Yeah, I’d done my research. So what? I wanted to know more about this band that the only man who’d ever touched my heart had started.
Then came the girl. Haley. She was sporting bright green hair, now, done up in a high pony that made the most of her pixie-like facial features. Enormous eyes. Tiny button nose. Even tinier mouth. High, wide cheekbones and a cute, sharp chin. She would have made a good model, I thought, giving my professional side the control for a moment. For one of those labels that preferred their girls to look forever young. Or maybe one of the labels that catered to younger girls—tweens and those slightly older. Labels that wanted cute little girls who fit the mold of what they thought their customers looked like.
She never could have done high fashion, or even the runways. Too short, first of all, and too young-looking. She wasn’t as willowy as me, or as classic-looking. She would be interesting for a day, maybe two—longer, if she could somehow get that It Girl status. If she could make a big enough splash by doing something dramatic, or even just being the best at a certain show. Hell, if a photographer in high standing took a liking to her and shot enough pictures of just her, it might have made her career.
But she wouldn’t have any true lasting power. Too niche.
I shook my head, surprised at myself. Sure, I’d been in this industry for longer than almost anyone else in my age group, and it made sense to look at people that way. I’d spent the last ten years looking at the people around me and not only figuring out how to be better than them, but figuring out how long they’d even be my competition. So much of my job depended on that. So much of my longevity had come down to figuring out how to be longer-lasting than the other girls. This was just experience speaking.
But I could see my angle for exactly what it was. I was comparing myself to her. Setting us up in a competition. And using my stomping ground to do it. Making absolutely sure she would fail.
“Come on, Lex, grow up,” I muttered.
Then, I took a deep breath and examined my heart a little closer—and was shocked at what I found. There was a method behind my madness, a reason for that faux competition.
I was jealous of that girl. Hotly and very greenly jealous. Absolutely sidelined by it. That was the girl Rian’s label had set him up with. She was the one who got to hold his hand and go out with him. The one who got to smile for the cameras while she leaned her head up against his chest, who got to pull him in to dance with her when there was a slow song on in the club they’d booked out for the night, who got to clasp his hand to her chest and look up into his eyes, playing for the audience.
Had they slept together? I wondered. Had they gone home, gone through the same door, and fallen into bed together, ripping off each other’s clothes in their need to be up against each other? How far did this so-called fake relationship go?
The thought made me sick to my stomach. But I forced myself to look at it, consider it. Forced myself to acknowledge that it was a possibility.
Even now, she was turning with what was no doubt supposed to be a proud and affectionate smile, staring at the side of the stage where I assumed Rian was waiting, lifting her hands to welcome him onto the stage. Welcome him into her waiting arms.
This was the girl he was with. He claimed it was all an act. Sophie made it sound like it was something else entirely.
And he’d still come to me. Still taken me to his bed and made love to me. Still told me that I was the one. But at the end of the day, I’d thrown him away—for this girl, and the sake of his public relationship with her. And if he never spoke to me again, I knew I would blame this girl. Even if it was fake. Even if they didn’t mean anything to each other. Because I’d walked out on him specifically because that relationship—whether it was fake or not—was an important part of his reputation and, therefore, career.
I groaned aloud. I was jealous. Horribly and heartrendingly jealous. Of some punk-rock pixie girl who looked like she lived on sugary candy.
How pathetic.
Then, Rian came on stage and I forgot all about her in the rush of euphoria I felt at seeing him again. I started screaming my head off and jumping up and down, clapping wildly with the rest of the crowd as if I was just one more fangirl, there to see my rock music crush.
Once they started playing, I saw exactly why the crowd was so excited. They were really, really good. And Rian’s voice was everything I’d thought it could be. I’d never been to see them live before—never had a reason to go to a show like this—but now that I was here, I couldn’t contain my excitement. And it was all for him, all focused straight on the man with the wild blond hair, jumping and weaving and screaming his lungs out on stage. I couldn’t believe I’d actually found him. Couldn’t believe I’d managed to get around the system, secured a ticket for tonight—it had taken calling in three different favors that I’d been saving for a rainy day—and made it there.
The man I’d been seeking was right there, maybe a hundred feet from me. I was there. We were under the same roof—again. And this time, I wasn’t going to let him get away from me.
Oh sure, I was only halfway there. I still had the little matter of getting backstage to take care of, or I’d never even be able to see him. I wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d be coming out into the crowd, conveniently right there for me to run up to him. I would have to get backstage, and then figure out where he would be.
But I had a plan for that one.
I danced and screamed and sang with the crowd for the entire show, and by the end, I was so exhausted I didn’t know how people did this for multiple nights in a row. I damn sure didn’t know how anyone in the band was still standing. But standing they were, and they came back onstage once, and then again, to play encores, then took their final bows and filed out, Rian’s hand on Haley’s back.
I glared after them, chewing on my lip, and then got to work.
Pushing my chest out, I plumped my lips into a pout, coaxed my eyes into being a bit bigger, and headed for the bouncers who were currently guarding the door to the backstage area. They were the gatekeepers. They were the ones I needed to convince.
