The next thing I know, he’s leaning over me, kissing my forehead.
“Daltrey?”
“Shh. I’ll be back, okay? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Have a good meeting,” I whisper, my eyelids fluttering closed again. The last thing I feel is his lips on mine before sleep claims me again.
For the first time in a long time, all my dreams are happy ones.
***
“Are you whistling?” Karen asks, staring at me from the doorway of the crew bus. “I’ve never heard you whistle.”
Paige peeks around from behind her. “Daisy! There you are. We were worried about you.”
“Seems like we worried for nothing,” Karen says, crossing her arms. “She looks pretty damn happy to me.”
“You’d be happy too,” I say, leaning back in my seat, “if you’d spent your night being ravished by a famous rock star.”
After a moment’s pause, they both start shrieking.
Paige practically knocks Karen over in her hurry to get into the bus. “Oh, my God!”
“You little slut!” Karen cries, laughing, as she throws her arms around me.
“Shut up,” I say, around my own giggles. “Everyone will hear you.”
“Who cares?” Karen says. “If I slept with a member of Ransom I’d want the whole world to know.”
I shove her away, rolling my eyes. “Well, I don’t.”
“Oh, Daisy,” Paige says, looking like she might cry, “I’m so happy for you.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I’m pretty damn happy, too.”
“So what happened?” she asks, pulling me to the couch. “When I saw you packing, you seemed so upset.”
I tell them all about the day Daltrey and I shared, pausing to allow them to squeal at all the romantic parts. When I tell them about freaking out, and how I told him everything, they both get quiet, squeezing my hands.
“But then it didn’t matter, not really, because he loves me anyhow,” I say.
“Aww,” Paige sighs, while Karen says, “A point which he made clear by boning you all night?”
“Karen!” Paige yells.
But I only laugh. Nothing’s going to bother me, not today. Everything seems a hundred times funnier, the world around me brighter, cleaner, more beautiful. It’s a world in which Daltrey loves me, and nothing can change that.
After they’ve drilled me for as many details as they can get, I decide we should start earning our keep. “We need to get going,” I say. “There’s work to do.”
We grab the boxes of extra merchandise and make our way into the venue. There’s more in the storage areas under the bus, and it takes us the better part of an hour to get everything into the building. I don’t see anyone from the band while we work.
I slipped out of Daltrey’s room before he came back from the band meeting, so I haven’t seen him since he left this morning. Even though I know it’s ridiculous, I miss him already.
I thought that finally being able to kiss him, to touch him however I wanted, would dull the desire I’ve felt for him all these years, but I was wrong. If anything, having a taste of him makes me want him all the more. By lunchtime, I’m seriously regretting my decision not to wait in his bed for him to come back. I should just live in his bed.
“Hey, Levi,” Paige calls.
I look up from the stack of hoodies I’m folding to see Levi striding across the venue lobby toward us. I smile in greeting, but it slips from my face when I see how serious he looks.
“Hey,” I say as he reaches the merch table. “What’s up?”
“Have you seen Daltrey?”
I frown. “Not since this morning. I saw him before the meeting.” I can’t help the blush that floods my cheeks, but he gives no indication that he notices.
“No one’s seen him since the meeting,” he says, running his hands through his hair. He looks stressed, a fact that sends a chill through me. Levi is never stressed. He takes everything as it comes, the calm center of the storm for all the band members.
“What do you mean no one’s seen him?” I ask.
“He left the meeting to go upstairs to his room for a few. We were supposed to meet back in the lobby to get to the photo shoot, and he never came down. When we went up to his room, no one was there.”
“What?” I’m definitely scared now. “Did you call him?”
“He’s not answering. I got a text from him about a half hour later telling me that he was fine but taking care of something and to tell his dad sorry.”
“What?”
He shakes his head. “That’s exactly what I texted back. But he never responded, and he hasn’t answered anyone all day.”