All Access (The Fangirl Series Book 1)

by Liberty Kontranowski

From the corner of my eye, I see her fiddle with her bracelet. My brain has no idea what to do with this information. She’s either completely delusional or totally telling the truth. Really, what she’s saying is plausible. Why else would a rock star text me out of nowhere and then proceed to spend so much time with me? I think back on our time together and try to make sense of it all. If he’s “in character,” then he deserves a damn Oscar, to be truthful. I mean, he’s all but told me he loves me, he’s gifted me with diamond earrings, and he spends nearly every available second either with me or talking to me. If he’s just acting, he’s really doing it up.

  But, maybe that’s why we’ve never had sex. Maybe he won’t go there because this is all a fraud. He’ll kiss me and mess around with me and tell me all the stuff I want to hear, but he won’t betray Robbyn or step into full-on bad-guy territory by making love to me.

  Oh my God. Maybe it’s all true.

  “Here he comes,” she says. “Listen, as a fellow sistah, I’m sorry to bust your bubble like that. But you gotta know the boy is mine. Always will be. Don’t forget it.”

  She excuses herself and touches Niles’s shoulder as she walks by him. I drop my eyes and pretend to dig around in my purse again, but really I’m hiding the tears that are threatening their spill.

  “Aw, shit. Again?” He thumps his hand on the table. “I knew I should’ve had you come out there with me. Whatever she said, I apologize in advance. I’m sure it was nothing good.”

  I don’t answer him because I can’t. I’m still digging and the tears are still threatening.

  “Kallie? You okay?” I shake my head, still looking down. “Dammit! What the fuck did she say?” He steps around the table so he’s right in front of me. He lifts my chin, but my eyes stay fixed on his shoulder. I cannot look at his face.

  “Tell me what she said.” He’s calmer now, and he positions his face directly in front of mine so there is no way I can’t look at him.

  I take a deep breath, battling with the corners of my mouth, which insist on turning downward. “Remember when you said that if I was uncomfortable tonight, we could leave?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “You can stay, but I gotta go.”

  “You are not leaving without me. Let’s go.” He takes my hand and leads me toward the door. I allow it, but what I really want to do is run in the opposite direction. What’s going to happen next? Do I tell him what Robbyn just told me? Do I hold out and see if he exposes himself for the fraud Robbyn says he is? Do I pretend none of the last ten minutes ever happened and go on like all is well?

  We crash through the door to the outside and I dash to the side of the building. In an instant, my stomach unleashes all the doubt and jealousy and alcohol it’s held all night. Niles is at my side, holding my hair away from my face, rubbing my back. He tells me it’s okay and that he’s here with me, and that everything will be fine.

  Everything will be fine.

  My head goes fuzzy and my body shakes . . . because as much as I want to believe him—as much as I really, really want to believe him—I seriously doubt that any of this is going to end up being “fine.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

  The city streaks by through the cab window as Niles rubs his thumb across the top of my hand. He hasn’t let go of me since the second we walked out of the club. Even as we slid into the cab seat, he held my hand. Seeing the concern on his face and watching the tender way he’s treating me, my heart refuses to believe that what Robbyn accused him of is true.

  I lift my forehead away from the cold glass of the window for a brief second, then let it crash down all over again. I simply don’t have the energy to keep my neck straight. My skin crawls thinking about how many germs are on this glass (Niles must be completely beside himself), but I don’t care. It feels good and it gives my eyes somewhere to look, other than at him.

  “So, are you ever going to tell me what happened?” he asks. His voice is soft and caring, but also has an edge to it. Not knowing what went on in there is obviously killing him.

  My mind goes wild. How can this sweet, sweet person—the guy who will not peel himself away from me, who told me how hot I make him, who told me how inspiring I am, who told me things he’s allegedly never told another person—how can he really be a fraud? Can all this really be an act? Is he that good of a liar? I simply cannot believe it. But why would Robbyn have lied?

