Chapter 19: Family for Ten Minutes

Lydia's POV

"You went without me," I said.

We were parked behind the label hall, and I had not looked at Gideon since he finished telling me.

"I did."

"You stood in her house and let her record you."

"I stood in her house and kept my hands to myself," he said. "She wanted a punch on camera. She didn't get one."

I stared out the windshield at the loading door.

I was angry, and underneath the anger I was grateful, and I didn't have a place to put both.

"Next time you wake me," I said.

"Next time I wake you."

"She knows about the porch," I said. "She knows where we sleep."

"She knows where I sleep. She was parked on my street last night."

"Then we don't go back there until this is over."

"There's a lock on the door, and Margo has a spare room. You are not sleeping on a hotel floor."

"Then I'm not sleeping alone," I said, "and she can look at your porch swing all she likes."

He turned my hand over and kissed the middle of my palm.

"Now put your phone in your coat pocket," he said. "With the memo app open."

"I was going to."

"I know. That's why I'm saying it."

The hall was a three-hundred-seat room with gold paint and velvet seats, built for people who were being signed.

Margo had a ticket in row C beside my aunt.

My aunt wore a navy dress and sat very straight, with her purse on her knees.

I saw her turn when I came down the aisle.

She lifted one hand an inch off her lap, and put it back.

"Over here," said a young woman with a headset.

She had come up beside me with a clipboard.

"Piper would like a minute before the set," she said. "In her room."

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