33. Mateo
MATEO
The way I pretended to be all relaxed and indifferent when I found Emerson on the other side of my door this morning deserves an Oscar.
It might have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
When I heard the knock on my door, I was already pacing on the other side of it, spiraling about what I was going to do.
I wanted to confront her—demand she explain how she thought sending me a video of her coming all over my pillow minutes before I had to be on stage was appropriate.
I wanted to bend her over my knee and spank her until her ass was red with my handprint—the little brat move of hers causing me to almost forget the opening lyrics to our first song.
It took me at least half our set to rein in my thoughts—and my fucking hard-on.
But worst of all, I wanted to ask her what this means.
Does this mean the “one night” wasn’t enough for her either?
But I knew asking her any of this wouldn’t get me the answer I want.
Emerson isn’t one to tell someone what they want to hear—and I can’t imagine I have the same effect on her as she does on me.
Then again, I did get her to crack first.
I don’t know what her intentions were when she came to my hotel room this morning, but I can only assume it was to pull some sort of reaction out of me.
“And for you?” the barista behind the counter asks me. The second our eyes meet, recognition flashes across her face. Not the I-know-you-from-somewhere kind. The holy shit, that's Mateo Lane from Cross My Heart kind. Her smile brightens instantly.
“Americano too, please. Hot, though.” I pull my wallet from my back pocket and hand over my card.
The barista's fingers brush mine as she takes it.
“Love the newest album, by the way,” she says, trying—and failing—to sound casual.
I offer her the smile I've perfected over years of these interactions. Warm enough to be polite. Not warm enough to be mistaken for interest.
Especially since we haven’t released an album in almost two years.
“Thank you.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Emerson watching the exchange.
The tight set of her mouth nearly makes me grin.
The barista hands back my card a second slower than necessary, just as another barista sets our coffees down on the counter. “Enjoy your coffee.”
“Thanks,” I offer, grabbing the cups and handing Emerson hers.
“We will,” she says with a saccharine smile, but there is nothing sweet about it.
I turn to her as we step away from the register, finding an open table near the window.
“Enjoy your coffee,” she mocks, her voice going an octave higher than usual. “I’m literally standing right next to you.”
“And?” I take a sip of my coffee, pulling out her chair before sitting down in mine. She looks from the chair to me, rolling her eyes before she sits down.
“She was trying to flirt with you.”
“Like I said, and?”
She groans, but I don’t know if she’s more annoyed with me or with herself. “And I was standing right there. She’s just going to blatantly drool over you right in front of me?”
And there it is. Jealousy.
Tiny. Barely there.
But enough to send an embarrassingly satisfying warmth through my chest.
Emerson is usually impossible to rattle. She's the one with a smartass comment always loaded and ready to fire. The one who never hesitates to poke fun at me when I'm the one stumbling over my words or saying something stupid.
Most days, I'm the easy target.
Not her.
Which is exactly why watching her get flustered is so damn entertaining.
My lips part with a small scoff. “That's what you took from that interaction?”
“Whatever,” she says, swiping her bangs from her eyes, just for them to fall back exactly where they were. “It doesn’t even matter.”
I laugh. “Right.”
Her eyes narrow. “It’s not like I’m your girlfriend. I’m your nanny.”
The second the words leave her mouth, her expression pinches.
There she is.
Not the confident woman who always seems three steps ahead of me. Not the one who can level me with a look and leave me scrambling to recover.
This is a side to her I haven’t seen—and one I could definitely get used to.
Flustered.
Human.
Cute as hell.
I lift a brow. “My what?”
She slaps a hand against her forehead with a groan. “Your son’s nanny,” she grits through her teeth.
How the tables have turned.
For months, she's watched me make an idiot out of myself around her. She's watched me stumble, overthink, and recover poorly.
It's nice to know I'm not the only one affected.
My lips part to say as much before she lifts a hand, cutting me off. “Don't start,” she mutters.
