“It was good, I guess. Dade isn’t in the best place, so that sucks.” I wasn’t intentionally using my friend’s drama to deflect, but I knew it would.
Gina sighed as she poured Corn Flakes into her bowl and added some milk before carrying it to the tiny table at our L-shaped banquette. “Dade is a great guy. I don’t get it. Why the hell does he have such a hard time holding on to a woman?”
Chris rolled her eyes. “Please. You’ve met his ex’s. The problem is with them, not him. Brainless gold diggers who wouldn’t even know the meaning of the word fidelity. As long as Dade was footing the bill for their shopping sprees, they were happy.”
It was true, our friend had a knack for picking the worst possible women. Made me think of my sister, and the fact that she was antitheses of the girls he usually went for. She was blue jeans and flip-flops, not Gucci and diamonds, like his usual type. She could care less about material things, as long as she had a roof over her head, food in the cupboard, gas in her tank, and enough to cover her bills at the end of the month.
“True.” I took a sip of my coffee. “So, Dade is looking for an assistant and my sister wants the job. Do y’all think that’s crazy or not?” I wanted to know if I was just being the over-protective big sis sticking my nose where it didn’t belong and I trusted my friends to tell me the truth. They knew Dade and they knew Charli. They could be unbiased.
Chris bit into her toast with peanut butter before reaching for a paper towel to catch the drip. “What’s so crazy about it? I think they’d hit it off.” She smiled at me. “What? You don’t?”
“She’s been crushin’ on Dade forever.” Charli probably wouldn’t appreciate my over-sharing, but they had to know the whole story before they could offer advice. “Like, I mean since he broke into the business.” We all had our favorite singers, the ones we went all fan-girl over when we met them at the awards shows, so Charli wasn’t alone in that, but Dade was going through a tough time and my sister was a rocket, according to my guy friends, so I didn’t want to be the one who lit the fuse.
Gina grinned. “Sounds like you’d be doing her a huge favour by introducing them then. Maybe your sister could finally cross Dade off her bucket list.”
I was pretty sure Dade topped Charli’s bucket list, which was part of the problem. He’d no doubt shut her down, if she ever found the courage to make a play for him, and that would crush her.
“Or maybe Dade could finally put a ring on some girl’s finger who wouldn’t run off to have it appraised the next day,” Chris said, frowning. “Like that last little bitch, remember? Tabloids caught her running off to the jeweler the day after he gave her the ring to find out how much it was worth.”
That pretty much summed up the sad story of Dade and women. He acted as their personal ATM and they’d literally drained him dry. He had plenty of money left, but they’d robbed him of the one thing that mattered most: hope. And I hated them for that.
“You know Charli, she could care less about money.” I popped two slices of bread in the toaster as my cell phone buzzed, alerting me to a message from Knox. I was dying to read it, but had to play it cool in front of the girls. “But Knox showed Dade a pic of Charli last night and it was weird.” He looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“Weird how?” Gina asked, munching on her cereal.
“He remembered her.” I glanced at my phone, trying to hide my smile when I saw the heart from Knox. “She’d gone to one of his concerts a couple of years back and he actually remembered her. Said he’d even asked his stage manager to look for her after the show.” My sister would flip shit if I ever told her that. “Can you believe that?”
“Doesn’t sound like Dade,” Gina said, her eyes widening. “He’s pretty cautious about messin’ around with fans, unlike our boy Knox, who would bang anything in a skirt.”
My stomach dropped because… damn it, she was right. Knox had a reputation as a man-whore for a reason. He’d earned it. And I had to remember that before I got in too deep. I didn’t want to let his past define him, because I knew there was a lot more to him than the choices he’d made, but I couldn’t ignore his history with women either. That would be stupid, and I’d already been duped by one man. I couldn’t let that happen again.
Chris laughed. “You can say that again. Did you see that brunette Knox was chatting up after the show last night? Probably took her back to his bus for a quickie before he met up with you and Dade for drinks.”
I turned my back as I buttered my toast, trying to slow my racing heart. We’d laughed about Knox’s pin cushions dozens of times before. To my friends this was no different, but my heart wasn’t invested all those other times.
“I must have missed that,” I said, trying to keep it light. “What was she like?”
Gina grabbed her phone. “Hot. What would you expect, right? I think I have a pic of them kissing. She posted it on Instagram and tagged him. I saw it when I was scrolling comments about the show last night.”
Kissing?WTF?So gonna kill him! Just last night we’d set some very clear boundaries and I thought we were on the same page. Okay, maybe he’d kissed her before our little chat, but we’d just had sex, and he waskissingother girls?
“Here she is.” Gina flashed me her phone. “I think she’s a blogger or something. Pretty big following too.”
I scrolled through the pictures. One of Knox in a lip-lock with the girl. Another of her at the show with a few friends, and a third of her standing by a limo outside the venue. She was tall, stacked, wearing a strapless black dress and CFM heels. Totally Knox’s type. The bastard.
I handed the phone back to my friend. “She’s pretty.” Then I snagged my phone and typed a single word to Knox.Asshole.I thought that pretty much summed it up.
* * *
Knox
I re-read Cece’s text, trying to figure out what the hell I’d done to piss her off this time. My girl was fiery, so it’s not like she never let me have it, but I wracked my brain, trying to think of a single thing I’d done to warrant it this time and kept coming up blank.
I texted her back.WTH?
She fired back almost immediately.You really have no idea why I’m pissed?
No. So get your sweet self over here and tell me.I wasn’t above begging, because whatever had her all worked up this morning, I would fix it.