  Get it together, Kallie. She’s jealous of you. A jealous ex-girlfriend who is not particularly stable. She’s heartbroken. She wants him back. She can’t accept that he’s moving on. And she really can’t accept that he’s moving on right under her nose, where she can see him gifting you with diamonds and canoodling every chance he gets.

  It would be torturous to witness someone you still love taking up with another person, I’m sure. I mean, we’ve all been there, right? We’ve seen our ex-high school crush or ex-lover or ex-whatever moving on with someone hotter, uglier, skinnier, fatter. It all hurts, no matter how much time we have invested or whether or not we thought we’d have a future together. In their case, she’d been pregnant with his baby, was with him for a year, thought they’d get married. Of course she’d be teetering on the deep end of desperation. I’m sure I would be, too.

  But then why am I still so haunted by her words?

  “Whatever she said obviously really upset you, and I hate that so much,” Niles says, bringing me back to the here and now. His thumb stops moving before he sucks in a breath. “I also hate that you’re not saying anything. Does that mean you think you can’t talk to me? Because, if so, that’s a huge bummer. I really thought we were . . . I thought we were much bigger than that.”

  I snap my head to look at him. With those few words, my heart just broke. He’s right. He’s absolutely right. We are bigger than that. I have no business letting an insecure, jealous ex-girlfriend put doubts in my head when the person I should be putting all my faith in has never given me any indication he’s not one hundred percent genuine. I turn in my seat until we are knee to knee and throw my inhibitions out the window. Cabbie be damned, I don’t care who sees me right now. This is something that must be done.

  I boost myself up until I am straddling Niles’s lap. At first, he looks shocked, but then he settles right in and clutches my waist. I hold his face and kiss him hard. He kisses me back with such fire, it’s hard to catch my breath. This goes on for ages, until I finally try to speak, in between kisses.

  “She . . . she talked a bunch of shit . . . said some things . . . tried to make me doubt you . . . but I don’t care . . .” I pull away, my heart absolutely racing. I look at him, stare at that beautiful face, and smooth his eyebrow with my thumb. “I don’t care what she says. I know what I know.” I kiss him again. “And what I know is that this is good. This is very, very good.”

  Even though Niles kisses me back, his posture suddenly stiffens. I pull back again and drop my hands to his shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I just . . . what do you mean she said stuff to make you doubt me? What did she say?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Niles. I don’t doubt you. At all.”

  His brows scrunch up and he shakes his head so slightly it’s barely noticeable. “She’s jealous, Kallie.”

  “I know.”

  “She can’t stand to see us together.”

  “I know. I get it.”

  “She calls and texts me all the time. I should have told you, but I didn’t want you to worry. Because it really is over between us. Really.” He looks at me, his eyes speaking volumes. “I didn’t not tell you to be sneaky. I promise.”

  I tip my head, smiling a small smile to let him know it’s all right. “I know, Niles. Really.”

  “Kallie,” he whispers, pulling my head down so my ear is near his mouth. “Let me make love to you tonight. Let me show you that you have nothing to doubt. That I’m, we’re, for real.”

  I am absolutely sure I ju
st lost consciousness. Niles Russell just told me he wants to make love to me. This is what I want most in this world right now and all I have to do is say yes and it will happen. Finally. Just like that. After all the thinking and wishing and dreaming and hoping, it’s here. The time is finally here.

  All I have to do is say yes.

  ***

  Niles stepped out quick (to get condoms? I assume so, but I didn’t ask.) and I am so thankful for this time to freshen up. My hair is disgusting and my eyes are screaming red from puking my fool head off earlier. I need to make myself hot—or at least presentable—before our big moment.

  My stomach is in so many knots I can barely function. I want to be calm and cool, but I can hardly stand up. I can’t remember the last time I was so nervous. I don’t think I ever have been . . . well, except maybe right before the first (and second) time I met him.

  What is this going to be like? It seems weird knowing it’s about to happen. Like, I kind of just thought it would go down naturally, without thought. I expected that we’d be in a “moment” and be so hot for each other that doing anything other than that would be impossible. Lord knows we’ve come close a bunch of times. I just assumed that’s how it would be.

