Hazel Jacobs

Sinful Rhythms

Black Lilith Series Book Four

Hazel Jacobs

Copyright 2017 Hazel Jacobs

All Rights Reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, real people, and real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the Author’s imagination and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organizations or places is entirely coincidental.

All rights are reserved. This book is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the express written permission of the Author. All songs, song titles and lyrics contained in this book are the property of the respective songwriters and copyright holders.

ISBN13: 978-0646970462

Editing by Swish Design & Editing

Formatting by Swish Design & Editing

Cover design by Jesh Designs

Cover Image Copyright 2017

Dedication

Kiss me, please kiss me.

But kiss me out of desire, babe, and not consolation.

– Jeff Buckley

Blurb

Tessa Hunt is a former English major and current barista who’s stuck working at Starbucks.

She’s got a huge family she loves, a pile of books in her ‘to be read’ pile, and a best friend she’s never met. D came into her life accidentally via an X-rated picture sent to the wrong number one late night five months ago, and the pair of them have been trading texts and secrets ever since.

When D invites her to finally meet at a rock concert, in person, because he has a job opportunity for her, she discovers that her hilarious dorky best friend D is the world-famous Dash Todd, from Black Lilith.

The job he’s lined up for her is shadowing Black Lilith for their Sinful Rhythms tour and writing an article about them for Rolling Stone! That’s the sort of thing that launches careers. But when Tessa tries to coax Dash into a more serious relationship, she realizes that things aren’t as easy as she thought they would be.

Dash makes her weak in knees, but he goes cold the moment she tries to get serious. After so many years of effortless sex with groupies, she can hardly blame him for wanting to avoid commitment.

When another man vies for Tessa’s attention, she needs to decide whether to pursue a relationship with someone who is actually interested or to wait for her rockstar best friend.

Acknowledgments

I firstly want to thank my fabulous readers. Thank you for loving these boys as much as I do. It’s incredibly humbling. I hope I’ve given the Black Lilith gang the ending they deserved. I’ll miss them crowding my head on a daily basis, and it’s with mixed emotions that it’s come to an end, but what a journey it’s been bringing them to life. Thank you for choosing me to do just that, boys! xx

To my girls, Dee, Kayley, Mia & Josie. You girls have fast become sisters to me through this last year, and I love you all so much. The late night calls that would go for hours, pep talks when I felt deflated, and overall support when I needed that boost saved my sanity. I have found forever friends, and although we are oceans apart, I’ve never felt closer to friends in my life. I’m going to jump on you all when I land in Atlantic City, next year. BRACE YOURSELVES, TRIGGER IS COMING! xx

To my editor, Kaylene. You were the first person I spoke to after writing Black Lilith. I was completely clueless about what the next step was, but you encouraged, nurtured, and guided me through this whole process. I don’t have the words to thank you enough for that, but I love you dearly and thank you from the bottom of my heart! xx

To Kim, I don’t think I have ever come across a more sweet and pure soul in my life. You ooze love, positivity, and this beautiful strength every day, and I’m incredibly grateful to have you as a friend. Thank you for always guiding me in the right directions, and being a pillar of support through this whole journey for me from day dot. You deserve the world, Beautiful! Love you. xx

K,J,H – You each own my heart, and I love you all beyond words. xx

Table of Contents

Dedication

Blurb

Acknowledgments

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

Bonus Chapter

Connect With Me Online

About the Author — Hazel Jacobs

Chapter One

Tessa Hunt ducks under an awning hanging over the street to check her phone. There’s rain splashing in the puddles around her feet, and her phone illuminates her face with bright light. Probably unflattering, but she’s too focused on her screen to worry about it. A slow smile crosses her lips when she sees who the sender is.

D: MAYDAY!! JUST WALKED IN ON MY FRIENDS HAVING A 4SOME. I AM TRAUMATIZED SEND HELP

Tessa covers her mouth so that she’s not laughing out loud in the middle of the street. It’s not the weirdest thing that people in Chicago would have seen, but she’s dedicated a lot of time to keeping herself as well-put-together as possible. It’s a habit she keeps up even when she’s alone. But D always manages to slip through her façade.

Glancing around, Tessa makes sure that no one is coming—she’s standing in front of a bakery, but when standing near Water Tower Place, there’s always a chance of a swarm of tourists running a girl over—and types out her reply.

Tessa: Holy shit, which friends?

Then she tucks the phone back into her pocket and covers her head with the hood of her jacket. Tessa’s blonde hair is relatively long, but she can gather it easily into her hood so the rain doesn’t send it into a frizz-frenzy. It would serve her right if it did, considering she’d spent forever trying to wrestle it into artful, loose waves that morning when she should have been working on her portfolio. Loose waves won’t get her a job, and D keeps telling her to embrace the straight hair.

As though he would know, he’s never even seen her hair.

Tessa slides out the way of a big guy in a suit on her travels to the train station. She spent too much time at the library, and now she’s running late to make dinner. It was worth it, she thinks, as she skips around another slow walker and ducks an umbrella before it knocks her head off. Her backpack is now crammed with new books.

When Tessa was getting her degree in English Lit, she knew that the job market would be terrible. In fact, her dad had offered to pay for a full ride for literally any other major. But she’d been determined. If she was going to put herself into massive debt, then she was going to do it because it was something that she loved.

Her dad didn’t end up paying her tuition, but only because he couldn’t afford it. With a big family like theirs, there was only so much he could do for his eldest.

Either way, Tessa figured every major came with a risk. Business BAs were washing pots in restaurants all over Chicago. Accounting majors were begging in the streets. Nothing was guaranteed anymore. So if she was going to get a degree, then it might as well be in something that she was good at, that she enjoyed, and that she could consider herself doing for the rest of her life. At least that was what she’d told herself when she’d walked onto the stage to shake the Dean’s hand and receive her diploma.

Her phone buzzed again in her pocket, but she had to wait until she was safely on the train station platform before she could check her message.

D: I HAVE TO BURN MY EYES OUT AND YOUR ASKING ME THAT??

D: I JUST

D: i cant

D: it was Tommy + Slate + their girlfriends

Tessa has to physically restrain herself from correcting his incorrect use of ‘your’ and ‘cant.’ Instead, she straightens her black skirt and quickly types back.

Tessa: Could be worse? Could have been Logan?

D: Jesus, dont even joke about that

Logan is D’s brother. Tessa has been trading texts with D every day for the past five months, and she knows the people around him almost as well as she knows her own family. Logan is his brother who’s dating Mikayla. Tommy and Slate are their best friends and basically D’s brothers, who are dating Sersha and Harper respectively. She knows that Tommy and Slate like to joke about group sex, but D has never actually witnessed it. Apparently, it’s something terrifying.

Tessa: Pics or it didn’t happen.

D: u horny wench

Tessa: Did they have the door closed?

D: thats beside the point

Tessa: I think the real lesson here is not to walk into someone’s room without knocking first

D: I CANT BELIEVE YOU ARE TAKING THEIR SIDE I HAVE BEEN VISUALLY ASSAULTED

Tessa smothers her laughter again and quickly puts her phone away so that she can actually get on a train. She’s having a harder and harder time of putting her phone away nowadays. Tessa’s dad has started to notice that his daughter spends way too much time with her eyes glued to her phone. She doesn’t know how she could possibly explain that she started texting a guy when he sent her a dickpic by accident late one night and that she now considers him her best friend. Or that she knows who everyone around D is, but she doesn’t know his real name. And he doesn’t know hers. Because that’s not the sort of thing, they need to know about each other. They’re happy to exchange ideas, pics, and funny stories. At this point, a real name doesn’t even matter.

Telling herself that she’s supposed to be getting on the train instead of giggling at D’s antics, Tessa quickly checks through the gate and skips past a couple kissing on the escalator, her backpack swinging dangerously with the weight of her books.

Once she’s finally on the train—snagging a seat in the corner by sheer luck—she quickly opens her backpack and pulls out the first book she sees: Hokkaido Highway Blues. A guy hitchhiking around Japan? Sounds awesome! She quickly settles herself down with the book in her lap and takes a moment to reread the blurb, because that’s the best part. That’s the part that hooks readers.

If only she could write like that…

She would probably still be broke.

But the thought of escaping to another place—to Japan, or Russia, or the Netherlands, or just anywhere that isn’t Chicago—excites her. Tessa has always loved reading because when she reads, she can imagine she’s somewhere else.

When she was a kid, she could imagine that she was in Hogwarts, Middle Earth, or even Narnia. Now that she’s older, she can still imagine that, and also imagine that she’s in another country or another time. Someday, when she can afford it, she’s going to see the world.

Her phone rings in her pocket, and for a moment her heart leaps into her throat. She nearly drops the book as she fumbles for it, a sudden anxiety clutching her before she sees the screen. For a moment, she feels a tiny spike of disappointment, but then she answers, “Hey Dad… I’m on my way home,” she says, pressing the phone to her ear and ignoring the dirty look she gets from the woman in front of her.

Jesus. Relax your flaps, woman.

It’s not Tessa’s fault her father called her, or that the other woman decided to catch the train that day. She’s just glad that she’s still got reception down here.

She tells herself that she shouldn’t be disappointed. D has never called her. That’s the one thing they’ve never done. No matter how many nights she would have liked to hear the noises he claimed to be making or to just hear his voice—calling always seemed to be the one line they didn’t cross. That, and showing their faces. The fact that he’s apparently having a crisis over the fact he saw his friends having sex shouldn’t change that. The closest she will get to D is reading his messy texts. And she’s okay with that.

“Was the train late?” Dad asks. He sounds a little tired.

“No, I just… got a call.”

“A call? From one of the jobs?”

Tessa hates the excited tone of his voice. She deliberately doesn’t look down at the waitress uniform she’s wearing, because that’ll only make her more depressed. All those hours she’d spent working on her resume, all those hours trekking through the newsrooms and trawling online for writing work, and she’s still making stupid orders at Starbucks in the middle of the city.

“No, nothing like that,” she says, thinking quickly for something to change the subject. “How did Jackie go in practice?”

“Yep… she’s coming home with a few bruises, but I think she’s pretty proud of herself.”

Tessa grins, even as she has to brace herself for a Yuri!!! On Ice marathon when she gets home. Her little sister became obsessed with ice skating after she saw that anime for the first time, and now she likes to practice as often as she can. Getting her to the rink every day is a bit tough, but luckily Tessa’s brother, Scott, just got his license. He’s still in that phase where any driving is fun, even if it’s driving his kid sister to the other side of town and watching her spin around on the ice for hours.

Of course, Tessa had to take another shift at Starbucks to pay for the fees. But Jackie is worth it.

“She came so close to pulling off a Salchow,” Dad goes on. “Scott got it on video.”

“I’ll have to check it out on Facebook.”

“Or… ask him to show it to you?” her dad says slowly, as though she’s a bit slow.

She sighs. “It’ll be almost an hour before I get home.”

Dad just clicks his tongue at her. He’s getting used to Facebook, but he still doesn’t understand why his children use it to communicate when they all still live at home.

“Could you grab some milk?” Dad asks.

“Sure,” she replies absently. The train is moving, and she can see the lights from the tunnels cutting through the window. “I can swing by the store. Is there anything else we need?”

“Nope, that should be it.”

“Okay. Love you, Dad.”

“Love you too, honey.”

She hangs up, reflecting again that her dad sounds really tired lately. He’s been working double shifts at the factory now that two of his kids are in college. Tessa graduated, but her brother and sister started their freshman year, and neither of them can work on their scholarships. So Tessa and her dad have had to pick up the slack.

Six siblings. One parent. She often wonders if her mother had done the math before she left.

Her phone buzzes in her palm, and she tears her eyes away from the window to look down.

D: comfort me

She rolls her eyes at him, even though he can’t see it.

Tessa: :*

D: :D

Tapping the phone with her index finger, Tessa finds herself mimicking the emoji that he sent. D loves his emojis. And his dickpics. But mostly his emojis.

She tries to conjure an image of the man that she’s become so close to over the last few months. Tessa doesn’t have a lot to go on. She knows from his pictures that he’s got pale skin. That he’s muscular from the pecs down. There’s a nice roundedness to his muscles that keeps him from looking like a weightlifter. And there’s a tattoo of a rose curling around his neck and part of his chest. His cock is… quite frankly, massive. When Tessa got the first picture, she’d thought someone had photoshopped it, or Googled ‘big cock’ and sent it to her as a joke.

She’d replied asking who it was, and D had realized pretty quickly that he’d sent it to the wrong person. His reaction had been the only proof she’d needed that it was a legit pic, which had led to a lot of questions. Namely—Has he ever hurt anyone with that thing? Could he use it as a weapon in a jail break? Now that would be a fun story to write.

He’d been adorably flustered, which she could tell even through his texts, and by the time he’d stopped apologizing she’d been intrigued enough to continue the conversation. He’d even been kind enough to send her more pics. In exchange for a few of her own.

What had started out as a mutually-beneficial picture exchange became an actual friendship. Tessa doesn’t really know how that happened. One day she was enjoying some of his raunchier suggestions, the next she was complaining about her second-youngest sister’s hogging the bathroom. D had fired back with a long rant about his older brother stealing his guitar so he could sing a sappy romance song to his girlfriend. They’d exchanged more pics, more information about their families, more… everything. This was the closest relationship she’d even had with anyone in her life, and she still has no idea what the man’s real name is.

For all she knows, she’s being catfished.

What if she’s being catfished?

That thought gets smothered immediately, because if she’s being catfished, then it would have backfired on her before now. It’s been five months, after all. With the amount of personal shit she’s told D, he’s enough information to ruin her, and enough pictures to make his own stop-motion porno. He hasn’t. So she can only assume that this is real. D is real.

If only she had the courage to ask him to meet up. But that’s a line that she’s not sure she’s ready to cross. Because it’s one thing to tell a guy everything about her when she knows that she’ll never see him, but it’s another thing entirely to actually look him in the eye. Some nights, when she’s laying alone with her siblings surrounding her in their own rooms, she wonders what it would be like to be in his arms. It’s an exhilarating and exciting thought. She both hates and is grateful for the fact that D lives in Manhattan with his brother and friends. Manhattan is well out of reach for a broke college grad, who’s never even left her home town.

Her phone buzzes again.

D: check this out

He sends her a link to a Vine video. Tessa opens the link and bursts out laughing in the middle of the carriage, making the woman in front of her tsk with annoyance. But Tessa can’t bring herself to care. That corgi’s butt is adorable. He always knows how to make her laugh.

Chapter Two

Tessa’s dad is her other best friend, and he has been since she was in high school, which sure as hell freaked her school friends out. Especially those who had viewed grown-ups with general suspicion and got annoyed whenever their parents wouldn’t let them buy booze. Tessa didn’t drink, she didn’t smoke, and when her dad asked her to do something she did it. She figured it was the least she could do for him since he worked so hard for his kids.

Which is why she’s up every morning at 5:00 a.m., preparing Jackie for skating practice while Dad is getting some much-needed shut-eye.

“Do you think I would look good in this?” Jackie asks, showing Tessa a picture on her phone of an anime character who looks like she’s covered in feathers.

“Yeah,” Tessa replies. “Is she one of the characters in Yuri?”

Jackie wrinkles her nose. “He is, yeah. His name is Yurio. He’s a cinnamon roll.”

“Oh, I see.”

She doesn’t see. Jackie’s always using weird Tumblr language that Tessa can’t keep up with, but she’s just so glad that the kid has that outlet now. It was a rough couple of years when she hit puberty, and her beard had started growing. It wasn’t until she was fourteen that she gathered the courage to tell Dad that she didn’t want to be a boy anymore. Apparently, she’d found a transgender blog on Tumblr and realized that she had been born into the wrong body.

Their dad had supported her, which only made Tessa love him more.

Tessa pulls Jackie’s long blonde hair back into a ponytail and braids the bottom, while her sister swipes through her picture gallery, showing Tessa the various outfits that Yurio wore in the show. By the time Tessa has Jackie ready, the sun has risen, and it’s time to get breakfast going for the others. It’s not exactly necessary because Kaden and Halley are college age—Scott’s a senior, and Mary and Stacey are juniors. They can all cook for themselves. But Tessa prefers to have something ready for them. She likes to make her siblings feel loved and looked after.

Jackie needs to be awake early for skating practice, but she can’t cook. She scoffs down the oatmeal and toast that Tessa prepared for her while she scrolls through her Tumblr dashboard. Tessa bustles around the tiny, cluttered kitchen to make some more toast and coffee for Scott when he stumbles downstairs to take Jackie to practice.

“Hey, Tess… check out this band. The lead guitarist is a total hot nerd.”

Tessa looks over Jackie’s shoulder. On the phone screen is a picture of four good-looking men posing in front of a white screen. The guy in the middle is wearing a black wife-beater that shows off the music inspired tattoo along his arm. One of the men on the side has bulky muscles and messy short hair which look surprisingly good—his pockets are stuffed with drumsticks, and his feet are clad in heavy-looking boots. On the other side of the group is a cute guy with floppy brown hair and a blue plaid shirt. He’s looking at the camera like it’s telling him a joke and he’s excited to hear the punchline.

But Tessa can tell immediately which one Jackie is excited about. He’s the one on the main guy’s left, with his elbow leaning on the other one’s shoulder. He’s buff, like the guy with the drumsticks, but in a subtle and less bear-like way, and he’s wearing an Iron Man T-shirt that shows off his forearms beautifully.

“Iron Man isn’t exactly nerd chic anymore,” Tessa says, shrugging. “Maybe they’re getting sponsored by the company that makes the movies?”

Jackie snorts. “If you read their interviews… he’s always dropping references. He’s a mad gamer too. They all are.”

“And what’s this nerd’s name?”

“Dash... Dash Todd.”

Tessa nods and immediately forgets the name.

“Is their music any good?”

“It’s awesome!” Jackie says enthusiastically. “They’re rock royalty. Black Lilith, that’s their band name. You’ve heard them on the radio.”

“Have I?”

“Do you listen to the radio at work?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you’ve heard them.”

Tessa decides to take her word for it. “So you like them, huh?” she asks, turning back to the kettle as she hears it starting to boil. She quickly pours some instant coffee into a to-go mug for Scott. No sugar, no milk. ‘Just fuck me up’ are usually his instructions when it comes to coffee brewing.

Even though she hates her job as a barista, she still feels dirty every time she pours instant coffee into her brother’s cup. One day, she’s going to save up and buy them all a real coffee machine.

“Yeah, they’re pretty rad,” Jackie says, flicking back through her dashboard and reading through an article. “Oh! Hey, they’re going to be in town. They’re coming to Chicago.”

“Great!” Tessa says. “Maybe you can get tickets?”

Jackie looks excited, but only for a moment, then she deflates like a balloon slowly leaking air. “Nah, we can’t afford tickets.”

Tessa wants to say that they can make it work, that there’s a way around it, but she doesn’t want to get Jackie’s hopes up. Maybe she can take some extra hours? As soon as the thought crosses her mind, Tessa feels her heart clench. She can barely function as it is. More hours would probably kill her.

When she’d finished college, she’d fantasized about getting a job writing. Working in a newsroom, or in communications, or even—when she was feeling particularly dreamy—as a freelance writer or novelist. But with the amount of hours she works in a day, she can’t bring herself to crawl to a laptop and start typing when she finally gets home. She’s always too exhausted to try and force her creative juices to start flowing once she’s had her shower and gotten the rest of the family through dinner and ready for bed. Often, she can barely muster the energy to read a chapter or two of whatever book she borrowed from the library before she’s knocked out in bed.

If it weren’t for D, she doesn’t think that she’d have any social life at all. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when the only communication she has with anyone outside of her family is with a man she’s never met. Who lives in another city.

“Maybe next time,” Tessa says, and she hates the resigned look on Jackie’s face.

“I probably couldn’t fit it around practice, anyway,” Jackie states. She’s clearly trying to cheer herself up.

“Hey, don’t skaters have to do routines to music?” Tessa says. “Maybe when you’re a famous skater, you can do a routine to Black Lilith’s music, and then they’ll want to meet you.”

Jackie gives Tessa a look like she’s worried about her sanity. “You’re a weirdo.”

Tessa is spared from retaliating when Scott stumbles downstairs, scratching the tiny sheen of stubble on his neck and rubbing his eyes.

“Coffee?” he asks. When he lifts his arms to yawn, he shows off his scrawny belly.

“Here,” Tessa says, passing him the cup. “Eat your oatmeal.”

“Hurry up,” says Jackie. Her leg is twitching as she pushes her own bowl away from her and stands up. “I’m gonna do some stretches.”

Scott watches her leave the room with a look of deep disgust on his face. “Fucking morning people.”

Tessa smacks him over the back of the head. “Don’t talk about your sister that way.”

Leaving him there, Tessa walks upstairs to her bedroom. The bedroom was once a walk-in closet, but when their family moved in, Tessa had just finished reading Harry Potter and was enchanted by the idea of living in a cupboard. Since there were more children than there were bedrooms, her dad had indulged her obsession and bought her a single bed that just managed to squeeze into the room.

Now, Tessa hates her past self. But she reasons that the tiny room is all she needs.

Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she types out a quick message.

Tessa: Good Morning D.

Then she follows it up with: My sister is obsessed with this band called Black Lilith. Ever heard of them?

She steps onto her bed and reaches up to the shelves above, where she keeps her work uniform. It’s the closest thing she has to storage space in here—there’s hardly even enough room for books. She keeps them stacked precariously against the wall in long columns, and has to move them onto her bed whenever she wants one from the bottom of the pile.

D goes to the gym every morning at 5:30 a.m., and it’s 6:30 now. He’s probably just finishing up. That gorgeous, muscular-yet-cuddly body of his takes work, and apparently, his trainer is a Slate’s girlfriend, Harper. D calls her a she-devil.

Sure enough, she gets a reply just as she’s pulling on her skirt.

D: yeah ive heard of them

D: maybe jackie can skate to one of their songs someday

Tessa: That’s what I said!

It’s like they share a brain, sometimes. Tessa glances down and decides that her bra is cute enough to snap a quick selfie and send it to him. Just a bra and a skirt. One of his favorite combinations. She quickly slides her blouse on as her phone pings again, and his response lights up the screen.

D: Ugh, the things I would do.

She may not know his name, but he does wonders for her ego. Especially when he sends a string of incomprehensible but appreciative emojis.

A knock on her door makes her quickly double-check that her blouse is on properly before she says, “Come in.”

Her dad enters, bald head first and looking tired but happy with purple smears under both of his eyes and permanently upturned lips.

“Morning… I think I heard Scott’s car leaving.”

“I’m just getting ready for work,” replies Tessa, pulling her hair into a high ponytail at the back of her head. She may only work at Starbucks, but she likes to be as well-put-together as possible. Who knows, maybe someday a future employer will see her there and offer her a job? Or maybe she’ll have to go to an interview after a shift? It’s always best to look as professional as possible. Just in case. “Do you want me to pick up anything while I’m in the city?”

“No, honey,” Dad replies. He comes into the room and sits on the bed. He doesn’t have to work until 8:00 a.m., but Tessa’s been getting the feeling that he’s been looking for extra work in the early hours of the mornings. Running around with his resume, just like she has been. No wonder he looks so tired. “What are you reading?” he asks, reaching for the book that she’s been keeping next to her pillow since there’s nowhere else in the room to put it.

“Hokkaido Highway Blues?”

“Set in Japan?” he asks, turning the book over so that he can read the blurb.

“It’s about a guy going on a road trip,” she tells him. “Based on a true story.”

He hums as he reads. Her dad is the reason Tessa loves reading. The reason that, even though he had told her he’d prefer her to get a real major, she’d gone with her gut and majored in English Lit. But what did he expect? He was a career librarian before Tessa’s mother left, and he’d had to find a more financially generous factory job.

Thankfully, the twins both went into economics when they were choosing a major. They were reasonable. Not like Tessa, who went with her gut and hoped that professionalism would make up for it. So far, it hadn’t. But she wasn’t going to give up just yet.

“Maybe when you go traveling, you can write a book about it,” Dad says, leaving the book on the bed to get up again and stretch. “I’m going to be late home today. Do you think you can make sure that Scott doesn’t burn the house down trying to make dinner?”

“I thought we banned him from cooking?”

“You know Jackie’s got that boy wrapped around her finger.”

Tessa snorts. She grins and nods to hide the fact that she’s stinging from his comment. That she can write a book about traveling. She knows that he’s just trying to show her that he believes in her, but all she feels is an expectation. A way to disappoint him if she can’t manage to follow her dreams.

Dad says his goodbyes. He’s still got forever before work, but if Tessa’s got the right idea, then he’s probably going to spend the time looking for a second job. Probably something like stacking shelves at the supermarket. Something he can do at night, while his kids are sleeping so that they won’t know.

Maybe Tessa should consider getting one of those jobs herself.

It isn’t that the rest of her siblings don’t pull their weight. Scott has a part-time job to pay for his car, and the youngest set of twins—Mary and Stacey—work a casual shift at Target after school. But they’re still just kids. It isn’t fair to put the weight of the family’s finances on them. Now that Tessa has graduated college, she can help out more. But it was easier to put one kid through college than it is to put two, and now even with their scholarships Kaden and Halley need cash and aren’t allowed to work for it.

It was all starting to catch up to her dad, and Tessa, now that she stopped to think about it.

Shaking her head at herself, she heads out of her room and into the tiny bathroom with its rattling copper pipes to put her makeup on. There’s scattered brushes and products everywhere, but she and her sisters have pretty much the same skin tone. She takes some concealer that she’s pretty sure belongs to Mary and starts applying it.

Her phone pings. Without taking her eyes off of her reflection, she raises the phone and checks the screen.

D: this is a bit sudden but do you want to meet?

He actually used punctuation. Tessa has to read the sentence a few times before it sinks in, and then she slowly lowers the makeup brush. Leaning against the sink, she takes a long breath.

Is she ready for that?

Are they ready for that?

What prompted this?

Before she can answer, she receives a long string of texts. It’s as if D is rushing to type.

D: the thing is im going 2b in Chicago in a few days

D: me logan tommy & slate

D: were in business together and we need some1who can write to print some interviews

D: they dont trust people easy but i told them we could trust u

D: u dont have 2 do it

D: but if u want to meet 2 talk about it

D: then we can meet maybe

D: if u want

It’s a while before Tessa can respond, but when she does, there’s a soft smile on her lips. D likes to go on a run of text messages when he gets flustered or embarrassed.

Tessa: That sounds like an interesting offer. I would have to meet them first.

Tessa: But I would like to meet you before I meet them.

Tessa: Where? When?

She leans against the sink, her face half made-up and the brush forgotten in her hand, while she waits with baited breath for D’s reply.

Chapter Three

D: do u think fish have feelings

Tessa: I’m going to ignore that.

Tessa grins to herself as she scrolls through her conversations with D, waiting outside of the bustling arena for Jackie to show up. The United Center is an imposing gray building, with very little personality beyond the massive long posters on its walls advertising the band that will be playing there tonight.

She and D had been exchanging texts with their usual frequency, only lately there has been a lingering sense of… anticipation. D’s texts were as dorky and cheeky as always, although now he’s also asking questions about what they should do when they finally meet. Not sexual. Just…

D: we should totally binge the lizzie bennet diaries together

D: u no u luv a good pride and prejudice adaption dont deny it

D: also i hear chicago has good pizza places ull hav 2 show me

D: if u take the job then u can crash wit us in manhattan til u find somewere to stay

Spelling errors aside, Tessa is touched by how he’s already planning what they’ll be doing together. Sweet little things like marathoning YouTube web series and eating pizza, making sure that she’s got somewhere to go if she ends up taking this job that he’s offering. Of course, a part of her mind has been almost constantly on the potential of everything else they could get up to. You don’t sext with someone for over five months without starting to wonder if the real thing will live up to the hype. But he hasn’t brought it up. They still share dirty pictures, but he never offers anything for when they finally see each other face-to-face.

He’s been a bit tight-lipped about the job as well. He won’t really tell her what it’s about. Only that it’ll involve interviewing and writing. It makes her wonder what exactly he and his friends do that they don’t trust regular journalists.

Is he in the mob? She throws away that thought as soon as it occurs to her. Of course, D wouldn’t be in the mob. His tattoos are all wrong.

But what if the job he’s offering isn’t all that great, and she has to turn it down?

Tessa glances around the entrance of the arena, as the crowd starts to thicken. Scalpers walk through, shoving their tickets into people’s faces. Excited men and women in band T-shirts screech with excitement, taking selfies in line as they wait for the security guards to take their tickets and give them their wristbands. When D told Tessa that he wanted to meet at the Black Lilith concert, she’d been surprised and confused. Who meets at a concert? It won’t exactly be easy to talk about job opportunities if they’re screaming over the music.

But D had insisted. He’d also insisted that she bring Jackie. No matter how hard Tessa had protested, he’d paid for their tickets as well. Promising that it was no big deal and that he had an arrangement with the band. When she’d asked why he didn’t answer her. They were so well-practiced at avoiding specifics that he’d probably done it without thinking.

Tessa had let it slide. She can ask D when she sees him. She stands on her tiptoes to try and see over the heads of the people in line, searching for her sister.

D: ill b in the severus snape T-shirt what will u b wearing

Ordinarily, when D asks her what she’s wearing it’s in a different context.

Tessa: White blouse over black jeans. With a Ravenclaw bow in my hair.

D: not sure that the guards will no what a ravenclaw is ;) ill give them a pic and tell them to be on the lookout for u

Tessa: Not everyone knows the ins and outs of Hogwarts houses like we do.

D: and that breaks my poor hufflepuff heart

They still hadn’t shared their names. She knows his Hogwarts house is Patronus—an otter, and the size of his penis fully erect, but not his name. They are about to meet face-to-face, but she still doesn’t know what his name is.

It was a tough thing to explain to Jackie.

She’d been ecstatic to hear that Tessa would be bringing her to the Black Lilith concert. Tessa had enjoyed about five minutes of Jackie bouncing around the room, still in her skating gear. But then she’d stopped and asked, worry all through her posture, where Tessa had gotten the money to pay for the tickets.

“A friend of mine gave them to me,” Tessa had replied wearily. “As a gift.”

“What friend?” Jackie had asked, cocking her head like a confused poodle. “Have I met them?”

I haven’t even met him.

“No, he’s from New York.”

“Oh.” Then Jackie had grinned slyly. “Is he a special friend?”

“Mind your damn business.”

“That’s not a no.”

And Tessa hasn’t heard the end of it.

Just as Tessa is starting to think about sending a text to her little sister, she sees a blonde ponytail running toward her. Jackie’s arms wave as she sprints to Tessa, her skirt flying behind her. Tessa feels a relieved smile spread across her face as she turns toward Jackie and catches her in a hug.

“Looking good,” she says. “You’re not tired after practice?”

“Nah,” Jackie replies, pulling away. “I’m totally excited. I can’t believe we’re really gonna see them! Do you think your special friend can get us backstage?”

“Let’s not impose on him any more than we already have,” says Tessa, running her hand over Jackie’s hair to smooth down some flyaways. “Come on, he said that we could meet him at the seats.”

So they walk over to the line. Well, Tessa walks. Jackie half-runs, dragging her sister behind herself and practically skipping. But the closer Tessa gets to the security guard, the more nervous she feels. D had told her that she would be able to skip the line and get their wristbands straight from the guards, but now she’s wondering if that won’t actually happen.

What if D was pulling her leg?

What if this is all a big joke, and she’s gotten Jackie’s hopes up for nothing?

What if—

And then they’re standing in front of the guard.

He takes one look at the bow in her hair and grunts. “You here for the reserved passes?” he asks.

Jackie’s the one who nods because Tessa is pretty much rooted to the spot. “Yep, two of them.”

He puts the bracelets on Tessa and Jackie’s wrists. Tessa stares at the sparkling, golden band, still not entirely sure whether this is really happening, even as she feels a wave of relief gently washing over her. One of the guards waves for the two girls to follow him, and they’re escorted into a hallway beyond the gate. None of the other people in line are shown into this hallway.

D must have a lot more pulling power over this band than he’d let on.

Tessa pulls her phone out of her pocket and sends a quick text.

Tessa: We’re here. Where are you?

Her phone pings within seconds.

D: make urselfs @ home ill cu soon

The United Center is a massive, indoor arena that can sit almost twenty-four thousand people. Most of the seats are already full with people who’d probably started lining up yesterday. But Tessa and Jackie are escorted past them, all the way to the front.

“No fucking way!” Jackie breathes as they’re escorted to their seats.

Front row, center.

Tessa stares numbly at them for a moment before pulling her phone out.

Tessa: WTF is with these seats?? They must have cost a fortune?

Even if he has connections, surely these seats should be reserved for celebrities?

Jackie is already settling herself in. They had bypassed the snack stands, and the guard offered to go and get them something to drink, but Tessa waved him off with a grateful smile. She’s still reeling from seeing their seats. Jackie pouts until Tessa promises to take her to the merchandise hall later and buy her a shirt. Since they’re saving money on these kick-ass seats, after all.

Tessa stares around for a man in a Severus Snape shirt. Someone with large shoulders and blond hair. She thinks that he’s blond. Not that his dickpics had backed that up. She checked her phone. D hasn’t responded.

Tessa: Where are you?

Tessa: The show is about to start.

Tessa: Starting to get worried.

“So, this guy… is he your boyfriend?” Jackie asks as Tessa joins her in the seats. They’re hard and dip at the back, but they’re still excellent seats. She only has to tilt her head slightly to look right into the eyes of where she imagines the band will be standing in a little while.

“No,” Tessa replies absently, still checking her phone.

“Well, why the fuck not?” Jackie asks. “I mean, tell me you’re at least sleeping with him? Or you’re planning to? Because these seats are worth a blowjob at the very least. Maybe even anal.”

“Young lady, you need to spend less time on Tumblr,” Tessa tells her. She’s pretty much immune to Jackie ‘shipping’ her with her friends by now. But she’s only fourteen and fourteen-year-olds shouldn’t even know what anal is.

Jackie snorts and takes a selfie, turning her body so that the stage is included in it. Tessa keeps craning her neck around, but the seats around them get filled pretty quickly, by women who are too busy squealing at each other to notice Tessa’s quizzical look. She can’t see any men in a Severus Snape shirt. Most of the men in the room are either in black shirts, or they’re wearing shirts emblazoned with the Black Lilith album cover.

She checks her phone again as the lights dim and the warm-up band takes the stage. The crowd roars so loudly that she tries to cover her ears and look at her phone screen at the same time. Not that it matters. Because D hasn’t texted her back yet.

The tickets might have been legit, but Tessa’s starting to think she’s been stood up.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” Jackie asks, leaning over and screaming into Tessa’s ear even as she bops her head to the beat.

“He got held up,” Tessa screams back. She shoves her phone into her pocket. “He told us to enjoy ourselves.”

Jackie seems to take that at face value. Tessa notices the people around them starting to stand up, and she’s compelled to join them even though she’s not really feeling the music. It’s not really her thing, and the lyrics are a bit simple, though the band seems good. They’re very beautiful women. She tries hard to lose herself and enjoy it, but she keeps thinking about the phone in her pocket, which hasn’t vibrated. Where is D?

After a few songs, the support band leaves the stage, and the arena erupts with chaos as Black Lilith comes on. The women on the other side of Tessa are jumping up and down, reaching toward the stage as though they want to grab at the men there. Jackie is practically vibrating with excitement, though she’s at least chill enough not to start screaming.

Tessa recognizes the four men from the picture Jackie showed her. The man at the front has short, messy dark hair that curls around his ears and a long, blue sleeve of tattoos showing through his tank top. He stands in the middle of the stage and winks at the audience. If the crowd wasn’t deafening before, it is now.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binaries… give it up for Lost in Time!” the guy in front shouts into the microphone. He waves toward the side of the stage, where the warm-up band had just disappeared.

A massive bear of a man takes a seat behind the drum kit, all black leather, tatts and heavy muscle. His blond hair falls into his face as he twirls his drumsticks and smirks at the guy next to him, who is the bassist with his coy smile and shoulder length brown hair. On his other side is a younger guy with a guitar slung across his back. He’s craning his head to look over the edge of the stage. When his eyes meet Tessa, he stops.

For a moment, she doesn’t understand why he’s staring at her. A famous guitarist like him can probably get any girl he wants, so lingering over some blonde in the front row would seem out of character.

Then she sees his shirt. The guitar strap slashes across his chest, but the picture of Severus Snape with a bright white doe coming out of his wand is unmistakable.

“No fucking way…” Tessa whispers.

 Chapter Four

The lead guitarist of Black Lilith keeps staring at her, his mouth slack, in a look that’s almost too adorable. If he didn’t have the body of a very well-structured wrestler, then Tessa thought he would have looked like a kid whose Christmases had all come at once. She didn’t know what her own face was doing, but it must have been something weird. Because there’s no way—no way—that D is a fucking rockstar and he never told her.

He couldn’t have kept something like that from her. Could he? Why?

She bursts out laughing. Her brain must be completely malfunctioning if she thinks for one second that her dorky, cheeky, D is some rockstar with a million fangirls. The shirt is just a coincidence, of course.

What the fuck had she been thinking?

She covers her mouth, but she can’t smother her mirth entirely. And the thing is, she knows that she’s technically laughing in the face of some rockstar. He’s staring her down right before a set, and she’s laughing at him. Maybe that’s his thing. Maybe he picks a girl in the crowd and just eye-fucks her all night. Maybe that’s how he gets groupies.

The guy, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind. He’s still staring at her, though, entirely shocked. He stares until Tessa’s laughter tapers off, and she’s starting to feel more confused than anything. He stares until the rest of the band starts to notice. The bass player with the floppy hair follows the guitarist’s line of sight until he sees Tessa. For some reason, he grins.

Then a drumstick comes out of nowhere and smacks into the back of the guitarist’s head.

Tessa winces while the crowd laughs gleefully as the guitarist rubs his head, glaring over his shoulder at the drummer. The drummer just wiggles his eyebrows at him while the other two on stage look amused.

But the hit has knocked that dumbstruck expression off his face because the guitarist quickly strips his guitar off—bearing a lovely line of muscle when his Severus Snape shirt rides up—and rushes across to the front of the stage.

“Uh, Dash?” the singer says, half into the microphone.

Dash… D… Dash?

Dash jumps off of the stage right in front of Tessa and Jackie. The crowd goes wild, and Tessa realizes that she’s standing up as well. She feels almost like she’s on autopilot like her body is reacting to him without even realizing what it’s doing.

Jackie’s squeal is drowned out by the crowd when Dash pulls Tessa into his arms, crushing her in a fierce hug.

“T… is that you? It has to be you. Holy fuck!”

T—that’s her codename. They came up with codenames after the third time they texted each other.

This is D. Dash is D.

And suddenly she understands why he never told her. Rockstars who share dickpics with strangers are risking a lot, but as long as they were using codenames—and D is the one who insisted on calling them ‘codenames’ because he is, and always will be, a fucking dork—he was free to send her whatever he wanted. Every naughty suggestion, every pic. They never showed each other their faces. It was safe.

Tessa wraps her arms around his neck, hugging him back. “You fucker!” she says, but there’s no heat in it.

He just laughs.

D’s body is warm already, flushed from the lights onstage. Tessa can feel his muscles beneath the shirt, feel his back taut with the strength hidden there, as he holds her tight enough to let her know that he’s not letting go, but clearly not as tight as he could. He could probably crush her with this bear hug, but instead, she feels warm and happy because he’s D and he’s here, finally.

When he pulls away, she takes a moment to really look at his face. He’s handsome, with a strong jaw and light, sparkling blue eyes that crinkle at the corners when he looks at her.

“You’re fucking beautiful,” he says, shouting because the crowd is screaming. And when did the crowd get there? Tessa had almost forgotten that they were there. “It’s not even fair!”

“Fair?” Tessa shouts back. “You want to talk fair… you’re a hot as fuck rockstar?”

He laughs. Tessa hadn’t realized until now how much she’d been looking forward to hearing that laugh. He pulls her in for another hug, and she nearly gasps out loud when she feels a distinct bulge in his jeans. Not that he’s hard, he doesn’t need to be. With equipment like that, he just needs to press against someone for them to know that he’s there.

Goddamn…

“Sorry, folks,” the singer—Logan. It’s Logan, D’s brother—says into the microphone. “Dash is just having a bit of a reunion right now. But he needs to put the pretty girl down and come back on stage.” The last part sounding more like a command than anything.

Dash’s shoulders heave with laughter under Tessa’s hands. She lays her head in the crook of his neck, just for a moment, before tearing herself away. He’s so strong, he could easily hold her in place. But he doesn’t.

“Go,” she says, shoving his chest and meeting dense but pliant muscle. “Go… we’ll talk in a bit.”

Dash is still grinning as he nods, eager, like a puppy. But then something changes in his eyes and they go from sparkling blue to dark as the deepest ocean. He reaches up to cup her cheeks, holding her in place and leans over to whisper huskily in her ear, “Don’t you ever take your eyes off of me. Okay?”

