Page 150 of The Bridges I've Burned

“Manic, you’re up in two minutes,” someone announced.

We all nodded as hair and makeup people swarmed us one last time. Asher handed over his drink to his assistant. It looked gross as fuck, but I’d seen him with it before every single performance. He swore it helped his voice.

My phone buzzed in my back pocket, and my heart spiked.

I pulled it out immediately, hoping it was?—

It wasn’t.

“Oh, good, they got it,” Asher said over my shoulder as he looked at the photo my brother had sent.

I looked at him in confusion. Macon and Marin had sent a photo of them in a giant infinity pool overlooking the ocean.

Macon

Thank you so much for the gift. We missed you.

“What gift?” I asked him.

“I upgraded them to the presidential suite at their resort.” He shrugged like it was no big deal.

“Why? How did you even know?—”

“People can be very forthcoming when my name is mentioned,” he said. “And we’re family now, Tate. It’s not an easy life, but we take care of each other. Mitch forgot about that. We won’t.”

And then Darius grinned and said, “Let’s go make some girls scream.”

I turned back to Hendrix, who was watching from the wings.

“Go make me proud, brother.”

“I’m sorry, who are you again?” I laughed.

“That’s the spirit.”

I walked out on that stage without a backward glance and knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that my life would never be the same.

ELENA

Since the majority of vacation rentals were booked from Saturday to Saturday in the Outer Banks, the drive back was relatively tame. I still hit the annoying back-to-back traffic in Virginia Beach but managed to sail right past Williamsburg.

Small miracles.

By the time I was hauling my suitcase into my apartment, I was bone-tired and in need of food.

I checked my phone for the hundredth time.

It had been over twenty-four hours since the wedding, and he still hadn’t texted me.

If Macon was right and Zander had, in fact, left to save the day, why hadn’t he reached out?

He’d asked me to go on tour with him. Had he changed his mind? Had my reaction—my reluctance—made him reconsider?

What if Macon was wrong and he’d used the reporters as an excuse to just get away from me?

I checked the time, wondering if I’d made it home in time for his concert. You know, the one he’d asked me to come to, but I’d been to chickenshit to say yes to?

Yeah, that one.

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