PLAYED - A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE (31 page)

Chapter
17

Trent

It was well past
daybreak by the time we finally pulled up behind the
RipFest
venue, parking with the other rental cars. It appeared that
half the busses had already left, eager to make distance on the day.

Predictably, Steven
flew out from my tour bus as soon as we were within earshot. With his
trademarked
hands in the air
routine,
he was even more livid than before.

“Alright, you dumb
fuck, you and I are gonna have some words,” my manager angrily declared. “And
without
the company of your dumb bitch
here.” He turned to her. “Babe, show’s over. Your sweetheart’s getting back to
work now, bye.”

I poked a firm,
commanding finger into his chest, and let my anger be known.

“If you
ever
call her a ‘dumb bitch’ again, I
will shatter your bones under one of these tires,” I practically spat at him.

He didn’t back down.

“Cut the shit,
ass-wipe. We were
supposed
to be on
the road over an hour ago, right? Why the fuck ain’t you picking up your
goddamn phone?”

“I forgot my phone,”
I answered unapologetically.

“You…you forgot your
phone.” He was dumbfounded. “That is the stupidest goddamn shit I’ve heard out
of your smart mouth yet. You fuckers
never
leave your phones out of sight.”

“Yeah, well, I was
distracted,” I told him, pushing past to bring Angel to the bus. Within the
instant, I knew the mistake, but it was too late to backpedal.

“I see that,” he
coolly observed. “Speaking of distractions, I can’t wait to see you explain why
you’re dragging a…an
associate
onto
the bus.”

“She’s my guest now,”
I gruffly replied.

“That’s not gonna
fly.”

I opened the door for
her.

“Just head to my
room. Do you remember where it is?”

Angel nodded quietly.

“Good. Go.”

She pushed inside,
her backpack catching on the door for a brief moment before she disappeared
through the door.

“She looks primed and
ready to hit the nature trail at a fucking campground,” Steven muttered. “You
turn down a whole bunch of groupies, but you get your dick wet with a
hitchhiker? Bitches literally
throwing
themselves
at your cock not good enough?”

I grabbed him by the
cuff of his shirt, tugging his face disgustingly close to mine.

“You want to talk?
Let’s talk,” I coldly started. “You have been a fucking
thorn
in our side from the start. I have no idea what your goddamn
problem is, but you need to cut your bullshit and start acting like a fucking
manager instead of a spoiled little bitch.”

Steven’s eyes flared
with anger, but he didn’t dare try to tug away from me.

“I promise you,
Steven, I will
work
on being easier
to deal with. In exchange, I bring this girl with us. She stays out of the way.
No problems. No distractions. She’s gonna be great for morale, and she’s coming
back home with me. Okay?”

His beady little eyes
positively glowered, but he didn’t lose his temper. However, he did seem to
evaluate the circumstances, because there was a pause before he finally opened
his fat, ignorant mouth again.

“Okay. Fine. Be the
fucking prima donna,” my unsightly manager finally muttered. “The bitch – the
girl
stays,” he quickly corrected himself,
“so long as she ain’t a liability. She stays out of my way, she doesn’t
interfere with the
band
, or
your performance
, and she can stay.”

I let go of his cuff.
“Deal.”

“We’ve only got,
like, five or six shows left anyway. Don’t go fucking this up for some pussy.”

I contemplated
knocking him out, but chose to take the high road. I met his sneer with a
furious curl of my lip before letting myself onto the bus.

The others were
loitering around the kitchen and entertainment areas. Dylan and Terence were playing
Mario Kart on one of the game consoles we kept hooked up to the big-screen TV.

Waylon, however, was
contemptuously watching me with a disdainful frown. As I tried to walk past, he
stepped in front with his arms crossed, his greasy, lean frame almost comical
in threat level.

“What’s this fuckery
about you coming in late with some wet-behind-the-ears chick?” He asked me
pointedly.

“It doesn’t concern
you,” I told him distantly.

“Actually, it does.
It means I’ve gotta miss lunch. You know how much I hate missing lunch? It
makes me all cranky, you know?”

“Yeah, I’m aware.
I’ll make it up to you.”

“Right…”

He let the thought
trail.

With a sigh, I took
the bait.

“What’s the problem?”

“What was your rule
with the bus?”

I fucking
knew
he was going to pull this.

“…No girls.”

“Right…” the thought
trailed again. “Except, funnily enough, just saw one. Only, the rest of us?
We’re already here. She came from your direction. Wanna, you know, clue us in
on that?”

