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While Steve had been surfing the crowd, Roux had been watching it all on the big screen from just outside the signing tent. The entire time she’d held her bullet tight in one hand, one part amused, ten parts terrified that he’d be injured. When she heard his very public love confession, her heart swelled, and she cupped her hands around her mouth to yell, “I love you too, babe!” There wasn’t a chance that he heard her from that distance, but her sisters sure did.
She was soon crushed in one of their breath-stealing group hugs. Even Iona seemed okay with how the situation was turning out. Let the world think what they would—Roux was in love, and not only did she not care who knew she’d fallen for the over-exuberant man jogging off the stage with his arm around his best friend’s neck, she hoped everyone knew.
“You know the best part about this?” Iona asked.
“More publicity for the band.” Azura rolled her eyes at their very predictable leader.
Iona rolled her eyes right back at her. “No. Roux and Steve beat that stupid tabloid to the punch. So now whatever ridiculous story they come up with won’t hold water.”
“I hope it’s already been printed, so they look like fools,” Sage said.
Roux was still flying high from Steve’s exhibition. “Number of fucks I give about that tabloid?” She peered at their smiling faces through the circle she made with her fingers and thumb. “Zero.”
“Back to work, ladies,” Sam said, and for the first time that evening he didn’t look pleased. “You have fans waiting to meet you.”
There were exactly two people in front of the table, but they went inside and dutifully signed the couple’s forearms.
“Are you the one Steve Aimes is in love with?” the woman asked as Roux signed her name in red.
Roux smiled. “Lucky me.”
“You do know he’s a notorious womanizer, right?”
Always someone whose goal was to burst bubbles and rain on parades.
“Not when he’s with the right woman,” Sage said in his defense before Roux could respond.
“And Roux is the right woman,” Azura added, squeezing Roux’s arm.
“All we can do is try to make it work, just like every other couple.” Roux’s smile never faltered.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” the woman said. She blew on the ink on her arm as she marched away. The man with her released an annoyed huff at her back, but followed her out of the tent.
“You know what sucks most about talking to fans?” Iona said, leaning back in her chair and capping her marker. “That you have to be cordial even when they say stupid shit directly to your face.”
“But ninety-nine percent of them would never be that rude,” Roux pointed out.
The tent flap behind them burst open, and Steve appeared in the opening, looking completely untamed with his shoulder-length hair in disarray, his eyes wild, and his chest heaving.
“Roux,” he said when his searching gaze found her.
She stood and stepped toward him, stunned when he fell to his knees at her feet and wrapped his arms around her waist, burying his face against her belly.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was saying.”
She smoothed his hair with both hands. “You didn’t?”
“I’m drunk off my ass. I never would have done anything that goddamn stupid—”
“Shh,” she said. “I liked it.”
He lifted his head and gazed up at her. “You liked me making a complete fool of myself?”
“Loved it,” she admitted, knowing she was grinning like a lunatic.
“Told you so,” Zach said.
“In that case . . .” He rose to his feet and turned to go. “I’m going to do it again.”
She laughed and caught his arm, swinging him around. “Once is plenty.”
He pulled her into his arms. He was sweaty and smelled like beer and the hands of thousands of fans, but she snuggled closer.
“You’re sure you aren’t mad?”
“I’m sure.”
“And your sisters?”
“Are insanely jealous of her and happy for her at the same time,” Iona said.
“In that case,” Steve said, scooping an arm under Roux’s legs and sweeping her up into his arms, “we have some celebrating to do.”
Roux expected Sam to refuse to let her leave, but he watched Steve carry her out of the tent with a contemplative look on his face. The crowd near the back of the main stage area cheered and catcalled as Steve carried her away from the festivities. He was more than a little unsteady on his feet from the alcohol he’d consumed or because she was heavier than he’d anticipated. So once the cheering quieted, she asked to be set down.
“I’m not putting you down until I can spread you out on my bed and show you how glad I am that you’re mine,” he said.
“You’re going to carry me fifteen miles?”
“Fifteen miles?”
“Yeah. The hotel is fifteen miles that way.” She pointed in the opposite direction. “I think. Or maybe it’s that way.” She pointed toward what appeared to be a mostly empty campground. Few people were wandering the grounds since the headliners were performing. “Or over there?”
“Guess I’d better call Butch,” he said.
She laughed. “So you’re going to make him carry us fifteen miles?”
“No, I’m going to make him pick us up in a vehicle.”
“We could make our way to a shuttle.”
“And where would that be?”
“We’d have to go back through there to get behind the main stage, and then . . .”
“I’m calling Butch.”
He used his cellphone while continuing to hold her, but when he described their surroundings and Butch said he couldn’t get him a ride for at least half an hour, Steve had to concede defeat and set her down.
