Page 63 of Let Me Love You (Excess All Areas 5)

He spooned her into his arms. “As good as that felt, you need sleep. Close your eyes, Chay. You’re not broken. He just cracked your foundation a little. And I promise you, we’ll repair it before we build on it, yeah?”

She nodded, and within minutes, she was asleep.

11

“Anybody else wake up and be glad they could just have a bowl of cereal for breakfast?” Jase said hoarsely, peeling a tangerine the following afternoon. His voice still needed time to recover.

Ben grabbed a tangerine from the dish on Jase’s new kitchen countertop. The large family room that opened out onto the garden was filled with acoustic instruments. “Definitely. And a simple cup of tea without having to order room service and wait half an hour.”

“I missed my bed,” Luke said, helping himself to orange juice from Jase’s fridge.

Matt lay sprawled on the large grey sofa. “I bizarrely missed being able to throw a load of laundry in the machine without putting it in those labelled bags.”

Alex snoozed in an armchair.

Luke tipped his head in Alex’s direction. “The only thing he missed was Zoe.”

Ben laughed and threw a tangerine segment at his brother who sleepily batted it away. “Fuck off,” he grumbled.

“I suppose we should get back to it,” Matt said, easing himself up off the sofa. “Although, it’s fucking annoying we have to do this today when we only just got back.”

Ben shrugged. “Once upon a time, we’d have been thrilled to be asked. And it’s for a good cause.”

Matt placed the Spanish guitar on his lap and strummed it gently. “I know. Being asked to record an acoustic version for a great charity gig is all good. Being asked to start the afternoon we got off a red eye is just shite.”

“Given we had weeks with nothing, in the past, I’d rather have this.” Luke returned to his Cajon and sat back down on it, hammering on the bass pedal four times. “Let’s go, losers.”

Jase shook his head. “You know I’m not singing, so you all carry on without me.”

Ben shoulder-checked him. “Then, mime it, singer boy.”

Jase raised his middle finger.

Matt grabbed Alex’s foot and shook it.

“Alright,” Alex grumbled. “Jesus. I feel like I haven’t slept in days.”

“You probably haven’t,” Ben said with a grin.

Alex grinned in return as he sat up. “Says the guy getting it on with Chaya under the blankets last night. Mile high club, anyone?”

The rest of the band chuckled.

“Don’t even start that shit with me. It’s not like we were fucking in plain sight. You’ve all done more than travel from destination to destination on all those planes we’ve used over the last couple of months.”

Jase looked over at Alex. “And some of us have done more than others.”

Alex shrugged unapologetically. “At least we now know that some vibrators are louder than others.”

Matt ran his hand over his face. “That was twenty of the most uncomfortable minutes of my life.”

“You could have knocked on the door,” Alex said.

Jase shook his head. “We didn’t want to embarrass Zoe.”

Alex burst out laughing, reaching for his woodblock and tambourine. “She’s deaf, remember. Wouldn’t have heard it.”

Luke groaned. “We are so dumb.”

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