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“Well, I wouldn’t say fantastically,” I corrected. “You got pretty beat up on your jaw.”
“This? This is nothing,” Roman said. “I’ve had worse from just slipping in the shower.”
“We caught him,” Roman said to Jack, who clapped his hands together in excitement.
“Holy shit,” he said, a huge smile on his face.
“You should join us,” I said, moving aside even though in reality, I mostly just wanted to talk to Roman right now. “I wouldn’t have felt half as safe watching it all go down if I didn’t know my house was well-protected.”
“Oh, I don’t want to intrude on you two,” Jack said, glancing between the two of us.
“Nonsense. Get in here.”
I turned to see Sam, the flirty bartender, with his sexy, slick boyfriend Fox on his arm. “My shift just ended. How are you guys this evening?” Sam asked. “This booth is like an all-star hot guys meetup or something.”
Jack looked at Fox. “You’re a lucky man, you know. But I’m pretty sure you’ve got the flirtiest boyfriend in America.”
“I’d be jealous if he wasn’t so correct,” Fox said, a small smile appearing on his face now, too. “This tavern seems to attract more hotties than a damn underwear model fashion show.”
“They all come to see me,” Sam said, preening.
“If you just ended your shift, you can feel free to join us,” I offered to Sam and Fox. I couldn’t seem to stop inviting people to join our booth, even though I’d thought the evening would be a quiet, calm one, tucked away in a corner with Roman.
Because these were all good people. And even though my head was still floating in some surreal space, having these guys around me was making me feel like I used to feel, before fame, before my stalker, before any of it.
Sam and Fox sat down and immediately, our little corner booth turned into a little celebration of sorts. Sam had the bar’s cook, Perry, bring out a round of new drinks he’d been working on, some cold, slushy lime drink that was way more delicious than it had any right to be. As the minutes passed, my memory of the night melted away. Even though I thought I needed to be isolated, the longer the conversation went on, the more I realized that this was the perfect thing to get my mind off of the insanity of the evening.
I hadn’t felt normal in so long that I’d almost forgotten what it was like. Eventually Jack Damien asked for a rundown of what had happened earlier in the evening and Roman told the whole story, detail for detail, and hearing it secondhand was bizarre.
“I don’t know how you were able to get through that,” Sam said, in a rare serious moment. “I can’t even imagine. I don’t like being alone on a normal day, but being alone while you’re super famous and have a crazy stalker?”
“It certainly wasn’t fun,” I said, taking another sip of the lime slush drink.
“No wonder you needed a bodyguard like Roman,” Sam said. “I get it, now.”
I puffed out a laugh, letting out a long breath. “Even with him around, keeping watch on everything, I didn’t sleep at all the last couple of nights. Barely at all in the last week, even.”
Roman furrowed his brow, looking at me. “Is that true, Theo?” he asked softly. “I thought you were able to get some good hours in.”
I bit my lower lip, shaking my head. “I tried, but mostly all I could do was close my eyes.”
The concern in Roman’s eyes almost broke my heart. He cared so, so deeply, even now. I could remember plenty of times in Los Angeles that friends had practically bragged about how little sleep they were getting. Back in the day, my friends would have laughed and clapped me on the back, saying I’d been pulling all-nighters.
I felt that same tightness behind my sternum that I’d been getting almost every time he did something sweet. Ever since he’d told me he wanted to cool things off, there’d been a bittersweet ache that I couldn’t seem to get rid of.
It was only ten times worse now, sitting here getting tipsy, feeling like a whole new life was about to begin for me.
I didn’t feel instantly better. Hell, I was still in a state of raw shock, and I had no idea how long it might be before I could shake it. I had already texted Madeline earlier in the day asking if she would start looking into potential therapists I could talk with—something I should have done a long, long time ago.
But the idea that maybe someday soon—not tomorrow, not even next month—but sometime, I wouldn’t have much of a need for a bodyguard, made the fear come back instantly.
I didn’t like the idea of being without him anymore.
