Consumed (21 page)

He grants me a sideways glance, like he’s really considering my words. “Epic romances are always fucking doomed.”

The sound of Lucas shuffling noisily down the bus aisle puts a stop to our conversation and Sinjin hands me the game remote for good. “I’m going to catch some shut eye before sound check.” His green eyes flash a warning at Lucas. “Meaning don’t wake me with any of that bullshit before then.”

Scratching his head so that his shaggy dark hair falls into his eyes, Lucas gives his band mate a cocky smile. He turns that look on me for just a moment, and something flutters in the pit of my stomach. “I’ll do my best,” Lucas promises.

Sinjin disappears into the back, but a few second later, he peeks his head out into the lounge. “Before I forget.” He holds up a set of drumsticks. I catch them, one at a time, when he tosses them in my direction. “Signed and all that good stuff.” Before I can offer him a word of thanks, he’s gone, and I can hear the sound of Puddle of Mudd’s “Famous” playing loudly inside of his compartment.

“Okay, he’s scaring me.” I lift my gaze to Lucas who’s leaned against the galley counter with a Red Bull in his hand. “You look . . . well-rested.”

He pops the tab of his energy drink. “I’ve got two weeks left on the road. Fuck yes, I’m rested.” Giving me an animalistic grin, he throws himself onto the couch with me, grabbing my leg and pulling me on him so that I straddle him. I muffle my shriek of delight with the back of my hand as he grinds my hips against his cock and leans me backward so he can kiss my breast through my tee shirt. “You look like—”

My phone vibrates on the table, interrupting him.

At first, I have no intention of answering it, but then he gives my thigh a squeeze. Reaching over, I begrudgingly grab it and turn it over to reveal an unknown number. A sliver of fear coils through me as I stare at the flashing screen because the first place my mind goes is to Sam.

So far she’s only used words to screw with me. As much as I hate to admit it, my address was probably easy to find because I had once included it in the Contact Me section on my website. 

But the thought of her going through the steps of finding my phone number?

Calm down
, I think.
Stop getting ahead of yourself and just answer the damn thing.

“You just going to stare at the screen?” Lucas growls into my ear. 

Giving him a trembling shake of my head, I swipe my finger across the bottom of the screen to accept the call. The person on the other line is already talking before I put my ear to the speaker, and I’m relieved to discover that the voice is automated. 

Sort of.

“. . . A collect call from Rebecca Previn.”

It’s my mother. 

I don’t know how many times I’ve received similar calls in the past, but they’ve been few and far between over the last year. I had run out of things to give her, and that meant, my use ran out too.

I’m not sure if it’s anger at her sending Gram to that attorney’s office or my old desire to make my mom happy that drives me to accept the call, but I do. She doesn’t start the conversation like she normally would—in that soft, sweet voice she uses whenever she wants something—she’s already advanced to spitting fire. 

“You little bitch,” she hisses. “How dare you try to turn my momma against me?”

Scrambling off of Lucas’s lap, I frantically work my finger over the volume button so the conversation isn’t as loud. Lucas is already leaning forward, working his long fingers over his bottom lip in concern. 

Turning my back to him so he can’t see my face, I take a cleansing breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She releases a growl deep from the back of her throat. “Don’t try that with me, Sienna, I see right through you. Always have. You’re trying to warp her mind against me, and it’s not right.”

I pinch my fingers over the bridge of my nose. Leave it to my mom to bring on a headache. “What exactly did I
do
?” I ask in a muffled voice.

“She told me she was ashamed that I wanted your boyfriend to help me out. That she won’t ever—”

“No.” I shake my head. “Gram shouldn’t feel even an ounce of shame over that. You should. You don’t even talk to me, and the first thing you do after reading something in a gossip article about me is call me expecting—”

Now it’s my mother’s turn to cut me off, and when she does, she’s bellowing into the phone. “You wrote me a letter
offering
.”

