by Piper Lawson
The car I took over here picks me up, and somewhere on the drive back to the arena, I hit the power button.
The phone has messages from someone named Annie. The woman in the photos?
* * *
Where are you?
* * *
When I get back to the backstage door, the guards have changed and they stare me down.
“I work here, I swear.” I reach for my ID, but I can’t find it. I hope to hell I didn’t leave it at the garage…
“Nina! Jax!” The words are hollered at the top of my lungs.
The security guy goes for me, and I back up.
Through the crack in the door, I see Jax burst through the door partway down the hall, but before I can say anything, the door shuts in my face.
Shit.
A moment later the door opens. A breath whooshes out of my lungs as I brush past the security guard and toward Jax.
His notices the phone in my hand, and his shoulders relax. “Where did you find this?”
“Your bus.” I hand Jax the phone and dig the charger out of my bag. “I figured no one else would be able to charge… whatever that is.”
Jax studies me as if he’s trying to decide what I’m made of on a cellular level.
“Thanks, babysitter,” he says finally.
He turns and starts toward the stage door.
“My name is Haley,” I call after him. Jax pauses, hesitation only noticeable because I’m watching him so closely, then keeps walking.
The last hour catches up to me, the fact that I hauled my ass across town to bargain with some guy who clearly likes his girls younger than half his age plus seven.
I lost my jacket, all for some ten-year-old piece-of-shit handset that doesn’t even matter. I squeeze my hands into fists.
Maybe Serena’s right.
Not just about the sex part, but that Jax Jamieson’s not someone I can learn from. He shouldn’t be on a pedestal.
He’s talented, but he’s also self-centered.
He goes through life with people throwing themselves at his feet.
People like that lose touch with what it’s like to be human. They don’t remember what it’s like to need other people. They can act however they want and do whatever they want because the world caters to them.
I take a minute to rub my hands over my face, then start toward the backstage door.
When I pass through the doorway, my eyes adjusting to the dark beyond, I pull up.
Jax is on the phone, his face transformed from earlier. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but the way he says it is caring. Like the man in the photos.
He’s leaning forward, and his mouth curves at the corner. When he rubs a hand over his neck, the tattoos on his biceps leap.
There’s none of the cockiness that’s part of his persona onstage. He’s just a guy.
Jax isn’t acting for the fans or the paparazzi or anyone. He’s basically alone, or as close as you can get backstage at a rock concert.
And he’s lit up like a Christmas tree.
My chest squeezes because it’s beautiful to watch. I move closer in the dark.
I don’t realize I’m blocking the way until one of the crew brushes past me.
I inch closer to the stage with a muttered apology that won’t be heard over the sound of Lita and her band less than twenty yards away.
When I glance back up, Jax is pocketing the phone.
“If that rings while you’re out there…” Nina warns.
I brace for an explosion, but Jax is a different person. He ruffles her hair, and she ducks away with a reluctant grin.
I don’t realize I’m staring until Jax’s gaze levels on me.
Shit.
I’m definitely in the wrong here. Not because I shouldn’t be backstage because, hello, I work here.
More because I feel like I witnessed a moment that wasn’t mine to see.
I start to turn, but Jax is walking toward me. It’s too late.
“Do me a favor,” he says when he pulls up.
His body’s bigger than I remember, his hard chest inches from my face.
I force myself to breathe as if he’s not close enough to encircle me with his arms.
My hips are yanked forward as if by an invisible cord, and it takes a second to realize it’s his finger in my belt loop.
Holy shit.
“Hang onto this for me. Haley.” His voice rumbles over the applause on the other side of the curtain.
My mouth falls open on a gasp as the phone slides inside the front pocket of my jeans, wedging in the narrow opening and creating friction everywhere it touches.
I’m not used to shaking hands with strangers, but right now, I feel his touch somewhere I never expected a rock star’s anything to get near in my lifetime.
Ripples of sensation shoot down my spine, between my thighs.
Jax’s grin is long gone, and as his amber stare bores into me, I swear he knows exactly what he’s doing.
My skin burns like the phone is hot. Part of me wants to yank the thing out and toss it across the floor.
Instead, as I watch him take the stage, I press my palm over my pocket so the outline digs into my hip.
6
Haley
“You ever going to play a cover?” Lita calls over the muffled shuffling of feet on the hotel’s carpeted lobby floor as we wait for elevators. The overhead lights cast a harsh glow on artists and crew alike, all holding the same energy of excitement and exhaustion. “They loved our Cranberries song.”
“Not going to happen,” Jax says. “I don’t do other people’s shit.”
“What about ‘Inside’? That’s your shit. From another lifetime.” Mace says it like a joke as we pile onto two elevators.
I’m swept into the one with Lita, Nina, Jax, Mace, and their drummer Kyle, plus a couple of the techs whose names I’m still learning.
“Would it kill you to play it for your fans?” Nina glances up from her phone, looking as alert as she did at noon even though it’s after midnight.
“It might.”
The doors start to close, then hesitate.
