It was more than okay. In answer, I bent one knee so my pelvis was closer to his and I could feel more of him through my dress. I wasn’t prepared to go all the way and I didn’t think he would ask me to, but as far as I was concerned, Sam Hardiman could position me any way he liked on the seat of his truck. I ran my hands back through his waves and gently pulled his head until I could reach his ear with my mouth.
“Ahh,” he sighed. His breath quickened, but he held very still to savor the experience. I knew exactly how he felt. As I tickled his earlobe with my tongue, I concentrated on the sensation of my body coming alive. I’d gone through all of this before, but never with a guy this beautiful.
Suddenly a car chirped. Headlights blinked somewhere in the deck. The noise sounded so close that I stiffened under Sam.
It wasn’t my imagination that the noise was suspicious. Sam pushed himself off me, propping his elbows on the seat. He craned his neck to look out the window.
The door jerked open. The man from the deserted street must have followed us here. I screamed.
A rough hand smothered my mouth. But in the next second, I saw it was still Sam who held me. He uncovered my mouth and looked outside the truck again. “What the f**k, Charlotte?”
“Hey!” Charlotte exclaimed. “This is exactly how you got me to join your band.”
My heart was still throbbing from the scare. Now it hurt from being broken into pieces. Sam had made out with me so I would join his band. He had touched me that way, kissed me all night, made me fall for him, just so I would stay in his band. He had done it before, with Charlotte.
When another girl came along, one with more talent and better style than me, he would do it again.
“Sorry,” Sam murmured in my ear. He hefted himself off me, momentarily crushing my arm—“sorry, sorry, sorry”—and pulled me after him so we both sat upright. Then he bailed out of the driver’s side of the truck and slammed the door.
Charlotte peered through the open passenger door at me. Blinking innocently, she said in a superfriendly voice, “When you first showed up tonight, did he tell you to act like the two of you weren’t into each other?”
Sam had rounded the truck and reached her. “Could I speak with you privately for a moment behind that Audi?” He shoved her along in front of him until they disappeared around the next car.
Ace stood with his arms folded in the empty space next to Sam’s truck, looking over his shoulder in the direction Sam and Charlotte had gone.
Buttoning my dress, I called to Ace, “Well, that was awkward.”
“Sorry,” he grumbled.
We could both hear Charlotte’s increasingly shrill voice: “ . . . just bring her into the group, Sam, without asking anybody’s opinion? Like we don’t even matter?”
I couldn’t make out any of what Sam said in response. I could hear only his stern tone. It must have worked, because she replied with indiscernible words, and then he stalked back toward the truck.
When Sam drew even with Ace, he stopped and gave him a glare. Ace just raised one eyebrow at him.
Sam threw up his hands in frustration, closed my door, rounded the truck again, and slipped behind the steering wheel. As he started the ignition and backed out of the space, I thought about opening my door and flouncing away. But I would have no way home. The last thing I wanted was to make a phone call to my granddad to rescue me from the District. I stayed put, watching Charlotte come from behind the car to meet Ace in the empty parking space. Their heads turned to follow us as we drove off.
“I’m so sorry about that,” Sam said quietly, his face blinking pale and then dark again as we passed under fluorescent lights spaced along the ceiling. “I should have warned her I was bringing you tonight. She was comfortable with the band the way it was, and she never accepted we needed to add somebody new. She won’t act that way to you again.”
She certainly wouldn’t, because I wouldn’t be around. She would be reacting exactly the same way to the next girlfriend Sam brought in.
But I didn’t say any of that. I owed Sam nothing, not even a fight about it. I stared out the window as we exited the parking deck, onto the side street. The lights of the District grew fewer and farther between until they faded into the neon wash of the larger city.
Sam’s voice broke the silence. “The gig is at the same time tomorrow night. Want to tell your grandpa we’re going on another date, and actually grab a bite to eat beforehand? If you’re not busy earlier, maybe we could spend the afternoon together.”
“I’m not playing the gig,” I said flatly.
“You’re—” he burst out, then pressed his lips together, controlling himself. He’d been afraid I would say this, and he’d only been pretending he thought I might not mind what Charlotte had told me. He said, with admirable calm considering how upset he must be, “But they asked us back.”
“But you didn’t ask me.”
“No,” he said. “Wait a minute. I told you that they asked us back, and you didn’t say you wouldn’t play with us. You’ve decided this only now, after what Charlotte said. Listen, Charlotte is a great girl and I love her—”
He kept talking. My brain paused here like time stood still. He loved Charlotte. And he glossed over it. This was a warning to me.
“—but she’s a few bricks shy of a full load about some things.”
“About you,” I accused him.
“We dated,” he acknowledged carefully. “I did not date her just to get her to join the band.”
“Did you tell her to act like you weren’t into each other when you brought her into the band with Ace?”
“Maybe,” he said, meaning yes, “because Ace would think I was dating her just for that. But I wasn’t. And I definitely was not doing what I was doing with you just now to get you into the band. You’re already in the band.”
“I most certainly am not,” I said. “I never agreed to that. Charlotte may be a few bricks shy of a full load about you, but I’m not.”
“Bailey!” he exclaimed before I’d quite gotten all of this out of my mouth. “You can’t turn this down. We already have a gig. We scheduled another gig with you in it.”
I shrugged. “Go back to the bar owner and say your special guest star won’t be joining you, and ask if he still wants you.”
“He won’t. That’s been the whole point of this, Bailey. I can’t do this without you. If I could, I would have done it last week.”