Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR_
JAMIE
Brix, Harley’s live-in head of security and boyfriend, puts the last box of my stuff in my new room.
“Thank you, guys, for letting me stay here until I can get a new lease on an apartment.” I felt terrible having to ask my boss to let me live with him, but like he put it, none of us will be here soon, as we’ll all be out on tour, so really, it’s as if I’m just using one of many rooms in Harley’s mansion as storage.
But also, I get the feeling Harley likes having me around. My worry is that means if he needs anything, instead of texting me, he’ll come to my room instead. Don’t sane and rational people choose not to live at their workplace for this very reason?
I can’t escape.
Harley puts his arm around my shoulders. “Now that you’re all moved in, how about you fetch me some coffee?”
Brix grunts. “I told you those kinds of jokes won’t be appreciated, yet you said it anyway.”
Harley saunters over to his boyfriend and looks up at him with the most innocent expression he can muster.
And being in a boy band, even if he’s now in his thirties, he can still pull off that pouty look.
“It’s because I have you, my big, strong protector, to hold her at bay when she comes at me with a knife. ”
I can’t help laughing at my boss, who is more friend than employer. “I’ll go make coffee. You want one, Brix?”
He looks torn, and Harley mocks him for it.
“Ooh, ethical dilemma. Will you let my personal assistant get you coffee after your big stand just now?”
“It’s the least I could do,” I say. “You did move all my boxes from Raffy’s apartment.”
And it did become Raffy’s apartment. It’s been a week since the night we broke up, six days since he tried to win me back after admitting he hooked up with someone that night.
It was the same recycled story, and thanks to Angel, I had the clear mind to tell him to fuck off.
My only regret was not hooking up with her so I could throw that in his face.
Harley scoffs. “Raffy. I told you not to date a guy with a dog’s name, but you never listen to me.”
“Well, if you had told me that he was a slimeball instead, maybe I would have listened. Your entire dislike for him was because of a name his parents gave him and was something he had no choice in the matter.”
“Are you saying his name wasn’t actually Rafael? Or Rafe? His parents actually named him Raffy?”
I throw my hands up. “You’re a celebrity. You should be used to meeting kids with unusual names.”
I turn and head down the hall toward the kitchen to make the coffee. I’m going to make Brix’s extra strong because I have something to ask him. I’m in need of his … contacts.
I’m putting on the finishing touches—a leaf design in Harley’s latte, and, well, Brix drinks his black enough to be confused with battery acid, so that one is simple—when both Harley and Brix join me.
“Just in time,” I say and hand over their drinks. “Also, while I have you, I had an idea for the tour.”
“I’m listening,” Harley says, but it’s not him I’m talking to.
“Actually, it had to do with security.” I glance at Brix.
“What about it? We have it covered.”
“Yeah, with venue security. I was just thinking that it’s such a short tour, and there’s so many moving parts.
With the guys’ partners coming with us, like Jordan and Lyric, and even Maggie and the kids, because Ryder tells me he will not be going on tour without his kids or their mother, even if Maggie is kicking and screaming about being dragged on a groupie tour—”
“Jamie, you’re getting sidetracked and rambly,” Harley points out.
“Right. Sorry. I was thinking it wouldn’t be a horrible idea to hire bodyguards for all of us. Not only for venue protection. And I figured your old company Mike Bravo would be good to handle that, right?”
Brix rubs his chin. “It’s not a terrible idea to have extra security around.”
Harley folds his arms. “Do we get a say in it? You know Mason will hate it. So will Maggie. She doesn’t even want to be on the tour, and now you’re saying she’ll have someone tailing her? The ex-army soldier who could handle herself?”
“I’ll contact Mike Bravo today,” Brix says and walks away.
Harley holds out his arms. “Am I invisible?”
Brix calls back at the same time I speak, and we both say, “Yes.”
Now to somehow make Mike Bravo choose Angel to send on this tour.
Sure, I could ask Brix for her number, but considering I have no idea where my head is at with all this I’m going through a breakup and am not so straight stuff, I don’t want to have to explain it when I don’t have answers myself.
All I know is that ever since leaving her house that morning, I haven’t stopped thinking about the way she leaned in closer to me.
I was sure she was about to kiss me, and I froze, even though everything inside me was screaming to close the gap.
To see if her lips were as soft as they looked, if her hands were as strong as I imagined, and to find out once and for all if my desire to kiss my best friend in high school was a fleeting thing or if I really am bi. Or pan. Or fluid. Whatever I might be.