Tessa feels his voice shuddering through her and thinks, not if my life depended on it.

But she doesn’t say anything. She waits until he pulls away and looks at her one last time, and then Tessa nods. He grins again, and the dark ocean is gone. Then he’s dropping his hands and turning around to scramble back onstage.

Tessa puts her hand on her chest, admires his ass in his jeans, before sitting back down. It’s only when she’s sitting that she realizes she’s throbbing.

Holy shit, when did that happen?

Immediately, her arm is snatched by Jackie.

“Explain!” her sister shouts as the crowd cheers Dash. “Now!”

“I didn’t know it was him—”

“How do you know Dash Todd?”

“He’s my friend—”

“You’re special friends with the guitarist from BLACK LILITH?” Jackie shouts.

“It’s a long story—”

“I can’t even! I have lost my ability to even!”

And then the music starts and Tessa, dutifully, turns away from Jackie to direct her gaze squarely at Dash. Dash, who has his guitar slung over his shoulders again and is picking through a series of scales. His eyes are on her as well. Even though she knows that the speakers are all over the arena, she feels like the music he’s making is being directed at her.

“Thank you for gracing us with your presence, you little shit,” Logan says, giving his brother a wave. Dash shrugs and doesn’t take his eyes off of Tessa. She couldn’t tear her own eyes away if she wanted to. “Now, let’s do this.”

The crowd screams. Dash runs his fingers over a riff and Slate—because it has to be Slate on drums, from everything D said about him who else would it be—picks up a beat. Then Logan is singing.

I found my way home the night before last,

thinking back on you, standing in the crowd, shouting out to me.

Holding me up above the waves,

so I can breathe and sing and laugh.

The crowd screams so loudly that Tessa has to cover her ears, but she still won’t look away from Dash. Beside her, Jackie is up out of her seat and bopping in time with the music. Tessa can see her lips moving out of the corner of her eye as Jackie sings along.

Tessa keeps watching Dash, but she notices little things about the other men on stage. Like the way Slate thrashes at the drums with the reckless abandon that D had said was typical of the man. He’d described Slate as ‘the best backup, totally reliable, but an asshole’ and looking at him now she can see what he means.

Tommy, the bass player, was described as ‘a cinnamon roll who could definitely kill you’ and she’d had to go to Jackie to have that translated into normal human speech. Apparently, it meant someone adorable who could beat you up. The bass player is the most adorable person on stage, so it has to be him. He just smiles through the song, nodding his head in time with the beat as he plucks at the bass and looks offstage every few moments like he’s searching for someone.

Never hit the ground, you catch me, and you carry me around.

It’s all because of you, you, you.

Taking selfies, hugging, dancing, laughing,

this story starts at the climax, and we’re so glad.

Logan is the singer. His smoky, sultry voice fills the speakers and makes the room vibrate with it. Tessa can tell that he’s observing her curiously, even though his gaze is generally in the middle distance.

She wonders what Dash told them about her. Did he tell them how they’d met? He must have at least told them a little bit about her if they’re willing to offer her a job.

The job...

Suddenly, that part makes a bit more sense. Bands have to be concerned with their image. If they don’t trust a regular journalist to do the right job, then it would make sense for them to bring someone in. But Tessa had always assumed that some artists had veto power over some magazines. Couldn’t they have just gone to one of those places and asked them to write positively about them? Why bring in an English Lit major with no industry experience?

A small part of her wonders if this is less about giving Black Lilith a good write up and more about giving her a job. Had Dash made up this opportunity purely as an excuse to hire his struggling sexting buddy? That seemed a little farfetched, but it made more sense than the alternative.

She shakes her head, shoving that thought away.

Of course, he wouldn’t do that, she told herself, you couldn’t mean that much to him.

Tessa vows to herself to ask him when they’re alone. When there’s a chance to really sit down and get to know this man properly. She still can’t believe she gets to do what she’s studied so hard for, finally. After so many months of using codenames and carefully avoiding what he did for a living—how could she have just accepted that he and his friends were in business together without asking what that business was?

Without you, we’re charlatans

painting pictures with words in our basements,

singing on street corners,

and beating pots and pans in a kitchen somewhere.

Instead, we went and worked in entertainment,

we owe you more than we can say.

So thanks a lot!

The crowd screams, Logan bows, and Dash wipes a line of sweat from his forehead. He looks eagerly down at Tessa, and his expression is unmistakable. She can practically see the text message forming in his mind, being sent to her in his thoughts—did you like it?

I loved it, she thinks back at him.

He grins like he’s won the lottery, but surely there’s no way he could know what she’d been thinking? Or maybe her face is more expressive than she’d thought.

“Thank you!” Logan says into the microphone. “We really mean that. We don’t know where we’d be without you all.” The crowd screams and Jackie jumps up and down next to Tessa.

Even though the music has stopped, Tessa still can’t look away from Dash. Don’t ever take your eyes off of me. She’s probably taking that instruction a bit more literal than she should.

“Now, we’re going to play something from Sinful Rhythms in a second—”

He’s cut off by another scream.

“But first, are there any Lenny Kravitz fans in the audience?”

Tessa throws Dash a ‘you’ve gotta be kidding me’ look. He’s known that she’s a Lenny Kravitz fan for months. He just shrugs and smirks at her, before heading into the opening riff to ‘Pleasure & Pain.’ Logan’s smooth vocals fill the song up in a way that completely does justice to the master. Beside Tessa, Jackie sways along with the music.

And so they go on, playing song after song, stopping after each one to talk to the audience or each other. They’re great musicians, but Tessa quickly learns the thing that sets them apart as performers is their chemistry. The way they interact on stage has Tessa nearly crying with laughter at one point, especially when Slate punctuates their jokes with a badum tish on the drums.

Tommy is the butt of every joke for a while. Logan makes fun of his floppy hair and wholesome demeanor before Slate starts making innuendos about Tommy’s ‘beast mode,’ which gets the crowd screaming again. Tessa remembers the day that D walked in on Tommy, Slate and their girlfriends having a four way and laughs right in the guitarist’s face. He seems to be grimacing at the memory.

“But here’s the thing, right?” Slate continues once the crowd’s laughter has died down. “Tommy may go from zero to a hundred like a fucking rocket, but can we all talk about Dash?” The crowd cheers and Tessa raises her eyebrow at him. “This fucking guy…” Slate continues.

“No kidding,” Logan says, speaking into the mic and grinning at Dash, who’s blushing slightly. “All of our girlfriends walked in on him once. It was a fucking nightmare.”

Tommy raises his hand to his ear, like he’s talking into a phone, and puts on a lighter feminine voice. “Tommy, I’m leaving you for Dash because he has a massive unit!”

Logan joins in with his own fake phone and girly voice, “Logan, are you aware that your brother is part giant?”

The crowd is laughing so hard that some of the women near Tessa are doubled over. Tessa just smirks. She’s well aware of Dash’s unfair advantage over other men. Dash, for his part, is still blushing but looks pleased with himself.

“Maybe we should play another song…” Dash says, leaning over to borrow Tommy’s mic, “… before everyone in the audience switches over to Team Dash.”

And then the crowd is chanting Team Dash, Team Dash and it’s pandemonium. Tessa wonders if there’s any way that the man could have a wider shit-eating grin than the one he’s currently wearing as he looks pointedly at Tessa.

Jackie leans over to whisper, “Is it big?”

“Mind your business.”

“That’s not a no.”

The music picks up again. Jackie excitedly tells Tessa that they’re playing a new song, something from the album that’s coming out in a month. Tessa never listened to Black Lilith before today, but she decides that she likes them. The fact that Dash is strutting around the stage, thrashing around like he owns it and everyone else is blessed and privileged to be there would normally turn Tessa off of a band, but on Dash it looks good. A mixture of adorable and fucking hot. And he keeps looking over to check that she’s watching.

Don’t ever take your eyes off of me.

As if she would want to.

Jackie keeps thrashing beside Tessa, getting so into the music that Tessa starts to wonder if the girl has dreams of being a groupie one day. Tessa is pretty sure that she’s giving Tommy doe-eyes. Tessa hopes that Dash can be persuaded to introduce them, or even just get Jackie the bass player’s autograph.

After about an hour of music, two women make their way down the line of the front row. Tessa wouldn’t even have noticed them if they hadn’t stopped right in front of her. She tears her eyes away from Dash to look up at them.

One is a blonde with wild hair that’s piled on top of her head like a nest, an Elvin chin, and a wide grin. The other is an all-American beauty with gorgeous brunette curls and a perfectly taut abdomen beneath the dress she’s wearing. They’re both grinning down at Tessa.

“T?” the brunette asks, raising her eyebrow.

“Yeah?” Tessa replies. There’s a lull in the music, and the boys are drinking from water bottles that had been left on the edge of the stage. A bra lands on one of the speakers near the front and Slate promptly wears it as a hat, inviting a round of applause and laughter.

“I’m Harper, this is Sersha,” the brunette says. Tessa instantly recognizes them—Slate and Tommy’s girlfriends. “Dash told us to take you backstage.”

“Is this your sister?” Sersha asks, her beautiful Irish accent hardly affecting Tessa’s ability to understand her.

Jackie nods so quickly that Tessa thinks her head is going to roll off. “Yeah!” she says.

“You can come too, beautiful. The band’s really excited to meet you.”

Tessa takes one last look at Dash on stage before Jackie is pulling her to her feet, eagerly following Sersha and Harper away from the front row.

Chapter Five

Tessa and Jackie are guided backstage into a long hallway that’s lit with flickering fluorescent lights, and walls that are decorated with lipstick kisses, and the signatures of the people who have performed there in the past. Tessa doesn’t have the presence of mind to look at them and try and pick out names. Now that she’s being brought backstage, she’s starting to understand that this is all real. They’re really real. She’s actually been offered a job with a famous rock band.

She takes out her phone and realizes that her dad has sent a message.

Dad: Hope you girls are having fun! Love you xx

Tessa sends a couple of emojis back and then sends her own message to Dash.

Tessa: You’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do!

He probably won’t even get it until he’s backstage with her, but she’d felt like she needed to send it. That’s what she does when she’s having a weird moment or needs to wrap her head around something, she messages D. It’s just that now… well, now D is the thing she needs to wrap her head around.

“I can’t believe you’re friends with Black Lilith,” Jackie says, shaking her head and giving Tessa a reproachful look. “What the hell?”

“I swear, I had no idea,” Tessa replies.

Harper looks over her toned, tanned shoulder with a raised eyebrow. “You didn’t?” she asks.

“I really didn’t.”

“Well, that’s a bummer. Now I owe Logan five bucks.”

“We didn’t think that Dash is as sneaky as he thinks he is,” Sersha adds. “He kept saying… ‘we can’t just send her a contract,’ ‘she doesn’t know who I am,’ ‘how am I going to tell her?’”

“We suggested just… you know… calling you?” says Harper.

“But then the boys decided to go for a grand romantic gesture.”

“It’s their thing.”

“We’re going to go ahead and apologize in advance for that.”

Jackie is watching the two women with her mouth open in awe, apparently soaking the information in. Tessa just wants to facepalm. She sends a text to Dash.

Tessa: Your friends are telling me all of your secrets.

They’re guided into a back room with long, comfortable-looking couches lining the walls and a heavy array of food on the table in the center of the room. There are sodas and fried chicken, but also a couple of baskets full of protein bars, fruit, and juice. Tessa notices Harper wrinkling her nose at the chicken as Sersha grabs a wing.

“You can have some if you’re hungry,” she tells Jackie and Tess.

Jackie falls on that spread like a bear on a honey tree, but Tessa’s feeling a little queasy.

“So, you guys know anything about what I’m supposed to be doing for you?” she asks, trying to get a normal, casual tone into her voice. She sits on the couch and winces when she realizes how unprofessional she looks in her black jeans and Ravenclaw bow. It’s one thing to wear these clothes to a concert and meet a friend, but this is technically a job interview. She hadn’t known that she would be meeting her potential employers today. “What the job entails, I mean?”

Harper sits next to her and opens a bottle of orange juice. “I think Logan or Mikayla can probably explain it better.”

“Mikayla…” Logan’s wife. Dash had mentioned that his brother had a sneak-attack wedding a few months ago. “Is she around?”

“She usually waits side stage to make sure that the roadies all do their jobs,” Harper replies. “She’s queen of getting shit done.”

Tessa’s phone buzzes and she checks the message.

D: im on my way dont let them tell u lies

Just as she finishes reading the text, the door on the other side of the room slams open and Black Lilith come crashing in. It is a literal crash. Logan and Slate fall onto their knees the moment the door opens, shouting as though they’d been fighting to get through first. Tommy comes through within moments, and he’s clearly moving too fast to stop because he only manages an “Oh, shit…” before he trips over Slate’s leg and lands on the other two.

Dash leaps over the three of them and lands in front of the table, where Jackie and Sersha are standing together and watching the pile of men on the ground.

“Suck it, assholes! Oh, shit…” his eyes go wide when he sees Jackie, “… there’s a minor. Watch your language.”

Jackie snorts and puts the bottle of Coke she’s been drinking on the table, resting her hand on her hip. “So you’re my sister’s special friend, huh?”

Tessa hides her face, while Harper shakes with suppressed laughter next to her. Tessa thinks that Jackie is being heroically restrained, considering how excited she’s been to come backstage and to meet the band. But there’s a difference between enjoying someone’s music and meeting your sister’s special friends, and Jackie was just doing her duty as Tessa’s sibling. She took it seriously, too. Scott would be proud.

“I don’t know what you mean, small person. Special friend? Don’t do drugs. Stay in school,” Dash says rapidly, sidling past her and the table as though he’s worried about turning his back on her. But when he meets Tessa’s eyes his entire face breaks into a wide grin and he rushes over to grab her off of the couch and pull her into another hug.

Just like during the concert, when Dash pulled Tessa into that hug, she immediately felt a surge of joy. She held his neck, squealed when he picked her up and laughed when he spun her around. He was so strong and seemed too giddy to know what he was doing, but also apparently aware of Harper and the table since Tessa’s flailing legs never made contact with either.

“You’re here!”

“I’m here!” Tessa agrees.

Over his shoulder, she sees the rest of the band pulling themselves up onto their feet. Tommy and Slate come forward and join Dash in hugging Tessa, wrapping her in two extra sets of sweaty arms. It isn’t until they join in that she realizes how sweaty Dash is. But she doesn’t mind it as much with him as she minds it with the others.

“Guys! Get off. You’re disgusting,” Logan says, pushing forward and giving Jackie a respectful nod as he passes her, which makes the girl blush a little. “Seriously, you’re literally dripping with sweat. She’s probably too polite to tell you to fuck off.”

“There is a minor in the room,” Slate screams in Tessa’s ear.

Logan sighs, takes out his wallet and gives Jackie a dollar. “She’s too polite to tell you to frick off,” he says to Slate.

Jackie shrugs and pockets the dollar.

“Mind your fricking business,” Tommy says.

“You’re all a bunch of frickheads,” Dash says.

Sersha and Harper are cackling as this goes on, and honestly, Tessa is starting to get uncomfortable, but if it means Dash letting go of her then she’s happy to stay exactly where she is right now.

Slate and Tommy let go eventually, and in a moment Dash does as well, though he remains close to her. He’s still grinning like a madman, and his hands twitch like he’s restraining himself from grabbing her again.

Logan steps forward to shake Tessa’s hand. “It’s really great to meet you,” he says.

Tessa sees a silver wedding band glinting on his left hand as it dangles casually at his hip.

“Dash talks you up all the time. I feel like I know you.”

“That’s very nice of him.” Tessa notices Jackie’s hopeful looks toward the band and says quickly, “This is my sister, Jackie.”

“Yes, we know about Jackie,” Slate says, coming around to pull Jackie into his side and give her shoulders a squeeze. “Dash tells me you want to ice skate to one of our songs?”

“I don’t… I didn’t… ” Jackie looks to Tessa, who nods sheepishly, admitting to telling Dash about it. In Tessa’s defense, she hadn’t known that D was Dash Todd, and that she was essentially telling the band that her sister was a huge fan of theirs.

“If you want, we can write something just for you,” Tommy says, coming around to Jackie’s other side and looking at her through his fringe with a gentle, hopeful smile. “That way, it’ll be completely original. No one else will be able to skate to it.”

“Nothing but the best for T’s family,” says Slate.

“Can we come and watch it?” Tommy asks excitedly. “I bet it would be awesome. We never thought a figure skater would like our music. Honestly, it’s really flattering.”

Jackie’s looking between the two men as though all of her dreams are coming true. On the couch, Harper has crossed her legs and is watching all of this with a look of nostalgia, as though she’s seen it before. Or maybe she’s been on the receiving end of it.

“This is a really cute shirt by the way,” Slate says. “But I think you’d look better in one of our shirts. To the merch!”

“To the merch,” Tommy and Sersha both shout like they’re about to go on an adventure.

They guide Jackie over to the corner where a box, overflowing with shirts and baseball caps, is waiting.

“They’ll be there for a while,” Logan says. “Sorry, I think your sister’s going to be smothered in affection. We don’t really, you know, have gears? It’s just off and on.”

“She doesn’t mind,” Tessa replies. She’s torn… part of her wants to sit Logan down and have him explain to her exactly what this job that Dash had lured her with entails, but most of her just wants to settle into the couch and finally have a conversation with the man she’s been texting for the last five months.

Logan looks between his brother and Tessa. His lips quirk up, and he says, “Look, we’ll talk about why you’re here in a little bit. Mikayla’s still wrangling people, and she’s better at explaining things than I am.”

“She’s better at everything than you are,” Dash tells him.

“Not true,” Logan says, though there’s a smile on his face that tells Tessa that he’s not annoyed or even really serious. “I can hold a handstand for five seconds.”

“How long can Mik hold one for?”

“As far as I know, she’s never tried,” Logan says airily. “Anyway, it’ll be better to wait for her. Dash, why don’t you make sure that Tessa’s settled, while I keep Slate and Tommy from killing the minor.”

“Sure,” Dash says, grabbing Tessa by her hand and pulling her onto the couch in the farthest corner of the room, away from everyone else.

Logan and Harper join the others at the box full of merch, and Jackie’s laughter fills the room as the boys begin putting shirt after shirt on her, to the point where she starts to look like a marshmallow. She’s also got a handful of dollars. Apparently, the Black Lilith boys have to pay up when they swear in front of minors.

“They seem amazing,” Tessa says.

“Yeah. They’re good eggs.”

They look at each other. Dash still has his hand on hers. He’s rubbing his thumb over the sensitive skin on her palm, right on the love line. Does he know that’s what the line is? Tess doubts it. The man in front of her doesn’t strike Tess as someone who’s into palm reading, and D had never given her that impression.

She keeps thinking of them as separate people.

Dash’s lips spread in a self-conscious grin. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says.

“You too,” Tessa replies. Though at this point, words don’t really seem to cover it. “I… well, I don’t really know what to say now.”

“I know,” Dash says. He glances over to see that the rest of the band is occupied. “I imagined this a whole bunch of times.”

“Me too.”

They fall silent, but it doesn’t feel awkward. It feels like one of those long silences she sometimes shares with her siblings, with an edge of anticipation to it that she’s never felt with anyone before. It’s like she’s known this guy for so long, and at the same time she can’t wait to get to know him.

Dash reaches up to touch her bow. “Blue and silver suits you.”

She pokes him in the chest. “Wouldn’t have expected a Hufflepuff to be rocking the Slytherin poster child.”

“There’s hardly any merch for us.”

And then they say, at the exact same time, “Cedric Diggory didn’t die for this.”

They lock eyes, and Tessa knows that she’s got the same stupid grin on her face that Dash has. That grin that means she’s met someone that she’s been looking for. That grin that means she’s delighted with what she’s found.

Dash pulls her a little bit closer, so they’re almost forehead to forehead. “Can I keep you?”

Tessa nods because she can’t quite find the words right now. He remembered her favorite quote from Casper.

Chapter Six

“Essentially, Black Lilith’s management wants a spread in Rolling Stone. About ten thousand words,” Mikayla says. She’s all business, just as promised, and her brown hair is pulled up into a bun at the nape of her neck.

Tessa is sitting on the couch with Dash on her side. He’d let go of her hand when Mikayla sat down and the ‘interview’ began. Tessa keeps calling it an interview in her head, but really it’s just a talk. Everyone in the room seems to have accepted her joining them as a forgone conclusion. Tessa still isn’t sure, though.

She and Dash had talked, which was nice. She’s realized that they are just as in sync in person as they are in text messages, and she’s delighted about it. But there’s an edge of something in all of their conversations. Maybe it’s the knowledge that they’ve both gotten off to pictures of the other, and now they’re not quite sure whether they should bring it up. They’d kept the conversation to safe topics. Their love of Harry Potter, and other popular culture references. Plus, Dash’s music and Tessa’s books. And then Mikayla had walked in, looking stunning and professional in a skirt and suit jacket, but with that Tessa had started to feel nervous all over again.

“I’m not a journalist,” Tessa explains to Mikayla. On Mikayla’s other side, Logan sits and calmly observes. “I’ve never even had anything published.”

“But you’re a writer, right?” Mikayla asks. Her hands are folded in her lap, and she’s got a smaller, daintier version of the ring that Logan wears on her left ring finger. “Dash tells me that you’re incredibly talented.”

“I just sent him a couple of stories…”

Stupid, little rambling pieces, really. At his request, because he’d been curious. He had complimented her through their texts and then asked if she could write a story about them. So Tessa had sent him about two pages of pure smut. He’d liked that and sent her pictures to prove how much he’d liked it.

She sends him a look and he quickly shakes his head. Tessa supposes that she should wonder how they’re so in sync, that she can ask him whether he’d shared those stories with Mikayla, using only a look.

“Dash knows stories,” Mikayla says. “He’s our go-to man for what’s good. If he says he likes your stuff, then you must have talent.”

Tessa feels her cheeks going pink. “Still, I’m not trained in journalism. Shouldn’t your management be hiring someone who actually… you know… um, knows what they’re doing?”

Across the room, Tommy is playing his guitar, picking out a tune while Jackie listens with her legs crossed. She’s utterly absorbed in the music, but there’s a calculating look in her eyes that tells Tessa she’s thinking about how to move to it. She’s thinking about how to turn it into a routine. So Tommy is already making good on his promise to write her something, even though Tessa hasn’t technically accepted the job. These guys are just as sweet as Dash had described them.

Mikayla and Logan share a look. “Black Lilith has had some… interesting experiences with outsiders in the past,” she says simply. “We usually prefer to only bring people in, if they’re known to someone in the group.” With that, she glances over at Harper and Sersha, and Tessa wonders what the history is there and whether she’ll ever have the chance to ask. “There are some journalists who would probably give their right arm for the opportunity to write ten K for Rolling Stone, but we need to know we can trust them.”

“So… you just want full control over the story?” Tessa asks slowly. “Like, veto power?”

“No, not at all,” Logan says, speaking for the first time since Mikayla sat down. “We just want to know that whoever writes the story is going to be fair.”

Dash leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “We’re all simple, idiot musicians,” he says, winking when Tessa snorts at him. “We’re aware of this. We’ve got a lot of flaws, and we’re not looking for someone to hide that. We just… you know, we’re people. We’re not ideas or… I don’t know… aspiration figures?”

“Usually when people write about musicians, even in interviews and stuff, they tend to go for the simple or to go for the angle,” Logan says. “And we want someone who can write us.”

“And you think that someone is me?” Tessa asks, still unsure.

Mikayla smiles. “Dash says that he would trust you with his life. So why not trust you with the band?”

Tessa looks over at Dash, whose cheeks are red. But he doesn’t look away when their eyes meet. Instead, he just shrugs, as though he’s surprised she didn’t know.

How can someone trust somebody with their life when they don’t even know them?

But as soon as that question crosses Tessa’s mind, she knows, because she feels it too. She might have had doubts about D, about his intentions and everything, but she’d still felt compelled to trust him. Sometimes against her better judgment.

She would often ask herself what kind of fool sends nudes to a man she doesn’t know.

What kind of idiot sends sexual fantasies to a man she’s never spoken to.

A man who won’t tell her his name or show his face.

But what they’d lacked in the finer details, they had made up for in the core of their conversations. She may not have known D’s full name, but she knew the kind of person he was. She knew that she could trust him, even if she’d never actually met him.

How weird was that?

“How would this work?” Tessa asks finally. “Would I be following the band around, or just do the interviews now and write something later?”

“The plan is to bring you along on tour. We don’t want it rushed, and feel it would be best for you to see the boys in action on stage and also behind the curtains,” Mikayla says. “We’ve budgeted for an extra person in the entourage. You would be invited to observe and conduct interviews with each of the band’s members. And also to conduct interviews with fans and people close to the band, if that’s what you’d like to do.”

Tessa rolled that over in her head. “What about, like… how long does the tour go for?”

“About six months,” Logan replies. “It’s a national tour, but we’re also hoping to do a few stops in the UK and Europe.”

“It’s for Sinful Rhythms?” Tessa knows that it is, but she just wants to ask a stupid, obvious question to give herself time to digest the information. Her mind is a big sluggish right now.

“That’s right,” Logan says. His eyes shift over to where Tommy, Slate, Harper and Sersha are crowded around Jackie. Jackie is practically vibrating with excitement while Tommy and Sersha fuss together over a notebook. “It’s the first album that Tommy’s sharing credit for, so it’s a big deal.”

Tessa considers that. The band had talked about this new album during their performance earlier. How excited they are for the tour. How Tommy had been working with his girlfriend to write it. How the band would be bringing fans along for the ride through their socials and through meetups. At the time, Tessa had let the information wash over her, but now that she’s being confronted with the idea of joining them, it sounds daunting. She doesn’t understand how sharing credit would make it a meaningful album, but she imagines that she would learn about that during her interviews.

But is she willing to give six months to a project like that?

Six months seems like an awfully long time to be with the group, especially considering she’s only expected to write about ten thousand words about them. Surely, that could be covered in interviews and independent research? But if the idea was to let her get a feel for them and write about them faithfully, then she thought it made some sense. Some. Not as much as she thought that it should, though.

“Um… I hate to ask, but…”

“Remuneration?” Mikayla questions, giving her a knowing look. “Well, Dash tells us that you’re one of two main earners in your family…” she pauses in thought, “… I hope it’s okay that Dash shared that?”

“Sure,” Tessa says calmly.

“And we don’t want to deprive your family of an income,” Mikayla goes on. She pulls out an iPad mini and taps at it a couple of times. “So we’re offering a base salary to make up for any loss of income from taking six months away from your current job. You can also keep whatever Rolling Stone pays its contributors. I think at this moment, it’s about two dollars a word?”

Tessa feels her eyebrows shoot up. Two dollars a word—for ten thousand words—that would cover Jackie’s skating fees for years. Then Mikayla shows Tessa her iPad, with a copy of the contract and the salary highlighted, which amounts to thirty-five thousand dollars, and she feels her eyebrows go up even further.

“That’s…” her mouth is dry, and she has to swallow, “… that’s really generous.”

“We take care of our own,” Logan says. “And we’ve had a pretty good run these last few years, so we can do it a lot more easily.”

“Right, well,” Tessa scrolls up to the top of the contract and starts reading, but is immediately overwhelmed by some of the jargon. “Can I take a few days to read this?”

“Of course,” Mikayla replies. “I’ll forward you a copy. What’s your email address?”

Tessa gives it to her. Mikayla and Logan say a couple more things, but Tessa is only barely hearing them. She’s starting to get a little bit too overwhelmed. So she reaches over to squeeze Dash’s hand.

“Hey, guys… why don’t we give it a rest for a second?” he questions, drawing Mikayla and Logan’s attention toward him. “She’ll read over the contract in her own time. Plus, you’ve been hogging her and now it’s my turn.”

Mikayla laughs, and Logan gives his brother a knowing look. Tessa wonders how long they’ve been lounging backstage. Doesn’t the band have an after party or something to go to? But Slate and Tommy seem pretty content to hang out with Jackie, and no one has made any move to leave. Mikayla and Logan pull themselves out of the couch’s many cushions and disappear through the door at the end of the room, leaving Dash and Tessa alone.

“Woah,” she says.

Dash leans forward, and Tessa can feel how warm he is through her shirt. She leans over, and he puts his arm around her, immediately enveloping her in a thoroughly comfortable hug.

“Is this too much?” he asks.

“It’s way too much,” Tessa replies. She doesn’t raise her voice because she doesn’t want to draw attention. “Dash… this is…” she pauses and continues, “… just too much. Too generous. You can’t do this?”

“Can too,” Dash replies. “Bass Note can afford it. And I wasn’t lying to Logan when I told him I trusted you.”

“I could have been catfishing you this whole time.”

“Nah,” Dash replies, shrugging.

Tessa leans closer to him, feeling his solid presence next to her like an anchor keeping her from drifting too far away. “Just the Rolling Stone money alone would have made the job worth it,” she says. “A salary on top of it? That’s… overkill.”

“It’s payment for services rendered,” Dash says. His tone makes him sound like Mikayla, and when Tessa raises an eyebrow at him, he wrinkles his nose. “I know, but it’s true. Like, if you were our manager or our trainer, we’d be paying you a wage. A writer should have a wage, too.”

A sudden thought occurs to her that if she and Dash had been having sex, then this would be a sugar-daddy move. They’d traded pics and fantasies, and Tessa had given him some writing, but was this solely a way to pay her for services already rendered? But as soon as the thought occurs to her, she dismisses it. Like always. Every time a thought occurs to her that paints D as a scoundrel or a liar, she instantly dismisses it. It’s become an instinct. Her first thought is to mistrust, her second is to defend.

 “I don’t know what I’m going to tell my dad,” says Tessa.

“Tell him you’re a grown-up writer now,” Dash says. “Tell him he doesn’t have to work two jobs anymore, and that he can take a holiday. I remember when Logan and I were growing up, he used to work so hard…” the corners of his eyes crinkled, “… I wished I could do something like this for him.”

Tessa’s eyes flick over to the door that Logan had disappeared through. She burrows closer to Dash’s chest, and he pulls his arm tighter around her. “Seriously, Dash… I don’t know how to thank you.”

He just shakes his head, and when she looks up, she sees that he’s grinning at her. “Don’t you dare,” he says. “You’re my best friend. Why wouldn’t I want to help you?”

“I can’t believe I’m going to write ten thousand words for Rolling Stone,” she says, slightly awed now as the reality has hit her. “That’s, like… people spend their whole careers working toward that.”

“Yeah,” Dash says. “And just think… once they see how great you are, there’ll be people all over the world wanting you to write for them. This is a career-maker.”

She watches Jackie—her baby sister—hovering over Tommy and Sersha’s notebook, her eyes sparkling. If Tessa takes this job, if she doesn’t fuck it up, she’ll be able to give her sister anything she wants. Dash is right—this is an opportunity that she could be reaping the benefits from for the rest of her life. She might be able to pay for Jackie’s surgery one day if she wants to take that plunge. Not to mention, Tessa could pay off her college loans. She could help her father get out of debt. She could do so much.

“You sure I shouldn’t be thanking you?” she asks Dash.

“I’m just giving you a boost,” he says simply. “You would have beat all the bosses eventually, but I know the cheat codes and I don’t mind sharing.”

“Seems like I should be thanking you.”

He leans over to kiss the top of her head. It’s not sexual by any means, but Tessa immediately feels a rush of energy flow from the crown of her head to her groin. Her blood immediately starts pumping adrenaline, and she’s hyper aware of every muscle—well-padded, but still hard and unyielding—beneath her side, where she’s pressed up against him. She remembers the dirty stories she’d sent him and the way he’d texted back little suggestions about what he would actually do if he got her hands on her. Those text messages had fueled her fantasies for weeks afterward.

It’s just a kiss on the top of her head. For all the talk he’d made about rocking her world, he was very tame in person. Tessa is glad for that. She thinks she’d been drowning if Dash had come onto her at the same time that he was offering her a job. This way, with just a kiss on the head and a warm hug, he makes her feel safe. Completely, totally safe.

“I’m gonna take the job,” she says. “And not because of the money… which is ridiculous by the way. And not because it’s a career-maker.”

“Then how come?” he asks.

She pulls away just enough that she can see right up into his bright blue eyes. “Because I get to spend six months hanging out with you.”

His smile is practically blinding. “Good.” Dash squeezes her into another hug, then pushes himself out of the couch. At first, Tessa misses his warmth, but he reaches down to pull her up into a proper bear hug that lifts her off of her feet again.

“We’re gonna have so much fun,” he says.

“How come?” Slate calls. Harper and Slate are settled together on the ground, leaning their backs against the other couch as they watch Tommy and Sersha bash out a song for Jackie.

“Tessa’s gonna take the job,” Dash tells him, dropping Tessa onto the ground.

“Fuck yeah!”

“Minor,” Tommy shouts, but Slate is already handing Jackie her money.

Jackie pockets the money without looking at it—it seems that this is something that’s been happening for most of the night—and stares at Tessa. “What job?”

Tessa puts her arm around Dash’s waist. “I’m gonna be Black Lilith’s pet writer.”

“Holy fucking, fuckballs” Jackie shouts losing one hundred percent of her cool.

Slate puts his hand out and clicks his fingers. “I demand two dollars back young minor.”

Chapter Seven

Tessa’s dad is shocked, to say the least.

“You’ve… been texting with a famous musician in a rock band?” he asks slowly, staring at the kitchen table right in front of her.

“Yep,” she says. So far he hasn’t asked what the texting has involved, but she knows she’s going to lie about it even if he does ask. There are some things you just don’t tell your dad, no matter how close you are. “And now I’m working for them.”

“Okay,” he says. That’s all he says for a little while. Somewhere upstairs, Jackie’s stereo is blazing her copy of the Sinful Rhythms album, which the boys had gifted her at the end of the night, along with about a truckload of merchandise. The heavy bass and drums are all that Tessa can hear from downstairs, but she knows that somewhere in the din is a smoky voice and a thrashing guitar.

Her dad sips his coffee, which is instant, and weak, and sugared up to the point where she might as well have just made him liquid sugar. Thinking of that makes her remember that she’ll need to quit her job at Starbucks. She’s sure as hell looking forward to that.

Mikayla sent her the contract immediately after the show, and Tessa and her dad had sat down to read it together. The more he’d read, the more his eyebrows had sky-rocketed until he’d asked her to make him a coffee and explain everything. Now, she’d made him the coffee and tried to explain. He’s still digesting the information though.

“You’re going to tour with them,” he says. His voice is deep as he sounds out every syllable of every word. “Is that safe?”

“Of course,” Tessa says. “They’ve all got girlfriends… one of them is married. I’ll just stick to the girls, and I’ll be fine.”

She doesn’t mention that her texting buddy, Dash, is unattached. Let her dad make his own assumptions. He reads over the contract again on her battered laptop that got her through all of undergrad with only a few minor blow-ups. Kaden and Halley, the eldest twins, have to share a laptop because her dad could only afford to buy one when he’d sent them off to college. If Tessa takes this job, she’ll be able to buy them both a new one.

Slowly, her dad taps the edge of the laptop’s keyboard and looks up at Tessa. She feels a jolt of surprise when she sees that he has tears in his eyes.

“Honey, I’m so proud of you.”

“Dad!” She rushes around the table and pulls him into a hug. “Geez, it’s just a job offer.”

“I know, but you deserve the best.”

She holds him a little longer, until she’s sure that he’s got himself under control, and then pulls away.

“So, I’m going to sign it. Okay?” she says.

He nods, and she quickly turns to the laptop to add her digital signature to the pdf. Then she attaches it to an email and sends it before she can change her mind.

“I guess Mikayla wants me to start in a few days. I’m supposed to go with them back to New York.”

“Better start packing.”

Tessa kisses him on the cheek and bounds upstairs to take a look at her clothing situation. She has a couple of outfits that she considers ‘job appropriate,’ but not nearly enough for what is essentially going to be a live-in position where she’ll be with her employers twenty-four-seven.

Should she consider them her employers? She can’t decide. Only Logan and Mikayla have exuded any sense of professionalism, Slate and Tommy were more like trained monkeys or younger brothers, and Dash? Well, Dash is something else.

As Tess walks upstairs, she passes Jackie’s door and nearly knocks on it to tell her the good news, then decides against it. Her sister has already imploded once today, and besides, she already knew what decision Tessa was going to make. She, Tommy and Slate had spent a good few minutes high-fiving, and then Slate had performed a drum solo on an empty box of chicken wings. Harper and Sersha had each taken turns hugging Tessa until Dash had swooped back in and claimed her for himself.

Tess finally makes it to her room and opens her phone, typing in the message.

Tessa: Just sent Mikayla the contract. You’re stuck with me now.

She really hopes that he doesn’t end up regretting it. They’d had such instant chemistry—they knew all the same jokes and liked a lot of the same things. She’d often heard stories about how people who met online would meet in real-life and realize that they were better off as friends with a screen between them, but thankfully that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Dash and Tessa had clicked almost instantly. But will working together change that?

Dash replies and Tessa is opening her message before the ringtone stops.

D: AWESOME!! welcome to the band gorgeous

D: ur still gonna take me out for pizza b4 we leave right

D: i want my damn pizza :(

Tessa: Of course I will.

Tessa puts her phone on the bed, then frowns over at her closet and picks it up again.

Tessa: What’s the dress code like for this job?

His reply is almost instant.

D: wtf what dress code

D: just wear what u wore today

D: u looked hot asfuck

Tess smiles at the message but shakes her head.

Tessa: That was rock concert attire, not work attire.

D: were literally a rock band??? theyre the same thing???

Tessa: Yeah, but I’m a writer.

D: shrug just wear whatever i dont think any1 will mind

Tessa: You are the least helpful person in the world.

D: well ajsdlkfj;leijrfk678

D: DEAR SEXY – WORK ATTIRE INCLUDES THE STRAP ON DILDO OF YOUR CHOICE TO BE USED ON ME AT YOUR DISCRETION

D: wear the bow. Nothing else. Just the bowjskjfg’

Tessa’s phone just keeps pinging and she’s pretty sure she knows what’s going on, but she’s enjoying the spectacle to do anything more than cover her mouth with her hand and giggle. It gets to the point where she has to sit down on the side of her bed and clutch her stomach.

D: ignore that

D: don’t ignore that these are my deepest desires i would like to write a sonnet for you and also buy you soft pretzels

D: kjaldsfklhupoeikfm34

D: tell me im pretty

D: liojl

D: FREE THE NIPPLE

D: SPECIFICLLY MY NIPPLE SET IT FREE TESS

Finally, Tessa takes pity on the situation and calls him, though she has to take a few long breaths to get herself under control first. The phone rings a couple of times, and then a falsetto voice answers in a British accent.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is Dash there?”

“I’m sorry, Dash cannot come to the phone right now. He’s busy shaving his chest—”

“Fucking hell, Tommy!”

“Shit… Slate, hold him.”

“I’m trying, he’s like a weasel.”

“Give it back!”

There’s a sound of crashing, more swearing, and a muffled sound of fingers over the microphone. Slate’s voice shouts, “Run Tommy!” and then there’s heavy breathing as someone—presumably Tommy—runs from the noise. A door slams and then there’s silence.

“Still there?” Tessa asks.

“Indeed,” Tommy replies in his fake British accent. “Thank you for waiting. Quickly, this is very important… are you listening?”

“With rapt attention,” Tessa says. She climbs up onto her bed and starts rifling through her clothes, thinking that she might as well kill two birds with the one stone and talk to Tommy while she’s going through her clothes.

“I need you to send me screenshots of the lovey-dovey texts,” Tommy says, in all seriousness. “Not the sexy ones, I already feel inadequate compared to Dash as it is. Just the ones that make him seem like a fourteen-year-old girl with a crush. I can pay you in Chipotle.”

“A tempting offer,” Tessa says, grinning. “But I think I’m going to have to decline.”

“I can sweeten the pot,” Tommy replies quickly. “I can go as high as half a punnet of blueberry Ben and Jerrys and a DVD copy of Old School.”

Then another crash sounds and Tommy has just enough time to swear quietly before he lets out an “oomph,” and Dash’s voice joins the barrage of noise filtering through Tessa’s phone.

“I’m throwing your bass out a fucking window. I give zero fucks. Get your hand off my ass, Slate.”

“It’s okay, just pretend it’s Tess.”

“I swear to God—”

 “Oh, Dash, I never knew it could be this way.”

“You all are literally the worst…”

“What’s going on?” a woman’s voice cuts through the fray, but she only silences them for a little while, then they’re back to swearing and shouting.

A hand passes over the microphone again, and someone shouts, “Mikayla, don’t spoil our fun,” before Mikayla’s voice comes more clearly through Tessa’s ear. “Hello?”

“Hi, Mikayla. It’s Tess.”

