CARTER WAS visibly uncomfortable on the plane, even in business class, even with the heavy anti-inflammatories the doctor had prescribed. Jeff felt bad about it—Carter was only on the stupid plane because of him—but whenever he opened his mouth to apologize, Carter gave him a look and said, “Don’t.”
And then, instead of apologizing, Jeff had to say, “So if I chartered us a private jet, do you think we could—” and then Carter shoved his dinner roll into Jeff’s mouth.
“No private jets,” he said firmly. “Sure, it’s mostly huge companies that are responsible for climate change, but that’s a bigger carbon footprint than I’m comfortable being a part of.”
Jeff took a bite of the dinner roll and set the rest down on his tray. “I could just jerk you off under the blanket instead,” he offered, voice pitched low. “You know. As a distraction.”
This turned out to be a mistake.
Most of the discomfort melted right off Carter’s face and was replaced by what Jeff could only describe as evil lust. “I have a better idea.”
Carter apparently took Jeff’s words as a challenge to get him as worked up as possible without touching his dick. Between the tray table and the blanket Jeff had thrown over his lap out of habit when he sat down, no one could see anything, but he was intensely aware of even the slightest twitch of Carter’s fingers as he gently, teasingly massaged his way from Jeff’s knee to the top of his thigh. By the time he reached Jeff’s groin, Jeff was frozen in his seat, afraid to move lest he shove Carter’s hand down over his crotch and buck against it until he came.
When he was sure he couldn’t take another second, Carter drew his hand back, and a flight attendant came around and took away their dinner trays.
“I hate you,” Jeff hissed, flushed all over and aching in his jeans.
“No, you don’t,” Carter said blithely as he stowed his tray table. He glanced over and smiled evilly. “Thanks for the distraction. It really helped.”
Jeff gritted his teeth until the flight attendant’s cart had gone by and he could escape to the bathroom.
Apart from that, the flight was uneventful. They landed in Vancouver and deplaned to find a postcard-perfect day waiting for them, the late afternoon sun washing everything with warmth. The water in the Strait of Georgia was a deep, glassy blue, and the Coast Mountains rose in the distance, capped with snow.
The view from their hotel room was just as nice.
“Wow.” Carter wheeled his scooter over to the window and set his laptop bag down on the desk. “Swanky.”
“Only the best for you.”
Carter half turned to give him a look at that, because yeah, Jeff had booked the room before he knew Carter was going to be sharing with him, but whatever. He’d also upgraded after Carter said yes.
Carter sat at the desk while Jeff tipped the bellhop. Then Jeff flopped onto the couch in the sitting room and stretched. He was still worked up from the flight. “Sooo… plans?”
Carter swiveled toward him, hands between his splayed knees. Jeff was tired, part jet lag, part travel, and he still kind of wanted to crawl across the room and put his face in Carter’s crotch. “I was actually about to ask you that. I’ve got a couple things I need to check on for work, but I didn’t know if we had dinner reservations or….”
Jeff had been thinking maybe romantic room service, but a night out could be good. In fact, a night out would preclude Carter from spending the whole evening on his laptop the way he had yesterday in Toronto, as though he were trying to make up for not being present for work in person by working twice as many hours.
“We should go out,” Jeff decided. They didn’t have a lot of time in BC—the first concert was tomorrow, then the follow-up the next day, and the day after that they’d fly out again, Carter back to Willow Sound and Jeff and the rest of Howl to their gig in Calgary. “I’ll look for something close by.”
“Sounds good.” Carter was already unpacking his laptop. “Do you mind if I work for a few? I’m pretty sure I’ll have another email from Emily. She’s been trying to track the impact of climate change on wildlife populations across Canada’s parks, but the data’s kind of a raw mess. I’m trying to help her track down better sources.”
Jeff had no idea if that was part of Carter’s actual job or if he was just such a keener that he couldn’t help himself, but he waved his hand. “Have at it. It’s early for dinner anyway. The longer we wait, the less jet lag will suck.”
