Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Seth
IT’S SO HARD TO hang back while the entire band goes out to greet their fans. Screaming washes into the greenroom every time one of them leaves, but I resolutely keep my head down, refusing to look up when only Jacob remains. Then he’s gone, out of my hands, and I simply have to trust that everything will be okay.
I’ve never been a very trusting guy.
Every instinct screams at me to check on things. Whenever the noise from the crowd shifts, I tense, my whole body preparing for the inevitable moment when something goes wrong and I need to leap into action.
I force myself to stay seated. Ryan is out there, and he’s got this. I hired him on the belief that he could do this, and it’s time to let him prove me right. Paranoia has no say in the matter.
Besides, he isn’t compromised the way I am. Clearly, I can’t trust myself to handle anything that has to do with Jacob. Twice now I’ve let what should have been part of my job spiral into something far more intimate, something wholly inappropriate. That’s two times too many, two times more than I ever should have allowed, two failures I can’t accept. It doesn’t matter if Jacob thinks it’s no big deal. He doesn’t understand what he does to me, the way I lose control around him. I can’t protect him or anyone else if merely standing in his presence clouds my mind and raises my heart rate.
Shame sizzles through me like fire crackers in my veins. I have to be here, but all I want to do is run. It’s just this one time, I remind myself. Once Ryan takes care of this simple meet and greet, I will be able to hand the reins over to him and fall into the background while I fill out the rest of the team. Ceding my place beside Jacob stings, but not as badly as my own horror at the way I’ve allowed desire to impair my judgment.
So I sit. And wait. And try to stop bouncing my leg as the crowd screams about something.
Levi returns first, relief washing through his face the moment he slips into the greenroom. He flops onto a couch. It’s the only furniture other than the stool I perch on, and Dan joins him on it after only a moment. They sink into the cushions with a sigh, their faces paler than usual and eyes glassy with exhaustion. Meeting a horde of fans is going to wring a lot out of these guys, even the more extroverted ones. They haven’t yet adjusted to all the changes upending their lives, but there’s nothing me or Ryan or anyone else can do about that. We can protect them physically, but the band will have to help each other when it comes to the mental and emotional toll that stardom brings.
“How’d it go?” I ask, definitely not fishing for information. My brain certainly isn’t whirling, trying to fill in the details of all the parts I didn’t witness, trying to imagine how Jacob fared through every second of this.
“Good,” Levi says.
Dan grunts and sinks deeper into the couch. His phone pings, and he digs it out of his pocket. Whatever he finds on it causes a flicker of a smile, there and gone like a flash of lightning.
“Emmett wants to know how it went,” he says.
“Ugh, you call him,” Levi says. “You’re better at talking to him.”
“Not really,” Dan mutters, but he doesn’t try any harder than that to deny it.
Keannen comes bounding in next. He looks a lot more alive than the other two as he flops onto the couch between them and flings an arm around both.
“You survived,” he says. “Great job, guys.”
“Shut up, Keannen,” Levi says, but it lacks any bite. He doesn’t even shrug Keannen’s arm off, instead leaning into the familiar comfort of his bandmate.
I tense when a fourth person enters the greenroom, but it’s still not Jacob. Shawn isn’t quite as dead as Levi and Dan, but neither is he as alive as Keannen. He tucks himself into the far edge of the couch, sighing as he settles on the cushions.
That leaves only more person. It makes sense for Jacob to be last, but that does nothing to settle my churning stomach. He went out last, and I’m fairly confident he sat at the far end of the table. Plus, he was clearly the most popular target of the fans waiting out there. It stands to reason he would return last as well. It is completely, totally normal, yet every second that ticks by without delivering him into the greenroom plunks into my stomach like a Mentos into a bottle of soda. I’m bubbling and gurgling, prickling anxiety boiling up inside me until I can barely keep myself on the stool.
Then Keannen says, “Hey, where’s Jacob?”
A charged silence sweeps through the room. The other members of the band look around like they forgot about him until Keannen spoke up.
“Wasn’t he right behind you, Shawn?” Levi says.
“He was sitting next to me,” Shawn says. “When I got up to leave I assumed he followed me.”
My control snaps like dental floss trying to leash a rabid dog. One string breaks every second, until a single fragile thread is all that keeps me from sprinting out of the greenroom.
“There’s no one else out there, is there?” I ask. I hope I sound normal. I think I sound normal. I can’t tell anymore.
“Just us and Ryan,” Shawn says. “All the fans were gone.”
Then Jacob is safe. He must be safe. If he’s with Ryan, he’s safe. If I keep repeating that, maybe I’ll believe it some day.
“It is kind of weird though,” Shawn mutters to himself.
