by Hazel Jacobs
“Hello, is this the PA for Black Lilith?” It’s a bubbly, cheerful female voice.
Mikayla feels a soft twinge of some unidentifiable, warm emotion as she answers, “Yes, it is.”
The woman on the phone turned out to be a journalist. The band hadn’t planned to do any press until the third day, but when Mikayla took the journalist’s request for an interview back to Slate and Tommy they were on board. When Dash stumbled down to the breakfast room, he was on board as well. Tommy returned to his date upstairs before Logan finally came down to breakfast at 9:30, and by then the decision to meet the journalist for lunch had been made without him. He determinedly avoided Mikayla’s eyes when he sat down and pulled a plate piled with fried eggs toward himself.
“Sounds fine to me,” he said. “We haven’t got anything else to do today.”
He had apparently forgotten his ‘big day tomorrow’ excuse, so Mikayla resolved to do the same.
They adjourned to their rooms, dressed, and met back downstairs before the car was set to pick them up at noon. Mikayla had gone for a simple blouse, leaving her blazer in her room and wearing the comfortable shoes she’d worn on the plane. Tommy flashed her a grin in his signature flannel—purple this time—with leather bands around his wrists that gave him an edgier look. Dash had an Iron Man shirt with long sleeves, while Slate had gone all out in a soft pink button-up shirt with a leather vest and ripped up jeans. He gave her a wink and an appreciative once-over when she joined them in the lobby. There was no heat or desire in his gaze, just an appreciation for a woman who looked nice in a blouse. She returned the look with one of her own. She could appreciate a man in leather. Logan looked as good as he always did in his white T-shirt and bare forearms.
She wonders if he’ll ever wear long sleeves and whether she’ll be heartbroken when he does.
Logan gives her a once-over as well, but quickly averts his gaze when he notices her looking.
“Let’s go,” he says. As though he were the one to set up the meeting and was now concerned that they would be late.
They pile into the car and get to the meeting with plenty of time to spare. The journalist—Kelly Whitehall—had booked a meeting room at her magazine offices. While the boys had been getting ready, Mikayla had done some background research on the magazine. WomanUP was a magazine that mainly wrote articles that interest women in their late teens and early twenties. The magazine sometimes dipped its toes into entertainment interest pieces when it wasn’t publishing articles on Dressing for Success or How to Decorate Your First Apartment. The band looks impressed when she tells them this.
“You researched them?” Dash asks with an eyebrow quirked. He’s got some suspicious bruises on his neck which will need to be covered up if the journalist wants photos. She gives Dash’s neck a critical look and decides that her own concealer might do if the journalist doesn’t have makeup with her.
“Of course,” Mikayla replies. “How else will you know what questions they might ask?”
All four of them shrug in unison.
“We usually wing it,” Slate says.
Mikayla honestly wonders how they’ve managed to survive as long as they have.
They arrive at the WomanUP offices and are whisked upstairs by security and into a medium-sized interview room, complete with comfortable chairs and snacks. The band settles in while she lingers outside, wondering what’s expected of her in all of this. The bright, off-white offices are near-bursting with beautiful women wearing the latest fashions, but with a shade of professionalism to their clothes which tells Mikayla that they’re journalists working at the magazine and not models. Some of them are craning their heads to get a look at the band through the massive windows of the meeting room, while others are too busy focusing on their computer screens to notice that anything is happening around them.
“Mikayla Strong?”
Mikayla turns at the sound of the familiar female voice. Behind her is a petite woman with a blonde pixie cut highlighted with pink and pouty lips.
“You must be Kelly,” Mikayla says.
They shake hands. Kelly has a strong grip. Stronger than Mikayla was expecting for such a small girl, but she can respect a woman who goes in strong.
“Nice to meet you, glad to put a face to the name,” Kelly says.
“You too,” Mikayla replies. She nods toward the band, who are all perched together in a heap on the couch in the meeting room and watching Mikayla and Kelly with interest. “They’re all yours. We don’t have any appointments after this.”