“I’ll get the next one.” I start to step out, but Lita sticks her arm in front of me.
“Don’t be dumb. If you haven’t figured it out, personal space doesn't exist here.”
Tour rule number twenty-three: no one is content to live in their own bubble; they need to bust uninvited into yours as well.
Disliking being touched by strangers should largely go unnoticed in life, but you’d be surprised how many times it comes up.
Everywhere from café lines to house parties to movie theatres.
By far the worst offender is elevators.
“Kyle, you have to stop giving shout-outs to random charities.” This is Nina’s voice.
“We’re lucky to be famous, Neen,” the drummer replies easily. “We should use that making the world a better place.”
“We need to scope them before we tell your fans to give their money to the Coalition for Panda Feelings. That is not a real organization.”
As the doors close again, my feet inch back until I’m pressed against a hard chest.
I know without looking who it is. I feel the sweat through his shirt, smell the salt.
“I’m going to start a charity,” Brick drawls. “The Free Blowjob Society.” Everyone groans. “You tell me that’s not making the world a better place, you’re full of shit.”
I try to move, but there’s nowhere to go. I turn my head, and my ponytail bumps something. Probably Jax’s face, I realize as Brick stifles a laugh.
“Sorry.” I face forward again.
“How did you like the show, Haley?” Mace asks.
“It was, ah”—Jax’s chest rubs my back as he shifts—“loud. I mean… good.”
After Jax slipped me the phone, I’d found my way back to the sound booth.
Jerry had acted as if he’d never tried to get rid of me earlier, even berating me for being la
te.
I couldn’t get a handle on it.
I can’t get a handle on a lot of things.
“Good?” Mace glances in amusement between me and the man behind me. “I think that’s the first ‘good’ we ever got, Jax.”
I’m counting the floors in this tiny box rising through the air.
Being in a confined space with lots of sensory stimulation makes me want to crawl out of my skin. Now, there’s the buzz of chatter, the faint scent of sweat and makeup. A breath at my ear cuts through the rest, sending shivers down my spine.
The elevator dings, and I burst out first.
The hallway feels as open as the Grand Canyon, and I suck in fresh air.
“I thought we had the entire floor?” I ask Lita, nodding toward the open door at the end of the hall. Loud music and female laughter pour out of it.
“We do.”
“Incoming!” Kyle hollers as he and Mace bound toward the room.
A woman sticks her head out, grinning and holding up a bottle of tequila. “About time!”
It clicks for me even before Nina warns, “Get a good night’s sleep. The busses will be ready to roll out at ten.”
Brick darts past Nina, turning to salute her with a mocking grin. Jax trails a few paces behind.
The band and crew disperse down the hall to their rooms, like pool balls after the break.
But I’m focused on one particular back.
“Do they do this every night?” I ask, staring after the band.
Lita doesn’t respond, and I turn back to find her sympathetic gaze on me.
“Rule number thirty: don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t ask. Don’t wonder. Don’t think about going down there. After having twenty thousand fans scream their names, they’re all kinds of spun.” With a wink, she vanishes into her room.
They’re all kinds of spun.
The image of Jax talking to Annie on the phone flashes across my mind.
I read my room number off the card and pad down the hall to the second door opposite the elevator. I drop my duffel and swipe the key over the pad, making the light go green.
“What’s your deal?” My head jerks up to see Jax standing outside the door at the end of the hall. “You practically sprinted off the elevator. You holding something against me?”
I blow out a breath. “Touching strangers weirds me out.”
I didn’t mean for it to be a conversation starter, but he strolls closer, the lights on the walls casting a bronze glow on his face.
He changed T-shirts after the show, and I wish he’d put on more because my gaze is drawn to the ink on his muscled arm.
“My mom tried to send me to daycare when I was three,” I go on, looking for something to say that’s not about his biceps. “Apparently I kicked an open bottle of finger paint at the woman who ran it when she tried to put an apron on me. After that, she put me in my own corner. Not great for social skills.”
He pulls up right in front of me. “Some days it feels like all I do is have strangers touch me.”
I wrap my arms around myself, shivering. “Sounds like my hell.”
A ghost of a smile crosses his face, but it’s gone so fast I might be wrong. “You get used to it. Or maybe you don’t.” He shrugs, though the look in his eye is anything but casual. “Anyone gives you a hard time, come to me.”
The protectiveness in his voice is unexpected. “I can take care of myself.”
“Never said you couldn’t. But you’re on my tour. Your job is to look out for me. Least I can do is look out for you.”
I never thought of it that way. “Okay. Thanks.”
His gaze drops down my body. When it drags back up, I realize Lita’s right—he does look spun. “I need something from you.”
Jax nods to my jeans, and I think my airway closes. It takes a long second for my brain to click into gear. “Oh!”
I dig in my pocket for the phone and hold it out.
He takes it from me, careful not to let our fingers brush, and I’m sure it’s on purpose.
“Why do you have a flip phone,” I blurt as he tucks the device in his pocket.
