“Don’t you understand it’s happening now?” Dawn cursed the guilty pleasure he got from squeezing Mage’s fingers. “How is he supposed to be with us on stage? How is he supposed to put his heart into music when it’s bleeding? The second gig is a week after that first one, but after that, the line-up is so dense. If something doesn’t work out, any amends he might have made now will be too little too late.”
Mage didn’t take away his hand, but he shook his head, his handsome face transforming into the stern expression that often reassured Dawn. Not tonight. “That’s out of the question. We’re a band, and this is work. If that’s how he’s reacting then maybe Asher wasn’t all that good for him after all.”
Dawn bit his lip in frustration. Mage in dad-mode was as hot as usual. “What would you have done if the person you loved left because of a misunderstanding and you had one chance to get them back?”
Mage stalled with his lips open. “There’s always more chances.”
“You don’t know that…”
Mage took a deep breath and stepped closer, unexpectedly entering Dawn’s personal space. He was so tall that they were now eyes-to-chest, and for the briefest moment Dawn wished he could be completely honest with his best friend. There had been so many opportunities—all the time he and Mage worked on music together, during quiet walks through the countryside, or that one time Mage was seriously ill and had told Dawn how much he appreciated his care.
Would it have really been so bad to confess that he was attracted to Mage, just to be explicitly told that Mage was straight and laugh it off as if it meant nothing? Hope would have been out of the way once and forever, and Dawn wouldn’t even have to bring out the big guns and admit that he’d been in love with Mage for years.
But they were both silent.
Until someone flushed water in the stall next to theirs, and their bubble burst.
The door to the restrooms slammed open, and Sid spoke. “Dawn? Mage? You here? We need to get going.”
Mage exhaled and unlocked the stall. “We’re here.”
Dawn peeked out once Mage left, embarrassed over what Sid might think seeing them in the stall together. But his angular face betrayed nothing, carefully neutral despite its pallid color and the red Mohawk hanging limply against his cheek.
“We were just talking,” he said quickly, but Mage approached Sid first and squeezed his shoulder.
“Sid, we’re going to Aspen.”
Dawn’s heart exploded with relief. Even if things didn’t work out, at least they would have tried. They wouldn’t be forever stuck wondering ‘what if?’ the way Dawn fantasized about kissing Mage’s full lips.
Chapter 2
Mage had no idea how he got roped into a break-in.
Scratch that. He knew exactly why he was in front of a mesh fence ankle-deep in snow. Dawn had asked for it, and Mage had absolutely no ability to deny those big green eyes anything.
So instead of preparing for the first performance of their big tour, members of The Underdogs reached Aspen after almost twenty hours on the bus, all because of a lovers’ quarrel. He would have never thought Sid, their cynical drummer, would be the one to create drama, but here they were.
Sid had always been the sarcastic one, with a wit sharp as a pack of razors, stable and reasonable even if he had a tendency to drink too much and smoked as if he’d bet someone he could outdo a chimney.
“Why can’t we just call him from the main gate and wait to be let in, like normal people? He wouldn’t let us freeze off our asses out here,” Mage asked, but his suggestions fell on deaf ears.
Dusk, their frontman, and his boyfriend Lolly led the way, jumping through the snow like two sickly gazelles desperate to show their herd that they were fit.
Sid snarled. “Because the ass hasn’t answered our calls and went AWOL on e-mails and social media. If anything, he’d pretend he’s not home.” He didn’t wait for an answer and followed the others into a patch of evergreens growing between two properties on the outskirts of town.
Dawn put his hand on Mage’s thick jacket. The scarf purchased on the way obscured the bottom half of his gentle face, but the green eyes framed by long, dark lashes, drew Mage in, nonetheless. As soon as Mage saw the pale fingers going purple from the cold, he craved to pull them under his own jacket and keep them against his chest until they were warm.
“It’s Asher. He’ll understand.”
