Rock Me Harder (Rock Star Rockstar Erotic Romance) (Rock Me #2) (3 page)

I did my best to act normally around Christian, but I had to admit I felt strange keeping this kind of information from him. I knew it must be a lie, I knew there is no way it was true, and that telling him was only going to hurt our relationship but I still felt guilty about keeping things from him.

For himself, Christian seemed completely normal. Which was nice, it was good to have something normal in the midst of the craziness that was our new life on tour. The gossip magazines, which if anything were even more brutal than the ones back home, had caught on to the fact that Christian and I were dating and I now found my picture on the cover of magazines multiple times whenever I went into stores. I always avoided that section, and I never read the articles, at least not after the first time I read one in which I was described as a nobody from America with terrible fashion sense, and to face not nearly attractive enough for someone as gloriously sexy as Christian Anderson.

I got to know the other members of the band pretty quickly as well. After all, we were spending a good chunk of time together. None of them had girlfriends, although Andy had mastered the art of the one night stand and the groupies, bringing constant streams of different local girls to his room and then discarding them later. None of them seemed upset by this arrangement, and it took me about two days to realize that it was pointless to introduce myself to them as I’ve never be seeing them again.

Of all the members of the band, Jared was actually the friendliest to me. He seemed to constantly be trying to strike up a conversation, and when we went out for meals at a restaurant I found that I actually had to make an effort to sit next to Christian or Jared would try and take his seat next to me.

At first I thought it was cute, and it was actually pretty happy to have another friend here in England. As the weeks went on however and we found ourselves and closer and closer quarters, I began to find it a little bit creepy. After all, Jared knew that I was with Christian. He seemed to be trying to flirt with me constantly, and I couldn’t really tell if he was serious or not. I didn’t worry too much about it though, since after all we were never alone together and I knew nothing was going to happen between us anyways.

Then one day, everything came to a head. I was having breakfast in the reception room of the hotel were staying in, enjoying some yogurt and toast while reading one of the local papers. I was by myself, and because of that didn’t really have to worry about reporters. It was true that my picture was constantly on the cover of magazines now, but it was always with Christian. When I was by myself, the reporters simply weren’t interested in me and I enjoyed this little bit of solitude that I had.

I was just getting ready to finish up, reading the comics, when the door opened on the other side of the room. Jared poked his head in and I had to admit a part of me felt my heart sinking at the sight of him.

“Hey, Violet, what’s up?”

“Not much” I answered noncommittally.

“Just eating breakfast?”

“Yup.” I hope that my short, curt answers were going to give him the hand that he wasn’t exactly welcome to join me for breakfast. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the hint.

“Hey Violet, while I’ve got you here alone, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Yeah?”

“What is it that you see in Christian?”

“What?”

“The guys not super nice, and sure he looks good, but that’s about as deep as it gets. He is the smartest guy on the block, and I know you guys have a history together but surely would’ve been able to find someone better than him.”

“That’s a ridiculous thing to say.”

“I love you Violet. I’m only telling you this in the hopes that you’ll be Christian and come be with me instead.”

“Let me put this clearly Jared. There isn’t a chance in hell that that would ever happen. I’m with Christian, I’m happy with Christian, I love Christian, and I’m not leaving him for you.”

“You’d be way better off without him.”

“That’s absolutely none of your business, never get out. I don’t want to ever be alone with you again.”

Jared got up slowly, and made his way towards the door.

“If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me” he finished before leaving. I didn’t even reply.

I sat at the table, staring at my newspaper and my empty tub of yogurt. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. The conversation with my mom had been less than a week earlier, and now I had this stress to add to my troubles. I leaned back in my chair, through my head back, and sighed. Once again, I had to decide if I was going to tell Christian about this.

