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"I think it's both, dude," I said. "Be careful if you have kids someday, they might come out swinging."
He smiled. "I think we will, in a few years. You can be the cool Uncle Axel."
"I can teach them all the bad habits." I grinned. "Like how to get a fake ID and sneak into a nightclub."
"Dude, I can teach them that," he said.
"Mel will be really impressed," I said sarcastically. "Maybe I should tell her. Remind her there's a reason you two break up."
"Ouch, I thought we were friends." His eyes were wide but he was smiling.
"Who told you that?" I teased.
"You did," he said. "Unless you were toying with me." He gave me a sidelong look.
I chuckled. "Of course we're friends."
"And what baggage does Hales have anyway?" he asked. "It didn't stop you from spending the night together."
"That's her business," I said. "Let's just say she has trust issues and I'm not gonna make them worse than they are already are, if I can help it."
"You really care about her a lot, don't you?" he asked. "There's something about you recently that I've never seen before. Is it love?"
I considered his question carefully, because I didn't want to answer unless it was honestly. Not about something like this.
"I don't know," I said finally. "I look at her and I can imagine being with her for a long time. Every minute I spend with her feels like something, I dunno, special? Like I knew her in a past life or some shit." I pointed a finger at him. "Don't laugh."
He spread his hands, almost spilling his beer. "I would never laugh about stuff like that. Not after waiting so many years for the woman I loved to realize we weren't over yet. We might be big, bad rock stars, but we still have hearts."
"Exactly," I agreed. "I miss Hayley when I'm not with her. All those years without Mel must have been… Crappy." Especially seeing her whenever he hung out with me, and trying to pretend he was over her.
He shrugged. "I guess, but it was what she wanted and who was I to argue?"
"Jude freaking Harrison, that's who," I said. "But no one makes Mel do what she doesn't want to do. So you had no chance until she was ready."
"Yeah, stubborn is a Gregory characteristic," Jude said. "I've noticed that about both of you."
"You too, dude," I said. "We wouldn't be where we are if we weren't stubborn as hell."
"I'll drink to that." He held up his beer bottle and nodded.
I toasted him back.
"What are you going to do?" he asked. "Apart from drink beer and eat burgers."
"Honestly, I don't know," I said. "On one hand, I'm a rock star, we're supposed to take chances. Right? On the other, I don't want to hurt her. If I do walk away, it's going to be hard to see her every day." It would be hard on both of us. We couldn't pretend what happened didn't happen. I didn't want to. I just wished things weren't quite so complicated.
"That, right there, is why office romances are a bad idea." He held up his bottle to the light before gulping down the last of his second beer.
"Says the guy who brought his girlfriend on tour," I said. "And let the label put her to work."
He snorted. "You know as well as I do that Mel wouldn't have been happy just being along for the ride. She wanted to be useful. I told her she didn't have to but she insisted. She didn't want to just be known as a rock star's girlfriend. Or a rock star's sister for that matter."
"Yeah, I don't think she has ever tried to get any special treatment because she's related to me," I said. "She has way too much pride for that."
"That's true, plus she might not want people knowing she's your sister," he teased.
"Can you blame her?" I joked. "I'm pretty disreputable."