“Thanks.”
Unfortunately, Jeff had underestimated his own exhaustion and Carter’s commitment to work. He fell asleep on the couch googling restaurants and woke up an hour and a half later to Carter touching his shoulder.
“You were saying about the jet lag?” Carter said, amused.
“Mmph.” Jeff rolled his neck to try to work out a kink. Outside, the setting sun burnished the mountains in red-gold. “You woke me up in time for the show.”
Carter lowered himself onto the cushion next to Jeff. “I guess they do sunsets okay out here too.”
“You still want to go out for dinner?”
Jeff’s stomach rumbled. Apparently their light lunch on the flight wasn’t enough to satisfy. “Yeah, but it might be a little tougher to get a reservation now. Let me just….” He shook out the pins and needles from his arm and picked up his phone.
Then—“On second thought,” he said, and he got up and used the hotel phone to have the concierge make a reservation instead.
“Wow,” Carter said again when he wheeled into the lobby at the upscale restaurant the concierge recommended. “Probably a good thing you took me shopping.”
Jeff had been mentally high-fiving himself since Carter stepped out of the hotel bathroom in fitted blue slacks that strained across his thighs, a plain white henley, and a gray sweater with a snap collar and detail at the shoulders that drew attention to just how broad they were. It was almost like Jeff had been paying attention all along to the things his stylist told him.
“You definitely look like a snack,” Jeff agreed, borderline lascivious.
Before he could say anything more scandalous, the maître d’ arrived to take them to their seats. Carter folded the handle on the scooter so it fit under the table and looked around. “You trying to impress me or something?” But he smiled like it didn’t bother him in the least that Jeff was about to drop several hundred dollars on a dinner Carter would’ve struggled to afford.
In response, Jeff batted his eyelashes. “Is it working?”
Carter laughed softly. “I don’t know. I’ve seen you pick gum out of a five-year-old’s hair. What’s this going to prove?”
He probably had a point, but whatever. They still had to eat. “That I care about sustainably sourced local salmon?”
Another huffed laugh, accompanied by a look so tender that Jeff, who made his living baring his soul in public, felt uncomfortably naked.
Dinner was nice. Carter was enraptured by the food and Jeff and seemed oblivious to the world beyond their table. Jeff made him try the fancy wine just because, then grinned when he wrinkled his nose and ordered him a beer instead.
As far as dates went, Jeff thought it was going well—until he’d paid the bill and they stepped outside to find a handful of paparazzi waiting for them.
Carter, who had been wheeling over the threshold when the first flashbulb went off, faltered and lost his balance, cursing when his booted foot hit the pavement. Jeff reflexively grabbed the handle of the scooter before it could roll off.
Shit.
“Carter?”
Carter had taken a step backward into the vestibule of the restaurant. Cursing mentally, Jeff backed up too, until the doors closed and they had a semblance of privacy.
For someone who was one of the calmest, most impossible to ruffle people Jeff had ever met, Carter looked positively bothered. His skin paled under his early summer tan, his mouth went tight, and his eyes took on a hunted expression.
“Are you okay?” Jeff reoriented the scooter so Carter could use it. “You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”
Carter shook his head, some of his color returning. “No, uh, it turns out the shop assistant was right about how jarring it is when you hit something unexpectedly and fall off, but no damage, I don’t think. Just an adrenaline spike.”
Thank God. “Sorry about this.” Jeff nodded at the sharks outside. “It happens sometimes.” More so on tours than at home, where people were more or less used to seeing him, and usually only if someone tipped them off; Jeff wasn’t that recognizable. “I should’ve warned you.”
“It’s not like you knew they were there,” Carter pointed out.
“No, but….” He might as well rip off the Band-Aid. “Between the Twitter thing and this—it’s going to be obvious now that we’re together, so you’re going to get to deal with all the fun of being a rock star’s boyfriend. Sorry about that.”
