Documentary

by Sand, A. J.

  As an officer was taking her statement nearly twenty minutes later, Kai called out to her from near one of the tour buses. “Dylan! Dylan! Are you okay?” Another officer was preventing him from walking over to her, and Kai struggled a bit in his grip.

  “Yes, I’m okay!” she shouted, feeling relief wash over her because he was all right, too, but the cop shoved him onto the bus, refusing to let him come any closer. Once the crowd thinned around her, the faces of the people in their group were starting to take shape finally. At least none of them got arrested. Chase and his friends were sitting, handcuffed and bloodied, and lined up along a sidewalk. The officer gave her his card and told her to call if she decided to press charges against Chase, before she hurried to get to the bus.

  “Excuse me! Hey!” A guy was approaching her and he looked really concerned so she diverted her path toward him. “You’re about to get on that bus with Kai White, aren’t you?” he asked, his face suddenly clearing of the worry. He pulled out his wallet. “I’ve got $500. Can you get a picture of his injuries or something really quick? I’ll give you $50 now, and my email and the rest after.” He pushed money into her hands. Scorching anger twisted in her chest, and she pressed her lips together in a bitter smile. Feeding the monster. This guy probably wasn’t interested in how Kai had tried to diffuse the situation or that he hadn’t made the first strike. Dylan balled up the bills and tossed them into the darkness, past the caution tape.

  “What the fuck? You’re a psycho, bitch!” he growled before he dashed to where she had launched it.

  “Twice in one night. That’s a record,” she said as she continued her walk, but she realized in that moment, if she went behind Kai’s back in exchange for the web series, she was no better than that guy. She would be letting the monster nibble crumbs right out of her hand, using him, and ignoring his preferences like he wasn’t entitled to some manner of privacy as a human being. She definitely wanted to help him fix his career, but she had never wanted to do it at the expense of exposing something he intended to keep private. She also wanted to excel at this job and have Nina Sanchez as a reference down the road and, dammit, she still wanted the videos. There had to be a way to do all of it without any damage or losses for anybody. She cared about him and knew that eventually she would have to come clean about Nina’s offer.

  Dylan flashed her pass to the driver of the tour bus before she got on. She found Kai in his bedroom and he was on the phone, but he looked happy to see her. He threw his arm around her while he completed the call. It always felt so good to be next to him like this. Being in his arms had a way of lessening the craziness of the night.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay.” Kai slammed a kiss against her forehead and put his cell down. “Police said I was causing too much of a distraction; they wouldn’t let me go to you.”

  “I’m okay...is everyone else fine? You got hurt.” She touched the two diagonal Band-Aids above his left eye when they pulled away. There was a bruise on his cheek, and his knuckles were wrapped too.

  “I’m fine. When Zave said Chase fucking grabbed you…” Kai spoke between clenched teeth before he kissed her forehead twice. “…Something inside of me snapped. I hate that fucking family. I’m so sorry. What a fucking mess. I was just on the phone with my lawyer.” They walked out to the lounge and sat at the table. “The guidelines of my probation state that I can’t get into fights, but Francine thinks because I wasn’t arrested or the initial aggressor or whatever, and I was defending myself, it should be fine. The witnesses told the cops the same thing. They still might want to talk to me, but at least they let me go. Otherwise, my probation would’ve been revoked immediately.”

  “Well, that’s good.” Dylan rubbed her shoulder and grimaced. The pain was finally setting in, and Kai’s face hardened as he watched.

  “Your arm hurts, doesn’t it?” he said, his tone caustic as he leaned across the table. “Chase is in luck. When I go out there and punch his eyes to the back of his skull, at least he’ll be able to get immediate medical attention.”

  Dylan leaped from her chair to his lap, but not before closing the separation curtains. “Hey, I’m okay! I am! I’m so glad you’re okay too.” She nuzzled against his neck. “So glad. And everyone else?”

