Rock Kiss 01.5 Rock Courtship(34)

He laughed and told her what to buy for a no-fail potato dish. The conversation, the growing connection between them, it was easy, happy, scary.

Her heart ached, being away from him. Until he hit the road, they hadn’t spent a night apart since New York. But the ache was a tender, beautiful one, and it paradoxically brought them closer. Because this was the first time their relationship had been tested—and they were coming through with flying colors.

Even when Abe almost drank himself into a coma six days into the tour and ended up in hospital, their bond didn’t falter. She did her job, managing the media, while David did his, keeping the band together. He was furious, but he refused to allow Schoolboy Choir to splinter… and the scary thing in her heart grew even bigger and more powerful in the face of his unflinching love and loyalty.

“I am so pissed off,” he said to her after Abe woke up. “But I will not let this destroy us.”

Having already ascertained that Abe would be fine, though his mood was apparently belligerent and aggressive, Thea focused on David. “I’ve never heard you this angry.”

“It’s like he doesn’t give a shit,” David said. “Everything we’ve been through together and he couldn’t fucking knock on my door and say he was spiraling down?” Raw anger. “Hell, he wouldn’t have even had to speak. He could’ve just turned up and I’d have got it. Instead, he’d rather fuck himself up to the point where he might push us to the breaking point.”

But Schoolboy Choir didn’t break, and Thea knew David had a lot to do with that. Furious or not, he managed to rein in his anger enough to ameliorate the tension. Fox, Noah, and Abe all had red-hot tempers. Left alone, Thea had no idea what the three men would’ve said or done, but she knew it wouldn’t have been good.

When she spoke to Molly a few days later, following Abe’s release from the hospital, her sister told her the atmosphere remained edgy. “They’re continuing to make amazing music together,” Molly said, “but it’s going to take time for things to get back to normal.” A small pause, hope in Molly’s tone as she added, “Angry or not, they’re family to one another, will figure things out.”

“Yes.” Thea tapped a pen on her desk. “At least the media interest has died down.” With the agreement of the band, she’d allowed reporters to assume Abe’s hospitalization had resulted from drugs. His problems with cocaine were well documented and no longer newsworthy past a single cycle.

“How are you handling all this?” she asked Molly, thinking of the way Molly’s parents had died and the ugly events that had preceded their deaths. Her sister was already having a tough time navigating a relationship in the glare of fame—this horrible reminder of a past that continued to cause her deep pain was the last thing she needed.

“Better than I thought I would,” Molly said. “Fox has been flat-out wonderful.” Voice husky, her sister spoke again before Thea could reply. “What about you and David?”

Thea stopped tapping her pen, embers heating in her stomach. “He makes me so happy, Molly.” Blowing out a breath, she admitted the rest. “It’s terrifying.”

“I get that,” Molly said softly, and her words held the perceptiveness of a woman who felt the same fear-entangled happiness. “But he adores you, you know.”

Thea’s voice was a rasp when she replied. “I know.” It made her breathless to think of the emotion in David’s eyes when he looked at her. “And… I’m starting to believe it might last.”

Because her trust in him, it kept intensifying, kept becoming stronger.

Knowing how stressed he’d been with the Abe situation, she arranged for hot room service to be waiting for him after the next concert, the dishes his favorites.

He video-called her the minute after he walked into his hotel suite, an adorably astonished look on his face. “Thea, you did this?”

Sitting in bed with the teddy bear beside her, Thea blew him a kiss. “Eat before it gets cold.”

She kept him company while he did so, their conversation effortless.

Then one day, she called him after a bad day at work. It was instinct to think of talking to him, she was so used to sharing her day with him by that point; it wasn’t until he’d picked up that she realized this wasn’t going to be a happy, easy conversation. But it spilled out anyway, everything she’d been holding inside all day.

David didn’t tell her to stop obsessing over work, didn’t switch off. He listened, agreed with her that the man she’d been dealing with was an asshole—really that’s all she’d needed—and the next day, her drummer sent her flowers. Unique and wild and with thorns. Thea smiled each time she saw those flowers, and in a moment of mischief, had a bouquet of lush, fragrant peonies in baby pink delivered to the next hotel on the tour schedule. They were waiting for him when the band checked in.