Page 7 of Protecting Mr. Fine

To forget that someone had touched me without my knowledge.

Had managed to pull aside my shirt and ink my skin.

Had tried sending me a message of some kind without explaining what the fucking point was.

I let out a shaky breath and tried to get control of my emotions.

I was the king of good fortune, I knew that.

In the grand scheme of things, my current hardships were small potatoes, and I had no right to complain.

Not only was I a megastar—one of the rare unicorns who’d dreamed of being a successful rock musician and had actually made it happen—I was also part of a priceless brotherhood of lifelong friends and, although hardly anyone outside of my brotherhood knew it, a rags-to-riches story even before I’d started my music career.

Bash, Silas, Landry, Dev, and I had met while attending Yale and had worked together to invent ETC, an emergency response software. Selling our company had netted us each over a billion dollars. We’d also learned the hard way to keep our windfall a secret from everyone but our assistant, Kenji, and our life partners, for those brothers lucky enough to find one.

Obviously, the millions I made from my music career were impossible to hide, but that was no hardship. It just meant that I gotto be crazy-generous with my wealth without risk of divulging my brothers’ secrets. It meant that I could consult with property agents about which of several multi-acre spreads in Wyoming I’d like best and not have to factor the cost into my decision. It meant that I got to be selective about the music I recorded and the contracts I signed.

It was the kind of life I’d have been scared to even dream of, growing up in Barlo. A comfortable, easy life, where I’d gotten to make all—or at leastalmostall—of my dreams come true. And by living my own dream, I was able to help others reach theirs. That was a privilege as well as a responsibility.

So yeah, I was Mr. fucking Fine, as Bear called me. And I damn well should be.

I damn wellhadto be.

Too many people were counting on me for me to be anything else.

So even if I was scared, even if I was freaked-out and violated and outraged and wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball under the covers, I was going to remind myself of how freaking lucky I was. Then, I was gonna smile and get on with the show.

And I did…

Until the emails started.

TWO

RYAN

Everyone knows bears are fiercely protective of their territory and their loved ones. When a bear claims something, it’s theirs, and they won’t hesitate to defend it. It’s a foolish bear indeed who goes sniffing around another bear’s honey.

—Bear Facts for Insomniacs, Episode 21

No one tested my patience like Zane Hendley.

Before meeting Zane a little over a year ago, I hadn’t known it was possible to be so annoyed by a genuinely good human. He was kind and generous, sweet and talented, and even after a year of being together almost twenty-four seven, I still had an enormous crush on him.

Possibly slightly more than a crush.

Yet I also fantasized about sedating him just to keep him from lying to my face about being “fine.”

That wasn’t the only thing I fantasized about doingto him, but the other things were even more unprofessional than the first. And I took my job way too seriously to consider wrecking it by?—

“Fucking assholes!” Landry jabbed his phone screen to end a call. He paced Zane’s Shaky Knees dressing room, where he and the other men Zane called his “brothers” had congregated after Zane’s set ended.

The fact that Zane’s friends had arrived not long after Zane and I had our dust-up and had managed to cheer him up and distract him the way I wishedIcould while I stood in the corner silently watching was neither here nor there.

I was a professional, damn it. Zane was my principal.

And maybe if I repeated those words to myself foranotheryear or two, I might begin to believe them.

“What’s up?” Zane grabbed Landry’s arm in a friendly gesture and forced him to stop his pacing.

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