One More Night (Backstage Pass Book 1)

by Ali Parker

  “And what about Jared’s feelings?”

  Jared’s feelings toward knowing the way I felt about him would be absolutely, undoubtedly, entirely negative. Which was why he could never find out what the depth of my feelings for him were. “They’re not in play. He’s always been very clear about what he wanted. This is fun for him. He doesn’t feel a thing for me.”

  “Let’s imagine for a second that that isn’t true. Let’s say that he feels as deeply about you as you do about him. What then? Have you considered the realities of a relationship with this guy? He has women throwing their selves at him left, right, and center. Part of his job is to flirt with them and to charm them. You’re not typically a jealous person, but how would you handle that?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I haven’t thought about the realities of a relationship with him, if you must know. I’ve been fine so far, though.”

  Thinking back to the benefit yesterday, I realized that I hadn’t been as “fine so far” as I would have liked to believe. The band was in the studio most days now, and at night, when Jared wasn’t with me, he’d mostly been working on new songs or out with the guys. The truth was that I hadn’t had to really deal with seeing him with other women, and I had no idea how I would.

  I couldn’t imagine that it would be easy or that I would like it very much.

  Kelly knew me better than I knew the palm of my own hand, and she could see the conclusion that I’d come to. “Exactly. You guys might be having fun now, but I doubt that you would be having fun then.”

  Truer words…

  “No, I don’t think I would. We’re not even in a relationship though, not really. So, this isn’t something that I have to worry about yet.”

  “Yet?” she asked, raising her brows slowly as she assessed the words I wasn’t saying. “Do you mean you’re not breaking it off with him?”

  “I’m not, no. I just can’t. Not now. He only agreed to be exclusive with me yesterday.”

  “Jared Larsen agreed to bang you, and only you, to the exclusion of all other women?”

  “He did.”

  “You think he’ll stick to it?”

  Nodding, I took another sip of my water, enjoying the fizz of the bubbles popping and burning down my throat as a reprieve to the seriousness of the conversation that we were having. Then I sucked down some of my milkshake for good measure. Only chocolate could fortify me for this.

  “I do. He’s many things, but he’s not dishonest. He’s too authentically himself for that. When he’s over this, I’ll know about it.”

  “What about you? You’re not going to get over him while you’re still under him on such a regular basis, which means you’ll fall harder while he slowly gets you out of his system. Where does that leave you when he does get over it?” Kelly meant well, but she was holding up a mirror that I wasn’t ready to look into yet.

  “I’m going to go with the classic, ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it’ approach,” I said, turning my attention to the menu that I knew by heart to keep from looking straight into that mirror.

  I should have known that she wasn’t going to let me off that easily. “I know that I encouraged you to give him a chance, and I was all for it when you told me about the arrangement that you’d made with him to have fun. I only say this because as much as I love Destitute, I love you so much more, and I think this is becoming too risky for you.”

  She wasn’t wrong, but she also didn’t know Jared the way that I did, and a dangerous, tiny part of me that was buried so deep that even I didn’t know it was there most days was still hoping that, just maybe, Jared would come around.

  “There’s just something about him. I can’t let him go.” I didn’t fully understand it, either, especially not since I knew very well where he stood on the whole dating and relationships thing, but he was like a magnet drawing me in, keeping me in.

  “I don’t mean this to be as callous as it sounds, but that’s just it. There’s something about him, something that has built him a global reputation for being a bad boy. Not even just a bad boy, a playboy, too. Jared being Jared, eventually, he will go back to that.”

  “I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but there’s so much more to him than just being a bad boy. He doesn’t let many people see it, but he has a heart of gold. He pushed really hard to make that veterans’ benefit happen, and he left around the same time that I did. After the final numbers were in.”

  I hadn’t mentioned it to Jared, but it hadn’t escaped my notice that he and Matt were there until after the announcement was made. They didn’t have to be, but they had been.

  Kelly picked up her glass, but didn’t take a sip of water. She just swished the liquid around, thinking over what I’d told her, evidently. “I’ve seen enough of their shows and interviews to know the man has natural charisma by the truckload. Are you sure that’s not all it is?”

  I nodded. “I know he does, too, but it’s not just that. I’m telling you. I can’t let this thing with him go. Not yet.”

  Resignation pinched her features as she raised her milkshake to her lips, taking a long sip before her concerned green eyes met mine. “Fine, you keep having your fun then, but you need to prepare yourself for the eventual letdown.”

  She squeezed the bridge of her nose, and her eyes shut for a moment as she continued.

  “You can’t love him. Loving him is like loving waking up to a thunderstorm on a Saturday when you don’t have anything you have to do. Or seeing a brightly shooting star when you really need to make a wish, surfing the crest of a perfect wave—”

  “You don’t surf.”

  She rolled her eyes and then fixed me with them. “Whatever. My point is that loving him is like loving a force of nature. It’s brilliant, unstoppable, and for that one moment, everything seems right in the world. But that’s all it is. It’s one fleeting moment.”

