Not just yet.

“Don’t put me through that shit again.” His voice is hoarse. Before I’m able to respond, he continues, “I text you, on the right number this time, and I get nothing back. When I go to your room, a fucking cop is there, and still, nothing from you. And then these fuckers at concierge refuse to tell me what’s going on.”

“I was filling out a police report.” We sit on the couch at the same time, and I accept his hand when he reaches for mine, linking our fingers. I tell him everything that’s happened before and after we met up tonight, leaving out the part about the disastrous double date with Shiner Bock and James. “I honestly didn’t even think to check my phone.”

He brings our hands to his mouth, running his lips across the backs of my knuckles. My chest expands, my muscles relax, and I squeeze his fingers.

“Don’t say sorry, Ky. Just don’t fucking...scare me again.”

Wyatt McCrae. Scared. Something about him admitting that to me tonight—on the night that we’ve agreed would be our last—sends multiple emotions pummeling through me, beating against my heart like a strong fist.

I pull out of his grip and scrub the heels of my palms over my eyes. “God, why do you have to say things like that now?” I drag my hands back, slicking tears through my hair as I push it away from my forehead.  Asking him this makes my thoughts flash back to a string of days and nights we’d spent together a few years back, and for the briefest moment, I let myself relive the memory.

Wyatt had come to me after my brother or Sinjin—I can’t remember which one, not that it matters now—had told him I was sick with a particularly nasty strain of the flu. He’d let himself into my apartment where he found me lying on the couch, and I’d shivered violently as soon as his fingertips made contact with my feverish body. When I finally found the strength to ask him to leave, fearing that he might get sick and be out of commission, he’d swooped me up effortlessly in his arms and taken me back to my bedroom.

“Breaking and entering is illegal,” I had coughed into the front of his tee-shirt shirt. “So get the hell out.”

“You gave me the key, beautiful,” he’d pointed out, holding me closer. “I’m not going anywhere with you feeling like this.”

“I’m not kidding,” I’d argued, each word practically wheezed. “Go home, McCrae, before you catch this crap, and I have to hear Lucas’s mouth about getting you sick.”

“You mean more to me than a goddamn fever,” he’d told me as he dropped me on the bed and then reached for the bottle of Nyquil on the nightstand. “And I don’t give a shit what your brother has to say—never have. I’m not leaving until you’re better, beautiful. And even then I don’t want to go.”

“Why do you have to say things like that now?” I’d asked, causing him to smile. 

“You want me to tell the truth, don’t you? Well, there it was.”

But despite what he’d said, combined with a couple days of feverish sex and cough syrup-induced conversations that blew my mind, the moment my fever broke, he’d bolted without as much as a goodbye. It had taken me a few weeks to convince myself to see him again, and even then, neither one of us had brought up the time he spent at my place while I was sick.

Now, a look of regret, which is quickly replaced by tenderness, flashes in his eyes. “Because it’s true.” He tugs me back to him, cursing. “And don’t do that. I can take tears from anyone but you, Ky.”

“I swear I’m fine.” I feel a little ridiculous...okay, incredibly ridiculous. I’ve never actually cried in front of him because he’s usually not around by the time the letdown kicks in and the waterworks begin. “I just need to go to bed.”

I stand to go join Heidi at the front desk, but he closes his hand around mine. “You’re not sleeping anywhere but with me tonight.”

As much as I want that to happen, as much as I want him, I can’t in good conscience leave my best friend alone. “I should stay with Heidi.”

Wyatt’s blue eyes scan the lobby until they zero in on Heidi. She’s kicked off her stilettos and is leaning against the front desk with her eyebrows pulled together as she signs a receipt. She was lucky. When Finn ditched her in favor of raiding our room, she had her license and bank cards on her. Instead of going directly back to our room, she’d stopped for a pity party shot at the first bar she found. I hate to think of what would have happened if she came straight to The Veranda.

Heidi’s right up there with my parents and Lucas and the band for me, and to think of anyone hurting her makes me feel physically sick.

“I can’t leave her alone, Wyatt,” I say, my voice brimming with so much emotion that he draws his thick eyebrows together.

“I’m going to text Cal.” He reaches into the pocket of his jeans for his phone.

I stop him, grabbing his hand, before he can send the other guitarist a message. “They hate each other.”

The last thing I want is to hear Heidi and Cal bicker, and they’ve been doing it for years, ever since he hurt her feelings by turning her down after a show. A vicious migraine is starting to make my eyes burn, and I doubt listening to them angrily spit out douche bags, hoebots, and fucksticks every few minutes will make it feel any better.

“And?” Wyatt’s smile is cocky and infuriatingly handsome. He shrugs out of my grip, his fingertips skimming mine in the process. He doesn’t seem to care that I’m glaring flame-tipped darts into his forehead as he sends Cal a message. “At least she won’t be alone.”

“Your tenacity is unnerving.”

“I want to do so many fucking things to you when you talk like that.”

“Let me talk to her, okay?” Sighing, I start toward Heidi, turning around to glance back at him a couple times. His eyes follow me, doing a double take when they drag over my ass. He’s probably just now realizing that I’ve not showered or changed since he left me, and knowing Wyatt, it’s probably giving him more ideas. “You shouldn’t look at me like that,” I hiss over my shoulder.

“Why the hell not?” he drawls. Running the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip, he gives me a confident smirk. “Trust me, she’ll say yes.”

I turn to face Heidi, whispering under my breath, “We’ll see.”

But, in the end, Wyatt is right. Heidi feels like she’s screwed up my night enough, so she doesn’t want to ruin what I had planned. Without so much as an eye roll, she quickly agrees to sleep on the extra queen bed in Cal’s room.

Wyatt and I go with her to grab her bags...well, bag because that’s all that’s left of her designer suitcases in our room. Most of my luggage is still there, and I pack my remaining belongings quickly. When Wyatt excuses himself to return to his suite, taking my stuff with him, I walk with Heidi to Cal’s room on the sixth floor.

On the third knock, Cal flings open the door, wearing nothing but a towel. A toothbrush is in his mouth, and his black hair is clinging to his damp shoulders. Leaning against the door frame, he gives Heidi a head to toe once-over. While under his scrutiny, I feel her fidget beside me.

Through a mouthful of toothpaste, he says, “Your mascara looks like shit.”

And here we go.

Heidi sneers. “I’m only staying with you because I love Kylie, limp dick.” She shoves past him, snapping the towel away from his waist in the process.

I’ve been on the road with the guys so much that there’s nothing I haven’t seen, but I still cover my eyes, feeling heat creep up my neck.

He chokes on the toothpaste and garbles something.

I’m laughing as I back away from the door. After the night I’ve had, it feels good to laugh. “Good night, y’all.”

Cal is still coughing when I begin to head down the hallway, but before I hear his door close, he says in a clear enough voice, “Bet you’re not going to try your small-dick-phone-sex humiliation shit on me now.”