by Milly Taiden
Trouble
Night draped black velvet over the long row of bus windows while Rhiannon stood at the rear, leaning on the cabinets that held the extra instruments and watching the men edge around each other.
No one spoke.
Xan Valentine sat on one side of the dining table booth, his fists clenched. He had already phoned Jonas, who was riding in the last car out of the arena with Tryp, to tell him about canceling the Reno concert, so Rhiannon and the guys took turns showering while the bus still had water hookups. She stood under the warm spray for a few extra minutes, letting the water soak the last of the conditioner out of her hair, before venturing back out into the interpersonal swamp that is a rock band on tour.
After Tryp’s dick-sucking remark during the audition, Rhiannon had bought grandma jammies to wear on the bus, but it turned out that Tryp was only inappropriate in public. If no one was around to be shocked or scandalized, he didn’t bother. He soon discovered that she found cheesy horror movies hilarious, and they had been fright buddies ever since. On long drives, he hunted through the DVD bins at truck stops, trying to find something truly bizarre for them to laugh at. Other than that, while they were on the bus, he usually drank beer, banged on things with drumsticks, or slept.
After her shower, Rhiannon waited for Tryp and Jonas and read a book on her new tablet while everybody else ignored each other in a stupor of their own pain, just like a normal family. Cadell was doing something on his tablet that required headphones and a lot of finger-swiping. Rade and Grayson were dozing on a couch, long legs dangling off and resting on the floor rather than risk touching each other.
Tryp and Jonas barged in about an hour later because they had gotten stuck in the post-concert traffic leaving the casino. As soon as Tryp saw Xan Valentine, he announced, “Fuck me, man! Now I know why you hog the encores! That was awesome!”
Xan didn’t even look up from where he slouched in the banquette, his knees covered by a blue blanket stolen from an airplane.
Rhiannon, sitting on one of the back couches, called out, “Tryppy! I downloaded Creature from the Black Lagoon 5. It’s in Swedish!”
“Gnarly!” Tryp crowed, having recently discovered surfer slang, and jumped to the back of the bus to slide onto the couch beside her, leaving Xan alone.
As Tryp skidded across the leather, the funk of his man-sweat reached Rhiannon’s face even before his muscled body crashed into her side. “Go shower,” she told him. “You reek.”
“The groupies like it,” he said, standing up and stripping off his tee shirt on the way to the bathroom, flexing his chest and arms and generally showing off.
Rade opened a window and stuck his head out, gasping for effect.
Tryp said, “Besides, I actually work up there. You slackers are all just plucking on little strings.” He slammed the door behind him, also for effect.
At the front of the bus, Jonas was already sitting in the booth across from Xan Valentine, talking softly, mostly reassurances about how smoothly the cancellation was going and how the Las Vegas show was going to make up for it. “We’re putting all the refunded tickets into a drawing, and we’re going to fly ten people to the Vegas show. This is a great public relations opportunity.”
Xan wouldn’t even look up, but he nodded.
Eventually, Jonas left him alone and came to sit by Rhiannon. “So what freak-fest are you going to watch with Tryppy?”
She showed him the tablet with the film’s name paused on it. “It’s got subtitles.”
“Can Tryp read?” Jonas asked, mocking.
She elbowed him. “Stop.”
Jonas set his arm on the back of the couch, and Rhiannon leaned into him, feeling his muscled body against her side. Vanilla soap whiffed from his clothes, and under that, a trace of something darker, more masculine, and Rhiannon turned her face into his dress shirt and breathed his clean scent before she remembered and pulled away.
“It’s okay,” Jonas whispered. “Screw them.”
Around the tour bus, Xan was still brooding in the banquette, but Rade and Cadell were watching her and Jonas. Grayson had crashed, snoring, probably stoned.
She scooted a couple inches away but leaned back and whispered, “This opportunity is everything to me. I can’t take a chance.”
Jonas adjusted his posture, leaning away. He whispered, “I am so regretting that air-tight fraternization clause that I wrote right now.”
