Page 13 of Dedicated
Later, when I climbed into my bunk and closed my eyes, I laid the scene out in my mind like a specimen on a slide, trying to examine and pinpoint my feelings exactly. Once, my reaction would have been different, less weighed down by emotion, more amusement that Les could get a seasoned reporter like Adam Slade on his knees. Never mind what it said about the guy’s ethics. His morals weren’t my business and Les’s shouldn’t have been, either, but it was different now, and it’d been that way for the entirety of this tour. And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, as much as I’d tried to put it out of my head, things had changed after the cabin and I was still struggling to figure it out. And what to do about it.
The memory of Les’s expression in that lounge wound sinuously over the backs of my eyelids, that half-lidded, deep green, arousal-heavy stare, the parted lips, plump and lush and wet. Once, I was the cause of it, and that was what was really fucking with me.
What inspires your lyrics, Les?
Les:Everything. My mind’s a crowded place. I walk down a street and there’s potential everywhere. I don’t really know how to explain the mechanics of it. People, places, random shit I see and get kinda hung up on.
Evan:He has frequent run-ins with telephone poles.
Les:That was one time.
Evan:At least twice. Remember Melbourne? And then there was the time I had to yank you back from stumbling in front of a bus in Rome.
Les:Oh yeah. Shit, well, that’s what you’re there for.
Evan:Loyal guide dog, yes.
Les:We need to get you one of those special guide dog vests so you can start coming inside at restaurants.
Chapter 11
Six months ago
There was a heavy current in the air, like the metallic tinge just before a storm, foreshadowing in the way Ella glanced between us after I’d scrambled to pour three shots, and we lifted our glasses and clinked them together. We huddled in a little cluster, and we all tossed back our shots at the same time, all swallowed at the same time, all lowered our glasses at the same time, then shoved them back on the counter and laughed.
A pregnant silence followed, a knowing silence glued together between the three of us by Ella’s hand on Evan’s forearm and the finger she’d hooked through my belt loop. I wasn’t sure what kind of line we were walking, but I was afraid to even speak and accidentally nudge it in the wrong direction.
Luckily, Ella stepped in by leaning to brush a kiss over my mouth, her hand still on Evan’s arm. It was brief, but I was shocked as hell to find Evan still standing there when it ended, this intensely focused gaze on me that softened when, in one smooth swivel, Ella’s lips were within a hair’s breadth of his.
“Please?” she whispered. I could see resistance in the way his hands hung slack at his sides. His shoulders twitched once, like he’d been about to take a step backward and stopped himself. He glanced away from Ella’s pretty mouth and back at me again, his eyes hard, almost challenging. Then he put his hand on her cheek and kissed her gently. Tenderly, as if he was making some kind of counter to what Ella had said earlier about liking my brand of roughness.
Ella reached for me, pulling me closer until I was anchored at Evan’s side. My hand collided with his as I wrapped her waist. I knew what she wanted, and I definitely knew what I wanted. And I could only assume that since Evan was still there, he was okay with it, too.
Triple kisses were one of thosegreat in theorythings, but the spatial configuration proved tricky. Ella tipped her head a little when I joined in, making room, and the space between the three of us became a breathless microcosm of tongues and lips lashing out sloppily. There wasn’t a lot of finesse to it, and mostly it was hotbecauseit was so dirty and disorganized.
I caught a swipe of Evan’s tongue, a darker, masculine flavor and heat compared to the light pink dart of Ella’s. She shifted her focus between us. One second I was lapping at the sides of their mouths as she kissed Evan, the next my tongue was flicking smoothly over the length of hers and I felt the background scrape of Evan’s teeth at the corner of my mouth.
Someone groaned. Me. And I realized I had a hand on each of them and my fingers were sneaking drowsily behind the hem of Evan’s T-shirt to spread across his lower back. A handful of minutes passed in this strange tango of lips, and somehow we seemed to get closer together until we were all squashed against each other and I wasn’t sure who was touching me where. I thought Evan’s hand was near my shoulder and Ella’s around my waist. She sucked at Evan’s lower lip, and I dropped my mouth to her throat, pulling a moan from her when I nipped at the tight cords of tendons there.
All I was thinking about was how insanely fucking hot this whole situation was and how damn awkward it was going to be if one of us stopped. I didn’t want that. I’d have done anything to keep us from getting stuck in an awkward, foot shuffling silence.
I was into Ella, I really was, but the second Evan got involved, it was over for me. I’d been rocking a low-key hard-on for him for months. Maybe even since shortly after we’d formed the band. There was something about him. Some presence that drew me to him that I couldn’t explain. I was sure some of it had to do with our music and how on the level and connected we were when writing and performing together, but there was something else less definable there, too, a longing in me that went beyond the songs we composed. I wondered about him all the time, and though I spent weeks and months on end with him, watching him with Ella was like having the curtain ripped back on this side of him he’d kept from me. A side I found very fucking intriguing indeed.
The moment she reached into his pants and stroked him, his eyes went hot with desire. His lips parted on a soft, surprised exhale, and I was a goner. My low-key crush exploded into full-on cosmic-sized lust. I wanted a hit of him the way I wanted my next breath, and even though I already knew that whatever I got tonight wasn’t going to be enough by a long shot, I was still bound and determined to get it.
Chapter 12
Present day
Iwasn’t even sure how what happened with Adam Slade happened. He did the interview, asked the questions, and sometime around the end, I became aware that he’d been giving me that look, the hungry I-want-you look that I was more used to receiving from fans than reporters. And when I flicked up my eyes and caught him doing it again, he’d jerked his gaze away, swallowing hard. I suppose you could say I instigated it by stretching my arms out over the back of the couch and letting my legs sprawl wide. When he looked back at me again, I tilted my head to the side, watching his expression and reading everything I needed to know in how it shifted. He was on his knees for me less than a minute later.
It wasn’t until I closed the door behind him as he tripped down the steps of the bus that I registered the scent of wings and remembered Evan and I were supposed to hang out. Probably the reason he’d been so gruff when he opened the door. Or maybe he was just pissed at the reporter for crossing a line of integrity, but shit, that happened all the time and, if nothing else, I figured I’d just guaranteed us a raving write-up. Evan could thank me later.
Or so I told myself, because I still felt guilty. I poked through the bag of food as the bus started up. The roadies trundled through the door, with Evan bringing up the rear and heading directly for his bunk. I cut up with the crew for a while, then went back to the bunks to see if I could make nice with Evan. But when I peeled back the curtain, he had his back to me, and even a poke only roused him enough to mutter a curt, “Exhausted.” Then he fumbled behind him and yanked the curtain back into place.
I gave up and returned to the lounge to stare at my notebook for a while. Nothing came. I felt words distantly, but I couldn’t coax them out onto the page. I was braintied. Was that even a thing?
Giving up, I climbed into my bunk, plugging my earbuds in and listening to a playlist Blink made for me. He was good at finding new music he knew I’d like. The bus swayed gently beneath me, a three-ton rocking cradle. I’d gotten used to how the vibration of the pavement below hummed in my bones for hours after we stopped anywhere. Some days I felt more highway than human. More parts moving with purpose than skin and bone. I had trouble slowing down. I had trouble just being still. Maybe it had something to do with moving around a lot growing up, the wandering and very fluid nature of my parents’ relationship and being their sole offspring. I’d always been aware of everything. And I’d always felt this freeform sense of… loneliness, I guess. A sense of not being fully grounded, and yet anytime in the past when a lover tried to tie me down, I’d be the first to flee.