Page 35 of Lance
FIFTEEN
“Amy.”
Even as Lance said the word, one that he hadn’t uttered for so many years before he’d finally told Jamie the story, he couldn’t believe that it was true, that the girl he’d come face to face with on stage could be his long lost lover.
But it was her. The same look of rebellious cheer was in her eyes, though she was older, of course. Five years older, just like him. But when he hadn’t found anything, he had said his goodbyes. He had accepted that she was probably dead and that he would never say her name again.
Only here he was, surrounded by his friends, face to face with the woman who had gotten away from him so long ago. The one he’d mourned, and had finally started to move on from just recently.
“Lance,” Amy replied, and she shot him a grin that was so much like the old days that his blood ran icy cold through his veins, freezing him from within. It was like coming face to face with a ghost, to see her again.
In a second, she was rushing toward him, flinging her body at him so that he had to raise his arms and catch her or else be knocked over. He steadied her and then pulled away again because damned if he didn’t have quite a few questions for her at this point.
“Lance, who is this?” Ken, a completely stumped look on his face, asked, and Lance glanced over at him and then shook his head. How was he even going to explain this? The only person who had the background on this wasn’t even there.
And where was Jamie? Lance knew that he needed to talk to the other man. He needed to explain that the kiss on stage had been Ken’s idea, something that even Lance hadn’t known about. He would have warned him, if he could.
“This is Amy. I knew her … a long time ago,” Lance tried to explain, but that didn’t even come close to expressing what was going on with him. It didn’t even scratch the surface. But it was all that he could come up with for the moment.
As he turned back around, Amy was there to meet him. It was beyond surreal to look into her face, and if it didn’t seem so clichéd, he might actually have tried to pinch himself to try to wake himself up from what had to be a very weird dream.
And it only got weirder, because as he met Amy’s eyes, she grinned at him like nothing was wrong like she hadn’t just disappeared for five years and allowed him to think that she was dead. And instead of offering any of the explanations which he legitimately thought he was entitled to, she flung her arms around his neck and clung to him as fiercely as a burr, fingers hooking behind his neck as she raised her head, stood on her tiptoes, and pressed her lips against his.
“Lance!”
The kiss was brief, and Lance didn’t even kiss her back. There wasn’t time for that. There wasn’t even time for him to pull away, but when Lance turned around, when he laid eyes on Jamie, who had just called his name, he knew that wasn’t what Jamie had seen.
Jamie had seen him, for the second time in one day, kiss someone else. That was all that he had seen. Lance turned to face his lover, and he saw the utter despair on Jamie’s face.
It didn’t last long. Jamie covered it up, his expression blank, except for his eyes, which burned with a cold, white-hot crystalline heat. But Lance knew he was in trouble, and he took a step toward Jamie, acting on pure instinct, his hand reaching out to him.
Jamie spun on his heel, but Aaron was there, blocking Jamie’s way, bless his heart. Aaron gripped Jamie’s shoulders and whispered something to Jamie, gazing into his face, and a wash of utterly inappropriate jealousy went through Lance at that moment.
Before, too, when he’d been backstage with Ken, he had seen Aaron and Jamie quietly speaking. He’d seen Aaron, who he had never seen touch anyone before, reach out and lay a hand on Jamie’s shoulder.
It was stupid, maybe, but he had to wonder just what their relationship was. They had never claimed that they would only sleep with the other, though Lance had known from the very first time that they were together that he couldn’t even want anyone else. He’d sort of thought, or maybe hoped, that Jamie was the same way.
“Everyone, take off,” Aaron finally demanded, after his brief, quiet conversation with Jamie. He raised his gaze and glared around at everyone, hovering almost protectively close to Jamie, which didn’t do anything for Lance’s state of mind.
“Fine, fine,” Ken grumbled, wandering off. On stage, Lance could hear Lester telling some comforting lies to the audience. Jamie had been hurt in his fall, Lester told the crowd, so the show was going to have to be over without encores. Jamie was going to be fine, and thank them all for coming.
It was all meaningless drivel to Lance, who stood, watching Jamie, who was huddling close to Aaron with misery in his eyes. Ken was gone, but Amy was still there, her arms crossed over her chest and a pouty look on her face as she walked around, putting her body physically between himself and Jamie.
“Lance! I’m back, and you’re ignoring me?” she asked as if he was the one who had done anything wrong here. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
It was too much. Far, far too much. Lance glared at her, locking eyes with her, furious.
“You’d better have a good reason for this,” Lance growled. “A damn good reason. But I have to deal with something else right now. I can’t talk to you.”
“Lance,” Amy started, protesting, a look of sheer disbelief on her face, but Lance had been telling the truth. He couldn’t talk to her. He just couldn’t. Maybe he would feel bad about that later, but at the moment, a woman who had left him, who had let him think that she was dead, five years ago, just wasn’t as important to him as Jamie was.
“Go. Give your number to someone, and I’ll call you tomorrow,” Lance told her, and then he looked up, meeting the eyes of one of the security team, who was standing nearby just in case he was needed. He was a large man, and when he came over, he dwarfed the slender, delicate Amy. She looked up at the guy, who stared back impassively, and made a visible decision to choose the better part of valor in this situation.
“Call me! We need to talk,” Amy told him, as she was ushered away. And man was that ever the truth, but he could talk to her later when this thing with Jamie was dealt with.
If there was still a thing to deal with at all. From the look on Jamie’s face, Lance wasn’t at all sure about that.
“Jamie,” Lance murmured, possibly too quietly for Jamie to hear. At least, the redhead made no answer, just watching him with wary eyes as Lance walked near. He didn’t back away, though. That was something.