She ducked her head to whisper even more quietly, “Is Xan going to cancel the tour?”
Jonas snorted. “If he’s breathing, he’ll tour.”
A Day Off
Jonas stayed in the back of the bus with Rhiannon, sitting near her on the narrow couch, waiting for Tryp to finish his shower so they could unhook the bus and start the long drive down the dark desert roads to Vegas. Her gentle body heat warmed his leg through his suit slacks.
If he couldn’t have his arms around her, if he couldn’t kiss her, at least he could be near her.
Since last night, or that morning, or when-the-fuck-ever it was, his mind had circled around her. If anything, adding the personal dimension had increased his interest in her.
When Rhiannon had been singing on stage last night, he had listened to her through some monitor headphones borrowed from a sound tech. Her voice was improving rapidly, pretty much with every concert, filling out with a richness that he couldn’t have imagined a few months ago.
He liked her. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and kiss her. He wanted to fill his hands with her body and lose himself in her.
In addition to that, she was becoming very interesting as an artist.
He couldn’t imagine anything more attractive.
After Tryp emerged from the shower and flopped beside Rhiannon to watch the gross-out, the driver unhooked the bus from the utilities. Jonas, Rhiannon, and Tryp watched a bad actor in a rubber suit mock-terrorize a gaggle of beehive-bedecked blondes, and the bus growled down the road toward Vegas.
Yes, Las Vegas. Sin City. Land of casinos and titty bars and whiskey buffets as far as the eye can see, peopled by women looking to party for a quick buck and scrawny men hoisting bulgy backpacks that dribbled white powders like breadcrumbs to lead the addicts home.
What, oh what, could go wrong in Las Vegas for six burnt-out musicians and an exhausted manager?
***
The Killer Valentine tour bus pulled into Las Vegas just after nine in the morning. The driver twisted in his seat and blasted a wolf whistle, and the musicians plus Jonas began to stir.
Jonas awakened, groggy from sleeping wedged into a corner and found Rhiannon asleep in the crook of his arm, her soft body cuddled next to him. Seemed like he had gotten a little snuggle time, even if he had been too socked out to even cop a feel. He glanced further down, past her red-gold curls spilling over his chest that smelled faintly of watermelon shampoo.
Tryp was sleeping with his head on Rhiannon’s lap.
Jonas frowned and tried to adjust his leg to casually throw Tryp to the carpeted floor of the bus.
Tryp didn’t move. He always was a damn heavy sleeper.
Jonas kicked, trying to dislodge him.
Tryp smacked his lips and nestled his head further into Rhiannon’s lap, rubbing his face on her pink plaid flannel pajamas over her thighs.
Jonas curled up, intending to smack Tryp upside the head for molesting the back-up singer. Tryp had all sorts of punitive clauses in his new contract, too, especially after the last incident.
The driver’s second piercing whistle woke everyone up anyway.
Tryp fell to the floor on his own, catching himself on his knees and hands, and Jonas flinched because the drummer could have broken his wrist or a finger.
Rhiannon dragged herself upright, rubbing her eyes and cheeks. “Are we there?”
“Looks like.” Jonas said. He rubbed his face, disconcerted with how his hands were shaking. His arms felt empty without her in them. Maybe Tryp’s huge head resting on Rhiannon’s
lap had cut off Jonas’s blood circulation to his legs or something.
He looked out of the bus’s windows at the late morning sunshine, but the long, long day was only beginning.
The porte-cochère shaded the bus from the worst of the Nevada sun, though the thousands of light bulbs on the underside shone pinpoints through the black-tinted windows. Sliding doors stood perpetually open as gamblers sauntered in for a long day and stumbled out after a long night.
“Come on,” Jonas stood and held out his hand to help Rhiannon to her feet, again availing himself of any opportunity to touch her. Her cool fingers in his were so light that his hand drifted up.
She stared out the windows at the shimmering lights. “What hotel are we at?”
“Bellagio. They had suites on the same floor available, and it’ll be easier to keep tabs on the Terrible Threesome if we corral them.”
