Page 20 of Dirty Love

She repeats the last line a few times until it’s a whisper and she drops to her knees. The lights go black and the crowd loses its mind, cheering for her in a way I’ve never heard.

In the dimness, as my eyes adjust, I see she’s still on her knees.

I take two steps toward her before I remember she has no idea who I am. I’m just the asshole who asked her if she’d been raped by a billionaire she hates.

Maybe she was.

Maybe she wasn’t, but it came close.

It doesn’t matter. A hostile witness won’t do us any good, and Cole and Tag had better luck with another witness lead in New York.

I need to fly home to Washington and leave this woman behind.

As she’s helped up from the polished wood of the stage, I melt into the shadows, but I don’t go far.

I watch as she comes backstage, stopping less than ten feet from me. She rubs at the back of her neck, then waves her hand in the air that someone understands as a universal demand for a drink. She’s handed a bottle of water, and takes a few sips before tossing it back to Handler #1.

She looks exhausted. Someone hands her a different drink, this one in a more tell-tale short glass with ice. Then another. She tosses both back like they’re water.

“Do you want to shower here?” someone else asks her. A tall, willowy blonde.

Tabitha shakes her head. “Not here.” Then she offers the other woman a glittery smile. “Not enough room for a crowd in the showers here, right? You coming back with me?”

The blonde laughed and nodded, her legs doing this simpering sideways wobble thing that make her look like a giraffe.

“Awesome. I need to blow off some steam. Okay.” She bobs her head, then hops on the spot, recharging herself like she’s got an internal battery fueled by vodka and flirting with pretty girls.

“You can do this,” the blonde calls, and then she’s gone.

And she does do it. Her encore is two songs, a ballad and an anthem, ending on a high note that brings down the house for a second time.

When she returns to the wings again, this time under her own steam, she peels off her tank top.

She needs to stop getting naked in front of people, an irrational part of my brain growls.

A man hands her a towel, and another shirt. She grabs his wrist. “Frankie, you coming back to my suite for the night?”

Jesus. I can’t take this.

“Whatever you want, Tabitha.” He gives her a smooth smile and my shoulders bunch up.

I’d like to smash his face into a million bits, but that reaction has nothing on how my body goes into overdrive when Grant approaches and slides his hand against the small of her back.

“Great show.”

“Thanks.” She doesn’t mention her planned group activities to him. Interesting. She’s invited the rest of the greater Los Angeles area.

“There are some investors—”

“I’ve had two drinks of—what were they, Izzie?”

“Vodquila. Best of both worlds,” the blonde adds spritely, either ignorant to the tension between the singer and her manager, or deliberately feeding the drama monster.

“Yeah.” Tabitha beams at Grant. “So I’m like a loose cannon. You sure you want me to do this?”

He glowers at her. “I told you to stay sober tonight.”

“Oops. I forgot.”

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