Page 118 of Hayden's Stalker

“Hey, Tati. Hey, Hayden. Great show tonight.”

“Thanks,” I say as politely as I can.

“Can we talk to you for a minute, Dan?” Tati asks him.

He turns to the other roadies and says, “I’ll catch up with you.” The roadies nod and walk away toward the crew bus before he turns back to them. “What’s up?”

“The gifts you took to the dressing rooms with Anthony. What do you know about them?”

Daniel looks confused and says, “Um, he had a whole bunch of gifts for the guys, and I helped him take them to the rooms.”

“Did he tell you where he got them?”

Daniel looks between the three of us, then back at Tati. “Yeah, he said he got them from security. What is this about?”

I watch him with narrow eyes as Tati answers casually, “One of the gifts was concerning, so we’re trying to find out where it came from. Did you see the security guard at all?”

Daniel shakes his head. “No. I just saw Anthony as he came backstage, and he had a whole bunch of gifts that he told me were given to him by security.”

“So, what did you do then?” I ask, and Tati tenses next to me as she looks at me before turning back to Daniel.

“Um, I helped him carry them to the rooms, then we stopped and split them into whose gifts were whose. I took Sebastian’s and Harrison’s to their dressing rooms and left Anthony with yours and Gabriel’s.”

Tati gives him her beautiful smile and says, “That’s really helpful, thanks.”

I frown at her because that’s complete bullshit. He told us sweet fuck all.

“No, it’s not,” I object. “He didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.”

She glares at me, then says in her coolly professional voice, “Correct. But Daniel has been very kind in answering our questions, and now we should all get on our buses and head off. Thank you, Daniel. I’ll see you at the soundcheck on Friday, I guess.”

“Ham and cheese?” he grins at her, and jealousy strikes me, hot and fast.

“Maybe. I might go for something fancy like roast beef. You never know,” she jokes.

Daniel gives us a casual wave, and Jesse looks over at Harrison’s tour bus nearby before he asks, “Are you okay to take Hayden to the bus without me?”

“Sure. Night, Jesse.” She nods at him and leads me back toward my bus.

“Why didn’t y—”

“Not now, Hayden,” she snaps at me, sounding pissed.

My jaw is tight, and I dislike everything about how this night is going. I hate that Daniel was the one who was part of my gifts being taken to my room. I hate that he flirted with Tati right in front of me. Most of all, I hate that I have no right to be anywhere near as jealous as I am.

Just because I love her doesn’t mean that I have any claim over her, and that sucks. I want to be with her more than anything, but she can flirt with whomever she wants. Whether that’s me or Daniel, Tatiana Swanson is free to be with any man she likes.

I follow her onto the bus. She greets our driver and does a roleplay with him about someone trying to force him to open the secure door, then she unlocks it herself and lets us into the bus.

I drop onto the sofa as she locks it behind me, then does a sweep of the bus before she comes back to stand in front of me as she frowns at me.

“What question did you want to ask me where every man and his dog could hear you?”

“Why didn’t you tell Daniel that he’d probably handled the gift from my stalker?”

“It’s on a need-to-know basis, and Daniel doesn’t need to know, regardless of if he had the package or not. Neither did Anthony, but I notice you’re not asking about what I did and did not tell him,” she says pointedly.

Obviously, I didn’t keep my jealousy hidden at all, so I shrug and tell her openly, “For some reason, I don’t care as much about your interactions with Anthony as I do about your interactions with Daniel. Want to know why that is, Tati?”

---