DOUBLE TREBLE (A TWIN ROCKSTAR ROMANCE)

by Nikki Wild

  “Guys… Have you seen Phoenix?”

  His voice was trembling. Aiden and I shared a concerned glance. “No,” he replied, his eyes still on me. “I thought she was up front around the merch booth…”

  “Oh fuck,” Trevor groaned as he ran his fingers through his hair.

  “What’s the big deal?” I asked. “I’m sure she’s fine, she couldn’t have gone very far. She does like to keep to herself sometimes…”

  Nicole’s eyes flashed with concern as she caught up to us, her phone planted against her head. She was talking rapidly to someone on the line, glancing around wildly.

  “It’s bigger than that,” Jeremy said.

  We turned to Carter, who flashed us the darkest, angriest look I’d ever seen. Every restrained ounce of quiet brooding was gone from his hateful expression.

  “What happened?” Aiden snarled.

  Carter’s next words destroyed me.

  “Alex was here. We think he’s taken Phoenix.”

  Phoenix

  “We’re here,” Alex grunted.

  I nodded complacently. It had felt like eons in here with him. While we’d driven through the darkness, Alex had been talking to me the entire time, ranting about being in rehab, how it felt to get out and realize that we’d all moved on to great success without him. The guilt was all that I could feel through the haze that dulled my thoughts, drowning my brain in sorrow and this strange glow of happy sensation that was radiating beneath my skin.

  I could barely remember the last couple of minutes. All that was there was the crushing blame. Even just trying to recall how I’d wound up in a truck with him was hard.

  Alex was at my passenger door now, helping me down from the truck. I stumbled slightly as I stepped onto the gravel, and he steadied me against him.

  “Here you go,” he growled, and I felt something large and lumpy being shoved into my chest. I glanced down as I enveloped the backpack in my arms. “Put it on.”

  My head felt heavy as I ignored him, unzipping the large compartment to see a cache of supplies. There was a towel, a blanket, snacks, a change of clothes that probably didn’t fit…

  “I said, put it on,” he insisted gravely.

  Nodding, I zipped it back up and slipped my arms into the straps. He secured the backpack on me a little tighter, and then walked me forward.

  The night felt crisp and cold as the gravel crunched beneath our shoes. Every step felt as distant as the last as I numbly walked towards my fate, my eyes struggling to focus on the neon sign above.

  Brightside Bus Station.

  It was late at night and the premises were deserted, save for a younger pair of travelers who were sitting near under the covered bus terminal. Alex led me to a chair away from them, and I numbly dropped into the chair as the bag hit the floor.

  “Pick that up,” he grunted.

  I did as I was told, pulling the backpack into the empty chair next to me.

  Alex plucked a cigarette out and stuck it between his lips, cupped his hand over it as he lit it.

  The brief flicker of fire was reassuring in the cold, empty blackness of the night. It reminded me of the fire that filled Aiden’s core, and I shuddered with the realization that I might never see him again. That’s why Alex was back, right? To replace me? I couldn’t think straight… At least I could watch the band continue to rise from behind a computer screen.

  After blowing out a lungful of smoke, Alex reached into his back pocket and pulled out a crumpled, printed bus ticket.

  “Here,” he snarled, tossing it into my lap.

  I barely paid attention to it. Wherever it was sending me, it was away from this life I had started to build here.

  All this time, I knew I didn’t deserve this. Everything had felt like a dream. It had all clicked into place, but somewhere deep down I’d known that it would come to this eventually.

  Alex would come back.

  And he deserved his rightful place.

  Who am I to dare to keep that from him?

  “I need to piss,” Alex growled, glancing over for the restroom building nearby. “You stay right here and don’t say a fucking word to those two, okay? They’re trouble. I don’t need them causing any fuss for me.”

  I nodded hazily.

  He lifted my chin with an angry look on his face. “Not a word.”

  All I could do was nod again.

  He looked satisfied with that, then turned and slipped away to the bathroom.

