8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Tyler
I unpacked the last of my things into the drawer closest to my bunk. I shared the space with a rotation of bus drivers who might need a break or a place to sleep, and Pasha, the preferred bodyguard. Men and women didn’t share buses on Mia’s tour, and he and a few other bodyguards were the only male crew members. When I’d raised my eyebrows and opened my mouth to question the gender balance, Laura had said it was merely a coincidence they hired so many women to work the jobs. Those women just happened to be the most qualified.
I’d nodded, as though her reasoning made complete sense. In Little Falls, smart, capable women surrounded and abounded. There was no doubt the women on the crew could be the most qualified. But I wasn’t convinced that was the reason women were hired in such large numbers. The imbalance didn’t bother me. I liked women; I liked puzzles. At some point, I’d figure out their reasoning.
The ring of the doorbell made me jump, and then I grinned. The last tour I’d been on hadn’t been anywhere near this level. A doorbell on a bus . Already the things I didn’t know or understand were piling up. I wasn’t sure I would be able to pretend I’d done this job before for Sarah Telling. Her shows were just as huge. I wandered through the small sitting room to the front entrance and pressed the button to release the doors .
Mia was at the bottom of the stairs, dark glasses concealing half her face. She climbed the stairs, and I stepped back so she could pass. Surprise flickered. When we crossed paths at the stadium after her sound check, I’d teased her. Or maybe I was flirting, even if it wasn’t wise. Whatever it had been, it pissed her off. Her reaction had reminded me why I found her so attractive the night we slept together. The fire raging inside of her ignited an answering flame in me.
“I asked Taryn to get me some time with you before the show tonight. She said she would.” Her fingers touched the arm of her sunglasses, but she didn’t remove them. When her hand lowered, it shook.
With a frown, I searched her face. The confidence she’d shown at the stadium was gone, replaced by a girl folding in, closing up.
“You okay?” I couldn’t tell if she was meeting my gaze behind the dark glasses or averting it.
“Sure.” She touched the edge of her glasses again without taking them off. “Fine. Great, even.”
“Hey.” I closed the distance and gently removed her glasses. She turned her face away, but she didn’t stop me from taking her shield. “Never to each other.”
“ You can’t lie. I can do whatever I want.” Her blue-green eyes hardened when our gazes met.
For a moment, I let her stare me down, but I didn’t back away or break eye contact. Just like when she came to Little Falls, I didn’t think she wanted to lie to me. Her anger, like the sunglasses, was armor. After sound check, she’d been annoyed, whether it was my presence or my reliance on her mother, I wasn’t sure. The sharpness in her tone wasn’t the same right now. Something had brought her here. “You’re upset. You didn’t come to tell me Taryn would give me time with you later. What happened?”
“I should go.” She snatched her sunglasses out of my hand, but I gripped her bicep, holding her in place when she tried to flee. “Coming here was stupid.”
My lips were close to her ear when I said, “Talk to me, Mia. I want to help.” I couldn’t get the sight of her trembling hand off my mind. “If someone hurt you—” Each time she breathed out, I caught a whiff of lemon and ginger. Those scents shouldn’t turn me on, and yet they were. Another thread of protectiveness stitched between us. Whether she liked it or not, we were a unit; and if someone hurt her, I’d find a way to make them regret it.
A shudder rocked her tiny frame, and she closed her eyes. “You can’t help. I don’t know why I came.” She tugged her bicep out of my grasp and moved toward the door. “I’ll walk you through the costume changes in a couple hours when I get back. Don’t ask anyone else.” Slipping her glasses back on her face, she pressed the button to open the doors and clomped down the stairs.
I watched her descent with a mixture of frustration and heartache. Had I pushed too hard? Maybe the trick was to say less, hold back, let her take the lead. The way her hand had shaken, the tiniest wobble of her chin, as though she was on the verge of a breakdown, had made me want to pull the information out of her and tear apart whoever had shifted her sense of self so completely. A few hours ago, she’d been my mini dictator. I didn’t know who’d shown up in my bus just now, but Mia felt like a woman split in two. She was a real-life mimosa pudica: a confident flower in bloom one minute, and closed-up, protecting herself from predators the next .
Grady had warned me she was, if not unstable, then unpredictable. Maybe this seesaw behavior was normal. Was her life full of high highs and low lows? I couldn’t imagine anything worse.
I tugged the sparkly outfit up Mia’s slight body, and when our gazes met, she grinned. “Pretty great, right?”
“You’re killing it, Mini.” I returned her grin. Would she get the reference? I’d worked it in a few times tonight during my first concert backstage, but she’d ignored it.
