Indigo Rain

by Elise Noble

  “Travis Thorne?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Talking, you say?”

  “Yes, talking. That was all. We were discussing song lyrics, and then someone screamed.”

  “We heard reports that there may have been drug use involved. Did you see anything?”

  Oh, shit. I’d go straight to hell for this, but although taking drugs was wrong, I couldn’t risk ruining people’s careers and livelihoods over a moment of stupidity. Not when everyone who’d got high tonight had done so voluntarily.

  I shook my head. “All I saw was alcohol. Will Jae-Lin be okay?”

  “It looks that way. They’ll keep her in overnight in case there’s a secondary reaction.”

  He closed his notepad, and the band around my chest loosened a smidgen.

  “Are you done with the questions? Can I go now?”

  “I’ll need to take your details first.”

  “Sure.”

  I gave my name and address, seething. Tessa had always said there was a bad girl inside me waiting to escape, but I wasn’t sure lying to the police was quite what she had in mind. I didn’t know who I was crosser with—Indigo Rain and their buddies for putting me in that position, or me for allowing them to.

  And that anger bubbled over into words once the emergency services had left and Rush tried to give me a hug.

  “Nice going, Instababe.”

  I shoved him halfway across the room.

  “Don’t you dare ‘Instababe’ me. My name is Alana. Not that it matters to you anymore, because I quit.” I stared daggers at everyone left in the room, with a particular focus on Rush, Travis, and JD. “The three of you need to re-evaluate your fucking priorities.”

  I stomped out of the room and slammed the door behind me. Who cared if it fell off its hinges? With all the other damage in the suite, nobody would even notice.

  Downstairs, I threw myself onto my bed. Well, that was my illustrious showbiz career finished. Just for good measure, I uninstalled Instagram and turned my phone off. I’d find another job. One that didn’t involve illegal activities. Writing stories about a bunch of crusty old politicians had never looked so appealing.

  The knocking at my door was soft at first, so soft I thought I’d imagined it. But it kept going, insistent, and I stumbled across the room in a baggy T-shirt and yoga pants to inform whoever had woken me up at three o’clock in the morning of the error of their ways.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked JD.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Why?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Then you can say whatever you need to say here.”

  JD didn’t look like a rock star anymore. Floppy blond hair fell over his face, and his eyes were puffy. Bloodshot. He’d gone fuzzy, as if someone had tried to erase his lifeblood.

  “Okay.” He grasped the doorjamb for support. “I need to apologise for what happened earlier. We all behaved like assholes, but I was the worst. I’ve never seen anyone sick like that before. I was scared, and I panicked, and I know that’s no excuse but I guess self-preservation kicked in or something.”

  Tempting though it was to shut the door in his face and go back to bed, I appreciated that it had taken a lot for him to come down to my room. Had he ever had to apologise for anything else in his life?

  “You’d better come in. We can’t talk about this out here.”

  Secretly, I was curious about JD. Call it my inner journalist. What made him tick? How had he gone from sleeping in his car, as Travis had mentioned, to trashing hotel rooms?

  I sat on the edge of the bed, and JD turned the desk chair around to face me. When he sat, he leaned forward, elbows on his knees so we were less than a metre apart.

  “Jae-Lin could have died tonight, JD.”

  “I know. If Zeph hadn’t broken the bathroom door down, and if you hadn’t come…”

  “He broke the door down?”

  “Verity was mad because she needed to take a piss.”

  “And that necessitated destroying the door?”

  “She heard someone moaning and thought they’d gone in there to f—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it.”

  “It’s rude when there’s only one bathroom.”

  It was also rude out in public, but I sort of understood his point.

  “So they broke in and found her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s dangerous when people with serious allergies get so drunk they don’t know what they’re eating. She obviously realised there was a problem if she carried an EpiPen.”

  “There wasn’t any shellfish. Hell, the only food we had was pizza. The cops said it must’ve been cross-contamination from the kitchen. It was an accident. A stupid accident, and then we made it even worse.”