“Oh, hi,” Mikayla says brightly. “I just got your contract… I’ll send you some more details in a few hours.”

“Thank you. Hey! What’s the dress code?”

“With these boys…” Mikayla says as the volume of shouting starts to die down, “… I think anything that doesn’t stain or wrinkle would be best. Remember that touring doesn’t leave as much room as anyone would like for laundry.”

“Great, thanks.”

She hears Dash say something, but whatever it is, it’s lost to the sound of Slate and Tommy hollering and laughing.

Mikayla sighs. “Lovely talking to you, Tess. I’m going to put Dash on now.”

“Great, thanks. Have a good night.”

“You too.”

There’s more noise. Muffled voices and laughter. When Dash’s voice finally comes clear, Tessa can tell that he’s not talking to her when he says, “She’s not my mom… she’s my sister-in-law.”

“Whatever Mama’s boy.”

“Fuck off, Slate, go do some push ups or something.”

A door closes, and suddenly it’s quiet on Dash’s end. “Tess? You there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Tessa replies. “Just so you know, Tommy wants screenshots of your lovey-dovey texts.”

“He’s getting a bowl of cereal in his bed tonight,” Dash mutters darkly. There’s another door closing, more silence. Then he says, “Okay, I’m back in my room now. And the door is fucking locked.”

“Good, because I was wondering.”

“Sorry about that,” he says, and his voice sounds pretty embarrassed. “They’re… well, they’re assholes.”

“I think they’re funny,” Tessa replies. “It’s the sort of thing I think my brothers would do.”

“Yeah, I guess,” says Dash. “Just so we’re clear, I don’t need you to free my nipples. But you can go ahead and tell me I’m pretty.”

“You’re pretty.”

They laugh together. It occurs to Tessa that this is the first time she and Dash have talked on the phone. They had kept it strictly to texts before now. Hearing his voice—even if it’s a shallow, tinny version of the voice she’d gotten used to during their conversations earlier that night—was pretty special.

Dash seems to be thinking along the same lines. “It’s weird to hear you talking.”

“Yeah, it is,” Tessa replies. “Especially since I would have usually gotten at least two dickpics by now.”

Her tongue goes between her teeth and she wonders if, by biting down, she could take that back. She’s not sure where they’re at now they know each other’s names. Has the dynamic changed? Dash hadn’t tried to be flirty since he’d invited her to the concert. Except for that one moment, after he’d first hugged her when he’d ordered her to keep her eyes on him. She isn’t even sure if he’s aware of how hot that was. But then, she thinks, D may be cheeky and a bit of a dork, but he’s pretty good at knowing what gets a girl’s motor running.

She’d always found it strange, that dichotomy of his personality. The way he could be so hot, the way that he could switch from loveable doofus to smoking in a single text. She’d sometimes wondered if he, himself, knew how he did it. Was it pure instinct? Had he spent years learning the skill?

Dash chuckles darkly in her ear. “Hold on…” he says. There’s a pause, a ruffling of fabric, and then her message ringtone dings in her ear. “There you go.”

Tessa pulls her phone away from her ear and opens the message. She can see the generic, cream carpet of a hotel room, the corner of a row of curtains off to the side, and a desk with a suitcase thrown onto it. There’s a mirror, too. It only takes Tessa a second to realize that the picture is of Dash’s reflection, with the phone conveniently raised to cover his face. There Dash is, in all his glory, with his pants around his calves and his cock flaccid on his thigh. Even limp, it’s huge. Big enough to make her a little bit concerned about how anything could happen between them because he looks like he could rip her in half.

“Say, how many women have you killed with that thing?” she asks.

“None, I promise,” he says. “Trust me, I know how to make you feel good.”

Tessa had kept it impersonal, even asked about other women, but Dash had gone straight for the personal pronoun. So maybe their relationship wasn’t going to change much after all. Maybe this will be their thing—they’ll be friends when they’re within touching distance and sext-buddies on the side. She can’t imagine what else she could be for him. He’s a rockstar for crying out loud, and he could have any woman he wants. He’s probably knee-deep in groupies. He doesn’t need Tessa for anything other than friendship and a few cheeky texts.

After a brief flash of disappointment, Tessa decides that it’s probably for the best. She’d been hired to write about the band, not fuck one of them.

“With a weapon like that, you’d better know how to use it.”

“The trick is to start slow,” he says. His voice goes even deeper until it starts to remind her of warm caramel, and the fact that Tessa’s got her phone pressed to her ear gives her the illusion that he’s speaking close to her. “Get you nice and wet for me. That can take a while. Hours, sometimes. But you’re worth it.” Tessa’s breath does not hitch. But she does press a hand to her crotch to try and slow the throbbing that’s already started. “It helps to get you to open up, too.”

“What do you use for that?”

“Fingers, tongue, maybe a toy if you beg me for it.”

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Dash’s voice might just kill her. It’s probably a good thing that they’d only exchanged messages in the past, and not had long, drawn-out conversations.

“I’m not a beggar.”

“I’d make you beg twice, just to prove how much you fucking want it.”

Her message tone pings again, and she regretfully pulls her phone away from her ear to look at the picture. It’s the same frame, except now Dash is at attention and clearly stroking himself. Holy shit, he looks so good like that. Dash has always looked good, in all of the images he’s sent her, but there’s something about seeing him in the mirror and hearing his voice in her ear that promises to wreck her if she lets it.

“And when I’m done begging?” Tessa says once she’s had her fill of the image.

“Then I’ll stretch you a little more, just to make absolutely sure you’re ready for me.”

“I’ll probably try to kill you.”

“Baby, you’ll barely be able to move by the time I’m done with the foreplay.”

Tessa is definitely starting to feel the effect of his words. All she wants to do is rip off her jeans and take a picture of her pussy, just to show him how wet he’s making her with just his voice and his pictures. In fact, her fingers start toying with the edge of them, getting ready to slide them down—

And then… someone knocks on her door.

“Shit!” she says, standing up quickly as though even sitting on the bed might be too incriminating. Dash’s voice goes silent as Tessa takes a moment to breathe and swallow before calling out, “Who is it?”

“Jackie.” Tessa wants to cuss her little sister out, but she reins herself in. “Sam’s gonna be late. Can you drive me to practice?”

“I… yeah, sure. Just give me a sec.” She scuffs her sock on the carpet and turns her head to speak to Dash, whispering, “I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay,” Dash says, and his voice doesn’t sound annoyed. He sounds completely understanding, though a little breathless. “Text me when you get home, and we can pick this up where we left off.”

“You’re very... accommodating.”

He chuckles darkly. “Only the best for you, Tess. Talk soon?”

“Talk soon,” she replies.

Tessa hangs up, straightens her blouse, and checks her mirror to make sure that she’s not too flushed. Then she steps out of her room to take her sister to skating practice.

Chapter Eight

On Wednesday, Tessa packs up the last of her best clothes, kisses her dad on the cheek, and catches a cab to the airport. Black Lilith and their entourage will be waiting for her there, with a ticket to take her to Manhattan.

Tessa swallows the first bubbles of nerves as she stares out of the cab window at the Chicago streets. Yep, she’s really doing this.

Jackie had been beside herself when Tessa left that morning, though that might have had something to do with the demo Tommy had emailed her of the song he’d written ‘just for Jackie.’ Poor kid looked like she was going to have a heart attack, and had demanded that Scott take her to the rink right that second. Scott had refused, because one… Tessa was leaving, and they might not see her for six months, so they should at least pretend that they were sad to see her go, and two… he hadn’t had his coffee yet, so fuck you. While Tessa had been climbing into the cab, she’d seen Jackie pulling on Scott’s sleeve, practically dragging him back into the house to get him caffeinated. Tessa made a mental note to thank Tommy when she saw him.

When they get close to the airport, Tessa puts her book in her handbag and sends a text to Dash.

Tessa: Almost there.

D: whats the cab # security will meet u outside

Tessa: Why would security need to meet me outside?

D: fans r a bit intense 2day

Tessa understands what he means the moment her cab pulls up to the airport departures gate. There are dozens of people loitering around outside, most of them holding signs with Black Lilith’s name on them and wearing merchandise of the band. Paparazzi lurks at the edges of the crowd, snapping pictures, while a handful of police officers can be seen tucked away at the far side of the airport doors.

Rolling down her window, Tessa winces when the sheer volume of the crowd hits her. No one is screaming, or even shouting, but everyone is talking excitedly, and the accumulative noise is enough to make her hastily roll the window back up. She wonders why Dash thinks security will need to come and get her. She’s a nobody. These people wouldn’t know that she’s involved with the band. But then she sees the sea of people breaking apart to allow security through, and something in her brain clicks, the crowd is so thick that there’s no way she would have gotten through without someone with authority coming to get her.

“Geez, what about the people who are actually traveling today?” she asks out loud.

The cabbie shakes his head. “Some people just don’t give a damn.”

The security guy taps on her window. Tessa notes his black shirt and jacket with Black Lilith written on it. So he’s not airport security, then. He’s handsome, if a little on the slim side and Tessa half-wonders if he would even be that effective when the band themselves are in such good shape. Slate could probably bench press this guy. Hell, Harper could probably bench press this guy.

“You’re Tessa?” he asks. He’s got a nice voice and kind eyes that wrinkle at the edges, with ink-black hair that falls in soft waves over his forehead.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Jared, I’ll be escorting you. Are your bags in the back?”

“No,” she replies, hoisting her battered and creaking suitcase up. She’d ridden with it in the back seat.

“Okay.” Jared opens the door and the crowd—who know that he’s with the band even if they don’t know who she is—jostles for a closer look.

Two other security guys—beefier, well-muscled men who also look a lot older and wearier than Jared—push the crowd back so he can pull Tessa out of the cab and take her suitcase. After paying the driver, he puts a hand on the small of her back and guides her through the buzzing, undulating crowd. There are men and women—though mostly women—and many of them are craning their necks to get a look at Tessa. Some of them are even taking pictures of her on their phones. Tessa resists the urge to cover her face.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you inside in no time,” Jared says soothingly into her ear. He seems like he’s had a lot of practice reassuring people.

True to his word, he gets Tessa through the doors. Inside, the airport is much calmer. The crowd must have not be allowed past the entrance.

“Thank you,” Tessa says, trying to take her suitcase back, but Jared just waves her off.

“I’ve got it, don’t worry. I think the band wanted to sign autographs, but the airport security won’t let them. Then one of the fans tried to grab Tommy’s shirt, so they all got kicked out. One of the paps also tried to get past the security gates and nearly got arrested. Mikayla’s out for blood. The band’s departure times were supposed to be secret. Not sure how anyone found out, but it’s all over Twitter. Anyway, have you got your passport? Let’s get you checked in.”

He says all of that almost in one breath as he guides her toward the check-in counter. Tessa finds herself following numbly, feeling an odd mixture of curiosity and disbelief. This guy seems to walk with purpose and self-assurance, but when he opens his mouth, he’s all enthusiasm and pouring out information. He’s got a cute smile, too. Which grows wider the longer he’s talking, though his eyes are constantly alert and moving around the room, possibly assessing. It’s an interesting combination that almost reminds Tessa of Dash. The way Dash can go from cheeky and dorky to hot and sensual in the blink of an eye, is often just as confusing and intriguing.

Thinking about Dash reminds Tessa of the nights she’d spent since actually getting to meet him when she’d been curled up in bed and whispering into her phone as he’d described everything he’d like to do to her. Tessa doesn’t know how she’s supposed to act around him now, but she hopes that nothing will really change.

He probably just likes to get off, she tells herself. Tessa is a good sexting buddy, but he could probably just as easily pick up a girl off the street and have the same experience. Tessa isn’t insecure, quite the opposite. She’s being realistic. Dash is a famous rockstar, and she’s a former Starbucks barista. Not exactly the sort of thing people write romance novels about.

“By the way, I like your shirt,” Jared says as they bypass the economy line and head straight to first class.

Tessa feels her eyebrows raising when she sees that they’re heading for the VIP lane, but says nothing about it. “Thank you,” she says. It’s a simple button-up blue blouse that she’d picked up at H&M, in a desperate attempt to get some work-appropriate clothes before she starts working with Black Lilith for months. She’s hoping that her first paycheck will help her fill out her wardrobe. “I like your jacket.”

Jared rubs his sleeve, obviously chuffed. “It’s a lot of hype, working with these people. They’re great musicians.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Tessa says.

“Right! You’re the writer, aren’t you? I’ve always wanted to do that. But I’m not very good at putting words on paper, you know? It’s really bloody hard.”

“Maybe you just need practice,” Tessa says as they reach the front of the counter, and she hands her passport over to the woman on the other side.

“Maybe you can teach me a thing or two?” Jared asks, stuffing his hands into his pockets and looking at her a little smugly.

Tessa smiles at him, in what she hopes is just an encouraging way. “Sure,” she replies because she’s always excited to meet someone who wants to write.

Her phone beeps, and she quickly checks the message.

Unknown: Hi Tessa, this is Logan. Just letting you know that Dash is checking his phone a lot, and he’s worried the fans abducted you. Could you reassure him?

Tessa frowns at the screen, then realizes that while she’d been talking to Jared, she had missed some texts from Dash. She sends a quick ‘Thanks’ to Logan, then a short ‘I’ll be through security soon’ to Dash. He must have thought that it was taking her a while to get checked in, but this is honestly the easiest experience with checking in that Tessa has ever had. The woman behind the counter prints her ticket, takes her bags, and waves her through to the security gates, and then Jared guides her through to the first class line, and she’s whisked through in less than ten minutes.

“Didn’t know first class got this many perks,” Tessa says, still a little dizzy from how quickly they’d stripped her of all of her metals and bustled her through the detectors.

Jared is sliding his watch back on and grinning. “If it makes you uncomfortable, you’re welcome to ride in the back with us.”

“Do the security guards not ride with the band?”

“Not unless they get a private jet. My boss thinks they’re only a few months away from that.”

“Wow,” Tessa says.

She can hardly imagine it. Especially since she’s gotten to know the boys. They all seem so normal to her. It’s hard to reconcile the image of Tommy and Slate playing keep-away with Dash’s phone, with the women outside carrying boards that said ‘Marry Me, Logan.’

That thought just reminds her that she’s going to be expected to write a story about them that will appear in Rolling Stone, and they’re essentially going to put her name in lights right along with theirs. With that thought, she thinks she might be getting a little faint.

“Woah. Hey… you okay?” Jared asks, quickly grabbing her elbow. His grip is gentle, so gentle that she almost wonders if he’s actually going to be able to catch her if she falls. “You got really pale there.”

“I’m fine, I promise. I just…” It’s hard to put into words. “Do you think it’s weird for me to be anxious about hanging out with famous people? Like, seeing paparazzi and people filming me, and the security thing, and first class, and all of this… I just… never thought that I’d have to deal with it? And I’m not sure how I’m supposed to act now?”

Jared looks at her thoughtfully, then shrugs. “Maybe just… pretend it’s normal?”

Tessa doesn’t think that’s going to help her, but it’s probably the best advice she’s going to receive. “Right, sure. Thanks.”

He leads her through the airport, past the gift shops, and toward the first class lounge. Sure enough, Dash is there, and the moment Tessa sees him she feels some of the weight starting to lift off of her chest. Sure, he may be a famous rockstar who can have any woman he wants, and sure she’s not certain whether their naughty nights will translate into the daytime just as seamlessly, but he’s her best friend. He’ll take care of her.

“Tess,” he shouts when he sees her, running forward and scooping her into a firm hug.

This feels so much better than Jared’s gentle elbow-holding. As soon as the thought enters her head, Tessa wonders where it came from. Why would she even compare the two?

“I thought you were kidnapped,” Dash says. He pulls away and gives her a wink before looking over her shoulder at Jared. “Thanks, man. I think Mikayla got us some sodas if you want to come in for a drink?”

“Sounds good,” Jared says, nodding his head.

Dash’s hand falls onto the small of Tessa’s back, right where Jared’s hand had been. Though Dash’s fingers curl possessively on her shirt as he leans over to whisper in her ear, “That’s a nice shirt. Very work appropriate.”

“Well, I couldn’t find a strap-on on such short notice,” she says, her voice as steady as she can make it with his lips so close to her ear.

He pulls back and gives her a sly grin, which tells her that yes, their naughty nights can translate into the daytime.

“Don’t worry, baby, we can get you something when we land in New York.”

Chapter Nine

Despite her best efforts, Dash keeps pulling Tessa out of work mode.

“Dash, pay attention.”

“How can I when your hands look so delicious?”

Tessa pulls her hand out of his and looks away to hide her blush. They’re on the plane, heading for JFK, and she’s been trying to run her preliminary research past Dash so that she’s sure she has her facts straight before her interviews. But Dash doesn’t seem to understand how serious this is. He keeps grabbing her fingers and trying to bite them, complaining that he’s starving because Slate stole half his burrito when he wasn’t looking, and they hadn’t had time to get another one before they had to board the plane.

They’re lounging in first class—and yes, ‘lounge’ is the correct verb, because they’re both reclined so far that Tessa thinks they might as well be laying down. She’s never been in first class, and the few times she’s flown before, she’s always walked through the cabin when all of the chairs were up. She’s seen pictures of first class passengers, but Tessa supposes that she’s always thought that they were exaggerated. When the flight attendant brought her some champagne before take-off, she realizes that they probably weren’t.

Dash tries to reach across the armrest to take her hand again, and she waves him off with a grin.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Woah, whipping out the ten dollar words already?” he asks, grinning at her with his head cocked adorably.

“Just… look… just let me run this past you, and then you can hold my hand for the rest of the flight. Okay?”

He’s such a dork, honestly. Her best friend has been acting nothing short of delighted to have her with him, and if it weren’t for that, she would have abandoned him already and traded seats with Logan—who’s sitting next to Mikayla—because it would probably be the fastest way for her to get her work done. She and Logan are sitting in front of Dash and Tessa, while Slate and Harper are behind them. Tommy and Sersha are across the aisle, with their heads pressed together as they scrutinize a laptop screen. When Tessa asked, Tommy had just shrugged and said, “Just some scribbles. You can take a look when we land if you like?”

Tessa had agreed, though she freely admits that she doesn’t have a head for poetry. So she probably wouldn’t be the best judge of song lyrics.

“So, okay, you all met in high school. Right?”

“Well, I met Logan a little earlier,” Dash says.

Tessa snorts and elbows him. “Right, but you met Slate and Tommy in high school?”

“Yeah. Starting the band was my idea.”

“Really?”

He nods proudly. “I wanted an excuse to shred my guitar and make pretty girls look at me. Plus, Logan needed to unwind, he was so serious.”

Tessa files that information away. She’ll probably ask about it later, but right now she’s in full recon mode. “Okay. And then when you decided to get serious—”

“We were always serious,” Dash says. And Tessa would have believed him if he hadn’t been fighting to pull her fingers into his mouth for the first twenty minutes of the flight. “We were,” he insists when he sees her expression. “I don’t know, it’s like… I always knew we had to make it. We were good, and Logan… he really loves music, you know? So we had to make it, or else he’d have been stuck with some desk job or something.”

“What about you?” Tessa asks. “What would you do if you weren’t a musician?”

Dash seems to think about that for a moment. He pouts a little, and the plane hits a bit of turbulence. He grabs her hand and pulls it over the armrest to hold it in both of his. Tessa allows it, enjoying the warmth and comfort of his big, broad hands covering her little one so easily.

“I think… maybe science? Or, like…” he pauses again and actually looks a little bit embarrassed. “Maybe maths?”

“Maths? You want to be a mathematician?”

“Music has a lot of math in it,” he says. He actually looks away from her—self-conscious for the first time since she’s known him—and he shrugs like he’s trying to throw it off. “It’s not like it matters because we’re doing this now, but in school, I was pretty good at math. If I’d gone to college, I think I would have majored in it.”

Tessa squeezes his hand, and he looks back at her. “I think that’s awesome,” she says. He grins at her like he’s relieved. “Why didn’t you ever go to college, anyway?”

“We couldn’t afford it,” he says. “And then we started making it as Black Lilith. There’s never really been time. Plus, we tour so much… so when would I be able to go to classes?”

Tessa mulls that over, wondering what she would want the twins or Scott to do if they’d had the opportunity to make it big before going to college. No matter how bad their financial problems, her dad was always adamant about one thing—education comes first. It wasn’t just that they needed degrees to fall back on. If that were the case, she wouldn’t have gone into English Lit of all things. It was that education gives people the chance to see the world in new ways. Tessa remembers the sheltered little thing she was when she’d first gone to college, and how exciting it was to be thrust into a world where learning about new ideas, concepts, philosophies, was an expectation. She’d learned French in college, and it made her see language in new ways. She’d learned history in college, and that had shown her how badly the world can go wrong when people prioritized concepts over other people.

No matter what, she wants the same for her brothers and sisters. And for Dash, if that’s something she has the right to want for him.

“Maybe… maybe night school?” she asks. “Or there are some colleges that do things by correspondence. You wouldn’t have to actually go to classes.”

Dash licks his lips and shrugs, self-deprecatingly. “Maybe. But it’s not a big deal.”

But it is a big deal, and she can hear it in the downward inflection of his voice. She wonders whether he regrets not going to college straight out of high school. He’s in his twenties, so he’s not too old to go by any means. But you only get one chance to be a fresh-faced freshman. She understands that he’s more world-weary than his dorky, geeky exterior shows. She knows it in the way that some of his late-night texts would border on the profound. How he would apply the philosophies of Star Wars and Harry Potter to the world around him. How he could turn anything into a joke so quickly that his mind must be constantly working, constantly engaged and drawing on every story he’s ever seen or heard.

Tessa squeezes his hand again as their plane hits another bump. He pulls it up to his mouth and, instead of trying to bite her again, he kisses her knuckles.

“What else?” he asks, nodding to the notebook that lays half-forgotten on her tray table.

“Oh, yeah,” Tessa quickly checks her notes again, her knuckles still tingling from the kiss.

Once again, she wonders whether he could be genuinely interested in her, or whether he’s a typical playboy who’s flirting because it’s what he’s good at. She’s sure that all it would take is a wink and a nod to get one of the flight attendants to visit the bathroom with him. In their defense, it would probably take just as much for Tessa to join him in the bathroom too.

Tessa doesn’t mind the flirting. Or the sexting, or the fact that she knows that he could have any woman he wants. Because he’s her friend first. She thinks that won’t change. And if they happen to help each other get off on the phone, moaning into each other’s ears and giving each other suggestions, then that’s good too. But Tessa’s not going to make the mistake of thinking that she’s special.

“Okay, so the girls? Mikayla was your PA?”

“Yep. You can thank Slate for that. He scooped her up and brought her on. Logan started flirting, like, immediately. They got together in New Orleans, and then after that she became our manager.”

“And they got married in Vegas?”

“Yeah,” Dash says. His eyes go a bit dark. “Some of the press thought Logan got her pregnant. You probably saw that when you were researching us.”

Tessa had seen that. Some journalists had speculated that Mikayla was a gold-digger, or that Logan was ‘doing the right thing,’ or that the baby wasn’t even his. Women started coming out of the woodwork claiming that they too had been impregnated by members of Black Lilith, but none of them had been able to prove it. Tessa remembers, vaguely, that one woman had insisted on a DNA test, but the results had been negative. It hadn’t helped that she couldn’t specify which member of the band members had knocked her up, leading to speculation that the band engaged in wild sex parties.

As far as Tessa knows, that only applies to Tommy and Slate. That information will not be going in her article.

“I guess I can see why you guys don’t like the press much after that.”

Dash nods grimly. “Fool us once, you know? Mikayla went through the newspapers and made an excel sheet with all of the journalists who wrote about her. Now we don’t do interviews with them.”

“Savage.”

“That’s my sister-in-law,” he says proudly.

An attendant walks through first class, offering drinks to everyone. Her eyes linger hopefully over Slate and Logan, but she’s slowed by Dash almost with a prowl-like walk, giving him a wicked smile. Dash, for his part, just nods politely. He mustn’t have noticed that the woman was more interested in him than the others.

Tessa wonders how quickly he would have taken her up on her unspoken offer if he had seen that. Would he leave Tessa behind?

No, she decides. Because he’s her friend. He would probably wait until Tessa had someone else to talk to, before heading off for a quickie with another woman.

She feels a spike of jealousy and pushes it down.

“So after Mikayla joined, it was Sersha?”

“Yep,” Dash says, sipping his beer with one hand while keeping hers captive with the other. Tessa sips her red wine along with him. She’s not technically on the job just yet. “Bass Note brought her on to help Tommy write our lyrics.” He smirks over the aisle at them. “Her and Tommy, and Logan and Mikayla for that matter… they hated each other when they first met.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.” He glances around the aisle at the rest of the passengers, before leaning over to Tessa. “There’s juicy gossip there, too, involving our last PA. I’ll tell you when we’re alone. Promise you won’t print it?”

“Not if you don’t want me to,” she whispers back.

He seems satisfied with that answer and takes another swig of beer. “Then after that was Harper. She and Slate met under… interesting circumstances. I’ll tell you about them later, too. And he brought her on as our personal trainer. She’s pretty great.”

“Seems like Slate has a gift with people,” Tessa says.

Dash snorts. “Yeah. He actually helped Tommy and Sersha get together, too. He really has a way with people. I still can’t believe he’s got a steady girlfriend before me, though.”

Tessa wrinkles her nose, ignoring the little voice in her head shouting ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ because that’s just ridiculous. She’s not rockstar girlfriend material.

“Well, maybe Slate can be persuaded to find someone for you, too?”

Dash purses his lips and looks down at their entwined fingers. It takes everything in Tessa not to read into that. Her vivid imagination immediately begins conjuring all sorts of ideas about what he’s thinking. About what that look could mean.

“Yeah, maybe,” he says.

They fall into a comfortable silence. True to her word, Tessa lets him hold her hand as they fly through the air, racing toward their destination. There will be a few shows in New York, so the band is going to stay at their brownstone, and Tessa has been invited to join them. Mikayla had offered to put her up in a hotel, but then Dash had cut across her and eagerly invited Tessa into a Halo tournament, offered his room, and just generally seemed firm to keep her with them.

He must be starved for company since his brother and friends have found significant others.

Tessa leans her head on his shoulder and feels him sigh beneath her cheek. It’s only a few hours left until New York. She closes her notebook and glances up at Dash, his strong jaw cutting through her vision, and his scent—a strong, but not overbearing cologne that smells of jasmine and wood—fills her up and makes her want to nuzzle into him.

“So what are you reading right now?” Dash asks, leaning his own head onto hers.

“Beowulf. The Tolkien translation.”

“God, that is so hot.”

She laughs, but not hard enough to dislodge her head. She wouldn’t dare. Right now, there’s not a lot that could get her to move from this spot.

 Chapter Ten

Black Lilith’s brownstone is so very in-character that Tessa wonders whether, even with her imagination, she could have pictured them living anywhere else. For one thing, the house was full of instruments. The boys would be talking one minute, and then the next they would fish a recorder or a ukulele out from behind one of the couch cushions and start playing. All of their furniture is second-hand and comes with a backstory. The living room table was discovered on the corner of 54th and Lex. The bookshelf belonged to Tommy’s grandmother. The kitchen chairs are ‘probably haunted.’ The walls are painted gold, and there’s a keyboard shoved up against a corner covered in otter stickers.

Tessa loves it.

The brownstone is immaculately clean considering it’s mainly been inhabited by four boys for years. In the cab on the way over, Dash told Tessa all about how Logan had insisted they buy it with their first big check from Bass Note. He kept one hand on hers the entire way, but he also spent most of the journey fidgeting, looking out the window, and jumping from one idea to another with the kind of rapidity that kept Tessa’s brain whirring.

Dash eagerly drags her downstairs once they arrive to show her the basement with its massive television and game system. There are cushions and huge fluffy pillows, and several futons stacked up on top of each other. Tessa feels like she’s sinking into a cloud when she sits down. She knows Dash is talking, but she’s not really taking it in.

“… and we’ve got Call of Duty if you’re down to play against Tommy because none of the rest of us can play with him anymore, and… oh, hey, are you hungry?”

“Sure?” Tessa says, a little bit overwhelmed by his eagerness despite everything she already knows about him.

“I’ll get you some cake. Wait here!”

Tessa watches him go with what she knows is a bewildered expression on her face. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought that he was nervous.

“He’s nervous.”

Tessa nearly jumps in her seat. Logan is standing in the doorway that Dash just left through, leaning against it with his arms crossed and a wry smile on his face.

“Nervous?” Tessa asks, trying to cover up how startled she’d been. She realizes that this is the first time she’s been alone with a member of the band who isn’t Dash, and suddenly wonders if she’s going to need that buffer.

Logan joins her on the futon and sinks into the cushions with a sigh. He’s taken off his jacket, and his colorful tattoos are on display even in the low lamplight.

“Nervous,” he agrees, nodding sagely. Above them, Tessa can hear the stomping of several boots as the rest of the band and their significant others go about whatever business they have. Dash had promised Tessa a tour, but so far he’d been more preoccupied with showing her his gaming system. “You make him nervous.”

“That’s … ridiculous,” she says.

As soon as the words leave her mouth, she’s worried that he might take offense. He’s technically her boss, after all. But he just snorts.

“Not as ridiculous as you think.”

“But. I mean… what does Dash have to be nervous about? I’m his friend, he shouldn’t be nervous at all.”

Logan looks over at her and Tessa is struck by the similarity in the brothers. Not just their looks—though Logan is slimmer and perhaps softer in his features than Dash—but in the way they hold themselves. Confident, like they’re sure of their place in the world, and with an edge of defensiveness in the curl of their shoulders, like they’re happy to prove their worth to anyone who asks.

What happened to these boys to make them like this, she thinks.

Dash and Tessa had never really shared particulars when they were D and T. Tessa knew the people in Dash’s life and how they were related to him, but she doesn’t know anything about extended family, his parents, or how he grew up. Her primary research of Black Lilith had hinted at some kind of drama in the lead singer’s and guitarist’s pasts, but after her conversation with Dash on the plane, she isn’t sure if she should take that at face value. She supposes that she’ll just have to wait until their interviews to get the full story. If she’s even comfortable asking about it.

The biggest difference is their eyes, she realizes. Logan’s are a soft brown, but Dash’s are light blue.

 “My brother’s a simple guy,” Logan says, still smiling that wry smile that tells her he knows all of Black Lilith’s secrets. “He’s nervous because he wants to impress you.”

She wants to point out the ridiculousness of that. The fact that he’s a rockstar who can, and probably does, have any woman he wants means he shouldn’t have to impress anybody. But then, she supposes, he has brought Tessa into his home after months of getting to know each other by text. Maybe he’s just hoping that they’ll get along as well as they always have, now that there’s no phone and no distance between them.

“Well, he’s doing just fine there. This place is great.”

Logan rolls his shoulders. Tessa notices the way that his fingers toy with the wedding band on his finger, almost absently, as though he’s still not used to it. “I heard you two talking on the plane. It’s good to hear that he’s opening up to you. He’s been a bit lonely since the rest of us started dating seriously.”

Tessa feels her cheeks flush. “That’s… I mean… I can see that I guess.” She gazes around the room and notices the one-player games are stacked on top of the pile next to the console. She sighs. “Poor guy.”

“It’s not like we’ve never dated before,” Logan says. He cracks his knuckles and Tessa winces on his behalf. “Tommy was pretty serious with one woman once. And it used to be that you couldn’t not see Slate with someone on his arm. But it’s different when it’s all three of us.”

“I imagine,” Tessa replies.

“I also wanted to thank you for encouraging him to think about college.”

Tessa cocks her head at him. Then she nearly jumps out of her skin when something smashes upstairs. She and Logan look up, and Tessa can hear Tommy’s voice drifts down through the floorboards, “Everything’s fine!”

Sersha’s voice responds, “Are you bleeding?”

A pause. “Not badly.”

“Jesus Christ,” Logan mutters under his breath.

“Everything’s fine!” Slate’s voice calls out, joining Tommy’s. “But, ah, Mikayla can you join us in the bathroom? Bring a towel.”

“There are towels in the bathroom,” Harper shouts.

“Yeah…” Slate replies vaguely.

Tessa looks over at Logan, who doesn’t look like he’s in a hurry to move. “Shouldn’t someone address that?”

“I’m not going to panic until I hear the sirens,” Logan says. “FYI, that’s a good pro-tip for living with us, since you’re going to be here for a few days.”

“Noted.”

“What was I talking about?” Logan continues, scrunching up his face a bit. “Oh, yeah… Dash’s college. Thank you.”

Tessa purses her lips and has to look away. He looks kind of proud, which is silly. Dash’s college aspirations aren’t the most personal thing the man has shared with Tessa.

“Did you not know about it?” Tessa asks.

“I knew that he should have gone to college. He would have if I could have afforded it. I never asked him what he would have studied if he’d had the chance.” He blinks into the middle-distance, clearly losing himself in the thoughts swirling through his head. “Mathematics isn’t a surprise. But I would have picked him for a history major.”

“He was good at history?”

“He was good at everything,” Logan says.

Upstairs, Tessa hears the soft, even tones of Mikayla’s voice. She can’t make out what she’s saying, so she’s probably in the bathroom with Tommy and Slate instead of across the house shouting. Tessa hopes that everyone is okay.

“Dash is… he’s a genius,” Logan continues. “He’s a complete doofus, but he’s also a genius. The kid was good at all his classes. He could remember everything he ever learned. He picked up the guitar because he was bored with regular music lessons where all they did was teach him how to play the recorder. I’m pretty sure he learned Dutch just to despite his French teacher. He’s that kind of brilliant.”

“That’s really cool,” Tessa says. “I didn’t know he could speak Dutch.”

“Ask him about it,” Logan says. Then he looks lost in thought again. “I think… I think he spent a lot of time studying when we were kids because things were kind of tough.”

Tessa opens her mouth, then closes it. It’s not her business. Even though she’s burning with curiosity, because Logan is Dash’s brother, and if Dash wants her to know these things then he will tell her.

Logan glances at her from underneath his eyelids, which are so dark that they almost look like eyeliner has darkened the brim of his eyes. “You’ll probably hear all about it when you do the interviews.”

“Logan, I never really got to thank you for the opportunity,” Tessa says, sitting up a bit straighter and reminding herself that this isn’t just Dash’s brother she’s talking to—it’s her boss. She looks down at herself and almost clicks her tongue when she realizes how wrinkled her blouse has gotten since she boarded the plane that morning. “Really, this whole opportunity is… unreal. Thank you.”

Logan just smiles. He’s got a nice smile, she decides. Almost as warm as Dash’s, and with a hint of something extra that makes her feel safe in a different way. It takes her a moment to recognize it—it’s the way that Scott looks at Jackie. The way that Kaden looks at his twin, and at Mary and Stacey. It’s the older brother look. She’s never had it directed at her before.

“You’re welcome. Even though I’ll bet we’ll be thanking you in a few months. Dash kind of insisted on us giving you the job.”

And Tessa starts to feel her cheeks getting flushed again. She feels like she’s back in college, in one of those moments that she’d often shared with one of the other students when there was a calm respite in between classes. In those moments, Tessa would often find herself sharing way more about her life and her dreams than she ever would have normally. She never understood it, but in those moments she would often find herself talking to that person as though she’d known them forever. Instead, of just for a few hours, or even minutes in some cases.

“Did he tell you about my family?” she asks.

He nods. Unabashed, unashamed. “Yes, but that’s only part of the reason he insisted on giving you the job.”

So she was right before, he had wanted to help her out. “What was the other reason?”

“He told us you’re damn good at what you do. Wouldn’t tell us how, so I’m guessing it’s a little risqué?” He laughs when he sees her expression. “Don’t worry, we’ve all been there,” he says, reaching over to pat her knee the way that she’s often seen Kaden do Halley when his sister felt nervous or self-conscious. They’re twins, but Kaden was born first. And he never lets Halley forget it. “Dash knows good stories.”

“Yeah, Mikayla mentioned that.”

Logan smiles at the mention of his wife’s name. “We trust him. But honestly? I think the biggest factor was him wanting to get to know you. Outside of whatever you two text about twenty-four hours a day. And that’s cool. Slate brings in strays all the time because he likes the look of them. It’s how I met my wife, so I’m not complaining.”

Tessa wants to press her hand to her face to cool it, but she’s worried that it will just draw more attention to the fact that she’s blushing.

“So it’s like Han Solo offering Rey a job because he wanted to keep her around?”

“Just so we’re clear… if you make one of those references in front of my brother he will cream his pants.”

Tessa laughs with him, and it feels good. Like she’s laughing with one of her own brothers. Then she hears the clomp clomp of boots heading downstairs and then Dash is there, with a Tupperware container in hand, and an amused look on his face when he sees the pair of them.

“What’s funny?” he asks.

“Star Wars,” Tessa says. Dash is already well aware of how much she likes those movies.

Dash grins wider. “I’ve got a copy of Rogue One if you want to watch it?”

“Sure,” Tessa replies, quickly sitting up so that he can make himself comfortable next to her.

Logan rolls his eyes and pushes himself to his feet. He spots the Tupperware in Dash’s hand and raises one elegantly eloquent eyebrow. “Really? You’re gonna poison her?”

“Mikayla likes it.”

“Mikayla likes you, so she’s willing to choke down that shit. Sersha spat it out the first time she tried it.”

“Tommy just scared her.”

Logan nudges Tessa’s thigh with his boot. “Whatever happens, do not feel obligated to pretend you like his cake.”

“Go have sex with your wife,” Dash says, shooing his older brother upstairs and closing the door behind him before he can answer.

Tessa watches Logan go, then directs a concerned look to the container in Dash’s hands. “You made it yourself, huh?”

“Yeah,” he says. Then he starts shuffling from foot to foot. “Yeah, and the guys always joke that they don’t like it. I don’t really know…” he glances up to the ceiling in thought, “… I like it. But you might not.”

“My mom taught me how to bake when I was younger,” Tessa says, scooting closer and grabbing him by the wrist to pull him down to her. “If it’s no good, then we can figure out how to fix it.”

“You wouldn’t lie to me, right?”

She gives him a look. “Never,” she replies, as seriously as she can.

There’s a brief moment where Dash just stares at her. Her lips, in particular, but also her eyes and her nose, and the curve of her neck. Tessa feels like she ought to be self-conscious, but all she can think about is how much his expression reminds her of the look Jackie would wear when she was on the ice, or the look her father had worn when Tessa had graduated college. Like there’s something magical happening, and he’s not sure what to do about it.

“Here, give me the fork,” she says.

He does, mutely. Still wearing that expression like he’s trying to decide if she’s real. “You never talk about your mom.”

“That’s because I despise her,” Tessa replies. “But she was good for something. She taught me how to cook.”

“My mom didn’t want us,” Dash tells her.

Tessa and Dash share a look. The awe is gone and replaced with comradery. The comradery of two kids whose mothers sucked and didn’t know what to do with them.

He opens the Tupperware container, and Tessa dips her fork inside, taking a bite and chewing thoughtfully. After a while, she swallows.

“Needs another egg,” she says, reaching forward to take another bite even though her taste buds are going to hate her for it. “And you need to change the chocolate. It’s not cooking chocolate, is it?”

He shrugs. “I don’t think so?”

“And I think you need more baking powder.”

Dash licks his lips, takes the fork out of her hand and tastes the cake. Tessa ignores the little flutter in her chest that happens when he puts the fork in his mouth without a second thought. The man has walked her through a step-by-step plan for how he would eat her out—the fact that he’s giving her indirect kisses is not the most erotic thing he’s done.

“Show me?” he asks.

“Okay,” she replies.

Chapter Eleven

Would I lie to you? By Charles and Eddie plays in the background.

The chilled out guitar filters through the iPod jack in the middle of the kitchen table, the gentle drums competing against the banging of the mixing bowl as Dash whisks the cake batter.

“Would I lie to you, baby? Would I lie to you?” he sings along.

Tessa shakes her head at him, which only makes him shake his ass in response. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re sexy.”

She sticks her tongue out at him because that’s the only way to avoid blushing at the matter-of-fact way that he says it.

They’ve nearly trashed the kitchen with their attempts to make a cake. Dash had shooed Sersha and Harper out and immediately started pulling bowls and ingredients out of the fridge. Tessa had briefly supervised until he’d tried to smash an egg directly into the cake mix and she’d been forced to step in. Then he’d set up the iPod and started twirling her around, completely distracting her. She tried to put him to work, but it was like wrangling a cat into a basket.

“You’re going to spill it.” Dash tries to lick the spoon, and she quickly covers his mouth. “Don’t you dare.”

Dash gives her a cheeky wink, but instead of licking her hand like she would expect one of her brothers to do, Dash slides the bowl onto the table and takes her hand, spinning her around. He takes her hip, scoops her up and holds her bridal style. Tessa throws her head back and laughs as he shakes his ass with her in his arms.

