She shook her head. “Not the same.”
“No, maybe not. Point is, we all get nervous and we all fuck up.” I let her go. “Lex, you have to learn how to believe in yourself.”
She laughed bitterly. “Yeah, okay. Let me just put that on my little ol’ to-do list—” her voice went sarcastic and she mimed writing something on an invisible notebook. “Note to self—be less of a colossal fuckup. Also,believein yourself. All you need is faith, trust, and a little pixie dust.” She glared at me. “You got pixie dust, Myles? Because I don’t.” She slapped my chest with both hands. “This isn’tA Star Is Born, Myles. You’re not going to shove me on stage and make a star out of me. Not everything has a happy fucking ending.”
“It can, though,” I said, stung by her words. “If you let it.”
She turned away, shaking her head.
“Lex—”
She turned back to me, suddenly sultry. “You want a happy ending, Myles?” She pressed herself up against me, eyes burning with sexual promise, leaning forward to give me a glimpse of the tits she was pushing against me. “I’ll give you a happy ending, and you don’t even need a massage first.”
“Lex.”
She cupped my crotch over my zipper—despite my mixed emotions, my body responded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. You want to have a happy ending?” She ripped open my zipper. Reached in and hauled me out, fisting my cock. “This is the happy ending you want.”
“No, it’s not.” I growled. “Quit.”
She bit her lip, her smirk a succubus smile. “Ah, wait, I know.” She dropped to her knees. Brought me to her mouth, spoke in a whisper, her lips sliding against me. “Thisis what you want.”
I grabbed her wrists, pulled away, and lifted her to her feet. “No,” I snarled. “That ain’t what I fuckin’ want, Lex.”
She wiggled against my hold. “Let go, Myles.”
I let her go, but zipped myself up—with intense difficulty and very real pain as I fought to bend my hard cock into my jeans. I faced her. Seething. Angry. Confused. “You can’t distract me with sex this time, Lex. I ain’t askin’ about secrets, I’m just askin’ for you to fuckin’ berealwith me. Youlovedbeing on stage. You know it, and I know it. I know what that looks like, and I saw it out there in you. I saw a woman with massive fuckin’ talent doing the thing she was fuckin’ born to do, and doing it like she’d been doin’ it her whole life. I saw fifty thousand motherfucking people watch you sing your heart out and fuckin’ slay them all dead with how incredible you sounded. I saw that, Lex, and nothin’ you say can make it less true.”
“If that’s what you think you saw, then you’re blind.”
“No, I’m seeing more clearly than ever.” I gave her the full force of everything I was feeling. “The ugliest you, Lex? It’s this, right here. You not believing in your own worth and refusing to hear otherwise.” I was quiet, calm, but I knew my words cut like a knife. “I see it, Lex. Iseeyou.”
“You don’t. You can’t.”
“I do, and I can.” I cradled her face, brushed tears away with my thumbs. “I see the ugliest you, and I still care.” I swallowed hard. Said it. “Still fuckin’ love you, Lex.”
A ragged, raw, agonized sob tore out of her. “Youcan’t!” she screamed. “You don’t know!”
“What?” I shouted back. “What don’t I know?”
“Everything,” she choked out. “Fuckingeverything.”
And then she fled, turning a corner and vanishing into the crowd of techs and stagehands and the whole small army of people it takes to put on a show of this scale. I wove and pushed my way through the crowd, a few steps behind her. And then, in a moment straight out of Hollywood, a taxi appeared from nowhere, stopped, she got in, and was gone in a moment.
Without her purse.
Without her phone.
Without money, cards, or ID…
With no clue which hotel we were staying in.
In a city she’d never been to, in a country whose language she spoke not a single word.
Whatever demon was she was fighting, the thing had her on her heels.
I managed to get a taxi not long after, but by then she was long gone and I had no idea where or how to go about finding her.
13
