Javier called again and wanted to know what to tell the press. I had nothing to offer. We decided the press could go on a little while longer thinking neither of us knew about the content, and that Flynn was on his way home so he wasn’t available for comment. The press would call bullshit on that because he had a radio interview, but that could have been taped. I had to buy us some time.
I called the charter company and had Flynn’s flight time moved up an hour. Javier spoke with Lee about the new arrangements warning him not to let Flynn speak to the press, and I’d warned Javier not to discuss it with Lee either.
Placing my cell on the table, I went back to look at the pictures again. My cell rang which made me jump because I was pretty strung out from everything I’d learned that morning. Flynn’s ID and image lit up my screen, and my heart jumped to my throat. I felt sick seeing his smiling face on my phone and knew instantly that if he was calling that early, then he already knew the story had broken. Every buzz of my phone cut deeper than the last as I ignored his call, until eventually it stopped, and the voicemail spool on the screen alerted me he’d left me a message.
My hands shook as I picked up the phone while another burst of adrenaline coursed through my veins when I stared at my cell. I briefly wondered if the message contained an apology or a denial on his part. This may be the call that ends my future happiness, I thought as I hit the voicemail to retrieve his initial explanation.
“Babe, pick up the fucking phone. This is bullshit. I have no explanation for this, but it’s all lies.” Denial. His voice sounded urgent, angry, or was that desperation? “Please talk to me. Call me back. I love you, Valerie.”
“Fuck!” I screamed and held the back of my hand to my forehead, the phone still in it. It rang again. I glanced and saw it was another call from him and placed it on the table, covered my ears and walked into the other room ignoring it. I’d already decided I wasn’t speaking to Flynn until we were face to face.
Left to ponder my thoughts and stare at the pictures while he flew home, even after a few hours I still had no idea what I’d say to him when he walked through the door. I half expected Lee, Craig or even Simone to call, to try to convince me it wasn’t true, but they hadn’t. What did they know? Each hour of silence that passed from that first call filled my heart with dread until I could hardly breathe.
By the time he was supposed to be home, I was struggling to restrain my worst fears. This is it. The moment I’ve fought to ignore since the beginning. We had been together for over three years and to my mind, I had always thought there would come a point when he’d tire of me and domesticity, and finally unleash the bad boy side I thought he’d been suppressing since we’d gotten together.
At twenty-seven years old, Flynn was still a young man, and he had the world at his feet. Panic got the better of me, after hours of deliberating those pictures my strength had slowly seeped out like a small hole in a dam, and I cried. I had built a shell of strength despite what I’d been through with my brothers’ deaths, but I’d felt my world implode and my shell crack with Javier’s call. The helplessness I felt was incredibly hard to bear. I couldn’t do anything until he came home but I thought when I saw his face it would either confirm my worst fears or worse, I’d read lies when he’d promise to tell me the truth.
“Where are you, babe?” Flynn’s urgent voice and heavy footfall carried up the stairs, and my body reacted with fear and anticipation. Blood pumped fast around my body. It swished in my ears again; it was the sound of anxiety, and it made me conscious of just how quickly my heart was beating. That fear also crept out of every nerve cell and rose inside. It rendered me temporarily paralyzed by the bedroom door.
“Look at you,” he said, throwing his hand out in my direction. I guessed I looked like I felt. Destroyed.
“It’s all bullshit, Valerie. You have to believe me,” he said, sounding even more desperate than he had in his voicemails as he reached out to comfort me.
I shrugged him off and stood hugging myself. “So?”
“So I’m here, aren’t I? You think if I’d done that I could stand here and face you like this? Plead for my place with you right here where I know I belong? I could never do that to you, to our son. Why would I use a groupie for a night when I have a lifetime of love with you, right here?”
“I don’t know, Flynn. Did she do everything you wanted?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I went to the TV station then for drinks with the producers, director, the host, and a few others. Then I went back to my hotel. Alone. To bed.”
“You’re seriously telling me that you have no recollection of the girl in the pictures or was that your clone smiling for the camera backstage and lying in that bed?”
Flynn looked at the ground and shook his head, “There was a girl who took my picture. I didn’t get a look at her face. She had her phone already up in front of it. She was wearing a backstage pass, so I smiled, and she took my picture. I turned away and went into the green room.”
“Where she took a picture of you relaxing on the sofa.”
He strode over to my laptop and tapped it so hard with his index finger the blood drained, and it went pale with the force, “Get the fucking pictures up,” he demanded, angrily.
Slowly, I went to where he was standing, opened the laptop, fired it up, and entered my password. The bedroom image was the last screen saved. He glanced over it and winced when he laid eyes on it again. Standing slowly he stood silently staring at it and shook his head, but clicked past it to the one he was after. I wondered what he’d been thinking in that moment.
“See this? I had my eyes closed, and the t-shirt? That was before the concert, Valerie, not after. I’d crashed on the sofa for a power nap after the sound check,” he stated, pointing at the t-shirt and glancing back at me. He was frustrated, his jaw flexing as he clenched his teeth.
