She wandered the grounds, waded in the lake, and caught part of a show from the VIP stand. She met Gage and their tour manager for a bite to eat. She replied some inconsequential response when Ivy finally texted back, ignored a text from Henni, and sent a text to Logan with a picture attachment of a couple wearing frog leg boots.
And she drooled over Gage in all of his rock godliness when Rattler took the stage.
By that evening, she was lying in a hotel bed in Croatia, thinking about those damn condoms again. Gage was back in big brother mode. All day he’d been sweet and funny, but no longer flirty. His eyes hadn’t lingered when they’d sat across from each other in the ride to the airport. They’d boarded the train and he’d chosen a seat a few down from hers instead of coming up with crazy excuses to ensure they sat together.
Turning her head to the window, she took in the stretch of turquoise sea beyond the rooftops. Iron bars just outside the glass sectioned the view into six neat rectangles.
She texted Ivy, but was no longer surprised or upset when no text came right back. Wayne Ketchum had somehow obtained her email, and after reading his threat over her late payment, she saved it out of sight into a folder. Once she’d passed along the news of the DNA test to her mother, she’d honestly expected the slimy snake to disappear. She knew she needed to talk to her lawyers about the past extortions, but being on tour was like an alternate reality. With a last look at the clock, she texted her two clients.
Need anything?
Sent 9:00 PM
To which Landon’s predictable response was ‘Just what are you offering, Bunny Pie?’ His reply was always suggestive, and she’d quit even humorously texting back ‘a chillaxing potion, Casanova’ or similar.
Gage, the un-obnoxious band member; Gage, the brother texted back: ‘I’m okay. Thanks, Sis.’
In a lethargic mode, she swung her legs from the bed and stripped off her jeans en route to the bathroom. She showered the traveling grime from her weary body and dawdled, thinking of Gage until her knees went weak, and she grabbed the showerhead for support. No hotel robe hung at the ready, so she wrapped in a towel and padded back into the main room. After turning off the lamp, she grabbed a couple of random mini-bottles from the fridge and stood in the darkness before the window. The sun had been replaced by city lights, the glow curving around the inky blackness of the sea and horizon.
Trying the clasp, she discovered the windowpanes drew open and the night air caressed her still-damp skin and hair. She plugged in her amp and settled with her guitar in the confines of the windowsill.
I mixed up a potion for my mixed up emotions
And sat by the sea drinking to my misery
Pausing, she glugged the liquor until only a sip or two remained.
If I mixed an elixir; if one sip would fix us
Would you sip by the sea with me?
Not bad? Maybe the key to great lyrics was to drink while composing.
The festival in Croatia was followed up by a few shows over the next couple of weeks in smaller venues. They traveled by bus. A sleeper coach is what she heard it referred to. Instead of the bunks being in the middle of the long vehicle, the bus was a double decker and their pods were sectioned off on the top story. It was roomier and quieter, yet terrifying to her for the same inexplicable reason the folding festival rooms had been. She couldn’t shake the feeling the bus was top-heavy, and she had more than one nightmare of a bus wreck.
She was awakened from one of these dreams by her own hoarse yell. Drenched in sweat and shaking, she rubbed her hand to the crown of her head, realizing she must have come up from the bed enough to hit her skull.
The bus was moving. She blinked in the darkness. Was it morning, afternoon, or night? She struggled with her memories.
After last night’s show they’d adjourned to the connecting bar where the band had enjoyed being mobbed by their fans. Both Landon and Gage had joined the others drinking. Gage had echoed her own order of a margarita on the rocks. After two, he’d switched to pomegranate juice, which she’d noticed had become a virgin favorite of his since his first try at the ice bar in L.A. But Landon, despite her best efforts to keep him in check, had become shitfaced. While she was busy trying to do her job with the obnoxious drummer boy, she hadn’t been paying attention until it was too late to the gaggle of groupies all over Gage. The female attention was nothing new. It happened almost everywhere he went, even now when his hiatus from tabloid headlines had his recognition factor at an all-time low. But even if the gals were practically—and sometimes literally—straddling his lap, she’d always seen a distance in his demeanor. Not so last night.
