Rock the City: A Midnight Fate Novel by Gia Riley

rate, the fire department might end up being the only solution.
    I stand between the bed and Easton, ready to play the role of the mediator. “Easton, Lane apologizes for being rude. Lane, Easton won’t make fun of you in your time of distress. Now, can we please get him free so I can go eat my weight in donuts?”
    Easton stands back up, still all business, yet working on the knots again. As soon as one arm is free, Lane lowers it, rubbing his chaffed skin on the sheets. “These ropes are never coming out of the closet again.”
    He tries to push Easton away and do the other side himself, but Easton stops him with one look. “Why do you smell like Joanie’s?”
    Lark slides down the wall until her butt hits the floor. “I’ve just spent five months on the road with the band, and this is the weirdest day I’ve had in a really long time.”
    I smile at her, handing her a muffin. “Face it, buttercup, life would be dull without me.”
    “It’d be something,” Lane mutters under his breath, just as Easton undoes the last knot.
    He gets out of bed with the sheets around him, grabbing his pants off the back of the bathroom door. The door slams a second later and Easton just laughs. “I think you shit all over his pride, Noelle.”
    “I’m sure he’ll express his gratitude once his boner’s gone.”
    Easton digs a donut out of the box, laughing as he takes a bite. “I forgot how much I enjoyed you. You’re good for him.”
    Considering Lane’s still hiding out in the bathroom, he might have a difference of opinion right about now. “Something tells me I’m going to have to screw him seven ways to Sunday before he forgives me for this one.”
    Lark shoves her last bite in her mouth, her voice muffled when she says, “Good thing you brought those three boxes.”
    “Right, it’s like I knew I’d fuck up.”
    Easton helps Lark off the floor and she hops on his back. “Tell Lane to be in the lobby by nine tonight. We have some tits to enjoy.”
    “For what?”
    “Dom’s birthday,” Lark reminds me. “Don’t worry, it’s just Lola’s. I have plans for us. There’s a cool place next door we can get food.”
    “You’re really okay with Easton going to a strip club?”
    “Yes, because he’ll come home all horned up. And I have more pregnancy hormones than I know what to do with.”
    “I think I like pregnant Lark.”
    “Dude, me, too,” Easton says with a very satisfied smile.
    After they’re gone, I carry the boxes into the kitchen and make some coffee. By the time it brews, I expect to find Lane waiting for me on the couch, but I end up finding him wearing a pair of sweats and leaning over the side of the bed with his head in his hands. Right away, I feel like complete and total shit.
    Cautiously, I sit next to him. He only raises his head when he feels the bed dip. “Lane, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean for you to get stuck.”
    “That was humiliating, Noelle.”
    “It wasn’t ideal, but you have to admit it was a little funny.”
    He stands up and grabs a shirt from his dresser drawer. “Easton will never let me live that down.”
    Before he puts it on, I wrap my arms around him from behind, his skin still warm from the shower. “I promise I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you. We only have two weeks, and I don’t want to spend a single second of it with you mad at me.”
    He unclasps my hands from his stomach and turns around. “Why does it have to be two weeks?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I’m done touring for a while, and we don’t start recording the new album for a couple weeks. The last thing I want is for you to go back home when I’m finally staying in one place long enough to live a semi-normal life.”
    “We talked about this. I have a salon to run. I can’t up and leave whenever I want.”
    “But two weeks is practically nothing. We were apart for almost six months, Noelle.”
    “We’ve had this conversation, Lane. Midnight Fate is your identity.