by Milly Taiden
Jonas could feel people walking on other floors, feel the building tremble around them. Even the Bellagio had been built with earthquake-proof elasticity.
He stared at the dark television screen, unwilling to disturb Rhiannon asleep under the sheets, but he couldn’t lie down. When he was flat on his back, the floor vibrated more, rattling his bones.
He sighed.
Beside him, Rhiannon sat up, and the sheets moved under his legs. “You awake?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Building moving?”
“Yeah.”
She cuddled close, her soft flesh molding to his back. Jonas closed his eyes, trying to feel nothing but her. Her long hair curled around his arm, and the sweet scent of watermelons rose in the cold air.
“Are you thinking about them?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he admitted.
Against his back, Rhiannon went very still, too still. Her voice was small as she whispered in the dark, “I was in the foster system, too.”
“How many?” he asked. He knew that she would understand what he meant.
“Five long-term ones. I don’t know how many dozen overnighters and short-term places.”
He turned and took her into his arms, cradling her, sheltering her, and stroked her hair.
“I lost a sister, too,” she said. The stricken breathiness of her voice reminded him of when she sang some of the most emotional lines of “Alwaysland.”
He asked, “What happened?”
In the dark, he could feel her breathing shallowly in his arms like she was panting through pain. “My mother was drunk. I ran and hid, but Reilly wouldn’t hide. I was too afraid to chase after her and haul her back under the bed after the third time. I thought my mom wouldn’t hurt a baby.”
Ah, this was why she flinched at any suggestion of violence, and he berated himself for ever being so insensitive as to say anything around her. You never know what kind of pain people are holding in. “How old was your sister?”
“Three.”
“And you?”
“Five.”
“So young.”
“I still miss them both.”
He curled around her, drawing her back down to the bed. His heart ached in his chest, a reflection of the pain in her voice, but there was nothing he could do except hold her in his arms until she slept while the hotel trembled in the gale.
Jonas still couldn’t sleep, but he lay still, prone on the sheets, vulnerable to the ceiling or the dresser that might fall on them.
A lifetime lived in foster care boggled his mind. He felt the scars of losing his family and being tossed into the ruthless system with people who wanted to care but couldn’t help him beyond making sure that he had been assigned a bed somewhere, and he couldn’t imagine the sadness that must have dogged Rhiannon her whole life.
He wanted to make that sadness go away, to surround her with what he remembered: the casual trust and care of his family.
Jonas held her, trying to make her feel safe if only for that minute.
A Manager's Job
The next morning, Rhiannon woke up with her face half-buried in a pillow that smelled like bleach and lavender instead of cigarettes and spilled whiskey. Slanting sun spilled through a gap in the dark curtains.
She stretched, luxuriating because the mattress was not lying on the floor and she had money to buy whatever kind of food she wanted, all day, and she didn’t even have to worry about how much gas she was going to need to pump into her rattletrap, oil-leaking car, either.
For the last two and a half months, she had awakened in clean linens with room service delivering whatever she wanted, but the large, softly snoring man in the bed beside her was the weirdest thing of all.
She rolled over. Jonas’s soft lips were parted while he slept, and he breathed deeply, so very asleep.
He lay on his back, one musclebound arm flung over his head. His hard cheekbone nearly touched his round bicep where his blue tee shirt sleeve ended. His light brown hair curled on the pillow by his head.
Rhiannon’s fingers reached to stroke his face, to explore his skin with her fingers while he slept, but that seemed creepy-weird so she curled her fingers into a fist on her pillow instead.
His eyebrows flinched, and his eyelids rippled as he dreamed.
Beyond him, the red numbers on the alarm clock read 10:37. From the light filtering between the curtains of the window and the fact that she was not standing on a stage, Rhiannon assumed it was morning, not past ten-thirty at night.
If she got out of bed, she might wake him, and she didn’t want to wake him up. Jonas had been out until three, bailing some roadies out of jail for throwing beer bottles and chasing the Terrible Threesome, and then he hadn’t slept much until dawn when the wind finally died down.
