Blessed Fate (7 page)

He needed no explanation. Jon and Travis knew Rain almost as well as I did and they loved her like a sister. If I couldn't be around, I knew they'd make sure no one slipped her anything. We had worked too hard to get to this level to let that shit bring us down.

"Thanks for letting me know." Jon made his way to the cabinets and started trying to find something to eat. "Is that all that's going on?" I looked at him, confused. "You were staring pretty hard at your phone when I came out here. What's going on?"

"Stalker," I replied. It wasn't a total lie; I felt like Tanya's obsession with me qualified as stalking. The difference was that she had an engraved invitation to follow me, a schedule so she knew where I would be at all times and I helped pay for her hotel room.

"Turn it over to Dexter," Jon said as if it was an easy solution. We didn't have a large security team with us, just a few of the bigger crew members with law enforcement backgrounds and connections to take care of any needs that might arise.

"It's not that simple. She says she has pictures." I would have rather been having any other conversation with Jon, even listening to him lay into me about my unrequited infatuation with our lead singer.

"Let me guess, someone you hooked up with and she wants more now?"

That was one way to put it. I dug deep in my mind, trying to find a way to avoid coming clean with him. "Yeah, but it's even more complicated than that."

"Jesus, Colt! Tell me you didn't get her knocked up. Please, tell me there's —"

"No, nothing like that. Shit, that might be better, to tell the truth." That was one bullet I was glad I had dodged. I shuddered at the thought of tying myself to Tanya for eighteen miserable years.

Jon leaned forward, scratching his head. "Okay, you'd better start talking because, personally, I can't think of much worse than getting a chick pregnant."

"It's Tanya." I swallowed hard, waiting for Jon's wrath to be unleashed. When it didn't come, I lifted my eyes to meet his. The look on his face was one of shock.

"You screwed our manager? What the fuck were you thinking?" He growled. I would have preferred screaming to the sharp, quiet tone his voice took on when he was livid.

"I obviously wasn't. It was supposed to be one drunken night back home, but then she kept calling." I tipped back my beer, emptying it. "And now she's threatening me with pictures of me leaving her hotel room in Shreveport, saying she'll tell everyone that I said I'd have her fired if she didn't sleep with me."

Jon laughed. "Yeah, because you have that kind of power here. Seriously, tell her to take a leap. If she tries anything, we'll cut her ass loose." The bus went quiet while he grabbed a cup of coffee. Lucky for me, he had more decency than to continue our talk while he wasn't close to me. "You do realize if Rain finds out about this, you can kiss any chance of getting with her goodbye, right?"

My shoulders slumped at hearing him voice the very fear that gripped me constantly. "You think I don't think about that? Fuck!"

"Dude, chill the fuck out. We'll figure it out. For now, that girl needs you there for her. Even if she says she doesn't, don't listen to her. We have six weeks left and every day is going to eat at her." He reached out a hand to pull me up from the couch, pulling me into a one-armed hug. "And if I hear that you're fucking around with her again, I'll cut off your balls while you sleep."

I nodded as I turned to go to Rain.

"Colton!" Travis's voice boomed through the empty bus.

My head shot up at the panic I heard in his voice. I had rushed to the bus as soon as our set finished, a migraine setting in. They weren't a frequent occurrence, but if I didn't get it under control quickly, I would be worthless the next day.

"Back here," I said, trying to keep my voice down. I pulled a pillow over my head as light from the interior of the bus washed over me when Travis threw the bedroom door open.

"You gotta get out here, man. I don't know what's going on, but Rain's behind the bus, freaking out. Sounded like a pretty brutal phone call she just had."

True to his word, Jon had made it known that everyone needed to keep an eye on Rain since she got the email from her dad. To the best of my knowledge, she didn't even realize what an intricate network was in place to keep her safe and sober.

"Thanks, man." I pulled on my pants, not worrying about covering my feet or bare chest. As I ran from the bus, I heard the shrill screeching of groupies on the other side of the cattle fence set up to keep them back. I raised a hand to acknowledge them but made no effort to interact with them.

I rounded the back of the bus to find Rain curled in a ball on the pavement bawling. I didn't want to ask her what was wrong because I had a feeling I knew. I prayed it wasn't as bad as my mind was making it out to be. Maybe her mom was just getting worse. "Hey, come here." I scooped her off the ground. She wrapped her arms around my neck, burying her face against me. "Shh, let's get you on the bus. It'll be okay, sweetie."

If graded on my ability to comfort her at that moment, I would have received an F. It seemed like every word I said to her made her sob even harder. Travis entered the pass code to unlock the bus and we rushed inside, pulling the interior privacy door closed.

"Baby, what's going on?" I tried to wipe away the makeup-tinted tears streaming down her face while Travis took off her boots. We sat quietly on the couch trying to figure out what was going on. He covered her with a blanket and I thanked him before he left us to ourselves. "Hey, talk to me."

"Gone... she's gone," she wailed. It was a soul-wrenching cry like one I had never heard before outside of the movies.

I stretched her out on the couch, placing her head on my lap. There were no words I could say to make it any better for her, so I let her cry while I rubbed her back. Her breathing evened out after nearly an hour, letting me know she had drifted off to sleep. I had no doubt it would not be a good sleep, so I opted to stay on the couch with her instead of moving to our room. She needed to sleep when her body let her.

