“Not just any flash drive, but the flash drive. Click on the folder labeled poetry.”
“He secretly writes poems?”
Kill me now. I resist the urge to smack Cole in the head.
“No, dude, there’s stuff on there Everett doesn’t want to get out,” Parker says, crowding us to get a look.
“You always were the smartest of the three of us.” For the first time, I wonder what it would have been like to grow up with them. To have inside jokes and fights like brothers would.
A pang of something hits me, but I ignore it. Life is what it is.
“Better gene pool,” Parker says, taking the flash drive from me. “Let’s see what’s on this.” Then he tells Jane to close and disappears into the back.
“HOLY SHIT.”
“Looks like he’s found something,” Cole says.
“Use it wisely, bro. But make a copy. Having a backup is always good in life.” I’m in desperate need of a backup plan, or a reset button. I need to get out of this tour, out of my contract, and out on my own.
Freedom. I need to be free.
Tossing the ticket and backstage pass to Cole, I turn and start for the door, but then pause. Everett might not be completely convinced that flash drive will hurt him. So I offer the one thing hardly anyone knows about, the one thing I think will help Cole and Violet. “If Everett tries to pull something, just say the magic phrase: Tara Flowers, Atlanta, Georgia.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Cole’s brows crash together.
Flashing a smile I don’t feel, I open the door. “But he will.”
***
I take another pull from the bottle of whiskey, hoping I pass out before I start thinking about my grandmother before she passed away.
The stadium roars to life again, and I grunt at the television screen.
Now that I’ve done my good deed of the century, I can leave this music tour and work on getting my life straight. I can finally get out from under Everett’s thumb.
In the end, it didn’t matter if Violet believed me or not. I know the truth, and that’s all that matters.
For now anyway.
“That was nice of you,” Bliss says.
I grimace at the sound of her voice. Just who I need to see in my less-than-flattering state—Bliss Davenport, seamstress to the band and star of my very erotic dreams at night.
Curly, brown hair, green eyes, and a body made for sinning with me, she’s the second girl I’ve ever known in this business to not use those assets to get her way. Her clothes are loose and nondescript. She hides in the shadows, watching everyone and rarely interacting.
Except with me.
Not bothering to get up, I glance over my shoulder just as the door shuts behind her. She drops a duffle bag on the floor.
For some reason she has a tendency to assume the best about me, even while knowing my faults and not giving me a pass on them because I’m famous, rich, and easy on the eyes. She doesn’t need someone like me, and I’d thought I made that clear to her the last time we were together.
“What makes you think I had anything to do with that?” Gesturing at the monitor, I stretch my legs out further along the couch in the dressing room.
“Because you say things like that.” She walks across the room and sits in a folding chair, but not before placing it right beside me.
I’m trying like hell not to notice her, especially not after our conversation the other night. And certainly not after I felt her up on my bus. She needs to leave, mostly because I don’t trust myself to be alone with her.
“What do you want, Bliss?”
“To watch the show. Oh, that’s the sweetest thing.” She sighs, and I roll my eyes, not bothering to see what my brother has done on stage.
“You could do that anywhere,” I point out.
Her profile is still to me, glasses perched on her cute nose, full lips smiling. Her hair flows down her back, and now I know what it feels like, how those curls like to wrap possessively around my fingers when I touch them… I swallow.
“I thought you could use the company,” she says.
“You think I want you for company?”
She smiles in answer, turning to me. Once again, I’m struck by her quiet beauty—it’s deeper than skin deep. It radiates from her, but in a completely unassuming way.
I try again. “You’re thinking we could be friends or something?”
She grabs the remote and clicks off the television. “I don’t think we could be just friends, Jackson.”
There’s she goes with my real name. “I think you’re right.”
Her smile falls. “Oh.”
I crook a finger at her. “Why don’t you join me?”
She stands, little pink tongue darting out to lick her lips. “There’s not enough room.”