Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
As she turned the corner at the end of the hallway, looking for Dani, Max almost ran into her.
“Oh! There you are. Dani is looking for you. Have you seen Ian?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen him.” And right then, another question got its answer. The image? It stuck. She would always remember what Ian looked like naked, just like so many men walked around with clear memories of Jersey naked and vulnerable.
Max chuckled. “Okay … where? Is he in the green room? I hope he’s getting dressed.”
“He is.” Jersey nodded slowly, chewing the inside of her cheek as what just happened started to fully come to life in the part of her brain that wasn’t fucked up from an unspeakable past.
Ian did that for her. No questions asked. Why? Why did he do that?
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Charleston.
Atlanta.
Nashville.
Birmingham.
Indianapolis.
Detroit.
The following weeks flew by. Ian Cooper put on unforgettable concerts. Jersey didn’t see much of them, but she heard them—or more accurately, she heard thousands of screaming fans. After they ended, she wasn’t beckoned to the green room or an SUV behind the building. She helped tear down the pop-up merchandise stands, gorged on food catered to the crew, and looked for Chris. But she rarely found him in the mix of local crew and Ian’s traveling crew bustling to get everything taken down, packed up, and on the road.
Chris traveled by bus. She traveled by plane. Ian treated her well, like a friend. So did Max, Shane, Rex, and Ian’s bandmates. Since the stripping incident, Ian kept a safe distance from Jersey or at least made sure they were rarely alone together.
Max did nice things for Jersey, but she had no idea if they were Max’s ideas or Ian’s generosity—like the trip to the hair salon before the last concert. Jersey acted like she didn’t care if she got a haircut, but there were no words to describe the feeling of someone washing her hair, cutting it measured and carefully, instead of the way Jersey had occasionally butchered her own hair over the years with dull scissors.
“Ready?”
Jersey turned toward Max just as Dani finished telling a story about her drunkenness from the previous night. Just because Ian wasn’t a partier didn’t mean his crew ran a sober ship after hours.
“Yeah.” Jersey followed Max toward the exit.
“Yo, Jersey?” Dani called. “I heard a rumor that you’ve been flying with Ian all this time, and that’s why we never see you on the buses. That’s fucking crazy, right? I mean … are you holding out on your girl?”
She wasn’t sure when Dani became her girl, but Jersey agreed with her about the first part. “Yeah,” she nodded and kept walking, “it’s fucking crazy alright.”
Shane drove them to the airport. They weren’t staying the night in Detroit. They were heading straight to Chicago.
“I’m so damn tired.” Max climbed the stairs to the plane with Jersey right behind her and Shane bringing up the rear.
Jersey stopped just inside the jet. Shane stored her bag in the bin above her head to the right and folded his large body into the seat on the opposite side of the aisle as Max. A closed curtain divided their seats from the other two seats and the sofa in the back of the plane. She had never seen the curtain closed.
“Go on back,” Max muttered on a big yawn as she stretched her legs out on the seat in front of her. “If he didn’t want you back there, you’d be on a bus right now.”
Was that true? Did Ian really want her there? He had a weird way of showing it.
Weeks of traveling with the star, but why? Naked Ian consumed her thoughts. Every perfectly defined inch of his body. Yet, he treated her like a friend, a sister. Not like the woman who asked him to strip for her. It was like it never happened.
“We’re taking off. What’s it going to be?” Shane nodded to the seat facing him.
Jersey collapsed into that seat and fastened her seat belt, gripping the armrests as they took off. Shane closed his eyes like the force of the plane didn’t affect him, and it probably didn’t. He’d done it hundreds of times.
Once the plane leveled out, and Jersey felt convinced that Shane and Max were asleep, she unbuckled and peeked through the closed curtain. Ian’s reclined body engulfed the sofa to her left, so she eased into one of the leather seats on her right.
When she looked at Ian again, two dark, wide eyes stared back at her. The way they burned her skin didn’t change her intentions. If he was a killer, she would end his life. But in that moment, she didn’t know anything. Weeks of digging and subtle questions left her with no more information about Ian and his past than she knew after their first time sharing spaghetti in New York.