Lost Angeles

by Mantchev, Lisa

  My wayward bridegroom is collapsed in a leather chair, a glass dangling from his right hand. It contains some hair of the dog: Bloody Mary, celery stalk and all, but I highly doubt it’s tomato juice. Xaine’s head is tilted back, his eyes are closed, his chest is still bare, but twin silver-glints on his nipples draw my attention straight to the matching piercings he’s sporting. The white gauze bandage on his wrist suggests he also got tatted up. And the metal on his ring finger is the last bit of confirmation I needed.

  Clutching the remote and the door jamb, I glare at him as hard as my head will permit. “You colossal douchebag—”

  “Just to clarify,” he interrupts, “the nip piercings were my idea, but you wanted the tattoo. Being a gentleman, I went along with it.”

  That leaves me sputtering for a full twenty seconds before I manage to get out, “Gentleman my ass.”

  He lifts his head then, cracking one eye at me in something akin to surprise. “I tried to get food and water into you before you conked out, too. Extra credit points for me when you up-chucked cake all over me.”

  “Wedding cake?” I throw the remote at him as hard as I can. It finds its mark, bouncing hard off his forehead.

  “Ow!” He flinches and musters half a glower. “What the hell, Lore?”

  “You said no funny business!” I’m unreasonably angry. Unusually angry. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever been this angry in my entire life. “You promised! There was a specific ‘No Wedding’ clause in our verbal contract!” The accusations are threaded through with panic and rage, and I can’t seem to get my hands to stop quaking, even when I jab an accusatory finger in his direction. “You did this on purpose!”

  “If you don’t stop shouting, security is going to storm in here to cart you away. Then they’ll be showing wedding and arrest footage on the five o’clock update.” Xaine’s head falls back again, and I can tell he’s struggling not to smirk over the idea.

  “Newsflash, Xaine, if I start screaming the house down, it’s not me they’ll cart off to jail.”

  He lifts the Bloody Mary and takes another swig. I give him a minute, wait to see if he’s going to say anything else, but when he fixes me with that trademark bored stare, I can’t help but stomp one bare foot on the floor in frustration.

  “What were you thinking? Four hundred years and suddenly you got a yen to turn domestic? Do you even understand what you’ve done?”

  “You seemed to think it was a good idea at the time. Something about the press eating it up with a spoon, which they are. It’s a field day on every channel, and it’s driving presales through the roof. But I’m guessing that’s not what you’re actually pissed about.” He pauses, taking another deliberate sip of his drink. “If you don’t like the ring, we can get a different one.”

  Standing there with a hip cocked, a finger pointed in his direction, and the weight of that diamond pulling at my other finger, I gape at him. “Don’t play stupid, Xaine. The shots were your idea. You had this planned from the beginning.”

  “Not quite the beginning,” he retorts. “It was actually somewhere between your stupid salad and Lonan’s steak.”

  That gives me pause, because between the appetizer and main course there wasn’t anything except—

  “Oh, my god. Were you mad that I called you my rock star vampire friend?” He doesn’t say anything immediately, but ducks his head instead, turning his guylinered eyes toward the tinted glass windows. “Xaine, you can’t just marry someone because you don’t like the nickname they give you.”

  “It wasn’t the nickname,” he says, but there’s enough of a hesitation that I know the moniker had something to do with it. “And you can calm your tits, love, it’s really not that serious.”

  My every extremity is cold, glacial cold, arctic winds blowing across my fingers and toes cold. I feel sick and weak and my head is pounding. I want to scream and cry and curse him, curse myself, curse anything and everything that I’ve done in the past twenty-four hours. Getting liquored up was a stupid thing to do, but not quite as stupid as trusting him. If I’d placed my faith in someone else, anyone else, I might be a little less married. My slow descent into madness might have begun a year ago, but it wasn’t until I reached LA… and met Xaine… that my life spiraled completely out of control.

  I swallow back the rising bile. “We need to get an annulment.”