The song changes and Little Mix’s ‘Love Me Like You’ starts. Dash drops Tessa to the ground and twirls her again, before settling both of his hands on her hips and pressing his chest against hers.

“Having fun?” he asks.

Tessa nods, grinning. It’s warm in his arms, and the first thing she thinks is that she doesn’t ever want to leave, but she knows she has to eventually. For one thing, they’re going to need to make this cake together. For another, they’re in the middle of a kitchen where anyone can walk in at any time. Tommy and Slate had disappeared with Mikayla after their bathroom incident, and Logan and the girls could walk in at any time.

Feeling Dash pressed against her does feel good. She can feel him everywhere, and she can imagine him all over her. Especially after the amount of times they’ve exchanged ideas and plans. With how close they are, Tessa can feel the heavy bulge between his legs.

Holy shit! That thing seriously deserves a fucking postcode, she thinks.

But you got that nasty. And that’s what I want. Tessa realizes that she’s singing out loud, and Dash is watching her lips like he did with the spoon covered in chocolate cake batter. Tessa is hyper aware of his body. The way his hands reflexively clutch at her hips. The way his Adam’s apple bobs when he looks at her. And she feels herself starting to heat all over.

“Hey Tess…” he says, then he swallows and closes his mouth like he’s changed his mind.

“Yeah?” Tessa prompts.

There’s something going on behind his eyes. Something that, on anyone else, she would have called nerves. But that can’t be right because Dash doesn’t get nervous. Dash doesn’t hesitate to flirt, to send pics, to demand that she touch herself and tell him how it feels. He doesn’t hesitate to say what’s on his mind and make sure that she’s enjoying it. So why would he be nervous now? When it’s just the two of them. Two friends making a cake while cheesy pop music plays on the iPod?

He wants to impress you, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Logan’s floats through her mind.

Achievement unlocked, she thinks.

He dips his head down to press against her forehead, and Tessa’s eyes flutter closed. She tilts her head up just a little bit, inviting the kiss she hopes is coming, but Dash seems content to just rest there.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he says, his voice nearly lost to the music.

“So am I.”

“I never thought I’d really get to meet you,” he continues. It’s as though he hadn’t even heard her, and when she opens her eyes, she can see him staring at her earnestly like he wants her to understand something unsaid. “And you’re… way better than I thought you would be. Like, way better.”

She reaches up to put her hands on his jaw and feels the sharp intake of his breath when his chest moves against hers. “Likewise,” she says.

“It’s… no, that’s not even close to it. You’re just—”

Tessa cuts him off by pressing their lips together.

It’s a sudden, impulsive decision, but at the same time, she feels as though she’s been waiting for this from the moment he’d sent her that picture. It’s the culmination of five months of texting, of several days of flirting, of half a day spent talking and learning each other in the comfort of his home, surrounded by the people he loves the most.

Dash immediately responds to the kiss. He pulls her hips closer and brings his arms up, caressing her ass and up her back so he’s half-hugging her, holding her in his strong arms with his shoulders broad enough to completely envelop her. Tessa has never felt so completely warm and safe in a kiss. It’s as though his arms have created a wall between her and the world, and there’s nothing that can get to her as long as she doesn’t break the kiss.

Not that she would want to. Because while his arms are pulling her closer, his tongue and lips are expertly making her shiver. Dash used to brag that he could make her fall apart—that he could ruin her for all other men—and now that he’s got her in his arms Tessa is starting to understand that his words may not be as exaggerated as she’d thought that they were when he’d first said it.

Tessa pushes herself as close to him as she can get, running her hands over his strong jaw before wrapping her arms around his neck and practically leaping up to wrap her legs around his hips. He holds her easily, not even bothering to try and put her on the table. He doesn’t need to. She grinds down on the bulge in his pants and feels him groan beneath her.

It isn’t until the song changes again, and she can hear their heavy breathing and the smacking of their lips in the silence of the kitchen, that Tessa realizes that she’s making out with her best friend in the middle of his family’s kitchen.

She pulls away—reluctantly—and breathes into his mouth for a moment.

“Can we take this somewhere else?” she asks.

Dash nods. They’re too close, so she can’t see his face, but when she goes to pull away, he holds her right where she is. Instead of putting her down so they can walk, he turns toward the door with her still in his arms, walking out of the kitchen. Tessa presses her forehead to his, desperate to feel the safety she’s come to associate with him when they pass through the living room because she doesn’t want to see whether someone is sitting in there—her boss, Logan, or the girls. That would be mortifying.

He carries her upstairs to a door along a tiny hallway. He doesn’t even fumble with the doorknob, and just as the door is swinging open Tessa’s mind registers just how well-practiced he is at this.

How many women has Dash carried through his house?

Probably a lot.

This is most likely a normal Saturday for him.

Tessa feels a pang of jealousy, then accepts it. She is kissing Dash.

She is finally kissing her dorky D.

She knows that she’s not the first, and she’s not going to be the last. He’s her friend first, and that’s important, but she’d be a fool to think that this is love. To think that he’s going to suddenly change would be completely irrational. But she can enjoy this, at least. She can be his best friend and enjoy his fun, dark, playful side at the same time.

When he finally drops her onto a bed, she takes a moment to look around. She can’t smother her grin—the room is a massive nerd cave. There’s so many different posters on the walls for various fandoms that she can’t even tell what color the wall is. And so many bobble heads and figurines on the shelves that she wonders where he even puts his clothes. The bed she’s on is a huge king with gray sheets that feel soft, but not unnecessarily so. There’s a desk against the wall absolutely covered in books with complicated titles on the spines, and stacked ten high and fifteen deep. She can see at least three different guitars from where she lays—two acoustics and one electric—as well as an amp beside the bedside table.

Tessa realizes that she’s been staring around the room too long. She looks up to see Dash looking down at her, watching her. That hesitant flicker is back in his eyes again. Tessa wants to reach out and draw him in, but she wonders if that’s even what he wants. Maybe he’d brought her up here on a whim, and now that he has her here, he’s not entirely sure if he wants to do what their kiss had clearly been promising.

So she smiles, relaxing her shoulders and body to show him that it’s okay. She sits up on the bed and slowly opens her legs inviting him in.

Something in his posture, changes. He smiles slyly and reaches for her hand, stepping between her legs and dipping down to kiss her again.

“Do you want a drink?” he asks, muttering against her lips.

“It’s… a little early, isn’t it?”

“Time is a construct,” he replies.

Tessa wonders if he needs a little liquid courage. That doesn’t seem like Dash. But she nods, because that’s clearly what he’s expecting, and maybe this is a way to divert attention from the fact that they’re in his bedroom for the first time since he’d sent her that picture five months ago. This moment has been building up between them for a while.

Dash leans over her, and for a second Tessa thinks that he’s pressing her into the bed. But he’s reaching over her head to the shelf on the wall, pulling a bottle of whiskey down.

She raises her eyebrow at him. “Do you have glasses?”

Dash smirks. There’s something, almost well-practiced about it. Tessa isn’t sure if she can put her finger on it, but it doesn’t feel the same as the genuine smirks and smiles she’s gotten used to seeing on his face since they met properly.

“Don’t need them.” He puts a hand on her shoulder and gently presses her onto the bed. “I’ll need to take your shirt off, though.”

It sounds like he’s reciting a script. Like he’s done this a hundred times before, and maybe he has. Maybe this is his signature move. Maybe this is what he does with all the girls that he takes into his bedroom. Tessa chooses not to be disappointed about that. Sure, there’s a tiny part of her that would have liked to be special. But now, in this moment, she just wants to give in to this obsessive, adoration she feels for him.

Tessa allows herself to be pushed onto the bed. Dash rips her shirt over her shoulders, and she lets it go willingly, feeling the cool air raise goosebumps on her skin. Leaning back, Dash stares down at her with his eyes scanning like he’s trying to memorize her, and that touch of uncertainty returns to his face. But when she reaches for his shirt, he shifts back and pushes her hand away.

“No, don’t,” he says slowly, hovering right in her space with an animalistic gleam to his eyes. “I’m not that easy, Tess. I want to play a little, first.”

Tessa wants to disobey, whimper, do something, but she’s almost dumbstruck by the sight of him leering down at her with such a darkness that it makes her freeze. He unscrews the bottle. His eyes never leaving hers, then lets a splash of whiskey trail down her stomach.

Before Tessa can gasp at the cool liquid, he’s following it with his tongue, lapping at her skin and humming. Tessa shivers for an entirely new reason. Her mind supplies her with the texts and the calls that they’ve shared, where he would describe exactly what he would do with her if he had her in front of him. He’d never mentioned whiskey before. But the way he’s making her feel right now like she’s a ball of liquid fire that he can’t wait to dive into, is intoxicating.

“Dash,” she says. His name is the only thing on her mind right now.

He finishes licking up the last of the whiskey and leans up to kiss her, sharing the taste of the burning liquid. When he breaks the kiss, he hums contentedly and leans his head against hers.

“Yes, Tess?”

“Please take your pants off. Like now.”

Not the most risqué thing she’s ever said to him, but it makes his breath hitch, and she sees darkness flash through his eyes again. He pulls away from her infinitesimally. Then his face morphs back into the smirk that makes her think that he’s planned this in a little too much detail.

“Like I said, baby, I’m not easy. Besides, this is more fun. Don’t you think?”

He splashes the whiskey onto her chest, and Tessa hisses at the cold contact. She feels it seeping into her bra, and she wonders why he hasn’t tried to take it off yet. But then she realizes that he’s too busy licking her clean to worry about it. Some of the whiskey pools in her collarbone, and he kisses along the bone when he’s done cleaning her off.

Tessa wraps her legs around his hips, pulling him closer so she can grind against him. She feels him warm and hard. The feeling of that pressure against her pussy and his hot, ragged breath against her skin makes her whine.

“Dash—”

“Tess,” he says sternly, “Good things come to those who wait, baby. And trust me when I say good things.”

I want the good things now.

Tessa groans as he leans over to kiss her again, sharing more of the amber liquid. He pours a little into the hollow of her throat and breaks the kiss briefly to dip down and take the shot.

It is at this moment that Tessa realizes how utterly powerless she is here. Not that he would force her—she doesn’t need to be forced. In this moment, she would do anything, say anything, be anything, if he wanted her to. This is completely new to her. She’s never felt so painfully desperate and so obsessive. And the fact that Dash has gone all dark and erotic, the fact that he’s become this entirely new person when she’s taken her shirt off, only adds the fuel to her burning need.

Dash leans back onto his knees and stares her down, his eyes dark enough to look almost black. Instead of getting scared, it makes Tessa bare her throat in submission.

Dash’s hand scoops her up, and she feels herself turning so that she’s on her front with her back displayed. Before Tessa can do anything, she feels the cool liquid pouring onto the small of her back, and she remains perfectly still while she waits for the delicious warmth of Dash’s tongue to follow it. Sure enough, he slowly licks, leaving a trail of burning need hitting her insides, running the tip of his tongue over the edge of her lace bottoms before biting her hip.

If he can make her throb with need with just his tongue on her back, imagine what he would do to her if he put it in other places…

Tessa wants to turn around, wants to demand that he fucks her all the way into tomorrow. In the past, she’s always been a demanding lover. Mostly because she knew that the men she was with wouldn’t know how to please her. But this time, it’s pretty clear that she doesn’t need to give directions. And even if she did, with Dash in this dark, bossy mood, there’s no guarantee that he would even take the directions she gave him.

She’s completely powerless. And she loves it.

Dash tucks his arm around her waist, pulls her up so that her back is flush against his chest, shifting his legs beneath her so she’s straddling him and she can feel the hard lines of him beneath her pussy. She’s starting to feel even more desperate as she grinds down.

“Don’t,” he hisses

She shudders and stops, forcing herself to keep her throbbing lower half still as Dash drops a few splashes of whiskey down her front, chasing it with his lips, sucking as he goes.

“Dash…”

Four years of college with an English major, and that’s the only word she’s capable of saying. Dash doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seems to like it. He runs his hand over her stomach and then down to run his fingertips under the edge of her lace underwear. Tessa leans her head back and feels herself spiral just from the carnal surge of wanting him. Needing him

“Get on your back, Tess.”

She does what he says without hesitating.

Powerless.

He presses her into the mattress and wraps her hair around his wrist. Suddenly, he pulls on her hair before dipping his head down and biting her neck with a deep groan escaping his chest. Tessa wants to run her nails down his back, his arms, anything. But he hasn’t told her to, and it seems without his permission she can’t do anything. It’s like he’s tapped into the part of her brain that controls her limbs, and now she can only move when he asks her to.

She knew that sex with Dash would be something special, but she hadn’t thought that it would consume her so completely.

Dash licks at the edge of her panties, and she shivers. She thinks that she might be pushed over the edge by the warmth of his tongue alone. Then he looks up at her with heavy-lidded eyes, and Tessa can’t speak.

“You smell like you want to be fucked. I think we’re about ready.”

Ready for what? She wants to ask. Instead, she just nods and hopes to every deity she can think of that it involves him taking his pants off.

Before Dash can speak again, someone knocks on the door and the pair of them pause. They don’t freeze because they’re not teenagers, fucking while their parents are in the house, but because it feels like a bucket of ice water has been splashed over them bringing each of them back to reality.

“We’re fucking busy,” Dash roars over his shoulder.

Tessa snorts, and he grins down at her. In that moment, the dark dominant side she’d gotten from him is gone, and he’s back to being her Dash again. They’re sharing a joke like they always do. The fact that she’s sticky with whiskey and shirtless in his bed doesn’t change that.

Tommy’s voice comes through the door. “Yeah. Are you guys gonna finish this cake or can I eat the batter?”

Dash frowns and looks over at the door, pulling away briefly from Tessa. “Dude, are you high?”

“Maybe…”

Dash sighs. Then he looks down at Tessa. “I really want to punch him right now,” he says.

Tessa sighs too. Her body had been heating up, and she thinks that in a few more seconds she would have been beyond the point of no return. It would have been harder to stop if he had finally gotten his shirt off too. Dash’s actions have gotten her all hot and bothered, and it’s annoying that they’ve been interrupted right before the good part. But as it is, if they’re going to stop, now’s the time.

“Tommy, we are baking the cake,” Tessa says.

“Okay, but, like… when will the cake be baked?”

Dash wipes a hand over his face and turns to open the door, giving Tessa a few moments to put her shirt on. He screws the lid back onto the whiskey. Then he opens the door and says, “Hold on, we’re coming.”

“I wish,” Tessa mutters under her breath as she follows him out of the bedroom.

Tessa wakes up curled up in the blankets and beanbags in the game room, with Sersha on one side of her, Mikayla on the other, and Harper hanging off of the edge of the couch behind them. Tessa turns her head a little so that she can see the television. It’s stuck on the menu screen for Dirty Dancing. Tessa vaguely remembers watching up until the scene where Baby got the money from her father. She must have fallen asleep after that.

Beside her, Mikayla snuffles a little. She looks adorable in her blue pajamas, so different from her usual attire, and her hair up in a loose bun.

Tessa had been surprised when the three other women had piled into the games room downstairs and dragged her into their cuddle pile as well.

“We’ve got popcorn and a movie,” Harper had said, patting the spot next to her, and snuggling up next to Mikayla. “The boys are doing music stuff, I think?”

“Shouldn’t you be helping?” Tessa had asked Sersha.

Sersha shrugs. “It’s movie night. Tommy can manage without me.”

So they fell together, first watching Flashdance, then switching to Fame and Dirty Dancing. The women had fallen asleep one by one. Mikayla had started snoring sometime during Fame, while Sersha and Harper had lasted through the first half an hour of Dirty Dancing.

Tessa was glad to have some company on her first night in the brownstone, even if it hadn’t been the company she would have preferred. Tessa’s still frustrated from earlier.

Speaking of… she glances at her phone, pulling it out of the pocket of her pajama pants.

D: i was gunna join u but u seemd 2 cozy

Tessa purses her lips and types.

Tessa: Wish you had. You look like you like a good spooner.

D: ur not wrong there ;)

Tessa: How long do you think it would have taken you to get bored with Fame?

D: excuse u thats our jam

D: wish we hadnt been intrupted earlier

Tessa feels her breath stutter in her chest as she reads his words.

Tessa: Yeah, me too.

D: u want to no what i would have done if we hadnt been intruptd

Tessa: Not while I’m surrounded by the girls, I don’t.

D: u sayin u cant control urself

Tessa: I know exactly how quickly this can turn in your favor, Dash. I’m not about to let you seduce me in a room full of girls I’ve just met.

D: get up and go to the bathroom

Tessa blinks at the screen, reading the instructions again. It seems like less of an instruction and more like an order, but she finds herself following it regardless. She removes herself from the blankets, making sure not to wake either of the girls beside her. She has a pretty good idea of what Dash has up his sleeve, and she doesn’t know how she could explain what she’s going to do if any of the others wakes up.

There’s a small bathroom on the opposite side of the room. It looks like it was put in by someone who was only about thirty percent sure of what they were doing. Probably shoved in as an afterthought because the guys didn’t like going upstairs to pee in-between their gaming marathons.

There’s a mirror, a sink, and a toilet in the corner.

“Okay,” she mutters while closing and locking the door behind herself.

She takes a moment to look at her mess of bedhead and types quickly into her phone.

Tessa: Okay, I’m in the bathroom.

D: Strip down

Tessa does as he says, stripping off her pajamas.

D: take a picture and show me

Tessa raises her phone so it’s angled up to the mirror, taking a picture of her whole body, and sending it to him before she can change her mind. A small voice in her head tells her that he could be sharing this with the other boys, but she dismisses it.

It takes a moment for his reply to come.

D: gorgeous

D: now make a video of running ur hand over ur body

She does it. She does everything he tells her, following order after order as he describes what she must do. Tessa can feel herself getting hotter and hotter as she reads his texts, enjoying the sense of danger she feels when she thinks of the girls in the other room.

D: if we hadnt been intrupted today i would have licked u all over

D: imagine that ur hand is my tongue

Tessa: Fuck, Dash…

D: Can you feel me tasting you all over?

Tessa doesn’t even realize that he’s asking a question, at first. Her breath is coming in shorter and shorter gasps. Tessa quickly types back.

Tessa: Yessss.

D: i no how to take care of u baby

D: use ur thum on ur clit and dip a finger in

Tessa is starting to feel herself getting close.

All of a sudden she receives a photo of Dash’s long, thick cock, fully erect and leaking. She recognizes his hand clutched around it, and he’s clearly moving it from the slight blur.

Before she can enjoy the sight of it, she gets another message.

D: take a video of u coming

D: i want to see u fall apart tess

Tessa can’t help the shuddering groan that escapes her lips when she finally feels herself clench around her fingers. After a couple of seconds poised in the flood of pleasure, she leans back against the door, gasping, and sends the video.

There’s a few minutes before he replies.

He’s probably watched it once or twice.

Finally, she receives another text.

D: Fuckkkkkk

D: I want to see you taste urself baby

She can’t cover up the groan, but she can muffle it so that the other girls in the games room don’t hear her.

Finally, when she’s done licking her finger, she stops recording before sliding down the door, so she’s sitting naked on the tile floor. She sends the video. By the time she gets a reply, she’s finally starting to get her breathing under control. There’s a picture of Dash’s cock, still pink and half-hard, clearly having just climaxed himself if the mess on his thigh is anything to go by.

D: next time i get the chance im gonna make u fkn scream

Tessa feels a giddy smile curling over her lips. Dash had gotten a bit dominant in a couple of their sessions before, but this is the first time that she can imagine his face while she’s touching herself. It feels good. It had made her channel her own pleasure a little easier, and it was sexy as hell to imagine the way his lips might have moved to give her those orders. The sound of his voice had been playing in her mind while she’d been working over her body.

Tessa: I can’t wait :*

D: :* goodnight gorgeous

Tessa: Night, D.

But it takes a few more minutes before Tessa’s legs work well enough for her to get up and put her clothes back on.

Chapter Twelve

“So, Slate… why don’t we start with your full name?”

“Nope!” Slate says cheerfully, tapping out a rhythm on his thigh with a pair of drumsticks, grinning at Tessa.

Tessa cocks her head. “But… okay, fine. We’ll start somewhere else. Where did you grow up?”

They’re sitting in the green room at Radio City, waiting for the show to start. Tessa is sitting in front of Slate, her laptop open in front of her and a bucket of chicken on the table. The boys are getting ready. Logan is sitting across the room with Mikayla on his lap, his arms wrapped around her as he works on finalizing the set list while she taps at her tablet. Tommy and Sersha have their heads bent over a notebook, as usual. Harper has Dash doing push-ups. Apparently, he has a lot of nervous energy before shows and so Harper makes him do reps to get rid of the tension. Tessa had found herself staring at him as he pushed himself off of the ground so effortlessly, imagining what it would be like to lay beneath him.

So she’s sat with Slate, opened her laptop, and tried to start an interview which isn’t going well.

“I grew up in America’s armpit. There’s no need to bring it up… it’s only going to make people bored.”

“Hmm,” Tessa says, unimpressed. “You know I need to have this information so I can do my job, right?”

“I know,” Slate replies. He gives her a sympathetic smile. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve been deflecting since I was in high school. It’s kind of my thing.”

“Okay?”

“Hey… would you like to know how I met Mik?” Slate asks, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Not to brag, but I’m literally the entire reason that she’s here.”

“I know. Dash told me.”

“Pfft. Dash wasn’t even there. You’re going to interview Mik, right? And Harper and Sersh?”

“I wasn’t sure if I should,” Tessa replies. She runs her hand absently over her skirt, the only professional skirt she owns. It’s going to be mangy as hell by the time her first month with the band is over. “The article is supposed to be about the band.”

“Yeah, but the girls are in the band,” Slate says. He leans over to grab a piece of chicken and takes a big bite. “They’re not on stage, but we couldn’t do this without them.”

Harper sends her boyfriend a fond look from where she’s standing over Dash with her hands on her hips.

Tessa taps out that sentence and asks, “Do you mind if I quote you on that?”

He has a mouthful of chicken, but he shakes his head. It takes him a few seconds to swallow. “Quote me on whatever you like… just don’t get me arrested.”

“Are you… doing things that could get you arrested?”

“Not recently,” he says, sniffing slightly and rubbing his hands together like he’s brushing something off of them. “Plus, like, you know what’s appropriate and what’s not. We trust you not to get us in trouble.”

“That’s very brave of you,” Tessa says. She shifts in her seat and tries to bring the conversation back to the topic at hand. “You were also the one who brought Tommy into the band, weren’t you?” she asks.

He hums in agreement. “Dude was a poet. We needed lyrics. Before that, we were doing shitty covers and playing songs that Dash wrote. There’s only so many ‘moons’ and ‘Junes’ a guy can sing before he starts to go crazy.”

Tessa nods along with him as she takes notes. She’s a damn fast typist thanks to years of lectures when she would take notes at the speed of light, catching everything her professor said so that she could justify the expense of tuition.

“Are you seriously typing all of this? It sounds like you’re just mashing the keyboard.”

“I’m typing,” she says. “So you’ve got… kind of a reputation for collecting people.”

“Yeah,” he shrugs. “I guess. I like people.”

“What was it about Tommy that drew you to him?”

Slate smirks and takes another bite of chicken, sending a lecherous grin over at Tommy. “He’s just so pretty.”

Tommy doesn’t look up, but he does give Slate the finger. Sersha doesn’t look up either. Instead, she just raises her thumb in Slate’s direction.

Tessa makes a note of the interaction. Not because she’s planning on bringing it up in the interview. Mostly just to remind herself of how in sync these people are. Sersha has only been with them for a few months, and she’d practically moved her arm in a mirror-image of Tommy’s, raising it at the exact same time as he did without looking up or even seeming to be aware of the fact that her boyfriend was moving. Tessa wonders what it must be like to be so deeply connected with someone that your movements have synced up. She gets that sometimes with her brothers and sisters, and with her dad. But to have a romance with that kind of closeness? That must be something special.

“Was it something in his lyrics?” Tessa prompts. “Maybe a particular line?”

Slate’s smirk drops, and he frowns thoughtfully. His face taking a faraway look as he twirls his drumsticks.

“You know, now that you mention it. It was one of the lines in the poem he was writing. I even remember it. Isn’t that weird? It was… Drawing blood with a pen, speaking words like razor blades. I remember because, at the time, it was just so fucking extra, you know? I was deep in my scene phase at that point, and Tommy’s poems were super deep.”

Tessa nods along to encourage him. As she types, working hard to make her fingers as light as possible so she doesn’t interrupt him, she sees his face almost begin to glaze over as he loses himself to the memory.

“It’s been a long time since I thought about that.” He purses his lips, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “I remember… it was maths? Yeah, it was maths. I remember because we were supposed to be working on triangles, and he was writing too much. So I looked over his shoulder and just… fell in love, I guess.” He looks up at her when he says it and quirks his lips. Then, he turns his head toward Tommy. “I love you, Tommy.”

“Love you, too,” Tommy replies without hesitating. He actually takes his eyes off of his notebook when he says it, turning to give Slate a smile when he does.

“And I love you, Logan.”

“Love you too, man.”

“And I love you, Dash.”

“If you really loved me, you’d give your girlfriend something to do besides giving me reps.”

Tessa snorts and quickly covers herself up. She’s trying so hard to be professional right now. Tessa has never seen a professional writer at work before—probably because they’re so few and far between—but she wants to do well. She wants to be remembered at the end of this job for getting the work done as efficiently and diligently as possible.

She can’t let Dash distract her. Not when she’s doing interviews backstage, at least.

They didn’t end up picking up where they’d left off. After Tommy had interrupted them, she and Dash had gone downstairs to finish baking the cake batter that they’d abandoned. Dash had gone back to being her flirty, dorky best friend, as though he hadn’t just spent several long minutes licking whiskey off of her body. Her bra had reeked of it afterward.

That night, she’d fallen asleep downstairs in the gaming room and dreamed of walking up to Dash’s bedroom and slipping between those gray sheets. Or, better, of Dash slipping between her sheets and finishing what he’d started earlier that day.

But the more she thought about their interactions, the more something didn’t feel right. Maybe it was the way he’d seemed to be… almost going through the motions? Like the moment there was a chance for some real emotion between them, he’d pulled back and seemed to fall into a role. Tessa wonders if he’s like that with every girl. If that’s something that happens to rockstars when they’re having sex with so many different women, but not wanting to be in any kind of relationship with them.

She’d tortured herself by Googling him, looking at picture after picture of him leaving gigs and clubs with women on his arms. It seemed that Dash was kind of a hound when it came to groupies.

Which suits Tessa fine. She tells herself that over and over again until she’s almost sure she believes it. She’s happy to be friends with benefits because she thinks the benefits will be pretty damn good. Tessa isn’t foolish enough to think that he’ll turn his back on the rockstar lifestyle, and forget about all the different women he could be getting just so he could be with her exclusively.

Dash rolls onto his back and gives her a wink. There’s a slow bead of sweat falling down his forehead thanks to the exercise Harper has made him do. She remembers the way that he’d pressed it against hers when they were in his room.

“Hey, Tess, come help me up?”

“I’m working, Dash.”

He lets out a little “pfft” and pushes himself to his feet, ducking his head so that he can avoid eye contact with Harper. Tessa has learned that the boys tend to avoid eye contact with their personal trainer because all it takes is one look from her and they’ll do whatever she wants. It’s like a superpower of hers. Harper can make the men of Black Lilith drop into five reps of ten squats with just a flick of her hair.

“Tess,” Dash says, joining her on the couch with a soft sigh and leaning against her, crowding into her space. “Come play with me.”

Tessa swallows the dozens of dirty responses that cross her mind when he says that. “I’m working,” she repeats.

“You’ve been working… forever.”

“It’s been three minutes.”

Slate finishes his chicken as Harper comes over to sit in his lap, perching herself on his thigh. He drapes a hand over her hip. “Come on, Squirt, your girl’s busy giving me my fifteen minutes of fame.”

Dash rolls his eyes. “She’s not my girl, and you’ve been hogging her.”

Harper shares a look with Tess. She leans over, and Tess can smell coconut and chocolate in the other woman’s hair as she whispers, “Dash gets a bit needy before shows. It’s best to humor him.”

Tessa chews her tongue. “How did he even get by before?”

“Annoying the roadies, mostly.”

“You guys know I can hear you, right?” Dash questions.

Tessa is saved from answering when Mikayla stands up, and Logan calls the other men over for a pre-show huddle. Slate gives Harper a kiss on the temple. Sersha and Tommy sneak a quick kiss before Tommy closes his notebook to join the others.

Dash waits until the other three are standing in a corner together before turning to Tessa and lowering his voice, “You’re gonna be here when I get back, right?”

“Wild horses, Dash. Wild horses.”

He grins at her, and she feels the heat rising in her cheeks because that grin is the one that always hits her hardest. It’s the grin like a dozen Christmases have all come at once. Like he’s been given the world’s most beautiful guitar. Like there’s a thousand and one Golden Retrievers in his room, and they’re all excited to play with him.

“Sweet,” he says. He glances down at her laptop and raises his eyebrows. “You really were typing that whole time?”

“Black Lilith didn’t hire me for my looks.”

“Good thing, too, or we’d go bankrupt paying your wages.”

“Dash!” Logan calls from the corner. “Get your ass over here.”

Dash squeezes Tessa’s knee and gives her one last wink before pushing himself out of the couch and heading over to join the huddle.

Next to Tessa, Harper leans over to take a bottle of water off of the table. She unscrews the lid and takes a long sip. Both she and Tessa let themselves stare at the band for a moment before Harper turns to Tessa and asks, “Having fun yet?”

“Definitely,” Tessa replies. She looks down at her notes and frowns, before turning her gaze toward Sersha, who’s still frowning at her notebook, and Mikayla who is swiping through her phone.

Tessa turns back to Harper. “Do you think I could join you for your next training session? And then interview you after?”

Harper raises her eyebrow. “You want to interview me? You know Slate was just trying to mess with you when he said that stuff, right?”

Tessa is starting to see the skeleton of the article in her head, and it’s making her excited. “Yeah, but I think he had a point. Why not interview the women of Black Lilith along with the men?”

Harper shrugs and bumps shoulders with Tessa, the way that Tessa would often do with one of her own little sisters. “Sure thing, gorgeous. If you think it will help.”

Tessa gazes at Black Lilith in their corner. Dash looks over his shoulder and smiles at the pair of women in the couch. Tessa leans over to rest her head on Harper’s shoulder and smiles back at him.

Chapter Thirteen

“Watch your head, Tessa.”

“Thanks, Jared.”

He helps her out of the car, and she smiles breezily in response to his nod. Black Lilith just finished their final set of the night, and the band is heading to the airport immediately afterward – they’ve got a plane to catch. New Orleans awaits.

If someone had told Tessa that she would be traveling to New Orleans with one of the biggest bands in the country right after finishing college, she would have asked what they were smoking.

When they get to the airport, it’s well past midnight and Tessa is exhausted. She looks to Mikayla for inspiration—Mikayla, who’s still looking perfect with her suit and iPad, tapping away while Logan rests his head on her shoulder and breathes in water vapor from a machine to save his voice. The rest of the band is sleeping in the limo, curled up around each other and snoring softly. Even Dash, who’d been full of energy when he jumped off the stage, is sleeping with his head on Tessa’s lap.

It’s a good thing that they took a nap in the limo because when they get to the airport, they’re immediately swarmed by fans and paparazzi.

“How are you liking things so far?” Jared asks, helping Tessa with her bag. Black Lilith immediately went to take selfies and sign autographs, leaving the entourage to get their stuff. Sersha and Harper walk through with their arms around Mikayla, guiding the other woman while she’s tapping at her phone. Sersha glances back to Tessa, who waves her on while Jared and the rest of Black Lilith’s bodyguards help with the luggage.

“Pretty well,” Tessa says. She tries to take her bag, but Jared just smiles and holds it just out of her reach. They walk together through the gap in people that airport security has made for them. “The band is full of characters.”

“You’re right there,” Jared says. “Never get bored with these guys. Did they tell you about the time that Dash nearly got stabbed by a fan?”

“No?” Tessa says, but it’s more of a question. Her eyes immediately find Dash, taking a selfie with a couple of girls a few feet away. He’s flanked by a couple of bodyguards. “When did that happen?”

Tessa and Jared get through the crowd pretty easily. No one pays any attention to them once they realize that the band is stopping for their fans, and there’s no reason to accost every member of the entourage for a chance to meet them. They make their way to the check in counter. She joins the queue behind Mikayla, Sersha, and Harper. Harper winks at Tessa when she looks behind.

“Before my time,” Jared says. He leans over to speak to Tessa, glancing at Mikayla like he’s worried that he might bother her while she’s concentrating. Tessa, who appreciates that kind of consideration, leans over to meet him in the middle. “Apparently, a woman brought a knife to one of their meet-and-greets. She went after Dash while he was doing autographs.”

“Did someone stop her?”

“Security got to her in time,” he says. “And Mikayla put herself between him and the knife. I think that’s one of the reasons the band insists on bodyguards for the women as well.”

Tessa looks quickly at Mikayla. She’s got her head bent over her screen, oblivious to everything that’s happening around her. Tessa wants to ask her what it felt like. What it meant to her to put herself in harm’s way like that. Her interviewer’s mind is already whirring. But mostly she just wants to hug her. Tessa has only known Dash for a little while, but now that she does, she can’t imagine a world without him. And she sure as hell, doesn’t want to.

“That’s why I’m here,” Jared says confidently, nodding to Tessa and pulling her out of her reverie. “There is bodyguards for the band, and bodyguards for the ladies.”

“Well, that’s good,” Tessa says. She realizes that her voice sounds a little breathless and she clears her throat. “I’m glad you’re here, then.”

They move slowly up the line for First Class check in. Sersha, Harper, and Mikayla are right in front, and while Mikayla seems to be engrossed in whatever is happening on her screen, Sersha and Harper appear to talking over her head.

“So am I,” Jared says, bumping Tessa’s elbow with his. When she looks up, he gives her a grin.

She knows that kind of grin. She’s seen it before—many times. The way his eyes make deliberate contact with hers. The way that he’s standing just a little bit in her space. The way that he’s shifting his body so he’s facing her, even though he’s technically there to guard all of the women and not just her.

Oh fuck…

He’s flirting.

Tessa wants to pull away immediately and tell him that she’s spoken for, but then she remembers that she’s not. Not technically. Dash might have offered her any number of filthy suggestions during their late-night texting sessions, but as far as either of them are concerned, they’re just friends. Maybe Tessa should address that. Maybe she should sit Dash down and have a conversation.

Jared’s not as good-looking as Dash, or as sexy. But he’s traditionally handsome, and he seems interested in Tessa. She should probably figure out what her status is with Dash so she can decide whether or not to pursue something with Jarad.

But that’s a thought for another time, because Black Lilith is making their way toward check in, and Tessa is being grabbed from behind by Dash and pulled into his chest. She feels his hard muscles beneath the soft layers, and she wants to melt.

“Hey!” he says, excited once again, as though his fans have given him energy. “New Orleans… have you ever been?”

“I’ve never even left Chicago.”

“You’ll love it. It’s great. Have you ever been, Jared?”

“No, sir.”

“Dude, quit calling me ‘sir’ that’s weird.”

Jared smiles and hoists Tessa’s bag up, carrying it to the check-in counter, when one of the flight attendants waves them through. The band is quickly given their boarding passes and ushered through security to the first class lounge, which is stunning in its unnecessary wealth and makes Tessa wonder if she should avoid touching anything.

She and Dash settle into one of the tables with charging stations. She pulls out her laptop and makes a few quick notes on her master document before looking up to see Dash watching her with a cheeky grin.

“I know that look,” she says. “If you tickle me, I’ll karate chop you.”

“How did you know?”

“I have two brothers and four sisters. I know when I’m about to be tickle attacked.”

He breathes out of his nose and lays his head on the table. “I’m bored.”

“Just give me a minute, and then you’ll have my undivided attention.”

Dash waits impatiently for three minutes before Tessa finally closes her laptop. Before she can speak, however, her phone rings in her pocket—her dad’s ringtone.

“Sorry…”

“No. It’s your dad, I get it.”

Her brain goes a bit fuzzy when she realizes that he recognizes her father’s ringtone. She glances at the screen and realizes that it’s a FaceTime call. Her thumb runs over the answer button, and her father’s face meets her.

“Hi, honey.”

“Hi, Dad! What are you doing up?”

“Just wanted to see you before you get on the plane. How’re things?”

Tessa shows her father the first class lounge, with all the trimmings. Dash waves when she points the camera in his direction and her father asks him if he’s had anything to eat tonight because that’s the kind of man he is. Dash assures him that he and the rest of the band will have a meal before they get on the flight.

“Jackie wants to send her thanks as well,” Dad says when Tessa has the camera pointed back at herself. “That fella in the band sent her a beautiful song. She’s been playing it non-stop.”

Tessa already knows about this. She’s got the text that Jackie sent her, which is full of heart emojis and incomprehensible keyboard smashing.

“I already told Tommy and Sersha, thanks,” Tessa says. “He just wants Jackie to film the routine when she’s done making it.”

Actually, Logan had floated the idea of putting the song out as a special track and having Jackie perform in the music video. Tommy had resisted the idea. He’d wanted to leave the song unreleased so it would just be Jackie’s and no one else’s. They’re still deciding what way to go there. Tessa thinks that Jackie might literally explode if she’s asked to perform in a Black Lilith music video.

“Oh, and I nearly forgot… Scott’s starting a new job on Friday.”

“What happened to the old one?”

“They cut back his hours.”

Tessa frowns. She glances up to make sure that none of the rest of the band is around because this isn’t the sort of conversation she’d like to have in front of them, but the only one within hearing distance is Dash. He’s watching her, and when he sees that she’s frowning, he frowns too, like an adorably confused puppy.

“Dad, I’m going to be bringing in money soon. Scott doesn’t need to kill himself during his last year of school.”

“Honey, you know Scotty doesn’t like to take money from us,” he says. He sounds sad. This is a conversation they’ve had several times. “I just really appreciate you helping out with Jackie’s lessons.”

“Of course,” Tessa says. She feels Dash’s hand reaching under the table between them to offer her knee a comforting squeeze. “But Scott can’t afford to mess up his final year.”

“I don’t think he plans to go to college, honey.”

“I know, I know, but—” Tessa stops herself because she’s about to say ‘he should have something to fall back on’ and immediately wants to kick herself. Isn’t that what her dad used to say when she’d insisted that she wanted to be an English major? “I just don’t want him to be working harder than he has to.”

Her dad gives her a sad smile. “Welcome to my life.”

Tessa blows her father a kiss through the screen, and he catches it, which makes her laugh.

“Anyway, I just thought I’d catch you up,” Dad says, yawning a little. “You stay happy, you hear me? Do good work.”

“I will, Dad. Love you.”

“Love you, too, honey. Goodnight.”

He hangs up, and Tessa leans back in her seat, letting out a long sigh.

“Everything all right?” Dash asks. He actually comes around the table to pull Tessa into the crook of his shoulder, enveloping her in one of his warm hugs.

“Yeah,” she says. “I just wish I could give my family everything they’ve ever wanted, you know?”

Dash hums and glances over at Logan, who’s currently curled around Mikayla. Mikayla has finally put her iPad away, and she’s sipping coffee and looking at Logan with the kind of adoration that Tessa had thought only existed in Disney movies. Across the room, Sersha, Harper, Tommy, and Slate are playing a weird card game that Tessa thinks they might have invented themselves.

“I know,” Dash says. He pulls her just a little bit closer. “I know.”

Chapter Fourteen

Backstage at the New Orleans venue, Dash is starting to vibrate again. Tessa has only seen this a couple of times, but she thinks she’s starting to be able to predict when it’s going to happen. When Dash is nervous, or excited, or both, he begins to get antsy. It’s like he’s bubbling with energy, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. Not until he’s out under the spotlight with a guitar in his hands.

“Come on, Squirt, let’s do some reps,” Harper says, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him off of the couch.

Dash digs his heels in and presses the side of his body up against Tessa’s squeezing her side.

“No!” he whines. “Don’t make me, please… I’m too young. I like being squishy. Tessa, tell her I like being squishy.”

“I wouldn’t call you ‘squishy,’” Tessa replies evenly. She’s in full work mode, so there’s no lust in her gaze when she gives his chest and stomach a quick once-over. She even crosses her arms across her chest so that there’s no possible way this could be considered sexy. It’s just her pointing out the obvious. Bantering, like the rest of them do. “Maybe ‘padded’ or ‘cushioned’ or ‘cuddly.’”

“This is what we get for hiring an English major,” Tommy says from where he’s sitting at her feet.

Dash doesn’t seem too worried about the fact that she’s pulled out so many synonyms for his body. If anything, he just grins wider. “These are all excellent… uh, verbs?”

“Adjectives,” Tessa, Tommy and Sersha say at the same time.