As suddenly as his composure had left him, though, it returned. Carter propped his knee back on the scooter and shrugged. “It was bound to happen eventually.” Then he added wryly, “On the plus side, no one will be assuming I’m straight for a while.”
The glass is always half full, Jeff thought. “Okay. So do you want to go out together, or do you want me to get in the car and come back for you? Or we can ask if there’s a back exit.” It wouldn’t be the first time he’d sneaked out of a restaurant. At least this time it didn’t involve Max being high out of his mind.
Carter deliberated. “You don’t have a preference?”
Maybe with someone else. Maybe once upon a time. But—“Unfortunately, when it comes to your mom knowing I wrote seriously dirty lyrics about you when I was practically a teenager, the cat’s already out of the bag. After that, the rest of the world isn’t so scary.”
Carter’s easy laugh was born of surprise. It was no less addictive now than it had been when Jeff was a high school freshman. “It’s my brothers you should’ve worried about.”
Oh Lord. Jeff was an only child technically, but he remembered what Brady and Dave were like growing up. Best to focus on something else for now. “How do you want to do this? If you didn’t have the scooter, I’d just hold your hand.”
Carter had the nerve to look disappointed they couldn’t do that, and Jeff’s heart made a noise like a rubber chicken. “Should’ve gotten one big enough for two.”
Now there was a mental image. Jeff grinned. “All right. Let’s try this again, eh? Don’t try to answer any questions, it just encourages them.”
“This feels so rude,” Carter grumbled.
“Taking flash photographs of someone without their permission is rude,” Jeff pointed out. “Don’t flip them the bird, though, you’re not Chris Pine.”
“Mom would disown me.” He huffed as he wheeled back up to the door. “All right, let’s do this.”
Jeff stayed just in front. The tabloids already knew his face; a shot would be useless to the photographers unless they could see both of them.
“Jeff, is it true—”
“Over here, Jeff—”
“Can you confirm—”
“—rumors of an underground sex club—”
Oh, dammit. Jeff didn’t need eyes in the back of his head to know that would get Carter to turn around. Sure enough, by the time Jeff caught his wrist, the photographer already had a shot of his face and a quote of Carter saying, in a deeply disparaging tone, “Really?”
Frankly after the past week, Jeff wouldn’t be all that surprised to find out Carter belonged to an underground sex club—though he would be impressed if you could find one in Willow Sound. “Come on, in the car.” He urged Carter in front of him.
Carter must have realized his mistake, because he got in the car first without argument. Jeff left the scooter for the driver to deal with and climbed in after Carter. When he closed the door on the paparazzi, the chunk of it seemed very loud, punctuated by a sudden cessation of noise from outside.
“Sorry,” Carter said after a tense half second. “That was pretty obvious bait, right?”
Jeff shrugged. “Yeah, but I could’ve warned you. Should’ve, even. You didn’t give them anything they could use, except maybe a shot of your pretty face.”
“Ugh.” Carter slumped in his seat as the car started to move. He was sullen for a moment and then cracked, “I knew I should’ve gotten my brows waxed.”
Thank God for Carter’s even keel. Still. “I should probably call my publicist,” Jeff said apologetically. “Release a statement.” He’d been hoping for a little more time to settle things with Carter before he had to do something so practical and unromantic, but he didn’t see a good way out of it.
He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if they broke up. Everyone would know how serious he’d been, wouldn’t they? People would find out Jeff and Carter had known each other forever and put two and two together. If they broke up after that….
But he was being stupid. Cart before horse. If they broke up, people talking about it would be the least of Jeff’s problems.
“Sorry,” Carter said again. “It’s weird. It’s not like I didn’t know you were famous, right? Except that it’s not how I think of you. I keep forgetting.” He smiled. “I’ll get used to it.”
Jeff wasn’t convinced, but that was his own problem. “I hate that they ruined our date night—the first night we got to spend together where we both knew it was a date.”
Carter slid across the seat until their shoulders touched. “Hey.” He jostled into Jeff’s side and gave a lopsided grin when Jeff looked up. “Night’s not over yet.”
