by Tess Oliver
Kellan spun around as if he was in the fight ring. He looked angrier than I’d ever seen him. My helmet clinked against the solid ribs of the mine as he pushed me up against the cross entry wall. He jammed his forearm against my neck. Of the three of us, Kellan, Tommy and me, Kellan was the smallest, but he was still tough as fucking iron, especially when he was pissed. And he was definitely pissed. I could have fought back, but I didn’t need to. I was getting what I deserved.
“Lost your cool? Yeah, I’d say you lost it. Don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you, but we’ve always got each other’s backs down here, remember? Whatever the hell is bothering you, deal with it. Just don’t fucking take it out on me.” He shoved his arm harder against my neck, temporarily choking off my air. But I didn’t smack his arm away. I stared down into his angry face and waited for him to back off. Which he did.
Kellan pulled away his arm and headed toward the break station without another word.
Chapter 4
Lenix
“Hey, Lennie, grab me the rest of that chicken out of the fridge while you’re snooping around in there,” Duff called to me over the kitchen island.
Duff, our keyboardist and, more importantly, our primary composer, was the quiet member of the group. When he wasn’t tapping out tunes on his piano, he was reading or playing video games. He was tall and thin, like a stick figure with shaggy black hair, and for the most part, he was the complete opposite of Brick when it came to women. Not that Duff didn’t have his share of groupies. He definitely did. But when he liked someone, he put his whole heart and soul into the relationship. Unfortunately, two bad marriages later, he had discovered that he needed badly to work on his girlfriend choosing skills. That was where his main character flaw merged with Brick’s, boobs before anything else. They both tended to see a girl’s breasts long before they noticed anything else.
I pulled out the chicken and slid it across the granite to Duff. I popped open a soda and walked around to the stool next to him.
Rex walked into the room, and his focus went straight to the chicken. “Dude, I had my eyes on that chicken this morning.” He tapped the side of his head. “I made a mental note that it was going to be lunch, and now there you are, sucking those bones dry.” He reached for a drumstick on the plate, but Duff held up a hand to stop his quest.
“Too late. Next time try a sticky note. I didn’t see any damn mental note on the chicken.”
Rex was his own animal too. He was sort of halfway between Brick and Duff on the woman front, but most of the time, he was too damn caught up in something stupid like a big gambling debt or shady business investment to have time for lovesick groupies. Rex had wisely decided that our luck would eventually run out and that Ice Cake would lose its mojo. He wanted to be ready to keep the millions rolling in the moment our fate was sealed.
“Who the fuck is eating my chicken?” Brick sat up from the couch in the next room. A girl with pink streaks in her hair sat up groggily next to him.
“Oh my god,” I sneered at him. “We all sit on that couch.”
“Relax, Lennie, we were just napping.” He kissed the girl and said something to her. She buttoned her blouse as she climbed off the couch. She tiptoed past all of us, as if it would make her less noticeable. Then she skittered off in the direction of Brick’s bedroom.
Brick combed his long hair back with his fingers. Like his pink haired friend, he was busy buttoning himself up as he got up from the couch and headed toward the kitchen. “That was my damn chicken to begin with.”
Apparently the chicken debate was not going away anytime soon.
Duff looked at him with a bored expression. “I think I could bring it back up if I jammed my finger down my throat. It was good, by the way. But next time you should order the extra spicy.”
Brick walked around to the refrigerator. “It was extra spicy.” He inclined his head toward the hallway where his friend had just scuttled off to. “Brynn likes the spicy sauce, so I let her lick it off. It was a lot of fun to watch.”
Duff’s face blanched, and his smug expression faded as he dropped the last piece of chicken onto the plate. “Now I really will stick my finger down my throat.”
“Dodged that fucking bullet.” Rex’s laugh boomed off the kitchen walls.
I stifled a smile and sidled past Brick with my soda.
“When are we leaving for California?” Duff asked as he shoved the plate away, seemingly hoping to distance himself from the tainted chicken.
