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Damn skippy he didn’t answer. He didn’t want Denver to put his head on a pike. But he didn’t really want to say he wasn’t into someone either. Tough place to be. But then again, nothing had been easy with Denver.

When Denver’s dark eyes gave him the once over, he only grinned. Totally worth it. “What?”

“Done flirting?”

He leaned into her and she shrank back, looking around. “Afraid to be seen with me?”

“I thought we were keeping things quiet.”

“What if I don’t want to?” He moved in closer. “What if I want everyone to know I’m into you? Really into you, not j

ust your body.”

Her eyes went wide as her gaze bounced from his mouth back to his eyes again.

“Not that I don’t love your body.” He pitched his voice lower. “And fuck, do I love to be inside you.”

She swallowed. “Ryan.”

“Don’t give me that warning voice. Just think about it.” He moved away from her—a herculean effort—and followed the music.

“There he is. Nice of you to join us,” Michael called out.

“Sorry, man. Fans found me outside.”

“Sure. Fans.”

Ryan flipped him off. “Where are we?” He picked up his acoustic that was set into a stand.

“‘Exile’ is what we were playing, but it’s pretty well covered. How about we go with ‘Shape of My Heart’?” Molly leaned on her mic stand.

Ryan put down his acoustic and went for his mandolin. “Excellent.”

Nothing could kill his good mood, not even going through the song six times before Molly deemed it worthy of the setlist. By then, there wasn’t any time to do anything else. It was time to get students and radio-contest people seated. Not to mention the meet-and-greet they had scheduled.

For the next few hours, they all put on their happy faces and signed precisely three hundred posters. He was pretty sure his hand was going to fall off, but the crazy-dar—radar for potential crazies—on the fans had been pretty much nada, so there was a silver lining.

He paced backstage as he waited for the high sign from the liaison from the college. The secret show held a dual purpose—one for the band and buzz about the album, but it also shined light on the college for having cool events as part of its campus life.

As a former college student himself, playing music had served as one of the best bonding moments of his life. He’d met his best friends in school, but their mutual love of music had cemented the friendship into something far more important than just buddies messing around in the rec room after classes. Michael and West had saved him from the eternal boredom of the engineering department.

And now look at them. A band, for fuck’s sake.

“What are you over here grinning about?” Michael asked.

“Just thinking we had an auditorium like this one. Remember when we saw that awful local band and threatened to go up onstage to show them how to play a guitar?”

Michael tipped his head back and bellowed out a laugh. “Stones of Death?”

“Yes! I couldn’t remember the name. God, so bad.”

“And we went home and wrote the original version of ‘Undermine’ that night.”

Ryan rubbed the back of his neck. “Christ. Feels like a million years ago.”

Michael peeked out into the crowd. “And now we send out a Tweet and an Instagram post and get two thousand people to show up to listen to us in under eight hours.”

“Fucking crazy.” Ryan turned to the sound of clapping.

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