Insider (Exodus End #1) (34 page)

“Right,” Toni agreed. She hadn’t seen the pictures or the memes he was referring to, but she was definitely going to look this up as soon as possible.

“And just because his hand was down my pants and I had a huge boner, that doesn’t mean I’m gay. Any guy would get hard under the expert tug of Zach Mercer’s hand.”

Toni’s eyes were about to pop out of her head.

Steve snorted and burst out laughing.

Toni’s face went slack when she figured out she was being had. Well, two could play at that game. “I’ll be sure to make it perfectly clear in your section of the biography that even though you like hand jobs from Zach Mercer, you draw the line at butt sex.”

She’d expected her threat to calm Steve down a bit, but he just laughed harder. “Good one, Toni. Now, when I tell Zach about this, you’ll back me up, right?”

“Back you up?”

“He’s the one who posted the photo. Several fans said it looked like his hand was on my dick and let’s just say my drunken expression looked rather
enthusiastic
. Then someone captioned it with
Mercer takes Aimes in his own hand
. Damn thing went viral, and I’ve been catching hell for it ever since. I’ve been trying to think of a way to get back at him. If he thinks you’re going to address it in an actual book, he’ll think twice about ruining my life.”

“So this incident ruined your life? How so?”

He rotated into a sitting position and placed his bare feet on the edge of the coffee table. “Do you always take things so literally?”

“Not always.” But usually.

“It didn’t ruin my life, but it does annoy me.”

“You don’t think it’s funny?”

“At first it was hilarious—it’s amazing how many different ways people come up with to caption a photo—but now it’s just annoying. Pretty much anything that goes viral online ends up being annoying, and when you’re the brunt of the joke and you can’t defend yourself—”

“Why can’t you defend yourself?”

“If you feed the internet trolls, they grow and reproduce. Best to let them starve. Eventually they find something else to obsess over.”

Toni nodded. “So are you mad at Zach for making the image public in the first place?”

“How was he supposed to know people would take it the wrong way?” Steve closed his eyes and laughed. “Okay, he totally knew people would take it the wrong way and have a good time with it. He just had no idea how far they’d take it.”

“So tell me about your ex-wife.” The interview had already derailed. No sense in trying to get it back on track now.

Steve’s head swiveled, and he scowled at her, but she sat poised with pen in hand, pretending  she was supposed to ask about personal matters.

“Nothing new to tell there,” he said. “Everyone knows it was a messy divorce. Bianca almost bankrupted me in the settlement, and she loves telling the press what an impossible asshole I am.”

“I wasn’t referring to that ex-wife.” Everyone knew about his divorce from America’s sweetheart. The mess had been in the tabloids for months and was still good for an occasional stirring of shit. “Unless you want to tell your side of the story.”

Steve released a derisive laugh. “Like that ever matters. I was labeled the villain on day one. Poor little Bianca. Everything I ever say about our breakup gets twisted around to make me look even worse. I just keep my mouth shut these days. Lesson learned.”

Better writers than Toni had tried to give Steve’s side of the story and he was correct—even when he wasn’t portrayed as a complete asshole, he ended up looking like one.

“I could try to put a different slant on it in the book,” she said. “Maybe we could include nice memories of Bianca with the band before your relationship got rocky.” She’d seen photos of Bianca with the band when they’d first started out. If Steve was okay with it, Toni would love to include her as part of the band’s beginnings.

“That relationship was always rocky, but we did have some good times in the beginning.”

“Can I include her in the history of the band?”

“Depends on what you include,” he said with a laugh.

“I’ll run it by you and you can give me some insider information on her part.”

“Maybe,” he said, still looking unconvinced. She knew he’d need time to digest the possibility of portraying Bianca in a good light. They’d been battling each other so long, he probably had a hard time remembering the good times. And that was what Toni was after for the book. The good times.

Shifting gears, Toni asked, “So what about your second wife?”

Steve’s face fell. “Where did you hear—” He shot to his feet and raced to the door. “I’m going to kill him. Dead.”

Toni reacted on instinct, hurrying after him and catching his hand just before he grabbed the handle to slide the door open.

“I’m sorry I asked,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was a touchy subject.”

“Not touchy,” Steve said. “Secret. Logan swore on his life that he’d never tell anyone, so that means I get to kill him.”

“Wait.” It hadn’t been Logan who’d told her.

Steve ignored her plea and slid the door open so hard it crashed into the frame with a loud
bang
. Like a freed beast, Steve sprang from the room with murder in his eyes.

Toni caught the astonished expression on Logan’s face just before Steve jumped on him. She could add interviewer to her list of things she sucked at. Not only had she asked only one legitimate question during their short interview, she’d managed to send her interviewee into an uncontrollable rage in mere minutes.

As no one else on the bus seemed intent on saving Logan’s life, Toni dashed down the aisle and tried to get a hand on the flailing drummer before he did permanent damage to her squirming boyfriend or justfriend or whatever he wanted to call himself.

Twenty

Logan wasn’t sure why he was suddenly caught up in a brawl, but he wasn’t about to sit there and take a punishing without retaliation. He took several punches to the ribs before he got in a single well-placed blow to Steve’s shoulder.

“You’re a dead man, Schmidt,” Steve yelled.

Logan was sure he’d done something to deserve getting his ass kicked, but hell if he could think of anything.

“What did I do?”