  “Like a moonbeam you can’t hold onto.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Elegant analogy,” I said flatly, wishing with all my heart that it wasn’t also a correct one. But it was, and I knew it.

  Despite the fact that her eyes were darkened by worry and her mouth was set in a grim line, my darling little sister was never one to dwell on drama for very long, and although it was forced, she grinned.

  “Thank you,” she said. “If you could hook me up with one of the members of Destitute for some short-term fun, I would be perfectly happy with that. Now come on. Let’s decide what we’re going to eat. I’m starving.”

  CHAPTER 23

  JARED

  “Dude, you do know that there are hundreds of furniture stores in this city, right?” Every time I was over at Caleb’s house, I gave him shit for how sparsely decorated his place was.

  The guy had two couches that should have been donated to the Salvation Army at least a decade ago. He’d picked them up at a yard sale long before we took off and refused to replace them. There was a small, distressed looking coffee table between them that we’d grown up with, and he had a mattress with only a base and no frame in his bedroom.

  Other than that, he had a few odds and ends scattered around. Souvenirs that he’d collected from the places we visited and some art on the walls that he considered an investment.

  The only concessions he’d made that hinted at the fact that he had two pennies to rub together was the eighty-five-inch, 4K Ultra HD TV that was mounted on his wall, the impressive equipment in his music room, and the location of his house. The location thing didn’t really count to my mind, though, because again, he’d only bought it because he considered it an investment.

  “You’re a millionaire, but you’re living like you could still be booted out any second,” I said, walking into the mostly empty space of his living area. Raising my beer, I pointed at him. “In case you missed it, no one’s chucking you out of here.”

  “I know,” he grumbled. “It’s my signature on the paperwork.”

  I held my arms out wide and turned slowly.
The living area we were standing in had high ceilings with views of the yards of his famous neighbors and across the city below. “If that’s true, then why are you still living like a squatter?”

  “I’m not, Jared,” he snapped and grasped at the back of his neck. Turning, he led the way through the wide double doors that led outside to his deck and across it to his shimmering blue pool.

  No bar. No patio set. No loungers by the pool. Nothing but a foldable camping chair that sat facing the view of the city in the corner of the large wooden surface that formed the entirety of Caleb’s yard. That was all that was out here.

  The city’s lights blinked up at us as we kicked off our sneakers, sat down by the edge of the pool, and lowered our legs into the cool water. It was something of a ritual for us and the reason I knew to wear shorts when I came over.

  Caleb made a sweeping gesture with his hand across the panoramic view he had of the city. “You think squatters have views like this?”

  “No, probably not. I wasn’t talking about the house. I was talking about what was in it. Or rather, what isn’t in it.”

  He scowled and raked a hand through his hair. “What more do I need? I can lie on the couch and watch TV, play Xbox, eat, sleep, and make music.”

  “I don’t know, maybe a couch that doesn’t look like it went through the first world war. Or how about a dining room table?”

  Caleb scoffed at me, kicking his feet around in the water. “What? Like that monstrosity you bought? Have you ever even eaten at that thing?”

  “Of course, I have. You were there. Christmas last year.”

  His eyes met mine, the ends of his hair moving from shaking his head. “We didn’t eat at that table, we drank at it. Just like we’re drinking right here. And nothing out here set me back a cool thirty grand just to look pretty.”

  “That’s because there’s nothing pretty out here.”

  Caleb snorted and sipped his beer. “Maybe, but have you even thought about all the useless shit you spend your money on?”

  “What useless shit?” I shrugged innocently, and Caleb full on laughed, but not in a way that any humor reached his eyes.

  “Let’s see. How about the inflatable, motorized bumper boats for your pool, the full-sized air hockey table in your game room that you hardly ever use, or the bubble tent that we put up in your garden until you realized how hot and humid it was in those things?”

  “Oh yeah.” I grinned. “Those things. They’re not useless. They’re awesome.”

  “You might think so, but they’re a waste of money. You have to start thinking about our future, your future. We might be hot right now, but that’s not going to last, and you know it. You need to start planning for when this chapter ends and put some money away so that you don’t end up with nothing and crashing on that couch of mine that you hate so much.”

  I waved him off, wishing he would loosen up for once. “That’s what our financial planner’s for. He’s making sure that we’re set up for the future. I mean come on, what do you and I know about money and investment? Nothing. Zip. Nada. Let the suits deal with that stuff and have a little fun with the spare cash that you have lying around. There’s enough of it to go around.”

  “That’s your fucking problem, man. It’s all about fun, the here and now.”

  “I don’t see how having fun is a fucking problem.”

  “You wouldn’t. That’s part of the problem. Take Alicia for example. We need that chick. She’s blown this album into something that legends are made of, and it hasn’t even been released yet. Of course, you didn’t take that into consideration before you whipped your dick out and started ramming it into her on a daily basis.”