Turning toward me, he took my hands and sat me down on the bed beside him, “I told you shit would get in the way of us. Now your trust is being tested. I’m being honest with you. I have nothing to offer for these photographs.” He said as his eyes continued to search my face. I couldn’t speak and after a moment he sighed and shook his head again, “I can’t deny they are me. They are. But I have no answers as to how someone got one in the bedroom. I saw nothing, and I heard nothing. Lee checked the room before I went there and we know no one was hiding anywhere. You know how he works. He cleared it. Ask him.”
“She’s wearing your shirt, Flynn,” I stated, loudly.
“I fucking know she is, but without my knowledge. I never fucking slept with her…with anyone, Valerie. You’ve got to believe me,” he pleaded, desperately as he tried to defuse the situation.
“I don’t ‘got’ to do anything, Flynn,” I answered back in a voice laced with hurt.
“Come here,” he ordered and tried again to put his arms around me. I felt he had no right demanding anything of me.
“No. Don’t touch me until I want you to do that. I don’t right now.”
“Then you don’t trust me, and you don’t believe me,” he stated, firmly.
“I want to—”
“But I’m going to have to justify myself when you should be on my fucking side. I told you I’d be honest with you, and I am. What the fuck you choose to do with that is up to you,” he said, in a complete change of tact.
“Fine,” he said. A flash of disappointment clouded his eyes as he rose to his feet and strode over to the dresser. He pulled out a few clean t-shirts, jeans and underwear and piled them on the bed.
“What are you doing?” I asked, suddenly alarmed at him stacking his clothes neatly.
“Going before I’m shoved. I don’t want to stay here with you while you figure it out. I love you, Valerie. You and Liam are my whole fucking world, but I am not living like this. I told you that before. You were new to me then, and I thought once we’d dealt with your insecurities you understood how I felt, but
obviously not. I’ll be in Chicago, and if you don’t mind, I’m taking Liam for a few days. I promised Teague we’d bring him next time I was there. This life brings many privileges, but at times like these I just want to disappear and leave the shit behind.”
Once again I felt paralyzed I couldn’t believe the attitude he’d adopted and I had never expected him to turn it around and come back at me. He behaved like he was the injured party in this. He did himself no favors in reassuring me of his innocence by walking away. If he’d given me time to digest the situation I thought something might have come to light that would explain the picture.
Before he came home I had wanted to believe him, but my disbelief at the beginning when I had first seen it began to wane after the way he reacted when I couldn’t just accept his word. My fragile trust due to my previous experiences with boys began to make me wonder if there was something to it after all.
Chapter 11
Making a stand
Flynn
How could she believe I cheated on her?
“How the fuck?” I asked myself out loud, as I shook my head in disbelief. I stared at the damning images in the online magazine that ran with the story. The chick looked hot, but nothing like my type. Valerie was my type. The girl was standing right in front of me at the end of my bed with her back to me, taking a picture of herself. She was wearing my shirt from the night before, and little else. I was lying in bed in the background. There was no denying it was me, but I had no idea how she’d been able to get those pictures.
As Liam climbed on board the airplane he could hardly contain his excitement for his trip to see Teague. I always talked about Teague to Liam when we were in Iowa and he looked up to him. The few times they’d been together it had been cute watching them bond. I strapped him into his seat and put on his noise-reducing earphones, before I turned my tablet on, set it to his favorite kid movie and hung it from the seat in front of him. Lee and I sat staring at my other tablet on the charter jet back to Chicago, still trying to figure out what the fuck had happened.
“So, you didn’t invite her?” Lee finally offered when he’d exhausted all possibilities in his thoughts.
“How the fuck can you even ask that? You tucked me the fuck into bed. What the fuck do you think? If I’d wanted to get my rocks off with some random chick, don’t you think I’d have asked you to cover me? You’re my fucking bodyguard or have you forgotten? It’s not my style Lee. You see how it is between Valerie and me. You think I’d blow what I have with the love of my life for a one-off poke and end up in the papers? Give me some fucking credit will you?”
“If you didn’t invite her how the hell did she wind up being up there? The only keys were yours and mine, boss, and from those pictures, it tells me she was around on both days we were there. I remember a chick hanging around the stage wearing a backstage pass lanyard talking to one of the crew. We had no meet and greet, so she was there at the invitation of one of them. Short—dark haired—smoking hot body, but in this picture? I can’t say for sure that’s the same person. The one back stage was wearing denim shorts and a fitted black t-shirt,” Lee thought out loud.
“Yeah, that was the same girl that took my picture as I was coming off stage. She was hanging with Jeff for part of the set, but she had her back to me. Only time I saw the front was when she took my picture, but her face was obscured by her phone. Call Jeff, I wanna know who she is.”
Just as I asked him to follow up on that, the captain asked us to get ready for landing, and I knew we’d have to wait for Lee to make that call once we were on the ground. I sighed heavily, turned the tablet off, and stowed it for landing, before packing Liam’s things away.
*****
Chicago weather was cold and rainy—perfect for my dark mood. Once we were in the car Lee called Jeff, set his cell on the hands-free, and pulled out of the airport as the call connected.
“Hello there, buddy. Whazzup, Lee?” Jeff said, in a sing-song voice.