“I should have thought this through a little better,” he said.
“It’s fine,” Roux said. “Wildly romantic even.” She fluttered her lashes at him. “The ambiance of a roaring crowd, the smell of the porta potties and cooking grease.” She took a deep breath through her nose and wished she hadn’t. “Did you hear me yell at you when you were on stage with Sinners?”
He cringed. “Did you tell me to shut the fuck up?”
She shook her head. “I yelled, I love you too, babe, as loud as I could. I just wanted you to know since everyone on the planet heard you but almost no one heard me.”
“I hear you now,” he said, finding a dry patch of dirt to sit on. He drew her onto his lap, wrapped his arms around her waist, and rested his chin on her shoulder. In the background, the concert had faded to a subdued, rhythmic thumping, with lyrics mumbled and guitars barely audible. “I’m glad I made a fool of myself tonight,” he said, “but I am sorry I drank so much. I know you don’t like me to drink.”
“You’re going to drink sometimes; it’s okay. There’s booze everywhere, part of the culture. I don’t expect you to abstain. I just don’t want you or anyone else to overdo it like you did last night.”
“I know several alcoholics who manage to abstain in this environment, so there’s no excuse. I’d give drinking up for you. All you have to do is demand I stop.”
Because she knew how much it sucked to try to live beneath ultimatums, she refused to give him one. “It’s your decision,” she said. “Not mine.”
“But it would be easier for me to give it up if you forced me to.”
“Do you want to give it up?”
“I want you to be happy, to feel comfortable, to trust me.”
She plucked at the fabric of her skirt. “I am, and I do.”
“How can you after everything you’ve been through because of alcohol?”
She rubbed his arm. “Alcohol might have made a horrible situation worse, but it was the alcoholic who was at fault, not the substance he abused.” It had taken her years to come to terms with that—and she still faltered at times—because it was a lot easier to blame an inanimate liquid than a loved one.
“When we get home, will you live with me?” he asked. “I don’t care where, just . . . I don’t think I’d survive a day without you, much less weeks.”
She knew exactly what he meant. When they were apart, she couldn’t get through ten seconds without thoughts of him circling her mind and an ache settling in her chest.
“We’ll figure out a way to be together.” She kissed his nose. “Let’s just enjoy Europe without further complicating things. Now that we don’t have to hide anything, I can make out with you in public if the mood strikes me.”
The current song ended, and the crowd cheered loudly, almost as if they were cheering for Roux’s fortunate change of circumstance.
Steve grinned in the near darkness. “Is it wrong of me to hope that the mood is striking you at this very moment?”
She shook her head and cupped his face between her palms, leaning in to kiss him. The taste of beer on his lips was too much for her, though, and she had to break away. “The mood will strike a lot more forcefully after you’ve showered and brushed your teeth. You reek of beer.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
When a golf cart pulled to a stop before them, Steve was vividly describing his crowd-surfing adventure. Roux doubted she’d enjoy it as much as he had. Having the hands of strangers all over her was not her idea of a good time. But she loved listening to him talk, and he was much more vocal when he’d been drinking.
“Did someone order a limo?” Butch asked.
Roux was surprised he’d come himself instead of sending some junior lackey to do Steve’s bidding.
“Yeah,” Steve said, “but I guess this piece of junk will suffice.”
“Watch it, smartass, or I’ll make sure there’s only room for Roux to sit and make you take laps behind us.”
Steve stuck his tongue at him like a spoiled child and set Roux on her feet before standing and brushing off the seat of his pants.
“Thanks for saving us, Butch,” Roux said, squeezing his shoulder as she climbed into the back of the cart.
“The cape is part of my uniform,” he said, winking at her.
Steve slid into the cart next to Roux. “And so is his clipboard of torturous hell.”
“What clipboard? You pretty much had the whole evening to make an ass of yourself on your own,” Butch said. “Tomorrow is booked solid, however.”
“I figured as much.”
“So I won’t get to see much of you tomorrow?” She’d probably suffer severe withdrawal symptoms.
“I don’t care if you hang out for our interviews, meet and greets, and whatever else management has in store for us, but it will be incredibly boring.”
“Not if I get to stare at you.”
Butch made a gagging noise, but he was grinning ear to ear as he directed the cart into a U-turn and drove back the way he’d come. In the distance, the main stage flashed and flickered.
“Maybe we should stay for the rest of Sinners’ show,” Roux said. She hadn’t gotten to see much of it while stuck in that signing tent.
“It’ll be over soon,” Steve said. “You’ll get to see them in London and Glasgow and wherever we go after that.”
“Madrid,” Butch said.
Wow. This was really her life, and nothing could take her happiness away.