“Nothing,” he whispered back. “Absolutely nothing.”

I gasped as his fingers slipped behind my neck and into my hair.

His hand stopped. His eyes widened with concern. “Okay?” he asked.

More than okay. I nodded.

He watched me carefully for a moment more like he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t change my mind. Then his fingers slipped farther into my hair, tangling themselves so I couldn’t have gotten away, and his palm tightened on the back of my neck. Now I understood why he’d asked permission. Things were about to get serious between us. I hadn’t known when I’d said yes that this was what I was in for.

His lips met mine again. His tongue gently parted my lips and slipped inside my mouth. This time I couldn’t help my hands creeping around his waist and grabbing handfuls of his shirt to pull him closer.

“Mmph,” he said, because we both were facing forward and twisting sideways to kiss. Now he took my hands on his waist as my agreement that he could rearrange me. He never stopped kissing me as he pulled my leg across his thigh so that I straddled him. Then he put his hands over mine on his waist, reminding me this was what I’d wanted, as he scooted forward. Through his jeans and my thin dress, I felt how hard he was.

I’d always thought kissing was sweet, whereas anything having to do with a guy’s pelvis was some kind of threat. Now, for the first time, I understood how a guy getting hard for me was sweet, too—maybe because his hands in my hair and his mouth on mine were making me lose my mind.

He broke the kiss and looked out the driver’s side window of the truck, then the passenger side, making sure nobody was watching. His labored breaths sent a new shiver down my arms every time a puff passed across my cheeks.

He faced me again. He was a lot taller than me, but because I straddled his thighs, our eyes were even. He leaned forward until our foreheads touched, still gazing at me, so close and so dark that I could hardly see him. I felt his breath in my mouth as he traced down my neck with his middle finger, callused from holding his guitar string down, and unbuttoned the top button of my dress.

As I watched his fingers, I remembered that my mother had dragged Julie and me to the fabric store to pick out the material for this dress. I had protested and said that rather than red rosebuds on a field of black, we should have the dresses made from the bolt printed with saguaro cactuses and horse heads, so appropriate that it circled back around to become ironic. I’d been tired of playing dress-up, one; and two, I was tired of matching Julie. I’d loved playing with her, but the matching outfits had seemed unhip and old-fashioned, something we would have worn on stage in my grandmother’s time.

He reached down to undo the second button of my dress. Suddenly I was the one huffing a surprised breath into his open mouth. He pushed through the opening he’d made in my dress and slipped his fingertips beneath the cup of my bra, across my bare breast. He stopped at my nipple, rolling it gently between two fingers. I squirmed on his thighs. It felt like there was a nerve stretched directly between my breast and my crotch.

I had made out with boys before. Boys had felt me up before. They had gotten my bra off me at parties. But they’d wanted to see me, or grab me, more for bragging rights than for their own pleasure. My pleasure never entered the equation. Sam was different. He teased me, tested me, touched me gently and watched my reaction with his depthless eyes. Ms. Lottie had warned me he was a heartbreaker.

“There should be a country song about this,” I whispered.

“I’m pretty sure there is,” he whispered back, sliding his whole hand into my bra to cup my breast.

There wasn’t, though. Plenty of tunes sung by men comically recounted everything they’d gotten away with in their trucks when they were teenagers. No songs sung by women rehashed how much they’d enjoyed it. But they should have. I could be the one to write that anthem.

Abruptly he withdrew his hand, lifted me off his lap, and set me back in the passenger seat. I was disappointed that he’d decided to end this. Then he put his hand behind my head, pulled me down to flatten me along the seat, and rolled on top of me. “Is this okay?” he asked.

It was more than okay. In answer, I bent one knee so my pelvis was closer to his and I could feel more of him through my dress. I wasn’t prepared to go all the way and I didn’t think he would ask me to, but as far as I was concerned, Sam Hardiman could position me any way he liked on the seat of his truck. I ran my hands back through his waves and gently pulled his head until I could reach his ear with my mouth.

“Ahh,” he sighed. His breath quickened, but he held very still to savor the experience. I knew exactly how he felt. As I tickled his earlobe with my tongue, I concentrated on the sensation of my body coming alive. I’d gone through all of this before, but never with a guy this beautiful.

Suddenly a car chirped. Headlights blinked somewhere in the deck. The noise sounded so close that I stiffened under Sam.

It wasn’t my imagination that the noise was suspicious. Sam pushed himself off me, propping his elbows on the seat. He craned his neck to look out the window.

The door jerked open. The man from the deserted street must have followed us here. I screamed.

A rough hand smothered my mouth. But in the next second, I saw it was still Sam who held me. He uncovered my mouth and looked outside the truck again. “What the fuck, Charlotte?”

“Hey!” Charlotte exclaimed. “This is exactly how you got me to join your band.”

My heart was still throbbing from the scare. Now it hurt from being broken into pieces. Sam had made out with me so I would join his band. He had touched me that way, kissed me all night, made me fall for him, just so I would stay in his band. He had done it before, with Charlotte.

When another girl came along, one with more talent and better style than me, he would do it again.

“Sorry,” Sam murmured in my ear. He hefted himself off me, momentarily crushing my arm—“sorry, sorry, sorry”—and pulled me after him so we both sat upright. Then he bailed out of the driver’s side of the truck and slammed the door.

Charlotte peered through the open passenger door at me. Blinking innocently, she said in a superfriendly voice, “When you first showed up tonight, did he tell you to act like the two of you weren’t into each other?”

Sam had rounded the truck and reached her. “Could I speak with you privately for a moment behind that Audi?” He shoved her along in front of him until they disappeared around the next car.

