Victoria sticks her tongue out at him while Shawn swallows two shots in short order, but she loses her good mood when he holds the third up for me. “Kit?”
My name on his lips is like a foreign thing, something that happened before Victoria and not after. I take the shot in a sort of daze, feeling her eyes on me as my fingers close around the clear plastic. When Shawn settles back into the leather couch cushion, she crosses one of her legs over his, and I get her message loud and clear. I sit on the arm of the opposite couch, declining the second shot he offers me because the last thing I need to do tonight is get drunk and emotional. He shrugs and downs his third.
“Look, I get it,” Victoria says, her pink tongue flicking over the vodka on her lips. “You’re not ready to sign with anyone. Whatever. You have my number when you are. I didn’t come all this way just to talk business.”
“What’d you come for then?” Joel asks, taking the bait she dangles.
“To see all of you, of course.” She turns her meat-eating eyes on Shawn and gives him a photo-ready smile. “I missed you.”
Her hand falls from his chest when he leans forward to pour another round of shots, but it finds its way home as soon as he sits back. And all I can do is watch. Even when other people join in the conversation, my eyes keep drifting back to Victoria’s fingers on Shawn’s chest, her bare calf on his thigh, her lips against his ear.
She’s the type of girl he needs, even if he doesn’t sign with her. A hot, rich, take-control girl. One who’s unforgettable. One with a name like Victoria Hess.
I’m staring at him—at them—when his gaze locks with mine, and Victoria tracks its movement, hers narrowing my way. They can tell I’ve been staring at them like some jealous love-struck creeper, and with two sets of eyes on me, all I can do is stand up. Brush myself off. Announce that I’m going to the bathroom.
“Are you okay?” Mike asks, cutting off the conversation he’s having with some of the stage crew.
“Not feeling so well.”
“Want me to come with you?”
“No,” I stammer as I make my sloppy escape. “No, I’ll be back later.”
I make my way through a maze of hallways, all the way to an exit door that gives way to a burst of star-sprinkled air. I have no intention of ever going back inside—not with my heart having manicured fingernails scratched all down its neck—so my combat boots punish the asphalt all the way across the deserted lot to the bus. We’ve been in that greenroom for so long that the crowd that normally waits for us has gone home, and I’m fumbling with the keypad next to the door when calloused fingertips curl around my arm.
Shawn spins me around, and my chin lifts to meet the intense way he’s staring down at me. “Why did you leave?”
The seriousness in his voice leaves no room for jokes, lies, or anything else I could possibly say. The vodka he drank is practically swimming in his electric-green gaze as he waits for my answer, but I have no answer to give. He brushes soft, black strands of hair away from my face until he’s palming the side of my neck. Then, with his fingers threaded in the thick of my hair, he steps forward and cages me against the bus.
“Why’d you look so pissed when you walked in the greenroom earlier? Why couldn’t you look at me? Why’d you leave?”
There’s nowhere left to run, but I can’t answer him . . . I can’t. “Why did you follow me?”
“For the same reason you left.” His face lowers closer to mine, and my lips quiver with the touch of his breath. “I want to kiss you.”
My heart kicks against my ribs, my palms flattening against the metal behind me. He’s asking me to make the same mistakes all over again. He’s asking me to revisit a party, relive a night on the dance floor, re-create a memory on the bus. And I know I shouldn’t want to . . . but I do. God, I want to.
I want him.
“No.”
“Please.” Shawn’s whisper pleads with me, his lips pulling closer and brushing mine on the word. I turn my face away, but his uncompromising fingers turn my chin back until there’s no more escaping. “Please,” he says again, just before his hungry eyes drop to my mouth. His lips follow, nipping at the closed seam of a kiss that’s threatening to consume me. All of me wants to bloom for him, wants to open wide and let him in. “Let me. Just once.”
His voice is like a kiss in itself—smooth and warm against my mouth, melting my resolve. I wouldn’t have the strength to tell him no again, but he doesn’t give me the chance to. Instead, he draws me closer, and he kisses me with such insistency that the soft petals of my lips are helpless against the heat of him. He kisses me with his eyes open. And, eyes open, I melt.
Kissing Shawn sober is like jumping off a cliff. Like realizing you can fly. Like welcoming the consuming rush of air. Like falling.