  “If I thought you really meant that,” he says, giving me a hard look, “my feelings would be really fucking hurt. As it is, you might want to reconsider. The publicity is doing wonders for the gravy train.” Then he’s up and out of the chair, setting the Bloody Mary down on the conference table with the hard crack of glass against glass. He reaches past me to snag the door, slamming it shut so hard that the wall vibrates and the tails of my borrowed dress shirt flutter against the backs of my legs. “We’re both back here in one piece, and the only difference is that we’re sporting some new ink and some nice jewelry. So there’s no need to go all nuclear fallout drama queen on me right now.”

  That hits like a slap to the face, mostly because I think I’ve been pretty relaxed about his constant shenanigans. I never yelled or screamed, stopped him or told him no. I went along for the ride, thinking I’d get off whenever he got tired of me. This wasn’t supposed to be permanent, because Xaine doesn’t do permanent. It wasn’t supposed to be forever, because he doesn’t do that either. I figured I was just the flavor of the week, the blip on the radar, another girl who was there and then forgotten. A standin for what he really wants.

  A do-over.

  “Annulment, Xaine.” There’s a tremor in my voice, and I’m really close to tears of anger, panic, heartbreak even, because he’s right. Some little piece of me wishes that I could gallop off into the sunset with Prince Not-So-Charming. “I am not kidding.”

  He stares me full in the face, right in the eyes, unwilling to give me a single inch to move or a second to breathe. There’s a flicker of something dark, but then he smiles like its nothing. That my tears and this place and the ring on my finger are nothing more to him than One More Wild Night. “Whatever, babe. You can call in a lawyer after the launch party tonight. Any shark in Hollywood ought to cream himself thinking about the kind of settlement you can go after.”

  “I don’t want your money,” I say, waving the suggestion off with a gesture. “I want—”

  “What?”

  Xaine watches me expectantly, waiting for whatever I’m trying hard to verbalize. There’s a pit of dread in my stomach. I’m mad at him. Mad at myself. Mad at Noah Carmichael for no good reason, save for the fact that now the alarm-radio is yapping about his recent night out on the town, making my head ache all the more.

  “What are you playing at here?” I ask Xaine finally. “Because we both know that I am not what you really want.”

  “I’m not playing at a goddamn thing, babe.” He reaches out and snags the door, jerking it open with even more force than he used to close it. One of the hinges actually gives, the screws wrenched out of the wood and hardware left to dangle when he heads into the living room.

  I follow him out, undeterred. “We met two weeks ago, Xaine. We don’t know each other, not really. And whatever you think you’re feeling right now, it’s far too soon to be love.” I pause there, because for one damn second I actually debate the wisdom of my next query. I debate the likelihood of surviving it. I already pissed Xaine off to the point that he’s walked away from me, and I wonder just how far I’d have to push it before he wrings my stupid neck. “Would it have killed you to ask?”

  He swings around, still moving when he answers, “You would have said no.”

  “Yeah, I would have, because it’s too soon.” I give a little shrug and add, “But a year from now might be a completely different story. By then we would know each other better. By then, you would know what you want.”

  “I know what I want,” he insists, “even if you don’t.”

  I brace one hand on the door jamb, holding myself
up, bolstering my resolve. “This isn’t like ordering everything in the FTD catalogue or demanding the entire menu, Xaine. You can’t just play with lives like this. I have the right to make my own decisions, and people keep taking my choices away like I’m physically incapable of looking out for myself. Cas Declan, Benicio, you…”

  That stops him dead in his tracks at the center of the room, every muscle clenching when the words hit home. “Yeah, because a wedding is exactly like a kidnapping, right? Putting a rock on your finger is exactly the same as raping your memories, right? Giving you my last name is just like what they did, isn’t it? Gosh, I hadn’t thought about it like that before. Thanks for making that crystal clear.”

