Her name became a rhythmic chant from his lips—AshAshAshAsh—as he gripped her hips even tighter and thrust into her again and again with absolutely no control.

There was nothing gentle about the way he took her, but she wouldn’t have wanted there to be. Not when every moment, and every experience, was so precious. All her life, she’d remember these amazing moments with him on tour. Moments when nothing mattered but each other—not their pasts, not their futures. Only how happy they made each other right now.

As her climax began to slowly shudder through her, Drew slid his hands from her hips to play with her breasts. A split second later, she was shattering so completely, so helplessly, that her hands began to slide down the tile wall. With one arm around her waist to hold her up and his hand splayed out over her pelvis, he thrust once, twice, three more times...and then he buried his face in the exposed crook of her neck and groaned her name one last time.

When the water began to turn a little bit colder, she felt a bar of soap slide over her skin, but she was too loose from their incredible lovemaking to do anything but let him wash her skin and hair clean. After everything they’d already done, it was surprisingly intimate. And oh so lovely to be taken care of like this.

A short while later, he turned off the tap and reached for a warm, fluffy towel. And as he wrapped it around her, he stared into her eyes and said, “It’s already the best birthday ever. But best doesn’t even come close anymore.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Drew was aware of the necklace beneath his T-shirt all day long...and all day long he’d wanted to grab Ashley in front of his crew and kiss her breathless. He was beyond touched that she’d had it made for him, a perfect little replica of the guitar his mother had given him.

Yet again, he thought about how much his mom would have loved Ashley. Just as much as he knew his siblings and his father were going to love her.

As if he’d conjured them into being, when he stepped out of his last interview for the day, his youngest sister, Maddie, came running toward him.

“Drew!”

He opened his arms and caught her. “What did you do with my baby sister?” Maddie was one of his favorite people on the planet, but he wasn’t sure he liked the short length of her skirt or the makeup she was wearing.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m going to look like a nun tonight compared to the rest of your fans.”

He wasn’t sure about that, but scowling at her when he hadn’t seen her for way too long was out of the question. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Mads. You excited about starting college soon?”

She nodded, but the light he’d hoped to see in her eyes wasn’t completely there. “I’ve been emailing with my new roommate, and she seems really nice.”

“That’s great,” he said in a gentle voice, “but you could have applied to one of the cooking schools you really wanted to go to. You don’t have to go to Stanford, you know.”

She shook her head. “Dad would have freaked if I’d gone to the Cordon Bleu, even if I could have gotten in. He likes knowing I’m going to be safe and sound at Stanford, just down the road from our house, with his fellow professors watching over me.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Drew promised her. “I’ll make him understand.”

But her frown only deepened as their father walked in. “It’s okay, Drew,” she said in a low voice. “It’s only four years. I’m sure I’ll have fun at Stanford like the rest of you did, and then he won’t have to be any more stressed-out than he already is.”

While Drew was growing up, their father had been easygoing about things that other parents freaked out about, like grades or staying out late. Even when their mom got sick, he’d still held it together pretty well. But then at the end, he’d lost it on all fronts. Work. Sleep. Fun. None of those things happened anymore for Michael Morrison. All of them tried to pick up the slack as much as they could, but the truth was that you couldn’t make a person laugh if they didn’t feel like it. You couldn’t order a person to fall asleep if all they did was have nightmares whenever they closed their eyes. And there was no point in their dad staring blankly at a computer screen all day either.

Drew wished he could help his father—they all did—and it killed him that he hadn’t figured out how to do that yet.

“Happy birthday, son.”

As his father hugged him close, Drew was upset to feel his ribs protruding slightly. His father was a great cook, and so was Maddie, who was still living in the house with him. But his appetite clearly hadn’t yet returned.