The ground slammed into my back and I blinked, disoriented, as my cheek throbbed with an aching heat. As the cemetery stopped wavering, I realized he’d knocked me off my feet. I was lying in the grass as he crouched over my guitar case. He unlatched it, opening it I assumed to make sure the Taylor was in it.
Adrenaline ignited my fury and suddenly I was not only on my feet but I was charging him. I slammed into him, knocking him away from the guitar. I grabbed chunks of his hair, pulling with all my might and feeling satisfaction roar through me as he yelled out in pain. As he managed to shake off my hand, I drew my fingernails across his face, drawing blood.
“Fuck!” he cried out, his face contorted with rage, and he grabbed my hand and twisted it hard.
Sickening pain made my head swim as I dropped to my knees. The world wavered around me, nausea and dizziness making me sway. Tears dampened my face as my breaths stuttered out at the agony blazing up from my wrist.
“Johnny, what ye done?” the other boy cried.
“Grab the fucking guitar and shut up,” Johnny said before I found myself pushed onto my back.
“Johnny, let’s go.”
“No before I teach this bitch a lesson.” His hard hands squeezed both my wrists, pinning them to the ground beside my head. I whimpered as nausea rose from my stomach.
I was so discombobulated, it took me a minute to realize Johnny had let go of my injured wrist to unzip his jeans.
What?
No.
No!
“No,” I tried to scream but it was like my vocal cords had snapped, the words coming out scratchy and pathetic. “No!”
“Johnny, no,” his friend begged. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Get off me!” I tried to push against the hands holding me down.
His cold fingers fumbled under my raincoat for the zipper on my jeans and panic set me off. I began to kick up my legs, trying to unpin them from his. He punched me.
Again.
And again.
Until I was dazed enough that he managed to shuck down my jeans.
“Johnny, no!”
“Stop fucking saying my name. Go hide behind a fucking tree if ye cannae stand there like a man,” he spat, his saliva speckling my throbbing, wet face.
Cognizance was returning and with it my determination.
He’d loosened his hold on my injured wrist while he’d been shouting at his friend so I used that moment of distraction to force every ounce of strength I had into twisting out of his hold and clawing his face. Ignoring the pain that screamed down my arm, I scratched at his eyeballs, his nose, his lips, and he fell off me, trying to protect himself. I rolled, digging my fists into the hard soil beneath the grass and using it as an anchor to pull myself out from under him, my legs scrambling like I was in deep water and trying to propel myself to the surface.
His cursing, foul insults rent the air as my fear-soaked body somehow did what I needed it to do. I had just gotten up on one foot when I felt his hand curl around the other, yanking me back down, face first, the impact on my chin causing a horrible burning in my nose, spots in my vision momentarily blinding me. But I didn’t stop.
I whipped around, preparing to batter him with my feet, when through blurred, darkening vision, I saw the other boy bring a rock down across Johnny’s temple.
My attacker slumped to the ground, out cold.
The boy stood, my guitar case in his hand, and stared at his friend in shock. His pale face suddenly turned to me. “Run,” he said, and then he did just that.
With my guitar.
With my money.
My gaze dropped back to the boy who had tried to rape me, blood trickling from the hair at his temple, and the whole surreal mess swirled in my stomach. I promptly threw up on the grass, hoping the blood I saw in it was from the cut I could feel throbbing on my lower lip. Shaking uncontrollably, I got to my feet, feeling hard and cold as I pulled up my jeans with my uninjured right hand and zipped them.
After struggling to get my backpack on my back, I protectively curled my sprained wrist into my chest and I ran, leaving behind my tent and, later I’d realize, my new coat.
My left eye started swelling shut, and what was left of my vision was hazy. I stumbled a few times and even fell at the sight of the cemetery gates. And by some miracle I got myself over those gates.
Having walked the streets many times, I was on autopilot. It was like my brain had made up its mind what to do before I could really process it. Keeping my head ducked down, I marched until I found the payphone I’d passed daily but had never used.
The change in my pocket was all that I had.
I had nothing.
No money.
And no guitar to make any more.
I had only one option.
After a few rings his masculine voice answering my call felt strangely reassuring. I couldn’t explain why.
“O’Dea?”
“Who is this?”
“Busker Girl,” I said, taking Mandy’s nickname for me. Then I swallowed my pride. In fact, the pain in my wrist swallowed my pride for me. “I need help.”
* * *
THE HEARTLESS BASTARD AGREED TO come get me if I promised to audition for him.
I had little choice in the matter.
He was just one more person I could add to my list of people I resented.
I was standing facing the phone booth when I heard the car pull up behind me. I tensed, not wanting to turn around in case it wasn’t him. Then I heard the car door slam and his voice asking, “Busker Girl?”
Turning to him, I finally understood how much of a mess I must have been in because O’Dea’s face slackened under the yellow glow of the streetlamp. Then it hardened and darkened with rage as he strode over to me. “What the fuck happened?”
“Can we get in the car?” I said, not wanting anyone else to see me.