  Everything in me wilts; I don’t have the sort of energy required to sustain my rage. “You promised no funny business in Vegas. You asked me if I trusted you, and I said I did. That doesn’t mean I trusted you only to get me back here with all my limbs intact…” I pause, because it could go on like this forever. Me fighting him, him fighting me, but in the end there’s only one of us who has forever at their disposal, and it sure as hell isn’t this girl. “I trusted you to keep your promise.”

  When Xaine turns around to face me, there’s no trace of hurt or anger or anything else evident in his expression. Everything is carefully, studiously blank. “It was a PR stunt, babe. I’ll get Steve to run down some paperwork, we can sign off on all the fuckery ever, no hard feelings, sayonara, thanks for playing.” Then he’s off and moving, lifting a shirt off the couch and tugging it on as he heads for the door. “Catch your act on the red carpet, then you can take the Apocalypse jet wherever you want.” He swings around to flash his fangs at me. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Capello, I need to get some fresh air and track down some breakfast.”

  The door slams shut behind him, rattling the frame and everything beyond it. Crystal vibrates on shelves, the television wobbles on the wall, and I stare at the place where Xaine used to be. When the air conditioning kicks on, the sudden breeze brushing across my face lets me know that angry tears spilled over at some point. The alarm is still blaring in the other room, and as if by rote, the DJ picks this exact moment to fire up “In Your Light.”

  A banner day, and it’s only eight in the morning.

  As I sink down into the white cushions of the couch, Xaine’s parting shot plays over and over in my head.

  I need to get some fresh air and track down some breakfast.

  Idly, I wonder what her name will be.

  Karen, Hannah, Rebecca…

  Closing my eyes, I drop my head into my hands, scrubbing at my eye sockets with rough palms. I want to go home. I want to rewind the clock a month and wake up in my own bed, in my own apartment, in my own world. Not this one where everything is wild and confusing.

  Lily, Abby, Anna…

  The giant, pink diamond twists around my finger until it’s digging into my fisted hand.

  Tina, Sabrina, Sara.

  I should feel better knowing it was all a PR stunt.

  Lauren, Gabrielle, Lorena.

  I should feel relieved.

  Brittany, Hailey, Jo… short for Josephine.

  I should be happy he’s not entertaining some stupid notions about love and happily ever after.

  Samantha, Jessica, Courtney, Jennifer, Beth, Amelia…

  And I most certainly have no right… to be jealous.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Xaine

  She doesn’t trust you.

  And there’s no reason that she should.

  I’m not really aware of moving until I hit the lobby. There had to be an elevator ride in there somewhere, but everything’s a haze of red, Lore’s every accusation pinging in my brain like the incessant dinging of the slot machines firing off all around me.

  It’s early in the morning. Really early in the morning. And yet there are still asses in seats, eager fingers pressing buttons and letting it ride and losing fortunes. Because there are no windows or clocks here, no one knows they should be passed out or eating breakfast. The main floor is specifically designed to be a labyrinth of tables and machines, making it difficult to find an exit without hitting a Minotaur first. I pause in the middle of it all, trying to figure out what the plan is now, besides an annulment and a massive red carpet event that should have been my biggest moment of triumph.

  Lore on my arm. A ring on her finger. “Mine,” finally.

  Not being able to mark her was a warning, her body’s way of telling me she doesn’t want anything to do with all this. Not for the long haul. Sure, I’m good enough to sing with and more than good enough to fuck for a while, but she never had plans to stay and doesn’t want to be tied to me for one second longer than it takes her to roll those pretty pink suitcases to the curb.

  The ones she never unpacked.

  So here I stand, in Vegas, with a wedding ring on my left hand and nothing to hold onto.

  “Hey, man.” Someone claps me on the shoulder, and I slowly turn around. Noah Carmichael is a hundred and seventy pounds of nice guy stuffed in a stringy rocker-boy suit. He’s human, but I guess I can’t hold that against him. Signed him to the Apocalypse label and let him play wingman for a few years. The last time we spoke in LA, we had a little scuffle over Reille. Noah had slipped up and said that maybe I needed to dial it back a notch, and I told him to mind his own business.

