I found my eyes lingering on Gardener Girl, despite my desire to keep this strictly focused on revenge.
“Stagehand?” I asked, ignoring her impatience. “Decided gardening wasn’t demeaning enough?”
I thought she had been glaring before, but now she was glaring. “You know exactly what happened to my old life.”
It was still there. That old fire she carried with her. The ability to look me in the eye and feel something other than blind admiration.
“My memory is foggy.”
“I don’t have the patience for this,” she said, turning to leave.
“Stop. I have an offer for you.”
She wheeled on me, eyes wild. Some of the emotion she must have been barely caging showed through now when her voice came out tight and forced. “I don’t want your offer. I don’t want anything to do with you. Ever. Again.”
“Two hundred thousand dollars. For six months of your time.” I was pulling numbers out of my ass, but I knew I didn’t have long before she walked out the door and probably out of my life for good this time. That was an unacceptable outcome. Gardener Girl didn’t get to leave again, not unless this old game ends the way I want.
She rolled her eyes and reached for the door handle.
“I’m serious. I need your help. I have writer’s block. Can’t write a fucking song to save my life for the past six months. It’s why I haven’t released a new album in so long.”
It was the truth, more of it than I had wanted to give, but I was desperate, I realized. I needed this. I didn’t need her. I wasn't that fucking pathetic. I just… I needed a taste of my old life. Back when I thought making it here would fix everything. I'd made it as a bonafide rock star, a celebrity. Besides, Aribella was the only girl I'd ever wanted to fuck and never got to. In six months, if I couldn't get her in my bed, I'd hang up my guitar.
Who knew, she might actually help me write a song again, too. It would be something different. She might spark some little flame of inspiration and get me on the right track again. Then I could cast her aside once I’d straightened things out with my life, once I’d proved to myself and everyone else that I hadn’t actually needed her all along.
“You don’t need my help. You need a professional. A psychiatrist, maybe. Or better yet, maybe rehab.” Her eyes scanned the countertop beside the couch, where prescription pill bottles were arrayed with pot and even some more hardcore stuff one of Taylor’s friends must’ve brought in. Alcohol, pot, and maybe a couple pills were as bad as I got. I left the dumber stuff to Taylor, while Brent, the schoolgirl, would only sip a beer or two if he was feeling wild.
“This shit is a problem?” I asked. “I’ll quit it. Cold turkey.” Again. I was so pathetically desperate it hurt. Cold turkey? I’d been half-assed trying to quit all the shit I was putting into my body for years now with no success. What made me think I could pull it off now?
She finally turns her body away from the door to look at me again, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes. “I don’t get it. Why are you suddenly so desperate for my help? Why did you call everyone in here? You couldn’t have known I was going to be one of the stagehands. Tell me exactly what’s going on if you want me to even consider helping you, not that you have a chance in hell of that, by the way.”
She was so goddamn fiery. So stubborn. I thought about how satisfying it would be to chip away at her stubborn resistance and feel her lips melt into mine while I grabbed a fistful of that ridiculous purple hair. A small voice in my head whispered that I wanted more. I wanted the way she filled in all my holes, all the places where life had punched straight through me without bothering to repair the damage. Even if that was true, I could fix myself. I was a grown ass man and I had more money than God. More adoring fans than I could meet in a lifetime. I didn't need some washed up gardener's daughter to make me whole. I just needed a fuck. A long overdue fuck.
And Gardener Girl needed to learn she was playing with fire. Offering her money was the nice approach. An olive branch, for old time’s sake. Now she was going to see why I always get my way. There was no tactic too low. No move too ruthless. I always won.
“Because you helped set up the stage and you also helped cause this little accident. I might be forced to miss my next few concerts. Who knows. Maybe I’ll need a month off. Two months. Three. Maybe the emotional damage of embarrassing myself in front of the crowd will give me performance anxiety. Hell, the video of me falling is probably already trending on YouTube. Imagine the financial damage to my brand.”
“For what? A twisted ankle and a scratch?”