“Excellent adjectives,” Dash says triumphantly. “I must maintain my cuddly physique. Release me, she-devil!”

Harper shakes her head at him. “And what are you gonna do with all that energy, hmmm?”

“I just need my guitar. Where’s my guitar?”

Harper releases Dash, and he stretches over the back of the couch to grab an acoustic resting on the wall behind them. Tessa turns her head away, so she doesn’t have to look at the trail of dark hair that’s exposed when his shirt raises up.

At her feet, Tommy just snorts and chews on the end of his pencil, not off in his own little world for once. Sersha has her head in his lap, playing with her iPod, her earphones blocking out everything but the loudest noises. Tessa has noticed that Sersha has earphones in more often than not. Across the room, Slate is doing push-ups with Mikayla sitting cross-legged on his back. Mikayla is working on her tablet with the same grace as she would have had if she’d had her feet firmly planted on the ground, which just makes Tessa admire her all the more. Logan is reading over the set-list. His eyes keep drifting over to Mikayla and Slate, but he doesn’t seem to be frowning or anything, so he must have his jealousy under control.

Men…

She runs her hands over the keyboard of her laptop, feeling the bumps on F and J to remind her where to put her fingers, so she doesn’t have to look—a trick she picked up when she took that typing course in her sophomore year. She types a reminder to herself to make a time to talk to Harper, Sersha, and Mikayla. Tessa’s already agreed to talk to all three of them, but there’s nothing set in the agenda, and she thinks that Mikayla will appreciate her being thorough.

Plus, it will probably help to carve in some time away from the boys. They’re too distracting.

Dash strums the strings of his guitar a few times, playing chords that Tessa doesn’t recognize. They’re quiet and haunting. After a few moments, Logan looks up from his notes and grins at his brother. He starts singing along to ‘Scars’ by James Bay.

You’re setting off,

It’s time to go, the engine’s running

Dash grins back, picks up the volume of the guitar but maintains the pace. Slate starts clicking his tongue in a beat. If he hadn’t been holding both himself and Mikayla up, Tessa thinks he might have been tapping out a rhythm on his knee. Tommy starts humming a bass line.

Together, the four of them start performing the song as though they’ve been practicing it for years. They might have been, Tessa will have to ask Dash about it. But she gets the feeling that this is entirely improv. They’re just that in sync.

Tessa makes a note of that, too. The way that the four boys will spontaneously burst into song at a moment’s notice. It will be a good detail for her article.

At the end of the song, Mikayla finally climbs off Slate’s back, and Dash is still bubbling with energy. Playing with his band isn’t enough. Tessa can feel him still vibrating beside her.

“For fuck’s sake, Dash. Just do some push-ups,” says Harper.

“Never!”

“Hey, Dash… come for a walk with me,” Tessa says.

“Okay!”

He leaps up to his feet, coming inches away from sending Tessa’s laptop flying. Apologetically, he scoops it out of her hands and puts it carefully onto the coffee table. Harper gives Tessa a thumbs-up, and Tessa nods back. If Dash isn’t going to let Harper help him work off the energy, then maybe getting him out of the room and moving around will do the trick.

“Don’t forget… warmup set is over in about twenty minutes,” Logan says as Mikayla settles herself into his lap.

Tessa briefly wonders how she can look so professional and so in love at the same time. She really is in awe of that damn Mikayla Todd.

“We’ll be back before Lost in Time are done, don’t worry,” Dash replies. He’s actually throwing the reply over his shoulder as he grabs Tessa’s hand and all but drags her toward the door.

Tessa and Dash fly through the backstage. Dash is pulling her toward the stage, where the heavy beat and the crowd are getting louder and louder as she and Dash get closer. Tessa can feel the humming through her blood, and she thinks that this must be what Dash had needed. Sure enough, when they pass under a light, she sees the swift grin on his face and the bright spark in his eyes.

Dear Lord, this man, she thinks as she jogs along behind him, he is such a fucking dork.

But a complete heartthrob, as well. The kind of sexy dork that she could imagine using his wide, adorable sexy as fuck eyes to get anything he wants out of his sister-in-law and the rest of the band.

When they come up to the edge of the curtain, the music is so loud that Tessa wonders how the roadies’ ears aren’t bleeding. They’re just working away, stacking instruments and prepping coils of wire so that Black Lilith don’t trip when they come through. Dash takes a moment to admire the stage. Tessa sees the women from Lost in Time thrashing their heads and playing their instruments in an erratic, heart-aching beat. Dash is pulling Tessa away back through the wires and the heavy instruments, so they’re hidden behind the curtain at the back of the stage.

“Dash, where are we going?”

But her voice is lost in the heavy music beating so hard that it practically rattles her bones. Dash pushes her over to a ladder in the corner of the backstage area and points excitedly up at it. Tessa looks up skeptically—it looks like it disappears into the rafters of the stage.

Dash leans forward, reaching out to pull her to his chest and press his lips to her ear. “We’ve played this venue before. It’s so cool upstairs.”

He doesn’t need to shout, he’s so close. The fact that Tessa is attuned to his voice helps a lot as well.

His hands on her body and his lips on her ear sends Tessa into autopilot. Just like the time he’d pulled out the bottle of whiskey when he took her to his room. Suddenly, she’s aware of the fact that they’re completely alone, but in a semi-public place. Surely Dash won’t try anything here? She’s technically on the clock.

But then he’s pushing her back to the ladder again, and Tessa finds herself going, following his directions and climbing onto the cool metal rungs in front of her, grateful that she’d chosen to wear black slacks instead of a skirt.

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this. I’m a fucking writer, not an acrobat.”

Of course, he can’t hear her.

When she gets to the top of the ladder, Tessa realizes that the music is quieter up here. The speakers below are all directed outward, so this space is relatively music free. It’s a metal walkway above the stage, well-hidden by the backdrop but high enough that people can hide and watch without being seen. It reminds her of those puppet shows she used to see at the circus. The ones where the puppet master would be standing above the ‘stage’ and manipulating his puppets from above. From here, Tessa can imagine dropping strings and controlling everything that happens on stage.

Then she looks out at the crowd and gasps.

It’s huge. She’s never seen something like this, especially not from the perspective of the main stage. This venue is no bigger than the arena in Chicago, but for some reason, the size and scope of the audience had escaped her when she was at that show. Now, looking out, she can feel a flutter of nerves, and she’s not even performing.

Dash stretches his hands over his head and smiles wide at the picture in front of him.

“I love this,” he says. He doesn’t need to shout to be heard.

“I can tell,” Tessa replies.

He looks at her, and for a moment Tessa feels her breath hitch because that excitement and adoration that Dash feels for the crowd is directed at her. She puts her hand on the protective railing in front of her and is surprised to realize that it’s vibrating.

“Hey, I was wondering about something,” Tessa says quickly, because now that they’re alone and Dash is in a good mood—why not? The thought that this might psych him out for the show crosses her mind, but Tessa dismisses it.

“Yeah?” Dash says, coming over to lean on the railing and then wincing and pulling away when he realizes that it’s vibrating.

Tessa doesn’t mind the movement, but she takes her hand away as well. It might be distracting.

“How… ah, how are you feeling? About… um… us? Am I, you know… what you hoped?”

Dash blinks hard the moment that Tessa starts talking, and she realizes that he’s pulling away slightly about halfway through her stammered questions. She sees it, she registers it, but it doesn’t quite hit until she’s finished talking. His right hand twitches like he’s running it over a fretboard, and his tongue comes out to wet his lips as he turns his gaze downward.

Tessa instantly feels a rock fall into her stomach for the split second that Dash is looking like that.

Then it’s like a light bulb switches on inside his eyes. He stops looking nervous and withdrawn. Instead, he cocks his head at her and gives her a long, slow smile. “Better,” he says, stepping forward and crowding her into the railing so she can feel the vibrations against her lower back. “You’re better than I hoped, Tess. You’re so fucking cute, but you’re also extremely sexy. And you like Star Wars.”

“Dash,” Tessa begins, because she thinks he might have gotten the wrong idea.

But then suddenly, he’s taking her by the back of the head and guiding her into a fierce kiss. Tessa can do little more than hold onto the front of his T-shirt and hang on for dear life as he plunders her mouth, wrapping his hand around her neck and pushing her into the railing so that her back is vibrating while her front is pressed against his.

She wants to pull back, to tell him that they’re in public, but just like last time she’s completely powerless. For all the dorky enthusiasm he’d had when they had been running through the backstage, he seems to have gone into his erotic, beast mode. It’s like he’s reached into her body and is pressing against all of her buttons, letting her know that he’s in control now and she’s just coming along for the ride.

She can’t even breathe, she’s so overwhelmed.

Dash leans back for a moment, and his eyes are dark. His pupils are so blown out that they’re black, and Tessa can see the way his Adam’s apple bobs as he looks down at her. He glances to the left, and then to the right, before leaning over and whispering in her ear, “Sit on the railing,” he orders.

What? Tessa thinks as her body moves before she can even give the situation conscious thought. Never mind that she’s hanging precariously above a sheer drop. Never mind that there are tens of thousands of people in the crowd beyond the stage. And never mind that a roadie could climb up here at any moment. If Dash wants Tess on the railing, then she is going to get on the fucking railing.

As soon as she’s sitting steady, the vibrations on the metal that she’d felt in her hand and lower back is transferred entirely to her lower half. She gasps. It feels intense, not quite like a vibrator because that would be more heavily focused on her clit. It’s an all-over alluring experience. Tessa strains and writhes, trying to get that sensual vibration to focus, only partly aware that her mouth has fallen open in a silent moan.

Her eyes lock onto Dash’s. He’s watching her with the kind of intensity that would be terrifying if it weren’t so erotic. He reaches down to hold her hips firmly, and at first, she thinks it’s just to tease her until she realizes that she’s so close to falling off of the edge.

Holy shit!

But before she can think anymore he slams forward, pulling her hair back with his fist and kisses her. It’s all tongue and all-powerful, and Tessa loses herself in the movements of his body against hers. He seems to be deliberately holding himself away from her, so she can’t grind against him like she would have liked to. Instead, she can only latch onto his thigh and press herself over and over, all needy. At this point, she doesn’t care if her movements send her falling, or if a roadie finds them because she needs to finish. She needs to be moaning his name at the finish line. Goddammit.

Dash pulls out of the kiss, and his gaze holds her. She can’t think of anything more intense than the sight of those eyes—fully-blown out pupils and all—looking at her. “Tess, let go and come for me, baby,” he growls pulling on her hair.

Tess can feel herself growing hotter, and wetter, the longer he stares her down.

She grinds against his thigh without finesse, and he allows it. He pulls her closer and spreads his legs a bit to give her better access. The part of Tessa’s mind that isn’t focused on chasing her obscene release, wonders why he doesn’t seem to be interested in getting off. Both times they’ve been together, he seems to consider his own pleasure secondary. He just likes watching her get off.

“Tess, let go,” Dash demands

Tessa presses her forehead against Dash’s. She’s close enough to feel his breath on her lips, far enough away so they don’t break eye contact. She can feel the feverish heat coming off of him. She can’t think or speak, and words have escaped her.

Then a wave of burning pleasure slams into her and her hips rock. She wasn’t expecting it so soon. Dash peppers kisses along her neck with one final bite to her shoulder as she moans out his name. He holds her steady while she chases her orgasm. Dash then reaches down and slides one finger inside her real slow, he’s looking up completely awed behind the dark passion that’s still burning behind his eyes. Sliding his finger out and running it along her clit one more time, he reaches up pulling her hair back with his other hand and smears his slick finger on her lips. “Open,” he whispers, not breaking eye contact.

Tessa never would have thought this could be such a turn on. She never would have thought a man could make her feel so weak, needy, and empowered all at once.

As she opens her mouth with a moan, Dash fills it with his finger and his tongue all at once, then they’re tasting her together as their tongues dance around his finger.

Oh my fucking God.

Finally, when the vibration intensity becomes too much, he helps her off of the railing.

“That was… fucking insane,” Tess manages to say still breathlessly.

“Mmhmm,” Dash replies licking his lips before pulling her in for another kiss. “You’re so fucking gorgeous when you moan my name,” he mutters against her lips. She returns his kiss as well as she can, with trembling knees while the crowd screams behind them.

It isn’t until much later that she realizes she never actually got to talk to him about whether they’re dating or not.

Chapter Fifteen

Tessa isn’t insecure, she never has been. She knows that she’s pretty enough, and she’s confident in her sexuality. Ex-boyfriends would often tell her how cute, sexy, or beautiful she is.

But she’s also realistic. And over the next few days, as Dash continuously avoids the subject of their relationship, she realizes that he’s probably not interested in her beyond a fuck buddy. She tries to bring it up, but he dodges, or distracts her, or brings up her writing, or tells a joke. Dash is still as sweet and attentive as ever, but it doesn’t take Tessa long to realize that his interest in her does not extend to them being anything more than friends with benefits.

Tessa tells herself that she’s cool with that. Dash is her best friend, and he’s not comfortable being anything more than that, then she’s not going to risk what they have by trying to make more out of it. She might be a romantic, who prefers being exclusive with the guys that she’s with, but Tessa likes to cuddle up to guys and enjoy their company without sex as an end-game or a forgone conclusion. But that doesn’t mean that she can force Dash into a relationship just to satisfy herself.

“Sorry, Tessa? Did I lose you?”

“No, Tommy…” Tessa quickly straightens her reading glasses and puts her fingers back on the keyboard, forcing herself away from thoughts of Dash and what they are to each other. She’s working. She can’t afford to be distracted. “Go on?”

Sersha and the others have gone out to get some take-out, but Tommy and Tessa had already carved out this time to have their interview. Tessa is sitting at the desk with her fingers resting on her laptop’s keyboard, while Tommy lays on the bed with his hands resting behind his head. They’ve been in New Orleans for a couple of days, but tomorrow they’ll be heading for Houston, and Tessa doesn’t think she’ll get the chance to talk to the band properly until afterward—there will be too many shows then. The next time she’ll get the chance to talk to any of them in any depth, will probably be in their next tour stop in Mexico City.

“Okay, well like I said, I usually think of a good line or a concept,” Tommy goes on. They’re huddled together in the hotel room he’s sharing with Sersha. “If that’s cool, then I usually build a song around it.”

“Can you give me an example?”

Tommy thinks about it for a moment. Tessa has noticed that he tends to give his words some thought before he speaks, unlike Dash and Slate, who tend to barrel in without thinking, or Logan, who gives the appearance that he’s thinking his words through but is actually just in the process of putting his foot in his mouth.

“There’s one song, called ‘How Dare You,’ that I wrote after an ex-girlfriend broke up with me. I wanted it to be about her, but it ended up being about Logan.”

“Logan?” Tessa asks. She’s heard the song, and it’s kind of rage-inducing. It had made her want to smack whoever it was who had inspired it.

“Well, he was mostly responsible for the breakup. Actually, no…” Tommy sits up so that he can see her clearly, “… Logan didn’t do anything wrong, but I didn’t know that at the time. There was a bit of a mess, and some stuff with money, and basically he let me believe that he broke me and my girlfriend up.”

“That’s… brutal.” Tessa can’t tell if she’s missing vital information or if Tommy is just speaking too quickly. She makes a note to herself to ask Dash for clarification later on. “So the song was about her to begin with?”

“It sounds cheesy and cliché, but I kind of write to get all my thoughts out. Otherwise, they pile up and get in the way of everything,” Tommy tells her. He smiles this self-deprecating smile, as though he thinks that what he’s saying must make him sound a little weird. “It’s kind of a mess in my head, and putting it into words helps me sort through it. At the time, I’d wanted to figure out why she’d left me, and then Logan… or, what I’d thought Logan had done… kept getting in the way. It ended up hijacking the whole song.”

“So what was the concept that you started with?”

Tommy bites his lip. “Why do people hurt other people?” he murmurs.

“And did you figure it out?”

Silence falls between them for a beat too long. Then Tommy shrugs and gives her his most cheeky smile. “Nope!” he says. “But I’m not a philosopher. I don’t think that music should be in the business of answering questions. Maybe its goal should be to put the questions out there, and then we can all figure them out together.”

Tessa quickly taps away at her laptop, desperate to catch everything he’s saying. Most of it is pure gold. She’d known the moment she met him that Tommy would end up being really quotable. Not that she wants to compare, but Slate’s interview had mostly been about him deflecting her questions rather than answering any of them. She’ll need to work harder on that guy if she wants to get to the heart of him.

But that thought makes her wonder. Should she be trying to get to the heart of these men? She’s been given complete creative freedom because they’re all assuming that she won’t make fools out of them. And even though she has no intention of doing anything like that, she still wonders what they could consider ‘being made a fool of.’ Is plastering their private thoughts on a magazine going to be too personal? Is Tommy saying this stuff here and now because he’s comfortable with her, only to feel exposed and vulnerable when he reads it in print later on?

Tessa wants to get to the heart of these men, mostly because she thinks it will make for a better story, but also because she’s genuinely curious. Something about the way that they interact. The seamless way that they fit together as though they’ve been designed for each other, makes her wonder what it’s about them that makes them so special. Because they are special. Any idiot can see that.

“Do you always go deep like that?” Tessa asks Tommy, pushing aside thoughts of creative integrity for another time. It’s the same thing she does with thoughts of Dash.

“Nah,” Tommy says, waving his hand. “You’ve heard our song, ‘Termites in the Toothpaste’? That’s about Logan and Dash’s first apartment.”

“Do you ever draw inspiration from anything outside of your experiences?”

Tommy bites his lip again, the fingers of his right hand clicking as he considers the question. “Well… okay… take the song I wrote for your little sister,” he says.

Tessa already thanked him for it. She bought him a whole packet of chocolate-chip cookies as a thank you, but she’d gotten the feeling that he was more delighted with the texts she’d shown him from Jackie gushing about how great the song is.

“I have no idea what it’s like to be transgender, so I can’t write from that perspective,” Tommy says. “I know what it’s like to want to change, and to feel like I’m looking at the wrong person when I look in the mirror, but it’s nothing like what she went through. So I had to look at it in a different way.”

“What way was that?”

Tommy shrugs. “Just… wanting to understand, I guess?” he says. “Just putting out the questions and hoping that someone will answer.”

Nodding, Tessa types that out. She thinks that Jackie will probably appreciate that. Jackie sometimes talks about how people with good intentions will try to speak for her. Allies who would call out transgender microaggressions, only to make a gaffe a few minutes later. Jackie isn’t a poster child for trans youth, and it annoyed her when people would try to put her in yet another gender-role box. So the fact that Tommy came to her with questions, instead of answers, delighted her.

“What about you?” Tommy asks.

“Huh?”

“What inspires you to write?”

Tessa shakes her head quickly. “This interview isn’t about me,” she says.

Tommy stretches his hands above his head and falls back onto the bed, kicking his legs up into the air and letting them flop down.

“The others will be coming back soon. And then Slate will make a dirty joke, and Dash will drape himself over you like a cat, so the interview will probably be over then. Besides, I feel like I hardly know you? Except what I’ve heard from Dash.”

Dash, who’s all hot words and sexy moves, but who hasn’t once tried to get off with her. And that’s something else that confuses Tessa to no end—the fact that Dash has made it a point to avoid letting her touch him. He seems so fixated on getting Tessa off, that it doesn’t even seem to occur to him that he has needs too. Ordinarily, this would delight Tessa to no end. But now, looking at it from a few weeks of experience with Dash, she’s starting to wonder if he doesn’t want to sleep with her or let her touch him because he wants to maintain distance. Like maybe sex is something he does with groupies, but not with his friends. Maybe he’s holding out on her because he doesn’t want to get her hopes up.

She doesn’t even know why she keeps coming back to the thought of being in a relationship with Dash. They’re happy the way that they are and there’s no need to escalate. But Tessa’s a romantic at heart, and she likes the idea of being exclusive with someone. To know that they’re happy together, that they don’t need anyone else, that they don’t need crowds or groupies.

Off topic.

“There’s not much to me,” Tessa says finally.

Tommy raises his head up a little to look over at her. “Not much? Not likely.”

Tessa runs her hand through her hair and rubs her nose. Somewhere outside, a drill sounds and Tessa realizes that someone must be doing construction nearby. Why is it that people always do construction near hotels? At both of the hotels that they’ve been in these last few days, there has been construction both times.

The thing is, she knows that there is something to her. Just like she knows that she’s pretty and that most men would be interested in dating her if they weren’t rockstars. But right now, she wants to stay focused on her job. She doesn’t want to break and become too chummy especially since she’s given herself a chunk of time when she’s supposed to be working.

“I’d rather just stick to the interviewing right now. Maybe later, when we’re eating, I can tell you more about me?”

“Sure, that works.”

So they kept going, with Tessa asking leading questions so she could get a better sense of Tommy’s process. She wants to get into the backstory of this character, of course, but right now she doesn’t know if she’s ready to start pushing. The fact that she instinctively pulled back when the questions about his ex-girlfriend were on the tip of her tongue proved that. Instead, she’d gone for safety. Not exactly what she’s being paid for, but Tessa is confident that in a few weeks, they’ll have reached the point where she can ask those kinds of questions. In the meantime, she knows that she can rely on Dash to give her whatever information she needs.

Sure enough, when the others returned with take-out in hand, Dash draped himself over Tessa and Slate started cracking jokes, breaking the interviewing tone immediately. Tommy and Sersha ate fried chicken on the bed, while the rest of the band sat around with their legs crossed in a circle like they were having a picnic. Tessa finally put her laptop away after Logan insisted.

“You’re off the clock now, Tessa. Go easy on yourself.”

Easy for you to say, she thought as she joined Dash on the floor, accepting a piece of chicken from him. You’re already well-established. My career hasn’t even started, and I’m already interviewing one of the biggest bands in the country. No pressure or anything.

Chapter Sixteen

“Do you ever feel like you might have skipped some steps in your career?” Tessa asks Jared as they wait together in the green room. He’s resting against the wall with his hands across his chest while she’s perched on the long, bright red couch with her laptop resting on her knees.

“Sometimes,” Jared says. “Especially when I call my parents on the weekend and they keep asking me to get the bands’ autographs. I only went into personal security a few years ago, you know? Didn’t think I’d be doing national tours this early.”

“Right? It’s just… so unlikely. It feels like I cheated.”

Jared looks down at his nails, before turning his gaze back up to her and giving her a cheeky grin. “Nothing wrong with it, though. Is there? You’re here now unless you want to take a few steps back?”

“No,” Tessa says. “Of course not. I just… I guess, I just have to earn it?”

Jared is prevented from answering when Sersha and Harper return to the green room, their arms linked at the elbows. They’d gone to the bathroom together, and Tessa had politely declined their invitation to join them. She still has edits to do.

“Still at the computer?” Sersha says, making a graceful gesture in Tessa’s direction. “Tessa, love, as one workaholic to another, put the fucking computer away.”

“I’ve just got one more paragraph to fix—”

“Nope!”

Harper takes the laptop from Tessa and puts it on the table, mercifully leaving it open so Tessa doesn’t lose her work. Tessa briefly panics until Sersha reaches over to save the document. Then both women take seats on either side of Tessa, barricading her in.

“Why don’t you two ever watch the show?” Tessa asks because in all the time she’s known these women, she’s never seen them actually watching their boyfriends perform.

Harper waves her hand in an almost fond slash dismissive way. “Unless the boys are planning a grand gesture, their shows are usually pretty similar.”

“Grand gesture?”

Harper and Sersha share a look over Tessa’s head.

“Tessa, allow me to introduce you to several years of escalating fuckups known as ‘Black Lilith’s courting strategies,” Sersha says.

And so Tessa is treated to a blow-by-blow account of how each of the women joined the Black Lilith family. She is awestruck at first at all the drama, mostly because she thinks that there’s a lot more to each of the stories than Sersha and Harper are telling her, but she’s too enthralled to ask leading questions or to try and fill in the blanks. She’s itching to take notes. She thinks about reaching for her laptop, but after a moment she decides not to. Mostly because it might break the flow of what they’re saying. Also because it’s funny.

“Logan wrote a song for her?” Tessa asks, grinning as she tries to imagine it.

“Yep. This is before either of us joined up, by the way,” Sersha says. “But yeah, they’d been dating in secret for weeks, then broke up. Then Slate thought that he was helping them get together. Then Logan decides that the only way to win her back is to improve a song for her in front of a crowd full of people.”

“Next level drama queens, the lot of them,” says Harper, taking a sip of water from a bottle she took off of the table. In the corner, Jared is still leaning against the wall and looking amused. “Sersh, tell her about the Tommy thing.”

“Right, so Tommy and I started dating, okay? And then Tommy’s ex plants one on him, and I think he’s cheating. So I leave the country.”

Tessa raises an eyebrow. “Naturally,” she says. “That’s not at all next level drama queen.”

“Hush you,” Sersha says, winking. “We’re perfect for each other. Can’t you tell? Anyway… Tommy Skypes my mam, finds out where I am, flies to Ireland, stalks me to a favorite spot of mine, and after I’m done trying to beat him to a pulp, he explains himself. Then he and Logan sing a duet for Mikayla and me at their next show.”

Tessa smothers her smile and leans over to the table to grab a Coke. When she sees Harper’s disapproving look, her hand skims the Coke bottle and grabs the water instead. Harper nods approvingly.

“Harper, did you get a song?”

“Nah, I got a limo and a bouquet of roses.”

“What?”

Harper explains to Tessa how Slate had shown up to their hotel, standing up through the roof of a white limo, and then scaled the wall of the hotel to reach her on the balcony.

“That’s… dangerous,” Tessa says. “Wait… so each member of the band managed to colossally fuck things up with their girlfriend, and then had to make a grand gesture to get them back? That sounds, I don’t know… ridiculous? Like, surely they’re not that much of a collective disaster.”

Sersha sighs and rests her head on Tessa’s shoulder. “That, my dear, is exactly what they are.”

“And we love them for it,” Harper adds.

“But we also want to kill them for it,” Sersha continues.

Tessa shakes her head. “But… they’d dated people before, right?”

“I mean, I guess?” Sersha says. “I don’t know. I get the feeling that… for Slate and Logan and Dash… they didn’t really think about dating much after they started the band.”

“They started the band in high school?”

“Indeed they did,” Sersha nods sagely.

Harper clicks her tongue and stretches one arm over her head, showing off her toned stomach muscles as she goes. She’s wearing a skin-tight blouse that seems designed to make everyone looking at her want to go home and do some sit-ups.

Above them, the stage is rocking. The green room is right beneath the stage, so Tessa had assumed that it would be ridiculously loud, but generally, it’s just the vibrations from the speakers that are bleeding through the ceiling above them. Thinking about vibrations gets Tessa thinking about the vibrations from the railing that Dash had made her sit on, which makes heat rise in her chest and she has to clear her throat.

“So Black Lilith is a collective dating disaster,” Tessa says. Sersha and Harper nod wryly. “That’s sad.”

“Yeah,” Harper says. “But, hey! Maybe Dash will be the exception?”

“How is it going with Dash, anyway?” Sersha asks.

Tessa ducks her head, her eyes drifting over to Jared who’s still waiting on the other side of the room. He’s schooled his expression into one of blank, watchful boredom. She wonders if he has an interest in this conversation. Tessa and Jared haven’t been able to talk much since he’d flirted with her at the airport, but she’s still hyper aware of him whenever they are in the room together, or whenever he’s following her and the rest of the women between hotels and venues.

Jared might want a relationship. In fact, he probably does. He’s not a rockstar who’s more used to being with groupies than he is with real people like Dash seems to be.

That’s a thought that Tessa hasn’t really given much thought to. If the men of Black Lilith are a collective dating disaster, and Dash hasn’t dated much since high school, then maybe he just doesn’t know how to date? Maybe he’s never given it any thought. He’s had sex on tap since Black Lilith got famous, and he’s got Tessa as a friend and a fuck buddy. Why bother with a girlfriend?

“Dash is… my friend,” Tessa says.

“So Tommy didn’t totally cockblock you when he got high in Manhattan, and decided that he wanted to eat the uncooked cake batter in the kitchen?” Sersha asks, raising an eyebrow.

“People can be friends and still be in positions where they can be cockblocked,” Tessa says evenly.

Jared’s lips quirk up, but otherwise, he doesn’t react.

Harper cocks her head at Tessa, before sharing a look over Sersha’s head. “So… okay, I’m gonna ask… what is the nature of your relationship with our favorite guitarist?”

Tessa can’t help but grin at the word choice. It sounds like the sort of thing that she might hear Scott asking when Jackie finally gets a significant other. Probably with a BB gun across his lap and a glare on his face.

“Like I said, he’s my best friend.”

“So you… turned him down?”

“Huh?” Tessa gives Sersha a look, assuming that she misheard the woman. Against the wall, Jared is checking his nails again. “He hasn’t asked me out?”

“He hasn’t?” Sersha and Harper shout together, making Tessa flinch.

Jared, for his part, doesn’t move. Tessa can’t tell if he’s just well-trained, and therefore not affected by loud noises, or if he’s as surprised by Tessa as Sersha and Harper seem to be.

The two women stare at Tessa like she’s made the most profoundly strange comment either of them have ever heard.

“But he is completely infatuated with you?” Sersha asks.

“Seriously, it would be creepy if we didn’t know that you’ve known each other for months.”

“No, I get that,” Tessa says. “But, like, he hasn’t asked me out. I don’t think he’s interested in making it a thing, you know?”

Sersha and Harper don’t need to say anything about that, their expressions say it all.

The door opens next to Jared, and he quickly pushes himself away from the wall, turning to face it, but it turns out to just be Mikayla with her cheeks flushed and a cheerful smile on her face. Unlike Sersha and Harper, Mikayla watches every show. But not because she’s infatuated with the band, although that is probably a factor. She watches the show because she is literally the one person holding everything together. Tessa thinks that if the world were fair, she would be focusing the entire ten thousand word article on Mikayla being a queen, but Bass Note will probably not be happy about that.

Tessa will spend a few thousand words expounding on how wonderful Mikayla is. If Rolling Stone doesn't like it, then she can figure it out in the edits.

“Hey, the show’s nearly over. What’s going on?”

“Dash hasn’t asked Tessa out yet,” Sersha says, as though it’s the greatest injustice that she’s ever heard.

Mikayla raises her eyebrows, but otherwise, she doesn’t seem to react too much. “Maybe he’s planning a grand gesture,” she says, shrugging.

Tessa raises her hand into the air, drawing the attention of the other women. “Um… I’m not comfortable with that?” she says. “No grand gestures for me, please?”

Mikayla nods with sympathy. “I understand that. If only the Todd boys would understand that.”

“It’s not a genetic thing. I honestly think there’s something in the water at the brownstone,” Harper says. She’s finished her water bottle and is twirling it in her hands with the kind of coordination that Tessa can only dream of. “Maybe even some collective head trauma.”

Sersha, Harper and Mikayla debate amongst themselves whether the band’s weird obsession with grand gestures is a problem that they’ve come to recently, or whether it’s a problem they’ve had all of their lives and, after a moment, Tessa’s hand creeps toward her laptop. When neither Harper nor Sersha slaps her hand away, she drops it into her lap and pulls up the paragraph that she had been working on before. Though, now that she can finally work on it again, she finds that she can’t focus on it. She’s too busy mulling over what the other women had told her.

Later, when the band is moving back to the hotel, Logan and Mikayla lead the way through the waves of fans waiting outside of the venue with the rest of the band and their significant others bringing up the rear. Dash and Tessa are at the very back of the party, but Dash gets pulled away pretty quickly to take selfies with fans. He gives Tessa’s shoulder a squeeze before he goes, sending her an apologetic look over his shoulder before he joins the women in the line.

Tessa chooses not to be jealous of the fans who press their breasts against his chest when he takes pictures with him, or the significant looks they give him when they tell him what big fans they are. She chooses not to be jealous, because she’s not in an exclusive relationship with Dash, and she doesn’t think that she will be anytime soon. Why should she be jealous of women who want to sleep with Dash when she’s in the exact same boat, and he’s avoided the subject pretty successfully.

“Everything all right?”

Tessa jumps, but it’s only Jared speaking into her ear.

“Yeah, sure. Hey, sorry if that conversation in the green room was a little awkward for you?”

“Not nearly as awkward as it seemed to be for you,” Jared replies.

There’s a shout, and they both turn to see Dash being enveloped by a young woman in a skirt so short that Tessa thought it was a belt at first. She raises herself up to plant a kiss on his lips, which Tessa could have considered a form of assault if Dash weren’t holding the woman up by the hips so she wouldn’t fall. The security guards arrive pretty quickly to pull her off of him, but they can’t wipe the embarrassed smile off of his face.

“Glad I’m not those guys,” Jared says, nodding to the security guards who are flanking Dash.

“Considering he’s been attacked by crazy fans before…” Tessa says. She watches the woman who kissed her best friend get escorted away.

He’s a rockstar. He can have any woman here, and he knows it. Why would he bother getting exclusive with one woman?

“So, I actually wanted to ask you something,” says Jared as he and Tessa keep walking through the crowd, leaving Dash to his fans. “But, ah… after hearing your conversation tonight, I should probably ask something else first.”

“Oh?” Tessa thinks that she knows where this is going, but she’s not about to come out and ask just in case she’s wrong.

“Are you interested in Dash?” Jared asks.

He’s forthright, Tessa has to give him that.

“Honestly? Yes,” Tessa says. “But… I guess I’m open to other offers.”

And as soon as she says it, she feels weird about it. Probably because she’s not open to other offers, and she really just wants Dash to ask her to be his girlfriend already and stop holding out on her. She wants him to drop his pants and give her what he’s promising since the day he sent that dickpic by accident. Mostly, though, she wants the security of knowing that they belong to each other in a way that doesn’t extend to just friendship.

But she figures that’s not going to happen.

“In that case,” Jared says, grinning down at Tessa and reaching out to push some of her hair over her shoulder. “Would you like to have coffee with me?”

Tessa sees another fan kiss Dash’s cheek out of the corner of her eye.

“Sure,” she replies, pushing an answering smile on her face to match his.

Chapter Seventeen

Dash scoops Tessa into his arms and throws her over his shoulder, laughing as he carries her up to the stage. The show won’t begin for another few hours, but the fans have already been outside for half the day. At the moment, it’s only the roadies and the band inside of Fitzgerald’s. On the outside, Fitzgerald’s looks like a bar from a cowboy movie with its white wooden walls and gray slat roof. It’s two stories, and Black Lilith will be playing in the largest event room on the top floor.

Houston is a lively city. Though, as Tommy had said as they’d gotten off the plane, “Don’t know what we expected from the city that spawned Beyonce?”

The moment they got to the venue, Dash had been flooded with his usual nervous energy. He started running around like a kid in a toy store, delighted with the smudged walls and large stage, and the squeaky bar stools pressed against the walls.

“Tess! Did you see the outdoor area? Let’s have dinner here one night.”

Tessa watched him run around until he finally seized her with delight and carried her up to the stage.

“Look!” he says, waving his hand out toward the room. “This place is going to be full of people in a few hours.”

“You’ll be in your element.”

Tessa is ushered off of the stage by the lighting and sound manager within moments because it’s time for the boys’ sound check. Logan is still talking to Mikayla and some of the roadies, but he waves Dash and the others ahead.

“Dash, can you stand in for me?” he calls from the other side of the room.

“What’s he talking about?” Tessa asks as she joins Harper and Sersha on some of the stools right in front of the stage. They hadn’t even gone to the hotel yet. They’d gone straight from the airport to the venue.

“Logan’s probably got some other stuff to do. That sometimes happens,” Harper says. “I don’t even know. Honestly, half the stuff that these guys have to do before a show makes my head spin.”

“But they’ve still got to do the sound check,” Sersha says.

Sure enough, Dash is strapping a guitar onto his shoulders. It hangs on him like a limb he’d been born with. Slate is sliding behind his drum kit, and Tommy is taking his place next to him, and together the three of them nod to the stage manager.

Quickly, almost without thinking, Tessa takes out her laptop. She’s typing before she can stop herself, though she’s got enough of her wits about her to notice that Sersha and Harper are giving each other knowing looks. Tessa still hasn’t gotten the chance to talk to the pair of them, or Mikayla, on their own. She makes a mental note to set a time with them together.

Slate is the first to start his sound check. Tessa makes notes as it happens, taking every detail in as they come to her, thinking that she might be able to use them, even though she’s not sure when or how yet.

The lighting and sound manager checks the levels on his soundboard while Slate beats his drums. Then Tommy plucks his bass strings, running through a series of melodies—or ‘riffs’ as Dash calls them—that has Sersha smiling fondly. Tessa doesn’t recognize the notes, but she makes a note of Sersha’s expression.

Then it’s Dash’s turn. He winks at Tessa before playing the opening bars of the Harry Potter theme song. It’s not as whimsical as the one in the movies because he’s giving it a dark rock feel. He’s playing it real sensual, practically eye-fucking Tess. It’s fucking hot.

Sweet baby Jesus…

By the time that the lighting and sound manager is nodding over his sound board, Dash is moving toward the mic stand and nodding along, tuning his guitar as he goes.

Tessa’s heart nearly skips a beat when he starts plucking out a tune that she vaguely recognizes. It’s the sort of melody that immediately sweeps through her, filled with melancholy and hope. Tessa thinks that she must have heard it on the radio once. It’s not one of Black Lilith’s songs. She knows that much.

And after a few repetitions of the introductory melody, Dash leans into the microphone and starts to sing.

I met you in the dark, you lit me up

You made me feel as though I was enough

Then Tessa knows her heart has stopped because she had no idea that the man could really sing. His voice is very similar to his brother’s, though maybe not as refined. But it’s smoky and sexy and full of the kind of youthful excitement that can’t quite be smothered by the lyrics that he’s singing. They may be melancholy, but Dash sure isn’t. He’s even smiling as he starts plucking a slightly different melody—a change in tone? Or key? Tessa’s not good at music, so she can’t tell what the change is. She only knows that something changed.

I knew I loved you then

But you’d never know

‘Cause I played it cool when I was scared of letting go

“I didn’t know that Dash could hit those notes?” Tessa hears Sersha mutter next to her.

She’s stopped taking notes. Her fingers are almost limp because she’s so enthralled with watching Dash run his fingers over the fretboard of the guitar and sing gently into the microphone. He’s not closing his eyes or swaying the way that Logan would if he were singing—he’s not losing himself in the music. He’s smiling and looking down at the girls in the front row, clearly enjoying himself. But if Tessa were to close her eyes, she would hear a smoky, slightly rough voice crooning soulfully into her ears.

Finally, the song ends and Dash finishes playing. Tessa blinks rapidly the moment his fingers stop moving.

Their eyes meet, and Tessa shakes her head to clear it, quickly resting her hands on the keyboard and tapping out a short note, though in a moment she’s already forgotten what she wrote. Because she’s still overwhelmed with the sights and sounds of Dash playing that song.

Well, fuck me! Now he can sing too.

The sound check finishes pretty quickly after that. Slate and Tommy take turns on the mic as well, singing Britney Spears songs at the tops of their lungs. But Tessa gets the impression that the sound check is long over by this time since the lighting and sound manager isn’t playing with his board anymore. Logan’s and Dash’s voices must be close enough for the guy to get the levels right without Logan. Tessa looks around, but both Logan and Mikayla have disappeared. She wonders where they went. What they’d needed to do that would take them away together.

Probably something important.

When the rest of the band is done with their sound check, and Slate and Tommy are finished goofing off, they jump off of the stage to join the girls. Slate pulls Harper to her feet with a wink, before dragging her off to a hallway that Tessa hadn’t noticed. She can only guess what he’s got in mind. Tommy and Sersha launch into a heated discussion about the nuances of slant rhymes in some of Black Lilith’s songs. A conversation which would ordinarily have fascinated Tessa if Dash didn’t immediately occupy her attention by pulling her out of the stool and maneuvering her around, so she’s sitting on his lap.

“What do you think of Houston?” he asks.

“No problem so far,” she says, and he chuckles in her ear at the joke. With her butt nestled against his groin, she can feel every inch of him even if he’s completely flaccid. She wonders whether wiggling around might wake him up. No, she shouldn’t. Especially not with Tommy and Sersha right next to them.

Tessa glances over her shoulder and realizes that Jared isn’t anywhere to be seen. Had he gone off with Mikayla? Or is he at the hotel sorting out their rooms. She never knows where half of the people in the entourage are. It seems that Black Lilith is a well-oiled machine.

“I didn’t know you could sing,” Tessa says, leaning back into Dash’s chest and enjoying the way his arms seem to naturally wrap around her. If she could just sit here with her eyes closed and his warm body pressed against her, she can almost imagine that they are a couple. “You’ve kept that quiet.”

“Logan’s the singer,” says Dash dismissively. “I’m just the stand-in when he needs to go off and fuck his wife.”

So that’s where they disappeared to.

“You were amazing.”