Brick grabbed a banana and peeled it. “Saturday. We’re stopping in Virginia for a day.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
Brick took a bite of banana before talking. An annoying habit of his. “I’m meeting up with that collector about the Les Paul I’m thinking of buying. I want to see it before I shell out the big bucks for it.”
“So, we all have to sit around Virginia for a day while you check out a friggin’ guitar for your collection?” I slid off the stool.
Duff looked over at me, and I knew one of his lectures was going to follow. “Lennie, we’re all going to waste an entire fucking week on the beach in California, and it’s well past bikini season, so you can rest up from exhaustion.”
His words hurt, and he knew it. Duff was the one person in the house who could lecture me and get away with it.
Brick and Rex were shooting me the same disapproving looks.
“You’re all mad at me?” My throat tightened as I spoke.
“Nah,” Brick said, and I braced for one of his heavy doses of sarcasm. “We’re all thrilled to give up two sold out concerts so you can get over your bout of little girl nerves.”
I blinked back tears. It seemed I’d been doing that a lot lately. I looked over at Rex, who I could usually get to move to my side or at least defend me. But he was standing rock solid like a statue.
“Sorry, Lennie,” Rex said. “You know I love ya, but this was a raw deal.”
“My gosh, you’ve all been talking about this, about me, behind my back. You guys have never done that before.” I sobbed once but took a deep breath to pull myself together. “Total fucking betrayal, all of you.”
“Lennie—” Duff reached for my hand, but I yanked it out of his reach.
“That’s great. And thanks so much for your support on this. Good fucking friends, all of you. Really. Good to know how you guys feel.”
“Lennie, you’re being dramatic,” Brick said.
“Fuck you, Brick. Fuck all of you.” I stormed out, and the tears burst free. I reached my room, my personal sanctuary, one of the few places on the entire planet where I could be alone, and slammed the door shut behind me.
There was nothing I hated more than knowing that I’d stomped off in a tantrum, thus lending weight to Brick’s ruthless comment about my little girl nerves, but I couldn’t stop myself. We’d all had our beefs with each other. We were four people acting as one entity, an entity that was making us all rich, so differences and disagreements were commonplace. But I’d never had all three of them angry at me at once. I hated it. It brought me back to that time in my life when I’d felt completely alone, as if no one alive noticed me or cared whether I existed. Including me. At sixteen, I’d reached such a low point in my life, I spent most of my day wishing the earth would open up and swallow me. Then Graham Rushton walked into my life, and everything changed so fast, I never had a chance to say goodbye to the darkness. I never had a chance to reconcile my mind and emotions with that former life, with my horrid childhood.
I pounced onto my bed, a bed that was flooded with more pillows than I knew what to do with. Any time I found a pillow I liked, I bought it. It helped erase that time when a pillow, even a stained, mildewed-covered one, was a luxury. I pressed my cheek against the silky pillow with the tiny sheep running across it, and my tears streamed down toward the shiny fabric. Now I had all the pillows I could ever use, and I was still crying. I’d been so happy and everything had been going relatively as smooth as it could with th
is whirlwind lifestyle, but then something changed. Something that was pulling me back to those old feelings of inadequacy and being completely alone. And all of it was affecting my performance on stage. I needed badly to get a grip on things. For a short span of time, I’d believed this trip to the beach, this vacation away from the craziness, would do the trick. But now I’d be stuck in a house where I’d apparently be suffering the angry scowls and behind-my-back conversations from the three people who meant the most to me.
A knock on the door startled me.
“Lennie, it’s me.” Graham’s voice came through the door.
“Good for you. I’m in no mood to receive visitors.”
“Yeah, well I’m not a visitor.” He opened the door to the room. “I’m those little devil and angel figures that sit on your shoulders and help you make decisions, whether they are good or bad.”
He walked over and, uninvited, he sat on the edge of my bed. “You’ve got to understand why the guys are upset.”