“I’m starting to think you’ve forgotten my name.” Mia’s eyes danced with amusement while the stylist rapidly worked Mia’s locks into a complicated braid. All of this was happening on the fly while the applause from the crowd roared around us.
“I remember.” The look in her eyes when our gazes met again made me wish I could subtly readjust my pants. No chance of that with the crew hovering. Someone would notice. Even this exchange was dangerous. “Mini suits you better.”
“I’ll let my mother know she got my name wrong,” Mia drawled over her shoulder just before a technician led her away.
The night had flown by in a blur of costume changes for her and her dancers. Backstage had been nonstop action, and I hoped I hadn’t screwed up. True to her word, she’d taken me through the whole routine in a dull and professional session when she’d gotten back from wherever she’d gone. I didn’t know if her monotone approach had been for the benefit of her mother who’d overseen it or for me. God forbid anyone suspect she gave a shit about something or someone.
I’d gone back to my bus and written out each change based on the set list she gave and then I cross-referenced it with the costumes’ racks. There’d been one literal snag when one of Mia’s sequins caught on my watch during a rapid change. We’d had to rip it off. I wouldn’t make that mistake a second time, and I was already trying to recall where I’d seen the spare sequins. This outfit was the last of the night. Encore number two called for her to drop from the ceiling in a silver sequined one-piece. She started the show descending from the rafters, so my heart shouldn’t be pounding so hard in my chest. Laura’s tirade about safety while she led me around the tour earlier made more sense after seeing the show from start to finish. Mia did some dangerous shit.
Mia’s heels clacked along the stage floor in a rapid staccato that matched my heart. The technician who’d led her away clipped her into a harness and yanked on all the connections. That was it? A couple rough tugs and those ropes were supposed to hold her? My heart kicked. I’d been so busy at the start of the show I missed this part.
From the side of the stage, the lights blazed on Mia, suspended, the attachments for the harness making her look like a butterfly. The crowd exploded with screams and clapping before all the lights went out. Then, as the beat to her most famous song started, the crowd lit up, their LED bracelets and crowns synched to the music. Each flash of the stage lights showed Mia closer to the ground. A spectacle of the best kind.
I crossed my arms and absorbed the energy from the crowd, the stage, the night itself. There was no way this feeling could ever become routine. Did Mia feed off this the same way I was? After almost two hours, I couldn’t believe the amount of energy she was still exuding on stage. Every dance step was precise. She adjusted the notes to the songs higher or lower based on her breath control, which she’d told me the night I fixed her costume. She’d been unbelievable that night, too, but on a much smaller, more intimate, scale.
“Incredible, right?” Laura’s lips were a hair’s breadth from my ear.
“That’s one word.” I didn’t turn my head, content to watch Mia dazzle the crowd, dazzle me.
“Was Sarah Telling’s show this good?”
“She was great. Not like this. But great.” The lie sprang out with no conscious thought. Vague. Complimentary. If Laura brought out details of Sarah’s tour, whichever one I supposedly worked on, I’d be screwed. There was only so much I could fake.
The lights went out, and the crowd burst into applause and whistles. I made out Mia’s shape as she appeared beside me. On her toes, her lips brushed my ear.
“A bucket or a lollipop. My stomach is fucking rioting.”
Out of my pocket, I produced the lemon-ginger one she favored and ripped off the wrapper in one quick motion. Her sigh was audible as she popped it into her mouth.
“Is that a lollipop?” Laura’s frown was clear in her voice.
“Yep! Sugar, Mom. Can you believe it?” Mia drew a finger down her cheek. “I can feel a line forming on my face already from the toxic effects.”
“Empty calories.”
“I got news for you, Mom. I’m going to be consuming more empty calories at the bar later. You know, the appearance you arranged for me? Gotta decompress somehow.”
“A bar?” I frowned and scanned Mia’s face. That sounded like the last place she needed to be .
“Sure. After about—” She grabbed my wrist to check the time. “Two or three hours of meet and greets. They paid out the ass for a photo and a few minutes of my time. Right, Mom?”
Through clenched teeth, Laura pushed out, “You told me yesterday you wanted a break. I’m not a magician. When you cancel, you disappoint. Let’s just get through the tour as it is, and we’ll go from there.”
I rocked back on my heels, surprised Mia had already broached the break with Laura. I opened my mouth to say something, to support Mia, but I couldn’t. We weren’t supposed to know each other. Truthfully, we didn’t know each other, despite our deal.