  “Yes, you did. I can deal with most things, but not the drugs. What if I’d been arrested?”

  “Getting arrested isn’t that bad.”

  Don’t kill the rock star, Alana.

  “Forgive me if I don’t want to try it,” I said, with as much piss and vinegar in my voice as I could muster.

  “Sorry.”

  Dammit, he looked so contrite that now I was the one who felt bad. “Fine, apology accepted. Can I get some sleep now?”

  “Are you really gonna quit?”

  “I’ll get the train back to London.”

  “Rush doesn’t want you to quit. Neither does Travis.”

  “Well, they should have thought about that earlier. Actions have consequences, JD.”

  Shit, now I sounded like someone’s mother. Not mine, obviously, because she’d delegated my upbringing to a series of nannies and the occasional au pair.

  “What if we cut down on the parties?”

  “I don’t care about the parties, just the illegal substances. Can you cut down on those?”

  JD sat back and sighed. “That’s mostly me, and I’ve tried. Gary and Ian started fining us five hundred bucks every time one of us got drunk or high.”

  “And?”

  “I couldn’t afford to pay my rent, and my landlord took back my apartment. Rush had to sell his car.”

  Freaking hell. “What about rehab? Have you tried rehab?”

  “I don’t have time for rehab right now. I think Gary and Frank are gonna send me after the tour ends. If it ever does. They keep adding more dates.”

  “Who’s Frank?”

  “Our manager.”

  “I thought that was Ian?”

  “No, he’s the tour manager. Frank’s the band manager.”

  The band manager who put profits above JD’s health. Travis was right—nobody cared. Was there any hope for them? The three amigos made Dex look almost normal. And speaking of my favourite grumpy bassist…

  “Where was Dex tonight?”

  “Who knows? He doesn’t party much.”

  Sometimes, I had to concede Dex had the right idea.

  What should I do? Despite their many shortcomings, Rush, Travis, and JD were oddly likeable, and I’d had a great time at the concert. Now that my adrenaline had seeped away, I understood I’d lashed out earlier in shock and fear, and perhaps I’d been too hasty. This wasn’t my dream job, but it was a chance to sneak a glimpse into a world normally closed off to girls like me.

  “I’ll stay, but I’m not going to any more of your parties if you have drugs there. Or if people are having sex in front of me because I really don’t need to see that. And I’m not travelling on the tour bus if you’ve got illegal substances on board.”

  “We don’t have coke on the bus. Our dealer delivers.”

  I held up a hand. “Stop! I don’t want to know any of this.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Just let me get some rest. We’re in Liverpool tomorrow?”

  “Leaving at nine.”

  I closed the door behind JD, then leaned on it and closed my eyes. Dammit, Alana. How badly would I regret this in the morning?

  CHAPTER 8 - ALANA


  IT WAS A subdued rock band that climbed onto the tour bus on Wednesday morning. Either that or they were still asleep, which was entirely possible. I felt like a zombie myself.

  According to Google, the journey to Liverpool would take two and a half hours, and I’d hoped to spend most of that snoozing. But Ian had other plans.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing last night?” he yelled at everyone. “You promised you’d go straight to bed, then you destroyed an entire hotel suite. Again.”

  Rush shrugged, unapologetic. “A few people came over.”

  “It’s splashed across the internet. The police were called, and everyone’s saying a girl overdosed.”

  “She didn’t overdose. She had an allergic reaction.”

  “You really think people will believe that?”

  “Who cares?”

  “Frank’s flown in to sort out the mess, and I’ll warn you—Gary’s not happy.”

  “What’s fuckin’ new?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s new—from now on, we’re implementing an extra tour rule. Anyone caught with more than two visitors in one hotel room gets a thousand-dollar fine.”

  “That’s you fucked, buddy,” JD said to Travis. “You’ll have to cancel the triplets tonight.”

