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Steve snorted and pretended not to notice the car full of attractive women that stopped beside them. It was doubly hard to do so when the driver flashed her boobs at them. Steve tried to remember what they’d been discussing before their conversation had gotten derailed.
“You know our records will sell themselves at this point in our career,” Steve said to Max, who was not ignoring the ladies in the next car. He was smiling at them while probably doing the math on how to engage all three of them at once. Steve cared about Roux too much to even consider it. He wondered if he’d have time to take a commercial flight to New York to see her for a few hours.
Damn, he really did have it bad.
“That remains to be seen,” Max said, rolling down the front passenger window with the button on his armrest. “Are you ladies having a nice evening?” he asked, as if they weren’t squealing like a set of bald tires. They totally knew who Max was. Had probably intentionally followed him. That sort of thing happened to Max all the time. He wasn’t likely to engage, though. Steve wondered what had Max acting out of character.
“You interested in a small orgy?” Max asked Steve quietly.
Zach sat up in the back seat and peered into the car beside them. “No guys. No guys at all.” He flopped back down on the seat.
“Is that Zach Mercier in there with you?” the driver of the car shouted. The other two ladies shrieked with excitement. Their interest made Steve miss Roux even more.
“I call dibs on Zach,” said the brunette in the back seat.
Apparently she hadn’t been reading the tabloids about Twisted Element’s drummer and his sexual preferences.
“I couldn’t get it up for you if I tried, lady,” Zach muttered to the seat his face was squashed against. “And I’m too tired to even try.”
“I’ll take a pass on this, Max,” Steve said. “You aren’t seriously considering it, are you?”
Max laughed, and sped forward when the light turned green, leaving the car of women behind as he took a risky left turn at the next yellow light. “I knew it!”
Steve raised an eyebrow. “Knew what?”
“I’ve never known you to turn down ass under any other circumstance. You’re in love with someone.”
“And what made that so obvious?” After all, he couldn’t deny it. “Was it all the flights to New York or me taking a woman to Dick Island?”
Max laughed—a deep, mirthful, genuine laugh. Steve could not remember the last time he heard Max laugh that way, at least not in relation to him. There had been so much tension between the two of them over the past few years that they had barely tolerated each other. What had changed all of a sudden? Steve was pretty sure the difference wasn’t in him.
“You still call it Dick Island?” Max said. “God, that must piss off Dare.”
Steve smirked. “Why do you think we call it that?”
Max laughed again, and then hit the brakes hard when the car in front of him stopped abruptly. Steve’s seat jerked forward, and Zach tumbled onto the floorboard behind them.
“I’m going to feel that in the morning,” Zach said, groaning theatrically.
“You didn’t damage anything important, did you?” Steve asked, peering over his shoulder and down at his barely functioning best friend. He was starting to think drinking was as stupid as doing recreational drugs. Steve wasn’t sure he was ready to give up either completely, but he was sure where that idea had come from. A certain woman had a lot more influence over him than he cared to admit.
Zach groped around his crotch. “Everything seems to be in tip-top shape,” he said.
Steve shook his head. “I meant your brain or maybe your hands, but I see what’s important to you.”
“I haven’t had sex in weeks,” Zach said as he pulled himself up onto the seat again. This time he sat in it properly and even fastened his seat belt. “Priorities change when you’re dying for a good piece of ass.”
“I can drop you off at one of your clubs,” Max offered. “I’m sure you could find a solution to your problem.”
Zach lifted an eyebrow—probably at Max’s use of your to modify clubs—but he let the mild offense drop. “There’s only one good piece of ass on the planet as far as I’m concerned.”
Steve was in the same camp at the moment—though his only piece and Zach’s did not belong to the same person. Maybe Zach truly loved Enrique. The actor didn’t deserve Zach’s devotion—no matter how attractive or famous he happened to be—but that didn’t make Zach’s feelings any less real than Steve’s. Maybe Steve should try to help Zach get Enrique back rather than trying to help him get over the fuckhead. Ugh, Steve hated that asshole. Or more precisely, he hated how he’d hurt his friend.
“That piece of ass doesn’t belong to someone in this car, does it?” Max asked, peering at Zach in the rearview mirror.
Steve couldn’t tell if Max was joking, concerned for his own ass, or indirectly asking if Zach had a thing for Steve, an assumption they ran into often. A lot of people had a hard time believing that a straight guy and a gay man could be best friends without sexual attraction entering the equation, just like a lot of people claimed that a heterosexual male and a woman couldn’t be platonic friends for the same reason. Both claims were complete bullshit. It was humanly possible for a man to think of something besides sex.
“No,” Zach said quietly. He closed his eyes and leaned against the window. He might have passed out finally, or he might have wanted to shut down the direction the conversation was moving.
“So who’s the lucky girl?”
Steve almost blurted the entire truth right there, but he remembered Roux’s worries just in time, so he supplied the half-truth they agreed to share with the public. “Her name is Katie.” It felt so weird to call her that even though it was her legal name. “She, uh, works at some animal shelter in New York.”
“Are you going to be seeing her on tour or not? She plays keyboard, if I’m not mistaken.”
Steve’s head whipped around. How had Max pieced that together so easily? They’d never keep her identity a secret at this rate. “You’d better wipe that smirk off your face before I wipe it off for you.”
Max laughed again. “I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a secret.”
“She doesn’t want anyone to think her band scored a spot on the tour because she’s sleeping with me.” He wasn’t sure Roux cared about that at all, but for some reason her sister Iona was adamant about it.
“People are going to think what they’re going to think.”
“Agreed.”
Max shifted in his seat. Apparently their sudden
tendency to agree on anything, much less everything, was as uncomfortable for him as it was for Steve.
“But if it puts her at ease to be called Katie in public,” Steve continued, “and to pretend her life in the spotlight can be entirely separate from her personal life, I’ll do what makes her happy. You are going to pretend you don’t know who she is when I introduce her as Katie, aren’t you?” Because he would throttle anyone who messed this up for him. The flimsy façade Roux had decided to hide behind was the only way she’d allow him to see her on tour. If it fell through, he’d have to turn to more obnoxious tactics, and he wasn’t sure how she’d take outlandish displays of his love.
“I don’t have a problem with it.” Max was silent for a moment as he navigated traffic. “I wanted to ask you . . .” He licked his lips and glanced briefly at Steve, as if hoping he didn’t actually have to speak his request and Steve would magically know what he wanted.
“What?”
“Would you be willing to fire Sam? I’ve been trying to think of the words to say, but I just . . . freeze up.
Steve frowned. Max was never short on confidence and had been so pissed at Sam when they’d decided to fire him that Steve was surprised Max didn’t literally set fire to their soon-to-be ex-manager. “It would be my pleasure,” Steve said. “Why the cold feet all of a sudden?”
Max sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “He’s been like a father to me for so long.”
He had? Was that why Max had always defended him?
“I’m mad at him. I feel betrayed and used, but . . . he made us who we are. I can’t forget that.”
Steve wanted to shake sense into him. “We were not made by anyone, Max. We were discovered.”
Max worried his bottom lip with his teeth. Why was this so hard for him? Had Sam brainwashed him?
“How about I call him right now?” Steve said, reaching into his pocket for his phone. “Get that toxic piece of shit out of your life for good.”
Max’s hand shot out and knocked the phone out of Steve’s hand. It landed somewhere on the floorboard at Steve’s feet.
