When my phone rings for what feels like the fiftieth time today, I think about not answering it. At least until I see Sly’s name light up the screen.

    Heat skates down my spine, and before I can think better of it, I pick up and say, “Dare I ask what trouble you’ve gotten us into this time?”

    “Nothing so far,” he answers in a slow Texas drawl that turns the heat into a burning wildfire between one syble and the next. “But with us? That could change in a heartbeat.”

    “You’re nothing if not unpredictable.” Which is the number one reason I shouldn’t have answered the phone. Nothing good cane from unpredictable. “So, what’s up? Did you get the date proposal from my agent?”

    “Oh, I got it,” he says, and this time I don’t hear any smile in his voice.

    Disappointment stirs in my belly, but I ignore it as I curl into the corner of my hotel room’s sofa. If he decides to back out, it’s probably for the best, even if it doesn’t feel like that right now. “What’s the matter? You don’t like the terms?”

    “What I don’t like is some asshole threatening to kill you in the middle of one of your concerts,” he growls.

    Disappointment turns to rm as his words sink in. “Someone threatened to kill me?” I swipe to my text messages to see if I missed something new from Marco or Bryan. But there’s nothing, which isn’t like either of them. If there’s a situation, they’re the first ones chomping at the bit to deal with it—especially considering we’re in full-blown crisis mode at the moment. “Are you sure?”

    His voice goes low and gravelly. “I know you saw the doll.”

    “What doll?” I’m genuinely baffled, both by his anger and by whatever he seems to think is going on.

    “The one dressed like you and stabbed through the heart with a Twisters knife!” I’m still trying to recall when his voice pitches slightly in disbelief. “You don’t remember the murder doll someone threw at your head?”

    “Oooh, that!” I snap my head up, pleased with having ced it. I have a vague memory of a toy fitting that description hitting me in Vegas. I was too preupied trying to get through the show from hell for it to make asting impression, though.

    “Oh, that?” His voice damn near cracks on thest note. “My God, Sloane. You act like it’s no big deal. That’s a serious threat!”

    “Oh, please.” Iugh. “That wasn’t even the first hex doll I’ve gotten this tour. If I got upset every time something like that happened, I’d never breathe.”

    I mean for the words to reassure him, but an immediate, “Shit like this has happened more than once?” tells me I’ve done the opposite.

    Whoops.

    I take a deep breath and try again. “I mean, the Twisters logo is new, but the rest? Sure. I’m not the most hated woman in pop for nothing, Sly.” The sooner he realizes what that entails, the better off we’ll both be.

    But apparently he’s determined to wear blinders, because hees back with, “You’re not the most hated woman in pop at all. Your fans worship you.”

    “Yeah, well, praise or pyre are just two sides of the same coin,” I toss back. “And one little flip changes everything. I think you’d know that better than most.”

    “I haven’t seen that—”

    “Yeah, well, good for you,” I interrupt as new stirrings of annoyance shoot through me. “Have you ever thought that maybe it’s different for women? When you’re a woman, someone always crosses the line. If it’s not a disgusting letter or a vicious social media ount tearing you down and ming you for who the fuck knows what, it’s someone breaking into your apartment and jacking off in your underwear drawer when you’re not there. Personally, I’d rather have the doll.”

    “What?” rm turns his voice hoarse as he demands, “Are you telling me someone broke into your apartment and…”

    “My apartment. My hotel room. Assholes are part of the game.” Though part of me wants to curl up on the floor at the memories, I keep my voice matter-of-fact but firm. If Sly intends to hang around long enough to make it to that date in L.A., he needs to know these things. And if the reality of my life is too much for him, if it scares him off, better now than at the restaurant, in front of the entire Hollywood press corps.

    “Yeah, well, they shouldn’t be. Not like that.” His frustration is practically tangible. “How the hell do they get so close to you?”

    The usation in his voice pisses me right the fuck off. Neither I nor my security team deserves the shit ton of me he seems ready to heap on us. He started this newest mess, but he’s got no freaking idea what it’s like to live the way I do.

    “Howe they don’t get close to you?” I fire back, suddenly tired of the whole conversation. “Is it because your security is just that good, or is it because nobody tries?”

    I brace myself for him to hit back with another ridiculous usation, at which point I’ll feel more than justified in telling him to fuck all the fuck off. I have enough shit to wade through every day without adding his to the mix.

    Except…Sly doesn’t hit back. In fact, for a long time, he doesn’t say anything at all. Just when I’m beginning to think he hung up on me, he whispers, “I didn’t know.”

    It’s not actually an apology, but the regret in his voice has my own anger backing down enough for me to throw him a bone. “I’m not there when it happens. The rms and cameras pick them up if they get too close to my homes. And, more times than not, the ones who are brazen enough to actually break in get caught. asionally they even get prosecuted.”

    “Is that enough for you?” he asks, his earlier frustration reced by something I can’t quite recognize. “Because it doesn’t feel like enough to me.”

    “It has to be enough,” I say. “It’s all I’ve got.”

    “I’m sorry,” he tells me solemnly. “I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through any of that. And I’m sorry if anything I’ve done has made it worse for you. That’s thest thing I’d ever want to happen.”

    Normally, I’d brush off the words. People apologize for shit all the time—it doesn’t mean they mean it. But I finally figure out what I’m hearing in his voice: sorrow, with a dose of shame as a chaser. It calms me down faster than anything else would have.

    “It’s not your fault,” I finally reply. Because it isn’t. This has been my life for longer than I want to think about.

    “It feels like my fault.”

    “Well, it’s not,” I tell him firmly. “Maybe you and Marquis are what kicked it up this week, but if it wasn’t the jumbotron, it would have been something else. It always is.”

    “How do you live like that?”

    “It’s been going on so long I barely notice it anymore,” I answer lightly, throwing in a forcedugh to really sell it. “Besides, what’s the alternative?”

    “Don’t do that,” he tells me so sharply that I reel back in my seat.

    What happened to the softness of just a few moments ago? “Don’t do what?”

    “Don’t pretend it’s not a big deal. Stop downying what you’ve been through and what you’re still going through. You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t hurt. And you don’t have to hide from me. Not about this. Not about anything,” he rifies. “But definitely not this.”

    A long silence follows his words. Not because I’m angry, but because I have no idea how I’m supposed to respond to him. To what he’s telling me.

    No one’s ever said anything like that to me before—no one’s ever told me I didn’t have to pretend before. Not even my mother, who was too busy trying to make money from me after my dad left to ever worry about how I felt. Or what I was having to keep hidden. The fact that Sly said it—and more, that he sounds like he means it—has something deep inside me turning dangerously soft. And even though I know it’s just a PR date, even though I know I’m the one who’s set all the rules, I can’t help wishing, just for a moment, that it could be more.

    “This is going to get messy,” I whisper, so low I’m certain he won’t hear it.

    But he must have ears like a bat, because he replies, “The things that matter always do.” There’s such warmth in his voice when he says it that I swear I could wrap his words around me like a nket.

    Which isn’t terrifying at all. “I need to go.”

    “Okay.”

    For some reason, I can’t hang up. “I like your voice.”

    He chuckles. “I like your everything.”

    And just like that, the walls I’ve built begin to melt. “This is going to get very messy.” I feel the need to warn him a second time, as a whole bunch of emotions I’ve kept frozen in ice for years start thawing out.

    But he justughs, the sound low and rich and so warm that it sets off an avnche inside me. Even before he says, “Then we’re already doing it right.”