The others were
listening now.

I growled inwardly.

It was time to lay
down the law again.

“She’s not going to
be a problem. I’m taking her home with me. She’s going to stay out of sight,
you understand?”

Waylon deliberated on
this for a moment.

“Yeah. Guess so. Even
at the shows, right?”

“What?”

“Well, you know,
special treatment and all. Unless you want to rub it in our faces, that is. If
she’s staying out of sight, that means she’s not leaving the bus for the shows.
That’s only fair, wouldn’t you say?”

“What difference does
it make if she watches us play?”

Waylon smiled
cruelly.

“Well, here’s a
scenario: I’m playing. I’m rocking out. Having a good old time.

“I look over, who am
I gonna see? Bam. It’s your broad. I lose my focus. I start missing chords.
What a distraction, am I right? It’s just a total slap to the face. Here’s the
fearless leader’s girl, where’s mine? Oh right. Can’t have one. My thoughts
start wandering, my fingers start missing chords…”

I swallowed back my
burning temper. I’d have been more up for this shit if Steven hadn’t already
put me in a filthy fucking mood. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to assault my
guitarist, then go back outside and lose my shit with the manager.

Neither of which were
acceptable.

“You see where I’m
going with this?” He asked, feigning politeness. “It’s just a total bummer, but
easily avoidable.”

“Fine,” I growled.
“I’m too tired for this shit. You win. She stays on the bus during shows.
On one condition.
”

“Oh yeah?”

“She stays out of
your sight? You stay out of hers. Don’t go
near
her, don’t
speak
to her, don’t
even
think
about messing with her.
You understand?”

Waylon smiled
wickedly.

“Heh. Yeah, all right
then. Have it your way,
boss.
The
girl and I steer clear of one another. She stays in that cage of yours until
we’re home, I don’t mess with her.”

“Thanks,” I grumbled.

It made me look weak
to give into his demands in front of the others, but I was exhausted.

I was
also
struggling to understand what I was
really hoping to accomplish with all of this.

Seriously? Bringing her onto the bus?

Taking her back home with you?

What the FUCK are you thinking?

I couldn’t explain
it, but I barely had the energy to keep standing. Instead, I gave a brisk nod
to the others – who quietly returned my acknowledgement – and stumbled towards
the back of the bus.

Once in my room, I
spotted Angel seated on the edge of my bed. Her backpack was slumped in a
corner, still zipped up and ready to go.

With a heavy sigh, I
let my fatigue finally settle in.
Was it
worth it? Was it worth ostracizing my band, my manager, and my entire meal
ticket for this chick?

Angel looked up at me
softly, a few strands of her hair falling in front of her eyes. It was clear
that she sensed the conflict – hell, maybe she’d even
heard
that asshole talking shit.

“I can go if you need
me to,” she whispered sadly.

“Where I need you is
here,” I murmured.

What? Seriously?

It was like my mouth
was running without me. First, there was my hesitation with the sex when I
climbed back on the bus, and now this. My brain wasn’t participating in
any
of this, not since I’d descended
upon her in the middle of the night.

But is that better, or worse?

I didn’t really have
an answer. It seemed like my heart and my tongue had grown cozy together – too
cozy. I needed to be smarter than this. I knew that I had to think rationally
about this sudden change in the dynamic… after all, I’d just invited who was
supposed to be a victory fuck onto my bus for the rest of the tour, alienating
my band and our manager in one fell swoop.

But the way that she
looked at me, and that pain in her eyes, told me that somehow… somehow, I’d
made the right decisions.

Maybe because I didn’t think about them,
I
wondered.

 
Angel was looking at me, watching me
think to myself. As the fatigue of the night finally overcame me, I sank down
to the mattress and pulled her into a deep embrace. With my mind finally
quieting down again, I collapsed into the bed with her, allowing the world and
its stupidity to fade into blackness.

Chapter
18

Angel

I slept the best I’d
ever slept when I woke up that afternoon, curled up in Trent’s arms. He was
knocked out solid, quietly snoring away, and I watched this beautiful, strange rocker
murmur and shift in his sleep.

This had been fast,
but it had felt
real
.

I didn’t quite
understand it, and I could tell that he didn’t, either. Not really, at any
rate. He seemed the impulsive type, and he’d completely thrown me off-guard by
almost backing down from the sex last night… and by inviting me into his world
like this.

I’d heard his
bandmates. They’d sounded
pissed
.

