Page 25 of Revived

“Never been surer of anything. You’re an asset and it never fails, at least once per tour, we wished we had someone along for the ride who had more medical training and experience than the rent-a-medics they have on standby for each concert.”

Mel nodded. “Do you have a pen?”

“Be right back with one. You can read over everything in the meantime.” For reasons I wasn’t ready to examine, relief flooded through my veins. She would be coming with us. That meant I still had time with her to figure out what I wanted. To find out if she was even interested in an old rock star with a shit reputation and an 18-year-old son I only recently found out about. She wanted children of her own. Were we too old for that? I was 37 and she admitted the other day that she’d be 35 soon. There would still need to be courtship time. Hell, I’d probably be knocking on 40’s door before a kid would be possible.

I had to shake the thoughts out of my head. What the fuck was I even doing thinking of having kids with the woman? She was signing a contract for work, not a marriage. I grabbed a pen from the kitchen and ran into Chevy on my way back through to Mel. “What’s going on?”

“Mel agreed to sign on for our up-coming tour.”

Chevy grinned. “Well, that’s fortunate. Now, don’t screw it up,” he told me and moved to go around to head into the kitchen as I was leaving it.

“No limp,” I commented.

“That’s thanks to the extra work Mel puts in with me. My PT says I’m months ahead of where I should be.” I nodded and added new thoughts to my checklist. She already knew my son so well, worked with him, made him better. Could it be as easy as just asking her out and making it happen now? The clause she’d asked for with the contract loomed in the back of mind. Would that include me too?

“Found a pen,” I called out when I entered the room Mel was in. She had just flipped to the last page of the contract. I sat beside her. “Any questions or changes needed?”

“Is this pretty standard?” She asked, staring into my eyes as if they’d let her know if I was being honest or not.

How did I tell her that having a Nurse Practitioner along for the ride wasn’t standard at all? “I’m fairly certain that it is for your level of expertise. If you want to have a lawyer check it over first, that’s okay. There’s time.”

“At least I already have a passport,” she told me as she shook her head. Then I remembered that she had just explained her previous lawyer quit due to lack of funds. Now, she was talking about a passport.

Shit. I hadn’t even thought about that for the overseas events. “Do you travel much?” I asked, wondering where she had been, and maybe even where we could go together.

“Nope. I’ve never been outside of the country. I was supposed to go on a cruise with my friend Amber last year, but we ended up having to cancel when my days off were revoked because of the flu running rampant through the nursing staff.”

“You’ve never even been to Canada?” I asked, shocked that she was in her thirties and hadn’t seen any of the world yet.

“No. I have student loans that I will probably be paying off until I die, so I don’t normally have a travel budget. I was able to save more before my divorce, when there was another income helping to pay for the over-priced, 1-bedroom apartment we shared. I couldn’t exactly advertise for a roommate with just one bedroom though.”

“Jesus, Mel. Why did you stay in New York?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t go home to my family or my town. That would have been humiliating. I don’t really know anyone else anywhere in the country.”

“Well, you do now.”

Mel smiled at me as she leaned over the document in front of her and started signing wherever she was required. “I’ve never been backstage at a concert before, this should be quite the experience.”

I laughed at that admission. “You are definitely in for an education and maybe a bit of culture shock. Tour life can be as wild and chaotic as it can be monotonous. Most times, we don’t get a lot of time to explore each town we go to. Usually, we ask to see the venue list and request extra days in interesting places if we have the time to spare between event dates.”

“It must be weird to say you’ve been places where you only saw the inside of a concert venue,” she surmised. Her cheeks had a little bit of pink to them as we spoke. There was a hint of a citrusy scent coming from her too. I’d noticed it before, but sitting so close as I was, felt more intimate for some reason, especially with the intoxicating scent of her making my mouth water.

“You can feel free to ask any question you have. I’ll try to answer as best I can.”

“Am I going to be stuck on a tour bus while a bunch of rock stars have a full-on orgy with groupies?”

I laughed at her and winked. “Not gonna lie, if you’d joined us years ago, you may have been dead accurate. Everyone has calmed down a bit since though. Alex had a couple of almost accidents, Tim had a mess situation that cost him his woman, and Wen has his own craziness that is ongoing. In the aftermath of all that, no one really wanted to take chances anymore. We started to adopt the same rules The Infinite Everything has for their tour busses. Busses are a sort of sacred space. Anything goes at the venues, or your own hotel room, but the busses stay mostly off limits except for the people who live on board.

“Is there a separate bus for medical staff or…”

“I’m not sure what will happen. We’re touring with Dusty Rose. Deacon may ask if you can join them on their tour bus since the band is all female and there are only four of them.”

“Oh, okay. As long as they won’t resent me being in their space.”

“I think it will work out really well for everyone actually. If you ever have any issues, you can always join the guys and me on our bus. You’ll be safe.

“I’m positive that shouldn’t happen,” she told me, though it wasn’t said in a panicky way. Mel smiled at me, as her cheeks reddened further, and I wondered exactly what she thought we might be getting up to on the tour bus with her. “I’ll keep it in mind as a last resort option though. Thank you, for thinking of me, and setting all of this up.”

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