Jeff was going to have to start eating his Wheaties to keep up once Carter’s foot healed.
Whatever. It’d be worth it. “You say the sweetest things.”
“Of course,” Carter said, mock serious. His eyes turned dark and heated. “I have to do something to make up for all the nasty things I’m going to do to you.”
“Hmm.” Jeff grabbed Carter’s hand before it could elaborate on what Carter meant by nasty things. “What if I want to do the nasty things to you this time?”
Carter squeezed his fingers. “I think we can work out a schedule.”
THE NEXT day marked the official start of the album-writing-and-planning session. Somehow everyone had figured out Jeff and Carter had the biggest room, which led to Joe, Max, and Trix showing up at the door around ten thirty.
They were lucky Carter had already started his workday, citing a request from Emily to track down some data from one of the other parks.
“You couldn’t call first?” Jeff asked as he stepped aside to let them in.
Max propped the case for his acoustic against the couch. He raised an eyebrow at Jeff, then noticed Carter sitting at the desk, broken foot propped up on the overturned garbage can, gently swiveling back and forth as he waited for someone to take him off Hold.
Joe rolled his eyes at Trix. “I told you.”
Carter took his foot down and turned his full attention to his phone. “Hey, is this Seanna Clarke?…. Hi, this is Carter Rhodes from Great Bear Lake. I’m wondering if you’ve got data on….”
Jeff made a “keep it down” gesture and lowered his voice. “I know I said we’d write today, but are we going to do it here? We don’t have a drum kit in the hotel, for starters. And Carter’s here.”
“Thank you,” Carter said. “I appreciate it.” He ended the call. “Uh. Hi again.”
“Right,” said Max. “Real jobs.”
With an eloquent eye roll, Carter closed his laptop. “At least nobody makes up lies about me joining an underground sex club in order to get a reaction photo.” He paused and reconsidered. “Or they didn’t until last night.”
Jeff had just gotten off the phone with his publicist a few minutes before Trix knocked on the door.
“Well, you’re officially famous now,” Joe said. “Congratulations, I guess.”
Carter made a face.
“It could be worse,” Joe went on. “When Sarah and I started dating—”
Oh God, no. “Carter doesn’t need to hear that story,” Jeff interrupted.
“Sarah would probably be embarrassed anyway,” Trix agreed, backing him up. “So, you know… maybe don’t.”
“Anyway,” Jeff cut in, “this is kind of Carter’s place? For doing work?” As in the whole reason Jeff upgraded the suite—okay, apart from the romantic gesture—was to accommodate him. They weren’t just going to kick him out.
But Carter smiled and tucked his laptop into his bag. “It’s okay. There’s a business center downstairs with complementary coffee and everything. You can’t exactly bring a guitar down there.”
“We could work in another room,” Joe pointed out. “We have three of them.”
“Nah,” Carter said easily as he gestured at the window and, therefore, the mountains and the water visible through the late morning fog. “Kinda sick of the view anyway.” He’d confessed the previous night over dinner that he found it hard to concentrate on anything except how gorgeous it was. Jeff couldn’t wait to bring him back sometime when he could actually enjoy it properly—hiking, kayaking. God, maybe they’d even camp. Jeff could survive for two days without hot water.
Probably.
“Are you sure—”
Carter cut Jeff off with a kiss on the cheek. He was getting pretty good at moving around with the cast on. “I’m not the only one who has to work,” he said. “I’ll be fine. Text me if you’re getting lunch?”
Jeff nodded wordlessly, his ears hot for no reason he could name.
Then Carter collected his scooter and wheeled himself out.
As soon as the door shut, Trix dropped into an armchair, giggling. “Oh my God, Jeff.”
“Wow,” said Max. “I thought she was exaggerating. But no. You really do have it that bad.”
“Don’t be jealous,” Jeff grumbled. He collected his guitar and comp book from the bedroom and made his way back to the sitting area.
“I think it’s nice,” Joe offered. “However, I am never sitting anywhere near the two of you on a plane again—”
“Jeff!” That was Trix, actually scandalized, but smiling.
