Page 29 of The Encore Effect

“What else?” he asked, balling up his napkin and throwing it down on the table.

Her eyes darted to the wadded-up fabric, then back to him, years of banked anger hardening her gaze. He waited as she carefully folded her napkin, setting it beside her plate. Even now, even in this, she was so tightly controlled. What he wouldn’t give to see her let go again.

“When this is over, I’m done. No more requesting that the label assign me to your projects—”

His heart skipped a beat. “I didn’t—”

“So much for honesty.”

He stopped short, caught off guard by the knowing look in her eyes.

“Derek told me,” she continued. “And you knew I wouldn’t be able to say no.”

He clenched his jaw, a sickly, cold feeling sliding down his spine. She was right, but at the moment he was having a hard time regretting the request. The rest of it—all the times he’d given her reason to doubt him, that he’d told her half-truths or kept her in the dark—well, that he would regret for the rest of his life.

Her green eyes blazed, hurt and anger and determination coiling around each other and bursting into cold flames that crawled across his skin.

“One month, and then the tour is over, and so are we. For good.”

Chapter Eleven

Kat stared at the list on the clipboard Gideon had handed her and realized she’d reread the same sentence at least five times. The rules she and Beckett had put in place were supposed to help her stay focused, but somehow she was still far too distracted despite the fact she’d hardly seen him since their dinner three days ago. When he wasn’t in the hotel gym or pool, he was holed up in Nico’s room allegedly doing yoga and playing video games, even though she knew for a fact he hated both of those things. At least, he used to.

He could have changed. It’s been years.

He hadn’t changed that much. He still used the same body wash, the same shampoo—their entire hotel room smelled like it, smokey wood and vanilla. He still left his shoes beside the bed, like he might need them in the middle of the night. He still told her half-truths and expected it to be enough. He was still Beckett.

But this Beckett wasn’t like her Beckett. This Beckett was even more closed off, sharper. And if sometimes she caught a glimpse of the old Beckett in the sparkle in his eye or the ways she’d catch him looking at her from across the room, that was just a trick of her imagination. Wishful thinking.

And she could not afford to start wishing for things she’d long ago accepted weren’t meant for her, no matter how easy it would be to imagine him filling the Beckett-shaped hole he’d left in her life. If there was one thing she knew about getting close to Beckett Hayes, it was all-consuming. Distracting with a capital D. And she would not get distracted. Not again. Not now when she was so close. One more month of the tour and then she could walk away for good, focus on her writing without worrying about the finances, stop living out of suitcases and tour buses, stop torturing herself with his proximity.

Gideon cleared his throat, a gentle nudge to get her wandering thoughts back on track. She sighed. “Do you have any concerns?”

“I’m always concerned, but it’s nothing the team can’t handle.”

“Tell the guys we’re cutting the meet and greet short so we can get on the road,” she said, gathering her papers and clipping her walkie talkie onto the belt loop of her jeans.

“Jackson won’t like it. He’s already asked for bottle service at the meet and greet.” For all his impressive impassivity, Gideon could say more with a handful of words and a blank stare than most people could say in an entire conversation.

“Tell him there are plenty of bottles on the bus and no one there is going to post his picture on the internet.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Gideon, we’ve worked together for years. I think you can stop with the ma’am thing.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She thought she saw the corner of his mouth kick upward.

She rolled her eyes and checked her watch as she left the makeshift office, leaving Gideon behind to finish his security checks for the night as she headed deeper into the maze of hallways beneath the arena stage. She’d almost made it to the wings when her phone buzzed in her back jeans pocket with an incoming text.

She swiped the message open to find a series of photos from the engagement shoot. The dimly lit room of the hacienda came to life with flickering candles that gilded their outline and sent bursts of light reflecting off her earrings, the engagement ring on her finger, making her all shimmer and sparkle against Beckett’s leather-clad solidness. Photo after photo of him looking at her adoringly, a softness in his eyes that wound around her heart and squeezed, the cords of his apparent affection cutting painfully into her flesh until she couldn’t breathe without feeling the bands of it around her chest.

Her phone rang, Jo’s name on the screen.

“Katerina Michelle Luna! Look at how freaking gorgeous you are!” Jo screeched.

“My middle name isn’t—”

“Babe, my inbox is flooded with requests for you to make appearances at bookstores along the tour route.”