Shortly after she fell asleep, Jon, Travis and the four techs staying on our bus quietly opened the door to join us. "How's she holding up?" Jon asked. I shook my head, not wanting to say anything and risk waking her.

"Damn, this sucks," Travis added. "I don't know who in the hell called her, but she was more pissed than anything. Sounded like they were giving her a hard time for not being there. Poor kid." He kissed his fingers before pressing them against her temple.

"So, how many shows are we going to have to cancel?" Jon asked. I looked at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. "We're not letting her deal with this shit on her own. She would be the first one there for any of us if we were in her place. Did she tell you what the arrangements are?"

I shook my head again. We sat there watching Rain sleep, drinking and trying to figure out what we could do help her through this. My fear that she'd fall back into old habits when she found out her mom had cancer was nothing compared to the anxiety I felt as I stroked her back when she started crying again in her sleep.

My body ached when I woke up, the combination of sleeping at an odd angle on the couch and not allowing myself to truly fall asleep so I could hear Rain if she woke up. As I worked the kinks out of my back and neck, I saw Rain leaning over the kitchenette counter waiting for coffee to brew.

"Hey, feel better after some sleep?" She looked up at me and I had to fight the urge to laugh. Her stage makeup from last night was dried onto her face and cracking. I squeezed her shoulder as I walked past to get her makeup remover and a washcloth. "Can you pour me a cup and meet me at the couch?"

I came out of the bathroom to see that she had curled up on the couch, gripping her coffee in both hands, staring out the window at the cornfields as we raced down the Interstate. I flipped open the cap on her cleanser and started gently working it into her skin with my fingertips. She flinched at first when my fingers touched her skin, but she quickly accepted my help, leaning her head against the back of the couch, allowing me to massage her face. Once the black smears down her cheeks started to break loose from the skin, she placed her hand over mine as I wiped her face clean.

"Thank you," she whispered. Her face and body were completely devoid of emotion. I knew it was because she was trying to process everything that had happened and would happen in the next week or so, but it was scary to sit there and watch.

On a typical day, our bus was alive and loud if people were up. Today, it seemed that everyone was going out of his way to remain subdued for Rain's sake. Each person woke up, grabbed a cup of coffee and sat in the living area, not saying a word. For a while, it was serene; then, it got slightly unnerving.

Jon was the first to break the silence. "Rain, have you talked to your family today? When we get to Des Moines, we can get you on a plane, okay?"

Her eyes grew wide, as if she was just now starting to realize that she had to go home and face her family. "No, not yet. There's nothing for me to do there. I'm better off here." She looked up to me for reassurance that I couldn't give her. I didn't know the right answers and it was starting to piss me off. For five years, we had been friends and I had become her person. The person she turned to when she was sick, the person who knew her secrets, and in one of the worst times of her life, I didn't know what in the hell I was supposed to do or say.

"Rain, look at me," Jon commanded. The way both of them narrowed their eyes slightly, I knew we were preparing to witness the two most stubborn people in our little road family go head to head in a battle of wills. Jon reached out for Rain, lifting her chin slightly. "You need to be with your family. Even if you can't do anything, you need to be there. They need you there."

Rain sat up on the bench, leaning even closer to Jon. "No, you listen to me. They don't need me there. They probably don't even want me there. So, I'm going to stay here, do the show tonight, and then we'll talk about what happens."

She braced herself before continuing. "She's dead, don't you get that? If I get home in the next hour or the next week, it's not going to change the fact that my mom is dead and I wasn't there. I never got to tell her how much it hurt me when she turned me away. I never got to tell her that I wish she could have accepted me for who I was. And I never got to..." Her voice trailed off as the strength she had tapped into faded. "She's just gone..."

Travis tried to add his opinion to the conversation but I shook him off. Knowing Rain, we needed to bide our time and not push too hard. We could keep working on her after she had some more time to herself.

"Come here, sweetie." Having Rain sitting in my lap was becoming a frequent occurrence but I wasn't about to complain. I wished like hell it meant the same thing to her that it did to me, but I took comfort in the fact that she trusted me enough to allow me to comfort her as a friend. "Do you want me to call Mark and find out what's going on?"

Rain's brother Mark was the only member of her family I had met. While she'd never said as much, I had a feeling he was part of the reason she wound up in Portland. They didn't talk often because he was busy with his own life, but he had moved to Oregon at some point to live with his partner, Dale; the partner their family didn't know existed because he had hidden his sexuality from them. To hear them tell it, the Neumann family wasn't the most accepting of those who didn't fall in line with their ideals, which left half of the Neumann children locking parts of themselves away.

"Would you?" Her eyes grew wide as if she didn't believe I would help her out.

"Of course I will," I whispered. "Whatever you need from me, I want to help you out. Okay?"

She nodded, handing me her phone. "Hey, when we get to Des Moines, can you take me to the mall? I need to go shopping before I head home."

I squeezed both of her arms, turning her to face me. "I told you, I'll do whatever you need me to. I mean it. Anything." Without thinking, I leaned in to kiss her forehead. Had it not been for the long seconds I left my lips pressed to her head, it could have been seen as a platonic show of affection. Instead, it was like I was trying to make her feel the emotions I held inside for so long, hoping that she would accept them.