* * *
When the show was over, all I could think about was getting to a phone and calling Cary.
While we waited for the crowd to thin, I leaned heavily into Gideon, drawing support from the strength of his arms around me.
"You okay?" he asked, running his hands up and down my back.
"I'm fine," I lied.
Honestly, I didn't know how I was feeling.
It shouldn't matter that Brett wrote a song about me that painted a different light on our f**k-buddy history.
I was in love with someone else.
"I want to go, too," he murmured.
"I'm dying to get inside you, angel.
I can barely think straight."
I pushed my hands into the back pockets of his jeans.
"So let's get out of here."
"I've got backstage access."
He kissed the tip of my nose when I leaned back to look up at him.
"We don't have to tell them, if you'd rather get out of here."
I seriously debated it for a moment.
After all, the night had been great as it was, thanks to Gideon.
But I knew it'd bother me later, if I denied Shawna and Arnoldo - who was also a Six-Ninths fan - something they'd remember for the rest of their lives.
And I'd be lying if I didn't admit to myself that I wanted to catch a glimpse of Brett up close.
I didn't want him to see me, but I wanted to see him.
"No.
Let's take them back there."
Gideon grabbed my hand and spoke to our friends, whose excitement over the news gave me the excuse to say I'd done it solely for them.
We headed down toward the stage, then off to the side of it, where Gideon spoke to the massive man acting as security.
When the guy spoke into the mic of his headset, Gideon pulled out his cell and told Angus to bring the limo around to the back.
While he spoke, his eyes met mine.
The heat in them and the promise of pleasure took my breath away.
"Your man is the ultimate," Shawna said, eyeing Gideon with a look of near reverence.
It wasn't a predatory look, just an appreciative one.
"I can't believe this night.
I owe you big-time for this."
She pulled me in for a quick, hard hug.
"Thank you."
I hugged her back.
"Thank you for inviting me."
A tall, rangy man with blue streaks in his hair and stylish black-framed glasses approached us.
"Mr.
Cross," he greeted Gideon, extending his hand.
"I didn't know you'd be coming tonight."
Gideon shook the man's hand.
"I didn't tell you," he replied smoothly, reaching his other hand out to me.
I caught it and he pulled me forward, introducing me to Robert Phillips, Six-Ninths' manager.
Shawna and Arnoldo were introduced next; then we were led back through the wings, where activity was high and groupies loitered.
I suddenly didn't want to catch even a glimpse of Brett.
It was so easy to forget how it'd been between us while I was listening to him sing.
It was so easy to want to forget after listening to the song he'd written.
But that time in my past was something I was far from proud of.
"The band's right in here," Robert was saying, gesturing to an open door from which music and raucous laughter poured out.
"They'll be excited to meet you."
My feet dug in suddenly and Gideon paused, glancing at me with a frown.
I pushed up onto my toes and whispered, "I'm not all that interested in meeting them.
If you don't mind, I'm going to hit the backstage bathroom and head out to the limo."
"Can you wait a few minutes and I'll go with you?" "I'll be okay.
Don't worry about me."
He touched my forehead.
"Are you feeling all right? You look flushed."
"I'm feeling great.
I'll show you exactly how great as soon as we get home."
That did the trick.
His frown faded and his mouth curved.
"I'll hurry this along, then."
He looked at Robert Phillips and gestured at Arnoldo and Shawna.
"Can you take them in? I need a minute."
"Gideon, really ."
I protested.
"I'm walking you over there."
I knew that tone.
I let him walk me the twenty feet to the bathroom.
"I can take it from here, ace."
"I'll wait."
"Then we'll never get out of here.
Go do your thing.
I'll be fine."
He gave me a very patient look.
"Eva, I'm not leaving you alone."
"I can manage.
Seriously.
The exit is right there."
I pointed down the hall to the open double doors beneath a lighted exit sign.
Roadies were already transporting equipment out.
"Angus is right out there, isn't he?" Gideon leaned his shoulder into the wall and crossed his arms.
I threw up my hands.
"Okay.
Fine.
Have it your way."
"You're learning, angel," he said with a smile.
Muttering under my breath, I went into the bathroom and took care of business.
As I washed up at the sink, I looked into the mirror and winced.
I had raccoon eyes from sweating so damn much and my pupils were dark and dilated.
"What does he see in you?" I asked myself derisively, thinking of how awesome he still looked.
As hot and sweaty as he'd been, he looked none the worse for wear, while I looked damp and limp.
But more so than my exterior, it was my personal failings I was thinking of.
I couldn't get away from them.
Not while Brett was in the same building with us.
I rubbed a dampened square of paper towel under my eyes to get rid of the black smudges, then headed back out to the hall.