  Rush snorted. “That’s him not fucked, you mean.”

  “You can’t keep sabotaging your careers like this,” Ian said. “Thousands of people have booked to see you on this tour, and your fans don’t want to witness you acting like hooligans.”

  “Bullshit. That’s exactly what they want. You think they’d pay to see choirboys?”

  “Everybody’s patience is wearing thin. Anyone would think you wanted this tour to end.”

  “We do.”

  Ian ignored that comment and pointed to the back of the bus. “Get some sleep.”

  I tried to follow, but Ian put out an arm to stop me. “Not you.”

  “Why? I need sleep too.”

  “The boys have had quite enough distractions for one day. If you want to sleep, you can do that on the seat here.”

  What an asshole. Four spare bunks and an empty lounge, and I had to squash onto a bench beside Reagan and Courtney.

  “Do you think it’s true?” Courtney whispered.

  “Think what’s true?”

  “That the girl last night had an allergic reaction?”

  “She did. I was there.”

  Reagan’s eyes narrowed. “You were there?”

  “Not for very long. I was on my way to my room when Jae-Lin got sick, but somebody screamed, and I ran back.”

  I carefully left out any mention of my little chat with Travis. Everyone here seemed to have a different agenda, and I hadn’t yet worked out whose side the two girls were on. Wow. This tour was actually more political than Parliament.

  “And?”

  “And she’d gone into anaphylactic shock, so I used her EpiPen.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  Why did they look so surprised? I may not have understood how the world worked yet, but I wasn’t entirely stupid.

  “But I thought you were just here to do Instagram?”

  “Right. Next time there’s a girl dying at my feet, I’ll just post pictures instead.”

  “There’s no need to get snippy.”

  Reagan turned away from me in a huff, and I mentally filed her in the “too stupid to live, too mean to die” category.

  Courtney gave me a helpless “she’s always like this” smile. I rolled my eyes back, and she giggled. Yes, Courtney was okay, but I’d have to watch my back when it came to Reagan.

  The band killed it on stage again while I slumped against a stack of equipment boxes in the wings and tried desperately not to fall asleep. Even with earplugs in, the noise was deafening, and the bass vibrated through my core with every chord Dex played.

  Gary had been incandescent with rage when we arrived in Liverpool, shouting red-faced about professional behaviour and potential cancellation costs and legal fees. Dex had walked off first, and Gary had only yelled louder as the others followed.

  I’d started making notes for my article in the afternoon, but as the saying went, truth was stranger than fiction. Who would believe all the crazy stuff I’d seen so far? A rock group at the pinnacle of their career who hated their jobs, the secret personalities of four so-called bad boys, and a record-label exec who popped antacids like candy.

  Especially as I told a different story with my photos. Yes, I’d reinstalled Instagram, and the boys put on a show for the camera, leaping around the stage as they played their hearts out.

  Perhaps I should suggest a few more candid shots to Rush? Rehearsal pictures, snaps from the tour bus, that sort of thing. Real life without the sparkle.

  Rush grabbed me and spun me around as they came off stage. Great. Now I was sweaty as well as tired.

  “Did you get good pictures, Insta—”

  I glared at him.

  “Instalana?”

  Better. At least he was trying. Very trying.

  “I got some good shots, but I’ll need to edit them when we get back to the hotel. No party tonight, right?”

  “No party.”

  And no more hotel suites either. From now on, Gary insisted the boys got basic rooms only, and worse, they had to share. JD grumbled about Dex’s snoring, and Travis complained about Rush’s untidiness, but Gary refused to budge. Four guys, two rooms, no minibars, and he’d even cleared the alcohol out of the fridge on the bus and replaced it with juice and mineral water. Wasn’t this the funnest tour ever?

  At the hotel, Rush clutched the bottles of whisky and vodka he’d managed to score at the venue while Travis carried their bags. Teamwork, rock star-style. I half expected Travis to have at least two out of the three aforementioned triplets in tow, but tonight, he’d returned alone.

