I drag my sunglasses off, tucking them into the pocket of my suit. What am I doing here? If I had a reason, it’s lost in her eyes.
That’s when I remember the envelope. “I was in LA for business and wanted to drop this off.”
Rae’s brows pull together as she accepts the envelope, opens it, and sucks in a breath. “This is more than my cut.”
“We filled Debajo, which exceeded even my expectations. You deserve it.”
Dark, troubled eyes search mine.
“Besides,” I go on, impulsive, “I wasn’t sure where to send the espresso machine, and you wouldn’t use it anyway.”
Rae shoves a hand through her hair, looking as if she can’t decide whether to laugh or scream.
I want her to say she made a mistake by leaving. That she still thinks of me late at night after her shows.
Instead, Rae lifts the edge of my suit and tucks the envelope back in my pocket over my heart, her gaze lingering on my shirt as if she can see the scar beneath. “You don’t owe me anything.”
But it’s the look she gives me before turning and starting back toward the trailer door—not angry but sad, overwhelmed—that steels me.
“You owe me something.” She stops, and I press on. “You left my bed without saying goodbye.”
Rae turns slowly. “You didn’t see the article?”
“I saw it. That’s what happens when you’re in the public eye. You grow a thick skin because the arrows only get sharper.”
Her voice rises, her hands fisting at her sides. “I woke up to that news story, to the world calling me a hypocrite and someone I cared about shoving it in my face.”
“Are you a hypocrite?”
“I don’t know!” she retorts. “You didn’t come back all night. I tried calling you. Waited for hours.”
Each word is a knife in my gut.
I figured she’d decided I wasn’t worth sticking around for, like everything else in her life. I wasn’t going to reach out to her and beg her to reconsider.
The possibility she’d taken the article to heart never occurred to me.
She’s so fucking young right now. It should be a warning, another brick in a fortress of reasons I can’t have her, but all I want to do is drag her against me.
“You tried to reach me when I was at the police station,” I say, clenching my hands into fists so I don’t touch her. “I stopped to see Christian on the way home. When I got back, you’d left.”
Raegan doesn’t blink. “What about the issues with the clubs?”
“I swear I cleaned house. I told you I would make them better, and I did. There’ve been no issues since. Not a single claim.”
She wants to believe me. I want her to, though I have no right to ask.
“The article made me question a lot of things,” she says at last. “Things I’d stopped questioning while I was in Ibiza, playing for a man who was my enemy. One I swore I’d never support again.”
“He’s grateful.”
Her eyes cloud, either at the expression on my face or the humility in my voice.
I won’t beg. But seeing her like this, knowing where she’s coming from, I need to make her understand.
I can live with being a villain, but I won’t let her be one.
“I have somewhere to be,” she says.