“Great!” Kelly declares. She saunters into the room and closes the door behind her, leaving Mikayla to wait in the hall. Within moments, she can hear the band laughing and she finds herself wondering what they’re laughing at.
“Don’t be needy,” she mutters to herself, pulling out her phone.
For the next hour, she listens to sounds of laughter coming from behind the closed door. A part of her isn’t surprised to realize that she can pick out the different band members’ laughs. She can hear Tommy’s quiet, smooth chuckle, Dash’s giggles, Slate’s barking, belly laugh, and Logan’s more elusive, bone-vibrating laughter. Kelly’s laughter is mingled in there as well, but Mikayla doesn’t care about that.
She decides that she should get used to this standing outside while the band does their thing. Most of them have welcomed her to their world, but she’s just the PA. She’s not really a part of it. It was different the night before when she was experiencing the show along with the crowd, signing along to songs and clapping with the band’s adoring fans. And then on the way home she sat in the back seat with Logan and the others.
But now… now she’s remembering that no matter how much they might seem to like her, no matter how much she likes them, and no matter how infatuated she was slowly becoming with the lead singer, she won’t be with Black Lilith forever. They’ve built a life for themselves which is as easy to fall into as it is to fall away from—traveling, loving and leaving women, and enjoying each other’s company more than anyone else. She had been given a privileged insight into their lives, but she probably won’t even be their PA after this tour. As if to prove that to herself, Mikayla pulls up the job ads on her phone and scrolls through, highlighting a few for future reference.
When the hour is over, the band comes out of the meeting room still smiling.
“That was fun,” Dash says, slinging an arm around Mikayla’s shoulders and grinning down at her. “Thanks for setting it up, Mik.”
“I can’t take the credit,” Mikayla says. “Kelly called me.”
“And you let me borrow them for a little while,” Kelly replies, tossing her head as though she means to flick some hair out of her eyes, but without any hair to flick she looks like a horse shooing a fly.
Mentally, Mikayla reprimands herself for the thought. It’s not Kelly’s fault that Mikayla felt left out just now. She shakes hands with the other woman and accepts the press of cheeks that Kelly goes in for. Apparently, the band has agreed to give a private performance to the whole office after lunch, so Mikayla quickly calls the roadies to get them to bring the instruments over.
It’s an acoustic set, very mellow. Most of the women in the office are only willing to take about fifteen minutes away from the desks, and then security is whisking the band downstairs and back to the car, only to find that a crowd of fans has sprung up out of nowhere and are now swarming around the WomanUp offices.
There are dozens of them—mostly women, mostly younger—some holding signs while others are bouncing up and down with excitement as they stare over each other’s heads, trying to catch a glimpse of Black Lilith.
“Since when are we One Direction?” Tommy asks, frowning at the crowd even as he pulls at his flannel and straightens his hair.
Next to him, Dash and Slate both share a surprised look.
“How did they know that we were here?” asks Logan.
Slate whips out his phone and scrolls down the screen for a moment, before snort
ing and replying, “Looks like one of the girls upstairs tweeted about our impromptu concert.”
Logan swears under his breath. Mikayla glances over at the security men, who are watching the crowd grimly. “I don’t suppose you guys can help us out?” she asks. They look unsure. “There’s a muffin basket in it for you.”
That surprises a laugh out of them both, and then they’re nodding and taking a stand on either side of the band in a moment. Logan flashes Mikayla an impressed look, and she shrugs, but she knows that her expression shows how aware she is of her own brilliance.
“You’d be surprised how many wheels can be greased with muffin baskets.”
Standing with the security guys on either side of them, the band takes on a new posture. Each of the men straighten up, start smiling, and approach the waiting fans with confident strides. They see Black Lilith coming, and Mikayla is hit with a cacophony of sound when they start screaming.
