Sofia pressed her lips together to hide their trembling.
“Now you’re finally getting better and I’ve got to go so you can stand on your own two feet. But you need to know the truth so you can heal the rest of the way, even if it means you’re gonna fire me. I’m telling you in front of her so, if you do fire me, she understands what you’re going through. I’m leaving you in her hands.”
She refused to look at Aish, but felt Devonte squeeze her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Princesa, but I’m asking you to keep an eye on him. Just...call me if you need me.”
He let her go and thunked Aish’s chest. “Sorry, man,” Devonte murmured. And then he left, leaving a Devonte-wide space separating the two of them.
A breeze pushed the scent of the ocean past her, and Sofia knew that wasn’t coming from the Bay of Biscay. She couldn’t look at the torn-apart man standing two feet from her.
“I can’t—” he started then stopped.
Sofia was squeezing her glass so hard she was afraid it might shatter.
“I gotta go.”
The smell of salt and sand dissipated as she listened to the slap of his shoes against the tile. Sofia wrapped a hand around the railing.
She couldn’t follow him. She couldn’t help him. She had duties and responsibilities here. She knelt to put down her glass then gripped the railing with both hands.
Aish now had to face what Sofia had proof of all along: that John stole songs. After Aish had broken up with her, she’d been a mess, weeping as she’d grabbed her things from the piles between his and John’s beds and thrown them into her footlocker. Only later had she realized she’d grabbed a flash drive that belonged to one of them. She’d been falling apart in a high-end San Francisco hotel when, wanting any connection to Aish, she’d opened it to discover audio and video recordings of other people playing songs she knew John had passed off as his own. The recordings even captured John hitting on girls or ordering a beer as the street musician or open-mike band played. She hadn’t cared about the thievery; she’d kept it and—shamefully—put it in her treasure box because it also had recordings of Young Son performing. Of Aish.
Now Aish had to face that song stealing wasn’t John’s only crime. He’d blackmailed Devonte, slept with an underage girl. What else had the friend he’d built a life around, the partner in his life’s passion, been hiding? Sofia hadn’t had proof of John’s manipulations, but she’d sensed them. Why hadn’t Aish?
Feeling the cold iron dig into her palms, Sofia convinced herself that she would deny Devonte’s request and let Aish be. She would leave him alone with his shock and sorrow. In a hotel. In a strange land. While his family was a world away and his friend was headed to the airport.
It was a cool, calm, deliberate decision.
Sofia was across the pool deck and pushing open the door into the hospedería before she’d fully settled on the cool, calm, and deliberate decision that—regardless how much she’d hated him over the last decade—she wouldn’t leave him alone now.
September 18
Part Two
The third time Sofia knocked on Aish’s suite door, she quietly called his name.
With the party in full swing, there was no reason any of the interns should be in their rooms. Still, it was best if no one caught her pawing at the rock star’s door.
When he still didn’t answer, she pulled out her master key card.
And saw him across the room in the lamplight, angry amazement overtaking the haggard look on his face as she pushed the door open.
“What the fuck, Sofia,” he said, glowering at her.
She stepped in and shut the door behind her.
“I knocked.”
“I know.” He turned his back on her and continued to pace. His stride was too long, too fast, for his hotel room, causing him to double back too quickly in front of his balcony door. The stone walls caged frenetic energy that needed to get out.
“Aish, what John did to you, the way he misled you was—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he growled without stopping. The thick swoop of his black hair bounced on his forehead.
“But it’s not your fault that John—”
“I don’t want to talk about that, Sofia.”
She crossed her arms over her linen shift to staunch her frustration, while he continued to march a trench into her hospedería floor. He was a gathering storm in his summer cream sweater and white pants. She couldn’t just leave him alone.
“Vale,” she said, dropping her arms helplessly to her side. “What do you want to talk about then?”
When he swung on her with his sparkling, black-eyed glare, it caught her off guard. “Let’s talk about Henry,” he said, aiming that too-long, too-fast stride at her. “Let’s talk about why he keeps putting his hands all over you when you’re begging orgasms from me.”
He was coming at her. Her heart was pounding. “Jealous?” she asked, raising her chin.
“Fuck yes,” he said, and then his big, hot hands gripped her shoulders. “It kills me to watch him touch you with the freedom I want.” His gaze scorched her lips, her cheeks, her eyes. “I want to wrap my arms around you. I want to stroke you and feel you lean against me.”
His words were like a sip of the richest wine. “You’ve been paying close attention,” she said, and felt his reaction—a fight of his impulses—in the squeeze of his fingers, the subtle dominating shift of his shoulders.
“Don’t, Sofia,” he warned, deep and growly. “Are you in love with him?”
Her body throbbed in anticipation. He’d never been jealous over her before. He’d never had reason to be; her devotion had been absolute and slavish. She wouldn’t
