My fingers teased the guitar strings endlessly. The music flew through my veins, a rush and comfort. An exhilaration and a soother. A total contradiction, but one that made sense nonetheless.Song after song it went, one after another, beat after chord, chord after lyric, lyric after scream, scream after blackout.We set our instruments down softly and walked back into the wings. Elena was standing in mine, clasping a bottle of water. I closed my fingers around the neck of the bottle, my pinkie barely an inch from hers, and pause.“You did good,” she said softly, swallowing before she looked up and met my eyes.I stared into her dark eyes, the color of dark chocolate, of a black coffee after a night of no sleep, and I replied, “I know.”I took the bottle from her, unscrewed the cap, and tipped it up, walking past her. I didn’t need my cute-as-fuck assistant getting into my head tonight.No, I needed some fangirling, groupie-ass bitch to bend over for me so I could relieve this stress.

I inhaled slowly when he opened the trunk and placed the shopping bags in. “I’m not lying.”“Mhmm.” He pushed the cart to the security guy, who wheeled it over to the cart shelter. Then he walked to me, slowly, and reached around my body to the car door. With his fingers curled around the door handle, he leaned his face towards mine. “Then why,” he whispered, “don’t you look at me when you tell me?”I averted my eyes to the side, saying nothing. He was standing so close to me, and he smelled good. Like, really good. Like coffee and cinnamon—warm and comforting. Nothing like the harsh cologne Martin used to wear, and definitely nothing like the whiskey and cigarette smoke he occasionally smelled like.“Huh?” he prompted, his voice still a gentle breezing whisper. “That’s what I thought.”“Leave it alone,” I replied, finally bringing my eyes to meet his. They were burning into me, thrilling and scary, and it was all I could do to ignore the shiver that cascaded its way down my spine. “P

ELENAI stared in the mirror. It was faded. In fact, it was almost gone. Sure, I froze my butt off lying in an ice-cold bath for an hour last night, and I was pretty sure I had a cold coming, but the bruise was better.Aiden walking in yesterday had ruined everything I planned. I didn’t want anyone to find out about my hellish past. I just wanted to come in, do my job, find myself. It seemed so simple before—but before, I didn’t know Aiden James.I didn’t expect him to push. I didn’t expect the James brothers to be so . . . immature, at times. Of course, if I didn’t have Martin’s voice whispering in the back of my mind so often, if I weren’t a victim-turned-survivor of both mental and physical abuse, I wouldn’t have been so bothered by their words. I’d have simply laughed and maybe said something snarky back in response.Instead I clammed up, got scared, and ran.And now my past wasn’t so secret.He knew. I was not stupid. I denied it until I was lacking in oxygen, but Aiden knew. The

AIDENFuck everything.My name.My kiss.Her tears.Her fear.I rested my elbows on the dining table and ran my fingers through my hair. I wasn’t supposed to kiss her last night. I wanted to—fuck, have I—but I wasn’t going to. I was going to pull my big-boy boxers on, unravel my cock, and get the fuck on with it. Maybe I’d jack off once or twice, then be such an asshole she’d quit and leave.Now it wouldn’t happen. That sassy, attitude-filled act she put on was just that—an act. It was fucking bullshit, a total performance so no one sees the scared-as-shit girl inside. So no one would get close enough to look into her eyes and see the pain there.She wasn’t broken, though. She was strong and resilient, despite the odd switches to shyness. She was like a knotted ball of my mom’s yarn waiting to be untied and unraveled, ready to spin into something beautiful.Except she was already. Beautiful. Her smile, her eyes, her laugh—it was all so fucking beautiful it pissed me off. She and her g

ELENAI rubbed my hands over my face, ignoring the guilty twinges in my lower stomach. They popped up the second Chloe smacked Aiden on the head yesterday and explained everything.Extra media attention on Dirty J. was the worst thing that could happen. Even if the #AidenSexTape trend on Twitter told a different story—and wow, were these girls so obsessed they’d watch him have sex with some girl?I knew this was a risk, taking this job. I wasn’t, and am not, naive to the fact that I was very much in the public eye. I was not so stupid as to think I wouldn’t get snapped on camera at least once or twice, but it didn’t matter, because petty celebrity matters were far beneath my family and the Diazs. Even my friends rarely checked the tabloids.Hell, I only did it on my phone when I went to the toilet, then I had to clear my browser history.No, this job was the safest risk I could have taken. Not least because I was constantly surrounded by big, strong-as-hell men nearly sixteen hours a