Page 41 of Wild Fixation
Ryan pulls out his phone. Though he’s smaller than Seth, when I get close, that difference seems awfully meager. He’s still huge, especially compared to my slender frame. When he puts his arm around me, it’s like a tree trunk lying across my shoulders. His hand squeezes, but I ignore it and smile as he holds up his camera for a selfie. His long arm allows him to easily capture both of us in the frame.
He takes the picture, and I figure the whole thing is done and I can go join my band. But Ryan doesn’t let go like I expect. He keeps hugging me against him, snapping a couple more photos. At first, it’s merely annoying, but as it goes on, worry prickles at the back of my mind. He isn’t letting go. Like, he really isn’t letting go, and there’s no one out here anymore except the two of us. I’m supposed to be safe. He’s the band’s new bodyguard. But the longer he holds me, the more this whole thing feels anything but safe.
“Did you get your photo?” I say, trying to gently nudge him.
“Yeah, yeah, just one minute,” he says.
He doesn’t let go. If anything, he holds me harder. When he squeezes, his strength is a blunt force, a mountain I can’t hope to push out of my path. It would take two of me to budge him at all, especially as panic flutters through my chest.
Is this actually happening? I should shout. My whole band is waiting for me mere steps away.Sethis waiting for me mere steps away. Yet my throat closes up, breaths coming too quickly as Ryan goes on holding me. He isn’t even pretending to take a photo anymore. He’s just clinging to me like he means to haul me away. Where and to what end, my panicked mind can only guess — and none of the guesses are good.
I should fight. I should struggle. But as panic rises around me like ice cold water, my limbs go numb.
I’m helpless, and Seth is too far away to even know it’s happening.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Seth
IT’S SO HARD TO hang back while the entire band goes out to greet their fans. Screaming washes into the greenroom every time one of them leaves, but I resolutely keep my head down, refusing to look up when only Jacob remains. Then he’s gone, out of my hands, and I simply have to trust that everything will be okay.
I’ve never been a very trusting guy.
Every instinct screams at me to check on things. Whenever the noise from the crowd shifts, I tense, my whole body preparing for the inevitable moment when something goes wrong and I need to leap into action.
I force myself to stay seated. Ryan is out there, and he’s got this. I hired him on the belief that he could do this, and it’s time to let him prove me right. Paranoia has no say in the matter.
Besides, he isn’t compromised the way I am. Clearly, I can’t trust myself to handle anything that has to do with Jacob. Twice now I’ve let what should have been part of my job spiral into something far more intimate, something wholly inappropriate. That’s two times too many, two times more than I ever should have allowed, two failures I can’t accept. It doesn’t matter if Jacob thinks it’s no big deal. He doesn’t understand what he does to me, the way I lose control around him. I can’t protect him or anyone else if merely standing in his presence clouds my mind and raises my heart rate.
Shame sizzles through me like fire crackers in my veins. I have to be here, but all I want to do is run. It’s just this one time, I remind myself. Once Ryan takes care of this simple meet and greet, I will be able to hand the reins over to him and fall into the background while I fill out the rest of the team. Ceding my place beside Jacob stings, but not as badly as my own horror at the way I’ve allowed desire to impair my judgment.
So I sit. And wait. And try to stop bouncing my leg as the crowd screams about something.
Levi returns first, relief washing through his face the moment he slips into the greenroom. He flops onto a couch. It’s the only furniture other than the stool I perch on, and Dan joins him on it after only a moment. They sink into the cushions with a sigh, their faces paler than usual and eyes glassy with exhaustion. Meeting a horde of fans is going to wring a lot out of these guys, even the more extroverted ones. They haven’t yet adjusted to all the changes upending their lives, but there’s nothing me or Ryan or anyone else can do about that. We can protect them physically, but the band will have to help each other when it comes to the mental and emotional toll that stardom brings.
“How’d it go?” I ask, definitely not fishing for information. My brain certainly isn’t whirling, trying to fill in the details of all the parts I didn’t witness, trying to imagine how Jacob fared through every second of this.
“Good,” Levi says.
Dan grunts and sinks deeper into the couch. His phone pings, and he digs it out of his pocket. Whatever he finds on it causes a flicker of a smile, there and gone like a flash of lightning.
“Emmett wants to know how it went,” he says.
“Ugh, you call him,” Levi says. “You’re better at talking to him.”
“Not really,” Dan mutters, but he doesn’t try any harder than that to deny it.
Keannen comes bounding in next. He looks a lot more alive than the other two as he flops onto the couch between them and flings an arm around both.
“You survived,” he says. “Great job, guys.”
“Shut up, Keannen,” Levi says, but it lacks any bite. He doesn’t even shrug Keannen’s arm off, instead leaning into the familiar comfort of his bandmate.
I tense when a fourth person enters the greenroom, but it’s still not Jacob. Shawn isn’t quite as dead as Levi and Dan, but neither is he as alive as Keannen. He tucks himself into the far edge of the couch, sighing as he settles on the cushions.
That leaves only more person. It makes sense for Jacob to be last, but that does nothing to settle my churning stomach. He went out last, and I’m fairly confident he sat at the far end of the table. Plus, he was clearly the most popular target of the fans waiting out there. It stands to reason he would return last as well. It is completely, totally normal, yet every second that ticks by without delivering him into the greenroom plunks into my stomach like a Mentos into a bottle of soda. I’m bubbling and gurgling, prickling anxiety boiling up inside me until I can barely keep myself on the stool.
Then Keannen says, “Hey, where’s Jacob?”
