Page 10 of The Comedown

Mary and I exchange looks as I stuff a snack in my clutch.

“The full page of text messages I just glimpsed says otherwise, but okay. Enjoy talking to nobody,” I say to Holter before telling him and Mary what time to expect me back.

Mary’s been with us since Holter and I were discharged from the hospital and she goes with him everywhere. On the tours I go on alone, she stays home with my son, taking care of him full-time, and the tours I get to bring Holter along on, she comes, too, watching him when I can’t. I would’ve preferred to be one of those moms that brings her child everywhere with her, but Mary really is the second-best option. She’s a certified teacher, speaks two languages, and earned a bachelor’s degree in childhood development. In all actuality, she’s probably a better mom than I am.

She’s probably a better mom than I am.

Honestly this was never my plan, to be apart from my own child this much. I always thought if I put in enough work, eventually I’d get to a point where I could be with him every day, but I’ve yet to reach it, and with Holter already being thirteen years old, I’m not sure I will.

We say our goodbyes, then when my heels clack against the pavement as I’m stepping off the bus, a deep voice beside me asks, “Where’s your security?” pulling me from the melancholic thoughts I lose myself in more than I’d like to admit.

I crank my head to find Julez leaning against the side of my bus with a hand up to his mouth. I can’t tell if he’s smoking because of the big, fat rings adorning his fingers, but when he suddenly drops his hand, I see he’s not.

“You felt it last night,” I tell him, pulling a few blue strands off my glossed lips. It’s not my favorite shade, but the stylist wanted our hair to match for today’s junket.

“Thanks for that, by the way. It’s been a while since I’ve been fucking shanked.”

“What can I say?” I tip a shoulder, throwing his words back at him. “I’m charitable like that.”

He scoffs before changing the subject swiftly with, “Blue looks good on you.”

Our eyes hold for a beat, then I tell him honestly, “You, too.” I’ve been aware of Julez since he blew up a couple years ago, but only from afar as we’ve never crossed paths before this. Seeing him this close though, I kind of wish we had. He’s extremely easy on the eyes.

“My bodyguard will keep an eye on your boy while we’re gone.”

“Um, thanks?” He goes to wave me off, and I quickly add in, “But that’s okay. He’s taken care of.”

I’m not only confident in Mary looking after Holter academically and emotionally, but also physically. We both take yearly self-defense classes, and while my weapon of choice is a knife, hers is mace. She knows who’s allowed around Holter, but more importantly, who’s not. I’ve used a bodyguard over the years, especially when Holter was little and reached for any stranger who’d bat an eye in his direction, but I’ve found the smaller and more trustworthy my circle gets, the tighter we all band together as a family to keep him safe. Nowadays, I can typically get by without a bodyguard at all.

We’re staying in a hotel the next couple nights, so while I’m busy doing interviews today, Holter and Mary, along with the rest of my team, will head over without me to get everything situated. Since this is a US-only tour, we’ll have a good mix of nights on the road and nights spent in hotels. Some shows are back-to-back while others have two or three days in between, and with us driving to all of them, my team will be there every step of the way. Unlike a lot of other artists who are always searching for the hottest, newest dancers, I strive for consistency and dependability, so once I find a backup dancer I trust, truly trust, I don’t replace them. The four I have now, I’ve been touring with for at least a decade. I have no doubt each and every one would give their life to protect Holter’s. It’s never come to that thankfully, but I can see why that’d be a foreign concept to Julez. Yesterday’s events proved that.

“Will someone be guarding him?” he asks, coming to stand directly in front of me, forcing me to tilt my chin to meet his eye. He’s tall. Well over six feet. At only five and a half feet myself, the heels I’m wearing do a good job hiding our vast height difference, but last night I was barefoot and had to stand on my tiptoes just to reach his shoulder blades, so I know exactly how tall he really is.

“Why do you care all of a sudden? Last night you let yourself on to my bus while everybody was asleep, then you tried to break into—”

“Are you fucking kidding me with that? You’re making me out to be some kind of pedo. How was I supposed to know your kid was in that room?”

Holter and I used to be able to share a bed on tour, but now that he’s older, I just let him have the whole room to himself. My team, I trust. But other artists’ teams… There are a lot of different kinds of people hanging around on tours—a lot—which can create opportunities for the more predatory ones to be able to seek out prey unnoticed. So, just like last night, if the bus has a private room, and Holter’s in it alone, I make sure I sleep in one of the bunks closest to the door and I do it armed.

“You still stood outside a closed door like you were about to open it without permission,” I point out, letting myself look over the rest of him. Thankfully, he cleaned up for our interviews today. He’s wearing a white sleeveless hoodie with the hood pulled up just enough to cover the crown of his head while still showing off his blue tips sticking out the front. The armpits are low-cut, revealing a fair amount of his colorful tattoos on his arms and chest, and his pants are different from the ones I saw him in yesterday. They’re black skinny jeans with ragged slices all down the fronts. He’s not just easy on the eyes, he’s fucking hot.

Julez seems to have the same idea as he takes me in as well, his chest rising and falling steadily until his gaze reaches the bottom of my shirtdress. The hands by his sides flex and I cock my head, studying him.

“Do you have any restraint? At all?”

He sticks those hands behind his back so abruptly, I grin. I didn’t think so.

His gaze jumps to something over my shoulder, and he murmurs, “I just wanted to see you while I still could,” before saying louder, “Collette, this is Bare.”

Um, what? I turn around, trying to keep up. He’s the one that told me I was locked into the contract I signed, so what does he mean “while I still could”? And who is—

“Bear? Like the animal?” I ask, giving the man that carted Julez off just yesterday a hesitant look.

“No.” He chuckles. “Bare, like he could kill someone with his bare hands.”

I shake the big guy’s hand, regarding it with even more hesitancy.

“He’ll be with…Holden?”