Oh dear. I didn’t like the sound of that.

I couldn’t stop him that much I knew. When Mace wanted something, Mace got it. I learned that early in our relationship like, the first date when he ended up spending the night, being the first and only guy I’d ever dated who I’d slept with on the first date.

However, thinking positively, maybe I could stal for long enough to get my head together.

“Before you start, tel me how much you heard,” I demanded.

He didn’t even try to screw with me, he just told me flat out, “Al of it.”

Shit!

“What’s the first thing you heard?” I didn’t know why I asked, maybe a form of self-punishment for being such an effing idiot and giving into Al y making me spil .

“The first thing I heard was, ‘Hel o? Stel a? Are you in the room?’”

Yep, he heard al of it.

I must remind you, my luck was not just shitty luck, it was super shitty luck.

“It doesn’t change anything,” I told him.

“It changes everything but then everything changed when you sang Hank Wil iams to me.”

Not this again!

“Mace, I’m not going to say it again, I didn’t sing Hank to you.”

“Kitten, the place was packed and stil , you and I were the only ones in that room.”

Sheesh.

“Please, let me go,” I asked, trying a different tactic.

“I didn’t leave you because you needed me.” Mace saw through my new tactic and didn’t think much of it.

I blinked. It felt like it took two days for me to blink; I did it in slow-mo. When my eyes were back to open they were a whole lot wider.

“Excuse me?”

“It wasn’t about you.”

Ah, so it was this game now.

My lips made a soft noise that sounded like, “poof”.

Then I said, “That’s what they al say.”

“It wasn’t.”

“So, it wasn’t me, it was you?”

“No, it was the men who watched you onstage, the ones I’d see gig to gig. Drinkin’ beer and adjusting their crotches and likely goin’ home and jackin’ off, thinking of you singing

‘Black Velvet’.”

“Right.” I sounded sarcastic because I meant to.

His face got closer. “Yeah. That’s right. Listen to me, Stel a, it wasn’t about you. I’m not the kind of man who wants other men jackin’ off to his woman. I’m also not the kind of man who wants to share her with four other guys.” My body went solid and my hands pressed against his chest. “I never cheated on you!”

“Yeah you did, every time you let me take a cal from Buzz or Hugo or Pong or Leo.”

Okay. Shit. Wel .

Um.

I had nothing to say to that because, in a weird way, he wasn’t wrong.

He felt my body relax, he knew he scored a point and he took advantage, pressing closer, his face dipping lower, coming to a stop an inch from mine.

“I knew when I got into it with you that I wouldn’t be the center of your universe. I was fine with that. I just didn’t know I’d be a satel ite.”

At his words, my body did an involuntary jerk.

I hated it that he thought that. I shouldn’t hate it, since I was over him, but I did.

“You weren’t a satel ite,” I whispered.

“I know that now, after hearin’ what you said in the kitchen. I didn’t know it then.” His arms came from around me and his hands went to either side of my neck, his thumbs pressing into the undersides of my jaw to tilt my head further back to look at him. “Kitten,” he said softly,

“you should have told me.”

Hang on a second here.

Was this happening?

And if it was, how was this happening? Why was this happening?

He broke up with me!

“You said I was needy,” I accused on a toss of my hair which, for your information, did nothing to dislodge his hands.

“I said your band was needy,” he contradicted.

“You did not,” I contradicted right back.

“I did. You heard it the way you wanted to hear it. I hate to break this to you but Stel a Gunn is not the Blue Moon Gypsies. There’s you and there’s the band. Babe, you gotta find where one ends and the other begins.” He was right. I knew he was right. I’d been worried about that for a long time.

But I wasn’t going to tel him that.

“You have no right to speak to me this way,” I snapped.

“I do.”

“And just how do you figure that?”

“Because the minute you sang the word ‘whippoorwil ’ a coupla months ago, your eyes locked on mine, you became my woman again.”

I jerked my neck away and took a step back.

Erm, excuse me?

“I did not!” I flashed.

“I didn’t know it at the time. Maybe didn’t want to know it.

“I didn’t know it at the time. Maybe didn’t want to know it.

I definitely fought it. But I gotta say, lookin’ back, you did.”

“I most certainly did not! ” I yel ed.

He grinned. “Yeah, Kitten, you did.”

I could not believe this was happening. I could also not believe he was grinning about it.

He kept talking. “It hit me last night after I told you Lindsey’d been murdered. Your face… fuck.” I watched his eyes grow soft, a look I knew too wel but this look was magnified, like, by a mil ion and I experienced a different kind of gut kick. “I knew then we weren’t done, definitely not over. Then the bul ets were flying around you and in that instant, I became sure.”

“Shut up!” I yel ed, not being nice nor meaning to be nice and wishing I could put my hands over my ears but thinking maybe that was a tad too juvenile.

He didn’t shut up. “I thought I’d wait until the Sid business was over but after what I heard in the kitchen, I’m not waiting.”

“I have a boyfriend!” I was stil yel ing, getting panicky, somewhat desperate and now kind of lying. I’d never describe Eric as my boyfriend. I didn’t know what he was but he wasn’t my boyfriend. I hadn’t even slept with him. It had been a long dry spel ; I hadn’t slept with anyone since Mace.

Mace kept grinning. “You’l have to find a way to let him down easy.”

Was he for real?

“Oh my God! You didn’t just say that.”

“Yeah, I did.” He reached forward, grabbed my h*ps and pul ed me to him again. I pushed back. He ignored this and kept talking. “I’ve been thinkin’ and I decided we should stay at your place. Juno’s used to it and I miss your big bed.”