Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

EMILY

Kieran placed his napkin in his lap. Our waiter had just brought two orders of the spaghetti carbonara at an Italian restaurant about a mile from our hotel.

"So, are you excited about the stop in St. Louis?" he asked.

Kieran knew our next stop after Chicago was only about an hour from my small hometown of Shady Hills, Missouri. I always had mixed feelings when I went home. But seeing my mother would for sure be a highlight, despite the painful memories there.

"I am," I said. "It'll be nice to see my mom and not have to stay at the hotel. I got special permission to leave the tour for a bit."

I'd opened up to Tristan pretty easily, yet I wouldn't dream of telling Kieran the truth about my past. Right off the bat, somehow I'd sensed that Tristan wouldn't judge me. Sharing that with him had been a risk, but I didn't regret it. Kieran, on the other hand, seemed like the type of person who might be shocked by my truth.

"There's nothing like an actual house with home cooking," I added. "You forget how much you miss it."

"I hear ya. I'm already dreaming about the next time I get to go home and eat." He smiled. "What do you think you'll do once the tour is over?"

"I'm not sure. That's why this experience is good for me. It's sort of like a palate cleanser. I'm hoping by the end of it I'll have some clarity about which direction I want to go careerwise."

"What are you narrowing it down to?" He twirled some pasta around his fork.

"Well, my major was communications, so I was thinking of applying for some PR positions or maybe marketing jobs. I might have to work some internships, though, to get more experience before applying for paid positions."

He nodded. "That sounds like a great idea. It's amazing how similar our situations are. That's exactly why I asked my uncle Atticus if I could come on this tour. I needed something to do while I figured things out…"

Kieran reached for the jug of water on our table and poured more into my glass. He was so considerate and respectful. Perhaps that's why I struggled to feel anything. As of late, I seemed to have a penchant for rough-around-the-edges, older men I had no business crushing on. Tristan had popped into my mind way too often tonight.

Ever since he'd come to see me on the bus, I'd been thinking about him, though we'd had no further interaction. So when Kieran had asked me to dinner this morning, I figured I had nothing to lose-anything to get my mind off my sudden obsession with Tristan Daltrey would be good.

The Chicago performance wasn't until tomorrow, so this was a night off for the band and crew. I couldn't help but wonder what Tristan was doing, how he was spending his free night, and whether he was nervous about the show, given his voice issues back in Minnesota. I found myself more and more nervous for him with each performance. Being the only person he talked with about his struggles felt like a weight on my chest.

I continued to force myself to make conversation with Kieran. "So, how does it feel to have a famous uncle?"

"Atticus is more like a father to me," he said. "My dad died when I was younger. He's not around as much as he'd like to be, but he makes up for it whenever he's home. He takes my brother and me on these weekend getaways, just the guys. He's really cool."

"It's nice for you to have that. I'm sorry about your dad."

"Thanks." He sighed. "What about your parents?"

"My dad left us-my brother and me-when I was three. My parents were never married. Growing up, my mother had a lot of boyfriends who'd come and go. It wasn't the most comfortable home life, but we did the best we could."

When our dinner was over, Kieran and I walked back to the hotel. As we bid each other goodnight at the elevators, he leaned in and placed a chaste kiss on my cheek. It was awkward and sweet at the same time. My body had no more reaction than if a baby blew a raspberry on my face. I knew in that moment there was no romantic future for us, as nice as he was.

I went back to my room to find Layla lying on her bed, watching TV. She sat up when I entered. "How was it?" she asked.

"He's so sweet."

Her brows lifted. "That's it?"

I kicked off my shoes, hesitant to say anything negative. "I don't know. It's not really a good idea to get involved with someone on this tour anyway, you know? If it doesn't work out, then what? You're stuck having to see them all the time. There's no escape."

"You couldn't have felt too much if your first thought is to look for reasons why it would be a bad idea." She saw right through me.

I sighed. "There was nothing wrong with him. He's super nice. But I have this problem where I tend to be attracted to guys who are all wrong for me."

"Join the club." She pointed to herself. "So Kieran has a lot of good qualities, and that makes him less attractive?"

I lay down on the bed. "It's not that I want someone to be an asshole. But when he comes across as near-perfect, it sort of lacks excitement, yeah. This is proof that I'm too young and immature to be in a relationship with someone who's worth it."

"I'm thirty-eight, and I still haven't stopped picking the wrong men. So trust me, it's not an age thing."

"I don't think I should be dating right now. And Kieran doesn't seem like the type of guy you string along. He deserves a nice girl. I don't ever want to break someone's heart again."

"Again?" She tilted her head. "Sounds like there's a story there. Are you a little heartbreaker, Miss Emily?"

A wave of sadness hit me. "Yeah. There is a story there. One I don't want to get into right now. But let's just say, I live with a lot of guilt over the way things ended with my first love."

"I'm sorry." She frowned. "That sucks. But at least you're learning from it, using it as a reason to be cautious with other guys."

"I guess," I murmured.

Just then my phone vibrated with a text from Stephen, the tour manager. It said Tristan was badly in need of allergy medication and asked me to go to the store to get some. I was off the clock starting at eight on nights we didn't have a show, but it was understood that if someone needed something in an emergency, I would deliver.

I looked up from my phone and hopped off the bed. "Tristan needs allergy medication," I told her. "I'm gonna run to the pharmacy."

"What a pain in the ass," she muttered.

I shrugged, putting on my shoes and grabbing my coat.

After I left the hotel, I searched for the nearest pharmacy on my phone as I walked through the parking lot to the rental car.

When I returned, I took the elevator all the way up to Tristan's penthouse suite. Unlike the other rooms in this hotel, this one didn't use a key. To enter, you had to have a passcode. Stephen had sent it to me in his text. As the elevator rose, my heart beat faster at the prospect of seeing Tristan.

The elevator opened to a spacious living area with a killer view of downtown Chicago. Tristan, though, was nowhere to be found. Or it seemed that way at first. The bedroom door was halfway open, so I walked toward it.

Before I could call his name, I froze. Tristan was in the room-but he wasn't alone. He was lying on the bed, and there was a woman with him-a woman straddling him. What the fuck? He was shirtless, but otherwise they were both clothed. Still, she was basically giving him a lap dance.

I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I couldn't move. Instead of running away, my eyes were glued to the situation. The room was silent, aside from her breaths. I couldn't look away-the way his head bent back, the way he bit his lip, the way she moved over him. She wasn't naked, but she might as well have been with the way she was grinding over him.

My eyes fell to his big, veiny hands holding her hips. What would they feel like gripping my body? Despite what he'd said before about groupies not doing it for him, he sure seemed turned on right now. My stomach twisted. More troublesome than the jealousy, though? I felt turned on, too.

Yet instead of leaving, I continued to stand there, imagining she was me, imagining what it would feel like to use his body to pleasure myself-to feel his hardness beneath me, that heat between my legs. My mouth watered. Distracted, the paper bag holding the allergy medication slipped from my hand to the floor.

Tristan turned, and his eyes widened as they met mine. After a few seconds of looking into his eyes, my legs regained the ability to move, and I hightailed it out of there.

Pulse racing, I pushed the button to the elevator more times than necessary and got in as fast as I could the second it opened. But before the doors closed, a large hand slipped between them.