He goes to speak with her, then two minutes later, he’s back, ushering me into the rear seat of a limo.
“Shouldn’t have done that,” I tell him as I drop my bag on the floor and he reaches for a bottle of champagne in the fridge.
“You’re my friend.” He pops the cork and pours a glass, passing it to me. “So, I heard that chick ask about Wild Fest.Areyou mixing there?”
I stare into the champagne flute, its tiny bubbles at odds with the leaden feeling inside me. “I got on their radar this spring before everything, but they’ve been dodging me since Ibiza.”
“That’s why you’re pissy? It has nothing to do with Harrison King?”
“Nothing.” I take a long drink, the bubbles tickling my throat, then burning after I swallow.
I pull off the headphones still around my neck and tuck them carefully into the bag at my feet.
Beck leans over, his handsome face suddenly close.
I frown. “What are you doing?”
“Testing your claim.”
He covers my mouth with his.
His lips are determined and playful at once as he kisses me.
My hands freeze in midair, too stunned to do anything else. He dares me to pull back.
I let the feeling wash over me. He’s warm, masculine, compelling in a totally unselfconscious, totally Beck way.
But it’s not dangerous or breathtaking. My heart rate is up from surprise, not arousal.
When his tongue parts my lips, I shove at his chest.
Beck drops back against the seat with a laugh. “See? You’re still hung up on the guy.”
“Just because I don’t want to fuck you doesn’t mean I’m hung up on someone else.”
“You’re kidding, right? Have you seen me?”
His words eat at the wall around my heart. “Thanks for trying to make me feel better. Even if it was a fucked-up way to do it.”
“I can’t fix your heart, but I can say you have no reason to feel ashamed of what you did in Ibiza. Whatever makes you so critical started a long time ago with shit you don’t think about in the light of the day, not to mention talk about.”
“You get all that from me not letting you stick your tongue in my mouth?”
He shakes his head. “Been watching you a while, Little Queen. You haven’t made peace with who you are. You want to play the Wild Fests of this world, you gotta do that sooner or later.” His phone rings, and he mouths, “My producer,” as he answers.
I drag out my own phone and pull up my social accounts.
Harrison King watch has resumed. He has left Ibiza. Since the photos of us surfaced, he’s been seen in London. Paris. At his clubs, but also with women.
What surprises me most is how the pictures make my chest ache. An unrelenting ache that lingers through days of trying to work, dinners with friends, nights alone.
How I feel has nothing to do with his hard, beautiful body or strong hands or firm lips or piercing blue eyes, and everything to do with the fact that I felt as if he showed me parts of himself he’d never shown anyone else.
Admitting what happened to his parents, that he’s on a mission to redeem them. He’d do anything to win La Mer and rebuild the empire that fell when they died, the same empire I threatened when I exposed him on social media.
Anything—including using me.
I don’t believe he set up the pictures of us at Debajo, but he must have seen them, and he hasn’t reached out once.