“Fuck.” I drop the damn microphone and stalk from the stage, snatching up a bottle of room temperature water and dousing my raspy throat.
Deb stands up in her seat and shouts at all of us, “Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you idiots?”
I have the strongest urge to tell my sister to shut the fuck up, but in a way I’m glad to have someone call us all on our shit. “You two are too fucking distracted by this sweet little piece of pussy here”—she points to Ali—“to see how badly you’re fucking everything up. Zed, I know you’re trying to cut back on the drugs, honey, but maybe for now we should try getting through the rest of this tour without all losing our shit, and Ash, I don’t know what the hell is going on with you, but this half-arsed band member shit has got to go. Either you’re in or you’re out, sweet cheeks. You can’t play like fucking Jesus and then take away all the fishes when the crowd is gone.”
“Deb—” I warn, but she holds up a hand as if to say I’ll deal with you in a minute and I promptly shut up
“So what the hell is going on with you, Cohen?”
“Nothing is going on with me,” Ash responds, running a hand over the back of his neck.
Levi studies him and then says, “Dude, were you banging some bitch you left back in Sydney?”
“What? No.”
“Are you gay?” Zed says, spinning his drumstick over his knuckles. He doesn’t seem fazed by the question, or the answer he might receive, but instead throws it out there as if he’s just tossing out ideas into the wind.
“No. I’m not fucking gay just because I’m not sticking it to everything that moves like all of you are.”
“Dude, what the fuck?” Levi says. “Why the hell aren’t you sticking it to anything that moves?”
“Because I don’t want to lose focus here. All of you can fuck up regularly, and you’d never be replaced, but bassists aren’t really that hard to come by.”
We all turn and look at him.
“Are you fucking serious?” Levi demands.
Zed gives him a goofy smile. “You’re not replaceable, man.”
“None of us are replaceable,” I say, swallowing hard. “We don’t just switch out band members. If one of us doesn’t do this, then all of us don’t do this. Where is this even coming from, Ash?”
“Forget it. Never mind.” He swallows hard, and wipes a thick sheen of sweat from his brow. He looks sallow and his eyes dilate to a point where all I can see from where I’m standing is huge black pupils.
“Are you high?”
“No. I’m just not feeling well.”
“You wanna take a break?” I ask.
“No. Let’s just get through this. If we suck this much during practice, surely we can’t be that bad tonight, right?”
“Right. Let’s do this, motherfuckers,” Zed agrees with a triumphant crash on the cymbals that has my ears ringing. He holds it steady to mute the noise, but my head still feels as if it’s going to explode.
“From the top,” Zed counts us in, and Ash’s meaty bass merges with the melodic squealing from Levi’s Fender Telecaster. Leif hands me a new mic, one I haven’t dropped, like a little bitch, and this time when I open my mouth to scream the lyrics, my voice is as smooth and clear as it should be.
I glare at Ali as I sing lyrics about promises that we made but have long since been broken, and even though I wrote this song for a different redhead, it’s as true now as it was then.
Zed guides us through the solo and then the bridge, and finally it all comes to a sweeping crescendo of raw sound where my voice is the anchor. The song ends on a crashing thump from Zed’s cymbals, and I open my eyes, staring at the woman I just poured my heart out to. She stares back, and even from here I can see there are tears in her eyes. I’ve never seen her cry. She’s beautiful in her sadness.
Ali closes her eyes. Fat tears spill down her cheeks, and then she stands and exits through a side door in the auditorium without looking at any of us. I close my eyes, fighting the urge to go to her, or to look at Levi and see if he’s battling the same impulses. When I do look at him, I find him watching me. I stare back, complacent, annoyed, and just as fucking heartbroken as I was when Holly left me and took my kid with her, because just like I did then, I’ve done everything wrong right from the very start. I made wrong move after wrong move, and I fucked it all up the second I kissed Ali, because that was the second I gave her all the power. That was the moment I gave her all I had left, and now I’ve got nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
VIDEO KILLED THE RADIOSTAR
ALI
“How you doin’, Nashville?” Cooper shouts into the microphone. The crowd roars. He places a hand to his ear as though he couldn’t hear them, and shakes his head. “Hmm, I didn’t quite catch that.”