Ace stood with his arms folded in the empty space next to Sam’s truck, looking over his shoulder in the direction Sam and Charlotte had gone.

Buttoning my dress, I called to Ace, “Well, that was awkward.”

“Sorry,” he grumbled.

We could both hear Charlotte’s increasingly shrill voice: “ . . . just bring her into the group, Sam, without asking anybody’s opinion? Like we don’t even matter?”

I couldn’t make out any of what Sam said in response. I could hear only his stern tone. It must have worked, because she replied with indiscernible words, and then he stalked back toward the truck.

When Sam drew even with Ace, he stopped and gave him a glare. Ace just raised one eyebrow at him.

Sam threw up his hands in frustration, closed my door, rounded the truck again, and slipped behind the steering wheel. As he started the ignition and backed out of the space, I thought about opening my door and flouncing away. But I would have no way home. The last thing I wanted was to make a phone call to my granddad to rescue me from the District. I stayed put, watching Charlotte come from behind the car to meet Ace in the empty parking space. Their heads turned to follow us as we drove off.

“I’m so sorry about that,” Sam said quietly, his face blinking pale and then dark again as we passed under fluorescent lights spaced along the ceiling. “I should have warned her I was bringing you tonight. She was comfortable with the band the way it was, and she never accepted we needed to add somebody new. She won’t act that way to you again.”

She certainly wouldn’t, because I wouldn’t be around. She would be reacting exactly the same way to the next girlfriend Sam brought in.

But I didn’t say any of that. I owed Sam nothing, not even a fight about it. I stared out the window as we exited the parking deck, onto the side street. The lights of the District grew fewer and farther between until they faded into the neon wash of the larger city.

Sam’s voice broke the silence. “The gig is at the same time tomorrow night. Want to tell your grandpa we’re going on another date, and actually grab a bite to eat beforehand? If you’re not busy earlier, maybe we could spend the afternoon together.”

“I’m not playing the gig,” I said flatly.

“You’re—” he burst out, then pressed his lips together, controlling himself. He’d been afraid I would say this, and he’d only been pretending he thought I might not mind what Charlotte had told me. He said, with admirable calm considering how upset he must be, “But they asked us back.”

“But you didn’t ask me.”

“No,” he said. “Wait a minute. I told you that they asked us back, and you didn’t say you wouldn’t play with us. You’ve decided this only now, after what Charlotte said. Listen, Charlotte is a great girl and I love her—”

He kept talking. My brain paused here like time stood still. He loved Charlotte. And he glossed over it. This was a warning to me.

“—but she’s a few bricks shy of a full load about some things.”

“About you,” I accused him.

“We dated,” he acknowledged carefully. “I did not date her just to get her to join the band.”

“Did you tell her to act like you weren’t into each other when you brought her into the band with Ace?”

“Maybe,” he said, meaning yes, “because Ace would think I was dating her just for that. But I wasn’t. And I definitely was not doing what I was doing with you just now to get you into the band. You’re already in the band.”

“I most certainly am not,” I said. “I never agreed to that. Charlotte may be a few bricks shy of a full load about you, but I’m not.”

“Bailey!” he exclaimed before I’d quite gotten all of this out of my mouth. “You can’t turn this down. We already have a gig. We scheduled another gig with you in it.”

I shrugged. “Go back to the bar owner and say your special guest star won’t be joining you, and ask if he still wants you.”

“He won’t. That’s been the whole point of this, Bailey. I can’t do this without you. If I could, I would have done it last week.”

I wasn’t sure that was true. He’d gotten the first gig without me. I was quickly learning that Sam said what he needed to say to get people to do what he wanted. Judging from the force behind his words, maybe he’d even started to believe them himself.

“Look,” I said with a sigh, “I told you from the beginning that I can’t be in your band. I’m not allowed.”

“You’re not allowed?” he asked incredulously.

“No.”

He grimaced out the windshield, considering this idea. “That’s why you walked to Georgia to phone your sister. Or whoever you were calling.”

“It was my sister, and yes.”

“That’s why your grandpa didn’t want to let you out of the house. Why aren’t you allowed to play a gig, Bailey? That’s insane.”

I nodded my agreement. And I had to explain the insanity to him, or he would never leave me alone. “I’m staying with my granddad because my parents are gone with my little sister. They all came home for my graduation, which was when I got in so much trouble about the wreck. For the past year, usually one of my parents has been home with me, physically, because they don’t trust me. But when they’re here, their minds are with my sister.”

“Doing what?” he asked quietly, like he was sure by now he didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Touring with her while she opens for bigger acts, and letting her get a lot of practice.”

His mouth dropped open. “She has a development deal with a record company?”

Of course he would guess. He might even understand more about the music business than I did. I said, “Yeah.”

“Is it working out?” I could see in his eager expression that he hoped it was working out, like Mr. Crabtree was eager for another Elvis song to play at the mall, a dog waiting for someone to throw a ball. If Sam had his way, he would network with my parents and my sister, around and then right over me. And he would ruin me in the process.

“So far, so good,” I said, understating by several hundred thousand dollars.

“Did she get discovered on the bluegrass festival circuit?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“But you were on the circuit, too.”

I swallowed. “Yeah.”

“So she got discovered, and you didn’t.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He sighed in frustration and gestured with his hands on the steering wheel as he exclaimed to the broad, dark street, “Too late. We’re talking about it, and you owe me an explanation.”

I almost said, I don’t owe you shit. But I thought back to my week at the mall. The anticipation I’d felt before I played with a group for the first time in ages. The way my hopes had been dashed when the group didn’t measure up to Julie. The elation I’d circled back to when I discovered Sam. The way the roller coaster had crashed to the bottom again when he and his father fought.