Page 25 of Forbid It

I flick my hair out of my eye. “This is a hypothetical scenario, of course.”

“Of course. And in this hypothetical scenario”—he glances at me with a raised eyebrow —“do I have a stylist?”

“All you, Bert.”

“Well, I already get messages about my playing, but no one has really said anything about my fashion choices.” He considers it. “To my face anyway. So let’s go with the first one. Right, let me think of one for you.”

I bite my cheek as excitement flutters in my belly at his willingness to play along.

“Would you rather…” he muses. “Never sing a song again or never play an instrument?”

“Ugh,” I groan dramatically as I collapse further in my seat. His hypothetical question hits harder than he probably thought it would.

“What?” he laughs, turning his attention away from the road to look at me. “Did I stump you?”

“Considering I don’t know if I’ll ever do either of those two things again, it’s almost not worth answering.”

He looks at me seriously, the blue of his eyes piercing. “What does that mean?”

I turn away from him to stare out of the window and readjust in my seat, uncomfortable for the first time since I climbed in his car. “It’s just…” I trail off. “I haven’t written any new music in months,” I confess in a rush.

“Okay,” he says slowly. “And is that not normal for you?”

“Kind of,” I shrug. “It’s not like I spend every day of my life writing, but I usually have these phases where I have so much rolling under my skin that needs to be let out somehow. But recently it’s been…” I lift my hair in my hands and use the weight of my head against the headrest to keep it in place. “Harder, I guess.”

“And this is stressing you out?”

I nod, unable to force the words out. I don’t mention that the consistent networking and attending the Rebels games is also goddamn exhausting. It’s not even just the one day a week, it’s the meetings with sponsors, the networking with donors and then my mother’s demands that I spend an equal amount of time with her, but of course that can only happen on the East Coast, so then I’m spending an inordinate amount of time in airports and on airplanes, thinking too much about hats and sunglasses and keeping my head down so I don’t get harassed by well-meaning fans who want to judge me by my baggy sweatshirt, which might not be the most flattering on my skin tone. And then when I finally feel like I have a second to sit at a piano or pick up my guitar, knowing this is my only time I have to actually do it, I just end up accidentally playing the melody to a song I already put on my last album. Exhausting.

“I just…” I trail off, gently running my finger over the leather armrest in between us, tracing the rough material of the seam with the pad of my finger.

He gently nudges my arm with his elbow as he rests it on his armrest. “You just what?”

“I feel like I’m letting people down,” I whisper.

“It’s not letting people down to take a break, Cassie,” Robbie tells me, the earnest look in his eye as he tries to catch mine so intense, I have to glance out the window. “Besides, it’s just temporary right? It’s not like you’re never going to write again.”

I groan playfully. “Tell that to my brain.”

“Come on, give yourself some credit.” He brushes my knee with the back of his hand, almost like he wants to rest his palm on it and squeeze. He returns his hand to the wheel as quickly as he approached me. “Maybe you’ve just got to give yourself an opportunity to get inspired again.”

I take in his side profile, one arm on the wheel and the other resting on the center console. His arms are tanned and corded with muscle, and a light stubble dusts his strong jaw. A strand of hair curls across his forehead, and I almost want to brush it away with my hands. Like he senses me looking, he turns and catches me. The shy smile he shoots me causes my belly to flutter, and I think there might still be some things to get inspired by.

In no time at all, we pull into my driveway, the car idling to a halt near my front door. I click my seatbelt, but I don’t make any move to leave.

“So, what do you do normally after a game?” I ask.

Robbie leans back in his seat, his hands coming to rest on his thighs, his watch glinting at me from the end of his veiny forearms. “It depends,” he sighs. “I used to spend time with my teammates, but now I mostly just go home, get on the bike.”

“The bike?”

He nods. “Yeah, I’ve got an exercise bike set up in the basement.”

It’s not like I can talk. I have a fully functioning gym in my basement, but unless I’m being forced to work out by a trainer or Pip when she wants to do pilates, I keep the door shut. Performing on stage is a full workout anyway, and the last thing I’d want to do after I get home is work out more. “And how far do you go on the bike?”

“Twenty miles or so.”

I gape at him. “Sorry, so you play for ninety minutes, essentially doing a high intensity workout and pushing your body to the limit, and then you go home and do more exercise?”