Page 20 of #Moonstruck

I hated when he called me IQ. I was about to tell him as much when I was interrupted.

“What? Maisy was roofied?” Parker repeated, obviously mishearing the wordaloof. “Who do we have to beat up?”

“I am fine! All of you calm down!” I loved my siblings, but they needed to stop acting like we were living in the seventeenth century and they’d been personally enlisted by the king of England to guard my virtue.

“All joking aside, you know how dangerous clubs can be,” Fitz added, his worried expression making me feel a little guilty for not telling them where I was going.

“I’m fully aware of the dangers, thanks to your many hypocritical lectures.” How was I supposed to tell them what had just happened outside? I hardly believed it myself. “I think you guys should sit down. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

They warily did as I asked.

I stood silently for a moment, not sure what to say or how they would react. Better just to rip off the bandage all at once. “So this random thing happened. Ryan De Luna came to see us perform tonight. He liked what he saw, and he asked if we wanted to be his opening act for the rest of his tour.”

My brothers just gaped at me. Like I’d announced my recent return from exploring the planet Mars and discovered a new humanoid species there that made me their empress.

I told them the financial details and how Ryan was waiting to hear from us. “If we don’t meet him at the Brown Bear diner in half an hour, he’ll assume the answer is no.”

“Ryan De Luna was here. Tonight. He listened to us play, and now he wants us to open for him? The biggest tour of the year?” Parker said each word slowly and carefully.

I nodded. “That’s what I just said.”

“And he’s at the Brown Bear diner right now, waiting for us to say yes or no?”

“Do you guys have a hearing problem? Yes, he wants us to open for him, and yes, he’s waiting for our answer.”

All three brothers exchanged glances and without another word jumped to their feet and sprinted for the back door. Fitz grabbed my wrist, pulling me alongside him as they ran.

When we were all in the van and Parker had somehow coaxed the beast into starting, I asked, “Does that mean you’re interested?”

Fitz looked at me like I was especially dumb. “This is the biggest opportunity we’ve ever gotten. We’d have to be total idiots to pass it up. I just don’t understand why he’d want us to open for him. We’re not going to bring in any new fans. Everybody in the audience would be there just to see him, and we’d get to benefit from it.”

“Yeah, and what he’s offering salary-wise is really generous, given where we’re at in our career,” Cole added. “He could have paid us a lot less. Why would he pay us so much?”

“Maybe he’s just a nice guy.” It was something I had been considering since I left his car. I had initially assumed he was an arrogant, playboy douchebag, but maybe I’d been wrong. Fitz often told me I should give people the benefit of the doubt, that I was too quick to jump to conclusions and didn’t let them explain themselves. Maybe I’d done that with Ryan.

We were stopped at a red light. All of my brothers turned to stare at me, and I could see the moment when all three light bulbs lit up over their heads.

“He wants you,” Parker said, forced to face forward as the light changed. “This is about you.”

“No way. This is not about me. I have made it very clear to him that I’m not interested. At all. The night I met him backstage? He was a total jerk to me. I called him names. The only reason I didn’t hit him was because he has big, scary bodyguards. And I really laid into him. You guys would have been proud.”

“Maybe that’s what he’s into,” Parker murmured to Cole, who nodded.

I threw up my hands in exasperation. “You guys are seriously the stupidest people ever.”

“The thing is, Maze, someone like Ryan De Luna is not like the guys around here.” Fitz’s eyebrows knit together, concern showing all over his face. “You would be really out of your depth with someone like him.”

“If I wanted to date him, there’s nothing any of you could do about it. But I’m telling you I don’t, and you should listen to me and believe me.”

“Even if he tries to make a move on Maisy, and we have to rough up his pretty-boy face”—Cole kept talking like I hadn’t even said anything—“it wouldn’t matter. This will get our name out there in a big way, and if people like what they see, we’ll book new tours and sell our songs. We might finally be able to make a living as artists.”

That hadn’t occurred to me until he’d pointed it out. That opening for Ryan might mean opening for other acts. That we would get to travel all over the world, performing for thousands of people, building a name for ourselves, gathering a fan base that would actually buy our music.

Ryan was offering to help us start down the path that would lead to everything we’d ever wanted.

It seemed too good to be true. “Do I get a say in this? Like always, you guys have decided what we’re doing without even asking what I want.”

“Okay, IQ, what do you want?” Cole asked.

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