She forced a laugh as she set the computer down on the floor next to the bed and then rolled over so she was draped on top of him. “Don’t worry. I’m not asking for your deepest, darkest secrets. Just a few of the small ones. Like, were you really born in Texas? Or were you born in Missouri? Or Alaska?” she asked, remembering she’d seen an interview where he’d claimed to be from Anchorage.
She’d thought where he was born would be an easy question to start with—what did it matter, after all? But he stiffened underneath her and for long seconds, she was certain he wasn’t going to answer.
In the end, though, he did. Grudgingly. “I was born in Springfield, Missouri.”
She’d already known that from the birth certificate, but the fact that he was honest with her…it meant something. She could feel herself melting just a little bit more, feel her defenses getting just a little bit weaker. The fact that a hint of a native accent crept into his voice when he said “Missouri” was just icing on the cake.
“Say it again,” she teased, straining forward to drop a kiss on his chin.
He looked baffled. “Say what?”
“Missouri. Your accent is adorable.”
He rolled his eyes at her, but he did it—twice—then waited for her giggles to quiet down before saying, “Okay, my turn.”
“For what?”
“You don’t think you’re the only one in this bed who gets to ask questions, do you?”
She had thought that, actually. But if he had questions…she had answers. As long as he didn’t ask her about her real reason for being in Austin.
Her stomach tightened unpleasantly at the thought. Here she was, all hung up on whether she could trust him, and she was the one lying to him. The one keeping secrets. The fact that she was doing it because she cared about him, because she wanted him to succeed, didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. Not when they were plastered against each other in bed playing twenty fucking questions.
Because her guilt was eating her alive, she told him, “Ask away. I’m an open book.” And she would be, she promised herself, about everything but her relationship to her dad and Caleb and her real reason for being in Austin. Wyatt deserved that much.
He tightened his arms around her waist, pulled her even more firmly against him. She reveled in it—in the feel of his tight, hard body beneath hers. In the sound of his heart beating beneath her ear. And, most importantly, in how well their bodies matched up. How good it felt to be wrapped up in him as the streets below them started slowly filling with people beginning their morning commute.
“Hmm.” He deliberated for a few seconds, his fingers unconsciously toying with the ends of her hair as he did. Finally, he settled on, “What do you do at the label? When you aren’t formulating social media plans for pain-in-the-ass bands? Or is that what you do all the time?”
Shit. Seriously? He could have asked her anything, and that was what he’d chosen? She was going to kick Caleb’s ass for putting her in this position—and her own ass, too, as soon as she figured out how to manage that. How was she supposed to lie to him when they were naked in bed together? And when she was trying so hard to let him know that he could trust her? When she was working so hard to trust him, too?
In the end, she decided to stick as close to the truth as she could manage. “Mostly I’m in marketing. I work out plans for bands when we first sign them, decide how we’re going to market them, what kind of publicity we want to garner for them, what demographics we want them to appeal to. I’m also often the liaison between the label and the band’s management. I make sure we’re all on the same page.”
“So you do all that, but you don’t actually work with the bands?” He looked skeptical. “Or is it just Shaken Dirty that you didn’t work with early on?”
“No.” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I don’t work with any of the bands. I just strategize.”
“Why not? You mentioned before that music is your life. Or was that just about your work?”
“No! Music is my life.” She rolled over, despite his efforts to keep her in place, and settled on the side of the bed with her feet on the floor. “Rock, especially. I fell in love with Queen and Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin before I could even walk. Spent my childhood going to Pearl Jam and U2 concerts. Soundgarden, Nirvana, The Cure. Nine Inch Nails. I loved them all. From the time I was in junior high, I never wanted to do anything but work with musicians and help connect them with fans who really got their music.”
“Which explains your obsession with social media. You get to do that on a global scale now, right?”
“I guess.” She sighed. It was so much more complicated than that, but she couldn’t explain it to him. Not if she wanted to keep her cover.
“There’s a story there,” he said, brows raised. “Do you want out of marketing? Would you rather be focusing on the music end of—”
“Dude! No offense, but I’m pretty sure you’re on like your fifth question, and I only got to ask one. That’s not how this is supposed to go.”
“Yeah, but this is so much more interesting!”
“To you, maybe. Not to me.”
“Okay, fine.” He settled back against the headboard with a little bit of a huff. “What do you want to know?”
“When did you move to Austin?”
“When I was sixteen.”