The Rosewoods Rock & Roll Box Set

by Katrina Abbott

  “I can’t,” I muttered under my breath, sure that he wouldn’t hear me over the distance, but it didn’t matter even if he did. I shook my head and then without looking at him, got into the back of the car.

  “Back to the hotel, please,” I told the driver, resisting the urge to look out the window because I knew without a doubt that Will would be watching me leave him.

  Pit Stop

  I allowed myself a few blocks of deep breathing before I pulled out my phone.

  The deep breathing was doing nothing to help me get over the heartbreak of tearing myself away from Will, so looking at my phone was more out of the need for a distraction than it was my willingness to see the assortment of messages that had arrived (and were still arriving from Sandy).

  Knowing my best friend would just keep sending through eternity unless I responded, I sent her a quick text back, assuring her I was fine but was heading back to the hotel, and I’d see her there later. She responded with a thumbs up, which likely meant she was getting reacquainted with Max, which suited me fine since I did not want to get into an actual conversation with her. Especially since she’d been pretty quiet on the topic of my mother and I feared that I wasn’t going to like where she stood on the whole situation.

  Not to mention a warning would have been nice.

  Responding to my father was a lot more complicated. His string of apologies via text didn’t help tamp down my anger at being blindsided again. But he was still my dad, so I took several more breaths, reminding myself that everything he did, he did with my best interests at heart.

  That helped. A bit. So after I calmed a little, I listened to his voicemail where he assured me he hadn’t intended to bring her to the venue. But since the concert hall was on the way to the hotel, he had stopped in for a minute to check in.

  He had even asked her to stay in the car, but when he had seen me up on stage, he hadn’t been able to tear himself away to leave. He admitted that he’d gotten caught up in watching me and had actually forgotten about her, but after a while of sitting in the town car, she’d come in to find him. Apparently, she had gotten caught up, too, and couldn’t tear herself away, either. If she’d even planned to duck out before I noticed her; who knows, she’d always been pretty selfish.

  I suppose it should have been flattering that they were so into my little performance that wasn’t even supposed to be. And I guess it was, but I was still really, really pissed.

  My father was begging for my forgiveness, promising me he absolutely had not intended to spring her on me unprepared. He understood why I was upset.

  I sighed in the back seat of the car, looking out the window through my tears at the city rolling by as my anger diffused, replaced by a tired sadness. I believed him that he’d learned his lesson about springing things on me, and this had been an accident. But that didn’t change the fact that I’d been caught off guard again. It was all just so...exhausting.

  I needed to get this whole thing with my mother over with. Although having Emmie and everyone else coming meant it would still have to wait until the next day.

  But at least now I’d seen her. And while I hated that I’d been blindsided, in some way, it felt like it was going to be easier confronting her now that the shock of seeing her was over. It was one more step to being prepared for our meeting. Not that I would admit that to anyone, except maybe Dr. Carmichael, but if there was a silver lining to all this, there was that.

  Ok, I sent back. Heading back to the hotel to make sure all is ready for later. See you then.

  I didn’t want to have to ask, but he must have read my mind and answered me with his next text:

  She won’t come to the events tonight, I promise. I’m sorry again. She is, too, FWIW.

  She was sorry. I wasn’t sure if that helped or made things worse, but I wasn’t going there and ignored that part of his message. Forgiven, I sent, being deliberately vague. But I am pretty sure I just got a raise. I added so he would know that I really did forgive him and wasn’t going to dwell on something that hadn’t really been his fault.

  Deal, he returned.

  I was about to put my phone away, but as I thought forward to the hotel, I instead opened a message to Graeme.

  Hope you’re not dying. Sound check went well. Will sounds good.

  I didn’t expect to hear back from him since he’d looked pretty dragged out earlier, but the three dots appeared on my screen immediately.

  Death unlikely. Feeling much better.

  So that was surprising. I had been worried he’d be out for days.

  I thought you had flu?

  6 hour flu.

  Huh? That’s not a thing.

  Right, he sent back. And then: shrimp and bean burrito flu?

  Graeme and his love for questionable junk food. Seriously? I thought you knew better.

  Seems not. I could imagine him saying it, too, his face deadpan except for that little twinkle in his eye.

  Dork, I sent. heading back to the hotel now. need anything?

  To my surprise, he phoned a second later. When I answered, I heard a TV going in the background, reminding me that illness or no, he was spending his unplanned day off, lying in a hotel room in a full-sized bed. That must have felt extra special for him since at over six feet, he barely fit in his bunk on the bus.

  “You sure you don’t mind stopping?” he asked, his deep, accented voice always making him sound sexy.

  “I’m stopping at a drug store anyway,” I lied as I looked up into the rearview mirror and caught the driver’s eye. He nodded in acknowledgment, and I smiled at him in thanks. “What do you need?”

  Sounding like he was happy to talk to me, he gave me a list that included Gatorade, Immodium, and Advil, along with junk food: Doritos and beef jerky. I told him there was no way I was getting him junk food, no matter how much he begged in his adorably sexy voice.

