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But he’d heard her.
And whatever stupid things other people had said, what she’d said hurt him.
He sat back on his heels, his face turned away. High color on his cheekbones.
“Micah,” she breathed and sat up. God, she was so wet and the pressure on her clit sent sparks through her body. She didn’t want it to end like this. She didn’t want it to end at all. “That was…I’m sorry.”
He braced his hands against the bed, his fingers inches from her legs, but she could feel them. The heat of them. The exact and precise distance between his fingers and her legs.
Those fingers that had been inside of her. That if she grabbed and held to her face would smell like her. If she put them in her mouth, they’d taste like her, and she’d blown it and he would never touch her again.
And worse, she’d never get to touch him.
“Josie is my cousin and I told her about that moment in the hotel, outside my door. About how it had seemed like you were going to kiss me…”
He smiled at her, but not his good smile. Not the smile from around the fire. This was the smile he gave the people at the county jail. The yeah, yeah, sure smile.
Parts of her heart snapped off.
She didn’t know how to get from this smile to the one she wanted.
“She said I should just go for it,” she whispered.
“And you did,” he said. “You want a selfie?”
She gasped.
“Sorry,” he said and shrugged into his shirt.
“No. I’m…I’m so sorry. You just…that was about me. That comment. Not about you.”
He looked at her, his hair pushed back from his face. His rock-and-roll armor in place. And she wanted to say I’m just a normal person, and I don’t know how to do this with another normal person, much less my favorite singer.
But when his eyes met hers, she realized he knew all that. And what was at the heart of all of this was that he was a normal person, too. She’d just forgotten that.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s like I said in the closet. It’s never really about me.”
Chapter Eighteen
Micah
Yeah, he thought, filling a bucket of water at the sink to take outside and throw across the embers of the fire. Maybe he could have handled that better. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard something like that after sex. It wasn’t even the hundredth.
He knew in excruciating detail how he couldn’t have things both ways. He couldn’t be famous and one of the sexiest men alive, according to various magazines that claimed some kind of authority over that domain, and he couldn’t use that famous sexiness to his advantage when it came down to making money for the band.
And then wish it all away when it suited him.
It couldn’t be done.
But this moment—this thing with Helen—felt outside of that. She was kissing him just like he was kissing her—because they were people interested in each other. Attracted to each other. Wanted each other.
But part of wanting him was the persona he’d created. Nothing was outside of Band of Outlaws.
You can’t have it both ways.
“Hey.” Danny came into the room from his bedroom. He was wearing pajamas. The guy slept in pajamas.
Danny was always too pure for Band of Outlaws.
“You putting out the fire?” he asked with a yawn. “I was about to.”
“I got it. Go on to bed.”
“Helen?”
“Sound asleep,” he said with a smile he did not feel.
“Okay. See you in the morning,” Danny said and toddled off to bed. But at the doorway he turned around. “I know it’s not any of my business and you’re a real private guy when it comes to, like…girl stuff.”
“Girl stuff? Are we in high school?”
“I like her. Helen. I like the way you look at her.”
“How do you think I look at her?”
“Like she’s real.” Danny yawned again. “You don’t look at everyone that way.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, man,” Micah lied with a laugh, but Danny didn’t buy it.
“Yeah, you do,” he said, as serious as he’d ever been. And then he lifted his hand in goodbye and vanished into his bedroom.
Micah took the bucket of water, grabbed a blanket from the back of the tuba chair and went back out to the fire. He’d put it out, in a bit. But first he wrapped that blanket around his shoulders and sat back in his chair, watching the orange-blue flames eat up the last of the wood.
I look at everyone like they’re real, he thought. I look at fans like they’re real. My band like they’re real. You don’t get to where I am unless you do that.
The thing I liked was that she looked at me like I was real.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and texted his brother.