She laid her head back on the pillow, watching every nuance of motion, resisting leaning over to kiss him.
For twenty minutes, she intermittently dozed and watched him, until the time she opened her eyes and found him watching her instead, his pale green eyes smiling.
“Hey,” he said.
“Is it morning?” she lied, knowing very well that it was just a minute before eleven.
“Our breakfast should be here in a few minutes.”
“When did you order that?”
His sly grin was not sheepish at all. “When I checked us all in. I figured it was a matter of time before I had you in my bed.”
“Arrogant bastard, aren’t you?”
“You bet. Comes with being a success in this business. You get to thinking that you can do no wrong. I was planning to cancel your room this morning, unless you don’t want me to.”
He watched her so closely, his green eyes running over her face and body, trying to discern what she really felt while her chest seized up, freaking out at the idea that she would have nowhere to go if Jonas abandoned her.
She was a singer, and while other people’s throats closed with emotion, her muscles were trained to where she could have tears pouring down her face but sing with an open throat.
“Maybe not yet,” she said.
He nodded, but he didn’t take his eyes off her face. “It’s okay. I understand.”
Rhiannon got a sick feeling in her stomach. “Do you?”
His jade green eyes were a little too large, like he was hiding something. “Yeah. I understand. It’s normal to not jump into a relationship so hard, so soon.”
“Oh, Jonas. That’s not it. It’s me.”
He swallowed like he was biting back harsh words, something that Rhiannon had never seen done. He said, “It’s okay. You have to be comfortable with this, too. Breakfast will be here in a second.”
He rolled out of the other side of the bed and went into the bathroom. Water swooshed.
She pushed her fists into her eyes and rolled onto her back.
Screaming is bad for the vocal cords. Screaming is bad for the vocal cords.
She squeezed her fists hard until room service knocked. She pulled on pants to answer the door, and the guy wheeled a long cart in. He removed the lids with a flourish, revealing a whole bunch of food on white china plates.
Rhiannon looked at it all after the guy left, wondering how many more people were supposed to show up.
Jonas came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, drying his hands on his pajama shorts. His smile seemed happier. “Did I hear room service?”
“Yeah. It’s still hot. What do you want?”
“I got the Denver omelet. I ordered your usual for you. Since we’ll be in Vegas tonight, too, you can order for yourself tomorrow.”
She glanced at him. “We’ll be here tonight?”
He nodded. “Xan made the call. He’s canceling tonight’s show in Provo. We had a promo day after that, so tomorrow afternoon we’ll drive straight to Salt Lake City.”
“Oh, no,” Rhiannon said. “Near beer.”
He grinned a little larger. “Yeah, I hope the guys don’t go into withdrawal
. Meanwhile, speaking of the DTs, they brought coffee, right?”
As they ate breakfast, the air between them seemed to thin, and Rhiannon could breathe easier.
Music Is a Bitch Mistress
The bus rolled through the harsh Nevada desert toward Salt Lake City the next afternoon. Outside, the wide sky focused the sunlight like a lens, burning the brittle scrub brush and mica-sparkling sand. Even filtered by the tinted windows, the sun heated Rhiannon’s arm even more than the blazing stage lights every night.
Jonas was reading a dog-eared paperback on the couch across from her, not close enough to touch, but close enough that she could reach out if she wanted to, if no one were watching, but someone was always watching.
Rhiannon sat on the other narrow couch, staring across the desert and studying some of Killer Valentine’s more obscure singles on her iPod, just in case, while Tryp sat at the other end, earbuds plugged into his ears, beating on the cushions with his drumsticks. He twiddled a stick between his fingers, spinning it while he tapped with the other one.
“Which song are you doing?” she asked him.
“‘Be the Night,’” he said, chewing on one side of his mouth. “I dropped a measure at the Tucson show and had to improv to catch up.”
“You remember that, huh?”