  “I’ll be there soon,” I told him

  “Good, thanks, Nessa. I’ll go take my forty-five-minute shower now,” he added, which would have seemed weird if we didn’t all complain about the necessarily brief showers on the bus. The ones that were even worse for him since he had to hunch in the stall. “What time are your friends coming?”

  “A couple of hours, I think,” I said, wondering why he sounded so eager to see them. “Why?”

  “No reason,” he said, and I could imagine him shrugging. “It’ll be nice to see Brooklyn, that’s all.”

  So that was unexpected. “Brooklyn?” I said. “Brooklyn Prescott?”

  “That’s the one.”

  I tried to figure out the connection, but nothing slid into place. Had they hooked up when Wiretap had played at Rosewood in the spring? No, that couldn’t be. They hadn’t been there long enough. How could they possibly know each other? I had to know. “So...How do you know Brooklyn?”

  He chuckled. “We actually sat together on a flight. Nearly a year ago now. Back when I first came to America to audition for your dad.”

  “Really? That’s quite a coincidence.” And how did I not know this?

  “Yeah. I didn’t know her or that I’d come to play at her school. That was, as you say, quite a coincidence. But something about her back then got to me. Just...she seemed so young but determined, you know?”

  That’s when it slid into place. “Oh my God,” I said as it hit me. “She’s Brooklyn Girl.”

  “Well, yeah,” he said as though I should have known.

  And maybe I should have, but Brooklyn was such a common name, and it had never occurred to me that he had met her on a flight or that they knew each other at all. “Small world,” I said.

  “Too right,” he said with a laugh.

  “Do you keep in touch?” I asked.

  “No, we haven’t. Not at all,” he said, sounding regretful. “Which is why it will be nice to see her.”

  “You know, she has a boyfriend,” I said, re
alizing as the words fell out of my mouth just how jealous it made me sound. It wasn’t like I was into Graeme but...well, I don’t know, but these were my guys and I felt protective of them. In something of a sisterly way. Except for Will, of course, I very much did not think of him like a brother.

  Although as I thought about him, I was reminded that he had dated Brooklyn, too.

  “Oh, I know,” Graeme said. “It’s not like that. Not at all. She’s...I just want good things for her.”

  Which was a weird thing to say. But before I thought of how to respond, he started babbling: “It’s silly, really, but maybe because I met her on that plane, coming to New York, and the song, and... Ach, don’t mind me, it’s stupid.”

  “What do you mean?” I prodded as the town car pulled up to the drugstore. “What’s stupid?”

  He blew out a breath and said, “She feels like my good luck charm. I know that’s daft and if you tell her I said that, I will throw a year’s worth of my used tea bags into your bunk. While you are in it, sleeping.”

  I laughed. “Fine, warning received and your secret is safe with me. I’m at the store, so I’d better go.”

  “Don’t forget the nacho chips,” he said offhandedly.

  “Nice try.”

  “Aw, come on, Nessa,” he whined, but thanks to that accent, even his whining sounded charming, more amusing than it was annoying.

  Still, I needed to stay strong. “No,” I said sternly. “We need you back on stage, and that means no more junk for you. You need to take better care of yourself.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, which was a little odd, but at least he wasn’t fighting me on it. Though truthfully, if they wanted to eat junk, there wasn’t much I could do to stop them.

  “I am glad you’re feeling better though,” I said, trying to take the sting out of my words from a moment before.

  Seeming to be over it, he thanked me and then ended the call as I exited the car.

  For the Love of Nachos

  When I arrived back at the hotel and knocked on Graeme’s guest room door, he’d answered right away and seemed very... not sick.

  Un-self-conscious in a pair of boxers and t-shirt (an outfit I’d seen him in countless times on the bus, so it was no big deal) he smiled and took the shopping bag from me.

  He looked in the bag and frowned, then looked up at me. “No nachos?”

  As I incredulously shook my head, I noticed there was no trace of the hunched-over zombie he’d been just a few hours before; he was back to his happy and healthy-looking self.

  “No,” I said. “No Doritos. No Jerky. No Skittles. No candy bars.”

  “Right,” he said. “Well, thanks anyway.”

  Yeah. So six-hour flu my ass. Even if it was just some mild burrito-induced food poisoning, he would still be feeling the effects, wouldn’t he? At least enough that he wouldn’t be looking for junk food. And if he was all better now, as he seemed to be, what was up with him missing a performance?

  I followed him into the room and closed the door behind me, taking a seat in the oversized chair in the corner. I gave him a moment to climb back into his bed, sprawl out his limbs to fill nearly the whole thing, and take a swig of his Gatorade before I spoke.

  “Graeme?”

  “Yes?”

  I cleared my throat and tried to sound like a friend and not a tour manager when I asked, “Are you faking being sick for a night off?”

  I could almost understand it if he had—everyone was tired and feeling it after many days in a row of working. But I sincerely hoped he wasn’t—Dad would have vetted all the guys to make sure they had a good work ethic, and I would hate to learn he’d made a mistake and brought in a slacker. Not that Graeme had given anything less than a hundred percent before now.