This is completely different to the conversation with my mom. This was definitely true, Jared definitely want to me to leave Christian for him. But could I tell Christian? After all, chances were Christian would be incredibly angry at Jared’s conduct, and I couldn’t guarantee that the band was going to stay together. I mean, stealing your best friend’s girlfriend isn’t exactly the sort of thing you get over in just a couple of days. This could be bad. I didn’t want to keep this information from Christian, obviously, but I also didn’t want the band to split up. I didn’t want to be the cause of that.

Once again, confusion reigned in my brain. What should I do? Should I tell Christian, let him know that one of his best friends wanted me to leave him, and risk Christian’s career? Or should I keep this information to myself, and hope that Jared got the message?

I thought about it through the day before settling on the latter. Once again, I was keeping things from Christian, and I could feel the guilt inside of me growing even bigger, but I just knew I had to do it. There was no way that I wanted to be responsible for the band breaking up, and after all it was only fair to give Jared a chance. Maybe he would realize how foolish he’d been, and maybe that would be the last I’d hear of it. I had to give him that chance.

As our tour moved into Ireland for the last leg in the UK before moving to the continent, I found myself feeling consistently depressed and wracked with guilt. My mother kept trying to call me, every few days I would have a voicemail from her, all of them saying the same thing.

“Violet, sweetie, please give me a call. I didn’t mean what I said, and I just want to talk about it.”

I knew that was my mother’s way of saying that she did mean what she said, and she wanted to convince me to come home anyway. I ignored her calls, refusing to call her back. Every time that phone rang and I pressed the ignore button I felt the sadness creeping up inside me. Before our last conversation, speaking my mom had been one of the nice things that remind me of home. But I didn’t have that anymore.

On top of that, I found myself trying to avoid Jared as much as possible. It’s actually a lot harder to do when you’re practically living with somebody then it seems. I would notice him walking down the hallway and quickly move into whatever door was closest to me, or if I was backstage with the band I would practically lock myself in Christian’s dressing room where I knew there was no chance Jared would enter.

It was like a constant cloud of guilt, fear and sadness washed over me. I don’t know how else to describe it. I’d never felt anything like it before in my life. On top of everything, I felt completely powerless to stop anything. I couldn’t change my mom’s opinion, I knew that. She was as stubborn as a mule, and always had been. If she thought Christian was bad for me, and she wanted me to move back to America, nothing I was going to say was going to change her mind about it. I just had to keep ignoring her, and keep feeling guilty about doing so.

With Jared, there was nothing I could do. I had to hope that he got the message, I had to hope that he understood that there was no chance we would ever be together, no chance that I was ever going to leave Christian for him. But again, in this situation, there was nothing I could do.

This wasn’t a healthy existence, and I think Christian noticed.

“Hey, I thought I’d take you out on one last date in Ireland before we fly out to France in a couple of days. How does that sound?”

“That sounds amazing” I replied with a smile. And it did; Christian and I hadn’t been on a proper date in a few weeks.

“I’m glad, you’re just looking a little bit down lately and I hope I can make you feel better. How about we just take a drive out into the country, and have a nice picnic along the cliffs?”

“I honestly can’t think of anything better.”

The thought of our upcoming date actually kept me going for the next few days. The next day was the last concert date, then the band had a day off before we all flew to Paris, while the stage crews took the ferry back to England and then across to France. It was on that day off that we were going to go on our date.

I went out to buy the stuff for our picnic, Christian and I agreeing that we would meet back at the hotel at around six, where he would have a convertible waiting to drive us out to the countryside, to the famous cliffs of Ireland where we would enjoy dinner by the sea. I was giddy with excitement as I picked out bread, wine, cheese, a quiche and a nice little fruit tart to be our picnic meal.

By the time I got back to the hotel it was five past six. I couldn’t wait for our date, and as I was in the parking lot I looked around for the convertible, although I didn’t see any. I wasn’t worried; it could’ve been in any of hundreds of different places around the hotel. But when I got back to our room and it was empty, then I began to worry. I looked around, but couldn’t see him. I dug out my phone and called him, but there was no reply. I went down the hall and found Andrea, but she hadn’t seen Christian at all. Eventually I came across a security guard who said he’d seen Christian leaders a little while ago, but that he hadn’t come back.

