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I pull the covers over us when she turns onto her side. Wrap an arm around her. Now that it’s over, she seems distant.

That puts a damper on my good mood. “What is it?”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispers. “And I’m concerned that if we keep doing this that might happen.”

I pretend that it doesn’t pain me that she isn’t as into me as I am into her. “You’re wrong.”

“So you won’t care if I crawl into bed with Bronx tomorrow night?”

“I’ll miss having you in my arms.” Being with her is what matters. “But I want you to be happy.”

She falls asleep in my embrace.

I wait until I’m sure I won’t wake her, then get out of bed and pull on a pair of sweats.

Riot is sitting on the couch. Eyes red and glazed. Just weed. He’s stopped touching any of the other shit since she joined us. Replaced addictive drugs with a woman far harder to shake.

I sit down next to him. “We’re fucking this up.”

“You think?” He side eyes me.

“She’s going to leave us.” I exhale. “Unless one of us finds a way to keep her here.”

“Do you think it will be you?” he asks.

“More than I think it will be you,” I say without malice. “You might have the past. And the way you fight tells me you both still have feelings. But as long as you’re with Sonatina you don’t have a prayer.”

He pulls the device his friend left him that shuts down any devices we don’t know about and presses the button. “I won’t be with her forever. As soon as we have something to use against her I’m done.”

“You still might be too late,” I warn him. “If she leaves... when she leaves... if she asks me to go with her... I will.”

I’d do it in a heartbeat.

His expression tells me more than he wants it to. He wants it all. L.A. Riot. Fame. And Kelsey too.

I don’t know. Maybe he can make it work. Maybe he can get her to forgive him.

“I won’t give up on us,” he warns me.

“Me either.” And we’re suddenly not talking about this dynamic the four of us have had with her since she arrived. Where she’s ours. “Which means at some point we are going to have a problem, aren’t we?”

He gets up and walks toward the bedroom. “Yeah, we probably are.”

Getting up, I follow him in. Climb back into bed next to Kelsey while he takes his usual spot in the chair beside her.

Sooner or later this house of cards is going to fall down around us.

15

Riot

“You’ll be standing here.” Sonatina points to a mark on the stage. Then she points to another mark front and center to the pit. “And I’ll be there.”

The strings bend under my fingertips as I play a series of random chords. “Uh-huh.”

Kelsey is sitting on one of Kodiak’s flannels off-stage. She’s wearing a second one over a cropped white shirt and black leather miniskirt. Her motorcycle boots are ever present. A tiny tracker that she doesn’t know about is hidden inside them and connected to an app on my phone.

And so is the one in the hem of her mini and another sewn into the lining of her bra. Oh, and then there’s a few in the chunky cherry-colored bangles on her wrist.