  He didn’t seem super-offended that I’d asked but shook his head. “I would like nothing better than to be with the guys, doing sound check and then playing at the concert tonight.” He then frowned as he waved at the TV, “And anyway, I’m restless and already bored of summer reruns, so it’s not like I’m having a party here holed up in the room. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, Vanessa, there’s no nachos.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Enough with the nachos.”

  “Probably best,” he said with a long-suffering sigh as he rubbed his belly over the covers. “Still not a hundred percent. Don’t want to anger things down below.”

  Having him tell me about his plumbing was TMI, but sadly, TMI was standard operating procedure when living in a tin can with a ton of guys. Bodily functions and all manner of sounds and smells that came out of those bodies had, sadly, become commonplace. We did call it the morgue, after all, and for good reason.

  I took his words at face value since the fact was, he loved performing, and I could think of no reason why he would bail on a concert for anything other than a medically necessary reason. Still, something was going on.

  It just didn’t add up. But whatever it was, he wasn’t letting on, which I did not like one bit.

  As I sat there, he stared at the TV, focused on a Law and Order rerun from like 2002. It was hardly a summer rerun, but maybe he didn’t realize that. Who knows if they ran L&O on BBC channels?

  “Graeme?” I said again.

  “Hmmm?” he hummed absently, not turning away from the TV.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  His eyes flicked to mine and then back to the television. “Nope,” he said.

  Right. “Graeme,” I tried again.

  “Nothing to tell, Vanessa,” he said, still not looking at me.

  For several long moments, no amount of trying to glare it out of Graeme worked, he just stared at the TV and pretended not to notice I was trying to exert great psychic pressure on him.

  Finally, I was just about to concede defeat when he let out a loud breath. “Fine,” he said as he reached for the remote that lay on the bedspread and muted the TV before he looked at me.

  “It wasn’t my idea. They asked me to play ill.”

  Oh. So that was unexpected. “Who asked you to play ill?”

  “Billy.”

  “Billy?” To what end? I turned my head and looked at him sideways wondering what on earth Billy was up to.

  “And your dad.”

  What? That made even less sense. “What for?”

  “You can’t let on that you know anything.”

  I didn’t know who he meant I shouldn’t tell, but if my father was behind whatever this scheme was, my loyalty was always to him. I made a crossing my heart motion.

  “They wanted Will up front tonight.”

  I couldn’t come up with any reason other than maybe they were auditioning him to replace Graeme. But that didn’t make sense: my father would never do that to Graeme. Also, Graeme seemed irritated at not being able to play but did not come across as tough he thought his role as lead singer was threatened.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s meant to be an audition for his grandfather’s old band.”

  “Is he in on this?” Because if Will’d had a part in this plan, it might have been nice to know.

  Graeme shook his head. “No. And you can’t tell him.”

  Okaaaaaay. “What’s going on?” I asked, not loving that band members were hiding things from each other. And maybe worse: that my father was hiding things from them. And me.

  “Apparently the band—Legion Thunder—wanted to see him play. They asked him to audition but seems he’s been dragging his arse on getting back to them,” he said. “Billy is associated with the band somehow. I guess this way they can see if he’s what they want in a new frontman.”

  “Frontman?” I asked, doing a double-take. “I thought he was going to audition for guitar?”

  He smirked at me. “So you did know.”

  Damn. No point lying about it, so I nodded.

  “Tell m
e, Vanessa,” he drawled. “Is there something going on with you two?” His amused smirk looked suddenly even more amused with the cock of an eyebrow. He looked like he already knew the answer to his question but wanted to hear me say it.

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “No.”

  The eyebrow went even higher.

  “Fine,” I said, dropping my eyes to my hands in my lap. “Not anymore. And before you say it...”

  “Say what?” he asked, actually sounding unsure of how I was going to finish the sentence.

  “Before you say...how I get around...like a groupie.”

  There was a moment’s pause when I had to look up at him to see what he was thinking. What he was thinking was apparently shock. “I was not going to say that,” he said. “What I was going to say was that it’s a shame there isn’t something going on because you two are clearly smitten with each other.”

  “Wha?”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “Please. You think no one has noticed? The looks, the whispering, the giggling across your bunks in the middle of the night? Hmmm?”

  As all the blood in my body rose to my face just then, all I could do was stare at him, replaying the past several days in my head. The ones where we’d thought we were being SO discreet. Not so much, apparently.

  “Anyway,” he went on. “None of my business, but maybe he’s dragging his arse because of you.”

  That was not news. I nodded, looking back down at my hands again. “That’s why we’re not...” I cleared my throat because suddenly it was really hard to say. “We’re done, Will and I.”

  “Well, I think that’s a mistake, but it’s not up to me, is it?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that which meant it was time for a subject change. “But why all the deception? About tonight, I mean?”

  “That I don’t know,” he said with a shrug as he reached for the bottle of Gatorade on the nightstand. “Maybe they want him seeming natural. Though he’s always a natural,” he said with a laugh, echoing my own thought. “Or maybe they’re worried he’ll balk if he knows he’s auditioning?”