But even though the sound was there, his voice powerful and strong, soulful and sexy, his whole demeanor was off. He wasn’t animated like he’d been before he left. He looked flat, empty, and almost lifeless. It appeared as though he’d been touring for months instead of weeks. The smile he was giving people was forced, strained, and his eyes were vacant. You had to know Nick to see it. To his fans he was engaged, but to Brent, something was terribly wrong, and I was thankful that he had become the assistant Nick truly needed.
I texted Brent and asked where they would be the following night. They were playing a free venue at Musical Legends Park until midnight, so I told him I would get a plane ticket, and he said for me to just get to the airport. The plane would be waiting for me.
The band was booked into the JW Marriott, New Orleans, on Canal Street, but Brent sent Nick down the street and around the corner to the Hotel Monteleone, where I was staying. I called Nick when Brent texted that he was on his way over.
“Hey,” he said gruffly, taking a quick breath. “How are you, baby?”
“I’m good, how are you?”
“Well, I would be better if Brent hadn’t fucked up the reservation and put me in a different hotel than Stig and Conner and everyone else. I mean, I was going to ask them if they had another suite, but Brent hustled me out the door so fast that people would have noticed if I made a scene, you know?”
“And that’s not you, the scene part.”
“Not anymore,” he agreed, chuckling. “At least I don’t have to go stand in line at the check-in desk and get the key. Brent already had it, so I’m going up the elevator now.”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Hotel Monteleone.”
“I heard it’s haunted, so that could be cool.”
“Aren’t all the older hotels in New Orleans haunted?”
“Good point,” I teased him.
He was quiet a moment.
“Nick?”
“Sorry, I just miss you and—more than I ever thought I would, and I just can’t wait to get home.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, like…” He trailed off, and I heard him inhale. “Anyway, I think when I told you in Kentucky that I wanted us to spend some time being an us, more than two weeks would have been good.”
“Like a month.”
“Or, you know, a year maybe.”
I snorted, and he exhaled and laughed as I heard the key in the door.
“I miss you too, honey,” I said and hung up.
“Loc,” I heard him say from the other side of the door, and the lost sound in his voice, almost bereft, made my heart hurt.
Leaving the door’s security latch hooked, cracking it open only as far as it would allow, I glared out at him. “Hey, buddy, I think you have the wrong room.”
The way his breath caught and his face lit up, his eyes wide and his jaw dropped, there was no question that to Nick Madison, I was everything.
And I felt exactly the same way about him.
“Sir?” I teased, loving the way he sighed, watching the tension in him fall away.
“Let me in,” he demanded, and his voice cracked with yearning.
I grinned at him, arching an eyebrow. “You want in?”
His response, the full-body shudder, made me chuckle. “Oh yes, please, I want in more than anything in the whole wide world.”
“You’re certainly easy to please.”
“No, I’m not. Not at all,” he murmured, his eyes narrowing to slits. “But my husband is my home, and as long as he’s around me, with me, I’m good.”
An old song filtered through my mind. “You love him?”
“More than—” He choked and swallowed hard. “There are no words. I have to sing it to you so you understand, so you can feel it.”
“Sounds like a good song.”
“It’s the best one,” he whispered. “Let me in and I’ll sing it to you.”
Closing the door, I flipped the lock, opened the door, and held out my arms. “Hi, honey, welcome home.”
I had never been held so tight.