Setting my coffee down on the table, I hold my hands up in surrender. “I didn't say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“Maybe,” I argue.
“Mateo.”
I can't help my smile.
Half an hour ago, she'd been pretending she didn't want to spend time with me.
Now she's annoyed because another woman recognized me.
I'll take that as a win.
“Maybe I should’ve knocked on Liam’s door this morning.”
My smile immediately drops, only for hers to turn lethal.
Well, we can’t all be winners.
By the time we finish our coffees, we've somehow wandered three blocks from the café, going back and forth, each of us testing the other's defenses and looking for cracks—toeing the line just enough to knock the other off balance.
Emerson points out every person on the street who does a double-take when they recognize me, asking if I want her to start carrying around a Sharpie or two for autograph emergencies. I retaliate by reminding her that someone gets a little territorial.
She insists she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
I insist I do.
We drift in and out of little shops as we walk through the city. Emerson disappears into a bookstore for nearly twenty minutes, emerging with two novels tucked under her arm and a third she swears she didn't just buy because the cover was pretty.
I follow her into a vintage record store and endure ten minutes of her making fun of my own albums sitting in the rock section. "Do you think they put these here because they're good?" she asks, holding one up. "Or because they needed something to prop up the shelf?"
I almost leave her there.
Instead, I buy the record and make her carry it.
Between the teasing, conversation comes easier than it should.
We talk about Crew. About the tour. About the cities I've liked and the ones I haven't.
She tells me stories from working at the coffee shop I'd never heard before, and I find myself asking questions just to keep her talking. She tells me all about her friends, Rumi and Ava, and about her brother Jack and Ava’s husband, who I learn is the same Anderson who led the Survive Alive House event that day at the station.
At some point, I realize neither of us has checked the time. And it’s been hours.
Neither of us seems in any hurry to go back to the hotel.
The jabs keep coming, but they've lost their edge, settling into something comfortable.
The kind of banter that starts to feel less like sparring and more like an excuse to keep the conversation going.
“Do you plan on going back to Hey Honey’s after tour?” I ask her, her shopping bags from the bookstore and the record store swinging in my hand.
She nods, her hands in her pockets as she matches her steps with mine. “Probably,” she answers, her gaze a few feet in front of her boots. “I also do freelance character designs and book covers for authors, so I’ll probably start that back up again too.”
“You don’t sound too excited about that,” I prompt, wondering why she seems so reluctant to return back to her life before she started nannying for Crew.
She shrugs, but she doesn’t say anything until we stop at an intersection, waiting for our turn to cross. “I may not want kids of my own, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to miss that kid of yours.”
It takes everything I have to keep my features schooled. Details about Emerson for me are like drops of water to a man who has been walking the desert. I can’t get enough, savoring each one since I have no idea when I’ll get another.
“You don’t want kids?” I ask, trying to sound nonchalant, like I’m just making conversation.
I told her how I was one-and-done with Crew that night on the tour bus, and I had an inkling this was the case for her, especially after her reaction—her relief—to hearing I had a vasectomy, but there was no way for me to know for sure without her explicitly saying the words.
Emerson shakes her head as the cars in the road begin to slow to a stop and the small crowd around us starts inching towards the street. “Not in the cards for me,” she answers. “Pregnancy scares the shit out of me, and, honestly, I just don’t want to be a mother.”
She steps down from the curb, and I keep my steps in time with hers as we cross the intersection, letting her words land.
I’ve seen the way Emerson is with Crew. How instinctual, how thoughtful, how nurturing she is. And while she may be all of those things, it’s not my place to judge someone’s choice on whether or not they want to be a mother.
I’m just grateful she’s sharing this piece of herself with me.
And I want to tell her that.
“What comes next for you?” she offers. “I’m sure you’re dying to say goodbye to this rockstar way of living and become,” she pauses, holding her hand up to cup around her mouth, leaning in to whisper, “a regular person.”