“Mom,” I breathe, hating the way my chest burns when I call her that. “Don’t do this crap.”

There’s the sound of shuffling paper on her end of the line, and then, in a clipped, shaking voice, she reads the letter aloud for me. It’s short and to the point, telling her that I would have Lucas pay for her lawyer if she wanted to take me up on the offer. Even for my mom, making up something like this is a little far-fetched. 

Once she’s done reading, Mom says something that wraps a layer of ice around my heart. “Sent three weeks ago—postmarked from Atlanta—so don’t sit there and lie to me.”

“Where did you say it came from?” 

She makes a strangled noise. “Are you deaf? You heard me. Don’t worry, I don’t want or need you or your boyfriend’s help. But if you ever, ever, try to turn my mother against me again, I’ll knock you on your ass the second I get out of this place.” 

She hangs up then, not giving me the chance to get in another word—but really, what the hell would I say after everything she’s just told me? Placing my phone on the countertop, I stare down at it blankly until I feel strong arms wrapping around me. 

“Your mother?” he asks, and I nod slowly, trying to catch my breath. “You didn’t let her push you around, Red. I’m impressed.”

But all I can focus on is what she had told me. That I had sent her a letter postmarked from Atlanta.

Atlanta. 

Where Samantha Wolfe lives.

Lucas spins me around to look at him, turning his head to the side so he can examine my expression. “Did she say what she wants?”

“She wanted something from me that I can’t give her.”

Because he knows that the phone call had at least something to do with him, he holds my face between his hands. “Do you need my help?”

A bubble of hysterical laughter rises in my chest. “No. Absolutely . . . no. I don’t want to give my mother anything.”

Yanking me to him, he holds me against his chest for a long time until my breathing has calmed down. By the time he lets me go, and I sink down on the couch, I’ve managed to regain some semblance of control.  

Lucas kneels down in front of me, massaging his thumbs against the backs of my calves. “I’ve got an errand I need to run with David, but if I need to—”

I shake my head quickly. “No, you do what you need to do. If I shut down every time my mom ripped into me, I’d still be twitching on the floor.”

As he gets dressed, I pace the bus, anxious for him to leave. The moment he’s gone, I grab my phone and go outside the bus so Sin won’t hear me. As I wait for Gram to pick up my call, I wrap my arms tightly around myself, afraid that if I let go, I’ll fall apart.

“This is early for you,” Gran answers warmly. 

Pulling in a harsh breath, I cut to the chase. “Have you gotten anything strange about me?”

“Sienna, what’s this—?”

“Have you? Any letters or anything since I came out here on this tour?”

Gram’s silence seems deafening, and it tells me everything I want to know. I feel like the breath has been ripped out of my chest. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because it just came yesterday,” she says, her voice defensive. She takes a tremulous breath before continuing. “I ripped that cruel trash up a moment after I read the first line. Do you think I’m going to tell you when someone sends a nasty note to tell me what they think of you, just because they don’t like whom you’re dating?”

“I—” I look down at the asphalt, glaring at a piece of broken glass a few inches away from my feet. “Gram, I’m so sorry someone send something like that to you.”

Not just someone. Samantha. I am almost one hundred percent sure that she is behind the note both Gram and my mother received. 

As my grandmother tries to assure me that everything will be fine, I come to a conclusion that makes my nauseous.  

Now that my family has been dragged into this mess with Sam, my plan to keep Lucas in the dark just flew out the window.

Because Lucas is gone right up to just before the band’s late afternoon sound check, I decide to wait until after his show tonight to say anything. I can hardly focus on the concert—I spend most of my time nervously looking my phone, checking to see if Sam’s sent me another message and wondering if Gram will call to say she’s received another note. 

I haven’t been this nervous—this sick to my stomach—in a long time.

I’ve seen how Lucas reacts whenever his ex-wife is mentioned—hell, I’ve stressed over that reaction. Asking questions about Samantha makes him automatically clam up. 

