by J J Cobban
“You don’t get to talk shit about Drake and then walk away, asshole.” Jo snapped “you should have known that would get you a slap upside the head!”
“Please.” The man scoffed, raking a disgusted sneer over Drake “That asshole just proved to everyone the rumours are true. He’s a fucking beast.”
I glanced to Drake, waiting for a reaction. All I got was a cold, hard stare. Drake met the man’s gaze and held it, refusing to back down. My stomach rolled at the dead look in his eyes. It was sickening to see the carefree, flirty side of him disappear. The light that had shone in his eyes earlier was long gone.
“Jez, where were the men when they instigated the fight?” Jez, who had been standing beside Seth looked a little shocked “Where they on the street?”
“No.” she cleared her throat “The other four had gotten in the first taxi and we were waiting inside the gates when they came up to us. They were standing just inside the gates.”
Bingo! I grinned wickedly at the man in front of me.
“Grab your friend and get out of here. You were trespassing on the premises when the fight broke out. You were on private property before the fight reached the street. You leave now without another word and I won’t pursue the matter with the venue and the cops.”
The man was weighing his options but in the end he knew he had no other choice. If the venue pressed charges on him for trespassing out of hours he was looking at jail time. Not to mention his friend had assaulted me with witnesses present. Without a word he hauled his friend up and moved off down the street. I ignored the small crowd at the other side of the street and stalked over to the small group.
“Do not look at any of the cameras. Do not wave at anyone. Do not smile. Turn your asses and walk back to the bus with your fucking heads down and a shameful look on your face.”
Seth hesitated, only to be nudged along by Jez. He changed his mind about speaking out and moved along with Travis, Jez and Jo. Drake fell into step beside me. I watched as Jo pulled her phone out, presumably letting Nico know what the hell had happened. My lips remained sealed as we made it back to the buses. Everything suddenly seemed too quiet. My footsteps echoed around my head as I stopped beside the door. Jez and Travis had gone into our bus while Seth and Jo moved to the last bus.
Tonight had been a mixture of emotions. Drake and I had made some sort of progress in our relationship, filling me with excited anticipation. Then the fight had happened. I was confused about that. Hell, I was a heady mixture of confused, furious and shaken. I’d never dealt with a situation like that before and I’d sorely overestimated myself. Realising you weren’t as unstoppable as you thought was humbling for sure.
I was going to be up to my eyeballs by the morning. Social media was going to be hellish. Then the tabloids would get a hold of it, wringing it for all its worth. I dreaded to think of the pictures and videos that had been taken.
Christ, I’d grabbed Travis by the hair.
I must have looked like a goddamn crazy woman.
“Darlin’?” Drake ducked into my line of sight, snapping me from my mental run down of the evening “You good?”
I stared up at him as he straightened to his full height.
“I’m going to have to be in damage control mode from the second I get up tomorrow. I need to let my father know what happened and how badly it spiralled. Then after that I need to get to the bottom of what the hell happened. On top of that there are now apparently rumours flying around about you. So, yeah, sure, I’m fine.” I sighed and let myself lean back against the bus. My head fell back as I tried to stamp my emotions back down. The last thing I needed to do was have a breakdown on my first night.
Firm, gentle hands slid down my arms and gripped my hands. I opened my eyes to see Drake pull me forward. I moved forward without any argument, I just didn’t have it in me. When I was closer to his big body, his hand moved up to cup my cheek. I closed my eyes as his thumb rubbed my cheek lightly. His other arm slid around my waist, pulling me flush against him. My arms slipped around his waist automatically as the hand on my cheek moved to sift through my hair.
“It’s been a shitty night, you don’t have to be fine right now.” He whispered into my hair “Take a breath.”
I felt my eyes burn with the threat of tears. The strong, proud part of me refused to let anyone see me cry so I buried my face into his neck. Inhaling his masculine scent. It was nice to be held, to know that not everybody was expecting me to be on my game all of the time. I let myself stand against him for a moment, soaking up the comfort he offered. After I was certain my face showed no evidence of my earlier weakness I stepped back. Drake cupped my cheeks and pressed his lips to my forehead gently.