“You know that chick you brought to the gig the other night in New York?”
“I didn’t bring anyone. You got the wrong guy, Lee. I’m a happily married man.”
“Are you fucking with us, Jeff? This is Flynn—who the fuck did you bring to the gig? I need her name,” I said, as I butted into the conversation, impatiently.
“And I’m telling you, Flynn, I never brought anyone to your gig,” he snapped back.
“You were talking to a girl as I came off stage. She wasn’t with you?”
“She said she was there with you,” he replied, sounding surprised.
“With me?” I asked in an incredulous tone.
“Yeah, and she had one of your backstage passes, boss. I checked out the serial number with Alison to make sure it wasn’t a fake,” he admitted.
“When have you ever known me to invite any woman backstage, apart from Valerie or one of her family?” I asked angrily.
“Hey, in this game there’s always a first time. Had my balls almost chewed off in the past when I’ve questioned the musician’s flavor of the week.”
What happened wasn’t his fault, but I couldn’t explain how she got a pass or how she entered my room. My passes were always in my luggage, and that hadn’t been out of our sight between the plane and the hotel room. Lee always insisted it travel up to the rooms with us. I wondered who the hell she was and why she was doing this to me? None of it made sense. I knew I had a few enemies in Iria, Bernie and the guys from Major ScAlz, but all that shit had been dealt with a couple of years previously. I made a note in my head to hire the private eye Javier used to get to the bottom of it.
Reaching home, Niamh frowned when she saw me climb out of the SUV carrying a very sleepy Liam. Kissing his forehead, I passed him to Niamh, and she put him to bed. I’d changed him into pajamas before we’d boarded the plane in case he fell asleep before we got to the house. It was clear as soon as I saw her face that she’d either been informed of what happened by Lee or by Valerie.
After settling my son in bed, she came back into the kitchen and wandered up to where I was standing. I was staring out at the garden thinking about how quickly life can change, and we have no control over it. She rubbed my back to comfort me.
“I’m sorry, Flynn. Shouldn’t you have stayed and sorted things out with Valerie instead of running away? This isn’t like you. You’ve always been passionate about fighting for what is right.”
Glancing up, I scowled because her comment annoyed me. I was pissed off that everyone seemed quick to believe I was capable of doing that to Valerie. To my family.
“You know what, Niamh, I am who I am. I’m just a guy who thought his life would go one way until fate stepped in and spun it out of control in so many ways. I’m honest and hardworking, but all people want is a piece of me. If it isn’t the fans wanting more than my music, it’s the industry, or the press trying to catch me doing something underhanded. Then there’s the crazy fuckers who are willing to ruin my life for who knows what fucking reason they have? I don’t need people around me that don’t believe in me. I need people that will have my back at times like these.”
“I never said I didn’t believe in you. I said this wasn’t like you. You’re a fighter, Flynn. You aren’t the type that runs when the going gets tough.”
I stared pointedly at Niamh and immediately saw the good in her. She’d been one of those people that had always been in my corner. She’d been a great sounding board when I’d been pissed off in the past and one of my strongest supporters.
Walking around the kitchen counter, I threw my hands up and sat heavily on the stool at the breakfast bar, slapping my hands hard on the granite.
“Val and I had this long drawn out conversation about insecurities the night before I went to New York. I thought we’d figured it out and she finally got how I felt about her. All it took was some fucking pictures I couldn’t explain for her to switch sides.”
Niamh sat across from me and took my hand i
n hers. “Do you trust me?”
I stared for a second and nodded, “Yeah, Niamh, I do,” I admitted.
“Okay, then you’ll trust what I’m saying and know this is coming from the best place, Flynn. Be honest with yourself at least. You have to admit it doesn’t look good. How does it look to you? You went home to face her, but instead of staying there and working this out together, you jumped ship and even worse, took her child with you like some kind of punishment. You seem to forget, Flynn, Valerie is a ball breaker in business, but she’s not much more than a girl where love is concerned. That’s all too easy to forget when she’s as capable as she is. Valerie’s been through tons of shit, and yeah, you have too, but you’re the one that’s in those pictures. What would you think if you were the one on the receiving end of those instead?”
Niamh had a point. I had to admit I would have been suspicious if I had been faced with those pictures and Valerie would probably have come off a lot worse than she’d given me. Deep down I knew she wasn’t wrong. If I’d been on the receiving end of those pictures, I’d have found myself in the nearest gun store buying a Glock and hunting the fucker down…but it wasn’t her it was me. And I was innocent.
When Val said she wanted to believe me and then hesitated, I saw red. In front of me was the girl I’d give my life for. I loved her with every fucking thing in me. But…and it was a huge but, could I live a life where I was constantly in the position where I had to prove my innocence? I’d never given her cause to doubt me and that one negative had cancelled out everything positive we’d accomplished concerning trust and commitment.
Whatever the fuck her hang-ups were, I wasn’t to blame for those. I had never cheated on her, nor would I. In my fury, I’d reasoned if she couldn’t accept that then there was only poison for the relationship we had, going forward.
Ready For Flynn,Part 3: A Rockstar Romance: Ready For Flynn Series Page 11