Rhiannon nodded, but Grayson, still sprawled on the other couch, glared at Jonas with just one eye open.
Jonas left them all on the bus to check into the hotel. After he cleared the paperwork, the band could use the rear entrance to avoid a commotion. Cadell was nearly anonymous because he was just a pretty-boy with jet-black hair, but Grayson and Rade attracted some attention.
Tryp and Xan were so recognizable that they could cause riots just by walking through a lobby.
Even a couple months ago, they hadn’t had to resort to subterfuge, but that was before that Rolling Stone cover with the guys half-naked and ripped after Xan had secluded them at that Utah gym for a month before the photo shoot.
The desk clerk handed Jonas an envelope stuffed full of keycards, and he hurried back through the lobby. It looked like a gold glitter bomb had blown up in there, spraying everything with a complete lack of taste. They must indeed be in Vegas because the air smelled faintly of cigarette ash.
Jonas rushed because he had six kids on that bus to get back to. They all seemed like kids to him, even though at twenty-seven, Jonas was only two years older than Cadell and six years older than Tryp, with the rest in the middle.
Rhiannon wasn’t a kid in his head, though. She was definitely a woman, a beautiful woman who was slipping through his fingers, but he didn’t have to look after her like she was one of the brain-damaged ducklings, either.
Jonas bounded up the steps of the bus, calling out, “Hey, guys! Let’s go around to the—” and stopped.
Shit.
Xan was standing at the back of the bus with his fist against the wall like he had just slammed it there. Cadell was doing something on a tablet.
Rhiannon’s bright blue eyes darted around the empty bus. “I’m sorry, Jonas. We tried to talk them out of it.”
Tryp, Rade, and Grayson were missing.
Tracking the Terrible Threesome
Rhiannon apologized again for not somehow stopping the Terrible Threesome from bolting out of the tour bus because Jonas looked furious for just a moment and then deflated, all his anger turning to defeat as he sagged against the pole for the stairs leading to the bus’s door.
When Jonas had been pissed for those few seconds, she had almost run and locked herself in the bathroom to get away from his rage, just in case he started grabbing people and slamming their heads into walls, but his anger had dissipated so quickly that she had barely drawn a breath before it was gone.
She should have found a way to stop them. She should have hog-tied them or blocked their way with her gargantuan ass or something, but she hadn’t.
She was useless again. She had been useless her whole life.
“I’m so sorry—” she started.
“Not your fault. Their decision.” Jonas waved off her apology and rubbed one hand up the side of his face. “We can’t chase them in this bus. I’ll get a rental car, and we’ll go find them.”
Rhiannon looked out the window at the long real estate of the Strip, a blinking cornucopia overflowing with half-dressed women and opportunities for drunken debauchery. The fountains in front of the Bellagio shot into the warm blue sky. People thronged the sidewalk, elbowing past each other, rushing to the next casino where their luck might change. She asked, “How on Earth will we find them?”
Jonas chuckled when she looked back, probably at the horror on her face at trying to find three people in Sin City. He said, “I put tracking software on their phones months ago. I’ve found them all sorts of places, even in police stations when they used their one phone call to yell at their girlfriends instead of calling someone to bail them out. If you could drive,” and she nodded quickly, trying to make up for her lack, “I’ll go inside wherever they are to round them up and roust them out. Cadell, you’re with me.”
Cadell sighed and picked his earbuds out of his ears. “Fine.”
Xan Valentine said, “I’m coming, too.”
“Sorry, Xan,” Jonas said. “You’re a liability. We’d get mobbed with you along. Besides, we can’t have you yelling at them, or even talking at them, really. I’ll chew them a new one for both of us.” He grinned, even though his smile looked kind of forced.
Xan smiled with one side of his mouth, the first time that Rhiannon had seen him crack any kind of a smile since his voice had choked the night before.
Jonas handed Xan a room keycard and had the driver pull around to the back. Early spring heat hung over the pavement at the rear entrance and was so thick that Rhiannon nearly gagged on it when she stepped out of the bus. Xan flipped a hoodie over his head to dash the few yards to the door and then up the private elevator.
