“Zach…” she said slowly, and hearing my name on her lips after so long gave me a hungry pulse in my stomach.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be the captain of the groupies. It’ll be your bus. I’ll make sure the other groupies understand that. You’re the boss.”
She looked at me in disbelief. “I said I wanted my own bus. It was in the contract.”
“And it is your bus. I put it in your name this morning. But there’s no space for the groupies on the other busses, so we’re going to have to use your bus to bring them along.”
“You know what,” she said, shaking her head and grabbing the handle of her suitcase. “There’s only so much I’ll take. I’m not doing it. I refuse to ride on that bus. I’m not going to let this be some juvenile revenge fantasy for you. If you want me to be here, you need to treat me like a human being.”
“Fine,” I said. “You can ride on our bus. We have a little extra room on the band bus. Hell. I’ll even buy you a curtain so you can wall yourself off from us if you want.”
She glared at me like she was trying to figure out if she had just walked into another trap, which she had. I knew she’d never let herself be shuttled in with the groupies. She probably wouldn’t even consider that buying a new bus and hiring a driver wouldn’t be a big issue. Hell, I could have hired a limo for her indefinitely, and if she had thought to ask, she could’ve had it. But something told me innocent little Gardener Girl’s mind didn’t understand what it was like to be filthy rich. She just couldn’t wrap her head around it, and that was going to make getting what I wanted from her even easier.
She scowled at the bus, then stormed off toward it, giving me an opportunity to watch her tight ass in the faded jeans she wore.
This was going to be fun.
11
Aribella
The tour bus was bigger than any apartment I’d ever lived in, and it dwarfed my mobile home. There was a kitchen with marble countertops. Three couches. Two beds. Two bathrooms. Flat screen TVs folded up against the ceiling that could be lowered with the push of a button.
Zach showed me where everything was. The bus was even wide enough that he had no problem navigating it with his crutches. I didn’t like how pleased he seemed with himself, because it only made me more sure that I really had walked right into his plans. He probably meant for me to end up on his bus the whole time, and the groupie thing was just a ploy to get me to be the one to agree to it.
He could be proud of himself all he wanted. If he thought winning me over was going to be as simple as having me on his bus, he was in for a rude awakening. I was going to do my time and then get out. This was like a six-month prison sentence, and I was going to look at it that way.
Still, I felt a distant kind of excitement at the sense of adventure tugging at me. The chilly bus and the view of the road from up so high reminded me of field trips as a kid, of hopping on a charter bus and going to Islands of Adventure for Grad Bash. Except that memory was sour, too. Most were, and when it came to my last years of high school in Belvedere, I could thank Zach for that.
He could try to force this to be torture for me, but I’d spite him by enjoying it. I was traveling the country and I didn’t have to spend all day in the sun stringing cables and hauling gear to the stage. It was going to be like a vacation. Sort of.
This time would be different from how things had played out in Belvedere. The beginning of the story was the same. Hope. Ill-advised anticipation. I was going to write a different ending, though. Agreeing to tag along with Zach Thornwood and his band for six months wasn't just saving my ass from the legal hell storm he promised to bring down on me if I refused. Granted, that was a big part of it. But this was also my chance to add a new chapter to the Zach portion of my life, where the pages were rumpled and worn from how many times I'd turned back through them, searching for a glimmer of redemption and coming up empty handed every time.
All I had to do was survive six months with him.
“What do you do for fun during the trip?” I asked. It was better to keep ignoring his hostility when I could. Maybe sheer force of will could turn the stressful push and pull between us into something boring and platonic. Doubtful, but it was worth a shot.
“Sleep. Read. Try and fail to write songs. Fuck horny roadies. Stare out the window. You know, all the usual road trip pastimes that seem like they would be fun until about thirty minutes into the trip.”
“Except this is like a luxury apartment on wheels.” I carefully refused to acknowledge his comment about “fucking roadies.” I knew he was just trying to make me jealous, and showing any sign of caring would encourage him. It’d make him think I cared, so I controlled my face and pretended it never happened. “I doubt you’d get a whole lot of sympathy from the average road tripper.”
He flicked his eyebrows up in a maybe not kind of way, and eased himself down onto one of the couches, setting his crutches to the side and kicking up his injured leg. “I don’t need their sympathy. I’ve got a new toy on my bus to pass the time.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but didn’t give him the satisfaction. I just stared at him, unimpressed. “If you want me to believe I don’t mean anything to you, you’re going to have to stop trying so hard to convince me.”
He actually chuckled at that, giving me a flash of the wolfish smile I remembered from high school, the one that had a way of smashing straight through all my best intentions and good sense. I was stronger now, and I walled myself off to it, not letting my heart pound the way it wanted to or letting my skin prickle. “I had almost forgotten how much I enjoyed you, Gardener Girl.”
“Aribella,” I said firmly. “I haven’t touched a garden in years.”
“Then why can I still smell flowers on your skin?”
My breath caught at the thought of him smelling me, sucking in my scent to devour.
“You always did smell like flowers, you know,” he said. “That first day we met by the wall, I thought the smell was just from the gardens, but it stuck to you. Sweet and earthy. You always smelled like flowers, and you still do.”