“Thank you,” Dash says, and she can feel the sincerity in the way his chest vibrates against her back. “But really, I’m more comfortable with a guitar.”

“What song were you singing?”

“Ah… ‘Say You Won’t Let Me Go’ by James Arthur.”

“I like it. I can’t remember hearing it before, but I must have.”

“You probably have. It’s pretty popular.”

They sit together in silence for a while. For once, Tessa has closed her laptop of her own volition. There’s nothing to take notes about right now, and after Dash’s performance, she really can’t think clearly about her job. No matter how desperately she wants to be a professional right now.

“Look at those two,” Dash says. Tessa turns her head slightly to see what he’s looking at—Sersha and Tommy with their heads bent over a notebook. “Lovey-dovey.”

“At least they’ve stayed where people can see them,” Tessa says. “Considering Slate and Logan disappeared pretty quickly with their significant others.”

Dash shakes his head slowly. “That’s what happens when band members get girlfriends. They start pairing off.”

Tessa is struck by his words, and not just because of the fact that she’s sitting in his lap. After all, to an observer, she and Dash would look far more intimate than Sersha and Tommy do right now. No, she’s struck by his words because his tone sounds… bitter? Dismissive? Not at all like he would consider joining the ranks of men with girlfriends. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“Didn’t you ever think of finding someone?” Tessa asks, because they’re friends after all, and friends talk about this sort of thing. “Just to even it up.”

Dash shrugs. “Why would I? It’s more fun just hanging out with my friends. The guys, the girls, you… having a girlfriend would just complicate stuff.”

Tessa has a sudden violent urge to pull away. To turn around and demand that he ask her to be his girlfriend, goddammit. They’ve seen each other naked. She’s got a whole album on her phone dedicated to that fact. And if they’re going to mess around and sit in each other’s laps then why not make it official?

But she doesn’t. She just asks, “Hasn’t anyone caught your eye recently?”

Dash shrugs. “I might have asked Mikayla out if it hadn’t been clear from the start that she was into my brother.”

“I would ask Mikayla out if she weren’t into your brother,” Tessa says, and she hopes her tone is enough to hide the sting she’d felt at his words. But, because apparently her mind has taken over her mouth, she asks, “Would you have asked me out?” She hopes that she got the teasing tone down. Tessa almost feels as though she’s back in high school, trying to fish through a conversation with her crush to see if he likes her back.

But Dash isn’t just a crush. He’s her best friend. If he could be something more, then that would be a bonus. But it’s not make or break.

She tells herself that over and over again.

Dash hums and taps the skin on her forearm. “Nah,” he says. Tessa hates how cold she feels at his words. “You’re too good a friend to fuck that up.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” she says.

And why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, she thinks but doesn’t say out loud.

“Dash!” Logan’s voice breaks through their conversation. “Could you check in with Cordy and make sure that your gear is all set? It’s gonna be a quick switch over, and I want you confident that the acoustic is where you need it to be.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dash says.

Tessa stands up to find Logan standing behind her and Dash. When Dash stands and gives her shoulder a quick squeeze before disappearing backstage, Logan remains. He’s got a thoughtful look on his face.

“Everything all right?” he asks Tessa once Dash is out of earshot. Tommy and Sersha are still close at hand, but they’re oblivious to anything but the laptop in Sersha’s lap. Apparently, those slant rhymes had been too complicated for a mere notebook to handle.

“Of course,” Tessa says. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Logan gives her a look like he knows something that she doesn’t. Maybe he does. “You know how, with some people, they seem dumb and they’re really not?”

“Yeah?”

He rubs his arm, running his fingers absently along the length of his tattoos. “My brother is not one of those people,” he says simply. “You need to really spell it out for him.”

“I don’t… uh—”

“Jared asked for time off,” Logan says, and Tessa immediately feels her cheeks flush.

So he knows about that.

“I get it, I do. But like I said, Dash really needs things spelled out for him. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tessa agrees, though she’s really not entirely sure what she’s agreeing to.

Is Logan saying that Dash would have a problem with her seeing Jared?

Is Logan implying that Dash is feeling something more than friendship and lust for her?

But Dash had been pretty adamant about them being just friends.

Logan nods once, then wanders over to drag Tommy away from Sersha, leaving Tessa alone with her thoughts.

Chapter Eighteen

Tessa leans back in her chair and stretches her arms over her head, turning her head back and forth as she hears her joints crack. She’s been working since she got back to the hotel. The band is out to dinner. Dash had begged Tessa to join them, but she’d begged for the night to herself. There was too much work to do. Her interviews need to be typed out properly, and she has to sort through her most important ideas, so she has an idea of what to put in the article.

The hotel décor isn’t particularly creatively exciting, but it’s enough to lose herself in her writing. There was more construction work going on outside—apparently, even Houston isn’t immune to that—so Tessa had put on some music. It was actually a Spotify playlist that Dash had made her. Most of it was bands that she hadn’t even heard of, and right now, Citizen Cope’s ‘Let The Drummer Kick It’ is playing. She likes the rhythm of some of these songs, and she realizes Dash has good taste.

Music helps her write. It helps her shut out the world, which is pretty important when she’s concentrating so much on what she needs to write. She’s got a few more questions which need answers.

How did Slate and Harper meet?

Who was Tommy’s ex-girlfriend?

What the fuck was Slate’s last name?

These were all personal questions, but there are professional ones as well. The basic facts about the band have already been published a hundred times.

When they got together.

How they got together.

How long they had practiced their instruments in music class and in garages before Bass Note signed them.

So what can she bring to the table that’s new?

Someone knocks at her door, and she jumps, so caught up in her own thoughts that she wasn’t expecting the noise.

“Who is it?” she calls.

“It’s Dash.”

Tessa runs a hand through her hair. She loves spending time with Dash, but there’s so much work to do. Not to mention Logan’s words from earlier are still ringing in her ears…

“Hang on.”

She goes to the door, opens it, and gets an armful of Dash. She lets him hug her, enjoying the feeling of his body against hers, before pulling away and giving him a smile.

“Glad you’re here, I have some questions about the article.”

He’s wearing a suit and loose tie, his hair is swept up on his head. Tessa thinks he looks good like this, but she prefers him in his usual slogan tee and jeans. This looks like a young man dressing up in his father’s clothes. It’s not her Dash.

He’s not yours, he’s just a friend.

“All work and no play makes Tessa a dull girl,” Dash says, kissing her on the cheek and waving the bottle of spicy rum that he’d brought with him in her line of vision. “Have a drink with me?”

“After this,” Tessa says.

Behind him, she sees one of the bodyguards who usually follows the boys around. Jared has gone with the rest of the entourage because most of his charges were going too. Only Tessa had chosen to stay in and work. Dash must have brought one of the bodyguards back when he’d left the restaurant.

“How was dinner?” she asks, drawing Dash into her room and giving the bodyguard a nod over her shoulder as she closes the door.

“Boring without you.” Dash settles himself on the bed and leans on her pillows. He seems to fill the room with the strength of his personality, and he beams over at her before his eyes slide over to her laptop. “Close the laptop, Tess. Take a break.”

“Dash… you know I love you, but I really do need to work. If I didn’t, I would have gone to the dinner.”

The Spotify playlist switches to the next song and Tessa finally hears a song that she recognizes—Queen’s ‘Friends Will Be Friends.’ Queen is one of Scott’s favorite bands.

Dash looks fondly at the laptop. Tessa realizes that while she was talking, he’d actually looked startled for a moment. It wasn’t until the song switched that he dropped the look. What had made him look like that?

I told him that I love him.

Well, she does. Tessa adores Dash. She wouldn’t consider it love in the romantic sense. At least, she wouldn’t admit to considering it love, especially since Dash has made himself perfectly clear about how he feels. The surprise in his eyes was yet another confirmation that he’s not trying to get into anything other than to fuck her, along with all the other women.

Dash pulls his tie off and waves it at her, along with the rum. “What do you say we have a little fun?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at her and winking.

Tessa can imagine what this fun entails, and for a moment she considers going along with it. She wonders what would happen. Would he tie her up and lick rum off of her like he did with the whiskey? The dark rum would stain the hotel sheets. He’s loaded, so he can probably afford to pay for the damages.

She is leaning toward the bed, getting ready to climb on. And then she remembers that she’s got a date with Jared.

Tessa is monogamous by nature. Even if she and Jared aren’t really serious and haven’t even been on a date yet, she feels obligated to avoid sex with Dash until she knows where that’s going. Dash is not going to have sex with her, anyway, she reasons. He’s avoided that so far. He would probably have just tied her up and played around. Nothing that could be considered a commitment.

But then Logan had seemed pretty adamant that she come out and ask him. As though Dash wouldn’t know his mind without someone actively taking him by the hand and explaining how they felt.

“Actually, why don’t we just talk?” Tessa says.

Dash cocks his head, his smile still on his face, though there’s a hint of confusion to it now. “Talk?” he asks. “What’s there to talk about?” He lowers his eyelids. “I can keep you extremely entertained with my tongue if that’s what you’re after.”

Tessa knows that he definitely could. But she just shakes her head. “Actually, there’s something I want to talk to you about, and I think it’s pretty important.”

“Okay, spill…” Dash says, starting to look worried now.

Tessa sits with him on the edge of the bed and puts her hands on her lap. Dash hesitantly puts his tie on the bedspread—maybe so that he can reach for it later—and the rum bottle on the bedside table, right on top of her book. Pet Sematary by Stephen King. The hotel table is so small that it’s only big enough for the lamp and the book, so the bottle teeters a little on the edge. Tessa watches it for a moment. Eventually, it stops moving and settles completely.

“Are we friends?” Tessa asks Dash, deciding to start with something easy.

Dash actually looks shocked. Much more shocked than she’d thought that he would be.

“Of course,” he says. “What kind of fucking question is that? Tess… we’re best friends.”

Tessa nods because she already knew that. It feels good to hear him say it as though it’s a given. “Yeah, we are.” He looks noticeably relieved. She continues after drawing a breath, “What about… more?”

“More,” he says slowly. Now he’s looking a little bit nervous. “More, as in… like… boyfriend and girlfriend?”

That’s such a sweet, high school way to put it. It’s the sort of thing that a boy might have asked her in grade twelve. Tessa nods again, watching him carefully. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well, I mean, that’s a bit…” he pushes his fingers through his hair and continues, “… why would we need to put it a name on it? Can’t we just keep having fun and being friends?”

She was expecting that, but it still hurt. It’s not a heavy pain, though. It’s a paper cut near the heart, one that stings a little with every beat. To hear it confirmed isn’t the same as understanding it without words.

Dash is clearly trying really hard to hold onto his smile, but his body has seized up. He looks almost cold compared to the way he usually sits with his arms open and muscles relaxed. He looks like he’s ready to take flight. His eyes are darting between her eyes and lips and chin like he’s trying to decide what he wants to focus on. He doesn’t want to be ‘boyfriend and girlfriend.’ He wants to keep up with the casual sex and continue to enjoy the freedom of his rockstar status. Tessa can’t say that she blames him. She knows that it would have to be a pretty spectacular woman who would draw him into a real relationship after the way he’s been living since, well, since he left high school. Tessa clearly isn’t that woman.

Logan had been wrong. It isn’t that Dash needs Tessa’s desires spelled out for him. He just isn’t interested.

“That’s totally okay. We can keep being friends.”

Dash looks relieved. “That’s best.”

“But I can’t keep ‘having fun,’” Tessa says.

At that point, his body language becomes even colder than it had when she’d asked whether he wanted to be anything more than friends. His shoulders turn inward, they hunch, and his chin dips down. For the first time since he came in here, Dash frowns.

“What? Why?” he asks. “Because I’m not going to commit? I didn’t realize our friendship meant so little to you.”

“I didn’t realize our friendship was dependant on me putting out,” she says, matching his cold tone.

He backtracks so quickly that Tessa thinks he might as well be walking backward. “No, no, no… that’s not what I meant—” he says rapidly.

“I know that we basically started this because of the sexting, but we’re more than that now, right?”

“We are, definitely,” he says. “You’re my everything, Tess. I’ve told you things I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Tessa leans over and puts her hand on his, squeezing his knuckles. She’s glad when he squeezes back, though it’s really weak. So weak that she wonders if he’d even meant to do it. Was it just a nervous spasm, or an instinct?

“Same here,” she says. “But we can be friends without the sexy stuff, you know? That’s all I’m saying.”

“Because… I’m not going to date you?” he asks. He is clearly hesitating, thinking, pondering. He looks so confused and stressed-out that Tessa almost wants to take it all back. But instead, she plows ahead.

“Well that, and I’ve got a date in a few days. So I feel like I probably shouldn’t cheat on the guy, you know?”

Dash pulls away his hand. Immediately. “A date?”

“Yeah,” Tessa says. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you about…” she waves a hand between them, “… this. Us. Just so we’re both on the same page.”

She wants to brush it off as double-checking, and not that she’d secretly hoped he’d sweep her off of her feet like something from a romance novel. She wishes that she hadn’t secretly hoped that he’d want to put a stop to her plans with Jared, and immediately demand that they become exclusive, but Dash doesn’t speak. He seems to be making his mind up about something, and Tessa doesn’t dare to hope.

Then he leans forward, pressing a kiss to her lips and crushing her breasts between them. He pulls her around so that she’s sitting in his lap. Tessa’s body immediately goes into its usual powerless lust. She wraps her arms around his neck and presses herself closer, because that’s clearly what he wants, and Tessa can feel his hands dip over her hips and waist, sending warm shivers through her body. Tessa falls completely at the mercy of Dash’s hands and mouth. When he reaches up to bury a hand in her hair, she can only gasp when he pulls just a little too tight.

Tongues meet in Tessa’s mouth. She groans at the taste of him—sweet, as though he has eaten cake recently.

Dinner. Food. Drinks. Coffee. Jared.

Her mind can barely form words, but the ones she can form are enough to pull her up short. She presses her hand against his chest. At first gently and hesitantly, then harder.

“Dash, stop.”

Her words are almost muffled by his lips, but they’re unmistakable. Dash stops immediately. No matter how hot and bothered he gets, he seems to know how to stop when he needs to. He pulls away, and Tessa takes a moment to catch her breath before pulling away completely and taking her legs off of his lap. She settles herself on the bed and sighs, brushing out her hair even though she can still feel the phantom warmth of his hands on her scalp. She looks down, half-expecting to see a handprint on her waist and hip as well, but her blouse is unmarked.

“I told you, I don’t want to do that anymore,” she tells him. Her voice is breathless, and she’s honestly surprised that the words don’t come out as a moan because she’s still so dizzy from the kiss.

“So this new guy… is he your boyfriend? I don’t get it?”

“We haven’t even talked about that yet.”

“Where did you even meet him?”

“Why does it matter?”

Dash stands up so quickly that the table gets knocked by his knee and the bottle of rum drops to the floor with a heavy thud. The bottle’s still intact, but Tessa winces and thinks about what kind of hell she would be in if she had smashed a bottle of dark rum on the carpet in her own home. Dash doesn’t even look down. Has becoming famous skewed his understanding of stains and carpets so much?

“I have to go,” Dash says.

“Dash… I don’t want to finish the conversation like this. Please don’t leave.” But he’s already heading for the door. “Dash!”

Dash closes the door behind himself.

Tessa leans down and picks up the bottle. She’s on auto-pilot. Her body going through the motions of cleaning up, even though her mind is reeling. One moment she has Dash in her room, cheerful as always, begging her to get out of the room and hang out with him. Then he’s gone, just because she told him that she’s got a date with someone else.

And what the hell was up with that kiss?

Had she made herself more desirable to him because someone else wants her?

Or was it a power trip for the rockstar, to try kissing her when he knows that she isn’t interested in getting physical with him.

Tessa gets up, her legs are still shaking from his kiss. Her core is tight, and her groin is a little heavy as well. One kiss and she’s wobbly like a new-born calf. Dash’s kisses are like a superpower. Tessa sits at the desk and runs her finger over the keypad, lighting up the screen again, and the moment she sees her notes she knows that she can’t work anymore tonight. Her head isn’t exactly a mess, but it is preoccupied.

It doesn’t help that she’s made a list of questions that she wanted to ask Dash. Questions that she probably won’t be able to ask now.

She sighs, closes the laptop, and pushes herself away from the desk. Standing up, she falls face-first onto the bed.

Chapter Nineteen

The first thing Logan does when he enters the hotel room is give Tessa a long, sad look.

“So, what’s your side of the story?”

Tessa hisses through her teeth and clicks her tongue. “Unimportant,” she says. “Why don’t we talk about you?” She draws the man to the bed and takes her place at the desk, resting her hands on the keyboard.

“Okay,” Logan says, slowly.

Logan doesn’t seem to like the idea of letting things go and focusing on the interview, but Tessa can tell—maybe it’s the way he holds himself, maybe it’s the way his eyes flicker between hers like he’s looking for something—that he’s either going to try and bring Dash up again in a few minutes, when they’re halfway through their interview, or at the end. Tessa hasn’t known Logan long, but she’s known him long enough to know he’s probably not going to give it up. He sits down anyway, and that’s a good start, making himself comfortable on the bed.

Dash hasn’t really spoken to her since their fight the night before. He’s been polite, in the sense that he hasn’t outright ignored her. He says ‘good morning’ and ‘how are you?’ But during breakfast that morning, in the dining room of the hotel, he didn’t look at her. He’d just picked at his omelet and smiled every time someone else spoke to him, clearly doing his best to pretend that nothing was wrong. Tessa had tried to catch his eye at first, offering a few observations about the meal and trying to pull him into a conversation about the new Fantastic Beasts movie, until she got the message—Dash simply was not interested in talking. At least not now.

Maybe when he’s had time to cool off, Tessa will try again.

She wonders how many women have ever actually turned Dash down. Not many, she thinks. Why would they?

But it makes her ache to see him like this—so cold when usually he’s so warm. He’s withdrawn and apparently determined to avoid eye contact at all costs. He won’t even look at her. A part of Tessa thinks that it serves her right for trying to turn what had begun as a fling into something more serious. Dash is her best friend—is, not was, because it’s not over, not yet—but the moment she wanted more, she should have known that it could all end in tears. Wasn’t that always the concern with trying to change relationships? That the change may trigger something awful?

She misses texting Dash. She misses laughing with him. She misses kissing him. She misses spending hours and hours talking about everything and nothing at all. It’s barely been twenty-four hours—no, it’s barely been twelve hours—and she already misses him like she’s lost a limb.

“Can you tell me a little bit about why you wanted to start a band?” she asks Logan, reminding herself again that she should be doing her job.

That’s another thing. She shouldn’t have brought something like this into her work. She shouldn’t have let herself get romantically involved with someone she works with. That was her first mistake.

“Mostly for kicks,” Logan replies easily, leaning back on his elbows so the ring on his left hand glints in the low lamplight. “I met Slate at school, and he was a drummer. We put together a band so we would have something to do after school.”

“So was it just an after school thing?”

“Yeah,” Logan says. He seems to think about it for a second. “Slate needed something to keep him away from home. He wasn’t on good terms with his aunt and uncle. And I didn’t really need to be home.”

Tessa hesitates for a moment, before asking, “How come? If you don’t want to answer—”

“No, it’s okay. You’ll decide for yourself whether it needs to be in the article,” he says. “I didn’t like to go home because there wasn’t really much to go home to. Dad left when we were young, Mom farmed us out. It was pretty much just Dash and me, and he was always in late honors classes, so going home without him just meant I’d have to come back a few hours later.”

Tessa nods. She’d known, of course, that Dash’s parents weren’t around when he was younger.

“Do you talk to her much?”

“Not really,” Logan replies. “She’s in Jersey, still. Don’t know where Dad is.”

Tessa’s hands are completely still on the keyboard. She doesn’t need to write this stuff down. She’ll remember it later, and she doesn’t want the sound of keys tapping to break through Logan’s words, to remind him that he’s being recorded and that this might all wind up in a story someday. She wonders if it’ll even wind up getting into the article. Or whether this is way too personal.

Logan taps his finger on his knee and rubs his thumb over his bottom lip. “So, maybe we can trade questions… one for one?”

“Ugh… must we?”

“Oh, I think we must,” he says slyly.

Tessa considers her options, then dips her head in consent. She knows that she can probably talk her way out of it. In fact, if she wants to keep this interview professional, she probably should. But Logan is a persistent man. He won’t give up on this, and if he does then it will be by walking out the door and cutting their interview short. More than that, Tessa realizes that he knows Dash. He knows Dash better than Tessa ever could. Maybe he can give her a bit of insight.

“So, you’ve had your first question.”

“If I’d have known that it would be tit for tat, I would have started with something better.”

Logan just smirks. “Shoulda, coulda, woulda.” He slides back onto the mattress and crosses his legs. “Here’s my question… are you okay?”

Tessa honestly hadn’t been expecting that. “I’m pretty much numb to it all, right now,” she says. “I wasn’t… I wasn’t expecting the way he reacted, but in the end, I guess I should have? I don’t know… you probably think it’s stupid that I want a commitment.”

Logan raises an eyebrow and waves his left hand at her, wiggling his ring finger. “You’re talking to a newlywed here, sweetheart.”

The room, which had started to feel a little bit claustrophobic, felt warmer. Tessa and Logan share a grin.

“So—”

“Ah ah,” Tessa says, holding her hand up. “My turn.” Logan grins and nods for her to ask her question. She taps her chin and thinks about it for a moment. Since it’s tit for tat now, she figures it should probably be something juicy. “What’s the one thing you regret most about starting this band?”

“Regret?” Logan replies. He raises an eyebrow and then frowns as though he’s never really thought about it. “Regret… I don’t think… no, I know, I don’t regret anything.” But he’s silent for a moment longer, thinking hard. He’s silent for so long that Tessa actually looks at her watch and begins to wonder if she shouldn’t have asked the question. Then he sighs and says, “I wish Dash could have gone to college. Now that we’re in a band together, he’s not going to leave, not for anything. I wish he’d had the chance to be an average eighteen-year-old, starting out as a freshman, doing all the stupid stuff that freshmen do. Even if he goes back to college now and gets his degree, it won’t be the same. He’ll never get those years back.”

Tessa is silent for a moment. Then, she quickly types Logan’s response into her laptop. He waits patiently while she does. “That must be hard. I know that you’ve kind of taken responsibility for him.”

“Had to. No one else would.”

“For what it’s worth, I think he turned out really well.”

He smiles then. It’s not a grin like they’re sharing a secret, but a genuinely pleased smile. “That leads me to my next question… What’s your version of what happened? Because I love my brother, but I think there might be more nuance to this than he seems to think.”

Tessa sighs and leans back on her seat. She realizes that, given a choice, she would have liked to talk to Mikayla, Sersha, or Harper about this. Baring her feelings has always been easier when she was dealing with other women. Not that Logan isn’t an attentive listener, but even in the moment between hearing the question and answering it, she finds herself editing her response. Downplaying the emotions and trying to get to the heart of the problem as much as she can. It’s a strange instinct, and one she should probably train herself out of.

“My version is… I asked him if he wanted to agree not to see other people, and he said he preferred to stay as friends. But… friends with benefits. I told him that won’t work for me. I told him that I’m going to see other people, but I don’t want to cheat on them. So. Yeah. That happened.”

Logan chews his lip thoughtfully, thinking it over. “Yeah, that pretty much matches up with what he said. Except, he was a little bit more emotional about it. Did he tell you why he doesn’t want things to change between you?”

Tessa shrugs. “I guess he’s so used to groupies… or just, one-night stands and that sort of thing that he probably doesn’t want to give it up.”

Shifting on the bed, Logan turns, so his entire body is facing Tessa, and she feels instantly as though she has his undivided attention. “Do you really think so?”

“My turn,” Tessa says. Because if she can avoid the question even for a moment, then she’d like to do just that. Anything to give herself time to think. Logan doesn’t look happy about it, but he nods his assent. “Tell me about how your relationships with the other band members have changed since you started it?”

Sometimes, Tessa thinks that the boys must get the same questions in every interview. She’d noticed it in the way that Slate so easily side-stepped some of her early attempts, and how Tommy’s responses were a little too well-spoken, as though they were stock responses that he’d given before. She’d thought that this question would be something like that. But, to her surprise, Logan’s face lights up.

“Slate and I were close friends,” he says, after again giving his response some thought. “Not like brothers, but close. Now, I think we’re all a big family, but Slate is more like… well, if I had to think of a comparison, I guess I’d call him an ex-boyfriend?” He laughs at Tessa’s expression. “We’ve never crossed swords. Tommy’s a bit more adventurous than I am when it comes to Slate, but Slate and I got really really close in high school. We were inseparable. And then we started to get famous, and we both began to get a little jealous of each other, and the time we were spending with other people. It’s only the last few years, probably about the year before Mikayla joined us, that Slate and I have both started to understand where we stand. I think we’re both a lot happier to let other people spend time with the other because we know that we love each other and nothing’s gonna change that.”

Tessa types all of this into her laptop fascinated and intrigued at the same time. “So, it’s like the ex who’s still your friend and wants the best for you, but knows that you’re going to see other people?”

“Exactly,” Logan says, tapping his nose. “Tommy… at first, Tommy was the little brother with Dash. When you meet him… and you’ve probably noticed this… but when you meet Tommy you kind of want to bundle him up in a blanket and protect him from everything bad in the world. It took me a while to understand that he doesn’t need protection. Or, if he does, then he’ll ask. It’s taken all of us a while to stop protecting Tommy and just let him get on with his life.”

Tessa nods. She types that response up, hoping that there will be a chance for her to ask Logan to elaborate on that later. She feels like there’s a story there.

“And Dash… well, Dash is still my kid brother. I’m still his big brother. I think of everyone in the band, my relationship with him has changed the least.” He waits until she finishes typing before asking, “Speaking of changing relationships with Dash. Do you really think that he doesn’t want yours to change because he enjoys sleeping with other women too much?”

Tessa wishes that she’d had more time to think about it before answering, “Honestly, I can’t think of any other reason. Why mess with a good thing?”

“But surely you know that he adores you?”

“That doesn’t mean that he wants to make things official,” she says, remembering how shocked Sersha and Harper had been when they realized Tessa and Dash weren’t an official couple. “I mean, he’s never even been in a relationship before… not a grown-up one, at least. Not one with actual emotions involved.”

“Exactly,” Logan says, shifting on the bed as though he means to get closer to her, but he’s already perched on the edge, and that’s as far as he can go. “Maybe that’s the problem? Maybe he doesn’t know what being in a real relationship means?”

“And so he’s going to avoid it indefinitely?” Tessa asks. “Sorry, that’s not going to work for me.”

Logan leans back a little bit, nodding with something bordering on respect in his gaze. “I understand that.”

“And he can’t blame me for wanting more just because he doesn’t.”

“You’re right about that.” Logan shifts forward again and smiles at her. Now she’s looking at him more closely, Tessa thinks she can see a hint of sadness in his eyes. “Though, I think there’s more to this than he’s telling me. Just a feeling I have. I’ve known him his whole life, you know.” He plays with the wedding band on his finger and shrugs. “Maybe you should ask him about it?”

“I will,” Tessa says. “As soon as he can look me in the eye again.”

Logan winces. “Yeah. Since you’re probably not going to hear it from him anytime soon… I’m sorry on his behalf. We Todds are pretty much cowards when it comes to the women we care about.”

Tessa rests her hands back on the keyboard and turns her chin toward Logan. “Speaking of… tell me about Mikayla.”

Logan’s face, if possible, brightens even more.

Chapter Twenty

A tour bus drives them to Denver—an overnight trip that takes them through some wonderful countryside. Tessa spends the first few hours admiring it and sending pictures from her phone to Jackie and her father whenever she has coverage. Scott and Kaden had both demanded more pics of the bus than they had of the countryside.

In their defense, it is a pretty awesome bus. It’s the size of a small apartment, with a kitchen and living area in the front, a master bedroom in the back, and a row of four bunks in between the two. There’s also a shower that none of the band was particularly interested in trying out. After Tessa had pried a little, Slate had spoken cryptically of buses swerving, sudden stops, and ‘the Unsolicited Penetration Incident,’ and Tommy had shivered like he’d had a bad dream.

Since it was over twenty hours to Denver, they were going to have to sleep eventually. The master bedroom had a bed big enough for a few, and the women had claimed it. The men having to take the bunks.

Tommy and Sersha have a seat near the front. Tommy, for once, is not scratching away at a notebook. He’s nibbling on his thumbnail and reading The Handmaid’s Tale while Sersha gazes out of the window with her iPod blasting into her ears. Their fingers are loosely entwined.

Slate sits behind them with his knees on the back of Tommy’s seat, playing some Nintendo DS game. He’s gotten so riled up that his elbows and shoulders move with violently every few seconds, jolting Tommy’s seat and bothering Harper so much that she’s had to move away. Retreating to one of the bunks to read a manual on muscle development with her legs in a lotus pose that Tessa couldn’t manage if she had a million years to perfect it.

Dash is in the master bedroom with Logan, probably because it’s the furthest he can get from Tessa without actually leaving the bus. She can hear the explosions from the movie they’re watching from where she sits next to the driver.

“Loud bunch, aren’t they?” he says, leaning over to talk to her with his low Texas twang. He’s an older man with a Rangers baseball cap turned backward. He’s taken a liking to Tessa, and he’s allowed her to sit and bother him instead of sitting with the rest of the band.

No matter what she does, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s an outsider to them. She thinks that it wouldn’t be like that if Dash were still talking to her. If he were trying to pull her into the conversations and forcing her to drop her professional demeanor to make her laugh. The other band members will still talk to her and laugh, of course, and the women give her long looks full of sympathy whenever they see Dash push her away. But apart from Logan, no one has really tried to reach out. Tessa wonders if they’ve been waiting for something, or if they didn’t want to give the impression of taking a side that isn’t Dash’s.

“Pretty loud,” Tessa replies. “But they’re lovely people.”

“I had to drive Kanye West’s bus a few years ago,” the bus driver recalls. “Seemed a little full of himself. A lot of them are.”

His voice is just low enough that no one beyond Tessa—perched as she is on the step between the driver’s cabin and the rest of the bus—can hear him. She can see Mikayla out of the corner of her eye leaning against the kitchen sink and tapping her tablet as usual.

“These ones are decent,” Tessa says. “Good people, every one.”

“I’ll take your word for it, darlin’,” he says. “At least there’s no entourage with these ones.”

Tessa nods. The entourage is coming in another bus behind them. Even the bodyguards are riding with the roadies and Tessa’s happy about that. She hasn’t really had the chance to talk to Jared since he asked her out. She knows that if they’d had the opportunity to talk, Dash would probably figure out that they were planning to go on a date. She can only imagine the way he would react to that.

Her phone pings and she glances down. It’s a text from Jared. She wonders if he knew she’d been thinking about him.

Jared: How’s things?

He texts with proper punctuation. That’s something she’s not used to. She licks her lips and texts back quickly

Tessa: Not much. I’ve made friends with the driver.

Jared: Really? Is he hotter than me?

Tessa: Much hotter. He’s got the sexiest liver spots I’ve ever seen.

Jared: Well, there’s no competing with that!

Tessa grins. It’s the sort of joke that she thinks Dash might make, though the moment the thought crosses her mind she’s kicking herself because she shouldn’t be thinking of him. She shouldn’t be comparing other men to him. It’s not fair. Not to the men and certainly not to her.

She hears footsteps coming up behind her and turns her head to see Mikayla standing over her, with a tired smile on her beautiful face.

“Hey Tess,” she says. “How are you doing over here?”

“Fine,” Tessa replies.

“And Robbie… you’re okay? Don’t want any coffee?”

“No thanks, Mrs. Todd. I had plenty when we left Temple.”

Mikayla looks happy when the driver calls her ‘Mrs. Todd.’ She’s still in the flush of her newly wedded bliss. Tessa knows that she and Logan never did get to have a real honeymoon.

To Tessa’s surprise, Mikayla slides into the space next to her and sits on the step. Tessa takes a moment to wonder whether it’s good for her skirt to sit on the ground where people have been walking.

“Fine, huh?” Mikayla says. She gives Tessa a knowing look. Tessa’s eyes flicker over to the driver and Mikayla seems to get the message. She takes out her tablet and taps out a message.

Mikayla hands her the tablet.

You’re not feeling left out, are you?

Tessa reads the words and chews her tongue, before quickly typing her reply into the notes app.

I’m here to do a job, not make friends.

Mikayla sighs and takes the tablet back. It takes her a little while to type out her message. It’s almost as if she’s writing a novel. Tessa watches the road pass through the window, waiting for Mikayla to finish her note. Finally, Mikayla taps Tessa on the shoulder and hands her the tablet.

When I came to the band, they were all single and happy to play with someone new. Now that they’ve all got someone they’re not as excited about new company. But I promise you, they all love you. I think they would love it if you would reach out. For something besides an interview.

Tessa chews her nail again and types her answer almost without thinking about it.

I get that. It’s a bit hard when interviewing is all I’m here for. You’re paying me a ridiculous amount of money, so I feel like any time I’m not working is time I’m stealing from you.

Mikayla clicks her tongue and gives her a knowing look.

Maybe when you’re done getting your material?

Yeah, perhaps.

Behind them, Tommy finally loses his patience and turns around to smack Slate over the head with his book.

“Stop fucking kicking my seat!”

“Ouch, asshole… what even…” Slate waves his DS to try and defend himself, but Tommy keeps smacking him around the head with the book.

“Feel the wrath of a feminist masterpiece, dickhead!”

As Mikayla and Tessa watch, Sersha glances at Tommy—who’s leaning over the seat with his ass in the air—and before turning back to the window and turning up her iPod to drown him out, giggling, Tessa and Mikayla turn back to the front while the driver shakes his head, muttering about loud musicians.

Mikayla types out another message.

Dash is distraught. How are you?

Tessa sighs.

Not distraught. I miss him like hell, though.

I swear those boys are the worst when it comes to relationships. It’s like they’re cursed.

Tessa tips her head back and laughs.

One of these days, I’m going to get the full story about all of the nonsense they’ve pulled.

I hope that you’ll be able to laugh about this fight with Dash someday.

The bus rocks beneath them, and Tessa feels a powerful urge to lean over and rest her head on Mikayla’s shoulder. It’s the sort of urge she’s often felt with her sisters. It’s something she might have felt with her mother if she didn’t despise the woman. Finally, Tessa gives in and lets her head fall. Mikayla doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, Mikayla reaches around so one arm is curled over Tessa’s waist, pulling her close, the way Tessa often would with her younger sisters.

“You will be fine, my love,” Mikayla whispers.

Tommy’s voice quiets down, so he must have gotten his point across. Tessa hears Slate muttering as he gets up from his seat, his heavy boots stomping down to the other end of the bus where Logan and Dash are still playing their game together.

Mikayla taps into the tablet.

For what it’s worth, I think Dash knows that he’s in the wrong here.

I don’t think there is a wrong per se. We just want different things.

He’s in the wrong because he’s not talking to you.

Tessa sighs. Then Mikayla’s hand rubs soothing circles on Tessa’s back, and she rests her head on the crown of Tessa’s own, making herself comfortable. Tessa watches as Mikayla keeps writing, putting sentences and sentences on the tablet and keeping up a steady monolog.

When I met these boys, they were dripping with women. Every night I would watch them go home with a new girl, and every girl knew where they stood and what they were doing, so it didn’t bother me. And the boys would always treat them with respect. After a while, each one of them met someone special. They could never do it without drama, but they’re happy now. Dash will be the same.

Tessa leans over to type out her answer.

Maybe not with me, though.

Or maybe he just needs to get his head out of his ass. The little fucker…

It sounds like something Logan would say. Maybe his personality has rubbed off on his wife in the months that they’ve been together.

“Have you said that to his face?” Tessa whispers trying to hold back a giggle.

“We all have, repeatedly,” Mikayla says. “Slate sat on his head for about five minutes.”

Tessa snorts. Her phone pings again, it’s probably with another message from Jared, so she ignores it. She’s not about to answer one of his flirty texts with Mikayla’s head right next to hers.

The bus keeps rocking as they leave the tablet to go dark with inactivity, letting it rest on Mikayla’s lap. Neither of them speaks. There doesn’t seem to be a need to, and Tessa has some things to mull over.

Both Mikayla and Logan had been under the impression that Dash is in the wrong here. But really, how can they think that? Dash and Tessa had both put their cards on the table, and they just wanted different things. No one was in the wrong, except for the fact that Dash seems to have taken her desire for a commitment personally. But even that isn’t really wrong. Just… it hurts Tessa to not talk to him.

She reaches into her pocket, careful not to move too much and disturb Mikayla, and pulls out her phone. The message is from Logan, not Jared. She opens it and feels Mikayla’s chin move as she reads the screen over Tessa’s shoulder.

Logan: You’re not upset are you? Do you need anything?

Tessa frowns at the screen, wondering what he means and what prompted this. But Mikayla sniffs with amusement above her.

“He can see us,” she says. “It’s a straight shot from here to the bedroom.”

Sure enough, when Tessa turns her head, she can see down the hall to the end of the bus, where the master bedroom’s door is open. She can see the bed from here. Logan is sitting on the edge, in a similar posture to the one that he’d had when she was interviewing him. Behind him, Dash and Slate are watching the movie, though when Tessa looks she sees Dash and Logan giving her and Mikayla almost identical looks of concern.

Mikayla snorts and takes Tessa’s phone out of her fingers. Then she types the answer.

Tessa: She’s fine. Go back to your movie.

While Mikayla is sending the message, Tessa gives Logan a thumbs-up. Her eyes shift to Dash, who looks away. When Logan gets the message, he gives Tessa a thumbs-up too and elbows Dash. Tessa turns away before she can see how Dash reacts.

Would he care if Tessa were upset?

He’d walked out of the hotel room, ignoring her calls for him to come back.

Mikayla hugs Tessa closer and hands her back the phone. “Typical. Maybe Dash asked him to send it?”

“Dash has my number,” Tessa says.

She stuffs her phone back into her pocket and puts her own arm around Mikayla’s shoulders because she’s tired of being the one to be comforted. Needing comfort is new to her, and in her defense, she hadn’t asked for it.

If Halley or Jackie, or any of her sisters, had come to her with boy troubles, she would tell them the same thing—no man is irreplaceable. There are four and a half billion of them on the planet. If a man wants something that you’re not willing to give—or vice versa—then there’s nothing wrong with moving on.

So why does her heart clench in her chest at the thought of Dash being worried about her? At the thought of him reaching out to her by proxy? And even if he hadn’t, even if Logan had seen his wife holding Tessa and wondered if she was all right on his own, Tessa still compares Jared to Dash without a second thought. It’s almost as if her mind has latched onto Dash as the standard by which other men should be judged. Which is ridiculous because he’s barely known her for a few months, and she’s only known his name for a few weeks. He’s gotten under her skin.

Tessa groans and sighs. Mikayla pats her back sympathetically.

“I know, honey. It’s the same with the rest of us.”

“You read minds, now?”

Mikayla gives Tessa a sly look. “Like I said, we’ve all been there.”

Tessa thinks that she’s probably right.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Dad, how long are you going to let Scott keep working these kinds of hours?”

“I think ‘let’ is the wrong verb,” Tessa’s father replies.

Tessa runs a hand through her hair, sighing as she sorts through her clothes. She never packed anything date appropriate. She never thought that she would need to. Most of her clothes are businessy or smart-casual. The few nice clothes she’d packed were there because she’d hoped to hang out with Dash. She’s got a couple of nice shirts, some skinny jeans, and a short skirt that can work for clubbing. But she never packed anything first date appropriate.

“Is he getting enough sleep?” Tessa asks, throwing the last T-shirt from her bag onto the bed and stifling a growl of frustration.

Dad sniffs. “Of course he is, honey. You think this is my first day as a dad?”

“He’s probably sneaking Netflix on his phone.”

“Jackie changed the password. None of us can get onto the account until Scotty’s finished his finals.” Tessa snorts. “How’s the job going, by the way?”

“Great,” Tessa replies because like hell she’s going to tell her dad about her issues with Dash, and the fact that most of her interviews have devolved into her interviewees trying to make her feel better about Dash turning her down. “Everyone is super nice, and I’m getting a lot of great details for the article.”

She hears something slicing in the background behind her dad’s voice. He is probably making dinner. Scott’s new job takes a lot of extra hours at night, so now it’s just her father and Jackie who eat dinner together every night. Tessa can remember when the entire family would squeeze into the kitchen and help make dinner. Dad on the chopping block, Tessa, Kaden and Halley grilling fish, Mary and Stacey mashing potatoes, while Scott and Jackie would stand together in front of the fridge and bicker about how many marshmallows they can fit into their mouths.

Before, it was just Mom who would cook. She hated having other people in the kitchen with her. Now that Tessa thinks about it, her house had never felt like a home until that woman had left.