A dark blue minivan with heavily tinted windows drove up to the entrance, and the driver handed off the keys to Rhiannon. Jonas rode shotgun, navigating with his phone, while Cadell sat in the second row and looked out the window, watching the crowds milling on the sidewalks in the heat.
All three phones beeped their location from a strip club just a few blocks away, and Rhiannon followed Jonas’s navigation through the cramped streets to the squat building.
She waited in the van, engine idling, watching the pale blue sky and far-away horizon. The air conditioner forced freezing air at her face and the sun pricked the skin on her arm for ten minutes until Jonas and Cadell returned, along with a very sullen Terrible Threesome.
Actually, Tryp and Rade glared and stuck out their lower lips. Grayson was watching something crawl up the side of the minivan that no one else could see.
They used the rear entrance at the Bellagio and rode up a private elevator, and Rhiannon watched how Jonas swiped the keycard in the elevator’s reader.
Cadell shared a two-bedroom suite with Xan, as they always did, evidently, while the three-bedroom suite was reserved for the Terrible Threesome. Jonas and Rhiannon each had a room down the hallway.
As Cadell swiped his card and opened the door, he grabbed Jonas’s arm, and his light brown eyes widened. “Jonas. Listen.”
Jonas stopped walking, and the rest of them all stayed with him. Rhiannon almost bumped into Tryp as she stumbled. Rade caught her hand and steadied her.
Inside the suite, Xan was singing.
Loud.
Jonas muttered, “Goddamn him,” and pushed open the door. Rhiannon peeked in the room from behind his arm.
Standing on the Mountaintop
The sun blazed in the glass wall of windows that overlooked the dust and glitter of Vegas and glared off the gilded and ivory silk furniture in the living room, flashing in Rhiannon’s eyes. She shaded her face with her hand.
In the couch area, Xan was standing in front of a computer with the lamps aimed to shine on him like he had set up an impromptu television set. The computer’s webcam light shone like a blue star visible even through the bright sunlight while Xan threw back his head and belted “Standing on the Mountaintop” to a track running through the computer.
Of course it was that one. Why couldn’t he have picked something soft like “Alwaysland,” for God’s sake?
Rhiannon and the rest of the band ran toward the computer, except for Grayson, who leane
d against the door jamb with his eyes closed.
Tryp pattered on the desk by the computer with his hands, sticking his head in the camera’s frame, while Cadell and Rade sang harmony. Rhiannon trotted a few steps behind them, but she joined in, too.
With the rest of them singing around him, Xan laughed, but he sang more softly.
Jonas paced off to the side, beyond the view angle of the webcam, his face impassive.
In a fit of insanity that she would later attribute to the stress of hunting down the Terrible Threesome and sleeping sitting up on the bus all night with visions of Black Lagoon Creatures dancing through her head, Rhiannon took the top line and sang Xan’s part with him.
What the hell. It was just a webcast.
She felt him look down at where she stood, but she grinned into the webcam and sang with all her might.
Xan backed off and sang the lower, lighter harmony line.
And that was good, too.
They finally came to the end of the song, and Xan encroached on the computer, thanking all the people who had come to hang out with them. A five-digit number flashed in the top corner of the screen. The first number was a four.
An internet disc jockey appeared in the corner and grew, taking over the screen, crowing his triumph of getting an exclusive interview and performance from not only Xan Valentine but the whole band, too.
Xan signed out. The blue webcam pinpoint star died.
Jonas paced faster, and now his fists were clenched. “Xan? Can I ask what happened here?”
Xan Valentine whirled, rounding on Rhiannon. His eyes blazed darkly with anger.
She held her hands up, trying to fend him off for when he grabbed her and threw her against the wall, and she tottered backward a few steps to try to get out of the range of his sweeping arms.
Xan didn’t reach for her, but his voice was a quiet snarl. “Don’t ever upstage me again. I swear to God, you’ll be on the next plane back to L.A.”
