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“And not a second more,” I quote, finishing one of his favorite sayings.
Knox looks pleased I know him so well.
Laken appears disgusted.
“I’ll meet you on stage.” Knox presses his lips to the edge of my mouth before guiding a disgruntled Laken inside.
They’re barely out of earshot when Emily says, “Your messages painted him as an ass, but he’s smoking hot. There’s no doubting that.”
“So fucking hot,” Jenni backs up.
Shocked, my eyes dart down to my phone. I gasp when I realize my endeavor to stop Laken from hearing them accidently switched our phone call to a Facetime chat.
“That ass…”
Jenni stops, swallows, then gleams excitedly when a voice in the background says, “No one else, Jen.”
Past Emily’s sweater-covered baby bump, I watch Jenni crash-tackle Nick onto a day bed in a massive dining room and kiss him senseless.
Once he’s breathless, she murmurs over his lips, “No one else.”
I grin like a loon when Noah joins our chat. “I think you were right. We should have packed bleach.” As Hawke’s grumbly laugh trickles through my phone speaker, Noah rubs Emily’s stomach before drifting his dark, moody eyes to me. “How are you doing, Nik? Ready for us to come on a world tour with you yet?”
Nerves echo in my reply. “Hopefully one day.”
Noah bobs down to pick up his adorable five-year-old, Maddie, while saying, “Tell me when you’re ready, and we’ll get everything settled here before joining you back in the States.”
“And leave the biggest European tour known to man for my little tour dates? Don’t be outrageous.”
“We’d do it for you, Nicole,” Emily says, her voice as sweet as her daughter’s dimpled grin when she spots Aunt Nicole on her mother’s phone screen. “In a heartbeat.”
I “tickle” Maddie through the screen while saying, “That’s because England is cold, and you grew up in Florida. Give it time. You’ll soon acclimate to the bipolar weather.”
Emily huffs but doesn’t deny my claim. She hates the cold as much as she does the groupies who forever throw themselves at her husband.
When Maddie’s mouth fills the screen with a big yawn, Emily steals her from Noah. “I better put her down for a nap. She didn’t sleep much on the plane.”
“I’ll take her,” Noah offers, stealing Maddie back. “Then you can talk to Nicole about the song she sent through last night.” His eyes are back on me, teasing and playful. “It was stuffed somewhere between checking if we’d arrived okay and news about asmoking hot date.” He mimics Emily's voice during the last half of his reply.
Giggling, Emily barges him out of frame. “Go put our daughter to bed.” If her next words are meant to be whispers, she needs to take a lesson on being quiet. “Then I’ll help lick your wounds after Nicole updates me oneverythingthat happenedtwo… whole… nights…ago.”
With Emily’s reply hinting at a gossip session, Jenni rejoins our conversation. “Spill, Nicole. I can see the debauchery all over your face.”
“You cannot—” Raised voices cut off my reply. They sound excited. Almost giddy. “Oh my god,” I murmur when I peer in the direction from which the voices project. A line stretches from the entrance of the dance studio and down an alleyway on the opposite side, spanning several blocks. “They can’t be here for me. Surely.”
“Who? Show us,” Jenni and Emily demand.
I spin my phone to face the crowd, gasping along with my best friends as the line grows by the second.
“This is it,” Jenni murmurs. “This is the moment you’ve been waiting for.”
Butterflies tap dance in my stomach when I remember my face is without makeup. Emily and Jenni have natural beauty, but I look like a sheet of paper on stage when the bright lights reflect nothing but my pasty-white skin. “I need to go. I have to get ready.”
“You—”
“Not so—”
I cut them both off with a promise. “I swear on Colette’s grave that I’ll call the instant this is over and tell you everything.”
