Page 23 of Mending Hearts

My shoulders slumped, and I ran my hands down my face. Back then I wanted to ruin him, rip him apart with my bare hands. Laura wouldn’t let me. That had been before I understood how the industry functioned, how much women were expected to bury for the sake of their career. “I don’t want to work with him again. I’ll quit before I work with him again.”

“We have contractual obligations.”

At this moment, I longed for my mom instead of my manager. The contract, whatever money was at stake, was nothing compared to the anxiety brushing against my chest cavity, wiggling up my throat. “I won’t work with him again. We can meet with him, but it’s only to tell him ‘no.’ I don’t care how high we have to go, how much shit we gotta stir. The answer is no. Pasha comes to the meeting. You come to the meeting.” Kenny was a door locker. And that fucking office was soundproof. Sometimes, I wondered if he videotaped the shit he pulled in there. “The answer is no.”

Chapter Eight

Tyler

Iunpacked the last of my things into the drawer closest to my bunk. I shared the space with a rotation of bus drivers who might need a break or a place to sleep, and Pasha, the preferred bodyguard. Men and women didn’t share buses on Mia’s tour, and he and a few other bodyguards were the only male crew members. When I’d raised my eyebrows and opened my mouth to question the gender balance, Laura had said it was merely a coincidence they hired so many women to work the jobs. Those women just happened to be the most qualified.

I’d nodded, as though her reasoning made complete sense. In Little Falls, smart, capable women surrounded and abounded. There was no doubt the women on the crewcouldbe the most qualified. But I wasn’t convinced that was the reason women were hired in such large numbers. The imbalance didn’t bother me. I liked women; I liked puzzles. At some point, I’d figure out their reasoning.

The ring of the doorbell made me jump, and then I grinned. The last tour I’d been on hadn’t been anywhere near this level.A doorbell on a bus. Already the things I didn’t know or understand were piling up. I wasn’t sure I would be able to pretend I’d done this job before for Sarah Telling. Her shows were just as huge. I wandered through the small sitting room to the front entrance and pressed the button to release the doors.

Mia was at the bottom of the stairs, dark glasses concealing half her face. She climbed the stairs, and I stepped back so she could pass. Surprise flickered. When we crossed paths at the stadium after her sound check, I’d teased her. Or maybe I was flirting, even if it wasn’t wise. Whatever it had been, it pissed her off. Her reaction had reminded me why I found her so attractive the night we slept together. The fire raging inside of her ignited an answering flame in me.

“I asked Taryn to get me some time with you before the show tonight. She said she would.” Her fingers touched the arm of her sunglasses, but she didn’t remove them. When her hand lowered, it shook.

With a frown, I searched her face. The confidence she’d shown at the stadium was gone, replaced by a girl folding in, closing up.

“You okay?” I couldn’t tell if she was meeting my gaze behind the dark glasses or averting it.

“Sure.” She touched the edge of her glasses again without taking them off. “Fine. Great, even.”

“Hey.” I closed the distance and gently removed her glasses. She turned her face away, but she didn’t stop me from taking her shield. “Never to each other.”

“Youcan’t lie. I can do whatever I want.” Her blue-green eyes hardened when our gazes met.

For a moment, I let her stare me down, but I didn’t back away or break eye contact. Just like when she came to Little Falls, I didn’t think she wanted to lie to me. Her anger, like the sunglasses, was armor. After sound check, she’d been annoyed, whether it was my presence or my reliance on her mother, I wasn’t sure. The sharpness in her tone wasn’t the same right now. Something had brought her here. “You’re upset. Youdidn’t come to tell me Taryn would give me time with you later. What happened?”

“I should go.” She snatched her sunglasses out of my hand, but I gripped her bicep, holding her in place when she tried to flee. “Coming here was stupid.”

My lips were close to her ear when I said, “Talk to me, Mia. I want to help.” I couldn’t get the sight of her trembling hand off my mind. “If someone hurt you—” Each time she breathed out, I caught a whiff of lemon and ginger. Those scents shouldn’t turn me on, and yet they were. Another thread of protectiveness stitched between us. Whether she liked it or not, we were a unit; and if someone hurt her, I’d find a way to make them regret it.

A shudder rocked her tiny frame, and she closed her eyes. “You can’t help. I don’t know why I came.” She tugged her bicep out of my grasp and moved toward the door. “I’ll walk you through the costume changes in a couple hours when I get back. Don’t ask anyone else.” Slipping her glasses back on her face, she pressed the button to open the doors and clomped down the stairs.

I watched her descent with a mixture of frustration and heartache. Had I pushed too hard? Maybe the trick was to say less, hold back, let her take the lead. The way her hand had shaken, the tiniest wobble of her chin, as though she was on the verge of a breakdown, had made me want to pull the information out of her and tear apart whoever had shifted her sense of self so completely. A few hours ago, she’d been my mini dictator. I didn’t know who’d shown up in my bus just now, but Mia felt like a woman split in two. She was a real-life mimosa pudica: a confident flower in bloom one minute, and closed-up, protecting herself from predators the next.

Grady had warned me she was, if not unstable, then unpredictable. Maybe this seesaw behavior was normal. Was her life full of high highs and low lows? I couldn’t imagine anything worse.

I tugged the sparkly outfit up Mia’s slight body, and when our gazes met, she grinned. “Pretty great, right?”

“You’re killing it, Mini.” I returned her grin. Would she get the reference? I’d worked it in a few times tonight during my first concert backstage, but she’d ignored it.

“I’m starting to think you’ve forgotten my name.” Mia’s eyes danced with amusement while the stylist rapidly worked Mia’s locks into a complicated braid. All of this was happening on the fly while the applause from the crowd roared around us.

“I remember.” The look in her eyes when our gazes met again made me wish I could subtly readjust my pants. No chance of that with the crew hovering. Someone would notice. Even this exchange was dangerous. “Mini suits you better.”

“I’ll let my mother know she got my name wrong,” Mia drawled over her shoulder just before a technician led her away.

The night had flown by in a blur of costume changes for her and her dancers. Backstage had been nonstop action, and I hoped I hadn’t screwed up. True to her word, she’d taken me through the whole routine in a dull and professional session when she’d gotten back from wherever she’d gone. I didn’t know if her monotone approach had been for thebenefit of her mother who’d overseen it or for me. God forbid anyone suspect she gave a shit about something or someone.

I’d gone back to my bus and written out each change based on the set list she gave and then I cross-referenced it with the costumes’ racks. There’d been one literal snag when one of Mia’s sequins caught on my watch during a rapid change. We’d had to rip it off. I wouldn’t make that mistake a second time, and I was already trying to recall where I’d seen the spare sequins. This outfit was the last of the night. Encore number two called for her to drop from the ceiling in a silver sequined one-piece. She started the show descending from the rafters, so my heart shouldn’t be pounding so hard in my chest. Laura’s tirade about safety while she led me around the tour earlier made more sense after seeing the show from start to finish. Mia did some dangerous shit.

Mia’s heels clacked along the stage floor in a rapid staccato that matched my heart. The technician who’d led her away clipped her into a harness and yanked on all the connections. That was it? A couple rough tugs and those ropes were supposed to hold her? My heart kicked. I’d been so busy at the start of the show I missed this part.

From the side of the stage, the lights blazed on Mia, suspended, the attachments for the harness making her look like a butterfly. The crowd exploded with screams and clapping before all the lights went out. Then, as the beat to her most famous song started, the crowd lit up, their LED bracelets and crowns synched to the music. Each flash of the stage lights showed Mia closer to the ground. A spectacle of the best kind.

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