Chapter Thirty
Maddox
Reign’s crew is tight, efficient as hell, even.
I’ve been watching them from the wings, mentally noting each lighting cue, every guitar swap, their movements so practiced they barely need to communicate with words at all. A glance, a simple nod, and it just shifts into place.
We need to be like that. Seamless, synchronized, no weak spots or distractions.
Not ones like her.
Not when opening for Reign has cracked something wide open in me. The scale of it. The crowds. The fucking magnitude of how big we could be.
Stadium big.
Legacy big.
And I want it. All of it.
I want the kind of success that has us selling out arenas, fans screaming lyrics back at us like confessions. Because they like the songs, because they feel them in their fucking bones. The way Reign’s fans do.
We’re good. I know we are. But we’re not there yet. And part of that is because…because of me. Because I can’t get my head straight.
Last week still lingers under my skin. Not the heat of what we did, but the way I kissed her afterwards and the press of her lips against mine as she kissed me back. Soft and hesitant, like she wasn’t sure what it meant.
Truth is, neither did I. All I knew was, I didn’t want to walk away.
I almost didn’t.
But then I remembered what was at stake. Beau, Eli, the band. Our whole damn future. Everything we’ve worked for.
So I forced myself to walk away.
When I left the things I bought her, she was curled up in the back room, a faint line of pain etched across her forehead.
Half-asleep, she cracked one eye open just long enough to see me leave the bag before drifting off again, unaware of what was waiting for her.
Not because she asked. But because it felt right.
I blow out a breath, bumping my head against the bunk wall, trying to clear the fog that always follows when I think about her for too long. Outside, the sky’s black, the windows reflecting the glow of the bunk light…and my scowl.
Everyone’s out cold, sleeping through yet another overnight drive, this time from Tampa to Dallas for our next set of shows. I should be asleep too, but all I can hear is her.
The soft hum under her breath when she’s thinking, the tapping of her finger against her tablet screen or the scratch of her pen in my notebook, the quiet shift of her weight in the booth she’s claimed as hers.
I told myself I needed to stay professional, keep my distance, but she makes that impossible without even trying.
We crossed a line again. I crossed it.
The control room should’ve been a one-time thing, maybe even a lapse in judgement, but what happened after wasn’t heat of the moment.
Loophole, I said, like it was some sort of permission. But it’s bullshit and I know it. I shouldn’t have said it in the first place, and yet, here I am, holding on to that one word, ready to use it again.
But the first rule of being in a band? Don’t fuck your bandmate.
The second? Especially not that one.
Lines get crossed all the time in this industry, being around the same people day in, day out, it’s sort of expected. But you don’t cross lines with ones that end careers. And Paige Erikson—Paige Deveraux—could end mine.
Kit Deveraux is an industry kingmaker. One wrong move, and we won’t just lose her, we’ll lose everything. And that can’t happen. I won’t let it.
But it’s not just about the risk. It’s the way she looks at me, like she sees something worth saving, like she’s not afraid of how damaged I am, and I’m finding the more time I spend with her, letting my guard down, the more I like it.
Like when she woke up and found the bag, emerging from the back room with a smirk, she tossed one of the candy ropes at my chest, teasing me for buying enough products to stock a damn vending machine.
She’d sat cross-legged, opposite me, chewing on the gummy rope like it was some inside joke just for us. I’d laughed–actually laughed–and for the first time in a while, it didn’t feel like I was holding anything back from her.
That’s the part that keeps me up at night, because I want more than just her body.
I close my eyes and squeeze my fingers into the bridge of my nose, trying and failing to push Paige out of my mind. It doesn’t work. She’s there, sinking through my bones, burying deep inside, and I fucking hate it.
You hate that you don’t hate it as much as you should.
My hand drops to the bed, brushing the edge of my notebook beside me, half-lost in the shadow. I stare at it, aware I’ve been pretending not to see it all day. Pretending I didn’t feel its weight the second she slipped it back into my bunk this morning, thinking I was still asleep.
She never says anything when I pass it to her.
Never looks at me when our fingers touch.
If it weren’t for the quiet nod and the way she loses herself when she starts to read, I’d wonder if she truly understands what it costs me to let her in.
Every part of me is in that book, inked on the page, secrets and truths buried between chords and riffs.
I snatch it off the bed, flipping to the page I know she’s been working on. The off-white paper glows under the dull light above me, and it hits me how familiar this has become. My rushed scrawl crisscrossing her neat one, her latest note small and wedged in the margin.
Still trying to dodge those feelings, maestro? I think you’re losing. This is beautiful.
The corners of my mouth twitch before I can stop them. I can picture her writing that, elbow on the table, lip caught in her teeth, thinking too hard.
Paige peels me open in ways that scare the shit out of me. More than Eli or Beau ever could, and those guys have seen me at my worst.
My gaze drifts across the darkened bus to the two bunks on the other side, landing on the top one, curtain half-drawn.
I wish she would’ve taken the private room because I’m attuned to it all. Every time she rolls over, the way her breathing changes when she dreams, that soft little sound she makes in her throat when she’s just waking up.
A sweet sort of torture every single day as we map the route of the tour.
She’s two steps away, and yet she might as well be on the other side of the fucking world. I ache like she’s next to me, feel her everywhere. Even in my sleep.
My pen’s already in my hand, fingers tight around it, and I hover for a second, rereading her words again before adding my own, tucked small between the lines like a secret only for her.
Giving up would be losing. And then who would you tear apart and put back together?
Tapping the pen against the page, I wait, knowing I should stop there, but something kicks up inside me, the creative part of me that only gets this unhinged around her.
I flip to a new page and start sketching the bars of a chorus that’s been gnawing at the back of my head for days. It’s barely coherent, but it’s real.
And hers. Even if she’ll never know it.
Letting the pen linger for a second longer, I write one more note at the bottom.
Don’t fix this yet. Break it apart. Don’t hide your process from me. Show me how your brain works. How you take something raw and make it refined.
The second the ink dries, I slam the book shut before I change my mind and tear the whole thing out. My fingers curl around the cover, the leather still warm from my touch.
I don’t want her clean edits or simple margin notes. I want her instinct, her gut reactions. The in-between parts that need filtering to find where the good shit lives. The part where she makes sense of me.
Carefully, I slide out of bed, keeping my footsteps light as I cross the narrow space between our bunks and slip my notebook under the curtain, tucking it beneath her pillow.
Long auburn strands scatter out across the cream cotton as she faces away from me.
My hand pauses mid-air, caught in that fragile space between wanting and knowing better.
I don’t mean to touch her, but I do. Just one strand, caught between my fingers like a fuse I’m too fucking stupid to stop sparking.
If she wakes, I’ll lie, say I was giving her the notebook, or something fell out of her bunk.
Anything but admit that I had a weak moment of needing to touch something that’s not mine.
She doesn’t stir, though, doesn’t shift, and I stay one second too long until want turns risky in the quiet.
I pull back and retreat to my bunk, lying flat on my back with clenched fists by my sides and the ghost of her hair still tangled in my fingers. In a space this small, there’s nowhere to run. And no distance is wide enough to keep her from my every waking thought.