Ransom (Courting Chaos Book 2)

by Heather Young-Nichols

  “That was painful,” Dixon said as we made our way back to the dressing room. “I just want to know who did what to cause this. Do we need to have our chakras cleansed?”

  I ground my teeth together, trying to ignore him. Obviously, he hadn’t seen any news and had probably been otherwise occupied. Booker kept his eyes forward and his mouth shut, but the way he quickly glanced at me, it was clear he knew. Yet he said nothing.

  I reached back and pulled my sweaty T-shirt over my head as soon as we entered the dressing room. I just wanted a shower and honestly, wanted to hold Bellamy, but that wasn’t in the cards for tonight.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Lawson said, coming through the door last. “Everyone on Ransom’s bus in fifteen minutes.” Then he left.

  “Looks like we’re bunking together again,” Dixon said, but he didn’t sound happy about it. “Just like on the old tours.”

  “I’m glad I wasn’t here for old times,” Booker added.

  I let them continue while I got into the shower and back out in record time. Those two were just entering when I’d already finished. I’d wait for them on the bus. A little time alone to cool off might have been better. Get my thoughts together and all that.

  “Hey.” Bellamy’s sweet voice relaxed everything inside me as I walked down the hall. She had to double-time her steps to catch up to my normal stride, but she did it. “I know you don’t have time to hang out tonight, but when I saw you, I thought I could at least walk you to your bus.”

  I slipped my arm around her shoulders and pulled her in tight. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

  “You’re a doctor now?” She smiled up at me.

  “Give me your phone.”

  She handed it over without asking why I wanted it. As we walked, I kept my arm around her and used my free hand to open up her camera app. I stopped us for the briefest of seconds and snapped a picture. It was perfect, her snug against my side, the both of us looking happy, as if we had zero drama in our lives. Then with the push of a few buttons, I changed the settings I’d wanted changed and handed it back to her. I’d get a picture for my phone later.

  We got to my bus and I knew I needed to send her away and fuck if that wasn’t the last thing I wanted to do. But this was the band and the rest of the guys wouldn’t be far behind.

  “As much as I’d rather spend the night with you, the guys are going to be here soon.”

  “Oh, I know. I just thought I’d walk with you.” Her pink tongue jutted out and wet her bottom lip. “I’m sorry about the show.”

  I sighed. She had nothing to be sorry for. “I’m sorry Dean had to get you out of there like that. I had no idea which way that was going to go.”

  “I’m not sorry about that,” she said back quietly. “Now kiss me before your band lip-blocks you.”

  I smiled down at her, then leaned into her space. Kissing Bellamy was some of the best time ever spent and it was never going to be enough. Unfortunately, just as my tongue snaked in to touch hers, Cross said, “How public do you want this to be?”

  I groaned but brought the kiss to an end. He was right. With Hope’s shenanigans, there were probably already multiple photographers, professional or amateur, that now had a hundred pictures of my tongue in Bellamy’s mouth. Not the best idea ever.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asked.

  I nodded. As if that was a real question. We hadn’t talked about a lot of things yet, so I had no idea how long she was going to stay on tour, which meant I had to spend every minute with her I could. And we needed a plan for when she left, though if I did a good enough job convincing her, she’d be here until school started.

  “Indie went back to the bus,” Cross told her as she began walking away. Bellamy waved over her shoulder so he’d know she’d heard him. But I planned to watch her until I could no longer see her, then remembered her phone.

  “Bellamy, your phone,” I called out at the same time as I used mine to call her.

  She looked down and as hard as she tried not to, she smiled widely and shook her head. “You’re an idiot,” she called out, causing me to laugh out loud.

  “You have no idea,” I called back.

  “What was all that about?” Cross asked once we couldn’t see her anymore and climbed onto the bus to wait for the others.

  “I took a picture of the two of us a few minutes ago and set it as the picture that’ll come up when I call.”

  “OK… ” he said. Yeah, that didn’t explain her response.

  “I also may have changed my name in her contacts.” He raised an eyebrow. “Earlier she mentioned getting used to something with a rock star boyfriend and I could tell, even over the phone, that it was a slip of the tongue and she got really embarrassed.”

  “Oh, god. What did you do?”

  “Changed my name to Boyfriend.”

  He chuckled. “You are an idiot. You know some people do get embarrassed, right?”

  I shrugged. “I mean, yeah, but did you see her face? That wasn’t embarrassment.”

  He couldn’t disagree with me there and the smile I’d gotten from her was one of the most beautiful things I’d seen in my life.

  “So, boyfriend, huh?” Cross said casually.

  Instead of answering with words, I gave him a hard stare. Sure, Cross could harass the shit out of me given my history with girlfriends, or recent history anyway, but he knew Bellamy and he’d know she was nothing like the last girl.

  Lawson interrupted as he climbed the steps to my bus, Dixon and Booker on his tail. “All right. Grab a drink and sit the fuck down. We have some things to go over.”

  I dropped into a seat at the table, as did Cross next to me. Dixon crumbled onto the couch, almost lying down like he was about to take a nap, and Booker hopped up onto the small counter between Dixon and us.

  First, Lawson explained what had happened with Hope doing the interviews that morning because Dixon still didn’t seem to know. Then he wanted to delve into the fall-out and I felt like a complete asshole by being the cause of the new problems we were facing.

  “There’s going to be some uproar because of everything that just happened. Hell, we’re still convincing the world you don’t all prefer teenaged girls,” Lawson said. “Some might even call for us to kick Ransom out of the band. Basically, this is like Eric two-point-oh.”