  He didn’t break all of his habits, though. When I went out in search of ice just after midnight, he was back in his favourite spot. The good news was that I didn’t trip over him this time. The bad news? Dex was with him.

  “I’m just looking for ice,” I said, holding out my glass to prove I wasn’t lying.

  “One floor down,” Dex told me.

  I tried to squeeze past, but Travis reached up and grabbed my hand.

  “Hey, wait.”

  “What?”

  “I never thanked you. For last night, I mean. I know JD spoke to you, but me and Rush owe you an apology too. We’d have been in so much shit if you hadn’t done what you did.”

  “Do you mean the part where I saved Jae-Lin’s life or the part where I lied to the police about your drugs afterwards?”

  “Fuck.” Travis dropped his head back against the wall with a quiet thunk. “All of it.”

  “I don’t like clearing up your mess.”

  “Cut him some slack,” Dex said.

  “Oh, you mean like you do with me? You’ve been nothing but hostile since I arrived.”

  “She’s right, buddy.”

  “Shit.” Dex slithered down the wall, wincing as he landed. “I figured you were the same as all the others.”

  “What others?”

  “The brainless bimbos that buzz around Rush and Travis, sticking phone numbers in their pockets and poking holes in condoms.”

  “Seriously? They do that?”

  Travis nodded. “Rule number one of being a rock star, blue-eyes. Always bring your own protection.”

  “Wow.” I shook my head to clear the image of an evil bitch with a pincushion. “For your information, my only goal in this whole debacle is to write an essay that convinces my university supervisor I can take all the waffle I’ve learned in my journalism studies course and apply it to the real world. I don’t want a notch on my bedpost or a nasty surprise in nine months’ time. Nor do I want to get arrested or appear in the press myself. Got it?”

  Dex chuckled. He actually chuckled. “Rush was right. You’re a ball-buster.”

  That was wha
t he thought? No, I wasn’t tough. I’d just gone into this game with a kill-or-be-killed mentality, and my emotions were all over the place. Three days with Indigo Rain felt like a year.

  “I am not a ball-buster.”

  “Sweetheart, that’s a compliment.”

  “I’m not your sweetheart either. And if you’ll excuse me, I was on my way to get ice.”

  This time, it was Dex’s turn to grab my arm.

  “Trav, get her some ice, would you?”

  Oh, no, no, no. Because that would leave me alone with Dex.

  “I can get it myself.”

  But Travis was already on his feet, holding out his good hand for my glass. “Sure.”

  His footsteps receded down the tiled stairs while I stood opposite Dex and his attitude with only a chasm of awkwardness separating us.

  He spoke first. “My problems can’t go in your article.”

  “I won’t publish anything you haven’t approved. I’ve already said that.”

  “Yeah, well, journalists lie.”

  “I’m a journalism student, and a lot’s changed since I started my course. I don’t even want to be a journalist anymore. But I need to finish my degree and get that piece of paper because otherwise, I’ve wasted two years of my life.”

  So many employers wanted you to have a degree. Without one, it was difficult to get interviews. Unless you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, it often didn’t matter what you’d studied as long as you had letters after your name. They just wanted to know that you could apply yourself and learn.

  Dex stayed silent, so I carried on. “It’s obvious there’s something wrong. I don’t need to be a journalist or a genius to see the pain in your eyes.”

  Which he closed, blocking me out. Where was Travis with the damn ice?

  “Arthritis,” Dex finally said. “I have osteoarthritis in my knees. Some days I can hardly walk.”

  “Arthritis? But you’re so young.”

  “Nobody told my bones that.”

  “But why is it such a big secret?”

  “Rock stars drink. They do drugs. They screw girls, and they smash up hotel rooms. They don’t walk around like old men at the age of twenty-five. And Gary thinks the cost of our tour insurance would go up if the news got out.”

  “Then Gary’s an even bigger asshole than I first thought.”