  “Everyone else is fine. Mostly just a few scratches from what I saw. Nina’s going to have my ass in the morning though. This is a fucking mess, Dyl.” Kai pressed his cheek against her forehead. “I don’t want Ashley to catch us like this.” He tapped her hip, a signal that he wanted her to get up. “You should go.” There was a pang of sadness in her chest at his sudden desire to have her leave. “I’m sorry that went down like it did. Are you mad?”

  Dylan stood up and touched his arm. “No—”

  “I told you our tour wasn’t like this. Fuck!” He slammed his palm against the wall after he stood. He was taking the whole thing really hard.

  Dylan folded her arms across her chest, and with some exasperation, said, “Kai, you didn’t do anything!”

  Kai shook his head, disagreeing. “I messed up and people could’ve gotten seriously hurt…you could’ve seriously gotten hurt. Things could’ve gone a lot worse.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. “I let Chase push my buttons. He knows I fucking hate him.” Kai walked by her, and she followed him out to the kitchenette where he pulled out one of the bottles of Grey Goose from the fridge.

  “Kai, can we talk tomorrow? It’s important.” Admitting her deal with Nina right now seemed like a terrible idea when he was content with spending the rest of his night with vodka. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Not really, but this should help…” He turned back once before he disappeared behind the separation curtain, and she followed but went to her bunk upstairs. After another hour and a half at the scene, the police officers officially cleared them to leave, and the caravan of tour buses pulled away to a hotel in New Jersey. When the bus was finally quiet from all of Xavier and Heath’s chatter and discussion of the night’s events, she followed the sound of light music to Kai’s bedroom, knocking softly on the door before she entered. She had thought Kai was playing one of his guitars, but it was coming out of his laptop. He was sitting on the couch with his laptop on his knees. He looked up but didn’t seem happy to see her and that hurt her feelings. It was actually a pretty mean look, like he had wanted anyone there but her.

  “I can go,” she blurted out.

  “Please don’t…” Kai swung his legs to the floor and patted the space on the couch next to him as an invite for her to sit. He smelled faintly of alcohol, but the bottle of Grey Goose was still mostly full, and he looked calmer than before.

  “You probably want to go home, huh? I wouldn’t blame you,” he whispered, his eyes filling with sorrow. Dylan shook her head.

  “All the Evernight shirts haven’t driven me away yet, so I don’t think anything can,” she said, putting her head on his shoulder. On the laptop screen were pictures from his childhood, seemingly from the same set as the one on his desktop of him and his mom. “Who are they?” she asked, pointing to the group of small children in one of the pictures. “Oh my God. Is that you? You were so adorable.” As she snuggled up tighter against him, he put his arm around her. Ashley was on one of the other buses, but she never seemed far enough for Dylan to be comfortable.

  Kai scoffed. “You saying I’m not now?”

  “Present day Kai has nothing on little you,” she teased. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  Kai shut the laptop and set it on a table before reaching over and tickling her side. He pulled her into his lap, and she didn’t protest, even though she kept her eyes nailed to the door. Soon she couldn’t concentrate beyond the rise and fall of Kai’s chest against her. One of his hands was gripping her outer thigh, and his breathing pattern changed slightly when she lowered her head to the curve of his neck. Maybe she wasn’t the only one whose body went into frisson when they were together. She really enjoyed being able to do that to him, and it took every ou
nce of strength not to put her lips on his skin.

  “Did you ever picture this life when you were that young?” she asked.

  “You mean beating the shit out of the Bunyan brothers in the same year?” Kai asked, laughing. “Actually, I never thought I’d get any farther than Butch did in his career.” He stroked her thigh absently. “Now though, I wonder what my life would’ve been like if my mom had just moved us to Lake Lure instead of going to Oahu with my dad. I would never have met the guys, but I loved her hometown a lot, which is weird because now I never tour in North Carolina.”

  “You miss it though, I can tell.”

  “I do...I really do. But sometimes it feels like things that scare the shit out of me haunt it. Things I’m really, really afraid of.” Dylan lifted her head and stared at him. It was one of those tragic Kai lines that always yanked at her core so hard, like she might be turned inside out.