Luckily for me, I had a famous face and had spent the last ten years of my life learning how to act like my life depended on it. This was going to be a piece of cake.
Alexis
The first bouncer was easy. He took one look at me, glanced at my ID, and ushered me past him with a shy grin. The second gave me a little bit of trouble. But after some more pouting and an episode of looking up at him from under my lashes and telling him that I’d wanted to meet Rian for years and would be forever indebted to him if he helped that happen, the second guy finally gave me a smile. He stood to the side, gesturing through the door—to an outcry from the rest of the crowd around us, all of whom had been trying to get through the exact same door.
I gave him a small smile of thanks and kept the sly, triumphant grin to myself until I was through that door and into the maze beyond.
From there, it got tougher. I walked quickly up one hall and down another, past so many doors I lost count of them, each door bearing a helpful label like Staff Only, or Crew Food. No matter how many corners I turned or how many doors I tried, I didn’t see anything conveniently labeled Open Here to Find Rian Cassady.
If that was how every venue looked, it was no wonder they didn’t let normal people back there. They’d have had lawsuits galore after people got lost and died of starvation.
Don’t get me wrong, I did see a lot of people back there, but none of them looked very friendly, and everyone seemed to be in a terrible hurry. They were carrying clipboards and rushing from here to there, shouting things in passing to each other. I wasn’t exactly going to interrupt any of them from their important errands to ask where I could find the band 858—and, most importantly, its lead singer. They probably heard that all the time and were completely over it. They’d probably laugh in my face for being just another groupie—and a lost one at that. One or two might even recognize me, but then I ran
a risk I hadn’t really thought about until right then: that it would get to the press that I’d been there, looking for Rian, and lost.
Ugh, I could have done just as much damage that way, and I hadn’t even thought about it. What would the reporters say if they found me in that situation? How could I have possibly explained that I was there because we were friends, and nothing more—and that I was there without him knowing because…
Because what? What could I possibly say? And how the hell hadn’t I thought about this before?
I quickened my steps, feeling a new and serious sense of tension. Please, I thought, let me find the right hallway. Let me find the right room. How many could there be? This building had to be a finite size, and there had to be a limit on the number of doors.
Surely, at some point, I would find the right one.
I let that thought finish right there, and carefully didn’t think about what I might find Rian doing behind that door. I further neglected to think about who I might find him with. And finally, I definitely, definitely didn’t think about whether or not he would hear me out—or if he would forgive me and want to be involved with me in the future.
Those were problems for when I found him. Right then, I had to find him before he did anything stupid like leave the premises.
Then, quite suddenly, I saw someone that I did recognize. And with the way my luck had been going, I guessed I shouldn’t have been surprised that it was the last person in the entire world I wanted to see. Right then, or ever.
Haley was striding around the corner, her face completely changed from the excited pixie she’d been on stage. She had her hair down, now, and I could see that it was tangled and sweaty. She still had on her punk-rock princess makeup, but her face had morphed from pixie girl to pissed-off drama queen, and she looked…
Frightening. Aggressive.
Turned out rock stars were wearing masks, too. And they could take them off just as easily as models. Not that this was any big revelation. I’d known Rian long enough after a single day to know that his entire rock star persona was just that: a mask that he put on when he needed to. It was one of the things I’d liked so much about him, right from the start. One of the reasons I thought he understood me so well.
But when he took off his mask, he was still completely lovable. This girl…I didn’t think she was anything like him.
I stared at her for several moments, wondering if she’d help me at all. Wondering if it was worth braving that anger for an answer to my need. Then, I decided that she was a familiar face, and even if she didn’t know who I was, she should at least be able to point me toward where the rest of her band was hanging out.
“Excuse me,” I said, putting a hand out to stop her. “I’m looking for Rian Cassady. I’m an old friend. He asked me to meet him here so we could have a talk.”
She paused and looked me up and down, her mouth twisted up into a grimace like I smelled bad or something. Then she huffed out a laugh and shook her head.
“You girls are getting less and less creative with your stories,” she muttered. “Get lost. He doesn’t want to see you or anyone else. If he was interested in dealing with fans, he would have gone to the autograph area. You’ll notice he’s not there—and he’s not planning on making an appearance. I suggest you find someone else to hassle.”
She brushed past me without another word, leaving me staring after her, shocked. Wow. We might be backstage and she might have taken her mask off, but standard publicity manners meant she should still treat a fan with a certain level of respect. Anything less and you risked blowing your cover. It was one of the first things we learned when we started dealing with fans in the modeling industry—and it shouldn’t have been any different in the music industry.
Respect was respect, and fans were always the ones who were paying for you to live the life you had. Unless they were attacking you in some way, you went out of your way to be kind to them. To at least be polite.
I shook my head, my respect for her falling even further, and then spotted a bathroom on the other side of the hallway. Oh, good. I really needed to pee.
