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“Yvette’s gone for the day. She won’t be here to make up another bed for you.”
“I’ll just use Dorian’s.”
“Ah.” His lips slide into a cockeyed sneer. “And there it is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What were you doing leaving his room this morning?” He asks the question I’ve been waiting for all day. He happened to be in the hall when Dorian was leaving, and despite watching me walk out of that bedroom, he didn’t breathe a word about it. Not at breakfast. Not at lunch or dinner. Not in the hundreds of seconds and minutes that have since passed.
“I was saying goodbye.”
“You went into a man’s room—a man you hardly knew—to personally tell him goodbye?” The contempt in his voice is laid on thicker than Tammy Faye Bakker’s mascara. “That, coupled with your concern for his safety and well-being, makes me think you’ve taken a liking to my brother.”
“I’m not sure where you’re going with this, but I’m tired, and I’m going to bed.” I turn to leave, but he tuts.
“I can already tell you, even if you were free to date someone else, he wouldn’t be interested in you. He’s still hung up on whoever that girl was from last year.”
My stomach plummets and my mouth runs dry. “What?”
“I told you before . . . he met someone last summer . . .”
“Yes, I remember. But how do you know he still loves her?”
“Because.” His nose wrinkles as if he finds my question annoying and pointless. “He told me.”
“When?” My voice is breathless, and Burke is two seconds from seeing through me, I’m sure of it, but I have to know.
“Oh my god. I was right.” He tosses a stack of photos onto the coffee table, sinks back, and threads his fingers behind his head as he scrutinizes me from across the room. “You do have a thing for Dorian.”
I consider telling him he’s wrong.
I could brush this off, insist he’s imagining it, maintain that Dorian’s not my type.
But doing any of that means I’d lose the opportunity to press this issue further—and I have to know.
“You forget I’m not technically taken,” I say. “I have eyes. I have feelings. I’m not saying that I have a thing for your brother, but if things were different . . . if our arrangement was off the table . . . I could see myself being interested in someone like him.”
His dark eyes flick to the ceiling and back. “God, you sound like Audrina, and we both know how that worked out for her.”
Audrina chose Burke, and Dorian never forgave her.
“When did he say he was still in love with that girl?” I try my damnedest to sound casual. “Just out of curiosity.”
“I don’t know.” Lines cover his forehead as he ponders my question. “As recently as a couple of days ago, I think. I’m telling you, Briar, you don’t stand a chance. Dorian would spend the rest of his life as a celibate monk before he settled for my sloppy seconds.”
Sloppy seconds.
We haven’t done more than kiss or hold hands.
But probably in Dorian’s mind, we’ve done it all.
Rarely do I agree with anything Burke says, but tonight? He might have a point—a point I’ll never be able to argue against because I’m legally sworn to secrecy.
Burke yawns, then returns to the photo project in front of him.
I head upstairs without another word, stopping in our shared room to grab my pajamas and a toothbrush before making a beeline to Dorian’s room.
Ten minutes later, I’m under his sheets, my cheek pressed against a pillow that smells faintly of him.
This may be the closest I’ll ever get to being with Dorian Rothwell ever again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
DORIAN
Present Day
“Dorian!” I’m greeted by the scent of sex, spilled beer, and groupie perfume the second I step onto the tour bus. “You’re back!”
We’re parked at some truck stop outside Jacksonville.
“Dor-man, hey.” Connor appears from behind a curtain that separates the living quarters from the sleeping quarters. His fly is up but the top button of his jeans is undone. His hair looks like he either just got up from an afternoon nap or he’s been entertaining one of the leggy blondes he always snags from the pit at each show, unbeknownst to his devoted fiancée back home. “How’s it going?”
I don’t like attention and fanfare of any kind, so I shrug and give a simple “Ready to be back.”
“We missed you,” a groupie says. I can’t remember her name . . . Charla, Charlotte, Charley maybe? We picked her up sometime after our Red Rocks show, and no one’s had the heart to ditch her yet. I have to hand it to her, though; she’s made herself indispensable. She sews, and she cooks or handles ordering food. She keeps the bus fridge well stocked with everyone’s favorite beers, makes a mean whiskey sour, and personally sees to it that the bus doesn’t perpetually reek of vomit and stale food.
