Page 45 of The Masks We Wear

“Don’t!” Ivory grabs the phone from her hands and tossesit to the corner of the room where my very sexy babysitter is sitting, his eyes glued to me with a look of concern and a trace of amusement in his eyes. He raises a brow at me in question and I nod as if to tell him I’m fine. “Selene said to stay off socials and not make ourselves a spectacle,” Ivory reminds Aria.

I rise from my folded up position on the floor, wiping the dust off my baggy fitted jeans with a graffiti Japanese dragon on the left leg. I walk over to where Harvey is seated to retrieve Aria’s phone and he bends down to grab it, handing it to me. My fingers brush against his as I take the phone from him and immediately, fire has ignited inside my veins. I know he feels it too based on the sultry look he gives me. “You okay?”

I nod, “Just haters being haters,” I reassure him even though deep down, I am bothered by them. I’ve been quiet about the anxiety I’ve had from the attack and about the comments I’ve been reading, some of which have been bashing the band or just me, in fear of coming across as problematic. I don’t want Harvey to think I’m too high maintenance and I don’t want him to worry about me. I just want us to enjoy our limited time together, happy as we can be, before it’s too late and we go separate ways. Then and only then will I allow myself to truly be upset and bothered by my personal issues.

I turn to walk away before he does what he does best and reads the emotions I’m feeling like he’s feeling them himself but he stops me by wrapping a hand around my wrist. “Are you forgetting how well I know you?” he asks. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

I shake my head and look down. “I don’t wanna talk about it right now.”

He hesitates before inevitably releasing my wrist and letting me return to the girls. I give Aria back her phone with strict instructions to stay off socials and to not read hate comments while Ivory basically repeats everything I said in differentwords. I navigate us back to making music, working on songs, hoping to remove the weight of what just happened but it feels like the weight leaves the room and just falls on my chest and mine alone.

Chapter 20

Brody

I’ve been all overthe world. I have been to some of the shittiest, most absolutely disgusting and fucked up places, seen some of the worst things you would never believe if I told you, but nothing is worse than the smell of Detroit, Michigan to me. There is a heavy scent of rotten eggs that just festers in the air and latches on to the insides of your nostrils, making you nauseous all day and just overall disgusted and peeved.

We’ve been here for three hours and already I want to hop back on the plane back to LA but we have a lot of fans here waiting to see us so I push through. I’ve had a disgusted expression on my face all day that’s starting to feel permanent and even when I’m in my hotel room, I can still smell it.

The door jolts open and I gasp, completely caught off guard and ripped from my thoughts. The aggressive entrance brings me back to that night and a rush of anxiety takes me over and has me gasping in fear, my stomach dropping. I inhale and relax when I find it’s Harvey and when he sees the fear on my face he scowls. A second later, his expression softens, “Just me,” he drops a brown bag off on my nightstand and cups my chin in his large hand. “You never have to be afraid of anyone coming into your room, Brody. I told you I would never let anything happen to you,” he reassures me, the anger rising back to the surface of his expression. I know it isn’t anger with me but rather anger with the man that traumatized me, anger that he wasn’t there to stop it earlier.

I nod, exhaling as I look down. I didn’t want to ruin the goodmood he seemed to be in when he entered but it seems I did what I do best and fucked it up. He tips my chin up slightly in silent command for me to meet his eyes and I oblige. “Talk to me. You still never told me what was bothering you in the studio yesterday and right now you’re making the same face,” his voice is gentle, concerned.

I shake my head and force a smile, “I don’t want to talk about it, it’s stupid.” I glance at the brown bag and give him a curious look while hoping to change the topic of conversation, “What’s in the bag?”

He gives me a disappointed look that tells me he knows exactly what I’m doing. “Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll show you,” he presents the ultimatum.

I frown, weighing out how curious I am about the contents of the bag and sharing my feelings. Fuck him and fuck the bag I don’t need to know what’s in it. But I know I’m full of shit and that the suspense will kill me. Fine. “Ugh,” I huff, rising from the bed and walking around the room so that I don’t have to face him. “I was just bothered by the hate comments.”

“Brody, fuck them,” he says angrily. “There willalwaysbe people who don’t like you or don’t support you for whatever stupid reasons they have. That isn’t just part of being a rockstar, that goes for everyone. Do you know how many people would love to watch me crash and burn? But I don’t let them get to me because I don’t care about what other people think and you shouldn’t either. People will hate on you because they know they’ll never be as talented as you or nearly as beautiful and at the best of times, extremely annoying,” his lips curve into a smile that elicits a matching one from me as I lean against the dresser with my arms crossed. Only he can produce a smile in a time like this. He walks closer to me, stopping only a few inches away. “You’ll never actually live your life if you continue living it for other people. Show them who you are, take the mask off, andstop hiding how perfect you are from the world, Brody Drake.”

His eyes gleam with something I can’t quite place but I’m in complete awe of him. The rush of sentimental emotions washes through me and pumps my veins with something that I’d rather not address at this moment, but they’re enough to have color rising to my cheeks and a smile forming on my lips. Nobody has ever said such kind things to me nor has anyone actually meant them. Harvey has seen me without the mask and he sees someone worthy of so much, I wish I could see in me what he sees. It gets a little easier though, the more time I spend with him. I grow more confident by the day and don’t feel a need to resort to drugs or alcohol, in fact I haven’t thought of either in so long I nearly forgot they existed. He caresses my cheek with his fingers and I say quietly, “Thank you.”

He leans in and kisses me chastely before smirking, “Anytime, Little Rockstar,” he pulls away a second later and walks back toward the brown bag, removing it from the nightstand. “As for your anxiety, I think it might be a good idea to talk to someone because what happened to you was traumatizing. It doesn’t have to be me or your friends, not even Selene, but maybe someone else. You shouldn’t keep things inside, it isn’t healthy,” his tone becomes serious.

My smile falls, “And you know all about being open and talking about your feelings?” I raise a doubtful brow at him.

He smirks, “Of course not. I’m a hypocrite but you know I’m right.”

I mutter irritatedly under my breath, “Yeah, yeah.”

“What was that?” he prods, a knowing look of arrogance on his face.

I frown, “I said fuck off and eat shit.”

He smiles, “That isn’t very nice. I’ll have to fuck that attitude out of you after I show you what I got.”

I clench my thighs together as heat pools low in my belly athis promise. My attention quickly shifts however, to the brown bag as he sets it down on the bed and starts rustling through it. “I got a few things for you,” he says as he rummages around in search of something specific.

I take a step closer to him, my curiosity piqued, “Gifts, you say?”

He removes a large, three wicked candle from the bag and I gasp when I read the label on the front. It’s my favorite candle, the one I have in every single room of my house back home, the Japanese cherry blossom candle. “Oh my God,” I gasp as he hands it to me and I open the lid to sniff it, my eyes practically rolling to the back of my head.

“I know the smell of Detroit has been bugging you and I also know you’ve been a little homesick so I figured you could use that,” he explains.

I beam at him, “Thank you. I love it. How did you know this was my favorite?”

He tilts his head at me, “It’s in every room of your house.”

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