But he’d stood his
ground, the alpha male that he was. It was clear what he wanted, and that he’d
make concessions with them to have it. He could probably have told them all to
go to hell, but I’d seen that he did care about them – especially onstage.

Do they fight a lot when they’re not performing?

Is that what it’s like to work with people like this?

Eventually, he woke
up too. Once we’d climbed out of bed and freshened up a little, Trent laid down
the single ground rule:
stay back here
.
He made it clear that other members of the band had expressed some discomfort
in having me around, and that he’d had to agree that I’d stay in his bedroom or
in the adjacent bathroom.

I’d been too tired to
really think much of being a complication, particularly in the madcap dash to
get back to the bus and finally rest. It wasn’t hard to figure out the math
once I dwelled on the details.

After all, I was on a
bus with a bunch of guys who probably didn’t appreciate someone being thrust
upon them at the last second – especially not a girl, regardless of the fact
that I was apparently fucking their leader.

It was fine by me. I
liked his room – it was kind of sparse, and not terribly big, but that seemed
like the kind of thing Trent would favor. It was a little larger than my small
backroom at the Riverton Bar, but it was free of the odds and ends that
cluttered and dominated the space.

“I don’t need much,”
he told me at some point after we’d woken up. “Not on the road, at any rate. My
place is a little different…but I like to keep my distractions minimal when I’m
on tour.”

“But what about me?”
I chuckled coyly.

“I make exceptions,”
he whispered, his fingers threading into my hair and exposing my neck for his
hungry lips. “Exceptions for cute girls who know how to ride my cock the right
way.”

Oh good,
I thought to myself.
So the arrogant asshole thing’s going to
stick around for a while.

Oddly, I kind of
liked it.

But we couldn’t play
for too long.

Trent and his band
had another gig.

The single, curtained
window in his room didn’t tell me much, and my host kept me plenty preoccupied
for a short while. But as he left to practice with them before the show, he
told me where we were.

“Houston.”

“We’re in
Texas?
We just sailed through Louisiana
and I didn’t even know?”

“Yeah, guess so.”

“But Houston is so
far…”

“And now you
understand why I was speeding,” he told me a little gruffly. “Steven might be a
total asshole of a manager, but he’s generally competent.
Generally
.”

Before he left, I
reminded him to take his pain medication. With an appreciative smile, he dug
the orange bottle out from a hidden spot in his closet, and then popped into
the bathroom to swallow it with a cup of water.

After he left, I
stayed put. I flipped through some books of his, realizing that I should have
tried to find something to keep myself preoccupied. But it wasn’t like I
actually
had
anything like that back
home, anyway.

I’d mostly spent my
time tending to the needs of the bar, occasionally walking further into town
and occupying myself at the single, small bookstore that we had.

At least there are
different books here.

A few hours later,
after the night had fallen, Trent finally returned to the bus. He planted a
quick kiss on my lips before going to wash off in the shower. When he came back
into the room, I was preoccupied with thought.

I knew that I had to
tell him.

 
“There’s something you need to know about
me,” I reluctantly blurted out.

Briefly, just for a
fraction of a second, a look of penetrated concern flickered across Trent’s
face. With the blink of his eyes, it was gone, replaced with his cool, smooth
confidence.

“What’s that? You’re
not really from Alabama? Secretly a government agent? Betrothed to another
man?”

I shook my head,
trying to not take personal offense to that last one. I knew he didn’t mean it.
He had just sensed that this was bad.

“You know how I
freaked out in the car earlier this morning?”

Trent looked
genuinely troubled for a moment.

“Yeah. There’s a
specific reason for that?”

“There was an
accident,” I told him.

“An
accident
.”

“I was in the car
with some people – I don’t really remember who. Just a group of us. The driver,
he was going too fast, taking too many risks…we hit something and I was thrown
from the vehicle.”

“Oh my God,” he
spoke, his face growing pale. He covered his eyes, looking incredibly guilty.
“I had no fucking idea. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know,” I
told him.

“But were you…were
you
hurt?
”

“Well, it
was
a high-speed collision, and I
was
ejected from the car,” I snarked
lightly, before toning myself back. “I mean…yeah. I was hurt pretty badly.”

“What…how did you…?”

“How did I survive?”
I asked, almost bitterly. “I don’t know. I was thrown into some trees. Luckily,
I wasn’t too mangled up. But I was in a coma for, like, weeks.”

“And your friends?”