Gideon waited a few feet away, talking with Robert, or more accurately, listening to him.
The band's manager was clearly excited about something.
Gideon spotted me and held up a hand to get me to wait a minute, but I didn't want to take the risk.
I gestured down the hall at the exit, then turned and headed that way before he could stall me.
I hurried past the green room door, chancing a quick glance inside to see Shawna laughing with a beer in her hand.
The room was packed and boisterous, and she looked like she was having a great time.
I made my escape with a sigh of relief, feeling ten times lighter the moment I left.
Spotting Angus standing next to Gideon's limo on the far side of the line of buses, I waved and set off toward him.
Looking back on the night, I was tantalized by how uninhibited Gideon had been.
He sure as hell hadn't been the man who'd used mergers and acquisitions as parlance for getting me into bed.
I couldn't wait to get him naked.
A burst of flame in the darkness to my right startled me.
I jolted to a halt and watched Brett Kline lift a match to the clove cigarette hanging from his lips.
As he stood in the shadows to the side of the exit, the flickering light of the flame caressed his face and threw me back in time for a long minute.
He glanced up, caught me in his gaze, and froze.
We stared at each other.
My heart kicked into a mad beat, a combination of excitement and apprehension.
He cursed suddenly, shaking out the match as it burned his fingers.
I took off, struggling to maintain a casual pace as I made a beeline for Angus and the limo.
"Hey! Hold up," Brett shouted.
I heard his footsteps approaching at a jog, and adrenaline surged through me.
A roadie was pushing a flat hand truck loaded with heavy gear and I darted around him, using him as cover to duck between two buses.
I pressed my back flat against the side of one, standing between two open cargo compartments.
I cringed into the shadows, feeling like a coward, but knowing I had nothing to say to Brett.
I wasn't the girl he knew anymore.
I watched him rush by.
I decided to wait, give him time to look and give up.
I was hyperaware of the time passing, of the fact that Gideon would be looking for me soon.
"Eva."
I flinched at the sound of my name.
Turning my head, I found Brett approaching from the other side.
While I'd been looking to the right, he'd come up on the left.
"It is you," he said roughly.
He dropped his clove smoke on the ground and crushed it beneath his boot.
I heard myself saying something familiar.
"You should quit."
"So you keep telling me."
He approached cautiously.
"You saw the show?" I nodded and stepped away from the bus, backing up.
"It was awesome.
You guys sound really great.
I'm happy for you."
He took a step forward for every one of mine backward.
"I was hoping I'd find you like this, at one of the shows.
I had a hundred different ideas about how it might go if I saw you at one."
I didn't know what to say to that.
The tension between us was so thick it was hard to breathe.
The attraction was still there.
It was nothing like what I felt with Gideon.
Nothing more than a shadow of that, but it was there nonetheless.
I retreated back out into the open, where the activity was high and there were lots of people milling around.
"Why are you running?" he asked.
In the pool of light from a parking lot lamp, I saw him clearly.
He was even better looking than before.
"I can't ."
I swallowed.
"There's nothing to say."
"Bullshit."
The intensity of his glare burned through me.
"You stopped coming around.
Didn't say a word, just stopped showing up.
Why?" I rubbed at the knot in my stomach.
What was I going to say? I finally grew a pair and decided I deserved better than to be one of the many chicks you f**ked in a bathroom stall between sets? "Why, Eva? We had something going and you just f**king disappeared."
Turning my head, I looked for Gideon or Angus.
Neither was anywhere in sight.
The limo waited alone.
"It was a long time ago."
Brett lunged forward and caught me by the arms, startling me, briefly frightening me with the sudden aggressive movement.
If we hadn't been so near other people, it might have triggered panic.
"You owe me an explanation," he bit out.
"It's not - " He kissed me.
He had the softest lips, and he sealed them over mine and kissed me.
By the time I registered what was happening, he'd tightened his grip on my arms and I couldn't move away.
Couldn't push him away.
And for a brief span of time I didn't want to.
I even kissed him back, because the attraction was still there and it soothed something hurting inside me to think I might've been more than a convenient piece of ass.
He tasted like cloves, smelled seductively like hardworking male, and he took my mouth with all the passion of a creative soul.
He was familiar, in very intimate ways.
But in the end, it didn't matter that he got to me still.
It didn't matter that we had a history, painful as it was for me.
It didn't matter that I was flattered and affected by the lyrics he'd written, that after six months of watching him enjoy other women while nailing me anywhere with a door that locked, it was me he was thinking about when he seduced screaming-for-it women from the stage.
None of that mattered because I was madly in love with Gideon Cross, and he was what I needed.