She wasn't wrong. I might have to hobble my sorry ass around on crutches for a couple days and wear a band-aid, but frankly, I didn't care. All that mattered her getting on my tour bus. I'd worry about the rest later, and I'd do what I needed to get her there.
“You think it matters how bad it is or isn’t?” I asked.
It finally sinks in for her then. Some of the color drains from her face. I see a glint of the young girl I tormented in Belvedere then. Helpless but still so deliciously defiant.
“I wasn’t even the one who was managing the cords.” Her voice had lost the note of defiance it held just moments ago. She already knew it didn’t matter. I knew she was too good to throw someone under the bus if it came to it, and she knew I was heartless enough to twist reality and pay out the ass for lawyers to slant the story in whatever way I needed. It was checkmate.
She twisted the bottom of her t-shirt in her fingertips, swallowed hard, and looked like she might be sick with anger and outrage. She also knew she wasn’t in a position to test me. It felt so good to break through her defiance, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t the slightest bit of guilt mingling with the satisfaction. I wouldn’t actually do anything like what I was threatening if she said no. Not to her. I knew she believed I would after what happened when we were kids, though, and that was all it took.
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
“You will travel with me for six months. You’ll be on the tour bus, the private jet, in our hotels, and backstage at concerts. And you’ll help clean my gruesome injury every day,” I said, pointing to the gash on my face.
“Gruesome? That will be healed in a week. No way,” she said simply.
“Then I’ll ruin your life. Again. But I think it would be harder to recover from this one. Don’t you?”
She closed her eyes, breathing deep and probably feeling the hopelessness settle around her like a thick fog. She was screwed, and she realized it.
“If I was actually considering this, which I’m not,” she said, but all the determination had gone out of her voice, and I knew she was just stalling because she didn’t want to accept the truth. “I would need my own room, and you wouldn’t get to be my boss. No wound cleaning. Nothing sexual, and no—”
I forced a laugh, like she just suggested something ridiculous, even though my mind was already playing out a scene of her moaning for me at ten thousand feet and while the tour bus bumped beneath us. “I need a muse. If I need sex, I’ll look elsewhere. Trust me. And the wound cleaning isn’t negotiable. You’ll come to my room every night and clean it up.”
I wasn’t sure why I was pushing the issue of the wound so hard, but I didn’t have to dig too deep to figure it out. I probably just figured if I got her in my room enough times I was bound to end up getting her to stay there. I doubted it even needed cleaning, but who gave a shit.
“I said nothing sexual,” she said, eyes hard.
“You can come to my room in the morning. Or I’ll come to yours. I don’t give a shit.”
“My room. In the morning. And nothing weird is going to happen.”
“I mean,” I said, grinning a little, even though it hurt to move my face at all right now. “Changing my bandages is going to be pretty weird.”
She looked at me like I was an idiot, and I enjoyed every second of it. It felt good fucking with her again. I knew where her buttons were, like old fa
miliar friends, and I missed pressing them. “Yes. It will be extremely weird. This whole situation is extremely weird. Why don’t you just let me walk out of here and we both pretend this never happened.”
“Because you don’t really want that. Do you? I wonder why you’re wearing that godawful lipstick. It’s strange, isn’t it? Some of the other stagehands weren’t dressed like they were at the concert. You didn’t have to be here, but you came. And you came with lipstick,” I add, my grin widening despite the pain.
Her hand started to rise to her mouth, like she needed to make sure she really had worn such a horrible shade of lipstick, then she plastered the hand back to her side. "It's impossible for you to imagine a world that doesn't revolve around you, isn't it?"
“No,” I said. “I get more hung up on how easily it’d keep spinning if I vanished, actually. Fucks with your head a little. People act like you’re a religion, but they’d have more fun worshiping your memory than you. Hell, you don’t even matter to them. You’re just an idea. The flesh and blood is an inconvenience if it doesn’t match up with the idea.”
She finally took her other hand off the doorknob and looked at me in a sad way I didn’t like at all, like she pitied me.