I hope I get my chance with Angel to figure it out.
Having the job that I do, I’ve met celebrities.
A lot. Everyone from the current superstars hitting the charts, to one-hit wonders, to the legends that fill the entertainment industry.
But I’ve never been as nervous meeting any celebrity as I am right now, waiting for the Mike Bravo hires to show up to go through their duties next week when we leave for the tour.
It’s been a month since I’ve seen Angel, and as I stare at the contracts and NDAs on the coffee table in Harley’s living room, I’m tempted to move the little Post-it with Angel’s name on it.
So what if I kind of manipulated the situation so she would be my bodyguard? Is this how I flirt now? Just straight up forcing her to spend time with me? Is that, like, considered kidnapping?
Maybe I should swap her name with Domino’s.
As the only straight man on the Mike Bravo roster, he’s been assigned to babysit Maggie and her two kids, whom she shares with Ryder and Lyric.
It was those two knuckleheads’ request, and I don’t think they know how much trouble they’re going to be in when Maggie finds out what they did.
I love Maggie, but she’s scary. Not in the way Angel is scary, but mom energy scary. Angel is … intimidating scary. Intimidatingly hot.
It turns out her nickname isn’t because she looks like a fallen angel, all gorgeous with her golden skin and long jet-black hair.
And there I go, picturing her again. In her little silky sleep shorts.
I swear, I look back on that night and see her with this ethereal glow around her that I’ve obviously made up in my mind, but my point is, in the month since staying at her house, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her.
So finding out her nickname is actually Angel of Death because she’s a sniper—something I didn’t know until Brix told me—should have been the moment I hesitated or got scared. But if anything, it only made me more interested in her.
Hello, therapy? I might need your help.
Now that this is happening, though, now that my plan to assign her as my bodyguard is coming to fruition, I’m wondering if I should chicken out.
Forcing someone to spend time with me is not the way to get them to date me.
But getting her contact information from Brix and being up-front about it is way too forward for me.
How does a baby bisexual get queer people interested?
I was kind of hoping Angel would reach out to me, but I understand why she didn’t. She doesn’t know whether I went home and made up with Raffy or was drunk and can’t remember throwing myself at her. I definitely remember that embarrassment, but I also can’t hate the moment all that much.
Because she not only made me realize that I deserve better than Raffy, but she also made me face those niggly feelings I’ve had since high school.
It turns out they were real and that I should have believed in myself and my own feelings.
I should have ignored it when others told me how I was feeling.
There’s no doubt I’m attracted to Angel. And that’s why I’m still staring at her Post-it, telling myself to leave it when my nerves really want me to switch it.
This plan was a good one until now, when I actually have to face her.
Brix enters the house with his old teammates in tow, and the noise of the front door opening and voices filtering down the hallway makes me jump a mile high. Too late to chicken out now.
I leave the seating area I’ve set up for them and welcome them as they come inside the house.
Angel is the third person to walk through the front door, and I swear, watching her and the other Mike Bravo people is like one of those action movies where all the attractive people walk in slow motion.
My face suddenly feels hot, and I try to avoid looking at her directly like she’s the sun or some shit. It lasts maybe two seconds.
Angel’s cut off her long hair in the last month and now sports a lopsided bob with an undercut on one side.
I thought she was gorgeous before. Now, she’s …
I swallow hard and force my professional smile. Because I have to be professional—ignoring the fact that I got her here in a nonprofessional manner.
“Welcome,” I croak. Great start, Jamie. “If you’ll follow me, I have all your paperwork lined up.”
It takes everything inside me not to dive at them and finally make the Post-it switch. That would be too obvious.
I bite my bottom lip and risk another glance in Angel’s direction. Yep, definitely couldn’t pull it off now with her staring at me.
“Your assignment brief and NDAs to sign are in your employment packets.” I gesture to the table where they are, and they each grab theirs and take a seat.
I can’t help watching Angel as she picks up her folder and opens it up because I know what she’s seeing. I’m her assignment.
Will she run? Ask to swap with someone else? I’m too scared to find out, so I hold my breath like that will delay this moment.
Instead of doing either of those things, her lips quirk, and her deep brown eyes meet mine. Butterflies erupt in my stomach.
I try for an innocent smile, but I’m scared it comes out as psychotic more than anything. I’m sure it’s not helping me look like less of a stalker. I might as well club her over the back of her head while I’m at it.