  I couldn’t have been sitting there long before I heard her voice. “Hey there.”

  My head lazily lifted as she smiled at me. “Can I bum a smoke? I forgot my pack, and I always get nerves before a long trip.”

  I dwelled on the words a long trip.

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  The stranger was speaking, but I wasn’t really listening. It’s only when I heard my name that I glanced back up.

  “Yeah, you totally are!” She laughed in surprise. “You’re that bassist chick from Decadent Desires! Man, I had to leave the show early, but you guys put on a killer set!”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  She was asking me another question, but my head was so foggy that I could barely understand her. I think I must have numbly nodded, because a moment later, she was pushing her cheek against mine with her arm around me.

  “You did a great job tonight. I look up to chicks like you who play like that. Makes me want to take the drums up again.”

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  Then, a flash of light briefly blinded me.

  “Thank you so much!” She grinned, jumping up and looking at the picture. “It means so much to me to get to take a selfie with you.”

  A moment later, I heard his angry voice as Alex stumbled back into view.

  “Hey! Leave her alone! Can’t you see that she’s exhausted? Give her some space!”

  The girl frowned.

  “Sorry! I was just asking for a cigarette.”

  As he jogged up, I expected him to tell her off more. Instead, he pulled out his pack and handed her one, lighting it for her in her lips.

  “Here,” he growled. “Now, we’ve got a long night ahead. Do you mind giving us a bit of space?”

  “Sure, sorry,” she shook her head quickly. “Thanks for the cigarette. Really helps with my jitters. You two have a good night.”

  She started to wander back towards her friend, and they looked over at me briefly before getting wrapped up in conversation.

  “Did she bother you?” He snapped.

  I shook my head numbly.

  “What did she want?”

  Something deep inside me stirred. It was a part of me that the alcohol couldn’t reach. It made me defiant, and when I turned to him I lied.

  “Nothing. Just a cigarette.”

  Alex studied my expression intently.

  “Good,” he muttered, sitting down on my other side, obstructing my view of the only other souls in this depressing place.

  I leaned back in my chair lazily, feeling the headache that was starting to spread across my mind. Although the fog in my mind was receding, it was taking its sweet ass time. Everything was starting to hurt.

  “Here,” he grunted.

  A bottle of water was shoved into my hands. He unscrewed the top and let me take a deep swig before I capped it again.

  “Get your fluids, or you’ll have one hell of a bad time tomorrow,” he chuckled. “You’ve already got enough shit in your system to tranquilize a horse”

  “I don’t do drugs,” I replied, shaking my head and staring down at my hands. They seemed to be growing, and I was fascinated at the way the skin was pulsing and swelling.

  “First time for everything,” Alex replied with a wicked grin played out across his face.

  What was that supposed to mean?

  “Relax Phoenix, don’t think too hard, you’ll strain yourself… And you don’t want that. After all, you’ve got a long bus ride back to Pennsylvania…”
r />   Aiden

  Nicole burst onto the scene with a defiant smirk on her face, her phone firmly in hand.

  “Grab everyone.”

  “You found her?” I blurted out.

  “I’ll explain on the way,” she replied hastily, bolting out from the doorway. “Give me a second to get us a car and a driver.”

  I raced down the hallway and found Dylan. Within two minutes, we’d tracked down the others across the backstage area and all reconvened near the exit.

  Nicole stomped into the room with one of our roadies. “We need to go. Now.”

  We all piled up into the half-empty stagehand van and hit the road as she sat in the passenger seat, tossing directions to the guy. He was apparently the most reckless driver that she could find, because those tires squealed and he narrowly missed ditches on his fast turns.

  Nicole, meanwhile, was buried in her phone and impervious to questions. Once she’d finally calmed down and gotten us onto the interstate, I asked the obvious one.

  “How did you find her?”

  “A fan sighting hit Facebook,” Nicole briskly explained. “Someone recognized her at a bus station about half an hour from here and posted a selfie online. Check it out.”

