by Kylie Walker
Nothing was more important than this.
Nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“That’s a wrap!” Jack, the sound check master, yelled from across the stage.
Roman nodded in acknowledgment, along with Asher who was standing right next to him. Jack relished in his responsibilities of sound check equipment manager, often labeling himself as the master of his craft. He did an impeccable job, much more astute and responsible than that asshole loser the band had done at the beginning of the last tour during the American leg. Grant Pierce had been Emelia’s boyfriend. How the times had changed. Now she was engaged to his best friend, Trevor.
Roman found himself daydreaming about owning his own little slice of heaven in the domesticated world. If he were ever going to even entertain the plausible outcome of ending up with a woman that he would even consider marrying, that woman would be Chloe.
His bones had a wavy sensation tremble through them whenever he thought about seeing Chloe, a blushing bride with a gorgeous bronzed tan that contrasted against her beautiful, long flowing, white wedding gown.
Roman wasn’t there yet, ready to stand at the altar and watch her slowly walk to him. Into his arms. Into his entire life.
He had taken a few baby steps to at least wonder about the subject, even hover over it for several minutes at a time. He cared for Chloe, but he still wanted to take things at a slow pace.
But he wasn’t quite to the point where he would say he was ready to take the plunge and dive directly into the sea of commitment with Chloe, as incredible, independent and sassy as she was.
Speaking of his new girlfriend, Roman glanced around the arena. Chloe usually sat off to the side with Emelia. He scanned the area, searching for her. Often, they would pick an empty pair of seats to plant themselves in and would gossip, kicking their legs over the empty seats in front of them. Occasionally Roman would glance in their direction and find them laughing or sharing treats like Starbursts or Mike and Ike’s.
They were best friends, two peas in a pod. They were a perfect balance and compliment to each other. Emelia had dark chestnut hair and creamy white skin. Chloe had tan skin and almost platinum blonde hair. Emelia was calm and easy going. Chloe was tantric and zesty, always keeping Roman on his toes.
He couldn’t wait until the tour ended when he would finally be able to snag some efficient downtime with her. He couldn’t wait to get to know her even more than he was already doing on tour.
There were just too many factors in the way, too many distractions with everything that entailed a world tour of this magnitude. He wanted to take Chloe out properly. He wanted to court her, to laugh with her, to pick her brain, and stay up all night making love to her. He wanted to snuggle up with her on the couch and fall asleep watching a movie with her.
He wanted to stay up half the night exchanging war stories. He wanted to make his famous mac-n-cheese for her or take her to his favorite ice hockey spot on the lake. He wanted to be her best friend, but he felt like he was always racing against the clock as if there were never enough hours in the day to achieve everything he wanted to accomplish with her. He knew there was time for that if he just allowed the universe to unfold their relationship at the rate he wanted it to go.
“Hey,” he nudged Colton as he approached him behind the stage.
“What’s up?” Colton gave him a nod in acknowledgment, running a hand through his thick, jet black hair.
“Have you seen Chloe anywhere?” Roman had that little niggling sensation that something was up. The last time he felt that way, Stephanie had been killed and it wasn’t sitting well.
He watched as Emelia talked to Trevor and Matt, the guy in charge of lighting for the tour. They were standing just off the stage by the front row seats. Roman’s heart leaped through his chest, anticipating seeing Chloe walk through the area or reveal herself from behind a corner any minute.
It didn’t happen.
“I haven’t seen her.” Colton shrugged casually as he began to walk off towards the direction of his dressing room. “I’ll be on the lookout though.”
“Thanks,” Roman called back, but he didn’t recognize the sound of his own voice.
He couldn’t pinpoint a reason, but a shaky rattling began to tug at the corners of his mind. He knew something was displaced. He instinctively reached into his back pocket where he normally kept his cell phone, but to his confusion, it wasn’t there.
Roman touched his front pockets, feeling around. All he found was his wallet. Where the hell was it? He never went anywhere without his phone. He hopped back up on stage, checked around the drums and the length of the stage, in case it had fallen out of his pocket.
Crouching down, he fumbled around the perimeter of the drum set, but he couldn’t locate his phone anywhere.
“Um, what are you doing?” Asher chuckled as he approached Roman, pretending to kick him but pulling his leg back before actually going through with it.
Call my cell phone,” he grunted.
“Why?”
“I can’t find it.” Roman threw his arms up over his head in frustration.
Asher had already retrieved his phone from his own pocket and began dialing Roman’s number. He held the device to his ear. “It’s ringing,” he declared.
Both Asher and Roman stood silent and still for a moment or two, both listening for the ring of Roman’s phone that never came.
“I don’t hear anything,” Asher stated the obvious.
Roman frowned. “Me either.”
“Maybe you left it in your dressing room?” Asher suggested.
“Fuck!” Roman expelled an exasperated puff of air, glancing at the rafters above their heads. “I’ll go check.”
He headed to his dressing room. It was just a phone; it would turn up eventually. Maybe the ringer was off. Who the hell knew? He couldn’t honestly remember the last time he even checked the damn thing. He found the phone distracting most of the time, but it was his link to Chole when he couldn’t be with her. Now that he couldn’t find her and wanted to call and check on her, it was missing — just his damn luck.