“They didn’t make
it,” I told him, fighting back tears. “I think the driver did, but the rest of
the people in the car, they all died on impact. Getting thrown out saved my
life.”

“And your memory?”

“Yeah,” I continued,
struggling to recall the details. “It’s kind of fuzzy. I lost a lot of my
memories from that point and back. The doctors told me that they don’t know how
I woke back up. But the damage was done. I barely remember a thing from before the
accident. Hell, the accident
itself
is
totally gone. I only know what happened because I was
told
.”

I realized that Trent
was squeezing my hand, staring deeply into my eyes.

“So, what
do
you remember?”

It wasn’t an easy
question to answer.

“It’s kind of
like…you know how you dream sometimes, and occasionally you remember it when
you wake up, but sometimes you don’t? If you’re lucky, you’ll remember it in
the shower, or maybe something during the day will remind you…and maybe it
takes months for it to click?”

Trent nodded
thoughtfully.

“Right. So, I
remember bits and pieces – like, I know who my parents are. I can remember
little… flickers of things. Like, mental pictures. The way the sunlight bounced
off of my hand, running through the cattails in a pasture. I remember a man – I
think he was my grandfather – carrying me on his shoulders when I was really
young, spinning me around in the rain.”

He squeezed my hand
gently.

“But…most of it is
gone. All I have are these tiny, fleeting moments. They’re small, and maybe
insignificant, but they’re all that I have left,” I told him.

It was only as he
brushed his knuckles against my cheek that I realized I had been crying. Trent
looked pained as he listened, wiping my tears aside.

“Everything from
before me being sixteen and younger is like a dream. I can’t remember much at
once. It only comes in small flashes, and then they’re lost unless I really
focus on them…and I can barely remember they were ever there from the start.”

“Have you been
checked out?” Trent asked. “Have you gone to see someone about this?”

“Not since the start.
The follow-up treatments were so expensive. Just the hospital visit from my
coma alone was terrible. It basically bankrupted my parents, not that they had
much to begin with.”

“And where
are
your parents?”

“Back in Alabama,” I
told him. “Not Riverton, though. Further back… deeper into the state.
Interstate doesn’t go anywhere near it.”

“You haven’t really
mentioned them before,” Trent observed. “Is there a reason why?”

Involuntarily, I
thought back to my other secret… the secret I wanted to take to my grave. His
hand squeezing mine felt so distant all of a sudden, and things were growing
darker and darker…

There was a voice, a
husky chuckle.

It shook me down to
my core.

With a deep, calming
breath, I summoned up my strength and fought my way back to him from that
crushing darkness. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than a second or
two but, to me, it felt as if I’d drifted back to that lightless abyss for
hours… possibly days.

“There aren’t really
many pleasant memories,” I quietly conceded to him.

“I see,” he answered
with a suspicious but supportive nod. “I’m not going to push you on that. I
just…I can’t imagine what it’s gotta be like.”

“What do you mean?” I
asked sincerely.

“I mean, I remember
mostly
what it was like, growing up,” he
told me. “But to have most of my life completely gone? I can’t think of how
hard that’s gotta be.”

“It’s not as
difficult as you might think,” I shrugged. “It just took some getting used to.
Luckily, I had help. Like with Old Greg. He didn’t have to take me in like
that, but he was a total lifesaver. I don’t know how I would have coped on the
streets.”

“How did you wind up
in Riverton?” He asked, tilting his head.

“I was just
hitchhiking…I think Old Greg was the one to find me. It’s hard to be certain.”

“Old Greg?”

“Yeah…”

I pressed harder in
my head, focusing on the memory. My nose got that slight smell of copper that
told me I was on the verge of remembering.

“That’s right…” I
smiled. “It’s kind of in pieces…but yeah, Old Greg picked me up on the side of
the highway and he brought me back to his bar. It must have been late at
night…the place was closed when we got there. I don’t remember much else.”

“You weren’t scared?”

“No, that’s the funny
thing,” I recalled. “I trusted him. Without even questioning him, really.
Something about that old guy just told me that he wasn’t trouble. Maybe I saw
something good and pure in his eyes.”

“Do you think you
knew him before?” Trent asked, wondering about the connection.

“Nah. I wasn’t
anywhere near home when he found me… He was just some lonely old codger who
took pity on some stupid wayward kid in the middle of the night.”

Trent didn’t seem too
convinced, but he didn’t try to pry.

“Anyway, my head’s
starting to hurt…I think this little trip down
Memory Lane
is kind of taxing me. How about we talk about something
else?”