  “What does that have to do with anything? We have an understanding, her and I. She’s not going to leave us when that comes to an end. “

  “Jesus,” Caleb muttered and chugged down half of his beer. “You’re in the first long-term relationship you’ve had in years, and you don’t even fucking know it. You might have an understanding now, but what happens when you start parading groupies around in front of her when we’re on tour in a couple of months? What happens a year from now, if and when we’re recording another album, and she’s not there to ramp up the hype to higher levels than this one? You ever think about that?”

  “We’re not in a relationship, firstly,” I started, stressing the one point that had jumped out at me immediately. He didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to what Alicia and I had agreed to, and he had to back the fuck out of it.

  Caleb laughed incredulously at my objection to our relationship status and didn’t let me say anything more before he interrupted. “You’re not in a relationship? Tell me something then, Jared. How many other women have you fucked since you started fucking her?”

  I swallowed and followed his example in draining half my beer because I knew what his assumption was going to be when I answered. “None, but that doesn’t mean that I’m dating her.”

  “You’re not dating her, but you dragged the woman off for a quickie while we were doing those ‘making of’ interviews at your house the other day.”

  “Oh yeah. That was fun. I should convince her to organize more things at my place.”

  Caleb rolled his eyes and continued. “Holy shit. You’re so oblivious. If we didn’t look so much alike, I would be sure that you were adopted. You know what regular sex, on demand, with the same woman, and only that woman, is called, Jared? A relationship.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t thought about it that way. But no. Alicia knew the score between us. “Nah, you’re wrong. Not for us.”

  Caleb’s jaw twitched, and he now had a white-knuckled grip on his beer. Damn, now he was getting angry. “Let me spell this out for you in a way that you might understand. Where in your house are you fucking her?”

  “Everywhere,” I answered without hesitation.

  “Everywhere but in your guest bedroom, right? You’ve fucked in your bed, am I right? No way a girl like that hangs around if you do nothing but fuck everywhere but in your own bed and never let her sleep over.”

  “So? Yeah, I’ve fucked her in my bed, and she sleeps there. That doesn’t make it more than what it is.”

  “You’re a fool if you believe that.” He jumped to his feet and didn’t look at me as he marched into his house, biting out an irritated, “I’m going to need something much harder than beer for this conversation.”

  “Dude seriously needs to get laid more,” I mumbled into the darkness and the warm night air.

  Talking about Alicia with him made me really think for the first time about the fact that this thing with her—not being a relationship and all—was going to end sooner or later. I honestly didn’t know how I would feel when it did.

  CHAPTER 24

  ALICIA

  I was going to kill whoever it was on the other end of that line. My phone was ringing incessantly, and I tried to ignore it, but this was the third time without any break in between that it was ringing, and ignoring it was becoming impossible.

  Groaning, I rolled over, and without opening my eyes, reached for the phone. After fumbling around for a second, my fingers closed around the offending object, and I blindly slid my thumb across the screen and held it to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Alicia,” Gerry’s harsh voice barked, and I flinched at the loud noise. “Thank God. I’ve been trying to reach you for ten minutes now. Where are you?”

  My eyes burned as I cracked them open. “Where do you think I am? It’s four-thirty in the morning. I’m in bed.”

  Even though he wouldn’t have been able to tell whose bed, I was thankful that for once, I was in my own bed. I hadn’t been five hours ago. Then, I’d been in Jared’s bed. I’d come home because I needed a decent, uninterrupted night of sleep, and that wasn’t going to happen while there.

  The man was insatiable. In the week since we’d agreed to exclusivity, we’d been together most nights, and concealer was no longer living up to its name when it c
ame to the bags I had under my eyes.

  Apparently though, a decent night’s sleep was still not in the cards for me. Gerry’s impatient voice came barking through the speaker again. “When was the last time you checked Insider Scoop?”

  His reference to the popular celebrity gossip site confused me. Then I was scrambling out of bed, wide awake as I realized the implications of why he would be calling to ask me that at this hour. Someone in the band must have gotten up to something last night.

  “What is it? I checked it before I fell asleep, and Destitute was clean.” It was the truth to some extent. I had checked my notifications from the site before I’d fallen asleep the first time while still at Jared’s, but I hadn’t checked it since.

  “Well, they’re not clean anymore. Just check the site, and get to my office in an hour. Don’t say I never warned you about them, so let the games begin. This is a nightmare. I hope you’re as good at cleaning up as you are at hyping up.”

  With that ominous line, the call dropped, and I flicked on lights as I hurried to my living room where my laptop was charging. I hit the button to fire it up, and while I waited, I made a very quick cup of coffee, then carried it with me to my couch.

  As I might have expected from something big enough for Gerry to pull me out of bed at this time of the morning, the dull, electronic beeps of incoming notifications and emails rang out as soon as I logged on.

  Hastily opening a few tabs on my browser, I thought at first that I was still dreaming, but as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I knew that I wasn’t. My initial thought that one of the band members had gotten up to something last night was dead wrong.

  It wasn’t one of the others, it was my very own—for the moment—Jared Larsen who was blowing up the Internet this morning. A quick scan of the headline and article that had been posted on the most widely-read gossip blog in town gave me the basic details.