I sat up and pushed some of the pillows out of my way. “Did they send you in here as some kind of liaison or mediator?” My harsh laugh caused the little muscle in the side of his jaw to twitch. “Tell them to fuck off, and you can do the same. And I’m not going to the beach with you people. You are all assholes, every one of you.” I flopped back down and scooped a mound of pillows over me to hide.
I felt the mattress move as Graham stood. He swept away the pillows with one angry arc of his arm. He pointed down at me. “We will all go to the beach . . . together. I sure as fuck don’t want to have to scramble around tamping down any rumors that the band is breaking up or having problems. It was hard enough getting the reporters to believe that a perfectly healthy and fit twenty-three-year-old was suffering from exhaustion.” With that, he turned and walked toward the door.
“I hate you, Graham.”
“I know you do, Lennie.” He turned around, and I thought, if Satan had bad taste in clothes and a spray tan he’d look just like Graham Rushton. His big bossy pointing finger came up again, reminding me of Mrs. Burner, my fourth and last foster mom, or at least she’d thought she was a mom. Graham took three steps toward the bed with his E.T. finger still up in the air. “Just remember this—I pulled you from the edge of hell, Lenix Harlow, and I can send you right back there.”
“Please do. And this time, if you could just give me a little push, it would be greatly appreciated. Now get out of my room, so I can wallow in my pile of pillows.”
Chapter 5
Dawson
Airports were just one notch below the Department of Motor Vehicles on the list of shittiest places to be in the world, but they still beat having to drive several thousand miles of empty road with no one to talk to. Plus, driving to California would have wasted two of my nine vacation days and that seemed like a raw deal.
I’d needed this time off and away from Bluefield. With my dad riding my ass for everything from leaving too much water on the bathroom floor to slamming the back door too hard, Kellan still hardly talking to me and Tommy blathering on about his damn farm, I was ready to explode. I’d already warned my sisters, Aubrey and Megan, not to expect me to be a great vacation mate. They warned me back that if I got too grumpy, they’d ignore me and I’d be conveniently forgotten on the morning donut runs.
I shuffled into the security check line. Some of the people in front of me had turned to look at something going on behind me. I glanced that direction. A small crowd of people was sweeping through the terminal, most of them curious onlookers who were trying hard to get a glance at someone.
The woman in front of me was staring at her phone. “It’s the band Ice Cake. That’s what all the excitement is about. My friend was at the coffee counter, and she snapped this picture.” Without me asking or showing any real interest, the woman showed me her phone. It was a blurry image of a tall, thin guy with black hair, who I recognized as the band’s keyboardist. The singer, a hot little red head with signature long bangs and equally recognizable golden eyes, was standing off to the side with a black fedora hat pulled low over her red hair.
The crowd and the entourage drew closer. The other band members were there too, with an older guy in a cheesy blue suit. I could only guess that the massive guy with white blonde hair and shoulders that were too wide to fit through the metal detector was a bodyguard. The singer was nowhere in sight.
I turned back around and stepped up to the tower of plastic trays. I pulled one off and dumped my backpack, my wallet and my phone into the tray and watched them disappear along the conveyor belt. I grabbed another tray for my shoes. As I leaned down to pull them off, I caught a glimpse of the singer, Lenix Harlow. The band was good and their songs rocked, but it was the deep, sensual, gritty tone of the lead singer that really made them great. She did not disappoint in person. It seemed all the energy from the frenzied crowd was pointed toward her.
Wearing a pair of jean shorts and a blue tank shirt, she had stepped out of line to favor a cluster of young girls with some selfies. She stood with her arms around them as they snapped away.
“Lennie, let’s go. Enough pictures. You need to take your shoes off.” The middle aged, badly dressed man, a manager most likely, called angrily to her.
Without making any movement toward the line, the famous singer reached down and slipped off her sandals. One of them flew in an arc through the air and landed on my shoe tray. It disappeared through the x-ray machine before I could grab it.