I had always said too fucking much around her. It was like I could feel her slipping underneath my armor, brushing against my secret desires and fears, and sharing them with her became too easy. Too natural.
I thought she was going to say something placating. I’m sorry. It must be hard. That can’t be easy. Any of the catchphrases that would simultaneously acknowledge and dismiss my fear. Instead, she crossed her arms, giving me a look that was all business and no bullshit. "I also want something in writing. Something that says you will drop the issue when my time is up. And that you won't go after any of the other stagehands for it. It will be a dead issue once I've paid my time. Completely."
“Easy enough.” I was glad to be back into safer waters. Away from the depths of how fucked up my mind was and back to how easy it was to be cruel, how quickly I could forget about my own broken life when I was breaking someone else’s.
She watched me, still restless, like she was almost hoping I would refuse one of her requests and give her the ammunition to fight back more. She wouldn’t get it though. She could demand all she wanted. I just needed time. I doubted she would do shit for my songwriting, but I didn’t doubt that six months would be more than enough time to sow the seeds for revenge, to break whatever it was inside her that made her think she could look at me with pity, like she knew me.
Gardener Girl made me feel soft. She made me feel like a kid who needed his mom, but that fucking ship had sailed, hadn’t it? The irony was that my mom lost her fight with cancer just a month after I gave my heart and soul to Tammy in exchange for the means to pay for her treatment. It wasn’t enough, but I guess if the universe was keeping score, I deserved everything that happened to me and then some.
“You’ll start tomorrow,” I said. “We’re heading to Tennessee by bus. Pack your bags or don’t. It’s up to you. We can buy you anything you need if you forget it. Oh,” I said lightly, forcing a fake cheer that I knew would grate on her. “And don’t forget sunscreen.” I shrugged at the baffled look she gave me. “The sun can still get you through the windows on the bus.”
She shook her head as if in disbelief, then turned and opened the door, leaving without a word.
I raised my eyebrow, but I didn’t shout after her or chase her. I knew everything I’ve said will be ringing in her ears now. Time would only make her more certain that she had no choice. She would be back.
“Someone send me a fucking doctor before I pass out,” I groaned. I almost shouted for some pain meds just for the high, but thought twice. I told Aribella I’d cut all of that out. Cold turkey. I may have been a ruthless asshole, but my word was good.
7
Aribella
“You’re kidding,” said Mandy. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
We were standing backstage in a narrow, dark hallway. A security guard with dark sunglasses stood outside the room where Zach just re-entered my life like an atomic bomb. A young, pretty doctor went into his room a few seconds ago, and I bitterly thought it probably wasn’t a coincidence that his doctor is attractive.
I had to remember that I didn’t care who he screwed. He wasn’t just an asshole. He was blackmailing me. Any lingering, ill-advised feelings I might have had for him evaporated as soon as he showed he hadn’t changed in eight years. He was still the vengeful, entitled boy from eight years ago. The only difference was that he had packed a little more muscle onto his lean frame, a little more sharpness to the angles of his face and the line of his jaw, a little more stubble on his face and somehow even more of that unflappable confidence he wore like armor. That was all. Beneath it all, he was the same.
Except that was part of the problem. Zach was so tragically broken. He was like a horrible car crash on the side of the road full of twisted metal, fire-belching black, oily smoke, and the threat of an imminent explosion. He was horrible and impossible to look away from. And worst of all, it was like knowing there were still people trapped in that wreckage. Good people. Innocent people who would never make it out on their own. Eight years ago, he forced me away, and now he was forcing me back into that blazing inferno. I knew I was going to have to fight against my natural urge to help him again. To fix him. He was too far gone. I needed to remember that.
“If I was kidding, I would at least try to make it funny,” I said. “There’s nothing funny about this. Unless you have a sick sense of humor, I guess.”
“Ari, he can’t do this. He can’t. We could go to the cops. Blackmail is illegal.”