They scream again, and still he shakes his head. Cooper glances at Levi, “Quinn, you catch that?”
“Nope.” Levi says, leaning into the microphone in front of him. “I didn’t hear Jack shit.”
The crowd roars again. This time, stamping their feet on the stadium floor.
“Now that I heard.” Cooper chuckles and places the microphone back in the stand as Byron—one of the roadies—runs on stage and hands him a guitar and a pick. Coop places the strap over his head, and strums. “Alright, so this next song is a little bit of an ode to Zed,”
The crowd cheers, and some over-excited fangirl screams, “I wanna have your babies, Zed.”
He laughs and leans into the mic positioned above his kit. “Err, thank you strange American girl who I’ve never met before, but I’m sterile, got measles as a kid, so ... no babies here.”
“Screw the babies, let’s just fuck,” the girl calls out and she’s pushed towards the stage by the crowd.
Zed smiles, and it’s damn near infectious. You can’t be in the same room as Zed and not fall even a little bit in love with him. He’s like a really overgrown three-year-old. “Think you can handle it?”
Levi steps up to his mic. “Please. There’s all of two inches to handle. Sweetheart, you want something to handle?” He spins his guitar strap around so his crotch is unobstructed and grabs his cock. “I got more than enough for you to handle.”
“Yeah, he should know, too. He handles it often enough,” Cooper says, and Zed beats the drums like at the end of a bad joke.
“Marry me, Cooper?” a girl from the front row screams, holding a sign above her head.
“Marry you?” he says, raising one brow and giving her his mischievous grin—my mischievous grin. “But, sweetheart, I barely know you.”
She responds with some whore-mouthed wisecrack about them getting to know one another on the tour bus, and he laughs and shakes his head, walking to the other side of the stage where he stands beside Ash. “Ash, tell me something?”
“Something,” Ash says. He grins and his adorable dimples pop out. The women in the audience practically turn rabid with their screams. He turns back to Cooper. “What do you wanna know, man?”
“Tell me why the women always wanna marry me, but never want to fuck my brains out?” Coop screams into the microphone. His question is met with an almighty roar from the crowd and Zed counts them in.
“This song’s called blow,” Coop growls through the intro.
Jealousy washes through me, white hot and searing, but I tamp it down. This is part of their job, and it shouldn’t matter that he’s suggesting to other women that they should have sex with him. It’s not part of the deal. None of this, whatever this is that I’m feeling, none of this was part of our unspoken agreement.
Coop’s eyes find mine as I stand in the wings, and his gaze is cold and challenging. Does he want me to suffer? Is this all just to hurt me because of what happened in the limo yesterday?
Taint play two more songs, each more scathing than the other, and with each of them Coop spends a good portion of it looking at me as he sings the lyrics. I’m beginning to sense a theme. Songs about heartbreak and betrayal were nothing new f
or the band, and even though these songs were written for another woman, there’s truth in them for us too. Which is disturbing.
I wait until he turns back to the crowd before I walk away. I’ve taken maybe five steps before he sings a bum note and I know that he has seen me. I don’t turn back. Instead I walk casually through the back room, ignoring Deb, Leif, and the rest of the road crew who aren’t manning the soundboard or waiting in the wings to switch out guitars. I head past security on the back door, basking in the tepid Nashville air, pushing through the throng of scantily-clad women muttering things like, “Who is she?”
“I don’t know, but if she was backstage then why the hell was she leaving?”
“Oh my God, you guys, it’s her. The redhead,” another girl says, and I turn and look at her with a curious expression. A petite blonde girl beside her squeals, “You’re so fucking lucky. I mean, Coop and Levi? I would die; I would like literally die. Is he really as big as everyone says he is?”
I stand there blinking at her as if I’m simple, my heart hammering against my ribcage. How does she know that?