That’s it. I can’t take it anymore. The note of doubt in Shawn’s voice breaks the final thread of my self-control like a bull stampeding through it.
I storm out of the greenroom without another word. I meet an empty room, and my nerves are so raw, my body so tensed for action, that that throws me for moment.
Then I spot them.
Jacob stands in front of the table where the band did their signing. Ryan is with him, but something about the image is all wrong. Ryan has his arm around his charge in a gesture that’s far too familiar. It’s more like a fan hugging him than a bodyguard protecting him. As I watch with gathering horror, Jacob pushes at the larger man, struggling to get away from him while Ryan holds him even tighter.
Any tenuous hold I had on coherent thought abandons me at last. It’s almost a relief. My body swings into action, all those restrained instincts roaring to the fore like hounds let off the leash. They caught the scent of wrongness long before I did, but I held them back in the name of replacing myself on the security team, removing myself as a conflict, doing the thing I’m supposed to be doing.
I was wrong.
I was so incredibly wrong.
This is where I belong, charging after Jacob, rushing in to protect him, barreling to his side. I reach him in only a couple steps and grab his assailant. Ryan might be a big guy, but I’m even bigger — and I’m highly motivated.
I wrench his arm off of Jacob and throw him back so hard that he clatters into the table. The whole thing shakes, and Ryan’s eyes go wide with shock. He almost looks sorry for a second, but that does nothing to cool the rage roaring inside me. I shove Ryan back, both palms slapping against his chest. The table clatters backward. Ryan stumbles, nearly tumbling over it. I haven’t given him a second to catch his breath and retaliate, and I don’t intend to. I snatch his shirt in one hand and cock my arm back, hand curling into a fist.
There is going to be blood involved in this.
Fury condenses in my clenched fist, like I’m hiding fire in my palm. It burns down my arm, tensing every muscle.
Then a hand grabs my wrist.
“Don’t,” Jacob says. “Don’t do it. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
The anger deflates, though a sparking remnant of it crackles in my blood. I don’t lower my arm, but some of the tension raging inside me quiets when I glance aside at Jacob. The pleading look in those soft hazel eyes knocks me back from the edge I stood on only a second ago. I don’t release Ryan, however. The bastard isn’t going anywhere until I know exactly what happened here.
“Explain,” I snarl at my new hire.
“I just wanted a picture,” Ryan says. “It’s a misunderstanding.”
I look to Jacob for confirmation, but he won’t meet my eyes. That’s answer enough. Whatever this was, it wasn’t “just a picture.” No one grabs someone like that to take a picture. Jacob’s cringing, terrified posture says it all.
I finally lower my arm, though I clutch Ryan’s shirt even more tightly, like I’m keeping a snarling dog on a tight leash. I address Jacob as though Ryan isn’t in the room.
“Are you okay?”
He nods. “I’m fine. Really.”
He sounds shaky, but I’m not going to push it, not right now, not with Jacob’s eyes on the floor and his shoulders hunched. A dagger stabs through my heart. He should never look this way, and it’s all my fault that he does. After weeks of dithering over applications, this is the guy I chose to hire. I put Ryan in charge of the meet and greet. I told everyone he was safe, that he could replace me as their bodyguard. How did I miss all the signs and let someone like this get anywhere near Jacob?
Before I can apologize, the rest of the band floods out of the greenroom. There are shouts and gasps as they take in Jacob’s scared hunching and my grip on Ryan. Jacob attempts to explain, and before I know it the rest of the band is bundling him away. He looks over his shoulder one time, catching my eyes as his friends drag him off to safety. I can’t return the look. Shame turns my gaze back to Ryan, who puts up his hands in surrender when he sees the look on my face. He’ll get more mercy than he deserves. As much as I want to murder him, I’m even more angry at myself.
“You’re done,” I say.
“It was just a picture.”
“No. You’re through, understand? And if you utter another word, you’ll wish I only fired you.”
He claps his mouth shut, nodding this time instead of daring to answer. I haul him by the shirt out of the meet and greet room. The band is in the greenroom, sheltering Jacob. I catch only a glimpse of them huddled around Jacob before I drag Ryan outside and all but throw him into his car, snarling at him to get out of here before I decide to make this worse for him. He goes, but so do I the second his car disappears. I can’t bear to stay here and face that look on Jacob’s face one more time.
I’m supposed to protect him, but so far I’ve failed in that duty in every possible way. If I’m not touching him, undressing him, drinking up his moans in the dark, then I’m placing him in harm’s way. I can’t be the knight in shining armor he envisions, and if I keep trying, someone like Ryan might hurt him before I can stop it.
I only have one choice if I truly care about Jacob.
I can’t be the one protecting him.