“It wasn’t my idea!” Jeff blurted.
Max threw his head back and howled, slapping his knee. “Oh my God. I never thought I’d see the day you met your match, but Carter has all of your numbers.”
“You’re the worst.” He tossed the comp book on the table. “Does anyone else have a comment to make about my boyfriend, or can we get to work now?”
Joe raised his hands. “Not me. I came to work.” He produced his phone and set it on the table. “I brought track recordings and everything.”
“Oh, a professional,” Trix teased. She pulled her drum sticks out of her boot and set them on the table, then pulled a few throw cushions off the couch and sat on the floor. “Some of us have to improvise. But I’ve got some ideas.”
Jeff opened his notebook to a fresh page. “All right, then. Conceptually, what do we have?”
Starting with Joe, each of them listed the song ideas they had been working on. An album needed a mix, but it also needed cohesion, something that would tie it together musically, thematically, or at least tonally. They couldn’t just split an album fifty-fifty with Jeff’s love ballads opposite Trix’s bangers. They could do one that was a mix of ballads and Joe’s anecdotes, maybe, but that really would be almost cottagecore, for them.
And then there was Max, who’d apparently been sitting on seven nearly complete songs written in actual musical notation. He took the pages, dogeared at the edges, out of the bottom of his guitar case and put them on the table.
Jeff felt like an asshole. “Okay, I’m getting the idea that I was late to the party on this one.”
But Max shrugged. “We’re here now,” he said, as though it were really that easy.
Maybe it was. Maybe it could be.
Trix blew out a huge breath. “So—thoughts for themes? Do we want to make lists?”
The business of whittling the album down from forty or so potential tracks to the ten to fifteen that would make the final cut took the remainder of the morning. By twelve thirty they were so into it they didn’t want to stop, so Jeff texted Carter that they were getting room service, and he should come up and join.
Carter texted back a picture of a plate with a half-eaten sandwich. I got hungry. Sorry! I don’t want to break your stride anyway.
He was probably right, since Jeff didn’t actually see the text until almost two, when he texted back a heart emoji.
Finally, around three, they wrapped up. There was still sound check and warm-ups and whatnot to go over. Trix shoved her drumsticks back into her boot and grabbed her hoodie from where she’d flung it over the back of the couch. “Meet you in the lobby at five?”
“Sounds good,” Jeff agreed absently. He stared at the chaos that had become the coffee table—a haphazard mess of yeses, nos, maybes, and revisions. His eyes felt gritty.
The door closed, and Jeff realized Joe was still there. “Hey, so I was hoping…?”
“Shit!” Jeff tore his attention away from the paperwork. “Yes. Sorry. We were going to talk, and I’ve been flaking.” Partly because of Carter, but partly because he thought he might know what Joe would say, and he didn’t know if he’d like it—wasn’t ready to know if he’d like it.
But it wasn’t fair to make him wait.
“You’ve been a little preoccupied,” Joe agreed. Of course he got it; he got Jeff better than anyone except maybe Carter. “This won’t actually take long. I just… I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Yeah, of course.” Apart from Carter, Joe was Jeff’s oldest friend. “I get it. Things are, um, not always good right now.” Hence his apprehension.
Joe looked pointedly at Carter’s empty desk space and smiled slightly. “I don’t know… some things are pretty good, right?”
In more than a decade performing with them, Jeff had never been roasted by his bandmates so consistently. “I thought you didn’t want details? You don’t want me to contest ‘pretty good,’ do you? With something like… incredible, mind-blowing, energetic—”
“Please stop,” Joe laughed and brought his hands up to cover his ears.
“—voluminous—”
“Gross.”
Okay, that was probably TMI. “Anyway.” Jeff leaned back on the couch, feigning nonchalance. “What’s—”
“Sarah’s pregnant,” Joe blurted.
Jeff’s mouth fell open. Words tumbled out without forethought. “Oh shit, no kidding?”