Mage took a deep breath, stalling when even Abra, Sid’s younger sister, outran them, following the length of the fence. His tongue itched to say what he thought about Sid and Asher’s relationship recently turning from stalker and stalked to a pair of lovebirds, but Dawn’s eyes shone with the kind of sweet naiveté he didn’t have the heart to crush. He’d already agreed to come here. How much more could they lose?
To be fair, he’d known Sid for a couple of years now, and he’d never before seemed so happy, but that came at a price of extreme mood swings whenever things between him and Asher weren’t working out as expected. And just as Mage had feared, the most recent upheaval had made a dent in the tour already. He didn’t even want to think about the fans let down by their decision to cancel the concert, and prayed nobody would ever found out they did so to pursue a guy who obviously didn’t want to be pursued. The internet would have never let them live that down.
But Dawn wouldn’t like to hear any of that, because his heart was made of gold and unicorns, so Mage pulled off his gloves and offered them to him. It was the least he could do on this insane day.
The way Dawn’s face lit up made Mage’s heart skip a beat. “Thank you, but you know I can’t. I’ll take one, but you keep the other.”
Mage licked his lips, which made them even cooler. The freezing air was biting into his cheeks, which meant Dawn, with his slender body, was likely suffering much worse. “Come on, you need them more. You know I’m like a human radiator,” Mage said, grabbing his friend’s hand.
Were this any other person Mage liked, the air would be already sparkling with sexual tension, but the way he felt about Dawn was beyond attraction, and definitely more complicated. That was what happened when you knew someone for half your life. With Dawn, it was a mixture of tenderness and lust that never went anywhere, because even if Mage were set on making his move, he didn’t know if doing so wouldn’t irreversibly damage not only their long friendship, but also the band that was their life. Also, Dusk would have surely thrown a tantrum over Mage dating his little brother, and they didn’t need that either.
So when he squeezed Dawn’s hand and covered it with the second glove, Dawn couldn’t have sensed anything was amiss. After all, their relationship has always been like that of brothers, and Mage hoped Dawn would never find out what kind of fantasies he sometimes had when they shared a room on tour.
Dawn chuckled, accepting the gloves, which looked like the loose skin of a Shar Pei dog on his hands. “Only if you’re absolutely sure. Come on, we have to help Sid fight for love.”
Dawn was the sweetest person Mage had ever known, and it was his duty to protect those innocent qualities in him. So when Dawn grabbed his hand and pulled, there was no other option but to comply.
The snow created a stiff layer that crunched under their weight, and Mage could sense more of it getting into his shoes with each step, so he ended up following his friends’ path. Dawn did the same, though he still had to laboriously lift his lean yet short legs in order to move forward. He would have gladly offered to carry Dawn, but even he knew that would have been over the top.
They delved into the patch of pines, and since it was already dark, he considered using the flashlight function of his cell phone, but he didn’t get to make a decision. His lungs filled with frosty air when he saw Dusk grab the mesh fence with one hand and pull out something that resembled pliers.
“What the fuck are y—?”
Dusk cut through a piece of the mesh and looked back as if he had no idea what Mage’s problem was, his long black hair already damp and p
lastered to his face. If Mage hadn’t known he was Dawn’s brother, he wouldn’t have believed it, because there weren’t two men in the world more different.
Lolly stood between Mage and Dusk, as if he expected having to protect his man from a physical attack. With his pink braids, and a parka of the same color worn over a fluffy green hoodie, he didn’t seem threatening, but one could never know with him, because he was as batshit as his boyfriend.
“We’re breaking in, you said it yourself. What else were you expecting? It’s all Asher’s fault, anyway. If he answered calls and e-mails, we wouldn’t have to do this in the first place!”
Abra shushed them, pulling her modest coat around her. “Don’t yell or he’ll hear us.”
Sid dragged his hands over his face. “That would be fine too. We actually want to talk to him. I do. I need to talk to him.”
When she sucked her lips in and her cheeks hollowed, Mage could actually see the family resemblance between Abra and Sid, because between his extravagant punk image and her conservative long skirts, it was sometimes hard to imagine they’d been raised by the same people.
“Sorry, brother. I got ahead of myself. It’s just all so exciting.”
