal chambers and then hadn’t properly paid the artisan. So, the weaver had put a curse on the royal family. It took years for the curse to be reversed, and ever since then, the king has to pay homage to the weaver when he enters the royal chamber to ward off the curse.”

“How exhausting,” Zane said.

“They still burn a special combination of herbs in the palace every spring to clean out the evil spirits left from winter. And the winds are always whispering fortune, or ill, or love, or loss.” I shook my head. “It was hard, when I first moved there, to reconcile myself to how deeply ingrained these ideas are in their culture. I’m curious if things will change now that Gerhard is on the throne. In some ways, he was as superstitious as his father.”

“You said his wife is super modern, though. She’s from…”

“The Netherlands. Yeah. Gisella. She’s a good influence on him. She’s a big fan of yours, actually. That’s one of the reasons I knew your music. She and the kids used to play your stuff all the time.”

Zane flicked his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head. “I think one of the reasons Violet assigned you to me was because you barely knew who I was. There was practically no chance you’d be weird around me. Sure enough, you acted like I was Joe Schmoe. It was kind of refreshing.”

“It wasn’t until I heard you sing the first time that I realized I knew your stuff; I’d just never seen you or really learned your name. It’s funny, Gisella saw you in concert in Berlin once, but since the king was my principal and he wasn’t there, I didn’t go.”

“Maybe they want to come to the concert in Amsterdam?” he asked. “You know I’m happy to arrange passes and stuff.”

I nodded. “Already offered it. I’m sure they’ll be there if they can get away.”

Zane eventually drifted off to sleep. I watched him and wondered, not for the first time, how I would feel if he ever stopped hooking up with people and started dating someone for real. Whatever he had going with Landry wasn’t serious—they were friends, but Zane’s busy tour lifestyle and Landry’s hectic modeling schedule weren’t compatible.

I thought back to last night. To Lou’s observations about Landry hooking up with someone else. To racing into Zane’s bedroom to find Zane wearing the same comfortable lounge clothes he’d put on before his friends arrived. I wasn’t the most sexually experienced person in the world—far, far from it—but I assumed if they’d had the kind of sex I’d heard through the door, they would have fallen asleep together naked. Or at least only dressed in underwear.

Now that I had time to think back, I realized Landry had been fully dressed also. Had they even had sex? If not, then what the hell had I heard? And what had Landry’s weird comments been about after the fact?

Last night hadn’t been the first time I’d had to sit outside of a hotel room door while Zane hooked up with someone, though, and Landry wasn’t the only person he’d been with. He’d had plenty of hookups since I’d been on his detail, and he’d had a reputation for having had even more of them under his previous publicist. Noelle had encouraged Zane to create a bad-boy reputation by indulging in hookup culture as much as he wanted and going out drinking after shows. It wasn’t until he’d gotten rid of her and hired Micki that he’d stopped making such bad decisions.

If only he’d stop hooking up with people altogether. At this rate, I was going to start losing weight from the number of times I’d had to escape and run the stairs at random hotels.

Maybe it was because of the sheer amount of time I spent that afternoon ruminating about Zane’s sexual exploits that my ears tuned in to what happened later that night around the bonfire.

Regardless of the reason for it, I was shocked by what I heard.