My cheeks redden against my will. “Well, keep your nose to yourself,” I snapped, but there was no bite in my tone. He still knew how to get to me. How to eat away at my resistance.
“Sure. It’s not my nose I was hoping to get close to you, anyway.”
“Does that ever work? Do girls really just pull down their pants and bend over for you? You say something crude and they swoon? Is that the game?”
He looks a little thoughtful, then a flash of something approaching regret colors his expression—a pinching of the eyebrows and averting of his eyes—but it’s gone in an instant. “Yes, actually. That’s exactly how it usually works.”
I managed to peel myself away from Zach and find a safe, somewhat isolated place by the bunk-bed style set up at the back of the bus. He was scribbling something on a notepad with a red pen, but from what I could see, he ended up crossing out everything he wrote eventually.
It had only been half an hour before someone opened the door at the front of the bus and clambered on. I saw the hulking, too-tall shape of Taylor. The bus had seemed so large until I saw him inside it, having to duck his head just a little to avoid bashing against cabinets.
He spotted me, narrowed his eyes, and then looked to Zach. “Is that who I think it is?”
Zach didn’t look up from his pad. “It is. And she’s off-limits. Don’t get any ideas.”
Taylor shot me a wary look, like I was a wild tiger that had found its way onto the bus, and in that instant I knew he remembered all too well what had happened at Belvedere High. He had no intentions of reliving that experience. He tossed a bag on the couch closest to the front of the bus, pulled out headphones, and plugged them into his phone.
That was fine with me. Simplicity was my goal here. No attachments. No complications. I’d make being here so boring for Zach that he’d end up cutting me loose after a few weeks because I wasn’t all the fun he had ho
ped I would be.
Then Brent came on the bus. He was as handsome as ever. Broad and more thickly muscled than Zach with a drummer's strong arms and shoulders. His moppy brown hair from high school was replaced now with a man-bun that suited his tanned face and his straight nose. He looked every bit the rockstar, and for a surreal moment, I marveled at how I'd managed to be a nobody and still had found myself tangled with two mega-stars in my life, no matter how messy that tangle had ended up.
Brent was the good guy. The one you could bring home to your parents and know he wouldn't tell your mom her cooking was horrible. He'd have smiled and thanked your family for the hospitality. They might have eyed his tattoos and rock star look a little warily, but he would've been a gentleman.
I knew there was an edge of something else to him, too. An insecurity that could show itself in ugly ways if he was pushed to it, but then again, who didn’t have flaws? His flaws were normal. Understandable. He was a good guy most of the time who had been put in some hard situations. But no matter how much I tried to convince myself now or eight years ago, he didn’t make that same chemical spark light up in me like Zach always had.
He was the right guy on paper, but he had never excited me. He was safe. He was the smart choice. Except when he noticed me at the back of the bus, he looked anything but safe. His eyes could have been hot coals for those first few seconds. His jaw flexed and his hands tensed until I thought I would hear his knuckles start to pop.
“We have a groupie bus for a reason, Zach,” he said, turning his eyes from me as his expression went from firey to cold.
“She’s not a groupie,” said Zach, who still didn’t look up from his notepad as he scribbled out yet another line of words. “She’s my muse.”
Brent stared at him in disbelief. “Your muse?
Zach finally peeled his eyes from the notepad to give Brent a withering look. “Yes. Some of us have to be a little more thoughtful about the musical process. Guitar and songwriting don’t just involve slamming sticks into things really hard and shaking your head. You actually need to think. Hence,” he said, gesturing to me, still not looking up from his notepad. “Muse.”
Brent looked to me once more and then shook his head. He shuffled to the back of the bus, tossed his bag on the bed above me, and stopped long enough to look down at me. There was anger in his eyes, and it was only then that I realized he was still bitter about how things had gone when we were kids.
The realization hit me like a hammer. He was a rockstar now. Both him and Zach were. Why did they still care about me? About what happened all those years ago?
“Am I in your way?” I asked when he seemed content to just stand there and glare at me.
He seemed to think about my question for a long time before his expression finally softened. “I don’t blame you, you know. Zach always was—”
“Brent,” growled Zach. “You don’t need to talk to her. She’s mine.”
Mine. A tingle ran up my spine, making my hairs stand on end. Last night I was a stagehand. My life was simple and maybe even a little sad. I was like a ghost running from her past, too preoccupied with the mistakes I had made to take any more chances. I was content. In a way. Zach had upended all of that. In the span of twenty-four hours, he grabbed my life by the ankles and flipped it upside down.
“I’m not yours, Zach,” I said. It was weak, and I knew it. I should’ve made him explain to Brent and Taylor how he was blackmailing me. But old habits die hard, and it seemed like I wasn’t completely done protecting his dirty secrets. I didn’t want to need anyone’s help to win this battle. I wanted to do it on my own. Let them think I was tagging along as a groupie if they really wanted to.
