His sudden inability to meet my eye feels like a tell. An amateur one, at that. If he’s going to crash my meeting, he should at least have the balls to own it.
Freddie steps back to catch my attention. “Hey. So, I think we’re going to head over to a club with Chris.”
It’s quite clear this is my cue to leave, for us to do another handshake / bro hug and promise to speak tomorrow after theshow, while Adam accompanies them to the club because Chris is his friend or guest or possibly some guy he now owes a favor. But instead I turn to Adam. I grab him above the elbow and smile like we’re best buds and say, “The place you were just telling me about? That sounds great. Let’s go.”
Adam’s gaze flickers down to my hand on his arm, then up to meet mine. He puts on a fake smile of his own. “Ready when you are.”
Under no circumstances am I going to allow the band to be alone with Adam tonight. Josie made it clear: I have until the end of the month to turn my revenue stream around, or I’m finished at Blue Sky.
Dempsey is my lifeline. I’ve put all my eggs in this basket, and I will do whatever it takes to prevent Adam from swooping in and signing them out from under me.
Which is how I wind up squeezed into the back of a limo next to him, pretending I can match men who are twice my size drink for drink.
I’m not going down without a fight.
CHAPTER TWOADAM
Before I’m even fully awake, I know I’ve fucked up. It’s a bone-deep feeling, accompanied by a blinding headache and the desire to pull the pillow over my face and will my body back to sleep. But that ship sails when the mattress dips and my eyes shoot open to find Eleanor beside me in bed.
She’s propped up on her elbows, clutching the crisp white sheet to her chest with one hand, staring at me like she’s seen a ghost.
I blink once, twice, trying to clear my cloudy vision. My eyelids are like sandpaper. It takes me a second to realize I slept in my contacts. “Eleanor?” My voice comes out low and gritty. “Why are you in my bed?”
“This ismybed,” she hisses. And… huh. Upon closer inspection, this does not appear to be my hotel room. The color palette is blue and gold, whereas mine was beige and green. The desk and nightstands are made of clear Lucite instead of wood, the overall aesthetic is much more modern,and the layout is completely different. I don’t even think this room is in the same hotel as mine. I sit up, ignoring the pulse of nausea that follows, and try to get my bearings. Only I don’t get much of a chance, because next thing I know, Eleanor kicks me out of bed. Literally. Her foot connects with my shoulder, and I hit the ground with a thud.
The sheet still tangled around one of my legs is tugged away, and I hear her scramble off the other side of the bed.
“… Sorry,” she says a moment later.
I groan. Then press the heels of my hands against my brow bones, hard. It feels like there’s shrapnel in my brain.
“Are you naked?”
My hands flop back down to my sides. I frown and lift my head enough to peek down my body and confirm that I am, in fact, wearing boxer briefs. As well as one sock. “No.” Alarm bells start to go off in my head. “Areyounaked?”
“No,” she answers quickly, her tone almost offended.
The alarm bells won’t shut up, though. They’ve turned into more of a blaring siren. I roll onto my side, and with great effort manage to push up onto my hands and knees. I hear Eleanor moving, too, and we look at each other over the bed at the same time.
Christ, my eyeballs are fuckingburning. I blink hard a few more times, bringing Eleanor into focus. Her hair is a mess and her mascara is smudged all over her eyes, but she’s still wearing her blouse from yesterday. That seems like a good sign.
“You don’t think we… I mean, we didn’t have sex. Right?”
I half expect her to laugh. To tell me there is no world in which she would ever sleep with me. Instead, Eleanor’s gazedrops down to the rumpled bed between us. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Wouldn’t you be able to tell?”
She cuts me a look. I can’t figure out if she’s annoyed or confused. “Excuse me?”
I’m still on my knees. I rock my weight from one to the other. “Women are supposed to be able to tell, I thought.”
“Who told you that?”
I shrug. “A friend.”
It was a girl I went to college with, who lived down the hall from me freshman year. It came up after we’d gone to a party together, only to get blackout drunk and separated before the night was over. Thankfully, it turned out her roommate had taken her home after she puked in the middle of a game of beer pong, but when I checked on her the morning after, I remember her saying she would have been able to feel if something had happened to her anyway. At eighteen that seemed perfectly believable. But I also used to believe running bottom-shelf vodka through a water filter would make it taste better. So.
Eleanor slowly shakes her head. “Okay, well, no. As amazing as my vagina is, it is not all-knowing.”