“Hey, Roman.” He heard his assistant calling out behind him.
He glanced over his shoulder. “What is it?”
“We need you in hair and makeup in five minutes,” she instructed.
“I’ll be there,” Roman groaned. He hated going through the process. He didn’t wear makeup, but he had a team of experts who primped and pampered him and the other band members before every show. Before long, he became distracted with the issues that had to be taken care of before the show. After a quick check of his dressing room with no luck, he headed back to the stage. He was out of time. The missing phone would have to wait. He glanced around as he walked. Where the hell was Chloe? The unease in his gut grew, but he pushed it down. He had to. He had a show to perform.
By the time the band had belted out their routine good luck chant, Chloe still hadn’t appeared. Roman had an unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach as if he had swallowed a lead balloon whole and it was just sitting in his stomach, weighing him down.
As he heard the screams of excitement from the crowd behind the stage, the adrenaline surged through him like usual. He hoped that Chloe had just been busy catching up on work and that she’d tried to reach him. Since his cell phone was still missing, it was a practical and plausible explanation as to why she hadn’t been able to get in touch with him yet.
The vibrations from the audience were infectious and shook him to the core. The fans were always his mental motivator, giving him a push to surge through even on those bleak nights where he felt too exhausted to even put one foot in front of the other. Some nights, he was barely able to get through a sound check, but as soon as the music started to play, as soon as he looked into the eyes of the thousands of shouting, adoring fans, all his concerns melted away.
Tonight, was no different. Roman was in his element in a matter of seconds, aggressively pounding away on the
drums while he initiated quite a substantial sweat in the process. He glanced around the crowd for Chloe, but the lights were too bright.
The crowd was going wild. If Chloe was out there, he couldn’t find her.
After the show, a sweaty, sore mess, Roman headed to his dressing room where a cold shower was on his horizon. He stumbled into Trevor as he trudged down the hallway. Trevor looked torn to bits.
The show had done a number on all of them but in one of the best ways possible. The most emotional and raw shows were the ones where the fans sucked all the life from the guys. Roman loved it, craved the sensation and couldn’t wait to experience it again. After a hard night’s sleep.
“I’m heading for the showers,” Roman mentioned in casual passing as Trevor hobbled past him. Sweat was pouring down both of their faces, their hair a disheveled wreck.
“Same here,” Trevor could barely speak, his voice was a raspy and hoarse croak by this time of the night.
“Catch you in the morning, man,” Roman said as he gave his best friend a salute in farewell.
“See ya,” Trevor cast a wave over his shoulder.
Roman unlocked the door to his dressing room, yawned and tossed his sweat towel onto the plush velvet black couch in the corner by the door. He wandered around the room, still attempting to search for his phone. Giving up, he figured he must have left it back at the hotel room.
He wanted to rush through his shower so that he could get back there and figure out any other clues that would lead him to Chloe. He hoped that he’d find her there, waiting for him with a valid explanation as to why she had been a no show. He hadn’t even gotten a chance to have his Red Bull and Reese’s peanut butter cup before the concert.
It was a ritual that he normally couldn’t go without, but tonight he had been too distracted to fuss over those routine treats. Chloe was usually the person who provided the snacks to him, but since she was nowhere to be found, neither was the Red Bull or Reese’s.
After a cold shower and a fresh change of clothes, Roman wandered out into the hallway, hoping that some of the band members would still be lingering around that he could catch a ride with. Without a phone, he felt cut off from the rest of society as if a part of his body had been detached. Unless he found his assistant or someone else, he might be trekking back to the hotel on foot.
Worry began to slice at his mind, robbing him of the euphoric afterglow of the concert. Where the hell was Chloe? It wasn’t like her to blow him off if he could even consider that to be what happened.
Something in his brain kept gnawing at him. Something just wasn’t right. There was a missing piece to this puzzle. He walked out into the lobby of the arena, stumbling onto Lucas who was getting ready to slip into a waiting town car.
“Hey man, wait up!” Roman called out, stopping Lucas before he could leave without him. Roman considered it to be a lucky break that he found Lucas. He could only hope that his luck would continue when he reached his hotel room later.
“Need a ride?” Lucas grinned.
“Yep.” Roman jogged over to catch up with Lucas. He asked Lucas to call his phone again. It rang, going right to voicemail. Good. At least the battery wasn’t dead. Yet. It had to be at the hotel room, waiting for him right along with his girlfriend.
Roman smiled. That would be the ideal scenario, Chloe lying on the bed in a sheer, lacy nighty, his phone on the nightstand. Shit, he didn’t even care about the phone.
He just wanted Chloe.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Roman stood outside of his hotel room door with the key in his hand. He was having another out of body experience, as if he were drunk, even though he hadn’t touched a single drop of alcohol tonight. It must have been the fear of the unknown, the anxiety of wondering whether Chloe was waiting for him inside.