Apparently this was a happy occurrence, because Joe was smiling proudly, his cheeks a little flushed. “Yeah. We found out a few weeks ago. That’s why she’s been having a hard time sleeping lately. Being pregnant is uncomfortable even in the first trimester.”
So it was early still. “Wow. Hey, that’s great. Congratulations.” Jeff snapped out of it and stood to pull him into a hug. “You’re gonna be great parents.”
“Thanks. My mom’s really excited. I keep telling her it’s early….”
Parts of Trix’s confession came back to him. Jeff did his best to keep them compartmentalized in the back of his mind, not to let them intrude on this joyous moment. “How early?”
“Nine weeks.” Joe blew out a breath. “But Sarah’s thirty-two, and it’s her first pregnancy, and she’s high-risk because of her diabetes, so she’s kind of freaking out.”
Translation—Sarah was fine; Joe was freaking out. “Oh man. That’s got to be hard, with you touring. I guess she probably didn’t want to come with, though, huh?”
“She can barely sleep in our own bed,” he said ruefully. “I got a text at three her time because I wasn’t there to use as a body pillow.”
“Rough.” But this didn’t seem to be the whole story. “So—is that it? Not that a baby isn’t a lot, it’s amazing, it’s huge, but I sort of got the feeling you weren’t done.”
“That’s the other reason I wanted to talk to you first. I know you’re on the same page. I need to stick around Toronto for a while when this is done. At least ’til the baby is born, maybe longer.”
Ah. “No tour,” Jeff said.
“I’m gonna be a father,” Joe said, and there was something fierce and happy in his voice. “I don’t want to miss it. Sarah will have some mat leave, but she wants to go back to work after. Her job is important to her.”
Jeff heard what he didn’t say loud and clear. Sarah’s job was important to her… and that was important to Joe, maybe more so than his own job. “The band will still be here after the baby’s born. When they’re in school and stuff.” They were already talking about finding a way to ditch Big Moose. That meant they could ax the grueling tour schedule too.
Theoretically.
Or they could be stuck doing the tour without Joe.
He wanted to be reassuring, but he wasn’t sure that was what Joe was after.
“Will it?” He gave Jeff a searching look. “We both know things have been rough for a while. You need a break. Max—”
A toilet flushed, and he broke off. “Carter didn’t come back yet, did he?”
Swallowing his dread, Jeff gave a slow shake of his head. “No.” Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen Max leave. He’d just assumed he’d sneaked out when Trix had.
But that was stupid. His guitar case was still over by the door. Which meant—
Water ran in the sink. Then the bathroom door opened and Max came out. “Hey. Did Trix leave?”
Shit. Jeff hoped he hadn’t overheard anything. “Yeah man, she said she wanted a shower before sound check.”
“Cool. I’m going to head out too. If I’m lucky I can catch a nap.” He paused to collect his guitar and looked at Joe. “You coming too? If we don’t clear out, I don’t know how Jeff’ll get laid again before the show.”
“Hey,” Jeff protested weakly.
Joe grinned and bumped his fist. “Get it, brother. I’ll see you downstairs, yeah?”
Carter came in a few minutes after they’d left, just as Jeff was climbing out of the shower and into bed for a quick nap of his own.
“Jeff?”
“In the bedroom,” Jeff called as he burrowed into the sheets.
Carter wheeled into the bedroom. “Productive day?”
“Mm-hmm,” Jeff said. He wanted to tell Carter Joe’s news, but if he went into it, he’d never get any sleep. “Talk later? You want to lie down with me?” After a beat he added, “No funny stuff, mister. I need my beauty sleep. Come cuddle me.”
With a snort, Carter sat down on the bed. A moment later, after removing his shoe, he curled awkwardly around Jeff. “Better?”
“Mm-hmm.” The weight of Carter’s arm across his waist settled something inside him. Suddenly his eyelids were heavy. “Wake me up at four thirty?”
Carter pressed a kiss to the edge of his jaw. “Okay.”