29. Mateo
MATEO
“You literally trained my son to need a ‘sweet treat’ after every meal. You know that, right?”
I’m watching Emerson and Crew absolutely destroy the dessert they came back to the hotel with after a day out exploring Portland.
“You can’t come to Maine and not at least try a whoopie pie,” Emerson argues, pressing her thumb to her lips before she licks off the icing, my eyes following the movement.
“We got one for you too, Daddy,” Crew says around the big bite he just took, chocolate crumbs and white icing all over his face.
It’s our first show back after our two weeks off for the holidays; this part of the tour is mostly on the East Coast with less long-haul traveling before we have a month off in the spring, then we power through our last leg.
“I’ll save it for after the show,” I tell Crew, ruffling his hair that started this morning in a neat topknot but is now a mess of windblown strands.
Emerson grabs a napkin, wiping Crew’s face before he goes in for another bite. The two fall into easy conversation about their day together, and I’m more than happy to just be here, watching from the outside.
Ever since that day at the fire station, the relationship between Emerson and me has shifted. I noticed it when we met at the tour bus two days ago. There’s a familiarity between us now—and I can actually talk to her without feeling like my heart is trying to beat out of my chest.
She’s someone I care about, just like I told her. I’m done trying to deny that.
I trust her with my son, the most important thing in my life, and I think I was reading too much into it all.
Yes, I’m attracted to her, but I have a handle on that now.
We had our one night, and now it’s out of our systems.
“What else are you going to save for after the show?” Emerson turns to me, giving me a smirk.
Or not.
The innuendo in her words goes unnoticed by Crew, but it slaps me directly in the face, the memories of our night together flooding my brain faster than I can keep up with.
And now I’m right back to where we started.
I cough into my fist to avoid a crack in my voice. “A cold beer and eight hours of sleep.”
Emerson rolls her eyes, going back to helping Crew clean up.
Since this suite has three bedrooms instead of two, I don’t have to share a bed with a four-year-old who recently started laughing in his sleep.
Laughing.
Like he’s straight out of a horror film.
It’s fucking creepy.
There’s a knock on our hotel room door, and Emerson offers to get it, balling up the napkin in her hand before tossing it into the trash.
I watch her as she walks away. The way her hips sway with every step, the way her tight long-sleeved shirt rides up on her back, revealing the tattoos she has there, reminding me of all the ones she has underneath.
“Hey, Liam.”
It’s like a bucket of cold water over my head.
Why does she sound so happy to see him?
And why do I care so much?
“Hi, hot stuff,” I hear Liam say just before he pulls her in for a hug, and my jaw ticks.
I can only make out bits and pieces of their conversation. Something about if Emerson is bringing Crew for Sugarcoated Lies setlist and what she’s doing once Crew goes to bed.
With her facing towards the door, her answers are harder for me to hear. I lean towards the door from where I’m sitting next to Crew at the dining table, hoping to figure out what exactly she’s saying.
I think I hear her starting to answer his question when suddenly I’m falling. The chair legs give out beneath me, sending me straight toward the floor. My arms shoot out just in time to catch myself before my face meets the ground.
Crew immediately bursts into laughter, asking me to do it again as if my near face-plant was a planned performance just for him, and Emerson and Liam rush over to me.
“Are you okay?” Liam asks, reaching out to help me up.
“I’m fine,” I mutter, ignoring his efforts and getting up myself.
“What were you doing down there?” Emerson asks, crossing her arms. Her hair is tied up into two buns on the top of her head, her bangs swooping to each side of her forehead just enough for her eyes to peek out from underneath them.
“I dropped something.” I run my hands down over my shirt, looking at the ground as if I didn’t find what I supposedly needed to pick up.
“Sure you did,” Emerson whispers before turning to Liam. “As I was saying, I didn’t get the best sleep on the bus these last two nights, so I’m just going to crash early tonight.”
He reaches a hand towards her, looping his finger through the belt loop of her jeans, and I have the urge to swat his hand away.
She lets him pull her in, just enough to make me feel like a third wheel. “Maybe next time.” She reaches up to pat his cheek twice, and he takes it as her dismissal.
“Always breaking my heart these days,” he says as he heads to the door, turning over his shoulder to give her a smile. “Get some sleep.”
“Will do,” she concedes, giving him a small wave before sitting back down with Crew as the door closes.
A few moments pass, and I find myself stewing in my thoughts as Emerson and Crew finish their desserts and start cleaning up the table.
“What’s the deal with you and Liam?” The words are out in the open, and I regret them instantly. Emerson turns my way as Crew hops off his chair, heading towards the kitchen sink to wash his hands.
Emerson huffs out a dry laugh. “Um, nothing?” She shakes her head, following Crew into the kitchen.
“That didn’t look like nothing,” I rush out, rounding the table to follow her.
She lifts Crew onto the counter so he can reach the water, turning it on and pumping soap into his hand.
She looks at him before turning her gaze to me, lifting a brow. “And what is it that you think you saw, rockstar?” she asks, her voice a little more measured than her usual teasing tone.