His legs were numb, and his hand felt unattached to the rest of his body as he swiped the hotel room key across the door. The little green light made a clicking sound as the door lock unhinged.
He pushed the door open with a pounding heart and sweaty palms. The lights were on, which gave him an instant flood of relief. Chloe must be inside of there somewhere if the entire place was lit up like Times Square. Every single light in the entire penthouse suite was on.
“Chloe?” Roman called out, placing the key card onto the counter in the little kitchenette as he took a look around assessing the area. “Chloe are you here?” He called out again, but he was met with silence.
He was greeted by empty air and space around him. Chloe was nowhere to be found here either. His worry was reaching panic level. After searching every room in the suite, he decided that it was best to try her unofficial room down the hall that his assistant still booked from formality purposes.
Chloe’s room was at the end of the hall by the elevators. He gently rapped his knuckles against the side of the door. He didn’t have a key to access her room. “Chloe?” He whispered softly, careful not to wake any other hotel patrons sleeping in adjoining rooms.
There was no answer from inside. He wondered if she might be in there sleeping, unable to hear him calling out to her. Was she angry at him in some way, perhaps the reason for her absence? Was she giving him the cold shoulder? It didn’t seem like Chloe’s demeanor to do something like that. If she was angry with someone, she would be the first to broach the subject, wanting to deal with it head-on.
Perplexed, he waited for several minutes, continuing to knock before eventually giving up and trekking back down to his suite at the other end of the hallway, past the elevators. He still needed to find his cell phone.
He walked back into his room, turning the entire place upside down. Frustration fueled his ambition to find his phone. He finally stumbled across it. For whatever reason, he found it sitting in one of his empty drum cases.
He picked it up, going into a frenzy as he immediately noticed what seemed like dozens of missed calls from Chloe. A sliver of relief enveloped him as he realized that she had been trying to contact him after all. He had also noticed that the ringer was off. There were no voicemails, so the mystery as to Chloe’s whereabouts was still on the table, floating out there in the open.
He immediately jumped in to dial her number, sitting down on the edge of the bed with crisp, fresh sheets from housekeeping. Too wound to sit, he stood up again and began pacing the room.
The call cut directly to voice mail. Why was her phone turned off? Was she in a no service zone? Roman paced the room with rising panic.
He glanced at the clock. It was a little after two in the morning now. It would be considered rude and reckless to call Emelia at this hour, probing her for information on where Chloe had disappeared with no guarantee that Emelia would be any more knowledgeable to Chloe’s whereabouts than he was.
Without any texts or voice messages from Chloe, Roman was stuck in limbo.
He could only hope that by some fleeting miracle, she was in her hotel room sleeping soundly. Even as much as he tried to convince himself of that scenario, it just didn’t seem feasible.
Why wasn’t she at the show? Why had she called him dozens of times? It wasn’t like Chloe to just vanish out of nowhere like a ghost in the night. She had to be somewhere, and Roman was bound and determined on finding her, even if it took all night.
He grabbed a jacket from the closet and threw it over his arms. He plucked the room key from the table right where he had left it. Roman didn’t have an agenda for now. He didn’t necessarily want to wander aimlessly all through the city trying to find Chloe. He knew it was a crazy and outlandish assumption to entertain the concept of that working out, but for now, it was all he had in his moment of desperation.
The lobby was quiet. A receptionist was staring at a computer screen, standing up in front of it while clacking away at a keyboard. Roman approached her.
“Excuse me,” he placed his hands on the counter.
The receptionist gazed up at him, but there was no recognition in her eyes as to who he could possibly be. S
he gave him a genuine, kind smile.
“Are you checking in, sir?” She chimed through a pair of heavily made-up lips.
Roman shook his head. “No, I’m already staying here,” he explained. “I was wondering if you happened to see a petite woman with short blonde hair come through this lobby recently?” He pulled out his phone and showed her a picture of Chloe.
She gave him a regretful frown. “I’m sorry sir, my shift just started thirty minutes ago. I’ve been in the back for most of it while we did the shift changes.”
“Oh...” Roman trailed off, disappointingly glancing over his shoulder.
“I can be on the lookout for her though,” the woman enthusiastically offered.
Roman glanced back at her. She had sleek red glasses and jet black hair. “Please do.”
“Of course, sir.” She spoke with a thick German accent.
“Great.” Roman drummed his fingertips against the cool marble reception countertop. “Thank you.”
He left the lobby and walked down to the indoor pool area, thinking perhaps she went for a night swim. When he approached the glass double doors leading into the spa and pool area, he discovered the doors were locked. He glanced up at the sign on the wall. The hours were nine in the morning until midnight. It was already long after midnight now. Chloe couldn’t be in there.
He walked over to the gym, finding the same problem. The gym only stayed open until midnight as well. Roman was striking out around every turn. He was going to have to give up soon and call it a night.
In one last feeble attempt at locating her, he walked out into the street. All was quiet, peaceful and serene. It was a powerful contrast from the switch of torment rattling through his mind. The noise of his brain was relentless. He felt like running up and down the empty sidewalks, panning the area while crying out Chloe’s name.