This will result in the same or maybe he’ll finally hit the roof, like he had in our hotel room in Atlanta several months ago.

It’s close to 1AM when everything is said and done backstage. When Tyler lets the band know that we’re facing a slight postponement due to a mechanical issue with a crew bus, Wyatt suggests we take the party back to the bus he shares with Cal.

Which puts yet another delay on my talk with Lucas. 

As we walk toward the other YTS bus, Lucas turns around. Walking backwards, he says, “I’ve got to run talk to Tyler for a few minutes.” His lips curl into a relaxed smile. “Can you go on ahead?”

Pushing my hair away from my face, I bob my head. “But Lucas?” He stops walking and faces me, his thick eyebrow cocked as he waits for me to say something. I turn toward him, wringing my hands together. “I’ve really got to talk to you before I leave to go home tomorrow, okay?”

He brushes his soft lips over mine, raking his teeth over my bottom lip before backing away. “Good. There are a few things I need to say to you, too.” 

I watch him as he sprints to the crew bus that’s still functioning. As soon as he goes inside, I climb the steps leading up to the bus right in front of me. I’m immediately greeted by the sound of Theory of a Deadman blasting loudly over the sound system. 

This is the first time I’ve ever stepped foot inside Cal and Wyatt’s bus, but it has a similar layout to ours.

“Hope you’re ready to take that shot,” Cal says from the kitchen, his dark brown eyes shining in amusement. He holds up two bottles—one of them vodka, the other rum—and dips his head to the hem of my shirt. “You taking it off now or are we doing this later?”

“In your dreams, Calvin.”

I walk down the aisle, passing through the small kitchen until I’m standing in the lounge area. When he spots me standing near the kitchen table with my nose wrinkled at the piles of laundry covering the couch, Cal downs his shot. “You can sit down. I swear the piles of junk won’t bite you,” he says sarcastically. 

Knocking a lacy purple bra aside, I plop down on the couch. “I never took you for a D-cup, Cal” I say. To my surprise, he flushes beneath his darkly tanned skin. 

“The infamous Heidi was here last week.” I look up to see Wyatt coming out of the other section of the bus. Heidi. That name sounds familiar. When I twist my lips, trying to figure out where I’ve heard it, he says, “She went with Kylie to New Orleans earlier this year.”

“Ah, I see.” I can easily remember a conversation I had with Kylie on the front porch of my grandmother’s house back in February. She had come to visit me to bring a peace offering after she helped Lucas trick me into having dinner with him and had mentioned Heidi. “Will she be coming along with Kylie this weekend in Atlanta?” I ask, and Wyatt mouths a dramatic “no.”

“I can only handle being around Heidi in small doses,” he explains, sitting down at the table across the aisle from me. “As of right now, I’ve overdosed on her this year.”

The bus door swings open, but instead of Lucas, it’s Sinjin who steps inside. When he catches the look on my face, he stops in the middle of the aisle. “Yeah, happy to see your ass too.” Grabbing a beer from the fridge, he takes a seat beside of me, propping his feet up on the table that Wyatt’s sitting at.

“You’ve looked like a damn deer in the headlights all night,” Sin points out, and I tilt my head at him. 

That’s because your leader’s ex is playing games with my family. 

To Sinjin, I say, “It creeps me out that you’ve been staring at me.” He mutters something, but then I realize he’s shifted his focus on Wyatt, whom he’s now arguing loudly with.

Sliding a little further away from Sin, I pull my phone out of my pocket. There’s a 5% battery warning up on the screen, and I groan. When I get up, I turn to Wyatt. “If Lucas comes in, can you tell him I went over to the other bus?”

After Wyatt promises that he will, I go outside. It’s chilly tonight, and by the time I get inside of our bus, I’m shivering and hugging myself. Leaving my phone to charge, I go through my luggage until I find the only jacket that I brought with me—an Echo Falls hoodie I’d been given by my old boss at Christmas last year.