“To remember where I come from.”
“2007?”
My comment earns me a slow grin that sends tingles all the way to my toes.
The smile freezes on my face when I hear a door open down the hall. One of Lita’s band members emerges, ice bucket in hand. He waves in greeting, then continues past us toward the ice room, which, judging by the sign, is at the end of the hall.
I’m suddenly aware it’s just two of us in this hallway.
I shove my hands in my back pockets. “Well, I should get to sleep, or I’m not going to retain the ten million things Jerry told me.”
“Wait.” Jax’s voice has me stilling, and for a second I wonder if he doesn’t want to leave either. “Who was better than me.”
He’s talking about the show. He has to be.
Though now that he’s so close, his amber eyes glinting with challenge, I want to say, “No one’s better,” because how could they be? At anything?
He’s intense and beautiful and unlike even the prettiest of the pretty boys Serena brings through our house. Jax is different.
He’s not a boy. He’s a man.
He’s a legend.
“Leonard Cohen,” I whisper. “Radio City Music Hall. He was eighty.”
His frown softens into confusion. “I’m competing with an eighty-year-old man?”
“He was forced to tour when his money was mismanaged and ran out. He started out with Canadian dates but ended up selling out all over the world, and… never mind.”
The guy from Lita’s band makes his return journey down the hall, and I step back on instinct because I’m pretty sure the space between us is short of professional.
“Haley,” Jax murmurs when the door down the hall closes. His lips are parted. His hair is still sweaty from the show. He needs a shower.
Judging from the tingling at the base of my spine, I might too.
“I know who Leonard fucking Cohen is.” Jax’s words drag me back. “I saw him at the Orpheum in Memphis.”
I blink. The smile’s faded, but there’s still amusement in his eyes. “Oh my God. I’ve always wanted to see a show at the Orpheum. Was it incredible?”
Laughter sounds from down the hall, but I don’t turn until the woman’s voice shrieks, “Jax!”
I jump a mile, and both Jax’s head and mine jerk toward the party room at the end.
A blond woman in a tube top and the smallest shorts I’ve ever seen spills out of the door.
And also the tube top.
“Get your hot ass down here!” Her voice is full of intention and attention, and there’s no question what she wants to do with his hot ass.
That’s when I realize there’s a hand on my hip.
Jax’s hand.
I glance down at it, and he does too.
He drops me.
For a second, I resent the fact that Jax Jamieson is beloved the world over, because it means everyone wants a piece of him.
And there’s only one of him to go around.
Jax turns back to me, and I imagine there’s indecision in his gaze.
I’m willing to bet the woman down the hall doesn’t want to talk about the Orpheum. Or probably talk at all.
“I bet there’s a Snickers waiting for you down the hall,” I offer. “She’d probably even unwrap it for you.”
He rubs a hand over his neck, and I swallow at the way the ink moves across his arm as he flexes. “No doubt.” Jax tosses his hair out of his face. “Sleep well, babysitter,” he murmurs.
Then turns and walks back down the hall toward the Den of Sin.
7
People who haven't been on tour think it’s basically like living in The Hangover.
Booze. Drugs. Strippers.
Tigers.
Zach Galifianakis wandering through the background in his underwea
r.
It’s not true.
The scene around me tonight, though, is pretty cliché.
“Jax, baby, come on.” The blonde shifts onto my lap, wiggling to get there. Her mouth pouts with whatever gloss she slicked on while she was thinking about me, or Brick, or Kyle, or Mace. Most of them don’t care which.
Right now, I’m a hard pass.
It’s been a long time since I screwed around on tour, and almost as long since I’ve wanted to.
I shift out from underneath her and reach into my pocket for the device I’m suddenly more protective of. I bang out a text.
* * *
Need 2 take my mnd off thgs
* * *
I glance at Mace, who’s making out with a brunette. I’d never hear the end of it if he knew what I was doing.
At the bar across the room, I fix myself a bourbon because I like the way it makes my throat curl inward after a long night of spilling my guts into the mic.
Kyle and two redheads who look like twins are dueling on Guitar Hero in the next room.
Brick is plugged into a console in the corner playing Fortnite.
The only woman he even looks at is Nina, and I’d know if something happened there. Even if one of them wasn’t too proud to admit it, neither of them would break the rules.
I can imagine it’s a shitty place to be. When the person you want’s the one person you can’t have.
The drink’s gone, and still my phone’s silent. I send another message.
* * *
Where r u?
* * *
I slip out of the band’s room and into my suite at the end of the hall. My bags are there, still zipped up.
The first week of tour, some assistant’s assistant tried to unpack for me. It didn't end well.
On top is a stack of paper, different sizes, held together with a clip.
I could try to write—a phrase, a verse, a bridge—but I haven’t turned out a good song in years. I’m not just losing my edge—I’ve lost it.
I pull my phone from my pocket and drop it on the bed. I strip the shirt over my head, wincing as I do. The mirror reveals a bruise near my rib, and I don’t know how I got it.