Cutting through the crowd, I was close enough that when Tanner snarled at him, leaning in close to his face, I heard every word.
“Why did you have to take my guitar and play, just to impress that guy?”
“You’re making a mistake,” Nick told him, which answered my question, if I’d even entertained such a ridiculous notion that he’d been jealous of me listening to Tanner.
“Can you just not—”
“Step back,” I ordered loudly, striding forward, shoving the men out of my way until I reached Nick, grabbing Tanner by the throat and pinning him to the wall.
Both hands were on my wrist instantly, clawing and desperate to pry my fingers open, his eyes gone feral as he struggled to escape.
“Never, ever touch Nick Madison again. You feel me?”
“Yes,” he croaked out. “Absolutely. No question.”
I let go and he slid down the wall, crumpling to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
“I told you, you were making a mistake,” Nick said to Tanner as I took hold of his bicep and led him back down the hall toward the front door.
People tried to talk to Nick, but I was moving too fast by then, and I had him outside at the valet station in moments. I gave the guy the ticket—I’d never been to a “small get-together” that had a parking service—and stood in front of Nick, hoping that I wasn’t going to need to draw my gun from the holster on my ankle.
“I knew you were close,” he said after a moment.
“What?” I asked, not turning to look at him.
He leaned into me then, from behind, pressing his forehead between my shoulders. “It was a mistake for that guy to ever put his hands on me.”
“Yes,” I agreed, seeing other people starting toward us and not liking that they noticed him, who he was.
“But he was right about something.”
“What was that?” I asked absently, seeing the car coming our way up the driveway.
“I didn’t like you thinking he was good.”
When the Toyota Sequoia was parked in front of us, I opened the passenger side door and put him in, engaging the lock and closing the door before I went around the back of the SUV, passed the valet a twenty, which he thanked me for, loudly—I was guessing not many people tipped them—and then slid in behind the wheel and got us out of there. The seat belt alarm chimed relentlessly, but I didn’t pull it over my shoulder until we were far enough away.
“Are you okay?” Nick asked, hesitating for a moment before he reached out and put his hand on my thigh.
“I am now,” I replied, taking a breath. “Next time, one of the guys comes with us. I don’t care whose house we’re at.”
“No, it’s fine,” he assured me. “Somebody always gets in my face once the alcohol starts to flow.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh my God,” he explained, making a gagging sound in the back of his throat. “Last time I was at a big party in Beverly Hills, a girl went off on me about my song ‘August Moon’ because, she said, singing about witches was going to send me right to hell.”
I chuckled. “And what did you say?”
“I didn’t get a chance. She, like, hose-barfed all over me.”
“Jesus,” I groaned, taking a quick turn, then another. “What’d you do?”
“I had to borrow clothes from my friend Angel, and that was one of the nights the paparazzi decided to take pictures. I wasn’t even drunk. I was a victim.”
I snorted.
“I love Angel, but man, he plays ball for the Clippers, right, so he’s so much taller than me and I—”
“Wait,” I said, turning to grin at him. “You mean Angel Lancaster, the power forward who used to play for Wisconsin?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, honey, how big was his shirt on you?”
Nothing.
I waited a second, looked away from the road and found him staring out the window, arms crossed like he had completely withdrawn. It was apparently too much familiarity for one night. I shut up then and didn’t say another word.
“Huge,” he said, out of the blue, and when I checked, he was staring at me. The way I was being looked at, hopefully, longingly, made my mouth go dry. “I looked ridiculous, like I was a toddler or something, and of course, those are the pictures that interviewers splash up on the screen whenever I say I want to be a serious songwriter.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him, acting as though there had been no lull. “It’s always the worst when something goes viral. It never goes away. It’s there forever.”
“It is,” he agreed.
We were quiet the rest of the trip home, and when we reached the house, he went directly to his room. I went out on the patio and stood in the space that I had come, ridiculously, to think of as belonging to me. I felt content there now that it was safe and secure. And as I stood there, still, my mind went back to something Nick had said. He didn’t like me thinking that Tanner Ward was good. What the hell was that supposed to mean?