“Do you know, I never thought I would have this much fun interviewing people? When I took the journalism classes at school, they made it seem like such work. But it’s just hanging out with friends and talking, and writing down what they say.”

“I bet it’s the exception that proves the rule.”

“Mmm… you’re probably right,” Tessa replies. “They’re spoiling me.”

Someone knocks on her door, and she turns. The hotel room is dim because there’s hardly anything beyond the one lamp next to her bed to light the place. She thinks that even if she could find some clothes for her date with Jared, she’ll never be able to see if it looks good.

Jared has the night off, and Tessa doesn’t have any plans to interview anyone tonight, so they’re going to have dinner. Often, Tessa gets nervous before dates, but tonight she just feels kind of… meh. Jared’s a great guy, but knowing the way that Dash gets her all hot and bothered, makes it a bit hard to get fired up about other men. Jared has a lot of work to do if he’s going to compare to Dash.

And the moment the thought occurs to her, Tessa kicks herself. It’s not Jared’s fault that she’s head over heels for another man. She needs to at least try to give him a chance.

“Hold on, Dad. I’ve got a visitor. I’ve got to go.”

“Okay, have a good night, sweetie.”

Tessa balks, before she realizes that she didn’t tell her dad about the date. He was probably just telling her to have a good rest. She hangs up and turns to the door. “Come in.”

It’s Harper, Sersha, and Mikayla. They pile into the room, Sersha with a bottle of wine in her hand, and they all burst into laughter when they see the pile of clothes on Tessa’s bed. Harper has Sersha around the waist and seems to be holding her up. Mikayla has Sersha by the other side.

“Lose something?” Harper asks.

“Leave it, and come hang out with us,” Sersha says. “The boys are going into town for some signing thing, and Logan gave Mik the night off.”

“You did everything you could to avoid that, didn’t you?” Tessa asks Mikayla.

Mikayla looks a bit chagrined, but she nods. “Logan can be a little hardcore about keeping us from working too hard.”

“Someone has to be,” says Harper.

“What’s this ruckus?” Sersha asks, waving at the piles of clothes on Tessa’s bed.

Tessa puts her phone back in her pocket and starts slipping the blouses back onto the hangers that she’d packed, transferring them to the cupboard in the corner of the hotel room. Harper takes up the other side of the bed and starts helping her.

“I’m trying to find something to wear. For my date tonight.”

Sersha and Mikayla share a look. “Ah… the infamous date. Yes, Dash has told us all about that particular nonsense,” says Sersha.

“It’s not nonsense,” Tessa says. She sits on the edge of the bed and kicks her feet, accepting the bottle of wine that Sersha offers her. “Jared’s a great guy. And it’s not like Dash is fighting to get all up on this.”

“Oh… it’s Jared!” Harper says. “Yeah, he’s kinda cute, I guess.”

Tessa smacks herself in the face. She’s kept that particular information under wraps for the last few days. She sees Mikayla and Sersha sharing another look before Mikayla starts packing all of the rest of Tessa’s clothes into her bag and setting it down next to the bed. Then she pulls Tessa up to her feet.

“Trying to find something to wear?” she asks. When Tessa nods, she gives her a smile. “Come on, I think between the three of us we can find you something.”

And that’s how Tessa finds herself being pulled into Mikayla and Logan’s room, while Sersha and Harper run to grab some choices for her from their own rooms.

“You really don’t have to do this,” Tessa says while Mikayla holds a long dress up in front of her, sizing the other woman up critically before shaking her head and returning it to her hotel cupboard.

“Of course not,” Mikayla says. “But it’s not a case of having to or not having to.”

Tessa watches as Mikayla goes through her own clothes, looking for something to fit Tessa’s needs. She feels a rush of warmth for her. Mikayla would have every right to be annoyed with Tessa for fighting with her brother-in-law, but instead, she’s helping Tessa find an appropriate date outfit with all of the determination and can-do attitude that she usually reserves for her work.

But Tessa realizes pretty quickly that she and Mikayla are kind of similar in a lot of ways. They both joined Black Lilith’s entourage to work, so most of their clothes are business-oriented, though Mikayla’s are of a much higher quality. There are a few dresses, though, and together they build up a maybe pile. While they’re waiting for Sersha and Harper to return, Tessa starts trying on the clothes, beginning with a burgundy cocktail dress with a sheer back.

“So… out of curiosity, what has Dash been saying about me?” she asks as she slides the dress over her shoulders and looks over at Mikayla. “How does he feel about me dating someone else?”

Mikayla raises an eyebrow. “You really want to know?”

The way she asks it, makes Tessa think that something horrible is coming on the back of that sentence, but she nods anyway. “Yeah, I want to know.”

“He seems to be under the impression that you’re making the date up.”

Tessa stares for a long moment, her dress hanging off of one shoulder and almost completely forgotten. “Why the fuck!”

“I know,” she says. “It’s like in Harry Potter, when Ron thinks that Hermione is making up a date to the Yule Ball so that she doesn’t have to go with him or Harry.”

Tessa is impressed by the reference. It’s the sort of thing that Dash might say, and she wonders if he has rubbed off on his sister-in-law. “But… in this case, I did want to go to the ball with Dash, but he turned me down.”

Mikayla shrugs. “It’s not a perfect metaphor.”

Before Tessa can reply, Harper and Sersha return with their arms laden with clothes.

“Fuck no! Take that off,” Harper says, dumping her own clothes on the bed and pulling at the dress that Tessa has only half gotten on. “Wrong color for you.”

“Might be a bit too formal for a first date anyway,” Sersha adds, handing her own clothes to Mikayla who starts sorting them immediately. “Do you know where he’s taking you?”

“Just a local restaurant, I think.”

“Smart casual, then,” Sersha says. She paws through Harper’s clothes while Mikayla pulls Tessa out of the dress, completely oblivious to the fact that Tessa is only wearing a bra and a G-string underneath.

The four women spend the next hour or so with their combined wardrobes, coming up with different combinations, and laughing at some of the more ridiculous attempts to be ‘sexy.’ It’s been a long time since Tessa has had a girl’s night, while hanging out and talking about clothes, sipping wine from the bottle that Sersha still has with her, and enjoying being around girly company. Jackie is too self-conscious to do things like this. Mary and Stacey have each other to play dress-up with, and Halley has been away at college. It’s not until moments like these that Tessa is aware of how little female company she actually has. It doesn’t help that her best friend is a man. Most of her friends in college were men too.

It’s nice, she decides, to have girlfriends. She wonders if they’ll maintain contact when her contract with Black Lilith is over, and she has to start looking for work elsewhere.

“You’ve suddenly gotten glum,” Sersha says, leaning over to Tessa from where she’s sitting on the bed. Mikayla is trying on one of Harper’s booty shorts, while Harper laughs like a mad woman on the ground. Tessa has a pair of shorts on her head like a bandana. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“Just thinking that I hope we can stay in contact when I leave,” Tessa replies honestly.

“When you leave?” Sersha says, confused. “You’re leaving?”

“I’ll have to… when my contract runs out, and the article is written.”

“Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting about that.” Sersha waves a hand at Tessa and takes another sip of wine. “We’ll have to come up with something else for you to write about so that we can keep you. Do you write lyrics?”

“I failed Poetry 101.”

“That’s not lyrics, love,” Sersha replies. “Mik, we’ll find something for Tessa to do so we can keep her, won’t we?”

“Of course,” Mikayla replies without hesitating. “We’ll have to be a bit creative about it.”

Tessa smiles along with them. At this moment, with the sun setting behind the curtains of Mikayla’s hotel room window, surrounded by the women behind Black Lilith, Tessa can half-convince herself that it’s possible. But it’s probably not. She knows that writing this article is a one-time thing. She can’t be expected to stay with these guys without contributing something. Maybe—she hadn’t allowed herself to think this—if she were Dash’s girlfriend, then allowances might be made. But just being a friend of the group wouldn’t be enough.

Maybe they’ll come to visit her in Chicago when they get gigs there. Maybe by the time this tour is over, Dash will be speaking to her again.

“So why Jared, if you don’t mind me asking?” Harper asks, leaning her back against the bed and looking up at Tessa and Sersha.

Tessa tried to come up with some enthusiasm for the man, but it was hard to fake. “He asked, I said yes.”

“It’s not to make Dash jealous is it?” Harper asks.

“Tessa’s not that kind of girl,” Mikayla answers.

Tessa sighs. “Dash made himself clear. Making him jealous won’t accomplish anything.”

“But he is hella jealous, though,” Sersha says. Mikayla and Harper both nod, as though Sersha has sad something profoundly wise. “I mean, he keeps telling himself that this is just a bump in the road, or that you’re making up this nonsense about seeing other men. But really, he just wants to keep you for himself.”

“Well, in that case, I’m going to need a commitment,” Tessa says simply.

Hell, I need something...

Chapter Twenty-Two

In the end, Tessa decides on a nice purple top from Sersha and a pair of black jeans from Harper, with necklaces from Mikayla. The other three women look really pleased with themselves when they’re finished, and Tessa has to admit that she’s happy with what they have come up with. And she’s even happier that they support her in her frustrations with Dash. They were all his friends first, and it could have been easy for them to just take his side.

Tessa takes the clothes back to her room and leaves them on the bed, climbing into her shower and letting the hot water soothe her. Jared has planned the night. She’s just going to show up and try to have a good time. Because he is a good guy. Not a second-best option, but a good option in and of himself. She mustn’t let herself forget that.

When she finishes showering, she realizes that someone is knocking on her door again. She quickly wraps a towel around herself and rushes out, answering the door with her hair still dripping.

“What did you forget? Oh…”

It’s not Mikayla. It’s Dash.

Shit

He looks good. Dash’s wearing a Batman shirt with a sports coat over the top of it that’s tight over his shoulders and gives his muscles some definition. His jeans are almost reminiscent of Slate’s, tight in the right places, yet loose enough to be masculine.

Ugh, why does he have to look so good?

He looks Tessa up and down, and she feels herself starting to heat up when his pupils dilate. It’s not like he hasn’t seen her in less clothing than this. He’s probably still got the pictures in his phone. But it’s a little weird, almost forbidden, for him to see her like this in the flesh.

“Sorry,” he says, not looking sorry at all. He looks almost angry, though the hint of arousal around his eyes does soften that a bit. “Can I come in?”

Tessa thinks that might be a bad idea since she’s actually getting ready for a date with another man. But she moves anyway. She steps aside to let him into the room and closes the door behind him, hating the way that she leans over to smell his cologne as he passes her.

“I… uh… don’t have a lot of time.”

“Yeah, because you’re going on a date. With Jared.”

Tessa hears the annoyance in his tone, and the reproach, which is surprising. “You spoke to Mikayla.”

“No, I spoke to Jared,” Dash replies. He sits on the bed and glances over at the clothes there, waiting for Tessa to put them on. “I just wanted to come and see if it was true, but I guess it is.”

Tessa wants to cover herself. She feels way too exposed right now, standing in front of him in just a towel with her hair still wet from the shower. She wants to go and put her moisturizer on and start getting ready, instead of standing here, getting cold, knowing that this is going to wind up devolving into an inevitable argument.

“What did he say?” Tessa asks after the silence between them begins to fill to the point of bursting.

“He wanted to know whether you have any allergies,” Dash says. He’s speaking through gritted teeth, and Tessa can see the way his chest and stomach are taut with tension. “Since I’m your best friend, he thought I would be the person to ask.”

“I told you,” Tessa says. “I told you I had a date. I wasn’t lying or hiding anything.”

Dash purses his lips and looks away. He looks… upset. Not annoyed or angry. Though that is the tone he uses when he speaks. He looks almost sad. Dash’s eyes are turned down, and his chin tucked into his neck, and Tessa almost wishes that she could reach out to him, but she holds herself back. Dash had made his feelings about her clear.

Just sex—nothing more.

“Dash. I told you that I was going on a date. This isn’t news.”

“No, you’re right.”

“So why are you upset?”

“Who says I’m upset?” he asks. He stands up again and tries to reach for her, and she pulls away. Not out of fear, but out of concern that his touch will make her want to drop the towel, and right now it’s the only shield she has. He looks hurt anyway. “Seriously?”

“I’m not sure why you’re here,” Tessa says, pushing aside the moment of weakness. “I told you what I wanted, and you said you didn’t want that. So now I’m going out with someone else.”

“You said I could keep you,” Dash says. He’s not shouting, but he’s forceful enough that Tessa can feel his voice echoing in her chest like a bass line in one of Black Lilith’s songs. “You said it. Remember? In Chicago?”

Tessa does remember. She remembers sitting with him on the couch in the green room with their shoulders touching. She had been so giddy because she’d finally gotten to meet the man who could make her weak in the knees with a single text message. They’d talked forever, almost forgetting that there were other people in the room. She had been dressed in Ravenclaw colors, and he had been wearing a Severus Snape shirt even though he’s a Hufflepuff.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Dash.”

Dash’s hands clench and unclench until he finally folds his arms across his chest and looks away from her.

“We’re still friends,” Tessa says. “I still want to be friends, Dash.”

“But… you’re… he’s… ” Dash shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it, and Tessa turns away to take the robe that’s hanging in the cupboard. Wordlessly, she drapes it over her shoulders and lets the towel drop. “He’s the one who’s going to keep you, now.”

That’s better, she thinks, cinching the robe around her waist and stepping out of the towel that’s pooled around her feet.

 “Nobody is keeping me. It’s just one date. It might not even lead anywhere.”

“He’s not good enough for you.”

She turns back to Dash, frowning. “You don’t get to decide that.”

“You’re going to leave us and spend all your time with him.”

“Considering he never leaves you guys, then nothing will change,” Tessa replies. She’s starting to get more and more annoyed now, but she channels as much energy as she can into remaining calm. If she and Dash get into a knock-down drag-out over this, she’ll be in no mood to see Jared later. “And I’ve only been here a few weeks. If anything, the biggest change would be me staying. I asked you to be with me. You’d said you weren’t interested, and that you didn’t want things to change between us.”

“I don’t,” Dash says. “Why does anything have to change? Why can’t we just stay the way we are?”

Tessa wishes that she could hear what he’s thinking. She feels like there’s something there, on the tip of his tongue, some thought that’s just out of his reach but will make all of this make sense. She doesn’t dare to hope that he might be changing his mind about their relationship. She doesn’t want to be disappointed again.

 “Because I can’t live like that. I’ve told you that.”

Dash lets out a noise that sounds like a mixture of frustration and desire. “You’re being unreasonable.”

“Unreas… oh, hell no. You did not just pull that card on me, Dash Todd!”

“If you could just be happy with the way things are, then nothing needs to change.”

“Life is change, Dash. Everything changes. People change. Get over it and grow up.”

Dash growls and runs his hand through his hair. Tessa sees the moment that he decides to switch tactics. She sees it in the way his hands drop down to his sides and the way his head cocks as he sizes her up. And even though she’s wearing a robe now, and she’s much less exposed, she feels completely naked.

“Has he ever made you come so hard that you forget where you are?” Dash asks. Tessa immediately feels her cheeks getting warm. “I could. You know I could.”

You already have, she thinks to herself.

He’s looking at her with those eyes that seem designed to trap a woman, his body leaning toward hers like it’s taking everything in him not to slam her against the wall. And honestly, Tessa is glad that he’s holding himself back because she knows the moment he tries anything she’ll be lost. He’s using that voice he’d used that night that they climbed up to the top of the stage, and he brought her to orgasm with nothing but his words and a railing.

What he could do to her now, she can only imagine.

“If I just wanted sex, I wouldn’t be going on a date with someone else,” Tessa says. Her voice is harsher than she’d thought it would be, and she knows that it’s at least partly to do with the way Dash is looking at her. Like she has to erect as many walls as possible between them or risk him slamming them all down with nothing more than a well-turned phrase. “If that’s all you can offer then it’s not good enough.”

Dash recoils like he’s been struck. Tessa reaches out to him before she realizes what she’s doing, and turns her hand up at the last moment so that she’s clutching her robe closed over her chest.

Dash turns away. He sits on the bed—nearly sitting on the clothes that Tessa had borrowed—and puts his head in his hands, scrubbing his head hard as though he wants to erase something from his mind.

“Everyone’s leaving,” he says. His voice is muffled, but Tessa can hear his words like shards of ice on her skin. “Tommy and Slate both have girlfriends, Logan has a wife, and now he’s talking about sending me to college. Alone. I haven’t… I’ve never been… it was always us. Together. Why does it all have to change?”

And just like that, Tessa’s heart breaks. She takes a step toward him, reaching out to try and soothe. “Dash…”

He looks up and quickly dodges her hand, standing up and walking to the door with his face pinched and his hands clenched at his sides. His feet beat the carpet so hard that Tessa actually winces.

“Whatever. You want to go get fucked by some glorified babysitter, you be my guest. Only I can really give you what you’re afraid to ask for.” He turns to look back at Tessa when he reaches the door, and there’s a sinful, sly smile on his lips. “Come find me when you’re done playing with Mr. Vanilla, Tess. I’ll show you what it’s really like to be fucked, and have you screaming my name like all those girls downstairs, within seconds.”

He slams the door on the way out.

Tessa stands in the middle of the room, right next to the bed, and stares at the closed door as her mind feverishly tries to catch up with what’s just happened. The argument had felt like it was going on forever at the time, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. Still numb, she sits down on the bed and clenches her fists into the robe she’s wearing, feeling the heat from Dash’s parting words starting to ebb away from where it had settled between her legs.

Slowly, she reaches for her phone and dials a number.

The dial tone is brief. “Tess?”

“Logan,” she says, finding her voice. “You need to find Dash and talk to him.”

“Is everything all right?” He sounds worried. There’s background noise on his end—some people talking, a voice that sounds like Slate’s. Tessa wonders if Dash had left whatever they’d been doing as a band, and come straight back to the hotel to confront her.

“Dash thinks everyone is leaving him,” she tells Logan, trying to cut to the chase as quickly as possible. “Because you’re all in relationships and he isn’t. He mentioned that you want to send him to college, and I get the feeling he thinks you’re trying to send him away.”

Logan swears quietly. “Seriously? Shit—”

“I think he needs his brother right now,” she says.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I’m on it. Hey… are you okay? You sound upset.”

It’s not until he says it that she realizes she’s crying. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just… just talk to Dash, okay? Reassure him.” She hangs up before she can hear his reply, because the pain behind her eyeballs has hit an all-time high and she curls up in her bed, heaving a sob into her pillow.

Tessa was never a crier. She hasn’t really cried since she was in her early teens. She used to cry over the smallest things, everything from someone giving her a funny look in the hallway at school, to getting less than fifty percent on a math test. It was something she did so often that she’d even worked out a system for it. She used to give herself thirty seconds—counting each excruciating second under her breath as she went—to really let the tears flow, and then she would pick herself up and start problem-solving.

The last time she really cried was when her mom left. Since then, none of the people she cared about had made her want to cry.

Laugh, throw things, or scream in frustration? Sure. But not crying. This is new.

Dash is always surprising her.

“One… two… three…” She counts up, letting the tears fall onto the pillow and sinking further into her own mind, allowing Dash’s words to haunt her as she goes. It’s not just the jabs that he’d sent her way that’s making her cry. It’s the way he’d started to break down toward the end, only to retreat back into himself when he realized she was reaching out.

How long has Dash been carrying that?

How long would he have held it in, and plastered a smile onto his face without a catalyst?

“Twenty-eight… twenty-nine… thirty.”

And she stops.

She lifts her head up and wipes away the worst of her tears, before going to the bathroom to wash her face and blow her nose. She drinks some water from the tap and runs a brush through her hair. It’s gotten tangled since she’d gotten out of the shower, and the water that drips onto her neck is cold.

Tessa hadn’t been expecting Dash to react that way. That sudden show of emotion was out of character, at least as far as she knows. She hasn’t known him for long, and since they’ve only ever been the flirty kind of friends, she doubts that there would have ever been a chance for this sort of thing to come up. How strange to think of someone as your best friend, but still not know what their main anxieties are.

Maybe they’re not as close as she had thought.

She braids her hair into two pigtails, then pulls them up and wraps them at the base of her skull, using pins to hold them in place. It’s a hack that Jackie found on Pinterest that looks way more complicated and sophisticated than it actually is. Then she goes back out to her room and starts getting dressed.

Her mind is still on Dash, though. She can’t even try to focus on Jared and their date. It’s not only that she and Dash fought, but there’s something else niggling at the back of Tessa’s mind. Maybe it’s the way he’d tried to make the change between them to be much bigger than it needs to be. Maybe it’s the way that he’d tried to steer the conversation toward his own sexual prowess. Whatever it was, something about their fight made Tessa think that what he was feeling about his fellow band members was only the tip of the iceberg. That there was something else going on. Something that made him want to shy away from her like some skittish colt.

Whatever it was, she would have to drag it out of him. After her date.

Because no matter what, she is not giving up on him. Dash is clearly going through some shit that’s making him lash out, and if she didn’t already have such a good friendship with him, she would have kicked him to the curb by now. She can only imagine what her brothers would say if they knew that a man had made her cry.

‘Where the fuck is he?’ would be Kaden’s response.

‘How would you like him to die?’ would be Scott’s.

She finished getting dressed, did her makeup, and looked critically in the mirror. She looked fairly normal, really. A nicely-dressed version of herself. Tessa thinks that she looks nice. Nice enough for whatever Jared has planned anyway.

Taking one last moment to check her hair, Tessa drinks some more water and pops an Advil into her mouth before heading out the door to her date.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Tessa slips into the bathroom and checks her phone, wondering how long she can send ridiculous Snapchats to Jackie before Jared starts to think she’s constipated. It’s relatively quiet in the bathroom, except for the soft melody of All Saints’s ‘Never Ever’ playing over some speakers. Which only makes Tessa feel worse.

As far as dates go, it’s not the worst she’s ever been on. Not the best, either. And it’s not that she’s still reeling from her fight with Dash. She’s been able to completely hide that from Jared, to the point where she’s pretty sure there’s something wrong with him because he can’t seem to tell that she was crying earlier tonight. The longer that Tessa and Jared spend talking over their meal, the more she realizes that Jared is nice.

Just nice.

Nice is not a compliment.

Nice is what you say when you have nothing else worth saying about someone.

Jared had taken her to a small restaurant in the center of Albuquerque. One that he’d never been to before, but that had good reviews on Yelp. He’d held her chair out for her, asked her questions about her family, and seemed interested in the answers. He told good jokes, and they liked the same books, though he hadn’t read nearly as many as she had. But about halfway through the night, she realized that he was never going to light her on fire the way that Dash could.

Fuck my life, she thinks. Dash was right about that, at least.

The fact that she isn’t as attracted to Jared as she is to Dash can be overlooked. What she can’t overlook is the fact that Jared is kind of… too perfect. Too good at being on a date. He’s clearly given his topics of conversation some thought, considered what she would like, all that stuff that would normally be sweet, but right now just makes her feel stifled with the scripted nature of it. Her conversations with Jared make her feel a little bit like sex with Dash does, like he’s done it a million times before and he’s going through the motions.

But at least Dash’s motions work. Jared doesn’t leave her shaking afterward, which is a point against him.

Plus, when Dash is not trying to push her away, there’s never a dull moment. When Dash isn’t inexplicably putting distance between them, he’s poking fun at her or telling her about a game he’s playing or enjoying an inside joke with her. Tessa can’t remember ever being bored since Dash accidently sent her that pic five months ago. He was her salvation for every lull in conversation and dull moment at work. She misses that just as much as she misses the sexual stuff.

The more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that Jared never stood a chance. It was always Dash for Tessa. It was from the moment her phone pinged in the middle of the night all those months ago.

All the stupid shit he’s pulled can’t change that.

That’s just typical, she thinks.

How is she supposed to move on when she’s starting to realize that her feelings for Dash are more than just the simple crush she’d thought they were? She won’t allow herself to think the ‘L’ word. But it’s there. On the edge of her mind. Five months of texting, a few weeks of his constant presence, and the ‘L’ word looms on the edge of her consciousness.

Tessa sighs and sits down on the toilet seat, scrolling through her phone and wondering if Mikayla might be persuaded to fabricate an emergency to get Tessa out of there.

Facebook is boring.

Twitter is boring.

That seems to be the dominant theme of this date.

Not bad, just not great. Not enough to make her feel triumphant about choosing a date with Jared over no-strings sex with Dash. Even the food was bland. She realizes that she doesn’t even remember what she’s been eating all night. Tessa had ordered something random off of the menu and started stuffing it into her face with no consideration for the taste.

Just as she thinks she should probably go back out to the restaurant, her phone pings in her hand. It’s not her text tone. It’s a call—from Slate, of all people. Tessa hesitates before answering.

“… Squirt, you fucked up, but it’s not over yet. Look, Tommy kissed his ex right in front of Sersha, and they’re fine.”

“That was one colossal misunderstanding, you dickhead.”

“Just sayin’. And Harper’s only just forgiven me for dry-humping that girl at the club right in front of her.”

What the fuck?

“We’ve all been assholes,” Logan’s voice says. He sounds tired. “Dash, bro, why didn’t you tell us you were feeling left out?”

Slate must have butt-dialed me, Tessa thinks.

She can hear the band’s voices muffled but in the distance. She considers hanging up, but then Dash’s voice comes through the phone, and she feels a sudden swoop of emotion. That ‘L’ word comes back to her mind when the sound of him, even with his voice strained and low, makes her feel at ease.

“Didn’t seem important. You guys are happy. And I do love the girls.”

“Still, you could have come to us.”

Tessa considers hanging up again because this is clearly a conversation between brothers. All of the men in Black Lilith are brothers, she’d be an idiot not to realize that. And she’s listening in like a creep, huddled up in a restaurant bathroom.

“It’s stupid. Anyway, I’m being stupid.”

“No, Slate is stupid—”

“Rude.”

“You put Sriracha in brownies, you fucking heathen.”

Tommy’s soothing voice comes through the line. “Dash, bud… you should talk to her.”

“I tried. I just got angry. She said I’m only good for sex, and she’s right. That’s all I’ve ever been good at when it comes to girls.”

“If she really thought that, why would she ask you to date her?” Tommy says, and Tessa wants to kiss the man for seeing sense.

And really, after everything that they’d fought about, that was what he’d taken from the conversation?

“She flinched at me.”

I was naked!

“She was naked,” Slate says reasonably. “You know, some girls prefer not to be naked in an argument. Shocking, I know. Personally, I can’t think of any greater advantage in an argument.”

Someone comes into the bathroom, and Tessa quickly ends the call, coming out of the stall and stuffing her phone into her pocket as she goes. She’s definitely been in the bathroom for too long. She washes her hands even though she didn’t do anything as the other woman—an elderly lady with dyed red hair—slides into the now empty stall.

Tessa looks herself in the eyes through the mirror. When she gets back to the hotel, she and Dash are going to need to have a talk.

In the meantime, she’s got a date. She dries her hands, takes a deep breath, and heads back out to the bistro.

“I had a great time,” Jared says as their cab slowly creeps back toward the hotel.

“Yeah,” Tessa says noncommittally.

The cabbie has mercifully turned on the radio, so that’s something at least. It keeps the cab from filling with uncomfortable silence. Though the choice of music ‘Wild World’ by Mr. Big isn’t exactly improving Tessa’s mood.

Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world

It’s hard to get by just upon a smile

The streetlights pass over them as they drive, casting Tessa’s face into shadow, into light, and then back into shadow again. She gazes out the window and sees the brightly-lit windows from late-night coffee shops and restaurants. Some of them have people gathered around their front doors, smoking and laughing and having a great time from the looks of it. Women dressed in short skirts with their eyes on certain men. Men with their sleeves rolled up, returning their gazes. Tessa sees a couple of buskers outside of a Starbucks, drawing a crowd as they play on an accordion and a violin. She can’t hear the music, but the amount of people around tells her that it must be nice. She’d love to be out there listening.

Jared hadn’t noticed her distraction when she came back to their table, but even he is not so oblivious as to miss the fact that she’s not as excited about their date’s apparent success as he is.

“You didn’t have a good time?”

“It’s not that I didn’t have a good time. You’re great—”

“I’m striking out, aren’t I?” He’s smiling in a chagrined kind of way, so Tessa feels okay about nodding. He sighs and nods back her. “Okay, that’s cool.”

“I’m so sorry, Jared.”

“It’s not your fault, Tess,” he says. He pats her hand, and she feels the warmth of his fingers.

She wonders if she would have enjoyed herself more if she didn’t have Dash to compare to. If she didn’t already have the ‘L’ word in her head whenever she thought of him.

“Thanks for giving me a chance, at least.”

“Of course. I think you’re a fantastic guy, I really do.” It seems terribly insufficient, but it’s all she can offer at this point.

She’s looking forward to getting back to the hotel. Tessa will try to get Dash alone, and if she can’t then she’ll retreat to her room and try to distract herself by reading something. Tessa had downloaded the Kindle app, so she isn’t dragging a library of books around wherever she goes on this tour. Maybe she could even get the girls to come to her room and commiserate with her.

No, she decides. If she can’t talk to Dash, then she doesn’t want to talk to anyone else. Tommy was right. They’ve spent too much time talking to other people, and not enough time talking to each other.

When the cab finally pulls up, Jared slides out and opens the door for her. Tessa looks up at him. He’s handsome and so sweet. It really is a shame that she’s in love with another man.

Fuck! I thought so.

Love.

Crap.

Is it too early?

Technically she’s only known him for a few weeks, but they were texting for so long before that. She and Dash were closer than she’d ever been with other friends.

Jared helps her out of the cab and smiles down at her in a hang-dog way that makes her feel kind of bad for turning him down. But then he pats her on the back which isn’t awkward and pays for the cab without hesitation.

“Thanks for giving me a chance, at least, Tess,” he says.

He seems to be leaving something unsaid, and Tessa wonders if he’s thinking about Dash and the conversation he’d overheard between her and the other girls. Does he think that he’s being passed over for a rockstar? Technically he is, but not because Dash is a rockstar. It’s far deeper than that.

“You’re so sweet, Jared. Thank you,” Tessa says, standing on her tip-toes to kiss him on the cheek.

The moment she turns her head back toward the hotel, she freezes. Dash is standing just inside the doors, with nothing but a sheet of glass between him and the couple that had just climbed out of the cab, with a dark look on his face. He’s lost his sports coat, and his hair looks a little limp as though he’s been running his fingers through it in frustration.

Tessa feels her stomach fall. Dash saw her kiss Jared. He’ll probably think that she’s dating him now, that the date went well, and there’s no reason for them to talk. There’s going to be drama. She’s probably going to have to chase him through the hotel to explain herself. Even though she probably shouldn’t have to explain herself because it was just a kiss, and it’s none of Dash’s business who she dates, even if she does love him. She tries to move, but her arms and legs are frozen as she and Dash stare at each other.

Then Dash’s dark look falls off his face, and he looks lethal.

“Oh, hell no.”

She can hear the words even with the glass between them, and then Dash is walking through the doors toward them. She feels Jared tense next to her, and she hardly has the time to give him a reassuring look before Dash has her by the elbow and he’s maneuvering himself between Tessa and Jared.

“Not today, man,” he says.

“Hey! You need to chill, Dash,” Jared says, holding his hands up in surrender while glancing over Dash’s shoulder at Tessa.

Tessa pulls her elbow out of Dash’s grip and grabs him by the back of the shirt instead. “Sorry, Jared, I’m going to go have words with Dash right now.”

She pulls. Dash doesn’t move, because he’s way bigger than her and he’s standing his ground, staring at Jared like he’s considering punching him out. Tessa is under no illusions about whether Dash would get physical—Dash isn’t the kind of guy to start throwing punches, not for anything petty—but the look he’s giving Jared makes her worry that he actually might do it.

“Stay the fuck away from her, dude.”

“Dash, drop it. You need to calm the fuck down, bud,” Jared spits back.

“Calm the fuck down?” Dash says stepping forward.

“Dash, goddammit… come with me… now.”

Dash looks at her. His eyes bore into hers, and she can feel the tension in his back muscles. Finally, he takes a deep breath, nods and turns to follow her into the hotel, not sparing Jared a passing glance as he and Tessa make their way inside.

Well, that solves the problem of how to get him alone, Tessa thinks, leading Dash to the elevator and pushing him inside. He goes willingly, crossing his arms over his chest and looking away from her while she presses the button for the elevators to go up to her floor.

“For the record, I was turning him down.”

Dash’s head jerks up so quickly that she worries he might have hurt himself. He looks at Tessa hard, like he’s searching for a lie, and when he can’t detect one he drops his hands and his shoulders visibly relax.

“Oh.”

“Oh… is right.”

“That’s good.”

“Good?”

“Wait! What were you doing kissing him, if you were turning him down?” he demands, suddenly getting worked up again. “Is that what you do with every guy?”

“Obviously not!”

“Why even bother turning him down?” Dash asks, his voice rising to meet hers, though he stops just short of shouting at her. “I thought you wanted some vanilla guy, who could be your boyfriend and take you on dates.”

“I want you, you fucking moron,” Tessa shouts back because she doesn’t have the self-control to keep herself from shouting.

“But you’re kissing other guys? Kind of getting mixed messages here. Do you want to be mine or not?”

“You turned me down, Dash, not the other way around. And I kissed him on the cheek. It’s not like we were fucking on the sidewalk.”

“Bet he wouldn’t even know how to get away with that,” Dash says dismissively, crossing his arms over his chest again like he’s fucked girls on sidewalks a million times and he could get away with it in his sleep.

Why did I turn Jared down again? she asks herself.

The elevator is completely silent except for the sound of their breathing and the blood pounding in Tessa’s ears, and the echoes of their voices bounce off of the walls.

“Why is everything about sex with you?”

“You weren’t complaining these last few months.”

“It was just one fucking kiss on the cheek. Jesus!” she says, and before he can even answer she’s barreling forward, “And I only kissed him because I felt bad about loving you instead!”

Silence.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Oh, fuck.

Tessa wishes she could clamp her traitorous mouth shut and never open it again. She watches Dash blink several times, rapidly, and then a subtle movement of his hand reaching up to his bicep and pinching the skin hard.

“Seriously?” she asks.

Dash opens his mouth, but no words come out. He’s looking at Tessa like he’s not entirely convinced that she’s real, and she can feel the heat rising in her neck, making her want to hide her face.

The elevator dings and she turns away from Dash, quickly walking out and making a beeline down the hallway to her room. She hears Dash’s muffled footsteps following her, and before she can turn, he has her by the small of the back and he’s pushing her toward his room. And she goes. She doesn’t even try to resist because the feeling of his hand on her back is enough to make her weak at the knees.

The moment he closes the door, Dash is on Tessa, pressing her against the wood. She can feel every inch of him against her body, and she wants to push herself closer, but there’s no space between them. If this were any other man, she would be afraid to have him looking down at her with the intensity that Dash has in his eyes. But all she feels like right now is a roar of flames igniting her insides.

“You love me?” he asks. His voice is all awe and confusion.

Tessa feels her shoulders rising with the sudden, irrational desire to hide her face. “Yes, Dash. I love you.”

“Tess…” he says, all rough and quiet like he’s afraid too much noise will break the bubble that they’re in.

“I don’t think you’re only good for sex,” Tessa tells him because, after the conversation she’d overheard, she thinks that he needs to hear it at least once. “But that seems to be all you want from me—”

“No!” Dash says. Their lips are so close that it wouldn’t take any effort at all for her to lean up and kiss him. He reaches up to play with a loose curl that has fallen out of Tessa’s intricate bun. “No, I don’t just want that.”

“But you don’t want things to change?”

“I… yes. And no. I want you, just like you want me. I’m completely in love with you, too. I swear it.” Tessa feels a swoop in her stomach at his words. “Sex is… well, I’m good at it, you know? It’s easier to just sleep with you, and be your friend than try to be good enough for you. Because I know that I never will be, and I don’t want to lose you when you figure that out.”

Not good enough, she thinks because it’s been so much drama and crap when they could have easily just talked it out like adults. Is she willing to cut him some slack? Is the precedent of Black Lilith fucking up, enough to get him a pass and a scolding instead of flat rejection?

“The best things aren’t easy,” Tessa tells him. She leans up so close that her lips are brushing his as she speaks her next words, “But they are worth it.”

It’s Dash who closes the distance. It’s Dash who takes her by the back of her head, and guides her mouth to his, enjoying the feeling of their lips and tongues moving together, before quickly taking control of the kiss to the point where all Tessa can do is curl her fingers into his shirt sleeves and hold on for dear life.

He grinds against her, and Tessa can feel the delicious size of him pressed up against her pussy. And all she can think about is getting him into bed and out of those clothes. Even after assuring him that sex is not all she needs from him, right now it’s the only thing on her mind.

“Dash,” she mutters, gasping out the word when he lets up enough for her to move her lips. “Dash, should we keep talking or—”

“Fuck the talking. Later,” he mumbles. She opens her eyes and sees that he has his own eyes closed like he’s savoring her. “Later, I promise. Right now—”

“Right now,” she agrees.

And then he’s kissing her again, with even more frenzy. There’s a possessive streak to the way he’s holding her, pulling her closer as though he wants to erase the taste of other men from her lips. Tessa can barely even remember her own name, much less the name of the man she’d kissed earlier.

The only thing in her mind is, Dash, Dash, Dash.

“Take me over to that bed right now,” she says.

Dash doesn’t need to be told twice. He releases her head and reaches down to pick her up by the waist, tossing her across to the mattress with as much ease as if she’d weighed the same as a book. He rips his shirt over his shoulders, and she almost dies. Scooting backward, she admires the trail of hair that runs down his abs and the way his well-muscled chest heaves when he looks down at her. He’s a wall of muscle like she always pictured he would be in person. But there’s a comfortable layer of softness all over him.

 “Tell me you love me,” she says.

Dash crawls over her legs and looks up at her with a wicked grin. “I love you.”

“Now, tell me you were wrong to turn me down,” Tess says biting her lip. Knowing damn well she’s pushing it, but couldn’t give two fucks.

“So wrong,” he agrees, smiling back on the verge of a laugh.

He pushes the leg of her jeans up and kisses her exposed ankles, the left and the right, alternating between each side before biting down on her ankle. Tessa closes her eyes and leans back on the bed, letting her head fall on the pillow and become completely focused on the delicious sting. He’s then reaching up to unbutton her jeans, and she simply raises to help him work them off, along with her G-string. She’s not even a little bit self-conscious when she feels the cool air on her completely exposed lower half. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen—and praised—before.

Dash presses his lips to Tessa’s thighs, alternating between both legs.

“You’re only mine, right?” he asks. To anyone else it might be dirty-talk, but Tessa can hear the brief edge of vulnerability to his tone. He wants assurance.

“Only yours,” she moans.

“Good answer,” he replies without hesitation.

He presses his lips to her thighs again focussing on her completely, kissing the parts of her that now belong to him and him alone.

Tessa pushes herself up to her elbows and runs a hand through his hair. Just to let him know that she’s there and she’s enjoying what he’s doing. At her touch, Dash shivers. He licks his way up her thigh, right up to the edge of her hip.

“Wait here,” he says.

And Tessa obeys, even when he gets up off of the bed and walks over to his bag. He rifles through it for a moment and then returns with another, smaller bag. He dumps its contents onto the bed.

Tessa shies away. “Did you buy that stuff just for me?” she asks.

“Yes, and I plan on using them all with you when you’re ready,” Dash says. Confidence is clear in his voice. “Do you trust me?”

He kisses her knee, and the movement is so soft that Tessa feels like melting.

She tries not to let the fear she feels show on her face as she answers, “Sure.” Tessa has this miniature feeling that Dash hides behind these toys as a façade.

But if Dash needs to fall back on what he thinks he’s good at, then Tessa will let him. Hell, it might be fun for now. But eventually, he will have to drop the mask and the scripts and show her the real Dash Todd. But maybe he’s not ready for that yet.

But if he loves me he will be soon…

And then Tessa is barely thinking at all because Dash is leaning up to kiss her and pressing the vibrator against her at the same time. She’s so wet that it slips right in, probably faster than he would have intended it to, and she gasps into his mouth as his kisses become rougher, greedier.

Dash leaves the toy inside of her. It starts vibrating, and it’s enough to set her hips lifting off of the bed. “Fuck! Dash…”

While the toy is inside of her, its extension is applying steady pressure to her clit, Dash reaches up with both hands to pull her shirt off. She raises her shoulders and arms eagerly, desperate to make this move faster. Her bra is gone before she even gets the chance to think about it. Dash sucks a nipple into his mouth and that, combined with the pressure on her clit, makes Tessa moan.

But it’s not enough.

More…

“You want more?” Dash asks. Tessa’s too messed up to wonder if she’d said it out loud. She just nods desperately.

Dash leans back on his knees and hoists her legs up around his hips. His jeans are tented with a huge bulge, and Tessa wants to demand that he get to work with that, but he seems fairly intent on going at his own pace and ignoring his own needs in favor of driving Tessa insane. He takes the vibrator and twists it inside of her, earning himself a long groan.

