Page 87 of The Encore Effect

“I’m handling it.”

“You don’t have that choice anymore. Neither of us do. Derek is meeting us in Cleveland.”

His face turned stormy. “We agreed you weren’t going to call him.”

“He called me,” she snapped. She looked away, not wanting to see the fury clashing with betrayal on his face, not when she was also so goddamn angry she could hardly keep it together. “I’m telling you this as a courtesy. As your tour manager—”

“Stop. I don’t give a fuck what my tour manager has to say. I want to know what you have to say.” She pressed her lips together in a flat line, crossed her arms over her chest. “Luna, look at me.” It took her a minute to gather her nerve, but when she lifted her eyes to his, all she saw there was fear. “Why is Derek coming to Cleveland?”

“The label doesn’t think I can handle keeping the tour on track.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“They think I’m too distracted. By my relationship with you.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Maybe it’s not. If we weren’t involved, if we didn’t have the history we have, I would have called Gideon in that night in Vegas. I probably would have consulted with Derek after the charity gala in Kansas. It might not have changed anything, but… It’s my job to address threats to this tour’s success, and I didn’t. Maybe I wouldn’t have either way… I don’t know.”

He raked his hand through his hair, the air between them thick, heavy. “What happens now?”

“We have three more cities to get through. We try to keep it together long enough to get to the end of the tour, and we try to convince Jackson to get help.”

“I meant what happens to you.”

She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. The label doesn’t trust me. If something else goes wrong…”

“I’ll talk to Jackson. Tomorrow morning.” He held out his hand to her, waiting for her to take it. When she did, he pulled her between his spread thighs, wrapped his arms around her middle, and pressed his face against her, his forehead resting just below her sternum.

For the first time since Jo had called, she felt like she could breathe. Air rushed into her lungs, and she allowed his arms around her to hold her together. She clutched his head to her chest, gently scratching her nails along his scalp.

“I should have said something to him a long time ago,” Beckett whispered against her, his breath hot against her thin blouse. “I didn’t want to believe he really had a problem.”

“None of us did,” she assured him, her own guilt souring in her stomach.

“I thought I was protecting him. That I had it under control. But all this time I was just enabling his addiction.”

She pressed her lips to the top of his head. “It’s not your fault.”

“I’m going to do better,” he promised, his hold on her tightening. “For him. For you.”

“Me too,” she said, her heart squeezing. “For both of you.”

“Seriously? No one wants to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with me?” Logan asked as the members of Midnight Storm piled into the elevator at their Cleveland hotel. “They have Jimi Hendrix’s handwritten lyrics.”

“I went last time we were in Cleveland,” Zach said.

“Nico?” Logan asked.

“Don’t look at me,” Nico said, stretching his arms over his head and yawning. “I want a hot shower and then I’m going back to bed. Zach kept me up half the night with his snoring.”

“I’m telling you it wasn’t me. There were motorcycles on the highway,” Zach said.

“All night?”

The elevator dinged on their floor and the guys spilled out into the wide hall of the boutique downtown hotel. They peeled off, heading to their rooms as they continued to bicker about whether Zach snored the night before—he did—and if the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was worth a visit on their one day off in the city—it was.

“Where’s Kat?” Jackson asked Beckett when it was just the two of them left in the hall, standing outside Jackson’s hotel room.