I could barely take my eyes off Tristan as she danced. She was smiling tonight. Wide. A light that was always inside her, but was often dimmed, was blooming into full glory, no longer hiding behind a blackout blanket. Tonight, it had broken free. She was radiant as she kicked her boots andshimmied and shook. She made me want to lose myself in her.
We danced to three songs in a row, two line dances before the last one required us to merge our figures together. The slow swell matching the pace of my hand as it grazed her hip, her waist, her side. Our bodies were talking to each other. Speaking a language as ancient as the skies. Attraction. Lust. But something deeper as well.
More.
When the sultry song ended, I led her through the crowd filling the place to bursting back to the barstool where our drinks waited for us. I wasn’t sure who’d kept the seats empty and waiting, Mick or Marco, but I was grateful to have a spot at the end of the counter, the place I normally hid out from the crowd.
I poured us another shot, and we downed them.
“Brady O’Neil!” The screech to my left caught me off guard after the long minutes I’d remained almost human instead of a superstar. I turned to the woman, barely more than a girl, hardly old enough to be in the bar. Her face was lit up, happiness bubbling through her.
“Can you sign this for me?” She shoved her arm out at me, angling her wrist, pointing at the tender spot where her pulse would beat, and holding out a permanent marker.
I turned my real smile into my Brady-facing-the-world smile as I took the pen from her. “Sure, darlin’. What do you want me to write?”
“Oh. Well. What do you want to write?” It turned flirtatious in two seconds, even though I’d clearly been drinking with someone else. The fan wasn’t being mean or spiteful. She truly just didn’t see Tristan. Dani was the one to point it out to me a few years ago—how everyone around me faded away in the intense focus my fans gave me.
I wroteSpread love into the world, xoxo Brady O’Neil. She giggled while I wrote along her wrist.
“That’s beautiful,” she said.
I handed her back the pen.
“Have a fun night,” I said and then turned back to Tristan, who’d watched the entire exchange. The layer of chainmail had started to slide back down between us, and it was the last thing I wanted.
“Take a walk with me?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Let me just tell Stacy I’m taking off.”
She weaved through the crowd toward the dance floor where Jin and Stacy were still moving together. It wasn’t every day you saw a man who was as happy to spend his time moving and grooving as his wife was. Maybe he just did it for her, but it didn’t look like it was much of a sacrifice. He looked happy to have his body pushed up against hers.
I waved my head at Marco toward the kitchen, the way I normally escaped, and he joined me there.
“I’m going to take a walk with Tristan. Why don’t you head back to the apartment?”
He looked around at the crowd.
“Let me get you both out and away from the stampede first,” he said.
I nodded.
Tristan returned, and I put my hand on her elbow, guiding her through the kitchen, out the back door, through the alley, and to the street that ran parallel to Main. No one was around, and the noise from the clanking of the kitchen and the music of the bar immediately was muffled.
“Call me if you need me,” Marco said, and he disappeared into the darkness, his black apparel blending into the shadows.
As if we’d spoken and agreed to it, Tristan and I turned and stepped in the direction of her house. Of Elana’s house. A repeat of just a few nights ago, but this time, the weather was at least thirty degrees warmer. As if we’d seen the last of the winter storms. New life. New beginnings.
“Does that ever get…weird?” she asked.
“Which part?”
“Well… The random person asking for your autograph must be odd, too, but I meant your bodyguard hanging around all the time.”
I shrugged.
“It probably would be if Marco and I didn’t get along so well. He and Trevor are the ones who babysit me the most.”
She gave a soft laugh. “Babysit?”
