Kylie had let Cora—the publicist she’d shared with Trace—go because it was a conflict of interest for Cora to try and spin his rehab stay positively for both of them. She planned to find an agent as soon as possible so they wouldn’t be sharing one of those anymore either. It was bad enough they shared a bus.
But Jane’s advice was always just keep your mouth shut, and Kylie often found herself struggling with that. And now, some dude named Josh from Rolling Stone magazine was tagging along on her every move. While she freaked the hell out about what her publicist had just said and the fact that she couldn’t stop thinking about Trace Corbin’s mouth on hers. To make matters worse, her phone had been ringing constantly all day.
“Sorry, I know I’m being rude. It’s just a weird day,” she told Josh in hopes that he wouldn’t write that she was a self-absorbed bitch who spent every waking second on her phone. They still hadn’t made it through the interview they’d started that morning. “I know you probably have a ton of questions left. I have thirty minutes until I go on if you want to squeeze the rest of them in.”
“No worries.” Josh smiled and she wondered if it was sincere or if he was compiling a list of reasons to slam her. This business was tough, and she’d learned the hard way not to trust anyone.
“So how has touring with your current boyfriend and your ex affected your performance?”
Kylie took a deep breath. “Um, that’s a difficult question to answer.”
“Give it a shot,” Josh prompted.
She forced a smile. “Oh-kay. Well, for starters, I don’t actually have a boyfriend exactly. Despite what everyone seems to think, technically I’m single.”
“That so? Well, that’s interesting, considering.”
“Considering what?” Kylie asked.
“Oh, you know. The reports that your guitar player leaves your apartment at all hours.”
“We write together,” she told him through gritted teeth. “And we’re friends. Like, actually friends. Not pretend friends for the sake of the media.”
“Is that a dig at someone specifically?”
Josh was starting to irritate her.
“No,” she said evenly. “It’s just, sometimes you read that people are in a relationship or just friends or enemies, or whatever, and really it’s just media hype for their next album, or a tour or something.”
“I see. Care to give an example?” Josh arched an eyebrow under his over-styled-to-look-intentionally-messy brown hair.
Suddenly she felt extremely stupid. As if stringing words together into sentences was suddenly outside the realm of her particular skill set. She’d never liked talking things out very much. She preferred to write songs about her feelings.
“I don’t have one.” She sighed. “I just meant that I’m not playing anything up or down with Steven Blythe. We’re friends. We hang. We have a good time. My regular guitar player’s wife just had twins. He needed some time off and Steven’s band was taking a breather. It was perfect timing and it’s nice to be on tour with a friend.”
“Would you call Trace Corbin a friend?”
Geez. This guy. Kylie glanced over to where Trace stood up on the stage. A few VIP fans had won tickets to some promotional thing he was doing before the concert. They were all female and squealing and jumping up and down. She was pretty sure one of them started crying when he hugged her and signed her shirt.
“No, I probably wouldn’t.” She bit the inside of her cheek harder than she meant to and tried to think. It was important not to say anything that could be twisted into something negative later. Or that the label would give her hell for. “But not because I have bad feelings toward him or anything. Just because at one point we were sort of involved and now we’re not. It’s like dating someone you work with and then breaking up. But you still have to work in the same office. You don’t hate each other, but the dynamic of your relationship has changed. So it’s not something I can label for you. It’s not friendship and we’re not a couple. We’re just on tour together.”
“And why is that?”
Kylie pulled her eyes from Trace. “Why is what?”
“Why are you on tour tog—”
Before he could finish, her phone rang again. She offered him an apologetic smile. “Sorry. One sec.”
Glancing down at her phone, she didn’t recognize the number. But the way this day was going, it could have been anyone.
“Hello?”
“Kylie? Kylie Ryans?” The voice was female and super high-pitched.