Last night he’d seemed to enjoy the boobs below his face and long legs extending from short skirts tangled with his while dancing. He’d seemed to thrive on manicured nails playing in his hair, caressing his chest, and stiletto heels against his biker boots while loitering at the bar. A couple of times she’d looked up, finding him missing for too long.
Throwing back the curtain, she bolted from her bunk, running from her thoughts. After stopping at the bathroom, she descended the spiral staircase. The moment her socked feet hit the first level, Landon picked his head up from the tabletop.
“Scarlette, thank fuck.” His body remained hunched, his arms on the table, and he dropped his forehead to his forearms as he begged. “Help me, please.”
“I told you. Didn’t I try to help you last night?” She slammed ingredients on the galley countertop as she bitched. “It’s not my job to cure your hangover. It’s my job to keep you from getting one. Was it worth it? I hope so.”
“Shit bitch. Save the sermon for later. Or better yet, never.” He mumbled into the table.
Gage emerged from the stairway and had obviously heard the exchange. With a fistful of hair, he jerked the other man’s head up. “What the fuck did you just call her?”
“Leave him, Gage. He’s an idiot.” The phrase pertaining to the obnoxious drummer was becoming one of her more common admonishments. Jamming the top on the canister and holding it for good measure, she hit the blender button.
“I’m sorry, Scarlette… Fuck, fuck. Just stop! Fuck!”
She whirled around in time to see Gage release Landon’s head, and Landon rub his skull as she had hers earlier after bumping it on her bunk. As she drizzled the smoothie into a cup, she glared over the mixer at the two of them, but a smile twitched her lips. Even if Gage had fucked someone else, or two someone elses, or three the night before, it felt good to have him come to her defense like a knight in shining armor—or a brother.
The ‘B’ word deflated her contented satisfaction.
“Any chance I could get one of those?”
Landon had already grimaced and made a run for the bathroom, slamming himself inside. Through the door drifted sounds of his condition—the rummage and then slam of the storage cabinet where the barf bags were kept, and retching.
“Sure?” She arched her brows when the heaves didn’t slow.
“What did you do to it?” With sudden understanding, Gage peered into the mixture.
“Just helping him clean out his system faster.”
“You’re evil, Sis.”
Stop it with the ‘S’ word!
She mixed a fruit smoothie, dumping an electrolyte juice into the concoction. After blending and serving him, she cleaned up the mess and joined him on the couch in front of the television.
The others gradually descended from the top level, blinking the sleep from their eyes. As it turned out, Landon was in the doghouse with even his longtime bandmates because tonight was a non-show night and a much anticipated hotel bed night. Because of Landon’s disappearance with a girl the night before and then his subsequent arrival at the bus in the early morning hours, they were still on the road instead of already checked into the hotel.
When at last they rolled into their town of respite, everyone began to gather their things. Once the bus stopped, no one wanted to be on it a moment longer.
&n
bsp; Scarlette was cleaning out her bunk when she looked across to Gage’s bag yawning open atop his mattress. Practically an invitation to look.
Fighting her pathetic impulse to snoop, she zipped her guitar into its shoulder carrier and listened, attuning her ears to the stairway. Losing the battle with her conscience, she took advantage of this moment alone. She twisted in the narrow aisle, and stealthily bent, reaching inside his bag with both hands. Curving her fingers into crane-like scoops, she burrowed through the disorderly mass of clothing to the bottom of the bag.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Damn it. A couple of the foil packets slipped through her fingers and she lost count. One. Two. Three. This time she collected them into one hand and searched with the other. Four. Five. Six. Okay. There should be two more. She tightly clutched the ones she’d found and frantically scraped around in the bag, praying to find the other two.
“What the hell are you doing?” Gage’s bellow may as well have been an air horn; she lurched so violently some of the condoms fell, each miraculously into the bag.