“I ... I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammer and then I wander away, so rattled that I’m shaking from head to toe. How does anyone outside of the band and the road crew know? I mean, it’s not like the three of us walk around holding hands, or fucking in public, for Christ’s sake.
I had planned on heading straight to the tour bus because we’re leaving right after the show in order to make it to Georgia, but I’m too flustered. Instead, I start walking and wind up at a hot dog place several blocks away.
I sit in a booth and I shake until my dog is delivered, and then I shake some more. My Coke has too much ice, which does nothing for the way I’m trembling. There’s no way she could have known anything was happening. I mean, it’s just a lucky guess, right? The press had been blowing up a possible Ménage angle between Coop, Levi and me since we were papped in Vegas. An overzealous photographer had snapped a picture of Levi and me in the lobby, taken from behind as he pinched my arse on the way to the elevator. That, along with shots of me and Cooper had been splashed all over the cover of a gossip magazine—but now the images were showing up on social media and various Taint fan-sites too.
The paparazzi had snapped a picture of Cooper and me attempting to leave the MGM Grand in Vegas, then they’d taken several more of us inside the lobby. His hands had been on my shoulders as he’d begged me to help him escape being a celebrity for one night.
I stare down at my uneaten hot dog, hating to waste food because several weeks ago I would have given my left tit for a meal this size. I’d been starving, homeless, I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from, and I would have finished every bite of that damn hot dog. I pick it up and as I’m biting down on the dog, a flash goes off. Sauce and mustard fly out the other end, squirting onto my hand and I blink back stunned stars. What the fuck? Why would someone snap me eating a hot dog? People are such arseholes.
When the starburst finally clears, a small girl with purple and black emo hair smiles sweetly at me as her and a friend saunter off talking animatedly over her phone. Fucking children. I wipe the sauce from my fingers and set the rest of the hot dog back in its basket, then I leave and wander further down the street to a bar, where I pay a ten-dollar cover charge to see some shitty band, but I pay gladly because I miss this. I used to drag Brad to see live gigs all the time. He went mostly for the booze and because he knew I wouldn’t shut up about it.
I take a seat at the bar and order a beer. Americans drink their beer at least 10 degrees warmer than they have a right to—it kinda makes everything taste like piss—but so far I’ve found a few good dark ambers that I can swallow. It’s nothing like a Toohey’s, of course, but when in Rome ...
I tap my foot along to the beat and think about my Grams. She’d be proud of where I am, or at least she’d be proud of the fact that I was in America, somewhere I’d always wanted to go. I’m not sure she’d be so proud of the fact that I was sleeping with two rock stars, but Grams was young once. She may not have understood it, but she’d accept it because they make me happy. Or ... sometimes they make me happy.
I glance back at the stage. The lead singer wears a baseball cap. That’s his first mistake, right there, but he has charisma. He’s no Cooper Ryan, but he has a cute smile. The crowd claps half-heartedly as he comes off-stage and heads for the bar. Even the pretty blonde bartender looks bored when the guy leans over and asks for a drink. The singer’s gaze rolls over me, and he leans against the bar and watches me drink my beer.
“Hey, can I buy you a drink?” he asks.
I laugh, because I don’t know what it is about me that attracts his type. Is it the lucky red Cons? The red hair I can’t be bothered dying? Or is it the fact that I’m so completely oblivious to the supposed swagger of rock stars that it makes me seem unattainable and therefore like someone they should pursue?
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
I raise my plastic cup to him. “I already have a drink, sorry. I’m sure you’re a really sweet guy.”
“Not that sweet,” he says, and he attempts to smirk. The only thing that pisses me off more than a smirk is a bad smirk. A smirk that doesn’t work.
“You’re not from here, are you?” he asks.
“No, I’m not. That’s a keen observation though.”
“Where are you from?”
“Australia,” I reply, and skull the remainder of my beer.
“Well then, Australia, now that you’re finished, you gonna let me buy you that drink or not?”
“No, I’m really not,” I say, and stand up from the stool. “To be honest, I already have way more rock star than I know what to do with. So thank you, but no thank you.”