As much as I tried to force the thought from my mind, I began to realize that I’d been stood up. There was no other explanation. I was sad, angry, annoyed, basically every negative emotion it was possible for a human being to feel, I felt in that moment. I was devastated. This was going to be our special date, and I was stood up. Why would Christian do this to me? Surely there had to be a good explanation for this. I called him again, but again there was no answer.

I went back into our hotel room and began to cry. The more the tears streamed from my eyes, the better I felt. It was relaxing, it was therapeutic. I still felt terrible, but the tears helped. I opened the bottle of wine that I bought, expecting to share it with Christian, and began to drink straight from the bottle. I ended up eating my half of our picnic, right there in the middle of our hotel room, on the floor while getting drunk on wine. Tears stained the carpet where they landed, covered by crumbs of quiche and tart that fell as I ate them, the comfort food not being nearly as comforting as I’d hoped. This wasn’t my proudest moment, but I had an excuse. I’d never felt this bad before my life. I was completely miserable, for the first time since coming to England. In fact, at that moment I actually seriously considered going home.

It was like the black cloud that had been following me around doubled in size almost instantly. Christian had been my rock. He had always been there for me, always taken care of me. It wasn’t like him at all to do something like this, and as I sat in the room and cried I realized that without him I was actually quite lonely. I was lonely, I was sad, I was angry and there was nothing I could do about anything once again, except cry.

After a while, Christian came back into the hotel room. He looked shocked to see me on the floor, tears streaming down my face, half the food I bought earlier completely eaten.

“Violet? What’s wrong?”

Maybe it was the wine speaking, but I practically exploded in anger.

“Are you kidding me? You’re asking me what’s wrong? How dare you? You stand me up on a date, you expect me to just come back here and pretend like nothing’s wrong?”

“Stand you up on a date? What are you talking about?”

I struggled to my feet and motioned to the half eaten food and empty bottle of wine, gesticulating wildly in the manner of all drunks.

“What on earth you think this is for? Did you completely forget that we had a date planned? We were going to go drive out the cliffs, we were going to have a nice, romantic dinner that was going to make me feel just a little bit better during this week from hell, and instead I come back here and find out you’ve left. I fucking hate you.”

“Hold on, hold on. What on earth are you talking about? I thought our date was canceled. And what do you mean a week from hell?”

“What gave you the impression that our date was canceled? Was the only thing I’ve been looking forward to in days.” I was starting to calm down slightly, but I could still feel the rage burning inside of me.

“Jared came by earlier and I mentioned the date and then he remembered that you had asked him to tell me that it was canceled. Jared said that you had a bit of a bug and decided to stay in tonight, so I went and grabbed dinner with the guys.”

“That stupid piece of shit. I can’t fucking believe he would go and do that.”

“What? Why would Jared make something up like that?”

I spend the next five minutes drunkenly telling Christian all about Jared’s advances over the last few weeks, culminating in our confrontation when I was having breakfast. I told Jared everything, realizing there was no way I could keep this from him any longer. As I continued my story, Jared’s face began to go ashen.

“I can’t believe it. I cannot honestly believe he would do something like that, he supposed be my best friend.”

“Please don’t say anything about it to him, Christian. Let me deal with it. I promise you, I can deal with it.”

“How can I just sit there and let him try and steal you from me?”

“I promise you Christian, he won’t succeed. But you have to let me deal with this, you can’t risk the band, you can’t risk everybody breaking up. I’ve seen you on stage, I know what the music means to you. I don’t want to be the reason that you’re no longer able to do it.”

“Violet, if it meant being with you for the rest of my life I’d never sing another note again. But I think you’re right, I won’t say anything for now. I just won’t trust anything Jared tells me about you.”