The band takes the noise in their stride. They go up to the fans one by one, signing books and T-shirts, and taking selfies down a line of people which stretches almost around the block. The security guys keep their arms up to make sure that the fans can’t tackle any of the band in their enthusiasm. Mikayla follows behind with her head down, hoping against hope that none of the fans decide that she is someone worth getting excited about as well. But they’re pretty happy to ignore her. They’ve got four beautiful boys to keep them busy.
“Logan! Logan! Over here!”
“Oh my God… Slate. I love you!”
“Will you sign my arm? I want to get it tattooed.”
The women are pushing each other, screaming to catch the band’s attention. Mikayla notices that none of Black Lilith—not even Slate, which surprises her—are obliging the women waving sharpies toward their boobs. Signing skin is apparently the line that none of the men are willing to cross.
Noise is everywhere, like a physical presence. She can feel the tension rising in her chest the longer that she’s there. This is different to a concert. This isn’t a reaction to Logan’s amazing dancing, or the music, or Tommy’s lyrics, this isn’t even a reaction to the men themselves. This is just blind, violent want. Mikayla truly hadn’t thought that Black Lilith would attract this kind of attention.
There is a sudden, deafening shriek, and she feels her body reacting by cringing away.
The band all flinch and the security guards perk up. One of the fans, a strong-looking red head with Dash’s face on her shirt—her large breasts stretching his image grotesquely—is screaming at the top of her lungs, but not in an excited way. It’s almost as if she’s in pain. There are tears running down her eyes and a look of horror as she stares at Dash, who was halfway through signing a girl’s autograph book.
“Who do you think you are?” she shouts, and it’s difficult to tell if she’s talking to Dash or to the woman next to him, but that quickly becomes irrelevant when she pulls a knife out of her purse.
The reaction is instant. Women around her start screaming and running in every direction, the woman Dash was standing with cowers behind him, and Dash’s whole expression goes slack as he stares down the angry-looking steel clutched in the fan’s hand. The rest of the band seem frozen as the women lets out another piercing shriek of “Dash!” and hurls herself at the guitarist.
Mikayla’s own blood is pounding in her ears—she can see Logan’s face drain of color out of the corner of her eye—and then she’s moving before she even realizes it. She’s the closest and the only one who can reach him in time as Dash still isn’t moving. He’s frozen with his eyes wide. And then Mikayla is standing between him and the knife, arms braced, eyes scrunched up and waiting for the blow. But it doesn’t come. Because the security guards are there, tackling the still-wailing woman to the ground.
There are sirens in the distance, but the noise is nothing compared to the sound of Mikayla’s own breathing, which she thinks her mother might be able to hear all the way from Vermont.
Had she really just done that?
Was she dreaming?
She doesn’t think so, because she’s suddenly pulled around and crushed into Tommy’s chest, his arms wrapping around her and holding her close.
“Oh my God… Mik… are you okay? What were you thinking?”
“Jesus, fuck! She came out of nowhere,” says Slate, coming up behind Mikayla and Tommy and wrapping them both in a hug.
Over Slate’s shoulder, Mikayla can see the security guards pulling the screaming fan to her feet and dragging her away. Dash is still standing there with the cowering fan behind him, looking between Mikayla and the abandoned knife on the ground three feet away from him. His expression is torn, as though he isn’t sure what he should be feeling, and then his face is obscured by his brother. Because Logan is there, pulling his younger brother into his chest as though he’s worried that Dash will disappear.
“I’m fine,” Dash says.
“I’m fine,” Mikayla echoes because Slate and Tommy are still asking her. And even though the fan hadn’t even managed to get close before the security guards had intervened, they seem to think that she’s going to fall apart at any moment. “I’m fine guys.”
Her heart is still pounding with the sudden adrenaline rush. She thinks that she might be trembling, but her eyes are blessedly dry. She shouldn’t need to cry, after all. She’d been completely safe and so was Dash. She doesn’t know why she’d felt compelled to throw herself between the blade and a man who’s taller, stronger, and faster than her. The security guards are already taking the woman away. Mikayla truly hadn’t needed to do that, but she’d seen the knife and reacted. She’d seen that Dash wasn’t going to move, so she’d done it for him.
