Page 36 of Stuck With My Rockstar Boss
“That’s not what happened. That’s not why…”
Dylan’s eyes show his hurt and disappointment. I’m not going to fight anymore.
“Can I explain myself?” I say quietly.
Inside me, he recognizes the fourteen-year-old boy I used to be. The one who’d trade CDs with him and go on bike rides late at night. We’re brothers. Through and through.
Dylan’s lack of response is an affirmative answer. “Could you all sit?” I ask.
They all return to where they were seated before I walked in. I turn away from them and try to steady myself on the breakfast table.
“Lucas, what’s going on, man?” Jay asks, his voice full of encouragement.
I take a deep breath and then turn to face them. I’ve forgotten how safe these guys are. They’re my people. “Something happened last tour. I don’t want to get into it. It was… something that’s made it really hard to be around people. Traumatic.”
Their faces all soften.
“And now I’m just anxious all the time. The crowds, the fans, even being in a grocery store gets my heart racing. It gets hard to breathe. And the only time I don’t feel that is when I’m onstage.” I stop and then decide to say it. “Or when I’m with Mika.”
The silence is deafening. I see Jay’s lips start to move, unsure if he should speak, eyeing the other guys. “So… she’s your girlfriend?”
There’s a pang in my chest. “No… I mean… it didn’t start that way. It isn’t that way. I…” I’m starting to feel hot and start pulling my shirt away from my chest to get some air. “She’s really good at making people fuck off and at the beginning of the tour she got me out of a situation where I was starting to have a panic attack, so I hired her to be like my chaperone and go with me places and get me out of bad situations. And it wasn’t–” I swallow. “It wasn’t sexual or romantic.”
“At first,” Dylan says, understanding.
“Right,” I concede. “Right, at first. But then we were spending all this time together, learning about each other, enjoying each other. She made me feel so safe. And I honestly haven’t felt that way in a long time.”
Dylan’s face breaks the slightest bit. It hurts to hear it, but I know the cogs are turning in his brain, wondering where he went wrong.
“And, yeah, then we started screwing around. And we knew we shouldn’t, but–” My throat freezes up as the thought bubbles up. “The way she makes me feel is the closest thing to love I think I’ve ever known. Safe and capable.”
Chase sniffs.
“You crying, man?” Jay asks and rubs Chase’s back.
“It’s just beautiful,” Chase says, rubbing tears out of his eyes.
I smile softly and then look Dylan right in the eye. “I need her here. If we’re going to keep going.”
Dylan narrows his eyes in the way I know so well. He’s ready to cause some trouble. “Alright, guys. I know what we’re going to do.”
And suddenly, the bus becomes a war room. Jay and Chase start calling Mika nonstop, but it keeps going right to voicemail. I send off a few texts to her as well. Dylan, though, is leading the charge and immediately goes to the source.
“Ken. Putting you on speaker,” Dylan says into his phone and then holds it out for all of us.
“Uh, okay.”
“So, what’s the deal with Mika, man?” Dylan asks with a clipped cadence. He’s always been good at the business side of things.
Ken starts to chuckle out of nervousness. “Is Lucas with you?”
“Yep,” I say.
“You know, I was just about to call you. How about we move this to a private conversation and–”
“No time for that,” Dylan interrupts. “We need Mika back, alright. She’s just as much a part of this tour as the rest of us.”
There’s a hesitation. “Well, I’m sorry, Dylan, but she was in breach of contract. I couldn’t do anything, even if I wanted to.”