“Clasp all that money a little tighter. A dollar might slip out.” Mia mocked.
“Take care of the dollars, and the millions take care of themselves.” Laura’s reply was breezy.
Not quite how that phrase went. But I supposed they were beyond counting pennies. They’d have lots of money, wouldn’t they? I couldn’t understand why her mother would be so worried.
Laura turned to me. “I know you need to sort out everything here and repair that snagged costume. Though, I think we have like six of them somewhere for when this happens. Anyway, when you’re organized, did you want to grab a coffee?” Her voice went up at the end, full of hope, the opposite of the bold bitterness running between her and Mia.
“He can’t.” Mia took the lollipop out of her cheek, went pale, and stuck it back in. “He’s coming with me.”
“Excuse me?” Laura frowned and crossed her arms.
“It’s his first night on the tour. I’m going to take him out, show him the sites. He’s thirty-five, not thirty-nine. He’s not going to want to go on a coffee date at midnight when he can mingle with hot dancers and do body shots in the VIP area.”
Her mother flushed. “He doesn’t exactly seem like the body shot type.” She gestured toward me, flustered.
Mia raised one eyebrow. “Which means he’s not likely to be your type.” She shifted her weight in my direction. We both knew I had no problem with body shots. I’d done some off of her the night we’d slept together. “Did you want to fuck my mother, Tyler? Cause that’s where we’re heading here.”
I rubbed my hand down my face, trying to decide if I was angry, annoyed, or amused by this pissing contest. I’d never seen a mother-daughter relationship like this.
“Mia, don’t be rude.” Laura grabbed her daughter’s upper arm and practically dragged her along with her toward the dressing rooms. “We need to get started on the meet and greets.”
“Two hours, Pretty Boy,” Mia called over her shoulder.
As soon as Mia was at the top of the stairs dressed in a sparkly blue mini dress, her exhaustion was palpable. It was almost two o’clock in the morning, and I’d had to have coffee at midnight by myself to keep from falling asleep. The last thing I wanted to do was go to a club for body shots.
“You got your good underwear on? I’m pretty sure I can get you laid.” She crossed her arms and cocked out a hip, another lollipop lodged in her cheek .
“You’re obviously not feeling well. Why are you going out?” I shook my head, ignoring her comment.
“Because I’m paid to appear. Thousands of dollars to show up. They’ll have advertised it. Some of those people who took photos and shook my hand at the VIP already mentioned they were going because I’d be there. Everyone wants a piece of me. The bigger Mia Malone gets, the more pieces they want to take.” With her hands, she mocked chipping away at some unknown shape. She took the fake fragment from the block and rubbed it all over her. “They want to figure out how to get some of this shine on them.”
“Seems logical.” My voice oozed sarcasm.
“Does it? Most of the time, I think it’s pathetic, sad. My mother would say it’s because I didn’t spend enough time wanting what I have to be able to appreciate it.”
“And what do you think?”
“She’s probably right, but I’d never, ever say it to her face.”
“Why not?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Mia shifted her gaze toward the windows and shrugged her shoulders. “Are you ready? I want to get this over with so I can come home and either collapse or puke my guts out. I’m barely holding it together.”
I rubbed my index finger along my forehead. For the last few hours, I’d been debating whether the potential conflict was worth saying anything. Better if I spoke up. The comment she’d made earlier to her mother about consuming more empty calories to unwind was stuck in my head. I couldn’t let it slide. “You know you can’t drink, right? Or do any other drugs? ”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Her eyes bulged out of their sockets, and she puffed out her cheeks. “You’re not my boyfriend. You’re not my dad. You’re going to lecture me?”
Pasha’s head popped over the edge of the bus stairs, and he frowned. Hopefully, her voice wasn’t drifting outside to other people.
“That wasn’t a lecture. It was two questions. And you’re right, I’m not your boyfriend or your dad. But I am someone’s dad, and my job is to look out for that someone.” I pointed to her stomach, annoyance zipping through me.
“On second thought, you’re not coming with me.” Mia whirled around, her dark hair flying. “I don’t need another person looking over my shoulder telling me what I can and can’t do.” She turned back, her blue-green eyes blazing. “You want to stay on this tour? Know your place. I’m not an idiot, okay? Don’t be a dick.” She clomped down the stairs and exited the bus before I could get my thoughts together.
God, she was so flipping frustrating. The worst part was my inability to decide which version of her I liked best. Most of them were infuriating. Made me clench my teeth to keep from losing my temper. But my blood pumped, hot and thick in my veins. Whether I liked it or not, being around her was the most alive I’d felt in years.