“The others should be hear soon. I’m gonna fill the driver in.” I stated, feeling stronger “The sooner we leave, the better.”
“What can I do?” he licked his lips, allowing his hands to fall to my waist “Gimme a job, boss.”
I tried to smile but I knew it was a poor effort. What I was about to say to him was going to ruin the mood entirely.
“I need you to get your game face on. Whatever the hell is happening is about you. We’re gonna have to start digging and find out where everyone is getting their information from, where these tabloid stories are coming from. That means keeping an ear to the ground, see if we can reach out to some people and see what they’ve heard. I have some contacts we can talk to. It may also mean that we need to decipher what’s true and what people are just making up.” Drake’s face fell. His eyes moved to where his hands sat on my hips, his thumbs rubbed small circles there. I hated asking him to do this but it needed to happen.
“If we can get a handle on this then we can control it,” I explained “I’ll help you.”
Drake’s eyes found mine and I felt my breath lodge in my throat. The pain swirling in his icy blue eyes was like a gut punch. This was physically painful to him, I knew it was.
“I won’t ask questions.” The words were out before I could think them through “If that’s what you’re worried about. I get you don’t want me to know and I respect that but it wouldn’t change how I look at you. You’ll always be the pushy asshole who hit on me the same day you met me, no matter what your background is.”
Drake’s lips tipped at my attempt to lighten the moment. He pressed his forehead to mine as the early morning silence wrapped around us.
I’d known there was more to Drake’s story than he let on. I’d known that he had his secrets. I’d just never counted on how many secrets he would have.
Or how dangerous they could become.
Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ Ｎｉｎｅ
Ｓｃｏｕｔ
My head thrummed and my entire body ached as I stretched as much as possible in the cramped bunk. I glanced down to my watch, rubbing the sleep away in an attempt to ease the blurriness in my eyes. My mouth dropped as I bolted upright. My already pounding head collided with the roof of the bus making me drop back down clutching my forehead.
“Motherfucker!” I snapped, rubbing it furiously. I checked my watch again, praying my sleep bleary eyes had deceived me the first time.
No such luck.
It was mid-morning and I could already hear a range of movement from the other people on the bus. I swung my legs from the bunk and let myself drop down onto the floor. My too long pyjama pants threatened to trip me up as I hauled ass to the other end of the bus. As I reached the kitchen area I found Travis standing in front of a large microwave, watching as his food turned slowly. I finger combed my hair, trying to pass as presentable.
A girl still had her dignity to uphold.
“Morning.” Travis smirked as he glanced at me from the corner of his eye. He ran a hand through his mass of curly hair, pushing it from his face. I winced, remembering the way I’d pulled at it the night before.
“Travis, I’m really sorry about last night.” I cringed “I shouldn’t have grabbed at you like that it was a shitty thing to do.”
Travis pulled his
food from the microwave and nodded his head slowly “Shitty, yes, but at the time it was also necessary. Apology not really needed but accepted all the same.”
I nodded my head, feeling a little easier about everything.
“I should apologise for walking away from the dickhead and leaving you alone. That wasn’t cool and if I’d been thinking straight it never would have happened.” Guilt and anger fused together in his swirling caramel eyes, reminding me that there was more to the band joker than he liked to let on.
“Let’s call it quits on the apologising. We both did things we didn’t like last night.” I shrugged with a smile “What you can do is tell me why my phone wasn’t in my bunk. I set an alarm on my phone last night and left it under my pillow. It was gone this morning.”
Travis grinned at that as he shoved half a pastry into his mouth followed by some bacon. With a nod of his head, he indicated in the direction of the living area. My eyes widened as I saw Jo and Drake sitting on a couch together, frowning at a laptop screen. The bus must have stopped at some point because when I’d gone to bed last night, Jo was on the other tour bus. I moved further down the bus.