“And it turns into a he-said-she-said between the desperate stagehand former love interest and the mega-star? Something tells me I’d come out of that one worse than he would.”
Mandy’s lips press together in a way that she knows I’m right, but doesn’t like it. “What if you just bail? Don’t go back in there. What are the chances he even remembers your last name?”
I frowned. “I got the impression that he didn’t forget anything about me.” I hated that the idea of Zach Thornwood still thinking about me after all this time made a chill run through me. I settled on deciding it was a creeped out kind of chill, not an excited one. I was lying to myself, but it was better than admitting I liked it. “Besides, he could probably just get my name from Chad. He’s about as organized as a flea market, but I’m sure he could at least pull up a list of his employee’s names.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? I have to do it.” I paused, searching her eyes for any sign that I was wrong, but found only resignation and anger in hers to mirror my own.
“You can negotiate. He wouldn’t pull this if he didn’t really want you there. The money means nothing to him, probably. Get everything you can out of him. Your own bus for touring. Your own hotel rooms. Hell, ask him for one of his credit cards, even. Why not?”
I shook my head. “I’m not taking his money. He offered me two hundred thousand dollars, and God knows I could use it, but I’m okay with my life. I just need enough for food and I hardly have any bills. Cell phone, gas, Netflix. My salary covers it and then some.”
Mindy squinted at me, searching my face like she might find some signs of brain damage. “I’m offended that we share the same DNA right now, Ari. Don’t be an idiot. Money is money. Who cares where it comes from? You give him six months of your life and he damn well better give you something to compensate for that. Two hundred grand is probably like pocket change to him. It could change your life.”
“Zach already changed my life once.”
Mindy gave me a suffering look, like I was being needlessly dramatic. She still didn’t know the full extent of what happened. “So then you take the money and let him change it for good this time. I don’t see what is so complicated about this, Ari.”
“Yeah, you don’t,” I said,
then immediately felt bad for snapping at her. “Sorry. That was my frustration talking. What you’re saying makes sense, I just can’t give a good explanation, and I know it’s probably dumb, but I can’t take his money. Just trust me. I can’t take it.”
Zach was still lounging on the couch when I went back into the room. The pretty doctor was wrapping a bandage around his ankle, one hand on his thigh and a flush of red on her cheeks. I shoved down the irrational rush of jealousy I felt, wishing my body would get the memo that I was not going down that road. Not again.
“We can put a boot on this to keep your ankle immobilized a couple days. You may want a pair of crutches for about a week to help keep from putting pressure on it and causing more swelling, but that’s optional, really.”
“I think I’ll need crutches,” he said, eyes fixed coldly on mine.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
The doctor glanced up at me, took in my outfit, my hair, and my lipstick, and then smirked to herself like she thought I was some groupie and had no chance with Zach.
“Out,” Zach said suddenly.
The doctor’s smirk widened, until she realized Zach was talking to her. “I’m not finished wrapping—”
“Out,” he barked.
She stood, glaring at me on her way out. I wanted to stick my tongue out at her, but thankfully, I suppressed the urge.
“I’ll do it,” I repeated, “but I have conditions. You’ll only pay me what I would’ve earned if I was still working as a stagehand. Fourteen dollars an hour. I’ll have my own room. You’ll have no power over me except that I’ll know I am stuck following you around for six months. Beyond that, you don’t get to tell me what to eat, who to date, or what to do with my spare time.”
He looked good, even with the gash running down his forehead and cheek. His lean body was still coated in a sheen of sweat from his performance, and his white undershirt stuck to his torso. His long legs were kicked up, shoes off and feet clad in socks. He looked gorgeous. Like a still frame from a behind the music documentary of a long-gone mega-star, the kind of shot that makes you marvel to think someone so much larger than life existed at all. The difference was Zach sat right in front of me. He watched me with calculating eyes. He dared me to fall for him, and if he was still the same Zach I knew, his dare was a trap. It was a trap so enticing that I wouldn’t be the first to fall into it head-first. Not the first by a long shot.
Hate at First Sight Page 5
