Steel 7 (Multiple Love)

The trouble is that everyone she works with seems intent on shaping her to be something totally different.

We’re on our way to Melbourne. It's a short flight, and once again, we're traveling with the dancers and the band, and even some of the technical team too. Luna has a great relationship with most of her supporting crew, but there is one guy, a lighting technician called Marcus, who makes the hair at the back of my neck prickle.

There's no reason for the strange sense that I have about him. He hasn't, to my knowledge, done anything wrong. There's just a feeling of wrongness about him. The same kind of wrongness that I sensed in my cousin who ended up in jail. An emptiness in his eyes. A smirk that doesn't touch the rest of this face.

I start to tell Connor about it, but I hear the vagueness of my own words and cut short before I spill it all. My crew already thinks that I'm superstitious. They don't believe in the evil eye, but I've seen the consequences of people's jealous thoughts. I know how much damage they can do.

It's why I try to surround myself with positivity.

It's why I value my friends so much.

Friends are the family we choose for ourselves.

Luna reaches across the aisle and touches my arm. "You're looking very serious today," she says. "You got something on your mind?"

"Just ghosts." I cover her tiny pale hand with my broad darker one. "But all the ghosts disappear when you're around."

Her hand squeezes my arm gently. "Mine too," she whispers.

We smile at each other in that warm, melted butter kind of way that comes with being completely comfortable in another person's presence.

When she draws her hand away, looking around, conscious that we are surrounded, I do the same.

We need to be watchful, Connor said. We need to make sure that our feelings for Luna don't blind us to any potential threat.

As I scan over the other people on the plane, my eyes meet Marcus's. He nods and curls his mouth into that smirk, and unease snakes through me.

Maybe he's just being friendly and polite. Maybe he's just one of those people who never quite fits in wherever he is but keeps trying anyway.

Or maybe he's trying to tell me without words that he saw the intimacy between Luna and me.

Paranoia isn't a good feeling to live with.

I've gone years suspecting everyone around me, never certain who was a friend and who was foe. I don't want to experience that again.

Our ghosts continue to shape us unless we work on dealing with them.

I haven't done that yet, but maybe it's time.

Maybe I can only be the man Luna deserves if I try.

We land in Melbourne and spring into action, hustling Luna into a new waiting car and then into a new luxurious suite on the top floor of Melbourne's most prestigious hotel.

It's evening, so I'm expecting Luna to tell us to lock the doors and come into her room. I'm expecting her to beckon us until we're all sliding between her thighs, finding pleasure and peace in her body, reveling in those feelings for as long as it lasts.

But she doesn't.

"I want to swim in the ocean now," she says.

"But it's dark." Ben glances at the inky black sky visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows that make up one side of the VIP suite.

"That's why," Luna says. "No one will be there. I can enjoy the water and not have to worry about paparazzi or fans or crazed stalkers."

"You don't have to worry about those things," Connor says. "Those things are for us to worry about, and we worry about them as much at night as we do in the day."

"I know." Luna pads toward him, throwing her arms around his neck. "You take care of me as if I'm priceless."

"You are." He dips down and gently kisses her lips.

"I'm just a girl," she says softly. "Just a girl, asking a boy if he'll take her swimming in the dark, away from prying eyes."

"You know that you don't play fair, Ms. Evans," Connor says.

"It should be okay," I say, never wanting to see Luna as down as she was in Berlin. "Some of us can stay on the shoreline.”

Luna shakes her head. "I want us all to do this. I want to make this memory so I can hold it in my heart. The other day it was nice, but I couldn't relax. There were too many people, and you guys couldn’t just hang out and be yourselves. I want this time for us."

Connor scans the room, meeting the eyes of each of us. He's seeking out our approval to do something that we all know could be dangerous. He's tired of shouldering all of the responsibility alone, and I understand that.