No. They really weren’t.
‘Spook. Call Rock Giant, would you? Tell him we need him to come over and help knock some sense into dimwit’s head.’
While Spook made the call, Ash continued to eyeball Xane like he was a naughty child. After a moment or two, he relaxed a little, uncrossed his arms and sat forward. ‘I’ve figured out what we should do.’ His bright-blue eyes lit up as though a light bulb had been switched on inside of them. ‘We’ll channel this shit. We’ll sit down and write some new kickass songs together.’
‘Sure,’ Xane agreed, flashing him a placating smile, the one he normally used to get Sally Kettering to back down when she tried to fill his downtime with five or more consecutive phone interviews. It seemed to work its magic equally well on Ash, who failed to hear the derision in his voice. ‘Then at least let me go and finish getting dressed.’
‘Moron,’ he muttered under his breath as he descended to the bedroom. Once there, Xane pulled on a T-shirt and jacket, popped in a new set of contact lenses, then, with his wallet stuffed into his pocket and his passport in his hand, he climbed out of the bathroom window.
He was leaving and neither Ash nor anyone else was stopping him.
‘And where on God’s earth have you been, young lady?’
‘Mum?’ Dani whimpered, as she lifted her hotel key card from the opening mechanism, hardly daring to turn the door knob. She gave a swift glance backwards towards the lifts, wondering if she had time to retreat before the full force of her mother’s intuition sniffed out her guilt. How had she even found her? She was
so
going to get it now. She’d had sex with a rock star – real devil where the sisterhood of St Agatha’s were concerned – which was possibly the most heinous crime she could have committed, and for which they’d make her atone. Although, fuck it! It wasn’t as if she believed in their religious claptrap, unlike her mum. If she weren’t so dependent on their goodwill for her maintenance then she’d have waved them goodbye long ago.
Yes, St Agatha’s had provided a refuge when she and her mum had needed a place to stay, but it had come at a price and, boy, did they know how to mess with her head.
She wasn’t going to feel guilty though. Why should she? She was a big girl now. She got to decide if it was OK to sleep with a guy or not. No one else’s opinion mattered. Well, except for his, and Xane had been totally on board with it.
In a fit of irritation, she flung open the door and walked in. Ginny swung into view from the direction of the bathroom, blocking Dani’s entrance into the sleeping area. She’d dressed in cargo pants and a skinny black T-shirt with a rip in the neckline that she’d patched with lace. Her black hair fell in a tangled mess around her face, still dripping wet from a recent shower. ‘Well, where were you?’ She flicked her finger against Dani’s collar bone, while pretending to be riled. ‘What happened to meeting back here?’
Dani brushed Ginny’s hand aside. ‘Dammit, Ginny, I thought you were my mother.’
Her friend’s face scrunched into a proper frown. ‘Yeah, ’cause I totally look like her.’
‘You … oh, never mind.’
‘Actually, your mum did call. She was worried she couldn’t reach you. Kind of know how she felt. It’s OK though. I told her you were fine and that you’d get back to her as soon as you were done screwing Black Halo’s drummer. You’d done the guitarists and only had him and the lead singer to go.’
Ginny was mucking with her. She knew it, and still her heart squeezed tight at the vague possibility that that conversation might have genuinely happened. ‘Please tell me you didn’t.’
‘I totally di–. Of course I didn’t. She never even phoned. Does she know how to use a phone?’ Ginny cuffed Dani on the shoulder again. ‘I think you might have, though. You’re gone all night and not a murmur from you. I was starting to think I ought to call the police. Where’ve you been, babe? Not sobbing your heart out in the car over Black Halo splitting?’
So Ginny knew what had gone down at the arena. ‘You could have called me,’ she retaliated. ‘And they’re not splitting up.’ Ash and Spook would make Xane see sense.
‘Uh, babe – I hate to break it to you, but they did. It’s front-page news this morning. It was even on the breakfast show. They’re reporting that Xane’s voice is kaput. That he barely croaked his way through the start of their set last night before he walked off. Apparently the tension’s been near breaking point inside the band for months.’
The music press didn’t know a damn thing. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Xane’s voice.’ She shoved Ginny out of the way. Nor a problem with any other bit of him. Everything worked perfectly. The only misfortune here was hers, in that she’d not be able to explore all that perfection fully.