He gently took hold of my right arm and guided me over to a black Range Rover. He pulled the door open and then helped me remove my backpack. I got in while he put my backpack in the trunk. Exhaustion hit me as I slumped against the car seat, the smell of leather and his cologne weirdly comforting. O’Dea jumped into the driver’s side.
“You left a few things out on the phone. What happened?” he demanded.
So I told him everything about that day and the boys.
“His friend hit him pretty hard,” I murmured, wondering if he’d hit him too hard.
There was utter silence from my right. I glanced at him out of my eye that wasn’t swollen shut. His fists were curled around the steering wheel, his knuckles white.
“I’m okay,” I said, realizing this was the first time I’d seen any real emotion from him.
“You’re pretty far from okay,” he snapped, starting the engine. “First we go to the hospital and we’ll let them contact the police.”
A new fear sprang up inside of me. “No. We can’t go to the hospital. We can’t contact the police.”
“Don’t talk shite,” he huffed, his SUV racing down the street. “Your wrist is sprained, possibly broken. If you don’t get that seen to, you’ll never play the guitar again.”
The thought made my chest ache worse than the blazing pain in my wrist or the throbbing in my face.
“He took my Taylor. It was . . . special. My mum had it specially made for me. I should have fought harder.” I sighed, shaking my head, decided. “No hospital. No police.”
“Drop the martyr act, Skylar. We’re going to the hospital and that’s final.”
My breath caught.
“You can drop the fake British accent too. As good as it is.”
Disbelief made my head swim even more. “You know who I am?” I asked in my own accent.
“Almost from the first moment I heard you play.”
“H-how?”
“Music is my business. I know music. At one point Skyscraper were actively on the lookout for a band like Tellurian.” He referred to my band by name. “A social media pheno
menon, a commercially successful teen pop-rock band with more substance than most and millions of teenage followers that would make us lots of money.”
“More substance than most?” Despite my current situation, I still had pride. It could still be pricked. Something he had a knack for, it seemed.
“You. You were the substance. You have a four-octave range. Rolling Stone magazine once named you in the top ten greatest singers of the twenty-first century. They never once named your band in the top ten greatest bands of the twenty-first century, mind you. Too many angsty, angry teen love songs to be truly respected. But you were, are, respected. Your talent is respected.” He shot me an assessing look. “And the industry has no idea about your songwriting abilities.”
“I wrote nearly all the songs for Tellurian,” I argued.
“Aye, but those songs are nothing like what I’ve heard you singing lately. The songs you’re writing now can make grown-ups feel, not just preteens who are sick of feeling invisible at school.”
“Wow, you’re really into that ‘hitting them when they’re down’ thing,” I said, disbelieving that he was talking to me about this while I was struggling to stay conscious. “Let me out of your fancy car, Nurse Ratched.”
He ignored me. “Why don’t you want to go to the hospital? Because you don’t want anyone to find you?”
“That, and my visitor visa expires in two weeks.”
“Do you have travel insurance?”
“No.” Even if I wanted to be fixed, I couldn’t afford it.
O’Dea sighed. “Well, we need to get that wrist seen to, no question about it. I’ll explain you’re my client here on business and that you got jumped by thugs. We’ll sort out the medical costs later.”
“I don’t want to be found.” The idea of Micah and the others finding me shoved me further toward passing out.
“We’ll also make sure they know how important your privacy is. Plus, I hate to burst your bubble but no one over thirty will know who you are.”
“Not true,” I muttered sullenly. “We had fans of all ages.”
“Mostly teens though. I know your demographic, Skylar. I researched you.”
I shrugged and then winced as pain radiated down my arm to my wrist.
O’Dea noticed and scowled. “Hospital.”
“And I have no say in this?” My voice sounded shrill with fear.
“You do realize you have a swollen eye, a swollen cheek, split lip, a possibly broken wrist, and some vile little fucker who will get his comeuppance just tried to rape you. But you got away. You’re made of stern stuff, Skylar, so buck up and start facing reality.” He raised an eyebrow at my visible indignation. “You can be pissed off at me all you want, but I’m trying to keep you awake by talking to you and it’s working. Now . . . are you going to pull on your big-girl panties or go back to making bad life decisions?”
I glared at him with my good eye. “Fine. Hospital. I’ll add it to the list to tell the doctor.”
“What?”
“Of injuries. Eye, ribs, wrist, and now this insistent, condescending pain in my ass.”
DESPITE SUGGESTING OTHERWISE, O’DEA MADE me tell the absolute truth about what happened. After an X-ray of my wrist, tests, and blood and urine samples, the hospital did call the police and I found myself explaining to two police officers that I had been sleeping rough in my tent in a cemetery. That the boys had followed me back there to steal my guitar. I gave more detail about the almost rape than I had to O’Dea, confused when he abruptly slammed out of the private room we were in.
“It’s only natural,” the female police officer, Officer Calton, said when she saw my bemused expression. “Your boyfriend will be feeling a different kind of anger than you are.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my . . .” I shrugged. “He’s trying to sign me to his record label.”
