“Don’t you have to start shooting soon?”

Mike gives me an honest yes at the same time Dee and Rowan both blurt no. Then Dee gives me a gentle push forward, and before I know it, Mike’s hand slides into mine.

Chapter 30

It’s strange, how intimate something as simple as holding hands can be, when it’s with the right person. Last summer, I held hands with Billy Lynch on the Ferris wheel at the Apple Harvest Festival. The view was beautiful: white lights strung along the streets, carnival rides flashing as they spun in the air, balloons and cotton candy swimming over the ground far, far below. And nothing. Not one butterfly, not one spark.

But here, with Mike, with nothing to see but tech equipment and unknown faces, my heart is a wild mustang that bucks in my chest. I hope my palm isn’t sweating, but I really can’t tell, because I’m holding on for dear life.

“What time did you get here this morning?” I ask to try to maintain the façade that I’m the kind of girl that can hold hands with a rock star. I can be cool. I can be calm. I can do words.

“Around seven this morning,” Mike says, and I gape at him. Dee and Rowan told me that the video isn’t scheduled to wrap until around three in the morning. That’s a twenty-freaking-hour workday.

“That’s insane,” I say, hoping that the crew at least fed him. I should have called before I left home to find out if he wanted me to bring anything: sandwiches or coffee or a pizza or—

“Yeah, well, I mean, I didn’t really have to be here that early,” Mike says, interrupting my mental checklist. “But Shawn always has to micromanage everything, and I figured he could use the company.”

It strikes me—what a Mike thing that is for him to say—and I realize he does this a lot: does incredibly sweet things and takes no credit for them. It makes my heart grow as I stare up at him, and when he meets my eyes, I make sure he knows, “You’re a good man.”

Mike chuckles and stops drumming on my hand, holding it tighter. “I’m not that good.”

“Yes, you are.”

He smirks and shakes his head, and when I wait for him to explain, he nods his chin toward a group of guys who are very shamelessly checking out my dress. “I’m a selfish man. I’m about to steal you from your fan club.”

He tugs me toward the woods, and as I let him lead me, I spot the path we took last time.

The cabin. He’s taking me to the cabin.

Last time, the entire path was lined with trees that looked like they were bleeding, they were so dressed in red leaves. Now, those leaves are withering under our feet. Each crackle weighs heavily on my nerves, reminding me that Mike is single, that he’s holding my hand, that we’re walking into the woods, that he told me he loved me.

None of this should be happening. He’s my cousin’s ex-boyfriend. He’s leaving on tour. He’s a freaking rock star. And if Danica jumped out from behind a tree right now and saw me holding his hand, she’d throw me out of our apartment, she’d get her dad to stop paying my tuition, she’d revel in the annihilation of my dreams . . . and then she’d murder me with her bare hands just for the fun of it.

Sliding my fingers from Mike’s, I swoop down to pick up a vibrant red leaf, pretending that my fascination with it is the reason I pulled my hand away.

It’s not that I’m afraid Danica is going to catch me here tonight—I know she won’t, since Shawn told her the video was rescheduled for tomorrow—it’s just that even if she doesn’t catch us tonight, even if she doesn’t catch us tomorrow . . . she’d catch us eventually. I’m smart enough to know that, and I care about Mike too much to pretend that I don’t. I don’t want to lead him on.

I twirl the dry leaf stem between my fingers, trying to ignore the loss I already feel at the absence of his touch.

“So you’ve been friends with Shawn a long time, huh?” I ask to change the subject, and when I look up at Mike, the expression on his face is unreadable.

He studies me for a long moment, and then he tucks his freed hand in his pocket. “Since we were kids.”

“How’d you meet? I mean, I know you went to school together, but how did you end up in a band together?”

Mike holds the reaching arm of a pricker bush out of my way and answers, “He and Adam just came up to me one day at lunch in the cafeteria and were like, ‘We hear you play the drums.’” He smiles warmly at the memory, continuing the story when I look up at him expectantly. “I was just sitting there drinking a chocolate milk, and they sat down in front of me and told me they were starting a band and wanted to hear me play. They rode my bus home with me after school, and I guess they liked what they heard, because we ended up spending the whole night just hanging out in my garage dreaming up this awesome band we were going to be.”

I didn’t know them back then, but I can see it. I bet Mike was the kind of teenager that didn’t even bother brushing his hair before he went to school each morning. I can picture him with his hours-old bedhead and his fingers drumming on the side of his chocolate milk, and I can see the curiously skeptical look he’d give a lanky Shawn and Adam when they said they wanted to hear him play. It feels like a fond memory—one that makes me smile.

“It was crazy,” Mike continues. “Shawn had that look in his eye even back then. Like when he talked about how we were going to make it big, I believed him. And so did Adam. I just wanted to be a part of that ride, I guess . . . That night was the first time I ever drummed for anyone other than my mom, and here I had these two guys telling me I could be a rock star.”




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