I open and close my fist at my sides before shoving them in the back pocket of my pants. “Nothing,” I answer too quickly. “You two just seem,” I pause for a moment, looking at Crew, who is too concerned with the soap bubbling up in his hands to really be paying attention to Emerson and me, “close.”
“Close,” Emerson repeats.
I nod.
“Well, not that it’s any of your business,” she begins to explain, grabbing Crew’s soapy hands and moving them under the running water, “but he’s a good friend of mine. Has been for years. So, yeah, I guess we are close.”
“I see,” I reply, and I should just leave it at that. I shouldn’t even have started this conversation to begin with.
Her relationship with Liam shouldn’t matter to me.
Yet I find myself asking, “How close exactly?”
She turns to me, her lips parted. But then she’s eyeing me up and down, and I immediately feel exposed—like she can see directly through me. A smirk blooms on her face just before she mouths, “Jealous?”
My stomach drops, and I want to jump out of my skin. “N-no,” I stumble out. “I’m just curious.”
Emerson laughs, and Crew asks what’s so funny. She comes up with some excuse that saves me from any further embarrassment, but I barely register it.
She grabs him under his arms, helping him down from the counter before following him towards the living room. As she closes the distance between us, her arm brushes up against mine, and she leans in close enough that I can feel her breath against my neck.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, rockstar.”
When I get home from tonight’s show, I’m greeted by the dimly lit hotel room and two bedrooms with the doors cracked open.
The adrenaline from the concert still hums beneath my skin, the ringing in my ears from the roar of the crowd just starting to fade.
I peek into Crew’s bedroom and find him sprawled out in the twin bed, stuffed animals surrounding him, with his Pepper one held tightly against his chest. I smile to myself at his soft snores, his little chest rising and falling.
Slowly closing the door, I cross the living room towards the other two bedrooms, tempted to peek into the one that’s currently occupied.
It’s like a force pulling me to Emerson’s bedroom, the thought so tempting that I have to stop myself from reaching for the door.
I fist my hand, bargaining with myself.
I just want to make sure she’s okay.
What if her phone isn’t plugged in? What if she doesn’t have some water by her bed? What if she’s cold and needs another blanket?
And that’s when I hear the soft thrum of a familiar melody. I can't make out the words, only the muffled rise and fall of the melody spilling softly into the silence.
It’s one I’d recognize anywhere.
Because it’s mine.
I haven’t let myself really think about Emerson’s secret that Crew spilled—how she listens to Cross My Heart to fall asleep. It felt like too personal a detail to know about her, like I wasn’t deserving of that piece of her—no matter how much I want to be.
I reach out for the doorknob, pulling the door quietly shut before taking the few steps to my bedroom, not trusting myself to be so close to hers any longer.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
My night with Emerson was supposed to get this out of my system.
I wasn't supposed to be sitting in this empty hotel bedroom, all too aware that she's just on the other side of this wall. It was supposed to be a one-time thing to help me move on, help me move forward and on to someone else—anyone else.
She's probably tangled in her sheets, wearing one of those oversized T-shirts with my band’s name on it.
And I hate that my mind knows exactly how easily I could cross the distance between us.
How easily it would be to sneak into her dark bedroom and beg her for one more night.
Just one more night.
That’s all I need.
I walk over to my backpack slung over the desk chair. I reach in, my hand immediately finding the small zipper on the inside. You wouldn’t know it was there unless you were looking for it—a perfect place to keep the one and only physical memory I have from my night with Emerson.
The scratches on my back faded, the bite mark on my neck too.
I feel the soft fabric between my fingers, closing my fists around Emerson’s underwear as if someone was watching me, hiding it in my grasp.
I close my eyes, remembering how she looked in nothing but that old Cross My Heart T-shirt and this little black thong and how she shoved it out of the way before sinking on my cock, wanting me so bad she didn’t even waste time taking them off.
I don’t even know how they ended up in the bed. Maybe she took them off before we fell asleep, or lost them when she was quickly getting dressed the next morning.
Either way, I couldn’t help myself from taking them, needing something besides my memories to remember the night.
My cock hardens as I remember the night, my body begging for a release that it hasn’t had since then.
I’ve gone years without having sex.
I thought I could do it again after Emerson—especially since her idea of helping me gain my confidence back to start having random hook-ups or whatever she said to convince me that the one night was a good idea—but it just awakened a part of me I thought died a long time ago.
I press against my erection through my pants, hoping to ease some of the pressure, but it only makes things worse when I realize I’m still holding Emerson’s underwear.
It’s the closest thing I have to having her.
And once the thought crosses my mind, I can’t let it go.
Maybe it’s because all the blood that should be in my brain is somewhere else, making it impossible to think about anything except the black fabric in my hand.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I unzip my pants, shove down my briefs, and wrap my hand around my cock. The hand holding Emerson’s thong strokes me from tip to root, the soft material brushing against my sensitive skin.
And then something in me snaps.
I work my hand up and down, picturing myself sliding in and out of her. I lean into the wall, my forehead pressed against my arm as my hips begin to move on their own, fucking into my fist harder and harder until I’m coming all over my nanny’s underwear, biting into my own skin to stifle the groan.