“Morning.” I called as I wandered towards Jo and Drake.
“Morning.” Jo mumbled as she picked at the pastry on the plate in front of her. Drake’s eyes lingered over me as I moved to sit cross-legged on the seat opposite them.
“Morning, darlin’,” he smirked. I felt familiar heat seep into my face as I tucked my unruly hair behind my ears.
“Did you take my phone?” My gaze flickered to the table, looking for any sign of my beloved device. I felt positively naked without it.
“Figured you could use the sleep.” Drake shrugged as his eyes went back to the laptop “Nothing much you can do until we hit Jackson, which shouldn’t be too long now.”
That answer gave me a mixture of emotions. It was sweet that he thought I needed someone to take care of me but also a little annoying that he’d just taken my phone. I had every intention of grabbing a couple hours sleep and then nipping the shitty situation in the bud. I chewed my lip as I tried to keep my business head on. It’d only been a couple days and my professional lines were being blurred.
“Well, I need it back now.” I cleared my throat “I have calls to make and I need to see how bad social media is. Has anybody checked?”
Jo looked up and cast a wary glance between Drake and I. Movement in the kitchen area caught my attention for a second as a thick tension filled the air. Lacey and Jez were moving around the kitchen, grabbing food and juice. My eyes fell to Travis who sat at the table with his food watching us. There was a strangely guarded look in his eyes as he watched us, as if he knew the reason for the sudden tension. My heart kicked in my chest as I noticed Lacey picking up on the tension as she slid in beside Travis at the table. I looked back to Jo and Drake, waiting for an explanation.
“Okay, what the hell is going on?” I demanded, leaning forward in my chair “What is with the weird atmosphere when I asked about social media?”
“The thing is,” Jo began carefully “We’ve been combing through every gossip column or tabloid we’ve come across and so far it’s pretty brutal. They’re saying shit about Drake having anger issues and an unstable personality but then they can back it up with out of context pictures. Like this one.” Jo turned the laptop so I could see the picture she had loaded on the screen.
I bit my tongue to stop me from cursing out loud at the picture on the screen. This was unbelievably bad. My eyes drifted to the bottom of the picture as I felt my chest tighten. The man who’d grabbed me last night was lying on the concrete with his head facing away from the camera, his body splayed out. As my gaze moved across the bottom of the screen my breathing caught suddenly. I was staring at an image of myself and it didn’t look good. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the screen. In the picture my eyes were wild and afraid as I stared at the unconscious body in front of me. From the slight blurriness of my body the picture had obviously been taken just as myself and the man hit the ground. It was only after taking in the first two people in the photo that I allowed myself to look at the third. I knew it was going to be bad but I didn’t realise how bad it would be. Drake’s fist was still clenched in the picture as he stood above the man with malice and hatred in his gaze. His icy blue eyes were narrowed and his lip was curled. I tried to swallow as my mouth dried out. Anybody looking at the picture would see Drake standing over a knocked-out man while a stupid girl looked on in horror from the floor. A sickening feeling filled my stomach.
This depicted Drake as some kind of rage fuelled monster who was capable of knocking out a man without a hint of regret. Then you threw my stupid ass into the mix and everyone just assumed I was caught in the crossfire of his fight. This was going to be worse than I expected and all because I had taken a stupid risk. A rocker caught in a fight where his opponent was knocked out cold was bad but putting a woman at risk at the same time somehow made it worse.
“Okay.” I breathed, the word coming out as a whisper “We can handle this.”
“We can?” Lacey asked from the table over a mouthful of cereal “How? This all looks pretty fucked.”
I couldn’t take my eyes away from the screen. This was on me. This was my fault and I had to fix this. If I hadn’t jumped into the middle of it then there would be no incriminating pictures. Jo turned the laptop back around and handed it off to Drake.