  I glanced at Nicole’s phone and saw a glassy eyed Phoenix smiling ear to ear.

  “They’re still there,” Nicole added quickly.

  “They?”

  “Alex is with her.”

  “Well I’m glad he’s there,” Dylan growled next to me. “The moment I see him, I’m going to punch his fucking lights out…”

  “This is as much our fault as his,” Carter coolly spoke up from his perch, facing us as Jeremy leaned back and thought on that.

  “The fuck you say?” I snapped.

  “Think about it,” Carter muttered. “We’ve all known Alex was coming back sooner or later. When was the last time any of us so much as talked to him? We left a man behind…”

  “But that’s not the same thing,” Dylan grunted. “He kidnapped her. It’s different.”

  “Is it?” Carter insisted. “If he’d walked up and put a gun to her head, that would be a kidnapping. But that chick in the signed Sabbath shirt said he just walked up and convinced her to go.”

  “Yeah?” Dylan tilted his head angrily.

  But I could see Carter’s point already.

  A heavy groan left my chest.

  “We all know she’s fucking insecure about her place with us. This was inevitable, and we are all to blame. If it wasn’t going to be Alex, it was gonna be something else.”

  “What are you saying?” Dylan asked.

  “I’m saying that Phoenix is overwhelmed, and it’s not surprising that she’s trying to bolt.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Dylan blurted out. “She’s happy. She has everything that she wants. Why the fuck would she give it all up?”

  “Because she’s waiting to wake up from the dream,” I bitterly concluded. “As far as she’s concerned, this is all some big practical joke that’s going to blow up in her face.”

  “Is that really true?” He asked me.

  “I think so,” Trevor nodded.

  “Well what the fuck did Alex say to her? Why would she run?” Dylan asked.

  “You tell me,” Carter added. “All I know is she’s at a fucking bus station with a big fucking smile on her face.”

  Dylan crossed his arms and leaned back. “Maybe I just didn’t really understand her, then.”

  “The signs where there, and I should have taken them more seriously.”

  “We all should have,” Carter corrected.

  “Doesn’t matter now,” I replied calmly before turning to the front of the van. “Nicole, can you tell me when the next bus from there is leaving?”

  “Already checking,” she held a finger up towards us. “Give me a second here… Yeah. Okay. There’s a bus passing through just under thirty minutes, bound for… oh, that son of a bitch.”

  “What?” We all gasped in unison.

  She turned her head to us. “Alex is putting her on a national bus back to fucking Pennsylvania. He’s sending her home.”

  My hands curled into fists.

  “We need to talk her out of this. Are we going to make it?”

  She looked at her watch.

  “We should get there with five minutes to spare,” she told us. “I’ve got fans at the station on standby. If we don’t make it, I’ve asked them to interfere for us.”

  “Good,” I nodded solemnly.

  Tension filled the air the rest of the way there. All of us sat in silence as my new best friend, the random stagehand she’d grabbed, drove us towards this fateful moment ahead of us.

  He slowed down for a traffic cop beside the highway, and then quickly kicked it back up to his reckless speed once we were clear. It was good to see that he was insane behind the wheel but intelligent enough to not catch us in a speed trap.

  Before long, we were veering off another exit and slowing down for every goddamn red light the universe could throw at us. Through it all, a dark little feeling was growing inside me. I could see the picture from Nicole’s phone spinning round in my mind. Her goofy grin was wider than I’d ever seen it. Those big beautiful eyes were stretched and unfocused.

  Alex has done something to her…

  Hold on, Phoenix, I growled inside.

  We’re coming for you.

  I felt a reassuring hand on my shoulder, and turned to see Dylan looking at me. My gaze slid across all of us back there, and I could see that the entire band was in this moment with me, fully invested.

  Decadent Desires was determined to get their fucking bassist back, no matter what.