He grinned at her but didn’t drop a beat with his sticks. “It was the third measure in the fourth line of the bridge that I missed. I’m still not sure how I did it, so I’m trying to beat it out until it’s stuck in here.” He flipped a drumstick over his knuckles, grabbed it, and tapped his temple, all without missing a beat.
For all his babyness, Tryp worked hard. She smiled at his antics.
Tryp grinned back and swung his stockinged feet around to rest in her lap, still drumming on the cushions and nodding to the music in his ears.
Rhiannon couldn’t resist and ran her fingernails up the sole of his foot.
Tryp crunched up, laughing, and dropped his drumsticks. “Jesus, don’t! That tickles!”
When he contracted, he lifted his feet, and thus the bottoms of his white socks were a much better target than even in her lap. She reached out and tickled both of them.
Tryp fell off the couch onto his hands and knees, laughing. In an instant, he gathered himself and pounced on her, gently digging his fingers into her ribs. Her whole body jittered, trying to get away from the tickling. His breath had just a little beer on it, and heat from his body flowed through her clothes.
Rhiannon’s squeal made everyone on the bus look up.
Tryp tickled her just a second more, and his weight was lifting off her to sit back when his dark eyes flashed open and he flew backward.
Jonas stood above Tryp, his face calmer than usual. “Don’t molest the back-up singer.”
“We were just kidding around,” Rhiannon said, reassurances flooding her mouth. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”
Jonas held Tryp by the back of his collar and shoved his other hand in his pants pocket, as if this were a nonchalant discussion. “Tryp? Can we agree not to touch Rhiannon?”
“She started it!” he said, still laughing and pretending to struggle.
Rhiannon stumbled off the couch as the bus veered around a slow car on the road. “Jonas, please. It was nothing. Don’t get mad.”
“I’m not mad,” Jonas said, but his voice lowered. “Tryp, are you ever going to fucking touch her again?”
Tryp’s face darkened and he jerked away from Jonas’s hand. “What the fuck, man?”
Rhiannon grabbed Jonas’s other arm.
Near the driver, Xan was standing up and holding onto the straphanger bar that ran down the ceiling while the bus swayed to change lanes again, watching them.
Rhiannon said, “Jonas, everything’s fine.”
Xan strolled up the bus. His British accent tightened his lips. “No, everything’s not fine.”
Jonas stuck his hands in his pockets. Tryp toppled to the couch, still glaring.
Xan said, “Jonas, what the fuck is going on?” Xan wasn’t big on emoting unless he was onstage, but one of his dark eyebrows lowered, and his mouth set in a hard line.
“Nothing,” Rhiannon said. “Tryp was just roughhousing, and Jonas was just making sure that it didn’t go too far. Right?” She shook his arm.
Jonas nodded, but his jaw bulged where he clenched it.
“Bullshit,” Xan said. He looked straight at Jonas. “You’re fucking her.”
“Xan!” Rhiannon said, preparing to be properly aghast.
Jonas said, “I’m not fucking her. I’m in love with her, and if any of you assholes touch her, I will tear up your contract.”
Rhiannon’s legs wobbled, and she sat on the couch, holding her face in her hands, wanting to crawl under something to hide before the fistfight started. Their harsh breathing was louder than the bus’s diesel engine.
Xan was silent as Rhiannon stared at the insides of her fingers, then he said, “She’s fired. When we get to Salt Lake, throw her shit off the bus.”
In Rhiannon’s chest, fear turned to bitter desperation. They were getting rid of her, throwing her away.
The stinking slum house was one long bus ride away, and Gaston would pick her up from the bus terminal in that rusted out hulk and hand her back the keys, assuming that he hadn’t destroyed the engine by not adding a quart of oil every week like she told him to because the rings leaked. A black cloud of oily smog followed that car wherever it drove.
Assuming that Gaston and those guys didn’t abandon her, too.
Assuming that anyone would ever work with her again.
No one would touch her if Xan Valentine blackballed her.