  Actually, what he said was, “You might want to take it easy before you kill her,” and then my fist plowed into his face so hard that he spent the next six weeks hiding out in his Malibu house while the gossip rags placed him in rehab. No hard feelings, I guess. Noah didn’t even demand an apology, because he’s not that kind of guy. One day after it was all over, he turned up on my doorstep with his guitar slung over his back, ready to jam like none of it even happened. He’s good like that, and in the aftermath of all the Reille-fueled insanity, I was also glad he wasn’t the hold-grudges or sue-my-ass-off sort.

  I hold out my hand to him with a casual “Good to see you alive and kicking” because last night, he’d been my best man. I guess that’s what happens when you crash the wrong stupid-long Hummer as all the artists on the label pile into the same hotel.

  Cracking open a bottle of high-end water, he takes a tentative sip. “Tell me you got Lore up to the room all right.”

  “Yeah, she’s up there.”

  Noah tips his head down so he can peer at me over his sunglasses. His eyes are bloodshot, but he doesn’t look half as crappy as I feel right about now. “Everything okay?”

  No. “Yeah, it’ll be fine. I need to get some food into me. I haven’t had anything since last night.” Normally, I’d swing by the front desk and have every egg and strip of bacon in the joint sent up with room service, but Lore is done with my particular brand of excess, and she can order her own food, if she wants any. “You should go to bed. You look like shit, and you smell like a brothel.”

  “Aw, I love you too, man.” Reaching up behind his glasses, Noah scrubs at his eyeballs for a second, moves to the bridge of his nose and then up to his hair. “I’ll grab breakfast with you, and then I can pass out for a few hours.”

  Now that I’m sobered up, I don’t remember his name in the rundown of talent I’d gotten from the production assistant yesterday. “The fuck are you doing in Vegas, anyway, Carmichael? I thought you had a couple private club gigs lined up in LA.”

  “Change of plans,” he mutters, not meeting my eyes. “I hopped on the jet late last night and hit the party about the time you and Lore were leaving it.”

  “What the hell happened? Last I checked, you were happy to be off tour for a while. Something something, hit the beach… something something, sun and surf… blah, blah, bullshit whatever.”

  I may have missed the mark in the empathy department, but Noah doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Yeah, well, shit came up,” he tells me, then adds, “They even tell you about the girl I found behind Scion?”

  “The body?” My forehead crinkles up,
because it’s too early in the morning for this crap.

  “The girl, X. She was alive when I found her. Got her to the hospital as fast as I could, but…” Noah averts his face, like he doesn’t want me to see what flavor of inner turmoil is going on behind those glasses. “Not fast enough, I guess.”

  I brush off mental cobwebs, trying to follow the sudden swerve in the story because I was expecting erectile dysfunction with the latest Victoria’s Secret angel and instead I’m getting the lone wolf hero story.

  “Come on, then.” Reaching out, I snag a waitress by the elbow. “Hey, babe, could you be persuaded to play tour guide?”

  Her mouth falls open, but she sure as hell doesn’t tell me “no.” Instead, I get “Anything you need, sir.”

  Damn straight.

  “What Mister Carmichael and I need are restaurant recommendations and a quick way out of the building that doesn’t involve me getting a tan.”

  She nods and purrs and escorts us to the VIP exit, where Noah and I end up in a black town car headed for parts unknown.

  “Remind me to never drink with you again,” he mutters, reaching for another bottle of water and cracking it open.

  “Whatever, tweet-fucker.” I should be mad about the drunken leaking of pics and videos all over the internet. Payback for the busted nose, probably. But really, it was good PR. Great PR.

  That bit wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth, either.

  Thinking about how Lore systematically hit me in every last leggy-blonde-feel that I have, I know I need to go lick my wounds and whatever else my tongue can find. It’s the only way to get back to being That Bastard. The one she thinks I am. The one the world thinks I am. Without realizing it, I took off all my armor and let her shoot straight through me