Brent’s eyes narrowed at me for the briefest of moments before he sniffed dismissively. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
I clenched my jaw, biting down the response that wanted to come. Because he’ll ruin my life if I refuse. It seemed like Zach would’ve almost wanted me to put that out there for them. He wouldn’t tell them himself, but he would expect me to do everything in my power to make this harder for him.
I grabbed my suitcase and wheeled it to one of the couches. What I wanted was privacy. I wanted a door to close so I could just decompress and take in everything, but I was trapped on a bus with these three men, feeling a little bit like a chew toy between two big dogs. Brent would’ve been the kind of dog to jealously guard me, to keep me with him in his bed and smother me with affection. Zach would be the one to play rough with me. I’d be left broken and tattered when he was done.
“Gardener Girl,” Zach said. “Come sit over here. I need some of your inspirational juices right about now.”
I thought about correcting him again on the nickname, but I doubted it would ever stop him from using it. I reluctantly stood again, while Brent was unpacking some things from his bag and setting them on his bed. I shuffled over to where Zach was sitting and sat as far from him on the couch as I could.
“You were always good at poetry,” he said, eyes on his notepad while he chewed the tip of his red pen. He lowered his voice and looked up at me. “What would be a better way to say, don’t even think about it.”
For a second, I thought he was actually asking for my opinion, and I started to brainstorm. Then it hit me. Did he really think I was still interested in Brent romantically? Or that I would be thinking about romantic relationships at all in a situation like this?
“I’m only here to meet my end of the bargain,” I said.
He looked thoughtful, then shook his head. “Nope. That is horrible. Go back to your couch, Gardener Girl. You suck at songwriting.”
12
Zach
She was on my bus. It felt surreal. I’d forget and then I’d catch a whiff of that flowery sweet smell of hers that always had me craving a taste, wondering if her skin tasted as sweet as it smelled. I had stupidly forgot that Brent would be on the bus, too, when I planned things this way. I spent more time watching him than her, because I knew he was thinking about it. I knew he would eventually find a way to get her alone and he would try to charm the pants off of her. The worst part was that he probably wasn’t even doing it entirely to spite me. I think Brent really did like her. He always had.
He wasn’t right for her, though.
Not that I was, but I didn’t want to date her. I just needed to fuck her out of my system. It irked me that I had to go to such lengths to do it, too. I didn’t beg for women. For anything. Then again, chasing after Gardener Girl didn’t ever feel like begging. That was the dangerous part. I liked the way she bit back. There was some life to her, and I couldn’t help myself from teasing it out of her.
With most people, it felt like I was walking in a dream. I could spit in their faces and they’d still want to go to bed with me. It was a feeling that drove me crazy. One that had driven me to drugs in the past, too. What was the point when nothing I did mattered? When people who were supposed to be adults and protectors took advantage of me and life just went on like it was nothing. Where I could act like an ass and still be adored? I lived in a world where actions had no consequence.
Except when she was in it.
But I knew if I fucked her she’d end up as a strawman just like all the rest. That was why I needed to do it. I couldn’t keep feeling like she was out there, wondering if I had made a mistake by pushing her away.
We were in Memphis, Tennessee to play a show at Levitt Shell. It was essentially just a stage in a grassy field, but it was a place I’d played before and enjoyed. It was apparently the place where Elvis had given his first paid concert, too. Taylor really geeked out about that the last time we were here, which wasn’t a surprise because he had developed a quirky fascination with history over the past two years. I would always find him sniffing around informational plaques at parks and near landmarks when we were traveling, drinking in whatever little tidbits he could find.
He wouldn’t admit it, but I was pretty sure his history fascination was because some g
irl he shacked up with in Chicago had been a history buff, and she was also one of the few groupies that had ever cut him loose. Maybe he thought if he soaked in enough history, he could make it work with her next time their paths crossed.
The hotel wasn’t too impressive from outside. It was a huge brick building without much character. Inside, the building made Gardener Girl’s eyes widen.
We were at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, and the interior was decorated in a high money 1800s vibe, with marble pillars leading to a second-floor balcony that overlooked the lobby.
“This is so cool. It’s like The Great Gatsby,” Gardener Girl said.
“They have a thing here,” I said. “They parade these ducks down a red carpet to a fountain. There’s a duckmaster with a staff and everything.”
“Please,” she said, eyes suddenly hungry. “I need to see that.”
Despite myself, I cracked a smile. “I’ll find out when it happens for you.”
She nodded, smiling to herself as she probably pictured the whole ordeal. “Zach,” she said, as if something had just occurred to her. “This is all about what happened back at Belvedere High, isn’t it? I mean, I know it is, but I need to hear you say it.”
I thought about that. “It’s about you. I don’t need to keep it a secret, Gardener Girl.” I got closer and let my words slide into her ear. “I’m going to spread you out on my bed and take every inch of you. I’ll taste that sassy tongue of yours, and then I’ll find out if you can still look at me like you’re better than me while you’re cumming.”
She stopped walking, stared forward while red started to creep into her cheeks. Her reaction told me that my words had their intended effect, but as usual, she refused to admit it. She seemed to force herself back to neutral. “What makes you think I would ever let that happen?”
Hate at First Sight Page 8