All the air rushed from Logan’s lungs as a body landed on Steve’s back and flattened them both to the floor. He was astonished to see a mass of long brown hair writhing about over Steve’s shoulder. Steve easily tossed Toni off his back by flipping to one side. While Logan took advantage of his opening and tried to scramble from beneath Steve, the drummer caught Logan’s neck in the crook of his elbow and squeezed him into a headlock. Already winded, Logan latched onto Steve’s forearm with both hands and tried to pry his arm loose so he could take a decent breath.

“Please don’t hurt him,” Toni cried, her hands next to his on Steve’s arm.

Technically, he was already hurt, but he didn’t feel that he was truly in danger. It wasn’t as though he and Steve didn’t regularly get into fights. True, they were usually both drunk, so the blows hurt less, but unlike Max and Dare, who preferred to talk through problems like a couple of wimps, he and Steve preferred to let off steam through their fists. Which was why everyone on the bus with the exception of Toni didn’t intervene in Logan’s impending murder.

“Why can’t you ever keep your big mouth shut?” Steve growled.

Logan’s grip loosened as his surroundings began to swim around him.

“I don’t care if you’re screwing her, she’s a goddamned journalist. You have to watch what you say to her.”

Logan racked his brain for something he’d told Toni that Steve wouldn’t want her to know about. Everything in Steve’s past was pretty much an open book to reporters already. Steve had one deep, dark secret, but Logan hadn’t mentioned the guy’s eighteen-hour marriage to Meredith.

“I didn’t tell her—” Logan gasped through his crushed windpipe.

“I don’t care if she doesn’t know the details. She knew enough to ask about it, and that’s too much.”

“Let him go,” Toni said, jerking wildly on one of Steve’s wrists. They guy had impressive upper body strength, so Toni’s attempts to save Logan’s life were completely ineffectual.

Toni switched tactics to slapping the crap out of Steve’s back.

“Ow!” he protested.

“I said let him go. He isn’t the one who told me.”

Logan’s vision tunneled. He knew he was in danger of passing out, yet he was more worried about Toni’s distress than his own.

“Knock it off,” Steve said. He released his hold on Logan’s neck so he could grab Toni’s wrists.

Gasping for air, Logan climbed to his hands and knees, hoping Toni could hold her own, because he wasn’t sure if he was much use to her in his current semi-conscious state. He tried to rise to his feet, but stumbled sideways against the sofa and ended up sitting in the middle of the floor, staring up at the ceiling because he was too exhausted to hold his head upright. Toni’s concerned face was suddenly in his line of vision.

“Are you okay?” she asked, leaning close to peer into his eyes.

He lifted a finger—a signal that he needed a minute to respond—as he sucked air into his lungs and huffed it back out painfully.

He watched in astonishment as she sprang to her feet and began jabbing an angry finger repeatedly into Steve’s chest as she told him off.

“You can’t just jump on people like that! What are you, eight? Learn to control your temper! Fighting is never the answer. If you have a problem with something I’ve done, then you need to take it up with me like a mature adult. Not attack Logan when he least expects it.”

“But—”

“You could have seriously injured him, choking him like that. I understand that you’re mad, but how would you feel if you’d actually killed him?”

“He—”

“You’d never forgive yourself, now would you?”

Logan sniggered at the astonished look on Steve’s face as he failed to get more than a word in.

“The two of you are going to apologize to each other and I’m going to apologize to both of you for being an inexperienced idiot who can’t—” She took a deep shuddering breath. “Who can’t even—” Her shoulders shook as her emotions finally got the better of her. “Even conduct a decent interview.”

She burst into tears and raced back to the lounge area, sliding the door closed behind her with a loud bang.

“What just happened?” Steve said, rubbing the red spot in the center of his chest.

“Seems she told you off for acting like a child,” Max said calmly. “Logan didn’t say anything to her about Meredith.”

“It was
you
?” Steve’s eyes narrowed.

“I panicked when she started asking me personal questions and it slipped out.”

“Poor Toni is obviously upset,” Dare said with a devious smirk. “I guess it’s time for my interview.” He rose from his recliner and headed toward the back of the bus.

Oh shit. Logan knew how Dare comforted women. As soon as he could find the strength to climb to his feet, he’d do something about it.

with Darren Mills

When the door slid open, Toni turned and looked up from her tissue. She’d expected Logan to come reprimand her for being ridiculously unprofessional—she didn’t deserve to be comforted after the foolish way she’d acted—but the man standing in the doorway was dark-haired and green-eyed, not golden-haired and blue-eyed. He was also the last person she’d expected to cuss her out and tell her to pack her bags immediately.

Dare Mills strode into the room and slid the door shut behind him. She supposed at least they’d have a little privacy when he fired her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded, and his handsome face blurred out of focus as fresh tears flooded her eyes. On second thought, no, she was decidedly
not
okay. She shook her head, pursing her lips together to stifle the sob creeping up her throat.

“I must say, I never thought you had it in you.” He chuckled and approached her slowly. “You don’t get angry very often, do you?”

Actually, she rarely got mad. And whenever she did, she reacted to her own tirade by crying, which was flipping ridiculous.

She blew her nose and yanked another tissue out of the box to wipe at her eyes. “I’m so embarrassed.” Mortified was a better word, but she’d truly be showing her geekiness if she started using that kind of vocabulary. She’d actually put her hands on another human being and then she’d started spouting words that under normal circumstances she’d think but never say aloud.