She nodded and then went on about numbers for a counselor. They finished up their questioning, said they’d check out the cemetery to see if my attacker “Johnny” was there. By the time I’d given them detailed descriptions of the boys, the doctor returned with X-rays of my wrist—it was fractured. He put it in a cast, something I knew would worry me in the morning, but I was so exhausted from the attack, my brain was too foggy to care. By that point O’Dea had returned, watching the process with a permanent dark scowl on his face.
The doctor stared at me with a furrowed brow. “Now that I know you’ve been sleeping in a tent, Skylar, I’m a little worried about your overall health. You’re slightly underweight and that might not be enough for concern normally, but considering how you’ve been living, I am concerned about possible malnourishment. I’m pushing your blood work through so we should get results in twenty-four hours. I’d feel better if we kept you here overnight and put you on a vitamin and hydration drip.”
Panic suffused me at the thought of being stuck in the hospital overnight. “I don’t need that. I’m fine, honest. I drink lots of water.”
“Do you have somewhere warm to stay tonight?”
“I’ll make sure my client has someplace safe to stay,” O’Dea chipped in and then proceeded to lie. “I had no idea she was homeless.”
The police took O’Dea’s number since I didn’t have one and told us they would be in touch. “Your guitar is one of a kind and the boys don’t know it. As soon as they try to sell it, it’ll make it easier to find them.”
I nodded, hoping I’d get my guitar back in one piece.
“And I’ll be in touch with your results,” the doctor said, still not pleased I’d refused to stay overnight. “We’ll talk.”
Once we got out of there, I was on pain meds and a little out of it as O’Dea drove us into the city. As my eyes drifted closed, he said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I mumbled.
“For not shaking your foolish head out of your arse and getting you off the streets. None of this would have happened if I’d tried harder.”
“I was warned,” I yawned. “They told me something like this could happen. I thought I knew better. I thought I was smarter than them.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing. Can I just sleep first?”
He was silent a moment. Then, “Aye, Skylar, you can sleep first.”
My last thought before I drifted off was how strange and scary it was to be Skylar again.
* * *
PAIN.
It was the first thing I felt. Horrible, restless pain originating from my left wrist. The pain seeped into my subconscious and I floated out of a dreamless state. My eyes reluctantly tried to open and panic momentarily seized hold of me when my left one struggled with the action.
When my vision cleared and I took in the airy white room around me, I grew more alarmed and scrambled upwards in the bed I was in, only to cry out when I pressed down on my left hand. I raised it, everything coming back to me as I saw the cast around my wrist.
I was attacked last night.
It hadn’t been a dream.
Images of Johnny bearing down on me, his spittle hitting my face, made my chest constrict with anxiety. I shook my head, trying to shake out the memory, reminding myself I was safe.
My head throbbed, the ache no doubt coming from my swollen eye. Glancing around, my head felt heavy on my shoulders. I was in a bedroom. The walls were white, the carpet a soft gray. Gray curtains were drawn across the window and the bed covers were a soft gray too. The only color in the room was in a beautiful, somewhat abstract, framed print of a pretty girl’s face. The artist had painted the lines and motifs that framed her face in hot pinks and turquoise.
I remembered O’Dea taking me to the hospital. I even remembered getting back in his car once we were done. But that was it.
Where the hell was I?
My body ached all over, like I’d been in a car accident. I swung out of bed, relieved to see I was still in my jeans and T-shirt. The thought of O’Dea undressing me for bed was more than I could
take.
As I stood, dizziness knocked me back on my ass again and I took a couple of seconds to gather myself. When I felt my head clear, I got back on my feet and slowly made my way toward the door. Stepping out of the bedroom, I found myself looking into a small but perfectly formed open-plan living space. The kitchen was modern with traditional influences—slate-gray, shaker-style cabinets, thick oak countertops, and glossy, lemon-yellow, brick-style tiles as a backsplash. It had a large range cooker with a fancy chimney cooker hood. There was also an island with more counter space, lemon-yellow stools, and beautiful drop ceiling lights with copper shades.
The sitting area had a soft gray corner sofa, a TV mounted on the wall, and a yellow button-back chair.
Beside the chair were French doors that led out onto a balcony. I immediately moved toward it, opening the doors and feeling the chilled wind whip through my hair as I stepped out in my bare feet.
We were on the River Clyde. I knew that from the walks I’d taken down there. On the opposite river bank was a huge rusty-red corrugated iron building that looked like a warehouse. There were more industrial-type units on either side of it. To the left of those was what looked like a couple of apartment buildings and next to that a church.
Stepping in out of the cold, I shut the doors and looked back around the beautiful little apartment. Where the hell was I?
As if on cue, a door slammed down the hall. Footsteps padded toward the living space and my heart started pounding.
I let out a shaky breath, not sure I felt relief or the opposite, as O’Dea appeared. He stopped short at the sight of me, drinking me in from head to foot. Finally, after I’d been subjected to his visual assessment, he asked, “How are you feeling?”
“Like I went a couple of rounds with a creepy Glaswegian kid.”
“I put your painkillers in the cupboard.” He headed into the kitchen and that’s when I noted the carrier bag in his hand.
“So . . . any chance you’re going to tell me where I am or are you enjoying discombobulating me?” I took one small step toward him.
As Dust Dances Page 5