At the same time, she jerked her other hand clear of his belongings. “I… Um… I thought I might need…” Holy fuck he was looking angrier by the second. He remained frozen, his mouth agape as he eyed her hand full of neat foil squares while she stammered. “I was just going to borrow…” And quicker than she could blink, he’d stalked the distance between the two of them and towered over her.
In one rough swipe, he seized the rest of them from her clutch and lobbed them at the bag so hard a couple of them bounced out. “Like hell!” His dark gaze was a dangerous glitter and his nostrils flared. “You need condoms, Scar? You get ’em from somewhere else. Anywhere else. The fuck!”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.” Her apology was a squeak. What the hell had she been thinking? What a stupid, stupid lie. On the one hand, seeing the pain in his face seemed justified given her agony of watching him with other women last night. On the other hand, she never wanted to hurt him. Ever. “I am. Really.” She reiterated her apology and since he was still a wall between her and her bunk, she took a step to the side. “Can I get by? Please?”
It was several long hard beats of her heart before he stepped aside, grabbed his bag without zipping it, left the fallen condoms on the floor, and departed. The rhythmic stomp of each stair stabbed at her ears. As the bus rolled to a stop, she took her time, checking her bunk for anything she might have overlooked, although she’d already cleaned it thoroughly, and at this point, she didn’t give a shit if she forgot anything.
When enough time ticked by that the bus was surely emptied of the band, she shouldered her bags and bumped down the narrow staircase.
“There you are.” Their tour manager offered to relieve her of her bags when she stepped into the hotel lobby. When she politely shook her head, he passed her a keycard. “Get some rest, sweetheart. You look beat.”
She smiled her thanks and zombie-walked into the elevator. Glancing down at the sleeve the card was in, she punched the correct floor number and sagged against the wall as the car began to move.
Rest. Maybe she would do just that. Mix her own sleeping potion and snooze from now until her phone alarm went off for the next entry on the itinerary. According to today’s schedule, they were in Milan. Italy! However, she’d learned better than to sightsee on her own after becoming lost on foot in Austria. It had been a Google-Maps, Google-Translator, no-taxi-in-sight disaster, and she never wanted to feel that helpless again. Asking Gage to go with her was out of the equation for a while.
He would stew angrily for a few days and then act as if nothing happened. Gage couldn’t stay mad.
“Gage, tell your sister you’re sorry.”
“No. It was her fault.”
His father hadn’t convinced him to apologize for shoving her when unseen by their parents, she’d slapped him first. But despite being grounded for the weekend, by the time Monday rolled around, he’d surprised her with a poster from the newest Marvel movie given to him by a friend who had a producer father. He’d even helped her hang it, grinning and chattering the entire time.
Coming back to the present, she picked up the room service menu. While scanning it for her own rumbling stomach, she habitually created a text of foods advisable to the diet Landon and Gage were trying to maintain on tour. Before hitting ‘send,’ she backed Gage’s name off.
After unsuccessfully trying to play guitar, watch television, choose anything for herself to eat, take a nap, she gave everything up when she couldn’t stop thinking of the condoms. She was in the wrong just as she had been years ago in the slap/shove incident. She was an adult now and should be acting like one instead of waiting for Gage to forgive and forget. Standing before the mirror, she used her fingers to comb her hair into a ponytail and dabbed at the dark circles beneath her eyes with concealer. She sent a text to the tour manager, and the reply to her inquiry came back immediately.
Gage was just a few doors down from her. Staring at the four numbers in the text, she waited for courage to miraculously rain like manna from the heavens, but it didn’t. With the room number etched into her mind, she pocketed the phone. Her legs felt like weighted sandbags as she stepped into the hallway and carried herself past one, two, and then stopped before the third door with the matching four numbers. Lifting a shaky hand, she knocked.
She had rapped three times over a five-minute period when she decided he was either sound asleep or out. Equal parts relief and depression overtook her when she turned away. The elevator pinged open down the hall and Gage stepped out.
