Page 33 of Second to None

“Okay.” I smiled at him. “If you insist.”

“I do.”

“Well,” Ellis said brightly. “This was fun. Anyone else, or should we get back to the music?”

“I’m good,” Jace said, while Mason sat up to grab his guitar once more. My gaze lingered on Levi, his profile sharp-cut against the pool’s reflected brightness, until he turned his head and caught me watching him. I fought the impulse to look away, and after a moment, the corners of his lips hitched up just enough to register.

It was a tiny,tinything. Yet somehow, it felt like a shift in gravity.

* * *

After a few more songs,we fell back into place. It wasfun. Just us, stripped back to the essentials—no stage lights, no screaming fans, only Mason’s guitar and our voices as we slotted back together.

Around one, we stopped for lunch. It came in sleek, logoed bags that screamed health-conscious chic—poke bowls, salads with ingredients that had been labeled ‘superfoods,’ and something green that might fall into the smoothie category. Yeah, my assistant knew my nutrition plan better than me. That’s why I paid her the big bucks.

We had lunch out on the terrace, heat pressing in even under the sun sail that shaded the table. “Organic kale and guilt-free quinoa?” Levi popped open his salad container, a flicker of something almost sweet tugging at his mouth as he shot me a glance. “Reminds me of when you were in charge of dressing room requests until the rest of us revolted.”

“Since Cass sprang for this,” Jace started, all wide-eyed innocence directed at Levi, “would you like to Venmo him? Or write him a check?”

Ellis waved his chopsticks before shoving them into his rice. “Go on, Lee. Show us how far you’ll go. I’m sure Cass’s assistant can set you up with a payment plan for this poke bowl.”

“If I wanted guilt with my lunch,” Levi said, “I’d have ordered something deep-fried.”

“Everyone’s a comedian,” I said. Sweat prickled on the back of my neck—the day’s heat combined with Levi right next to me, my body steadily aware of his proximity. It didn’t seem to wear off, nothing like how our noses tuned out smells after a few minutes. Sensory adaptation, something like that? To do with how our lizard brains were more interested in change because it signaled danger. Cave bears, thunderstorms, brush fires.

Levi was all of that and more—the opposite of safe. But I’d spent years trying to run and it hadn’t brought me anywhere.

“Actually, hold that thought,” Mason said. “Let’s get this show on the road before we dig into the food. Jace—you and my guitar? Make it broody and mysterious.”

“I’m really more of a boy-next-door kind of dude,” Jace commented idly. Regardless, he settled in the grass with Mason’s acoustic guitar, looking just about ready to audition for an indie record cover, all sunlit body and smouldering expression. “Broody enough for you?”

“It’ll do.” Mason snapped the picture just as Jace’s face cracked into a goofy grin.

“That’sthe money shot,” Ellis said around a bite of rice.

Mason showed us the resulting photo. It was soft and sun-flooded, but not as polished as what we would have done in the past, real in how Jace’s hair was unstyled and he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. My team would have advised against posting a similar snapshot of me.‘It’s about the illusion of authenticity,’they’d say.‘Not the actual thing. We want you tolooklike you just rolled out of bed, but without a full bladder, the imprint of a pillow crease on your cheek, or morning breath.’

In other words—someone just a little less me.

“That works,” Jace said, chill as anything.

Mason did a quick edit and showed us his caption‘Retro vibes’before he posted it. Lunch disappeared between jokes about Levi’s apparent vendetta against free food and a quickly escalating spiral of kale conspiracies, all of us trying to outdo each other with ever more ridiculous theories. By the time we were done, Mason’s picture had received nearly a million likes and hundreds of excited‘oh my god NC reunion it’s true!’comments.

Breadcrumb number one—success.

Ellis was first to the pool, yanking off his shirt as he went, pants following. “No clothes allowed!” he called over his shoulder before he splashed into the water.

“Band rules,” Jace agreed with a sage nod.

“That was never a thing,” Levi said. “Just because we went skinny dippingoncein a hotel pool…”

“And every time we’re here,” Mason said, already stripping. “Also, there’s nothing you lot haven’t seen a million times on the tour bus.”

Levi sent me a quick look that I couldn’t quite read. Unspoken commentary about how he’d spent a limited amount of time here, all things considered? Which was true. This house had been ours for slightly over a year, and we’d been on the road for most of that. Still—to me, our time here carried the weight of decades.

Back then, he’d have been first in the water. Now, he sat back as Mason and Jace followed Ellis, didn’t move until I got up too and tugged off my T-shirt and then stepped out of my shorts, back turned to him in case he wanted to watch.

The water was a cool shock against the heat of the day. I dove under, and by the time I resurfaced, blinking drops out of my eyes, Levi had joined the rest of us, all sharp lines, leaner than he’d used to be and a little quieter, steadier. Sunlight cut across his shoulders and chest, his flat stomach only just hinting at his abs. Short-trimmed hair leading down from his navel, and I snatched my gaze away, hot and guilty.

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