I peek back at him. “Are you kidding me? The outside ones are the best.”
He nods in agreement before returning to the hallway and letting the door clank shut.
Stopping in the center of the room a few feet away from a beverage table, I draw in a deep breath, sniffing the air. And once my brain processes just how good this room smells, I inhale again.
The scent is vanilla and something citrusy. I spot three candles—one on each of the side tables and the last positioned in the center of the coffee table. On the other side of that table, Tyler is on the couch next to Cal. Their heads close together as they talk.
“You put scented candles on your rider?” I ask, stretching my arms out in front of me.
“The candles are Sin’s new thing,” Wyatt answers. I look around the garment rack to find him sitting on a stool on the opposite corner of the room. No surprise, he’s smoking like a freight train, but luckily, Sinjin’s candles pretty much cancel out the odor. I wrinkle my nose as Wyatt stubs it out and immediately fires up another. “Helps him relax.”
I follow Wyatt’s gaze until it lands on Sinjin, who’s stretched out on the loveseat. There’s a folded cloth over his eyes and a bottle of Southern Comfort within reaching distance on the floor.
“How’s the relaxation going, Sin?” I tease. He answers by giving me the finger. Laughing, I begin to distribute everything from my cart. When I get to Wyatt, and he lifts the hangers out of my arms, I arch my eyebrows together. “So what weird shit do you have on there?”
“On what?”
“The rider for the dressing room. Sin’s got his candles and booze. I’m not even sure I want to know what Cal asked for. So what about you?”
Wyatt tosses his clothes on the back of the armchair that’s closest to him. “Gum. Cigarettes. Energy drinks. I’m simple as hell compared to the rest of these f**kers.”
Cal snorts loudly, dragging my attention back to him and Tyler. “You should tell her how all the weird shit on the dinner and lunch menus belong to you.” Tyler remains wordless—he’s literally said a total of twenty words to me since the tour kicked off—but he nods his strawberry blonde head in amusement.
Wyatt changes the subject. “How are the guitar lessons going?”
I move my hand from side to side. Lucas has been teaching me a little each day since he surprised me with the mahogany Gibson. When I throw that in with the few chords I learned from my grandfather as a kid, I’m average. “It’ll take some time.”
“You’ll learn,” Wyatt says scratching his straw-colored hair.
He doesn’t say another word about the food rider, and I make a mental note to pay better attention to what we’re served during the next couple of days. Spinning around, I pace back to the wardrobe rack, which is empty except for a pair of Diesel jeans, a black, short sleeve Henley tee, and black and white Converse. For Lucas. Who’s nowhere to be found.
Rubbing my hands down the back of my tight, navy blue skinny jeans, I glance around at the rest of the band. “Do y’all know where—?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll have him all to yourself after the show,” Sinjin says, sitting upright. He tosses the cloth that was over his eyes behind him, where it lands a few inches from the candle on the end table. “But if it makes you feel better, he’s on the phone in the bathroom.” He points two fingers at the restroom in the back of the room. Sure enough the door is closed.
“Look at you cooperating,” I say sarcastically. “Was that so hard?”
Cal gets up from the couch, his straight black hair swinging around his shoulders. “He’s twitching from having to be a good boy,” he states dryly. “Oh, and your ass better come back here tonight after the show.” He winks theatrically. “I heard a rumor you’re supposed to do body-shots. What I want to know is if it’s supposed to be with me or off of me? Or off of you? And how Lucas feels about that?”
I shoot a hell-freezing look at Sinjin who’s the only person aside from Lucas that I’ve mentioned Ashley’s YTS bucket list to. He smiles like the Cheshire cat and then stretches back out on the loveseat, rolling over on his side so that his face is turned away from us. When he speaks, his voice is low, but it’s quiet enough in the dressing room for everyone to hear what he’s saying loud and clear.
“Lucas will break the f**king bottle over your head if her lips even come close to you.”
Ignoring Sin, I address Wyatt. “Can you let Lucas know that I’m putting his wardrobe for tonight in that closet over there?” He confirms that he will, and after I take Lucas’s belongings off the rack and hang them neatly in the dressing room closet, I pull my garment cart toward the door.
Before I leave, I pause.
My eyes flit to the restroom door once again, and I twist my lips to the side. I try to convince myself that it’s not Sam he’s talking to and that she hasn’t tried to snake her way back into his life. I haven’t heard from her since the night before we left, and I’ve almost talked myself into believing that she won’t send another. That she wanted to retaliate against Lucas after reading an article about us being together and the easiest way for her to do so was to reach out to me.
Ripping my gaze away from the door, I give the band—minus Sinjin, whose back is still turned—an upbeat smile. “Good luck. Or break a leg.”
After I return the rack to the crew dressing room, I make it a third of the way up the hall before I hear yet another voice shouting my name. This time it’s a shirtless Wyatt McCrae.