  “Oh, well, I guess…you won’t like your gift much then,” she said, laughing awkwardly. “I feel like an idiot.”

  “You got me a gift?” he asked, surprised. “When? What? I wanna see.”

  “You’re sure?” Dylan climbed off him and walked up to her bunk. She returned with a framed photo. She had ordered a professional drawing of part of the actual lake in Lake Lure with the mountains in the background. “I found a place in D.C. that does these. Picked it up when I went home for the cookies. We have this tradition in my family that whenever we go somewhere we’re going to be for a bit—moving to a new house, college, a tour bus—we put up something that we love or that has a lot of meaning. I wanted this to be your thing, but I guess I knew those good memories at Lake Lure had some bad parts too, because of your family. I’m sorry.” She passed it to him, and Kai was silent as he held the frame in his hands. He looked back and forth between it and her, keeping his brow furrowed. Dylan’s heart was slamming into her ribs in suspense. She breathed out in relief when he smiled as he studied the detail of the drawing.

  “Dylan… this is… I don’t even know what to say.” Kai shook his head and looked up at her. “It’s perfect. It’s beautiful. Ghosts or not, estranged family or not, I do miss it. It has a lot of good memories, Dyl, and the fact that you were even thoughtful enough to do this…” Kai set it on the table with the laptop. He pulled her back to his lap and mashed a kiss against her temple. “Thank you.”

  Momentarily ignoring how compromising the situation already was, Dylan swiveled one of her legs over so she was straddling his lap, her knees and folded legs flanking his thighs. She hugged his face into her shoulder. “I’m sorry tonight got so messed up.”

  “Eh. I got to punch Chase without going to jail, and it’s not so bad right now,” he murmured, chuckling. “And I’m glad you’re staying. I was ready for you to ask us to drop you off at the nearest bus station.”

  “Nope. Not leaving. And you know I’m here for you, too, right?” she asked.

  “Thanks. I guess you owed me one,” he said, and it saddened her that he thought she was there with him as a favor. She pulled back and shook her head. She cupped his face and tilted it toward hers, wishing for the gloom in his eyes to disappear.

  “No, I’m here because I’m your friend,” she reassured him, which conflicted immediately with her desire to kiss his lips. They were right there, making hers ache like crazy. Her feelings for him weren’t lessening, they were getting stronger, and it was getting harder to sell this friendship idea to herself.

  “Look,” he began, “About what happened in the dressing room earlier…”

  “It’s okay, Kai. We had a moment. No big. We were speaking in hypotheticals,” she said, shrugging. His lips transitioned to a devilish grin.

  “Oh yeah? Then what was your hypothetical response to what I said?” The bus came to a stop and she left him only with silence and a smile. Once inside her hotel room, Dylan fell asleep almost immediately, worn out from the night’s events, but she drifted off with pleasant thoughts of Kai and how his face had lit up when she gave him the picture. She awoke to a breaking dawn, filled with nausea and anxiety about the day ahead with the video’s release. Feeling a weight pressing down on her chest, she picked up her cell phone.

  “First video goes up today, Mac. The entire world is going to see it, and I’m so scared. I hate being scared. You were never scared, which makes me feel so dumb. I make a big deal out of trivial things. I wish I had your courage.” Dylan shuddered as a warm tear raced down her cheek when she finished typing. She would’ve done anything to hear his comforting voice in that instant. She looked at the black number five on her wrist. He didn’t get them. You’re getting what you want. You have no right to be afraid. You have no right to feel the other thing you’re feeling either…about Kai. You’re not even being honest with him. And that’s not why you’re here in the first place. Dylan sighed and sent the message to “drafts.”

  After a shower, she packed up her things in preparation for the day then opened her laptop. The subject line of her morning email from Nina was all she needed to know that the video was live, but a thought from last night was already snatching away her attention. Chase Bunyan had said something that was bothering her. He had said that Leko was in the alley the night of the fight with Jeremy, but his name wasn’t in a single newspaper article she had come across about it. She was sure of this because the night Leko picked her up from LAX was the first time she had heard his name, and she knew she would’ve remembered “Meleko” from all the research she had done about Kai’s fight.