I walked through and picked up my stuff at the end. I sat down to yank on my shoes. The cute white sandal sat alone in the plastic tray. I picked it up and stood.
“Ah, you must be the prince who has found my glass slipper.”
She was stunning up close, but I wasn’t surprised. Still, it stole my breath for a second.
The singer pushed up the narrow brim of her hat a few inches, revealing more of her long red bangs. Then she let her jewel-toned eyes graze me from head to toe. “I’m really liking this new prince thing that’s going on. The tattoos, the muscles, the altogether menacing look, it works. I mean who needs a clean cut prince in a finely tailored suit when you can have this.” She waved her hand in front of me.
A large figure loomed behind her, and I pulled my eyes away from her stunning face to make quick eye contact with her bodyguard. He didn’t need to say a word to let me know I was one wrong move from getting my ass pounded. I almost wanted to see him try. I’d been in need of a good fight. Although, I probably would have been on the losing end of one where the beast outweighed me by one whole human.
“You might like the whole new prince look, but I’m not as happy about the new transformation of fairy godmother.” I motioned with my chin, and she glanced back over her shoulder.
She waved off the giant as if he was no more than a speck of dust in the air. “That’s just Axel. He’s harmless. Unless he’s mad. Then he’s pretty close to lethal.”
“Lethal is kind of the opposite of harmless, isn’t it? Here’s your sandal. It sort of took a ride with my shoes. You’ll be happy to know your sandal is not part of a terrorist plot.”
Her bandmates hurried past.
“Let’s go, Lennie. We’re boarding first.” I recognized the guy as lead guitarist, Brick, or something.
She ignored him completely. Her dark lashes fluttered down over her gold flecked eyes as she stared at the sandal in disappointment. “Aren’t you even curious if it fits?” She lifted her breathtaking gaze to me again, and I quickly realized that no matter what happened at the beach, this moment was going to be the fucking highlight of the vacation.
“I could try it on your foot, but it wouldn’t get me very far because I don’t have a castle to sweep you off to.”
“That’s all right. I’ve learned it’s not the castle that makes the prince. It’s the prince that makes the prince. That sounded silly. So, now, I’m going to take my glass slipper and be on my way.” She placed her hand on my arm to steady herself as she slipped on her shoe. As she t
ook it away, I could still feel the heat of her fingers on my skin. “Thank you.” She winked and walked away with the giant lethal man in tow.
Lenix Harlow looked back at me once more with those incredible eyes before disappearing into the crowd.
Chapter 6
Lenix
I’d taken extra steps to make sure I was sitting next to Duff in first class by basically gluing myself to his side until we sat. After all that effort, I’d made the mistake of sticking in my ear buds and closing my eyes. Graham had taken advantage of my sudden state of sensory deprivation and quickly switched seats with Duff . . . just as the seatbelt sign clicked on.
I opened my eyes and caught Duff’s pathetic apology shrug as he disappeared to the seat behind me. I slumped down farther, crossed my arms and turned toward the window to make sure Graham understood that I didn’t want to talk to him. But by the time we’d taken off and the cheese trays were being wheeled down the aisle, the earphones were giving me a gnawing headache and I could no longer pretend to be asleep.
I busied myself with tasting the various cheese samples and tried my damndest to ignore the man next to me. But he wasn’t easily ignored.
“Now, keep in mind, Lennie, that this is a resting vacation. You can’t go out partying or running on the beach or swimming in the ocean.”
“Maybe you could just wrap me up in a bed sheet when we get to the house, and I could just lie there like a mummy for the week.”
“Actually, that’s not far from what I expect of you this week.”
I dropped the stinky white cheese on the tray, no longer hungry. “What you expect from me? How about this, Graham? How about you leave me the hell alone, and I’ll pretend we’re on different planets for the next week.”
The flight attendant, a cute guy with a crooked smile and a nice, boy next door face had been watching me. It seemed he’d finally worked up the courage to ask me for an autograph. He walked over with an airline cap that had a number of autographs on it.