He wasn’t mad at me.

The room was steamy and smelled like his cologne. He had a towel around his waist and he stood over the sink, trimming his beard.

Something about the casual routine stirred feelings in me. It felt so right to have him here. His presence didn’t even feel new. It felt familiar and normal and it gave me a preemptive sadness that I suspected would grow with every day that brought us closer to his departure date.

In a few weeks, he would be gone. The bathroom would be empty. Tucker would go with him. Jason wouldn’t come over anymore. And the clothes in the drawer he wanted would disappear.

Empty, again.

“Don’t worry.” He winked at me. “I’ll clean the sink. You won’t even know I was here.”

The irony.

I gave him a weak smile. God, I was a nutjob. In the last week I’d shown Jason enough crazy to scare off anyone. He’d seen me blackout drunk and washed barf out of my hair. He’d sat with me, surrounded by piles of my dead fiancé’s clothing, and watched TV. He’d held me while I had a panic attack and even offered to sell his motorcycle so it wouldn’t upset me. I was knee-jerk emotional responses, a minefield of bad days and walls to tear down, and they popped up at random, without warning.

And he didn’t care.

For some reason this gorgeous man who looked like he could be in a damn electric razor commercial was all in—even if we were about to be all out—and I wouldn’t even give him a fucking drawer.

I leaned there, watching him run the razor down his neck, and he glanced at me with those blue eyes and I missed him already.

“You’re a very patient man, aren’t you?”

He slid his eyes down my body and raised an eyebrow. “Well, it’s paid off so far.”

The breath that I blew through my lips was one of resolve. So it wouldn’t last. Okay. But I’d give it everything until it ended.

I held up a key.

Jason froze and his razor clicked off.

I pressed the key to his bare chest, over his heart. “Use whatever drawer you want,” I said. “Park your truck in the garage. No more ringing the doorbell when you come home. Okay?”

The smile on his face made my heart hurt. I don’t know that I’d ever seen him look this happy.

“Okay,” he whispered, putting his palm over the hand on his chest.

We’d have it all…right up until we wouldn’t.

Chapter 26

Jason

? Broken | Lund

I typed in my text and heard the ping from across the store.

Jason: You’re so fucked. One word: pleather.

Sloan: How do you feel about taxidermy?

Jason: How do you feel about the 70s?

A Talking Heads song played in the background, and I looked over the racks of the musty Santa Monica thrift store. Sloan glanced up at me from across the room and narrowed her eyes. I beamed back at her.

She’d had Zane drop me off at Goodwill so she could challenge me to a game on our date night. We each got fifteen dollars to buy something the other person had to wear for the rest of the evening. It was actually a pretty hilarious idea. But when I heard Sloan laugh all the way across the store, I knew it wasn’t going to end well for me.

“Your bravery is about to be tested,” she said outside ten minutes later. She was adorable.

“Nothing scares me.”

“Really? I think this might scare you,” she said, pulling out a long red cape with little tacos on it and holding it out by the corners.

I ran my hand through my hair and she laughed.

“Okay. It’s a cape. I can do a cape,” I said, a laugh in my throat. “I’m man enough.”

“I tend to agree with you on that.”

“Your turn.” I’d hit comedy gold in there. I pulled out a footie pajama with a unicorn head for a hood. It even had a tail. She blanched and I started cracking up.

“Do I have to wear the hood?” she asked.

“Absolutely. And the belt.” I produced a wrestling championship belt made of gold plastic.

She made a face. “Fine. But I’m not done with you,” she said. “Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you’re this famous guy”—she made jazz hands—“and you can’t get photographed walking around the Santa Monica Pier in this. That it would be bad for your image and Pia would lecture you and blah blah blah. But I want you to know I’ve made arrangements for this because I’m a very thoughtful girlfriend.”

She turned away from me and put something on. When she turned back around, I howled with laughter. She wore flesh-colored plastic sunglasses that looked like hands over her eyes. There were gaps between the fingers to see through.

We both laughed so hard we were crying, and I grabbed her and pulled her into my chest.

I couldn’t live without this. I wanted her to come on tour with me.

I didn’t care what I had to do to make it happen—pay her bills, bribe Kristen for support. Beg her.

I was still waiting to hear back from Ernie on whether we could get Lola off the ticket before I talked to Sloan about it. But whichever way it went, I already had a plan to see her when I was on the road. If she couldn’t go with me or visit because of Lola, I’d come to her as much as possible. And there was the five-week break for the holidays. We’d talk on the phone and we’d Skype. We’d done the phone thing before. We were good on the phone. We could do it again.