Harvey gripped her hips and thrust up hard, making her squeal and burst into laughter as I stood frozen, unsure what to do.
“Tobias, get your dick out,” Harvey growled, as though this were all a normal day. But it wasn’t a normal day, and Tobias was too substance-affected to be able to even spell consent. Let alone give it.
“No. No one else is getting their dick out, and if I see even a hint of yours, Harvey, I will cut it off. Don’t test me. We’ll be having a long talk about this tomorrow.” My hands shook as I grabbed Tobias, towing him behind me to the back of the bus where a large bed took up space in the only private sleeping space.
“Mmmm, bed,” Tobias rumbled in a sleepy tone so like his brother’s that it threw me for a moment.
They were so different in personality that it was a shock to remember they were identical on the surface in so many ways. Taking advantage of my momentary distraction, he swept me into his arms and tossed me onto the mattress before crawling after me. I sat up against the headboard as he wrapped his arms around my hips, rubbing a cheek against my thigh and settling in.
With little other choice, I stroked his hair, enjoying the feeling of the strands running through my fingers. He released a shuddering sigh and melted under my touch, his lashes fluttering closed.
We sat in silence for a while, the peace of the moment lulling me into a kind of trance. Just when I thought he had passed out again, he spoke without opening his eyes.
“Please don’t leave us, Angel. We all need you so bad.”
Chapter
Eleven
Calix
I was losingmy goddamn mind.
As we left San Diego in our dust and trundled toward Austin for our next set of shows, all I could think about was the puzzle that was our manager. Every song I wrote had to be trashed because the stalker vibes were strong, even to me. From her brown hair with the blonde ends to her practical black boots, she was a walking, talking enigma.
The urge to watch her had only grown worse after finding Tobias wrapped around her, sleeping soundly in a way I hadn’t seen since…possibly ever. He’d treated her like his own personal teddy bear, and for the first time in a long time, he hadn’t made a noise the entire night. Not a whimper.
She had fallen asleep on the sofa last night, her laptop open on a spreadsheet that detailed hotels, venues, and local attractions. Not unusual in and of itself, but I had seen the way she looked at the bunks in the bus. It was a similar look you’d expect to see on a person staring into their own grave.
The biggest mystery was one I’d overheard when she was on the phone to her mom the night before. While the rest of us sat around messing with new riffs and not working through my lyrics, because no fucking way was I admitting they were all about Tatum, she slipped into the bedroom to make a call. A few moments later, I told Otis I needed a new notebook from my bunk and followed her. The excuse had been partially true. I needed a blank page to try to find a different muse, but the notebook I’d bought before we left LA was in thetoo nice to usecategory. I’d have to settle for scrap paper until I could buy a suitable one in Texas. As I sidled close enough to listen in, I overheard the words “investors”, “clients”, and “portfolios”.
I never claimed to be a scholar, but I knew none of those words had much to do with the tour. We were her only clients, and as far as I could tell, she had no management experience prior to taking us on, so there were no portfolios. Moving up my bunk to fluff the pillow, buying more time to listen in, I heard her go into a detailed explanation about accounts and…banking? After a few more moments, her voice softened, taking on a gentle quality as she said hello to someone who must have been younger. She spoke about baseball and making it toanother gamewhen she camehome. Did she have a kid?
I’d brought up what I overheard with Otis a couple of hours later, but in true Otis fashion, he’d only told me, “It’s her story to tell, but we can trust her.”
He knew more than he was letting on, and it killed me to know there was a secret.
We had passed the Texas border an hour earlier, and while the coffee pot was boiling, Tatum announced she was going for a shower.
Don’t do it.
I poured a mug of liquid gold, staring intently at the door and devising how I could break in and demand answers while she was vulnerable. If she wasn’t expecting it, would she let the truth slip?
Knocking my mug back in a hard gulp that burned in my chest, I decided to give it a shot.
I confirmed my bandmates were all distracted, then slipped into the hole-in-the-wall bathroom. The room barely fit two people, with a wet area behind a curtain and the dry area I stood in, which housed a small basin and a shelf to store clothing. Piled neatly on the shelf were her signature jeans, black fabric that was probably a T-shirt, and a lacy pair of pink panties sitting on top of the pile.
Don’t get distracted.
Before I could announce my presence, a deep, guttural groan came from behind the transparent barrier between us.
“Why do you sound like a wounded bull, Tater-tots?”
“Holy fuck!” I felt a moment of guilt as Tatum, clearly very surprised to see me, slipped. Her arms pinwheeled until she caught hold of the shower curtain, pulling it down with her as she crashed into the shower wall.
“What the hell are you doing in here, Calix?!”
The feeling passed as I took note of all the skin visible behind the thin sheet of transparent plastic.