Dani stopped dead at the foot of the first bed, having won her way past Ginny. ‘Oh … my … God!’ She turned to Ginny in horror. ‘What happened here?’ Beer bottles and food remains littered every available surface. Both beds were rumpled. The curtains were half off the rail and there were smears of what she hoped to God was chocolate all over one set of sheets. Her gaze strayed towards the overflowing bin and the collection of empty foil wrappers around its base. ‘Ginny?’
Ginny gave a high-pitched laugh and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I may have had a few friends back.’
Friends didn’t leave your place looking like a pigsty and stinking like a brothel.
‘We had a laugh, that’s all. Things got a bit frisky.’
‘A bit?’
‘All right, a lot.’ An errant grin stretched across her generous mouth. ‘It wasn’t as if you were using your bed.’
That didn’t really account for the wholesale abuse that had clearly gone on. Shaking her head, Dani sought out her overnight bag. It at least had survived unmolested. She didn’t ask whom Ginny had brought back. The sordid details would no doubt emerge over the next few days. Ginny enjoyed dropping squirm-inducing facts about her love life into regular conversations.
‘Oh, good, you’ve found your bag,’ Ginny breezed cheerily. She squashed shut the lid of her own suitcase. ‘It’s checkout in ten minutes.’
Dani swung to face her. ‘No. We can’t leave it like this. They’ll fine us.’
‘Don’t be silly. They don’t know that it looks like this, and we’ll be home before they notice. Besides, the bill’s already settled. The guys paid for it.’
Further thoughts about the room were zapped from Dani’s head at the mention of guys, plural. The evidence laid all around them, but she’d deliberately erased those details from the picture. Admittedly, one man would never use that many condoms. More foil wrappers crinkled under foot as she crossed the room. It made her damn uncomfortable, how Ginny was happy to have numerous men pawing her all at the same time. Love was between two people, but then she supposed Ginny would tell her that love had nothing to do with it. She’d been having fun.
Perhaps leaving was a good idea. Dani swallowed slowly. She supposed her actions last night weren’t so very different from Ginny’s. Neither of them would hook up with the same men again. But Dani’s heart had been very much involved. Her chest felt tight every time she thought about Xane.
‘OK, let’s go,’ she agreed, hitching the strap of her overnight bag over her shoulder. Maybe, once they were home and some measure of normality returned, the truth of how she’d spent the night would be less likely to explode from her, leaving behind a mess as big as the one Ginny’s antics had created.
She wouldn’t see Xane again, and that was eating away at her.
‘Where’d you get those jeans from?’ Ginny asked as they emerged into the hotel parking lot. ‘I mean, you didn’t have room in your purse to hide them. They’re not even PVC, are they? They’re real leather.’
‘I borrowed them,’ Dani huffed. She didn’t want to say they belonged to Xane and that she’d taken them from his wardrobe while he was talking to Ash and Spook, or to admit that she’d run away because she was terrified of how strongly she felt about him after only one night, and how badly her heart would get bruised if she stayed any longer.
She couldn’t give Xane the casual, non-serious fun he obviously needed to lift him out of his current plight. She both liked and needed him too much for that. Really, she ought never to have climbed into bed with him. Not that she regretted it.
Just – the thing was, kissing rock stars was a fantasy. It wasn’t supposed to happen, especially not to someone like her. She didn’t live in the land of supermodels and fairy-tale princesses. She was plain old ordinary Daniella Fosbrook, a nobody who right now needed to go hide in a corner and cry.
At least she could do so wearing a T-shirt fragrant with his musk.
They reached the car and Dani threw her overnight bag into the boot.
‘I really was worried when you didn’t show up,’ Ginny said as she slid hers in alongside it.
‘Sorry. I did mean to call, but I kind of got distracted. That was really selfish of me. I didn’t actually plan to stay out.’
‘It’s OK, as long you’re fine. Are you?’
‘Course,’ she replied, faking cheeriness. She turned away to hide her discomfort.
If only Xane hadn’t asked for her number. He wouldn’t call her. She knew that, but now the expectation was there, and she’d be waiting for him to call even though she knew he wouldn’t.
They drove home in silence, without even turning the stereo on. ‘Was he cute?’ Ginny eventually asked after twenty minutes on the road.
‘Who?’
‘The guy you spent the night with.’
‘I never said I spent the night with someone.’