“I need my phone.” My voice was louder this time “I can call my Dad and ask him to get a fix on things at the office, they have more time to handle the in-depth searches and damage control. From there we try and do some making up. We need to work out what you’re willing to tell the media and then we make a statement. Hell, if we can we need to make a presence somewhere where people can see how genuine you are. If that goes as well as I’m hoping it will then it’s just a case of being vigilant. No more street brawls or confrontations with strangers.”
There was a long pause when I took a breath.
“How much of the tabloids is made up?” I moved on to ask, looking towards Jo. I was finding it increasingly difficult to meet Drake’s ice blue gaze. The guilt was becoming too much.
Jo cleared her throat and glanced to Drake before answering “A lot of what we read is true. At the same time though it’s like the outline of the articles are true but they’ve fluffed it up with bullshit. It’ll be hard to deny one thing and not the rest.”
She was being deliberately vague and I could feel my suspicions increase.
“Alright, so we need to get out in front of this. We make note of what’s not true and then take it from there. We need the public to see what a great guy Drake is. So tell me what the fluffy bullshit is? Look, I can find out what the hell everyone is saying about this with a couple of Google searches but I’m asking you all out of courtesy. So spill.”
Jo ran a hand through her thick, red hair and took a deep breath. Just when I thought she was about to speak, she stopped and looked to Drake. I raised a brow, turning to look at Drake. His head was bowed as he scrolled through something on the laptop. My eyes narrowed as I waited for him to look up. I’d meant what I said the night before about not asking questions. If he wasn’t comfortable going into details about his past then I wouldn’t pry. That didn’t mean he got away with pushing me out completely. I still needed to know what the hell I was dealing with. I had to prepare him for interviews and maybe release a statement. I couldn’t do that if I didn’t know what the hell everyone was saying about his past.
I turned to look at Travis, Lacey and Jez. Travis and Lacey were still at the table, refusing to meet my gaze as they picked at their food. Jez was staring at Drake, concern written all over her face. She was my source if push came to shove. I could see her trying to work out what she should say and how she could help her friend.
“Alright.” I snapped, my business hat firmly in place as I took charge of the situation. This was yet another example of why I had to watch myself. The ban
d had lost respect for me and therefore didn’t see anything wrong with denying me what I asked for. I’d become too close to them. Too much of a friend that they’d forgotten exactly why I was on this tour in the first place.
“I’ve tried to do this in a friendly and patient manner but I don’t think any of you understand the impact this can have.” My voice was hard as I got to my feet, looking at them all “If people start believing what they read about Drake then it has a domino effect. The tour will suffer because fans don’t want to listen to someone who doesn’t think twice about knocking some idiot out in public. Then the money stops because people don’t want to listen to someone with anger issues and a murky past. If that isn’t bad enough then the angry fans start. You can kiss goodbye to the fans asking for an autograph. Instead they’re gonna want to know how you can do shit like last night with women around or how you could supposedly do whatever it is you did in your past! Then Ultimate Corruption get involved because of how close you all are. They lose fans because everyone thinks that the boys are supporting your history and lifestyle. I’ve given you the worst-case scenario but my point is it’s not just you this effects.”
My voice bounced off the walls of the bus. I wasn’t yelling at them but my tone left no room for argument. My eyes found Drake again and my annoyance bubbled over when I noticed that Drake still had his head down.
“We hear ya,” Travis nodded, looking around the various nodding heads. It looked like everyone was in agreement. Everyone but the still silent, still moody looking Drake.
“I am trying to do my job and help. I want to stop the bullshit that people are saying but I can’t do it blind.” He still made no move to look at me “Goddamn it, Drake, look at me!”
It was like slow motion as his eyes lifted to mine. I thought I might see anger when he finally looked at me. I could imagine him being pissed at the situation. What I didn’t expect was the emptiness in his eyes. As his eyes met mine there was nothing there. It was like he was completely numb. Somewhere in my speech, I’d struck a nerve. The guilt could choke me at this point.