His attention was on his phone screen as he walked. She drank him in as he closed the distance between them, unaware of her presence. Putting the device closer to his lips, he spoke, seemingly dictating a text.
“Haven’t decided. But I’m really in no position to say no. Not like anyone else is beating my door dow―” And here, he cut the end of his sentence off when he suddenly locked eyes with her.
His arm fell. The text appeared forgotten as his long legs, encased in the sexy straight jeans that looked so good on him, slowed their stride. He wore a belt today, which was rare for him, and she had a split second fantasy of it looped around her wrists.
What the hell?
She and Gage had never been straight vanilla, but neither had he ever restrained her with more than a grip of his long guitar picking fingers.
“Wassup, Sis?” His casual tone sounded recovered from his fury of a couple of hours ago, but his features were still stony instead of relaxed.
Stop calling me that! “I have a confession.” Across the hall, a door opened, and one of the faces she recognized as a tech on their tour nodded at the two of them before departing toward the elevators. Unnerved at the interruption and their lack of privacy, she lost what focus she had. “Can I come in?” He’d made no move thus far to unlock his door, and she chewed at the inside of her lip while waiting for his ruling.
Without a word, he jabbed the keycard into the slot, flipped the latch, pushed the door open with one arm, and motioned with his chin for her to go ahead. After crossing the threshold, she hovered near the door when it clanged closed behind him. He flicked his phone to one of the tightly made beds and turned to face her, hands resting on his hips.
When she was quiet too long, he repeated, “Wassup, Sis?” And this time she was sure he’d stressed the ‘S’ word.
Shifting her weight, she forced the words out. “I was counting them.” Her throat constricted, refusing to say the word condoms. His brows drew together, clearly not yet understanding what she was blabbing about, and she tried again. “I was going through your bag to count them. Not take them. See, when you left your bag with mine the morning of the festival—was it Budapest?” The towns were a blur. “It was the time you stayed in my room. I looked in your bag to make sure you had everything before our guys took the luggage. Anyway, I started folding the clothes that looked clean, and by the time it was all said and done, I noticed there were eight.” She braved a look a
nd found his intent gaze roving her face. “Condoms. Eight. I don’t know why it stuck with me.” Yeah you do… “But this morning… This morning I just wanted to know if there were still eight.”
“Why?” His look had softened, and the borderline pity lurking in the depths of his dark eyes suggested he knew exactly why she’d felt the need to count condoms the morning after he’d had gorgeous women draped on his lap and rubbing against him on the dance floor.
She felt one of her shoulders lift in the barest shrug, and her reply was mumbled to the carpet fibers. “I don’t know.” There was no way she would say it aloud—would give a voice to the wondering if he’d banged one or more of those women against a bathroom stall. When she thought about it, despite the gentleness of his question, ‘why?’ had been a kind of asshole thing to ask her. Boldly, she lifted her gaze to his and tacked on, “Bubbah.”
She’d put up with ‘Sissy’ for the better part of a week, but ‘Bubbah’ was his undoing. She saw it in the set of his jaw and felt it in his fiery glare.
Pivoting away from her, he bent, jerked his bag from the floor, and slung it onto the bed. The grate of the zipper was loud in the silence that had settled. He upended the bag, letting the clothing free-fall to the bed. A charging pad and an electronic tablet bounced onto the mattress. His shaving kit skittered to the edge of the bed. Grabbing the foil packets as they appeared, he placed them together in a haphazard pile. But they were easy enough to count. Six. He seemed confused and frantically rummaged some more. When one of them fell to the floor, he stilled. Seemingly, they’d both remembered at the same time the two left on the bus floor.
With a quick bend, he picked it up and turned back to her. She shivered at his closeness and the contact with his skin when he pressed it into her hand.
“I told you, I didn’t really want one…”
“You know what we need, Scar?” He cut off her protest and tipped his head down to hers. “We need closure.”
Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance Page 46