  I fluff my hair, brush my teeth, spray on some dry shampoo, and do a quick shave of my pits. I spruce up “down there” and dust everywhere I can reach with shimmering powder. I’m feeling as good as I can under the circumstances and squee at myself in the mirror.

  This is it, Kal. This is your moment. The guy you’ve dreamed about for years is about to get as close to you as humanly possible. In just a short while, you two will become one. Keep it cool, this is what you want. Don’t freak out. Don’t blow it.

  Despite my best efforts, all the pep talks in the world can’t stop my mind from going batshit crazy. What’s he going to look like naked? What will he think about how I look? Will he be, ahem, big? Small? Average? I don’t have a lot to compare him to, but I don’t think it will matter anyway. Even with my nerves turned up to full blast, I’m already so hot all it will take is for him to put a hand on my boob and I’ll lose my mind, I just know it. This is so bizarre. I kind of wish I didn’t have time to think about it. I’m freaking myself out and nothing has even happened yet.

  I’ve done all I can do, so now I just wait. I put all my toiletries away and take one last look in the mirror. As I fix a clump of wayward hair, my phone bloops and I grab it, expecting it to be a text from Niles. When I see a number I don’t recognize, I almost ignore it, but open the text instead.

  “In case you didn’t believe me,” it says, “I have some proof. Stay tuned. Sending it through.”

  I wait a second, scrolling through all of my recent contacts, looking for a number that matches. It must be Lucy, texting from her personal phone. Maybe she’s about to send me a copy of a movie rights bid or something. Oh man, that is quite possibly the only thing that could make this moment even more amazing.

  “Feast your eyes,” comes the next text.

  Feast is not the word. Because when I open the attached photo, I see a snap of a notebook page, scribbled on with handwritten notes. Notes that say, “Figure out where she was coming from. Where was her head? Why me? Why now? What does she see in me? What is she expecting? What does she want? Why a book? Why a story about someone she doesn’t know? Why take such a risk? Build album around these answers.”

  For at least the tenth time tonight (and for so many reasons) my heart stops. I scrutinize the writing. I’ve only seen Niles’s handwriting on the card he left me in the hotel room back in Philly, but I’ve drooled over that card so many times I can see the writing as though it were right before me. And, as much I can’t stomach admitting it, the writing in this photo matches it precisely. Oh my God.

  I scrunch my eyes shut as I set down my phone. These are the things Niles wanted to learn about me so he could write his next album. These, right here, are the reasons Niles reached out to me. Why he keeps me around, keeps asking questions, keeps winning my trust, keeps convincing me he cares.

  This is picture proof. What Robbyn said was true.

  Niles is fucking using me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Tough Love

  Kallie, get a grip, I tell myself. Think this through. Don’t jump to conclusions. Maybe it’s not what you think.

  But how can it not be?

  It really does make sense. Niles reached out to me because he was creatively dry. That’s why he keeps telling me how impressed he is with my progress on Book Two. He must find that intriguing because he’s coming up so empty. I’m sure I’d feel the same way.

  But if he needed me for inspiration, yet he’s still not making much progress, what does that mean? He’s obviously not getting what he needs from me. Or maybe his feelings for me really are real and I’m distracting him. But even if that’s the case, does that excuse the fact that he used me?

  Ugh, what the hell, what the hell, what the hell?

  “Kallie? Hey, I’m back.”

  Oh my God, he’s here. What am I going to do? I can’t just jump into the sack with him. Not now. Not knowing what I might know. But, I want to jump in the sack with him. Whatever it is that’s going on here, I have genuinely fallen in love with him. Well, the him I thought he was. But even if he’s not that guy, he’s still my rock star crush, and who wouldn’t want to get it on with their rock star crush when the opportunity arises?

  I mean, right?

  “You fall asleep on me?”