Mage wasn’t sure if he could deny Sid that bit of recklessness when he was so desperate. The unexpected nature of Sid’s relationship with Asher had broken the steel core that used to keep him from making rash decisions. He seemed so lost without that armor around his heart, Mage couldn’t find it in himself to argue.
The pliers took another bite of the fence. Then another. And another. Mage briefly hid his face, taking a deep breath to calm down. It couldn’t be helped. Today, he’d break the law.
When he looked back at his life, he’d only ever broken the law whenever Dusk talked him into dumb shit. And the one time Mage ended up arrested and got his mugshot taken was after he’d followed Dusk on a ridiculous escapade to save Abra from her crazy cult family. He didn’t exactly regret it, since Abra needed to be saved, but talking to his Dad after the information about his arrest had been leaked to the media hadn’t been his proudest moment.
Dusk pulled on Mage’s arm. “Let’s go. Quick. I wanna see his face. We could, like, creep him out through the window.”
Mage stood still, easily resisting the pull, but Sid was already through the hole in the fence and helping his sister cross. Great. “What do you think this is?”
Behind Dusk’s back, Lolly rolled his eyes. “Where’s your sense of fun? You’re a rock star, and you can’t be one without doing crazy shit. Without it, you’re just… I don’t know, a musician. And how boring is that?”
Mage huffed, but finally stopped resisting. “We’re not exactly there yet. There’s not gonna be a manager to cover up our mess.”
Lolly cocked his head. “Aren’t you the manager?
“That’s exactly what I meant. If the band’s bass player needs to be the manager, we’re not rock stars yet!”
“Come on, what’s the worst that could happen?” Dusk asked, with a grin on his handsome face.
Asher calling the cops on them and Mage being the first one to get shot?
“That’s exactly what I don’t want to find out.”
To Mage’s surprise, Dawn was the one to cross the fence next. A piece of wire pulled on his hood, revealing the pretty face with blushing cheeks, and shoulder-length black hair. “Sid could get his heart broken. That’s the worst that could happen. We can’t have that.”
It was official—Mage lost this battle. And since there was no use fighting, he pushed past Dusk and Lolly, and crossed onto Asher’s property, careful so the wire wouldn’t pull on his dreadlocks.
“Okay, fine. But let’s be reasonable. We’ve already damaged the fence. Let’s not act like this is a fun outing.”
A snowball hit his back just as he finished saying that. Perfect. He’d have fought those clowns if he weren’t too busy following Dawn. So they were here for Sid, but Mage still had his own priorities, and Dawn’s safety was at the very top of the list, right next to staying alive and signing a real record deal.
The belt of trees surrounding the property was quite extensive, though once they moved beyond scattered bushes and into snow so deep Dawn and Abra sunk in above their knees, the silhouette of the huge wooden lodge appeared in the bright moonlight. The light was on downstairs, but despite the size of the windows, Mage couldn’t spot Asher from afar. Breathing in a gulp of air, he rubbed his stinging cheeks, wondering if he really was the only one here who felt uncomfortable approaching someone’s home without warning.
Sid was about to enter the clearing beyond the trees when a dull, steady barking made them all come to a standstill.
“Look, maybe we should try calling him again,” Mage proposed, hurrying to join Dawn at the front of their group, because this could turn ugly real fast.
But before he could once more attempt to convince his reckless friends they should turn back, Asher’s familiar silhouette appeared behind the glass, and he opened the sliding door.
A massive dog launched outside like a rocket.
“You didn’t say he had a dog!” Dusk yelled, and bolted toward the gate, with Lolly following his example.
Sid didn’t change his course much, advancing toward the house at an awkward angle, his long, skinny legs hopping through the deep snow like stilts. “I didn’t know!”
Abra was nowhere to be seen in the sparse light, but it was Dawn’s high-pitched scream that pushed Mage into action, and instead of running to find safety beyond the fence, he faced the upcoming wall of fur and teeth that jumped through the white fluff as if it were a healthy young colt. The huge St. Bernard was muscular, and likely weighed more than him.