A tiny smile twitched at the edges of Ginny’s lips. ‘Babe, you’re wearing his clothes, and you smell of him. Besides, he must have been good, because you’ve hardly mentioned Xane Geist. I was expecting you to be sobbing on my shoulder by now, feeling bad for him and all that stuff.’
‘He wasn’t cute,’ Dani said, choosing to answer Ginny’s first question.
Xane was many things, scary, intense, delicious, but cute wasn’t one of them. ‘And I’m not sure he was good for me either.’
Though she kept her attention on the traffic, Dani could still feel vibes of incredulity sparking off Ginny. She supposed it did sound rather weird. From Ginny’s perspective, she’d passed over meeting Black Halo backstage in favour of spending the night with a guy who apparently had nothing to recommend him.
‘Did you get to meet the band?’ she asked hoping to deflect any more questions before they were voiced.
Ginny wriggled upright immediately, her uncertainty on Dani’s account disappearing. ‘I met. I partied. We fucked, and did sexy, smoochy stuff.’
‘What, with all of them?’ It was her turn for scepticism. She knew perfectly well Ginny hadn’t met Xane, and she doubted the rest of the band had felt much like partying.
‘Nearly all. The only one I didn’t meet was your man hunk Xane. I have to tell you, you missed out, babe. They’re all completely drop dead … And Ash – oh, my God, Ash – he fucks like a goddamned maniac. He’s so fucking hot he sizzles. I swear I have burn marks all over me.’ Ginny even lifted the hem of her top to look for the evidence across her midriff.
Dani guessed Xane had been right. His band mate had performed as expected – forwards, backwards and upside down. She very nearly asked as much. Instead, she murmured, ‘I met Xane.’ Despite her voice being barely audible over the sounds of the traffic and her friend’s rambling account, Ginny heard her. At which point her own account dried up.
‘You met Xane. That’s who you spent the night with! You’re wearing Xane’s clothes? Fuck, Dani! I think you better tell me about it. What’s up? Was he a prick?’
‘No.’ Dani shook her head. ‘I gave him a ride home because he needed a lift and then he invited me in, and we did stuff.’
‘Good stuff?’ Ginny continued to peer at her incredulously.
Dani summoned a nod and smile.
‘So-o-o why the sad face?’
‘It’s over. That was my moment with him.’
‘Babe.’ Ginny patted her knee.
‘He asked for my number, but I know he won’t call.’
‘Hey, I didn’t even get asked for my number.’ Ginny glowered at her for half a second before shrugging off her resentment. ‘Maybe that means he really likes you. You never know, he might actually call. Let’s get in the house and then you better tell me everything.’
Ginny demanded a full blow-by-blow account, right down to how many steps led into Xane’s bedroom, how many hairs he had on his chest and how many piercings he had, and exactly where.
‘Just tell me what he said again.’ Ginny slurped a mouthful of hot chocolate laced with cream and marshmallows. ‘Try to remember his exact words.’
‘“Give me an hour or so, and then we’ll catch up.”’ Dani scooped the frosting off her drink and stared at the muddy liquid, longing for a nice cup of tea. Hours had passed without a word from Xane, and she was sitting at the little breakfast table in the kitchen she shared with Ginny, still dressed in Xane’s clothes, wondering if she’d ever find the motivation to move again. Her phone lay on the table, silent, its screen dark.
‘I guess they’re still hashing stuff out. It’s pretty major to walk off stage. I guess there’s a shitload of mess to clean up, and that’s before they negotiate a way forward. At least we know that Ash and Spook are with him. The core of the group will stick together.’
Dani wasn’t so certain about that. Xane had seemed adamant that it was over, but maybe he frequently made OTT remarks that he then backed down over. Whatever the case, she doubted he even remembered her name by now, let alone why he had kohl marks up his arm.
When her phone began to wail with Xane’s voice, and it danced across the table top towards her, she could only stare at it in alarm. In the end, Ginny picked it up. ‘Unknown number,’ she whispered, as though the caller might hear. ‘It’s got to be him.’
‘Don’t answer it.’
Chances were that it wasn’t Xane but some salesman intent on providing her with a dream kitchen she’d never be able to afford, which would leave her doubly disappointed.
‘Are you frickin’ insane? We haven’t been sitting here praying for the last three hours for you to ignore him when he acts as promised.’ Ginny hit ‘answer’ and clamped the phone to her ear. ‘Hello.’