I hustled toward it, putting the search for Rian on the back burner for the next five minutes.
Rian
I rushed after Haley, hissing her name, and was nearly hit by some girl who went sprinting across the hallway right in front of me. She ducked into a door—the bathroom, I saw as I strode past—and I immediately forgot about her and increased my pace, trying to catch my fake girlfriend.
Since my legs were longer than hers and she refused to run, I caught her before the hall broke into two and grabbed her arm, spinning her toward me.
“What do you want?” she hissed at me, her teeth bared in what could only be called a snarl. She yanked her arm out of my grasp and backed up several steps to get away from me.
“I want you to talk to me,” I hissed back.
We were whispering for a very good reason. We weren’t supposed to be in this section of the building, and we definitely weren’t supposed to be having an argument in a place where any member of the public might happen across us. But she’d rushed out of our lounge so quickly that I hadn’t had a chance to stop her, and she’d been walking fast enough that I’d almost lost her in the maze of hallways. In the end, I was lucky to have seen a flash of green out of the corner of my eye and guessed correctly that it was her hair.
She was furious with me. And I couldn’t really blame her. I’d put everything at risk—though it wasn’t even a recent situation. It had been nearly two months earlier.
It also hadn’t been my fault. Not really.
“What were you thinking?” she whispered back, her eyes narrowed and throwing acid my direction. “A full week in a hotel with someone else? A hotel in the middle of nowhere, totally deserted except for you two? And you didn’t think anyone would find out about it?”
I took a deep breath. Damn, she was really playing up this girlfriend thing. Anyone watching us would have thought this was a real fight, not one we were having to manufacture. Or, rather…they would have thought this was a fight that had started because Haley was jealous. Not because she was worried about me having risked her career.
I closed the distance between us and grabbed her arms so she couldn’t get away from me again. I didn’t want to have to shout.
“Haley, it’s not like I had any choice in the matter. Which you know,” I said firmly. “I was stuck. She was stuck. We didn’t choose it. And it’s not like we were there without anyone else knowing about it. We both had security there, taking care of us. John was the one who was supposed to get me out of there. He knew exactly where I was and exactly what I was doing.”
“Everything you were doing? I doubt that very much,” she replied, scowling. “Not like there was anyone there to truly watch you, was there? You two could have done anything you wanted, and no one would have been the wiser.”
I paused for a moment, confused. “Haley, are you actually jealous? Is that what this is?”
She threw my hands off, scoffing. “Get real, Rian. You know I don’t care who you fuck. I don’t care about you at all. I’d be happier to be rid of you, honestly. Rid of the entire band. Did you know that? Did you know that I just want out of this situation? Out of this band? Doing things on my own, the way I want to do them? But no, I can’t do that. Can’t leave the mighty Rian Cassady and his terrific band that I’m so lucky to be a part of. Everyone would think I’m crazy.”
Right, well I definitely hadn’t known any of that. I mean, I’d known she didn’t care what I did with my time. But I didn’t know she wanted out of the band.
“So leave, then,” I said, confused. “If you’re so unhappy, leave.”
“I can’t!” she shouted—for real, shouted—in my face. “I can’t do that until I have a good reason. Until then, I’m locked in that stupid, bullshit contract. Get out of my way!”
She shoved past me, moving in the direction from which she’d just come, and I kept going f
orward. I didn’t understand the problem. Someone was going to break the story about Alexis and me being stuck in that hotel in China, but they weren’t going to say that anything had happened between us—because no one knew that anything had. Still, it was the perfect excuse. If Haley wanted out, she could say that she thought I was cheating on her and break it off. It would have been a perfectly good reason.
Of course, it would have violated the contract for her to do that. But if she wanted out badly enough…
I was sick of the girl. Sick of her drama, sick of her attitude, sick of the problems she was always causing.
Honestly, I thought that if she could find a way to leave the band, it would probably be the best thing for all of us.
Alexis
When I was done in the bathroom, I walked quickly toward the sink, my mind already on finding a hallway I hadn’t tried yet. Maybe the one Haley had come out of? It seemed like a sure bet—at least as a general direction.
Then, I looked up and realized that there were mirrors right over the sinks. Of course there were. What women’s bathroom didn’t have those mirrors? I stepped back and looked myself up and down, judging my appearance.
This was going to be the first time I saw Rian since that incredibly hot night after the bookstore. And I’d put a lot of time and effort into my outfit with that in mind. I was wearing skinny black jeans and a bright red top—red was my best color—and had pulled my hair back into a messy bun. Red lipstick and a brush of mascara had finished the ensemble, and I looked both casual and glamorous, just as I’d planned.
I hoped it worked. The thought of him had my heart racing again, and my stomach—and the area just below it—were heating up in a way that made me breathe deeply and let my eyes drift closed, my mind going to the way Rian had kissed me when he saw me in that bookstore, the way his mouth had dragged over mine, owning me more thoroughly than I’d ever been owned before.
How To Have Surprise Quadruplets (How To... Book 2) Page 11