Dash’s arms come up to hug his brother. Logan meets Mikayla’s eyes. There’s gratitude in those soft brown orbs, and she thinks that her actions—however ill-advised or unnecessary—were completely worth it. She feels Slate and Tommy’s arms tighten around her and allows herself to sink further into the safety of them as Logan watches her over his brother’s shoulder.
When they get back to the hotel, Mikayla arranges for a security detail for the band. They hadn’t had one until that point—they hadn’t thought that it had been necessary. They might have been well known in some circles, but none of the band members or the crew had ever felt unsafe at any of their venues or meet-and-greets. Not until that morning.
“But I’m fine!” Dash says as the band piles into Mikayla’s room. “She didn’t get anywhere near me.”
Mikayla’s room is large enough to fit five people but small enough to feel crowded. Slate and Tommy are on the bed leaning against the headboard watching Logan and Dash argue, while she sits at the desk in the corner and types emails on her phone.
“She didn’t get anywhere near you because security got in the way,” Logan replies. He doesn’t look angry, just tired. Mikayla can only imagine what it would be like to see someone attack her family and be too far away to do anything about it. “If they hadn’t stopped her, then Mikayla would have been the one wearing that knife.”
Dash looks guilty at that. Mikayla wants to wrap her arms around him and tell him that there’s no need, but she knows that it would be a futile gesture. Besides, it was her decision to stand between Dash and that knife.
“Did anyone recognize her?” Tommy asks from the bed.
All three of the other band members shrug.
“Honestly, it all happened so fast,” Slate says beside him. “I just froze… I wasn’t thinking…” he trails off then, and all four of them turn their heads to look at Mikayla. She can’t read their expressions.
“They’ve taken her to the police,” she says, holding up her phone and showing them the screen with a list of texts from the security guards who’d detained the fan with the knife. “Maybe they’ll have some answers as to why she attacked Dash.”
“Are you okay?” asks Logan, ignoring her words and running his eyes down her body as if he’s worried he’d missed an injury.
<
br /> “Of course,” Mikayla answers. “She didn’t get anywhere near me.”
Tommy lets out a breath. “You took a big risk, Mik.”
All eyes on her. She ducks her head so that her fringe falls into her eyes, incredibly self-conscious even though she knows, on some deep level, that none of the band members want to make her feel that way.
Dash steps forward then, and Mikayla is struck suddenly by how tall he is. Up until now, the fact that he’s the little brother of the group has made him seem small, somehow. More vulnerable. He pulls her out of her chair and envelopes her in a bear hug. She can smell the sweat on his neck and feel his heart pounding against her chest as she wraps her arms around him and buries her face in his shoulder.
Mikayla can feel the eyes of everyone in the room on her then. She wants to tell them that what she did isn’t a big deal. That it wasn’t even necessary in the end since the security guards had everything under control, and if she’d taken two seconds to actually think about it, she would’ve known that.
Of course, if she’d taken two seconds to think and security hadn’t reacted, then there’s no telling what could have happened.
“Thanks, Mik,” he says gruffly.
She shakes her head. “You don’t have to thank me, Dash.”
They stay like that for a moment longer before her phone buzzes, and she pulls away. Slate and Tommy are watching them from the bed, smiling with relief and fondness. Logan is watching Mikayla with an unreadable expression, but she’s gotten used to that so she ignores him as she scrolls through her phone.
“Bass Note says they’re happy to hire extra security as soon as you sign off on it,” Mikayla says. She gives Logan a stern look. “Apparently, I can’t arrange for bodyguards for you all because I’m not allowed to access your accounts.”
Logan huffs in annoyance as Tommy pipes up from the bed, “What? You’re not allowed?”
“No,” says Mikayla.