  Oh, his voice is so playful. He’s so charming and seemingly genuine, there is no way that what is going on between us is not real. I’ve heard his heart thump, I’ve felt his body react to my touch, I’ve seen him cry as he admitted all his wrongdoings, then plead with his eyes for me not to hate him because of them. His kisses are too deep to be fake, the way he looks at me and touches me and acts so protective of me—those are not the behaviors of a con artist. And now, he’s asked to make love to me to prove he’s for real. He said it himself. This is proof he cares.

  But what about the picture?

  He knocks on the bathroom door. “Are you okay in there? Come on out. I miss you.”

  Oh, I miss you, too.

  I open the door slowly and see that quirky face I just can’t get enough of. I could stare at him forever.

  “You are so beautiful,” he says, stepping toward me. Even though part of me wants to punch him, I remind myself that I don’t know the whole story yet. I let myself fall into his arms and bury my face in his chest. I love how he feels against me. I can’t help it. We fit.

  Man, I just want this night to go as perfectly as it was supposed to. I want to take him by the hand and lead him to his bedroom. I want to strip us both naked, where we’ll kiss every square inch of each other and finally maneuver ourselves so that instead of two people, we are one.

  I want to take it slow and easy, feeling every feeling that needs to be felt and going to every place we’re ready to go. When it’s over, I want to look him in the eye and tell him straight up, without reservations, that I love him. That there is almost nothing he could do wrong and no reason I could ever stop loving him. That whatever brought us together doesn’t matter, and that the only thing that does matter is where we are now.

  But I don’t know how true that is. Call it cynicism or the skittishness of enduring another failed relationship, but I’m not sure if I can move forward with something that’s already laced with doubts and hidden agendas. If the reason I am melting into his chest right now is because he needed my pathetic fangirl story to inspire his new album, maybe I shouldn’t go any further at all.

  I seriously have to find out what he was thinking. Right now.

  “Niles? Do you really, like really, care about me?”

  “More than I want to admit.”

  There was no hesitation. No pause, no nothing. He didn’t miss a beat. His arms tighten around me, bringing us even closer together.

  “But I’m a head case, right?” I
lift my head just a touch, then plop it right back down again. I can’t look at him. It’ll be much easier speaking to his shirt than into those beautiful eyes.

  “I mean, I wrote a book about some guy I didn’t even know. Celeb-stalker. Who does that? Who risks the judgment of pretty much everyone just to tell a fangirl story like mine? There must be a reason behind that madness, right?”

  I pause, then with my heart up in my throat, I just plain old put it out there. “Shit, I bet you could write a whole album about that.”

  And with that, he stiffens. Like really, really stiffens.

  Bingo, I got him.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it, I got him.

  “I can’t get in bed with you tonight,” I say, stepping back as my chest tightens. I glance at him just long enough to see the pained look on his face.

  “Why not?” he whispers.

  “Maybe this is all too fast after all.”

  “It’s not, Kallie. Come on. We’re there now. We have been. I was just too scared to let it happen.”

  “Why? Afraid of hurting someone?” My cheeks flush and I clench my hands together, mostly because I don’t know what else to do.

  “Yeah,” he says, his voice rising to match mine. “You!”

  “Me? Really? Are you sure you don’t mean Robbyn?”

  He throws his hands up and looks back at me with flashing eyes. “Kallie, what the hell? I thought I’ve been perfectly clear about all that!”

  “I can’t have sex with you tonight, Niles,” I say again, turning my gaze to the floor.

  “Yeah, okay, I get it. But will you please be straight with me about why? This is not about Robbyn. It better not be. We’re done. I’ve told you that. A million fucking times.”

  “Well, that’s not what she says,” I spit. “But that’s also not the real issue here.”

  “Then what is the real issue?”

  I think fast, because I’m really not sure where I’m going with this next. I suddenly feel panicky about tackling this head on. I’ve forgotten how hard new relationships are, and I certainly couldn’t have predicted the effort it takes to be in love with someone you idolize, but obviously barely know. I’m not ready to completely walk away from us, but I know that I can’t go even the tiniest bit further without thinking this through.