The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob(54)

I grew up without a dad. I won’t do that to a kid. Or to a partner.

Slowing down? Yeah, I could see myself doing that.

Giving up on touring all together?

No way.

They can pry that microphone out of my cold, dead hands when I’m ninety-seven.

“Secret,” I tell Davis. “She has three kids she doesn’t want appearing in the tabloids. Not a lot of spare time. Plus, her ex traveled too much. It’s just—just a thing.”

Davis can be a sneaky bastard, and he can be annoying, but he understands shit the rest of us miss all the time. Which means the sympathetic, dude, you’re fucked look coming from him makes my gut tighten. “Good luck with that.”

“I can handle a fling with an attractive woman who needs to blow off steam, and we’ll both be just fine.”

In coming up on twenty years on the road, I’ve eaten some questionable foods, put my body through jet lag more times than I can count, drunk a lot of stuff I shouldn’t, and my stomach has suffered the consequences.

Right now, it’s suffering about the same fate as the night I should’ve skipped the oysters and tequila at that dive bar in—hell, I don’t remember where I was.

Most of the next week was a blur of digestive disorders.

Davis is giving me another one of those sage man-bun looks. “Do what makes you happy, man. The rest is in the noise. Tickets. Cinnamon rolls. And tell your mother you’re happy she found someone who treats her well.”

I need to be home more.

No, that’s not right.

I want to be home more.

See my family more. Sneak into open mic night at a bar in the warehouse district. Have a talk with fucking Stan Sheldon about how to treat my mother.

Date Ingrid.

I want to date Ingrid.

Not temporarily. Not be friends with benefits. Not in secret.

Smart and low-key to keep her out of the tabloids, yes. But a secret from my family and friends? No.

Except I can’t be there for her the way a guy who wants to date her should. I can’t get to know her kids without being the guy who also doesn’t make it to hockey games and gymnastics meets and preschool Christmas programs.

I want to date her, but I can’t be what she needs.

This is officially a fucking disaster without a solution beyond keep calling this a secret fling for as long as you can so you can keep her forever.

Except there’s one other solution.

And that’s that I let her go.





Nineteen





Levi



Forget leaving her alone.

I’ve been in Germany for less than twenty-four hours. I can’t sleep. The director on this car commercial is a grade-A dick, and as someone who can be a perfectionist when it comes to stage performances—trust me, I really can—I have the absolute authority and experience to recognize dick over fussy artist.

One uses his manners and shows appreciation. The other is just a dick.

My favorite restaurant here in Nuremberg doesn’t open for another two hours. I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to stay in the hotel.

I want to be home.

Maybe I have been traveling too much.

Except home is New York these days, and I’m not thinking of New York.

I’m thinking of Copper Valley. The city skyline. The ballpark. The Blue Ridge Mountains hugging us.

Ingrid’s bookstore.

Ingrid. Naked. Laughing. Smearing cheesecake all over my chest.

Licking it off.

I’m hitting her number before I give myself time to process what I’m doing. She picks up on the fourth ring. “Hey?”

She’s out of breath, and it’s a question.

What are you wearing is probably not what I should lead with here. “Hey. You busy?”

“No, I—Zoe Elizabeth, put your brother down—I’m good. Breathing through my nose. Not planning to sell my children to a wolf pack. Doing just—Piper. We do not pull our pants down and moon our family at the breakfast table.” She snorts like an angry rhinoceros to punctuate her statement.

Even though I’m an ocean away, I back up from the window in my hotel room to get out of the blast zone.

No phone sex.

Right.

Dammit. “I can call back later. Or you can call me. Whenever. Anytime.”

“So help me, if you hang up this phone, I might not have three children when you get back to the States.” She blows out a loud breath. “And I don’t actually mean that, but—Hudson Andrew Scott, DO NOT TOUCH YOUR SISTER’S HEARING AID. Jeremiah was a bullfrog, I cannot with all of you this morning. Oh my god, why is the squirrel in the refrigerator?”

There’s a mass of voices and shrieks on the other end of the phone.

A door slams, and all goes quiet.

“Sorry,” Ingrid mutters. “You didn’t need to hear that.”

“I called Tripp once when James was giving Emma a bath in the toilet.”

“Oh my god.”

“Not the best discovery for a guy dealing with hypochondria…”

“I just want to pull my hair out. We do this every morning. Seven days a week. We always have somewhere to be, but can they just eat breakfast and brush their teeth and get dressed and get out the door without fighting or breaking something or telling me they forgot they have a science project due tomorrow and we were supposed to be growing mold for the last two weeks? No. No, they cannot. And there was a squirrel in my refrigerator. Do you know what that means? That means if I hadn’t opened the fridge door before we left, I’d come home to half the things in my fridge eaten by the dead squirrel laying in the middle of it. How is this my life? How? Do you know when I was in the Army, I once broke up with a roommate because she left cups on the coffee table without using coasters? And now I’m happy if all the laundry in my bedroom is shoved in a small pile in my corner because it means the kids have just picked stuff out of it all week so there’s less to fold when I finally get around to it.”