A chuckle escapes my lips, even though I know she’s just trying to change the trajectory of the conversation because it’s gotten too close to something she doesn’t want to talk about.
I decide to let her, offering my own reluctance for returning to real-life instead. “I’m more scared than anything else.”
“How come?” she asks, our gazes still out in front of us as we walk down the snowy sidewalk.
I sigh, the feelings I’ve been holding onto for the last year begging to be unloaded, just so they stop feeling so heavy. “I don’t really know who I am without Cross My Heart.”
Emerson lets the words hang between us for a moment. “I’d argue you’re still Mateo Lane.”
“Thank you, Emerson. You know, that really helps.”
She bumps my shoulder again with hers, and my entire body warms at the contact.
“Seriously,” she says, “you’ll always have Cross My Heart. Just because you aren’t touring or making new music doesn’t mean that part of your life is over.”
“I think I’m okay with it being over,” I admit, having realized these last few months that our time together as a band is finding its natural end, and I have to be okay with that. “It’s more that I don’t know what comes next.”
“Well, what do you want to do next?”
I shake my head as we turn a corner, the coffee shop we started at this morning coming into view.
"I don't know. I'm almost forty, and Crew starts kindergarten this fall."
The words feel strange coming out of my mouth.
For so long, everything in my life revolved around tour schedules, recording sessions, and release dates. My calendar was planned months—sometimes years—in advance.
Now, the thing I look forward to most is walking my son to school.
A year ago, that thought would've terrified me.
Now it doesn't.
That's the problem.
Because I can picture it. I can picture being home. I can picture coaching Little League, helping with homework, and sleeping in my own bed more often than not. I can picture family dinners and school recitals and all the ordinary things I've spent years missing.
And I want those things.
I want them more than I want another tour.
But there's still something that won't settle.
"I don't think I'm scared of the band ending," I admit.
Emerson glances over at me.
"I think I'm scared of..." I trail off, searching for the right words. "Not mattering the same way."
The confession feels embarrassingly honest.
I shove my hands deeper into my pockets.
"That sounds incredibly arrogant when I say it out loud."
"You’re hot enough to pull it off."
I look over at her, my lips curving. "Have I told you how good you are for a man’s ego?”
She winks at me. “Once or twice.”
I let out a laugh that turns into a sigh.
"It’s just,” I start, trying to turn all these feelings into words I can explain.
“There were people who came to our shows and told me our music got them through the hardest parts of their lives.
Divorces, addiction, losing loved ones, depression, and other mental health issues.
" My throat tightens. "People would wait for hours just to tell us that one song changed their life, or made them feel a little less alone.”
Emerson's expression softens, a knowing look on her face, and I remember what she told Crew—about how she listens to our music when she misses her mom, and how I overheard the lyrics she had playing in her headphones while she was sleeping.
"I'm not saying I saved anybody. I know how ridiculous that sounds.”
"It doesn't sound ridiculous,” she says.
I swallow. "I just..." I stare down the sidewalk ahead of us. "I liked being part of something that helped people. Even in a small way."
The words finally click into place.
That's what I've been grieving.
Not the tours.
Not the fame.
Not even the music.
The purpose.
The feeling that what I was doing mattered to someone. That what I was doing had an impact. Made a difference.
For a moment, Emerson is quiet.
Then she says, "My brother mentioned they're looking for volunteers at the fire station."
I bark out a laugh. "What?”
"I'm serious."
I glance at her.
"The volunteer program. They're always looking for people."
"Emerson, I don't think fighting fires at forty is my next career move."
She shrugs.
"I'm just saying there are a lot of ways to help people."
The comment should roll right off me.
Instead, something catches.
A memory.
You can be the singing firefighter.
Crew’s words echo in my mind for a moment, making me wonder if this is the answer I’ve been looking for.
All I want is to be a man my son can be proud of.
And that’s starting not to feel so impossible anymore.