  “Get ready, boys,” I heard Nicole tell us from the front. “My phone says that we’re less than a minute away from this place.”

  True to her word, I could already see the neon sign in the distance, a dimly lit bus station in the dark beneath it.

  We screeched to a stop.

  “Alright, boys,” I growled as I flung open the side door and lunged out of the van. “Lets do this!”

  We piled out at the bus terminal and rushed inside the covered waiting area. There, sitting near the entrance, were Alex and Phoenix.

  “What the fuck–?”

  Fueled with a rich, burning animosity, I grabbed the traitorous asshole by the scruff and yanked him to his feet.

  “You’ve fucked shit up for us for the last goddamn time, you miserable junkie–”

  I raised my clenched fist, fully prepared to pound this asshole into the pavement, when I heard Phoenix shriek from her seat.

  “Wait! Don’t!”

  Alex was gripping my wrist with both hands, trembling in front of me. His feet were dragging the ground as I hesitated. I was so prepared to punish this piece of shit the best way I knew how: the thorough beating that had been a long time coming.

  “What?” I turned to her, scowling.

  “Don’t do it!” Phoenix quivered in her seat, begging me with her eyes. “He’s just…” She was slurring her word badly, and I realized that there was more than alcohol at work

  “This fucker did something to you,” I dismissed her. “You don’t have a grasp on what this fucking junkie was about to make you do.”

  “He wasn’t making me do anything,” she told me, validating every last one of Carter’s words. “I was here because I wanted to be here…”

  “Then what on Earth did you think you were doing?” My brother walked up beside me, authoritatively crossing his arms.

  She shook her head.

  “Take Alex back. He deserves this more than I do.”

  “Bullshit,” I growled. “Phoenix, how much have you had to drink?”

  “Just a couple… I don’t feel right Aiden…”

  “Don’t worry, I’m going to get you out of here,” I said, taking a step toward her. Alex was quick to block my path.

  “She’s not going anywhere with you,” Alex grunted, reachin
g a hand up to rub his neck. “Phoenix wants to go home. I’m the fucking bassist for the Decadent Desires.”

  “You’re out of the band,” Carter said, tilting his head as I came nose to nose with Alex. “You’re locked out of the contract. If we tried to take you back we’d lose everything. Didn’t Phoenix mention that?”

  “No,” he turned to her with disdain, putting a bit of distance between us. “She didn’t say a fucking word about that.”

  “Yeah, asshole, because you drugged her half out of her fucking mind,” Dylan blurted out as he shoved past us both and sat down beside her. “She’s all kinds of fucked up Aiden! Look at how dilated her eyes are!”

  I reached out and grabbed Alex by the neck of his shirt, pulling his eyes back to my own. I could see the spark of recognition behind his own bullshit.

  “You’re fucking kidding me… You fucking drugged her? Can’t handle that we have success without your sorry ass, so you’ve gotta take that away from us? Is that what this shit was, a revenge scheme?”

  “No,” he shook his head. “I just… my head’s so fucked up after all that rehab shit, I’m trying to pull it all back together…”

  I shook my head. “If anything happens to Phoenix, your head is never getting put back together.”

  He looked up at me, eyes welling with tears. “I only dosed her with a couple downers. She’ll be fine. I promise man, she’ll be fine. You’re like my fucking brother. Let her get on the bus and we can play together again. We can get a new contract… A new label…”

  “You’re never coming back Alex. Get that through your junkie skull,” I hissed.

  The bus pulling up drew my attention, and Alex managed to wrench himself out of my grip, stumbling backward and trying to make a run for it. My fist flashed out, smashing him alongside the jaw and sending him sprawling over a row of filthy hard plastic seats.

  “Get her to the hospital,” I shouted at Dylan. “I don’t want her to see this.”

  I took a few steps forward, ready to grab Alex off the floor and beat the ever loving shit out of him. At least, that was the plan until I heard Phoenix shouting over the pounding blood inside my ears.

  “Don’t do it…”