“Dash…” Tess moans. “I need you.”

“You’ve got me, baby. I’m right here.”

“No, Dash… I need you.”

His eyes flicker, then he shoves the toy forward, so it presses down hard on her clit. Tessa gasps. She’s aching for release, and she thinks that she probably looks like a mess—chest heaving, skin flushed, eyes rolled back, and pupils probably dilated to the size of saucers.

But if there’s one thing Tessa knows, it’s her own orgasms. She’s close, but this isn’t enough. The toy is too impersonal. She should have realized from the moment Dash slid it in her that it wouldn’t get her going the way that it should. The way that she knows he could if he’d just take her himself.

“Are you hiding behind that toy, Dash?”

“Baby, I don’t need to hide,” he says, scoffing. There’s an edge to his voice as he twists the toy again.

Fuckkkk!

“I’m not going to come like this.”

“Oh, challenge accepted,” he whispers biting down on her hip.

“I mean it, Dash. I want you. All of you.”

Dash seems to think about that. There’s a flicker of doubt behind his eyes and Tessa remembers that she’s already decided to just let him have his way. That if the sex-god persona was what he was comfortable with right now, then she should leave him to it. But in her daze, she’d just blurted out what she wanted.

Dash turns off the toy and pulls it out of her, making her gasp. Then he licks the toy with a wicked grin on his face and Tessa thinks that she might spontaneously combust.

“Jesus.”

“Dash, actually,” he replies. He leans over and kisses her neck, her collarbone, and the curve of her breasts. She reaches up to run a hand through his hair and tugs slightly. “I’m going to have to get you relaxed first, Tess.”

He’d seemed comfortable with the toy, with making her come on the railing during the show in Houston, but when he leans back to survey her, he looks less confident. Not necessarily out of place, though. It’s as though the veneer of his script and his plans for her have gone out the window, as though he’s dropping the act and he’s gone back to being her sweet Dash—or at least, her best friend who’s on the edge of going full sex-god. He looks like he’s hanging on the edge of his sanity as he looks down at her, but there’s still a tiny sliver of concern in his eyes. He even chews his lip a little as he tosses the toy to the bottom of the bed, and hoists her hips up again so she can wrap her legs around him.

 “Dash, I need you so bad right now,” she says.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then fuck me. Not having you inside me right now is hurting!”

Dash just shakes his head at her. He looks slightly in awe, as though he would never have expected her to say something like that. Though at this point what else is there to say?

“You’ll have me,” Dash says.

As he says ‘have,’ he presses his thumb to her clit and all Tessa can think is finally before her eyes roll back in her head and she’s gasping and writhing. Dash is not even moving his hand. He doesn’t need to. Her hips move of their own accord. The more he touches her, the more she wants. She wants to be enveloped in Dash, to be consumed by him, she wants to be as close to one as two people can get.

“Holy shit, Dash.”

Finally pressing in a finger, she squirms at the intrusion. It’s as though her body, recognizing the difference from the toy, is behaving differently now that it knows that Dash is the one filling her up. He pushes in and out of her, rubbing her with his thumb at the same time, watching her with such an intensity that she has half a mind to cover her breasts, she feels so exposed under his gaze.

“You’re tight,” he says. Like he’s in awe. “I didn’t… God. How long has it been, Tess?”

“Too long,” she moans. Her voice is thin and breathless. “It’s only been you since you messaged me that night, Dash…” she trails off when he reaches for hair and pulls with ferocity.

“I’m going to make you so ready for me, baby,” he growls into her neck. It’s like since she just told him he’s been the only one on her mind from that night, he’s switched to ultimate beast mode.

Yes, yes, yes.

“You’re going to be so stretched that you’re not going to feel anything but destroyed when I’m done with you.”

So that’s the issue, she thinks. He’s worried that he’ll be too big.

Tessa reaches up to run her hand absently over his arm, the only physical comfort she can offer when she’s feeling so good already.

“I’m well aware you have the Loch Ness Monster hidden in there somewhere, Dash. But if you don’t get him out right now I’m going to have to go get that vibrator.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Dash slides another finger into her, his being so much thicker than her own. He gently opens her up, slowly caressing the inside of her as though he’s trying to learn her through touch alone.

“So good, Tess,” says Dash, and Tessa thinks that she might actually pass out.

The blood has rushed from her head and the rest of her body, and it’s pooling right in her clit. It feels like she’s on fire, she’s throbbing, she’s so desperate for release that she can hardly think beyond more and yes and there. Dash may not have known her body for very long, but he can play her as assuredly as he’s ever played his guitar. Somewhere in the hazy, pleasure-soaked regions of her brain, Tessa wonders if that’s what he’s doing. Is he running his fingers inside of her and playing invisible notes? Are his fingers making music with her moans?

Dash runs his free hand over Tessa’s hip, feeling the overheated flesh, and she can’t tell what he’s thinking beyond apparently being intensely focused. His palm grazes the top of her groin as he works his fingers inside of her, brushing against her clit at the same time and causing her hips to jerk up and seek more pressure.

It’s a strange feeling to be on the edge of orgasm, but not to actually come. Like she’s waiting on the edge of a cliff, and all she needs is a little push. But she can’t jump herself. But holy shit would she like to. She tries to push her hips down to meet his fingers, and then Dash starts to thrust his long, thick fingers into her. He pulls them out to the tips and then rotates his wrist so that his fingertips are running over the edges, stretching her.

“You’re going to kill me with those fingers of yours.”

He looks pretty pleased with himself. “They didn’t bring me on to the band for my good looks.”

“Dash—”

“Patience,” he says like he can tell what she’s thinking.

Probably because there’s not a lot else she could be thinking in this context.

So all Tessa can do is lay there taking the pleasure, rotating her hips while he fucks her with his three fingers, thinking it’s criminal that she hasn’t come yet. She’s so overstimulated that she thinks it can’t be healthy. Like she might actually have an aneurysm because something has to explode inside of her.

And Dash is desperately methodical. Tessa sinks further into bliss as Dash alternates sharp thrusts and slow, gentle stretching, brushing a thumb over her clit every now and again and earning himself a moan and a swear. It occurs to Tessa that she’s not being nearly as quiet as she should be for a hotel guest. The neighbors will probably complain.

“You’re being loud, babe.”

“Whose fault is that?”

Without pausing, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and starts a song. It seems to be a random selection, and Tessa recognizes the song. ‘Running Up That Hill’ by Placebo. It’s not loud enough to drown her out, but it might confuse the casual listener, which she thinks is probably the best they can hope for right now.

Tessa is whining and begging, and then Dash dips his head down to lick at her clit and her whole body shudders. She goes completely silent. Nothing escapes her but a breathy moan while the heat rises up her legs.

Dash pulls all three fingers out of her and Tessa gasps. “Dash… ” It’s not a protest because she knows that he’s not about to walk away, not now. She just has to say his name. It’s the only word that makes sense to her now.

Dash pulls back a little, curls his arms around Tessa’s hips, and starts lifting her so that he’s facing her clit. She’s already been stretched out to take three fingers.

“Just relax,” Dash says. “I’ve got you.”

At this point, Tessa would happily let the man do whatever he wanted since he seems to have a plan. Dash uses his hands braced on her hips to raise her body right up off the bed, so her legs drape over his shoulder. Tessa’s shoulders are still on the bed, but the rest of her is up in the air. Dash presses his mouth to Tessa and starts licking in long, slow, deliberate strokes.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

Dash is so strong that he can hold Tessa up like she doesn’t weigh a thing, which is lucky because she doesn’t have the core strength to hold this position when she’s not internally combusting. His tongue sends tremors down her spine as he continues to open her up, tracing the edges of her before dipping inside for a better taste.

Tessa knows that she can’t keep this up much longer. There’s a point where not orgasming becomes painful, and she’s almost reached it. She’s shaking, she’s keening, and her breathing is so shallow that she wonders if someone listening in would think that she was having a panic attack.

Then he leans up and sucks her clit into his mouth, and then Tessa’s whole body bucks in his arms as electricity, pressure, and heat shoot through her body.

“Holy shit, Dash…”

He ignores her gasping prayers as he tightens his hold on her hips. Tessa sobs out loud as her orgasm finally hits her. Dash runs his tongue over her clit, again and again, pushing her through her spasms, coaxing even more pleasure out of her. She thinks she might be screaming because her throat is sore, and she knows that she’s hurting her nails from gripping the sheets too hard.

Finally, Tessa sags in Dash’s arms, completely sated.

And Dash is moving again, but mainly to lean over, so she isn’t hurting her back while he continues to lick at her, moving his tongue down to her opening as he traces around the still-spasming muscles. Tessa can’t think, she can’t speak. She would never be able to describe this experience, not with all of her years of school to give her the vocabulary and the tools to do it.

She’s still having trouble sorting through the haze of post-orgasmic bliss, but she’s vaguely aware of Dash maneuvering her around. She goes willingly, unable to really help much, but at least not hindering. Tessa feels herself being pulled up and waits for what feels like an eternity as Dash undoes his pants. She tries to turn her head, but she can’t see much.

Maybe that’s a good thing.

Maybe if she sees the size of him, she’ll tense up on instinct.

Then Tessa is being turned around so that her back is pressed against Dash’s chest. His hands are shaking slightly, and doesn’t that do wonders for her self-esteem. Pulling her thighs apart, so she’s straddling his legs while he kneels. She looks down at her spread legs and she can see the thick head of him. He’s wet at the tip and flushed, and inexplicably covered with a condom, even though she has no idea when he managed to slip one on. She must have been a bit more messed up from the orgasm than she’d thought.

She’s whimpering, needier, and more desperate than she’s ever been with any other man because even though she’s already come, she still feels strangely bereft. Even though she’s had her pleasure, she wants more.

“I love you, Tess. But right now, I’m going to fuck you like I hate you.”

Holy fucking shit. Yes!

Dash’s breathing is harsh in her ear, and he lifts Tessa’s legs up to maneuver her over him, pressing his head to her and finally beginning to push himself in. Dash lowers Tessa easily down onto himself, and Tessa lets her head fall back onto his shoulder. She finally understands why he was so hesitant to get started—if she weren’t so blissed out and relaxed, this would have hurt. It would have stretched her to her absolute limit, both thick and long in a way that she’s never experienced before. All that preparation was definitely worth it.

She moans all the way down, and Dash pushes deep inside of her waiting, relaxed body.

“Tess,” Dash says. He sounds completely wrecked. “Fuck! I can’t take this any longer. I hope you’re not fragile.”

Tessa can hardly breathe, and in a few seconds, it doesn’t matter if she can breathe or not because he takes her like she’s belonged to him her whole life. Dash groans and curses in her ear as he moves savagely. Tessa tries to hold onto something, but there’s nothing to hold onto, so all she can do is wrap her arms up and around his head so she’s pulling at his hair, and that only makes him go deeper and harder.

Dash’s hand dips down to rub her clit, rapidly and with purpose, and Tessa opens her mouth in a silent scream as her body tenses up, then releases, then tenses again. Dash’s voice, groaning with pleasure, fills her ears as he clings to her, dropping her down and grinding in a long circle with deep, violent thrusts, bringing her as close to himself as he can get her, and she can feel him pulsating inside of her. He’s so big, and he fills her so completely, that she can practically feel the blood rushing through him.

“Jesus, Tess,” he breathes out, and she feels a warm rise of affection in her chest when she hears it.

Tessa can barely move when they’re finished. She can only collapse onto the bed as a puddle of very satisfied woman. Dash seems to take a moment to collect himself before standing up, and Tessa—still dazed—takes a moment to really appreciate the size of the cock that was inside of her.

Black Lilith hadn’t exaggerated.

She’ll need to get out the measuring tape later, she thinks.

Dash tosses the condom into the trash can, turns off the music, disappears into the bathroom and returns with a warm wet towel. It isn’t until he’s halfway through cleaning her up, with the kind of gentleness and thoughtfulness that would make her weak in the knees if she could stand, that she can finally speak.

“I think I had an out-of-body experience there.”

She expects him to say something smug, but he looks almost shy as he finishes cleaning her up and throws the towel on the ground.

“Yeah, me too,” he says. Then he lays down and pulls her into his back, spooning her from behind.

It’s only now that she realizes she’s sweating.

“I should take a shower.”

“Mmm…” He doesn’t move to let her go.

Tessa decides that the shower can wait. Instead, she burrows herself into his chest and reaches up to run her fingers over the arm that he has draped over her waist.

“We’ll talk later, right?” she asks. “Get all our shit on the table, so that we don’t ruin it?”

Though, really, they’ve already said the dreaded ‘L’ word. What else is there at this point? Everything else can be worked out. Everything else is secondary, superfluous… her brain must still be messed up from the sex because she can’t think of another word to use there.

“Yes, absolutely,” Dash replies. “Logan said we should. I trust him.”

“I mean, the man is married. Something went right there.”

“Yeah…”

He drifts off. She can tell from the way his words are slurring that he’s starting to fade into unconsciousness. Tessa knows she’ll follow him soon, but for the moment she’s happy to just lay there enjoying the feeling of him wrapped around her.

Dash stirs and kisses her shoulder. “So, you’re now my girlfriend, right?”

She smiles into her pillow. “Yes,” she replies. “Dash, don’t make me regret you.”

“Baby, I wouldn’t dare.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

The band cheers when Dash and Tessa come downstairs for breakfast the next morning. Tessa buries her face in Dash’s neck to hide her blush, and she feels his hand curl around her hip, a mixture of possessiveness and comfort.

“Look at the happy couple,” Slate shouts when he sees the pair of them. He and Harper high-five.

All around them, other hotel guests studiously ignore the rowdy table. As far as hotel dining rooms go, it’s not the fanciest one they’ve been in. That was in New Orleans, where each table came with its own chandelier. It’s a nice room full of long tables, each with its own miniature buffet in the center that regularly gets topped-up by the waiters floating around the room.

Dash tugs Tessa around to the table and pulls out a chair for her. “Just ignore them,” he mutters into her ear. “They do this with all the new girls.”

Tessa just bites her tongue and tries to look like she isn’t hoping that the earth will open up and swallow her. It’s taken everything in her not to wince when she sat down, she’s still a little sore from last night.

It’s one thing to tell Dash she loves him while they’re safe and alone in his hotel room, but quite another when she’s confronted with his make-shift family. She has a sudden flash of memory to back when she was in high school, bringing boys home to meet her dad. There was always an edge of anxiety to these interactions for her because it always felt like he was judging them by some standard that she wasn’t even aware of. And that he knew on some level they were kissing her and touching her, doing all manner of things that she wouldn’t want her dad to know.

But as she looks around the breakfast table, she slowly begins to relax. Because yes, the people looking at her are well aware that her relationship with Dash began with sexting. They’re all probably painfully aware of how Dash is in bed because they’ve even made jokes about it on stage for thousands of people to hear.

There’s no judgment in their faces, though. Only joy. Slate and Tommy are exchanging knowing looks and ribbing Dash when he finally sits down.

Sersha examines Tessa’s neck and clicks her tongue over the hickeys. “I’ve got a cream for that,” she says. Her own pale skin looks blemish-free, so Tessa thinks that whatever this cream is must be good.

Harper reaches under the table to give Tessa’s hand a squeeze and a massive smile.

Even Mikayla is grinning widely, as though she can’t even begin to hide it. She even takes her phone out and snaps a picture, as though this is a moment that needs to be documented. As though this is important—Tessa and Dash, and their first breakfast together as a couple.

But no one at the table is smiling wider than Logan. He looks like what Tessa imagines he must have looked like on Christmas morning when he was a boy, like the very thought of possibility was enough to make him burst. He looks at Dash from across the table, and there’s so much pride in his gaze that eventually Tessa has to look away. It’s starting to blind her.

Is that how I’ll look when one of my younger brothers starts dating seriously? she wonders.

Probably.

Dash dishes up breakfast while Tessa gropes for the coffee. He starts piling a plate with toast, jam, and fruit, and Tessa only has a moment to wonder why he’s picking foods that he never eats for breakfast before he plunks the plate down in front of her.

“There you go,” he says.

She wonders if he’d Googled ‘how to be a good boyfriend’ at some point because that shit is textbook.

“Thanks,” she says, kissing him on the cheek.

Tommy, Logan, and Slate all speak at the same time, “Aww, feelings!”

And together, their girlfriends and wife smack them on the backs of their heads.

Tessa thinks that it won’t be long before she, too, joins the strange hive mind that is Black Lilith. It won’t be long before she knows all the inside jokes, before she can banter with the men like a pro, before she can pick the quirks of each of the women. It won’t be long before she knows Mikayla’s favorite ice-cream, Tommy’s favorite song, and Harper’s favorite brand of deodorant. Sure, these things generally take time to learn, but she’s not going anywhere.

She glances over at Dash and, as if he can hear her thoughts, he turns and winks at her.

“So,” Slate says, leaning across Harper’s lap so he can speak to Tessa. “Did you get any interesting calls last night?”

Tessa is confused for a moment. What the hell does he mean by that? Did someone call her or Dash while they’d been together? Had she missed something important?

Then she remembers—the butt-dial that she’d overheard in the bathroom.

“You sneaky bastard.”

Slate doesn’t even look a little bit sorry. “Just be thankful I didn’t have to rent a limo this time.”

“You’re all menaces,” she says.

Her voice attracts Dash’s attention, and she quickly rushes to cover it up. She’ll explain later when they’re not surrounded by his family. And she will explain. There will be no secrets between them ever again if she has something to say about it.

“Hey, Logan… I’ve been thinking,” Dash says, poking at his own plate—eggs and bacon, much more Dash-themed than the one he’d made for her—and attempting to look nonchalant despite the sudden tension in his shoulders. Tessa reaches over to run a soothing hand over his knee, reacting before she even knows what he’s stressed out about. “You know how we’ve got that break from touring and writing scheduled for September?”

“Yeah?” Logan replies. He’s finally started eating again, but he still can’t wipe the grin off his face, so he looks a little bit like a demented Joker when he answers. “Thanks for scheduling that, Mik. We’ve been touring non-stop for nearly a year, it’s time for a break.”

Mikayla waves off the compliment.

“Well, I was thinking… since it’s September and we don’t have anything planned… maybe I could apply to, like, an online course or something?”

Silence falls, and Tessa’s heart immediately leaps into her throat. That’s huge for Dash. To offer such a significant change when he’s felt more and more like the rest of the band—his brother in particular—has been pushing him into it. Tessa half-wonders if this is Dash’s way of capitulating, of giving in, and accepting that the band wants him gone—which, to her mind, couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Dash…” Logan says. He looks around the room, perhaps checking to see if anyone is watching them. Then he leans forward so that only the people at the table can hear him. “We talked about this, man. I don’t want you to leave, I never did.”

It’s a testament to how close everyone at that table is that no one seems uncomfortable. Tessa does, a little bit, but that’s because she’s new. Everyone else looks like they’re just concerned about Dash.

But Dash, thankfully, just rolls his eyes. “I know that, dickhead,” he says fondly. “I said online, didn’t I? As in I can do them from anywhere? I’d never be able to learn on campus with our schedule.” He leans back and shrugs like it’s no big deal, even though the eyes of everyone at the table are fixed on him. “I… uh, I looked up some stuff. Stanford does an interesting MOOC on mathematical thinking and logic. That could be fun.”

Then a lot of things happen at once.

Slate, Tommy, and Logan all push themselves out of their chairs and rush around the table. Harper reaches out and puts her arms around Tessa, hurling her into Harper’s lap with such strength that Tessa is stunned. Mikayla is taking pictures again, as the three men of Black Lilith tackle their youngest member out of his chair and onto the ground, creating a cursing, writhing dog-pile of limbs as they all hug him at once.

“Woah,” Sersha says.

Mikayla nods, though her eyes are a little bit teary as she captures the whole moment on her phone.

“Dash, buddy, I would never want you to leave the band. But I’m so glad you’re doing this,” Logan’s muffled voice says from the pile.

Tessa glances down at the surprisingly strong arm wrapped around her. “Damn, lady, you just picked me up like I weigh nothing.”

Harper shrugs. “You don’t. You should eat more protein… helps build muscle.”

“I’ll remember that.”

The men are still on the ground. Tessa can’t even see Dash from where she’s sitting, he’s somewhere at the bottom, probably. They’re no longer writhing or trying to grab hold of one another. It’s as if the four men, having made themselves comfortable, are content to just lay together for a moment and bask in Dash’s good news.

Tessa can understand why they’re so thrilled. For Dash, college was the change that would mean giving up on something he loved, even if he’d always loved learning and he’d always had a burning curiosity as well. The fact that he’s found a way to go back to school without changing his entire life is fantastic. And yes, some may say that this is a step backward, that Dash’s desire to avoid change was what had led him to choose the online option. That if he’d really wanted to grow, he’d go as an on-campus student.

But Tessa’s still sore from their night together, when he’d thrown caution to the wind and allowed himself to really be present with her. She still had the marks on her thighs from where he’d held her up. She still blushes when she thinks of how he’d told her that he wanted them to be a couple. A real, honest couple. Dash isn’t about hiding from change anymore. But it would take more than the prospect of a college degree to get him to consider leaving Black Lilith.

“Look at our boys,” Sersha says, shaking her head. “Fucking baby men, the lot of them.”

“Speak for yourself,” Mikayla replies. “Mine cooks.”

“Mine can too,” Tessa says excitedly. “With supervision.”

“Mine can’t cook, I just keep him for decoration,” Harper says.

The four women share a moment. Tessa can’t wait to unpack their stories. She wants to learn everything about them. About what had drawn them into this little family that the men of Black Lilith had created for themselves. And all because four boys from Jersey decided to start a band in high school.

Tessa has a sudden spark of creativity, and she quickly wriggles around in Harper’s lap, pulling her phone out and typing the words ‘Butterfly Effect’ into a note.

“Something for the article?” Harper asks.

Tessa nods. “I think so. We’ll see.”

And, just because she can, she takes a picture of the pile of men on the ground and sends it to Jackie.

Tessa: Your heroes. My new boyfriend is somewhere at the bottom. xx

Jackie’s reply is almost instantaneous.

Jackie: Wha

Jackie: What the fuck

Jackie: You have a boyfried

Jackie: It is dash?

Jackie: Is his penis huge??

Tessa considers the questions carefully. Behind her, she hears Harper snort at the screen.

“What’s going on?” Sersha asks.

“Tessa’s sister is malfunctioning,” Harper replies.

Tessa quickly types, yes, yes, and yes.

Jackie replies with the eggplant emoji and a thumbs up.

Eventually, the men on the ground pull themselves out of the pile, red-faced and grinning like idiots. Tessa types out and sends one last message before extracting herself from Harper’s lap and taking her place at Dash’s side.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Mikayla says when Logan joins her. “Dash, if you need help with the research, just let me know.”

“Thanks, sis,” Dash replies. Tessa doesn’t miss the way Mikayla’s face lights up when Dash calls her that.

Dash’s phone pings and he checks the message. His face is still flushed from the crushing weight of three full-grown men, so Tessa can’t tell if the blush he’s sporting is because of that, or because of the message.

Tessa: I love you. xx

Dash quickly types a reply, hits send, and leans over to kiss Tessa on the temple while he squeezes her knee. The rest of the table, apparently satisfied with the recent family-bonding, lets the kiss pass unnoticed. Tessa’s own phone vibrates in her hand and she looks down to see his reply.

Dash: Love you 2 baby ;)

Epilogue

Five Months Later…

“I’m nervous.”

“Don’t be nervous, you’re going to kill it.”

Dash runs his hands lightly over Tessa’s arms, trying to soothe the tension there. She tries to calm herself and enjoy the way his fingers feel on her skin, but at the moment her mind is too busy racing to feel anything beyond slightly sick. She stares up at the tall, ominously-gray building, dreading whatever waits beyond the doors.

“Tess? Hey, stay with me, baby.” Dash kisses her on the cheek.

Tessa forces a smile and turns to give him her full attention. “Sorry,” she says, still feeling a little flustered.

“You wouldn’t be this nervous if you hadn’t insisted on getting here half an hour early,” Dash says, and he looks at her fondly even though there’s a hint of worry in his voice. He seems to be genuinely concerned that she might plummet over any minute. She’s probably really pale beneath the makeup that she and Sersha had painstakingly put on that morning.

It’s been five months since she and Dash became an official couple, but it feels just as surreal every time she wakes up next to him. She wonders if she’ll ever get used to the feeling of him inside of her, or the knowledge that she only needs to reach out and take his hand to let the whole world know that he belongs to her, and that she belongs to him. They’d kept their relationship a secret until the article was published in Rolling Stone this week, but after that Bass Note’s publicists sent out a press release and suddenly Tessa Hunt was hot property. That, and the notoriety of the Rolling Stone article, had landed her the job interview that she and Dash were standing in front of that building for. She shivers when she stares up at the building again, turning away from her boyfriend and gazing skyward.

“You’re right, we shouldn’t have come so early.”

“Ah, it’s no big deal. At least we left time for a flat tire, traffic jam, and alien abduction,” Dash says. He’s wearing his standard slogan tee—the Incredible Hulk today—and sunglasses to avoid being spotted. His bodyguard, Lance, is standing a discrete distance away from them.

Tessa takes Dash’s hand and gives it a tight squeeze. She feels hopelessly overdressed standing next to him in her interview clothes, but she couldn’t help it. Nothing but the best for The New Yorker.

“Let’s get coffee,” Tessa says. “We’ve got time.”

They duck across the street to a coffee shop that’s almost certainly frequented by some of the journalists who work at the magazine that Tessa will be interviewing for in less than half an hour. She tries to avoid eye contact as she and her famous boyfriend sit down in the corner of the room and order a café latte each. Lance orders nothing. He just sits quietly beside them, trying to look inconspicuous in his black T-shirt and jeans.

Whenever Tessa sees Lance, she’s sadly reminded that Jared isn’t on her detail anymore. They’re still good friends, but after she and Dash had gotten together, Dash had started to get a little alpha male whenever he and Jared were in the same room, which was a lot, considering it was Jared’s job to shadow the women behind Black Lilith. In the end, to save Tessa the indignity of having to tear her new boyfriend a new one, Mikayla had discretely reshuffled their deck of bodyguards so that Jared was shadowing the support band, Lost in Time. It had turned out to work in his favor. A couple of weeks after the change, Tessa got a text from Jared to tell her that he and Lost in Time’s petite bass player were dating. Dash stopped his ridiculous posturing after that.

“Hey,” Dash says, kissing Tessa’s cheek to bring her back to the present. She realizes that there’s a steaming mug in front of her that hadn’t been there when she’d zoned out. “Where’d you go?”

“Oh you know, just thinking about one of my exes,” she says.

Dash nods sagely. “Yeah, I feel sorry for those guys, too.”

She grins at him. When it’s just the two of them, he’s still a huge dork. Only now, he’s a dork who shows his affection with lingering, public kisses, and his eyes entirely focused on her. The night they came out as a couple, there were still a few women who’d inundated him with texts trying to coax him into their beds. He’d firmly shut them down in front of Tessa.

When the Rolling Stone article had been published, Tessa had felt a brief moment of panic at the thought of having to return to Chicago. It had been Tommy, of all people, who’d shut that down.

“So when are you moving in?” Tommy had asked over a coffee one morning last week.

“Moving in?”

“To the brownstone?” he’d said. “Just, you know, I need to know when I have to up my gym regimen to burn off the cakes you’re hopefully going to cook for us. You are going to keep making those, right? Because I don’t think I can go back to Dash’s cakes.”

“Woah, slow down,” she’d said, raising her hands. “You think I’m moving in with all of you?”

Tommy had cocked his head at her, looking for all the world like a confused puppy. “I mean, you’re a writer, right? What better place to live than Manhattan?”

“I haven’t even talked to Dash about this.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a given at this point. You’re family now.”

Tessa had been touched, but she’d chosen not to get her hopes up until she’d spoken to Dash. Dash had blushed and sputtered adorably before he’d admitted that he wanted to ask her father’s permission to move in with her—‘to court you’ in his words—and Tessa had nearly died laughing before bringing the subject up.

They’d flown back to Chicago only three days ago. Dash had met her father. And just like that, she’d become a fully-fledged member of the Black Lilith family. She’d tearfully bid her family goodbye in Chicago, only to get a furious call from her dad as soon as she touched down in Manhattan.

“Why do I have fifteen thousand dollars in my bank account?” he’d asked.

“Oh, good, that went through,” Tessa replied blithely.

“Tessa—”

“Tell Scott to stop killing himself with work. Buy Jackie some new skates. Get Kaden and Halley some decent clothes… and the twins a new laptop each.”

“Tessa—”

“I gotta go. Love you!”

She has no regrets. Now that she’s had an article published in Rolling Stone, she thinks she can afford to spend the majority of her first big paycheck on her family. It’s about time her dad got a break.

Dash’s thumb runs over her fingers as he holds her hand lightly in his. They’ve been pretty much constantly touching since their first night together. Tessa has never had such an attention-drunk boyfriend. Not that she could ever complain about it.

“Do you think I should have gotten a bigger portfolio?” Tessa asks, holding up her thin booklet and tapping the cover.

“Tessa, you sent them an e-portfolio.”

“I know, but what if they want to see hardcopy?”

“Then direct them to the stone age, where the rest of the Luddites live,” he says affectionately. He’s so adept at deflecting her anxieties that she wonders how she’d ever managed to get through a job interview before now.

She supposes that she should be grateful. Dash’s usual tactic for distraction is to drag her into a shadowy corner and give her a physical reason to forget what she was stressed about. She can’t go to an interview looking freshly fucked.

“How do I look?”

“Beautiful.”

“You’re biased. Lance, how do I look?”

“Very professional, love.”

Tessa feels a little bit better after that.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she considers her options before opening it. She’s had good luck texts from the rest of Black Lilith, as well as her dad and the rest of her family.

It’s not a good luck text. It’s Jackie, sending her a picture of the outfit she’s going to wear for her free skate at the state championships in a couple of months.

Jackie: i look just like yurio in welcome to the madness i am deceased

In the picture, Jackie is wearing a purple punk jacket, black leggings, and a black shirt that is just on the edge of too revealing. She’s also got a pair of sunglasses in one hand, her eyes smudged black and her hair in a half-up, half-down style.

“Aw,” Dash says, looking over Tessa’s shoulder at the picture. “Our little punk is growing up.”

“She’s so looking forward to you guys being there,” Tessa says, tapping a quick congratulatory reply to her sister.

“We wouldn’t miss it for the world. Tommy’s pretty excited about seeing her ice-skate to his song.”

“Isn’t it the whole band’s song?”

“Nah, we’re gonna give Tommy this one.”

Tessa puts her phone on Do Not Disturb and sips her coffee, mulling over the fact that she can’t remember a time when she was this nervous. This interview won’t make or break her career, but still… it’s The New Yorker. She’s interviewing to be a book reviewer for The New Yorker. This is the kind of dream job that she’d only ever thought about in the dead of night while typing up term papers and spinning fantasies, because those were the only things that would get her through the coffee-induced haze of exam season.

“I know you’re nervous,” Dash says, probably for the sixtieth time today. He kisses her cheek and sighs against her skin. “But I’ll be right outside, waiting for you.” And then he lowers his voice so that Lance can’t hear him. “And then I’ll take you home, and we’ll celebrate what a great job you did.”

“I swear to God if you get me horny—”

“I’m just talking about celebrating,” Dash says, his innocent voice belied by his thumb still stroking her fingers. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“And if there’s nothing to celebrate?”

“Oh, baby that would be a tragedy,” Dash says. He runs his nose down her neck, a move that would look affectionate to onlookers but sends a shot of arousal through her immediately. In the three months they’ve been together, her body has become conditioned to understand what every caress is implying. “But I’m not worried. You’ll be amazing, and we’ll have a reason to celebrate.”

Tessa turns her head to give his lips a soft kiss. “Wouldn’t want to disappoint you,” she says.

Dash returns the kiss, lingering just a little as he whispers, “You never could.”

Bonus Chapter

[The following excerpts have been reprinted with permission from ‘Black Lilith is Flying on Butterfly Wings’ by Tessa Hunt, published in Rolling Stone]

It started with two young boys looking for a reason not to go home. It became a global phenomenon.

“I met Slate at school, and he was a drummer,” says Logan Todd, the Black Lilith’s charismatic frontman. “We put together a band so we would have something to do after school.”

Black Lilith just completed a national tour to celebrate the release of their latest album ‘Sinful Rhythms.’ The band is known for combining beautiful lyrics with musical mastery, all while tapping into every demographic possible. They work together, they live together, in a beautiful brownstone with golden walls and a gaming room in the basement, and they have tapped into a golden vein of the popular consciousness. There’s no stopping them now.

Like the butterfly beating its wing that starts a hurricane, Black Lilith’s beginning was seemingly innocuous. A couple of boys playing in a garage, with one of them bringing in his younger brother, while the other coerces a local poetry prodigy into playing bass for them.

[…]

Logan’s hands are constantly in motion, which draws the eye to the ring on his left ring finger. Logan married the band’s manager, Mikayla Strong, in a secret ceremony. His face lights up beautifully when he speaks of his new wife.

“I think I knew the moment I met her,” he says. “We didn’t get off to the best start. I kind of thought she was a groupie. It wasn’t until I was done striking out with her that I realized she was our new PA!”

Mikayla was brought into the band’s little family as a personal assistant. It wasn’t until she proved to be amazingly over-qualified that she was upgraded to the band’s manager.

“I always wanted to go into events management,” Mikayla says, with one eye on the interviewer and another on her tablet. “I thought it would be challenging. Much more challenging than being a PA. But events mean that I don’t have to deal with people, and I can’t imagine that now that I’ve worked with Black Lilith.”

So what changed? How did the fairytale romance between Logan Todd and his new wife begin?

“There were a couple of misunderstandings,” says Logan. “In the end, it took Slate intervening to help me get my act together and convince her that I trusted h7er and I wanted to be with her. Mikayla is my soulmate and soon to be mother of our first child in five months. We were always going to be together. We just had to take a few detours on the way.”

Logan’s relationship with Slate, the band’s drummer, is unique. Logan looks almost as delighted as he does when someone mentions his wife.

“Slate and I were close friends. Not like brothers. If I had to think of a comparison, I guess I’d call him an ex-boyfriend. We were inseparable.”

[…]

Slate is frustratingly tight-lipped about his background.

“I grew up in America’s armpit. There’s no need to bring it up, and it’s only going to make people bored.”

Slate began his drumming career inauspiciously, turning restless hands into music by pulling a prank in the middle of a high school assembly. But now he is on par with Keith Moon and Neil Peart. Though he drips humility in our interview as he deflects the spotlight to his fellow band members. Preferring to remain behind his drum kit, Slate is the strong presence at the back of the band keeping everyone else on rhythm.

“It’s my job to make sure that no one else misses their cue. I’m not about to forget how important that is.”

Slate is responsible for bringing Mikayla onto the crew—scouting her from an internship with Bass Note Records and offering her a position with the band on sight. He is also responsible for drawing out the latent talent of the band’s lyricist and bass player, Tommy Jones.

After reading a line of poetry that Tommy had written in his math notebook, Slate says that he fell in love with Tommy’s words.

 “Dude was a poet. We needed lyrics. Before that, we were doing shitty covers and playing songs that Dash wrote. There’s only so many ‘moons’ and ‘Junes’ a guy can sing before he starts to go crazy.”

Slate is also happily engaged to a personal trainer and professional superwoman, Harper Styles. Proposing in a ludicrous stunt that involved a dwarf Elvis, and three baby goats.

“She’s pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me, so I had to get that shit in lockdown.”

For her part, Harper is not impressed with the rockstar lifestyle. Especially not since she was hired to keep the band in shape.

“The amount of Red Bull and carbs I had to cut out of their diets is insane,” she says, working in our interview between sessions at the gym. She gives a cheeky grin as she continues, “But it’s worth it, right? You should see my fiancé’s abs. Total babe status!”

Thousands of fangirls thank you for your service, Harper.

Of the two of them, it seems that Slate is the most starstruck.

“The girls are not on stage with us, but we couldn’t do this without them,” he says.

[…]

Tommy Jones is a poet in a rockstar’s body.

“I usually think of a good line or a concept,” he says. “If that’s cool, then I usually build a song around it. It sounds cheesy and cliché, but I kind of write to get all my thoughts out. Otherwise, they pile up and get in the way of everything.”

Whenever Tommy enters a room, the atmosphere instantly becomes more relaxed. He has a remarkable ability to put people at ease, to quell their insecurities, and make them feel as though they are the most important people in the room.

A born and raised a Jersey boy, and the son of a college professor, Tommy Jones met Slate in tenth grade. He did not know how to play the bass guitar. He had never even considered music as a hobby, much less a potential career path. But his willingness to be surprised made him the perfect addition to Black Lilith.

“Slate set me up with some YouTube videos. It was a bit hard at first, but once I got the hang of it, playing music was really fun! I remember when I figured out the Super Mario theme, and I thought, that’s it. It’s not gonna get any better.”

But Tommy’s main joy lies in writing lyrics. While Tommy’s long-time girlfriend, Sersha Walsh, is his official collaborator, he considers every listener a potential collaborator. He enjoys the idea of creating a dialog with his audience, and his delightfully complex lyrics achieve this.

“I’m not a philosopher. I don’t think that music should be in the business of answering questions. Maybe its goal should be to put the questions out there, and then we can all figure them out together.”

Sitting in on his writing sessions with his girlfriend, the first thing that a viewer will notice is how easily he smiles, how quickly he articulates his thoughts, and how happy he is to collaborate. Tommy seems as though he is constantly ready to be delighted.

Sersha finds this trait a mixture of endearing and troubling.

“The problem is that he’s too adorable,” she says. “It’s impossible to stay mad at him. The asshole.”

There’s clear love between them. It is evident in every gesture, every shared look that seems to speak volumes, and every song that the pair of them write together—building Black Lilith’s incredible presence in the music industry with every lyric.

After shadowing the band for several weeks, it was clear that Tommy is the heart of the Black Lilith family.

“I love these guys just as much as I love my little brother,” he says cheerfully.

While on break from tour Tommy Jones and his girlfriend Sersha Walsh will be looking after his niece full time in New York, while his brother Geoffrey starts his first year in college. It’s extremely apparent that he is a family man first.

“I don’t know where I would be without them. Frankly, I don’t want to think about.”

[…]

Dash Todd is an interesting dichotomy. The baby of the band, the youngest member, Logan Todd’s little brother, and resident nerd.

“I like pop culture,” he says, shrugging and lifting his hoodie so the interviewer can see his The Empire Strikes Back T-shirt. “It’s fun.”

He is also the band’s lead guitarist. He delights in performing the solos and riffs that characterize Black Lilith’s sound, he throws himself into performances with vigor. But he also embodies a calm sense of power when he performs. Watching Dash Todd play guitar is like watching Thor call down lightning—there’s a lot of power there, and a lot of control.

“Right before I go onstage, I’m totally pumped and nervous. Our personal trainer, Harper Styles, makes me do reps to get the energy out. But then once I get out there I feel a lot less freaky. I barely even hear the music. My fingers know what to do, and I’m just playing with my family.”

He tries to play off his talent, even though he was named in the Top Ten Young Guitarists to Watch list, from last month’s Rolling Stone.

“I don’t think I’m any more talented than anyone else,” he says. “I’m the lead of a great band, so it’s easy to look impressive.”

While Dash is making waves in the music industry, he’s also taking steps to improve his mind. Like Brian May and Tom Scholtz, Dash Todd has a high IQ and an interest in mathematics that survived his public school education and is a constant source of pride for his older brother.

“He’s a doofus, but he’s also a genius,” says Logan, with a mixture of frustration and admiration. “The kid was good at all his classes, he could remember everything he ever learned. He picked up the guitar because he was bored with regular music classes, where all they did was teach him how to play the recorder. I’m pretty sure he learned Dutch just despite his French teacher. He’s that kind of brilliant.”

Now that the band is taking a well-deserved break from touring, Dash will be taking a Bachelor of Mathematics at Columbia University. It’s quite a big change from music.

“Since we started to build up a following, a lot of things have changed,” Dash says. “And sometimes that scared me. But I’m getting better at embracing change.”

Really? So what is the change that Dash Todd is most excited about?

He smiles at the question and gives it some thought before he answers.

“I’m really excited to start taking risks with relationships. I want to share my whole life with someone special… and I’m super excited because I’ve found her.”

Interviews were conducted by Tess Hunt.

** You can also find Tessa Hunt’s work weekly on - The New Yorker **

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About the Author — Hazel Jacobs

Hazel Jacobs is a passionate fan of romance novels and a crazy fan of rock and roll. Never trained as a writer, she began creative writing as a hobby. That quickly evolved into a mission to pen a novel that brings a new generation of readers into the wild realm of loud music and total passion.