Heart of Stone

Chapter Fifteen: Flying High

"My manager is meeting us there," he replied. "She always likes to fly out first, check there won't be any nasty surprises."

"Like what?"

"Just with the venues and questions."

"You approve the questions before they're asked?"

A chuckle rumbled from his chest as he shook his head. "I wish. There are certain topics I can't legally discuss, so she makes sure they aren't part of their conversation points."

That piqued my interest. Before I could ask him to expand, he powered on.

"That doesn't mean they won't ask me those questions—some like to try their luck—but I can't answer them if they do, so it's a waste of a question and a waste of their time."

"What kind of topics?"

Crossing one ankle over the other, Teddy scraped a hand over his chin. The plane began to taxi towards the runway, and I had a fleeting moment of panic as I tried to recall if I'd packed everything.

"It's a well-known fact that I dabbled with drugs when I was younger," he said. "It helped with anxiety before performing. I then got therapy, cut out the drugs... I was very open about it at the time, but journalists are never satisfied knowing the disclosed facts. They want the scoop. They want to know where I got them, who else in the industry is using, if I'd ever go back..."

"I'd guess it's pretty rife."

"You'd guess correctly," he said with a small smile. "But my management invested a lot of time helping me get clean, and they made me promise I'd never use it as a talking point again. I've told my story, and that should be it as far as the media is concerned."

"It hardly plays into your family-friendly brand."

"Hardly." He winked. "Anyway. There's that. I'm not allowed to talk about Lacey, either. That's part of an agreement with her management."

Interesting. If Teddy couldn't talk about Lacey, then he couldn't set straight any stories that came out about them. And there were a lot of stories.

"Lacey spoke about it," I said. "On Twitter."

Teddy wrinkled his nose. "Not really. She made a joke about an article. She didn't explicitly confirm or deny it. But that's why my manager lost her mind about our behaviour in the club. We can't confirm or deny anything, yet we're causing further stories to get published."

"And why can't you talk about her? Surely it'd be easier to release a statement and move on?"

We paused the discussion as the plane's engines roared and propelled us down the runway, into the sky. I'd half-expected Teddy to use the distraction as a way to change the subject, but he didn't. Not that his answer pacified me, either.

"Soph." He leaned forwards, elbows resting on his knees, an eyebrow lifting. "You can't even call me by my real name. I think we should wait until we know each other well enough for you to do that before discussing something like this."

"Shit." I mirrored his raised eyebrow, my mouth twitching. "Is it that bad?"

"Can't say. Legally bound." Teddy made a motion of zipping his lips, but his eyes twinkled.

"I just find it weird calling you Ed. I know you as Teddy."

"You don't really know me as Teddy. You didn't know me at all."

"Fine. I knew of you as Teddy. Better?"

He nodded, just as Mark approached to grant us permission to roam about the cabin if we wished. Teddy unclipped his belt and twisted to sit sideways in his seat, legs dangling over the armrest.