  “Your guard dog,” Chase had said. “Your guard dog.” He had meant it in a derogatory manner, but Leko did indeed always take care of Kai; everyone knew this. Leko was there but had not come forward claiming to have witnessed the actual fight? Maybe he could have cleared up what really happened. So why not? What did Leko know? And would he even talk to her about it? Her interest was certainly piqued now. There was something much bigger going on and the thought left her unsettled. How much trouble was Kai really in?

  The Trouble With Erica Evigan – Chapter 15

  Dylan re-read as many detailed articles about the fight as she could find online. Police reports were public records in California, and the official one about the incident was easy enough to locate on the Internet. She printed a copy down in the hotel’s business center and returned to her room to read the long narrative section below the procedural information. Kai had readily identified himself as the person responsible for the assault to the responding officers. He had stated that he had approached Jeremy at Club Victory about working on a music project together. Kai and Jeremy went out into the alleyway to have a conversation, and shortly after, an argument ensued over songwriting ownership and royalties, leading to Kai striking Jeremy. He admitted wholly to starting the fight.

  The part of the report that Dylan found the most interesting was the discussion on how many people were in the alley directly following the altercation. Kai denied Leko had been there, adding that he only noticed him standing with the group of people who had come out with the club security in the aftermath. Chase and Adam Scott disputed that version, and they said they had found both Leko and Kai outside with an injured Jeremy. Leko had confirmed Kai’s statement to the police, and no one else was able to definitively place Leko in the alley when Chase and Adam said he was there.

  Dylan ran through the details over and over. Something still didn’t seem right. The anonymous video didn’t place anyone except for Kai and Jeremy in the alley and… the person shooting the video! Duh! A spiky chill rolled down Dylan’s back, and she jumped off the bed to a standing position. “Oh my God. It was Lek who shot the video. That would’ve placed him in the alley before Chase and Adam got out there. It had to be. He saw the fight. He saw it and he was there.” Her heart was racing at the revelation. It simultaneously made sense and didn’t. As always, when it came to Kai, the answers only led to more questions. Why would Leko record damning evidence of his best friend and then release it to the public? Leko was too loyal to Ka
i, and she had never seen him so much as cast a resentful glance his way. Leko was the closest to a blood relative Kai had in his life. Money? Kai would’ve given Leko any amount of money, and she didn’t doubt that.

  There was no rational reason for Leko to betray Kai. Not money. Not jealousy. He had been so nice to Dylan, too, but what if she was wrong about Leko’s kindness? And what if Kai had been wrong about him all these years? Her stomach gurgled with heat as she reached for her phone on the nightstand. She wanted to get a reading on his reaction to her questions about that night. It was in the very early hours of the morning in Hawaii, but Leko was probably awake. She sighed, fearful of how the conversation would go as she tapped his name in her contacts.

  “There’s my favorite girl,” Leko said when he answered. There was a woman’s voice in the background. “No, baby, it’s my grandma. Yeah, she always calls late.”

  Dylan couldn’t help laughing in her nervousness. She loved Leko as a friend, which made what she suspected all the worse. “Lek? You there?”

  “Hey, baby girl, sorry. You all right? What’s going on? Kai texted me about the fight. Shit is already all over the Internet. He said Chase hurt you. What happened?”

  “I’m okay, Lek.” Her throat went dry as she sat down. “Are you able to talk? I want to ask you something.” And then her brain went into overdrive. “Lek, I just want to hear your side of the story. Whatever it is. It doesn’t matter how bad it is. We all make mistakes, and I’ll help you however I can. No judgment from me. I don’t want you and Kai—”

  “Whoa. Slow down. What’s going on?” Leko’s voice, audibly low and full of concern, sliced right through hers. “You know something about me that I don’t?”