Page 88 of Sky Full of Stars

Driving home I think of my own insecurities about Adam going on tour. It’s clear from the video, Nick, Jordan and Archer are no strangers to picking up women and on tour they’d be constantly in their face. I’m surprised to realise I don’t feel that way now. Over the course of the last couple of days, Adam convinced me he isn’t like that. I trust him.

Adam is in the living room with his guitar when I get back. He is making notes in a pad, then strumming some chords. I walk down into the sunken room and he glances up at me, giving me a bright smile.

“How was your lunch?” he asks.

“Good,” I give him a smile. I want to ask about Nick but am hesitant, not sure I’m in a place to question him about his friends. “You’re writing music?” I ask instead.

“Yep, recently came across a lot of inspiration,” he set his guitar down and held his hand out to me.

“Oh yeah?”

“Hmmm,” he pulls me into his lap and wraps his arm around my waist, using his other hand to pull me into a kiss.

“Can I see?”

He squints. “It’s just a rough draft.”

“Is it about someone you know?” I grin.

“Maybe,” he kisses my nose then reaches for the pad and closes it over. “But that person will have to wait until its finished to hear it.”

My heart swells with emotion. I wrinkle up my nose and he looks questioningly at me. “We are talking about me, right?”

He laughs and pushes me onto my back, crawling over me.

“No one has ever written a song about me before,” I tell him, as he fiddles with the buttons on my dress.

“You have many song writers in your life, Slugger?”

I laugh this time. “I mean, it’s kind of a big deal,” I glance away shyly, not sure why I suddenly feel like I can’t look him in the eye.

He puts a finger to my cheek and tilts my head back to look at him. “You’re definitely a big deal,” he says softly. “And I’m not kidding, I have been inspired. It’s been a while since I wrote something serious without Arch.”

He kisses me again and before long he’s rid me of my clothes and his own, pulling a condom from somewhere like magic. I don’t want to think about why he seems to have them all over the house, not when he is sliding inside me, wrecking me for any other man.

Later on he orders in Chinese food and sets us up out on the deck so we can watch the ocean. It is amazing how many stars are visible over the ocean. We avoid talking about tomorrow but eventually I can’t hold back on what happened earlier.

“Did you see the guys today?” I ask.

“Spoke to Arch on the phone but I was running some other errands today then got caught up with a certain song. Why?”

“So you didn’t see the news?”

His brow dips. “Shit, what happened now?”

“Nothing bad. Well, nothing you need to worry about,” I twist the stem of my wine glass. “There was a story on TV, it showed the guys out last night.”

“Don’t tell me, Jordan did something stupid?”

“No…Nick.”

“Nick?” he arches a brow. “I thought he went home with Elsa?”

“He changed his mind, said Jordan begged him to go out with them.”

“Ah, okay, yeah. I had a text from him last night asking me to join, but I didn’t see it till this morning. I had somewhere better I needed to be,” he gives me a filthy grin. I shake my head at him. “So what did Nick do?”

“He picked up a girl, there was video of him kissing her and getting in a car with her.”