Jonas reached over and took Rhiannon’s hand away from her eyes, holding her fingers. “Think about this, Xan.”
“We agreed,” Xan said. “Never again. Lynda nearly tore this fucking band apart. Tryp still gets shaky if we talk about her.”
“I do not,” Tryp said, sitting on the other end of the couch from Rhiannon, but he ran his hand through his short black hair and held it at the crown, pulling.
Jonas told Xan, “I didn’t plan for this to happen.” He was holding her hand, but her knees were still shaking too much to stand. “She’s a beautiful, intelligent, incredibly talented woman. Of course I was attracted to her. Of course I fell for her. She’s got the talent to make it in this business and stay on top of the charts. She would do better with another six months or a year with Killer Valentine, or you can fire her, and you’ll be alone on that stage until you break a cord.”
Rhiannon pressed her feet against the floor and forced herself to stand. Even if all those things that Jonas had said were lies, she didn’t want to get blackballed. “Xan, I love working with you and Killer Valentine, but it is ridiculous to fire me over this. There’s no discord in the band.”
Xan didn’t even look at her. “Why you, Jonas? Why the fuck you? I can see these buggers not able to keep their dicks in their pants, but not you.”
“I didn’t plan this,” he said, “and it’s not like that. It’s a relationship.”
Xan twisted and glared at Rhiannon, his brown eyes blazing. “Is it?”
Rhiannon swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah.”
“If you marry him and get knocked up, your career will be over,” Xan said. “I thought you wanted to be a musician. That’s why I hired you, because I thought I saw something serious in you, not like all those other singers who had pretty faces and voices and nothing but bleeding vacuum in their heads, who just wanted to fuck the band to get a ring or child support.”
“I am serious,” Rhiannon said, all her earnestness rising to her face. “I’m not giving up music.”
Xan leaned down. “Music is a bitch mistress, Rhiannon. You can’t have both a personal life and make it in this business. Trust me on this. I learned the hard way. You’re going to have to choose, so choose now. If you choose him, it will fuck up the band, so you’re out. If you choose the band, then you have to cut i
t off with him right now.”
God, her heart clenched hard. It was an impossible choice. Killer Valentine wasn’t just a job. It wasn’t just her big break. She belonged with them. She was part of the music every night, an organ in the body of the band. They would have to cut her out.
And Jonas was so much more.
Her whole skin trembled.
Be the funny redhead.
But this wasn’t funny. Xan was asking her to choose between her heart and her soul.
Jonas stood above her, still holding her fingers in his. His pale green eyes watched her, turning anguished again.
Xan Valentine’s anger smoldered in his dark eyes, daring her to not choose music, to not make the same sacrifice he had.
Rage boiled in her, crazed fire that tried to launch her through the air to slam Xan Valentine’s stupid head against the window of the bus, but Rhiannon breathed in cool air, opening her throat.
The rage didn’t control her, but she wasn’t going to make a joke and laugh off this diabolical choice between her life and the kind of love that made life worth living.
Rhiannon stared right up at Xan Valentine the Rock Star who had brought her along on this blockbuster tour, the guy who had fought his way to the cover of Rolling Stone and dragged his band along with him.
“Fine,” she said. “You’re going to make me choose? I choose Jonas, but I’m not giving up music. I’ve learned so much from you about how to put together a music career, but I’m not going to burn myself and my band to the ground while I do it because I’m in this for the long haul, for dozens of albums and a career that spans decades. I choose Jonas because I love him, and without love, all this doesn’t mean shit and won’t last. I would love to stay with Killer Valentine, Xan. You’re the best in the business, and I love your music and all you guys, but I won’t give up Jonas. So, am I fired or not?”
Xan’s sharp expression scrutinized her like he was calculating just how much she was worth to the band and just how much damage she was going to cause when it all blew up. He stepped back, and his teeth didn’t unclench as he said, “This is just starting to come together. I can’t lose you.”