Realisation dawns on his face. “Wait, you’re the redhead.”
“I am a redhead, yes, again, very keen observation.”
“I saw your video.”
“What video? What are you talking about?”
“The video with you, Cooper Ryan and Levi Quinn.” He arches a brow at me and prompts, “In the elevator?”
The blood drains from my face. I feel it. There one minute, and gone the next. I stagger a little on the spot, and Smirky grabs my elbow to steady me. “That was you, wasn’t it? Fuck that shit was hot. You know, if you want a future in porn I know someone.”
Oh my god. I sit down hard on the stool and he grins at me. “Wait till I tell Mikey about this. Hey Mike!” he screams across the bar to the stage. “I found the redhead.”
Everyone in hearing distance turns to look at me, and I shoot up from my seat, sprinting from the venue. I run as fast as my feet will take me, and I have no idea where I am, but the streets are dark and I think I’m in a less than desirable neighbourhood because the buildings all around me are run-down, some with missing windows, some completely picked bare of building materials that might have been of a use to someone.
My phone rings, the shrill sound echoing into the empty street, but I ignore it in place of bending over and vomiting on the pavement. And all over my lucky red Cons, which aren’t so lucky any more, it would seem. My phone rings out and then starts up again immediately. I let it ring as I bend over, clutching my stomach, trying to rid my body of the bile, and then, because my day couldn’t quite get shit enough, it starts to pour. Fat raindrops hit my face and body.
This time, when the phone rings I answer it. “What?”
“Where the fuck are you?” Coop says.
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you answer your phone? What the fuck, Ali? You disappear when I’m onstage. James said you were accosted by groupies, and then you just sprinted off into the night by yourself. Do you know how stupid that is? Where the fuck are you? The bus is ready to leave. I’m getting in a cab and I’m coming to find you.”
“I don’t know, okay?” I mutter, on the verge of tears. “I have no idea where I am. I’m lost and I’m cold and they know.”
&n
bsp; “Who knows? What are you talking about? Are you high?”
“No, I’m not high,” I snap. “Everyone knows, Coop.”
“Ali-Cat, you gotta talk to me, babe. Everyone knows what?”
“About us. Levi, you and me.” I swallow down the lump in my throat, tasting bile. “There’s a video.”
“FUCK!”
“I’m going to go home.”
“What are you talking about? You’re not going home. Tell me where you are and I’ll come find you.”
“I don’t know where I am, Coop. I don’t know what I’m doing.” Tears fall down my face in a torrent, washed away by the rain. I bend over, clutching my stomach again, though I know there’s nothing left to purge. “How did we get here?”
“Fuck, Ali, don’t fucking freak out on me now. Look around you. Where are you? Is there a street sign?” I peer up the road, locating one. “I’m on Wiltshire Street.”
“Wiltshire Street, now,” he says, I assume to a cab driver because I hear his door slam and the soft rumbling of an engine in the background. “I’m in the car. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, okay? We’re going to sort this out. We’ll figure it out, just ... no more talk of leaving, you got me?”
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Ali?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry, babe. This is all my fault.”
I shake my head, as though he could see. “No, it’s not. It’s mine.”
After twenty minutes of standing in the freezing cold rain, a cab pulls up and Cooper jumps out before it’s even pulled over to the curb.
“Ali,” he says as he wraps me up in his arms. He smells like sweat and cologne, a heady mixture.
“Fuck, you scared the shit outta me.” He pulls back to look at my face. “You okay?”
My teeth chatter and my whole body quakes as I nod, and then I shake my head and lean into him.
He doesn’t say anything about the vomit on my shoes, or more than likely on my breath, and I appreciate that. Instead, he bundles me up in his coat and hurries me inside the cab, instructing the driver to take us back to the stadium. When we pull up outside the lot at the back, there are more than just fangirls waiting—set up around a barricade is several paparazzi.
Tainted: The Complete Enemies-to-Lovers Rock Star Romance Box Set Page 21