I turned to face Nash, not ready to let him go.
He slid a lanyard with my name tag over my head. “Steve and I will get your luggage to your room,” he said. Then he sighed. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Is this your boyfriend?” Li asked.
For the first time, she didn’t sound bossy. She sounded envious.
“Yeah, I am,” Nash said, eyeing the boys in the group. “Be sure to tell the others she’s taken.”
I looked up, a question on my lips, but Nash bent down and kissed me. He wrapped me tightly in his arms, just as he had last night and sealed his mouth over mine. I parted my lips, needing more, but he pulled back, clearly aware of our audience. Right. My cheeks flamed.
“I’m going to hold you to your promise about the shows. And I mean it—I want you to be mine,” he murmured in my ear.
I tipped my head back, holding his gaze. My worry about the girls he’d meet over the next weeks faded as I noted his proprietary glare around the room. Nash had just staked his claim. In front of my entire summer cohort.
Instead of being frustrated with his high-handedness, I melted. Because he was jealous. Because he couldn’t stand the idea of me hooking up with an MIT boy any more than I could handle him with one of the beautiful fans.
Nash glowered for a moment longer, and then he smiled at me—the devastating one that made me hot and bothered—before he walked over to Steve.
Another girl in our group sidled up to me. “Your boyfriend’s hot.”
“He is.” I nodded, my gaze still trailing Nash.
“He seemed to want to make sure no one here bothered you,” she said.
I finally turned to look at her. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Sarai,” she said.
I offered her my hand. “Aya.”
“Oh, we all know who you are now,” she said with a laugh. “You’re the girl with the hot boyfriend.”
Well, there were worse ways to be known.
16
Nash
As I returned to Atlanta and Cam’s tour without Aya, I moped. Having Aya with me had reminded me of my days touring with Lev. We were a team, together, sharing experiences. Now, once again, I was alone.
Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed for more than friendship with her. I wanted her—wanted the MIT nerds to know she was mine—but I’d watched my parents’ relationship shatter many times. What if I’d pushed the friendship I cherished into a place where it was doomed to fail?
Still, despite my second-guessing, I missed her, no matter how much Cam tried to cheer me up. I had used the plane ride from Boston to Atlanta and then the hours at the venue to compose three tunes, though—the first I’d managed in years.
Cam whistled as he read them, his head bobbing to the melody. “These’re damn fine.” He settled back in his chair in this newest suite in yet another fancy hotel. “Why don’t you work one of these tunes up real good and you can sing it in a couple of weeks all by yourself? That’s after we do ‘Sweet Baby Home’, though.”
I gasped. “You’d let me do that? Take over part of your set?”
“Sure. My fans are gonna love you.”
Excitement caused me to twitch in my spot on the couch, but I frowned. “I, uh… I’m not sure I’m country-music material.”
Cam smirked. “You do have a bit of an edge to you.”
“So…wouldn’t one of these songs dilute your brand?”
He leaned back. “Nope. My fans like me because I got an edge to me, too. Think about what music is doing, Nash. It’s evolving, right? Pushing boundaries, blending.” He leaned forward and flicked the music still clutched in my hands. “These walk a line between rock and country, and there seems to be an appetite for that. I mean, I’m there a lot of the time.”
I stared down at the lined paper in my lap, then swallowed and looked up. “Why are you so nice to me?”
Cam smirked. “Because I can be.”
I began to frown.
“No,” he said. “You’re not here out of pity.” He popped a Werther’s into his mouth, his eyes burning with intensity. “I told you before, your father reminds me of mine.” He glanced away, his jaw clenching. “Maybe if my old man had spent some of his time helping me instead of disparaging me, things would have been different.” His sentence ended softly, as if he were admitting that to himself for the first time.
“I’m just a kid—”
“With talent. And kindness. My mama likes you. Once I told her about you, back when I lived next door, she tasked me to look out for you because she worried about your influences, since your parents…”
I stared at my Converse sneakers. “Since my parents pretty much abandoned me.”
Fuck. I hated that I was like Lord Prescott in any way. But…truth was, whether it hurt or not. And this truth cut deep. My parents had given up on me when Lev died. And my subconscious had known long before I was willing to admit my family had shattered. There was no fixing it. I hated Dad for that, almost as much as I hated myself. Because my father might be selfish, but I’d been the one who didn’t fulfill my role, didn’t write songs when he needed them. And now, my family would never heal. So fuck it.
I clutched the music I’d just written. I’d wanted this—the ability to create something perfect—for so long. And now that passion flared brighter because these songs were for me. My father had made his point the other night. There was no going back. I was done.
“Look, Nash. You’ve had some hard knocks,” Cam said, interrupting my thoughts. “I get that. Also think you’re talented. And a good man.” He smirked at my scoff. “You’re ready to fly. I got the connections and ability to make that happen. Plus, I happen to like you.”
“Don’t forget your pay-it-forward theory,” Chuck rumbled.
I glanced over at Cam’s head of security, frowning.
Cam nodded. “Right. I help you now; you help someone else when the time’s right. Maybe multiple someones. One thing I learned in the Army—we do a lot of damage, but we rarely try to fix underlying issues. In your case, I can give you the opportunities your father should be giving you. It’s a song, an introduction. It’s hanging out with you. And it’s nothing hard since I’m more than glad to do all that.”
I smoothed the pages over my lap. “Like…a mentor?” I asked, still wrapping my mind around Cam’s kindness.
“Yep. Like that. And one day, I’ll be begging you to take my calls.” He laughed.
I clenched my hands into fists. “That’ll never happen.”
Cam sobered. “Back to the song. You down?”
I considered it a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that. Can…can we time it so I play close to Boston?”
“Damn straight. How about Madison Square Garden? That’s in a little over a month. Call up your girl. Get her to fly out for the show.”
I swallowed, all my emotions about Aya bombarding me once again. “What about you? Have you—”
He waved his hand. “I don’t talk about my past. Because that’s all it is.”