Without thinking, Mage chased the small figure running across the snow-covered lawn, his own muscles tight as he jumped through the white piles, desperate to reach Dawn. The thick clothes were a hindrance, and at some point, the scarf he’d gotten at a gas station unwound from his neck, leaving it vulnerable to the frosty air.
His lungs ached from the speed and the temperature of the air Mage drew in all-too-rapidly, but the rhythmic thumping behind him didn’t leave space for thinking. There was only one thing Mage knew now—if he didn’t catch up with Dawn on time, the idiotic decision they’d made as a group could have consequences much worse than getting arrested.
“Get the dog away!” Mage caught up with Dawn before the dog could. He closed his arms around him and they both toppled into the snow just before the St. Bernard pounced.
“Ash! It’s just us! Call off the dog!” Sid yelled, but it was too late.
The beast sank its teeth into Mage’s forearm and pulled, yet all Mage could think about was Dawn’s stiffened body under his. The boy was so scared he let out a sob, clutching the front of Mage’s jacket. Their eyes met, and Mage knew he’d let the dog chew his arm off if that meant keeping Dawn safe.
The hoodie and thick jacket protected Mage from the sharp teeth, but once the St Bernard thumped its front paws on his back, as if trying to break ice, there were more important things to worry about. Mage forced his body to stiffen, propped on hands and knees to protect Dawn in the safety of the snow den created by their combined weight. The dog shook its head, growling as if he were out for blood, but even with the shudder running down Mage’s body, he kept himself steady, focused on Dawn, who stared back at him in the dark capsule of air warmed by their breathing.
“It’s okay. Don’t move.”
Dawn’s eyes glistened with tears, but he slid his hands from Mage’s jacket to his uncovered neck. Mage wasn’t sure what that was about, but then he understood that despite his fear, Dawn wanted to protect Mage’s throat. They were down in the snow, and yet Mage had never been filled with so much warmth.
He could sense the heat of Dawn’s palms even through the overly large gloves, and Mage was sorry he’d given them to him after all. A sudden movement from above tugged Mage up, but before he could spin and fight the dog for their lives, Asher’s v
oice cut through the frantic beating filling Mage’s ears.
“Balto. Get off him. Get off him!”
Another pull, dragged Mage up, and he could barely feel the squeeze of someone briefly holding his arm when all his attention was focused on Dawn’s delicate face, on his long dark hair spread across the snow. Dawn let out a desperate sob and quickly rose. His whole body trembled, and Mage held him to make sure Dawn wouldn’t fall over. The barking was getting more distant now.
“A-a-are you o-o-kay?” he choked out, with his teeth clattering, and pulled Mage close. “I should have ran f-faster.”
Mage could hear the others approaching, but he didn’t want anyone filling the space between the two of them with their unnecessary presence, so he pulled Dawn into a firm hug, rubbing his back in gentle circles. “It’s fine. Not your fault. I should have stopped you all from coming here. What were we thinking?” he muttered, briefly glancing toward Asher, who was struggling to herd the dog back into the house. Sid followed him like a puppy, uncaring that Dawn could have gotten hurt because of this stupid plan.
“Oh, my God! Dawn! Mage! Are you guys okay? What a fucking beast!” Dusk ran up to them, and with Lolly pressing on from the other side, Mage found himself in the middle of a hug sandwich. Too little too late.
Mage sighed and combed his fingers through Dawn’s damp hair. “You should have thought about this before you cut a hole in the damn fence!”
Dusk rolled his eyes as he stepped back. “Get that hockey stick out of your ass. Nobody got hurt.”
It was easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one with bruises and aching hands. It was only thanks to Mage’s puffy jacket that his arm hadn’t been mauled to bits. “You would be singing a different tune if you had to explain to your mom why Dawn got bitten by a giant St. Bernard in someone’s yard.”
Dusk groaned. “But he wasn’t. You’re the hero. Saved the day.” The praise sounded particularly uninspired.
The Underdogs Box Set - Books 1-3 (gay rockstar romance) Page 44