Did I?
Maybe it made me a bad person, asking him to do me this favor despite all the confusing feelings between us, but it didn’t change anything. I still needed him, and if he was willing to let me use him, I would.
Yeah, Golden Boy. Whenever you’d like.
When I exited the bathroom, Mace was waiting. Spencer had disappeared somewhere, so it was just the two of us.
“Are you done being a diva?”
I rolled my eyes. “Needing a few seconds alone after a set does not make me a diva, Mace.”
“Then what about the fact that you spent all week blowing me off?”
I didn’t have an answer for my behavior, not a good one anyway. So I turned it back on him. “What about the fact that you spent all day today ignoring my calls and flaked out on setup?”
He tossed his head to get his black hair out of his eyes. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, completely closed off. Face blank. He said, “I told you, something came up.”
A drop of unease rippled through my chest. He was lying about something.
“Want to tell me what that something was?”
He punched a fist forward in his pocket and clenched his jaw. He shook his head and shrugged. “You have your secrets, and I’ll have mine.”
“The difference, Mace, is that my secrets don’t affect the band.”
“Jesus, I’ve got zero fucks to give about this band, Max. You know I’m only here for you.”
Unbelievable. In some demented part of his brain, he must have thought that sounded romantic because he stepped toward me and slipped his hands over my hips. I shoved him back hard.
“If you knew anything about me, you would know that this band is my life.”
“Oh, it’s clear you care about this band more than you care about me, about anybody.”
“Damn right, I do.”
He tugged on one of his gauges and ran his thumb under his nose. He got up in my face and said, “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
I’d known that for a long time.
“Says the guy with pinpoint pupils. What are you on? Couldn’t wait until after the set?”
He closed his eyes and groaned. “I get it. You’re mad about this morning. I’m sorry.” His hands came up to my jaw, and he continued, “Can’t we just—”
I shoved him back again and felt his fingernails scrape my jaw.
“No, Mace!” My voice was explosive, and I made myself calm down and lower the volume. The last thing we needed was for someone to hear us arguing back here. “Just . . . I can’t do this right now, Mace. Let’s take the night off, and we’ll address this all later.”
“Later, yeah, I’ve been hearing a lot of that recently. I’m sick of waiting for later.”
Damn it. I didn’t have the energy to deal with this right now. I tried to reach for him, to appease him, but he backpedaled away from me. “I don’t know what the hell you want from me, Mace.”
His face screwed up in anger and he said, “I’m not sure I want anything from you anymore.”
He blew out the back exit into the alley, and it didn’t bode well for our relationship that the thing that irked me the most was that he left Spence and I alone to pack up once again.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale.
“Does that really work for you?” I turned to find Cade leaning against the door. He was wearing a black button-down shirt with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. You knew you were in bad shape when just the sight of a guy’s forearms distracted you. The week of not seeing him had done nothing to quell my attraction to him.
Bad news.
“Sometimes,” I said. “At the moment, it’s doing a fat lot of nothing.”
One side of his mouth lifted up in a half-smile, and he asked, “Do you want me to leave?”
I wasn’t sure whether he had heard enough of the fight to know that it was about needing space or if he was just better at reading me. I wasn’t calm, not in the slightest, but I trusted him not to push.
“No, that’s okay. I’m okay.”
Inhale.
Exhale.
He pushed off the wall and stepped inside the room, closing the door behind him.
“I’m really glad I came,” he said.
I nodded, and because I was a glutton for punishment, I asked, “Where’s your friend?”
He laughed and ran a hand across his jaw. My hands tingled, and I pushed them behind my back, far away from him. He said, “She’s gone. Thank God. She wanted to leave in the middle. I didn’t. We agreed to go our separate ways.”
I took a seat on a beat-up old couch in the corner, and he sat a few feet away from me. I slid a little closer.
“I wouldn’t have been offended, you know. You could have left.”
“No, I couldn’t have.” His eyes dipped toward my legs just for a second, but I saw it. “I’m sure you hear this a lot, but you were amazing.”