Page 22 of Mending Hearts

“Does anyone like repeating themselves?” Tyler’s tone was mild. “I don’t want to fuck up. If you’re too busy, you don’t get to dictate whoisn’ttoo busy to help.”

I stepped toward him, even though he towered over me. “I do get to dictate. This is my show. My job. Consider me your dictator.”

“Can I call you that?” He raised his eyebrows, a hint of a grin threatening at the edges. “Mini-dictator?”

My expression clouded, and I frowned. He never bit back; instead, he sifted through my blows as though they were mere puffs of smoke. “No, you can’t call me that.”

“You want to dictate things, but you don’t want anyone to acknowledge that you’re acting like a dictator.” His eyes darkened a fraction. “You’d rather dominate in private?”

I met his gaze, and a memory jumped between us. A hotel room. Dim lights. His tongue pressing against my core, licking and sucking, making me feel like I couldn’t get enough. My hands tangled in his hair.Faster. Harder. More. Don’t stop. Don’t ever fucking stop.

Tearing my gaze away, I turned my back on him, burying the memory. “Call me whatever you want. Just don’t fuck up or else I’ll have to fire you.”

“Noted,” Tyler called. “No fucking…up.”

The urge to turn back, give him another piece of my mind surged through me. Would it work? Already, he was meeting my annoyance with mild reason. Why fight when the other person wouldn’t fight with you? Luckily, I knew someone who met a fight head-on, just like me.

I found Mom in the office portion of her private bus, which was her second-favorite place to be after she was done in the center of the stage, screaming at random workers about any and all injustices she could find.

“Ah.” Laura turned in her swivel chair after I drew the door tight. “My gorgeous daughter. You want me to fire him yet? Personally, I think he’s lovely.”

I suppressed an eye roll at her fake British accent that she loved to put on as a bit between the two of us. Sometimes the gesture made me laugh. Today, I wasn’t in the mood to be amused. “I saw how lovely you found him. Lovely while you riffled through my costumes. Lovely while you dragged him from bus to bus. Probably lovely as you shoved your tongue down his throat.” I ran a finger along the windowsill and didn’t look at her, as though her response meant nothing. Tyler was nobody, after all.

“Now, now.” Laura made a tsking sound. “I’ll save that for the end of the tour.” She winked and turned around again. “Never mix business and pleasure.”

“Except, you do it all the time.”

“Sure, with local stagehands or whoever I want who doesn’t travel with us.” She cast a glance over her shoulder and then scribbled a note to herself before turning around. “Name the last time I fraternized with a roadie.”

“You used the wrong F word there.” I sank into the couch and stared at her. Technically, the rotating opening acts didn’t count as people on the road with us, but her sexual conquests weren’t as fleeting as she made them seem either. Had she slept with someone in a role like Tyler’s before? No way to be sure.

“I was surprised you were okay with him joining the crew. I know we’d met him before, and he had the okay from Sarah…”

“And that was enough.” I bit the tip of my pinky finger. The hard plastic didn’t offer the same comfort as my brittle nails. Other than going to see Tyler, I couldn’t remember the last time I lied to my mother. We didn’t always get along, but a couple of years into this madness, we agreed that the only way to survive was to be honest with each other, even if we weren’t with other people. Tyler had said something similar in his bid to convince me to keep this thing growing inside me.Never to each other.

“Well, he’s delicious and old enough to be your father, which suits me just fine.”

“He’s only old enough because you and my sperm donor had me when you were twelve.” I ran my finger along the arm of the couch. “Did he look thirty-five to you? I didn’t think he looked that old.”

“Your father was twenty, and I was eighteen when we had you.” Laura flushed and flipped her hair. “And thirty-five is not old.” She narrowed her eyes. “How’d you know his age? Why would you ask him?”

Already I was messing up and piling lies on top of lies. Everyone knew you didn’t compound lies—remembering them became too hard. My list of who had been told what when was only going to grow in the coming months, hopefully not in direct proportion to my uterus.

“Thirty-five is old.” He just wasn’ttooold. Or at least, not too old to find him attractive.

Once.

I found him attractive once.

“Kenny Connors is meeting us in Nashville when we stop there.”

“Why?” Kenny was a producer I’d been forced to work with by my label when I first broke out. He’d gotten me alone under some guise of helping me. Instead, he’d helped himself. Unease slithered down my spine.

Laura rotated her chair and leaned back. “Word on the street is that he wants to take the lead on your next album.”

“No chance. None. Not happening.” Pinpricks burst across my skin, and I rose to my feet, pointing my finger. “You know what he did.”

“Do you want to go after him?” Our gazes connected for a beat.

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