  “Without the pedophilia,” Dixon offered. It didn’t help but did lighten the mood a few notches. He held up his hands to Lawson’s scowl and said, “I’m just saying.”

  “Well, yeah. This is not worse than Eric,” Lawson agreed. “What I’m saying is the fallout is going to be similar.”

  “But I didn’t do anything,” I said. “Unlike Eric, who really did fuck up, my only mistake was dating her in the first place.”

  “You’re saying you didn’t get her pregnant?” Lawson countered.

  The idea made my stomach turn. When Hope had first said she was pregnant, no, I wasn’t all that happy about it. But the idea of now having a kid with someone other than Bellamy… actually made my stomach burn.

  “I’m not saying that at all. It’s possible, though if it’s true, I want to sue the condom company,” I said. Dixon snorted and I tried not to look over at him or I’d lose it. “I’ve been wearing those fuckers since I was fifteen with the idea that I wouldn’t get someone pregnant and now if I did… I feel a little cheated.”

  “Like you could gone bare the whole time?” Booker asked. The guy was definitely getting more comfortable with us.

  “Exactly,” I said, throwing my hands out in the air. “See. You get it.” Once all of our laughter died down, I said, “But seriously, I didn’t do the shit she’s saying I did. I didn’t tell her to have an abortion. I asked for a paternity test. Bellamy isn’t a homewrecker. I met her after Hope and I were already done. Hope’s just looking to cause problems with what’s probably a lie anyway.”

  “I believe you,” Cross said. “I’ve known you a long time and running from responsibility isn
’t you. Your mom would kill you.”

  “Oh, god,” I said with a groan. “I was so worried that Bellamy saw the interview that I didn’t even think about my parents. My mom must be losing her shit.”

  “Wouldn’t she have called?” Booker asked.

  “Not when she knows we have a show. But I fully expect to be woken at the ass crack of dawn with a call from her. That should be fun.”

  Cross’ body shook with silent laughter beside me. “Mrs. Drake has raised three boys and she’s hardcore. This should actually be a bit fun to watch.”

  “Asshole,” I muttered under my breath, not because he was wrong, but because he was right and had said it out loud.

  My parents hadn’t been strict exactly, but my mom was adamant that her sons wouldn’t be the kind of men who didn’t know how to treat a woman. She wasn’t raising perverts, she’d always said. I didn’t think she’d believe the things Hope had said, but she was more from the school of trust-but-verify. And boy would she verify.

  “You’re a grown man who’s afraid of his mother?” Dixon asked, then began laughing loudly.

  “You’ve met her. Wouldn’t you be afraid of her?”

  That just made him laugh louder.

  “All right,” Lawson said loudly. “This isn’t fun and games. We need a plan. Ransom’s not leaving, but we have to all have the same response when this comes up and boy, will it come up. We have to get the word out because the booing that happened tonight can’t continue.”

  “And Bellamy can’t be the scapegoat,” Cross said before I had the chance. “People tend to side with the pregnant chick and they’re going to want to blame Bellamy.”

  “How do you know about all this Lawson?” I asked.

  “He knows everything,” Dixon replied and waved his hands around us slowly to indicate he really meant everything.

  “You said she wanted you to go to the doctor with her, right?” Booker asked. I nodded. “Now, she couldn’t have really wanted you to go as we said because Bellamy overheard her saying she wasn’t actually pregnant.”

  “All true.”

  “So how do we know the doctor is legit?” he asked. “What’s their name? Their address?”

  “Um… I think Hope sent me a text with the info when she was trying to get me to commit.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and before I could unlock it, a new message from Bellamy popped up that read, “But you’re a hot idiot.” I smiled and shook my head but had to ignore it for now. “Yeah, she sent me everything,” I finally said.

  “So why don’t we do some checking?” Booker proposed. “There are a lot of shady people around, especially when there’s the promise of money. The band is just kind of hitting its stride. It wouldn’t be the craziest thing I’ve heard and let’s be real. The jilted pregnant girlfriend isn’t exactly original.”

  “No shit,” Dixon said through a yawn.

  “So let’s start looking and there are some people I can call,” Booker offered. “It shouldn’t even be that hard to at least figure out if she’s telling the truth.”

  “You have people?” I asked with my head cocked to the side.

  “I’ve been doing this professionally since I was sixteen. I don’t have people. I know people.” He hopped down and slid in across from us at the table as I pushed Cross away from me so I could grab my laptop.

  At some point, the bus began moving as we huddled around the table searching for this doctor and anything else about him. Booker even took over to scour Hope’s social media for clues. The guy was a like a rock star detective. He asked me for a pad of paper and a pen and began scribbling across it at a speed I couldn’t follow. Then he’d pick up his phone and send some texts and go back to my laptop. It was like he didn’t even need the rest of us there.

  One thing was for certain. I might not have known what it was, but Booker Coyote had a plan.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Bellamy

  Two days later and my name was everywhere. Bellamy the homewrecker. My brother called me the first time he’d heard someone say my name on the radio in connection with Courting Chaos on his drive to work and insisted I come home. Insisted he’d beat Ransom’s ass. He’d known who was on tour with Kissing Cinder and my name wasn’t all that common so even with the Harper, he knew.

  The day after Hope’s interview, Indie and I spent the day on the bus Facetiming our friend Maggie. She and her boyfriend weren’t going to be able to meet up with us, but we did get to “meet” him via video chat and dear lord, that accent would’ve made most girls drop their panties. I couldn’t blame Maggie for falling for him so quickly.

  Indie explained that we’d be traveling the entire day and while the buses tried to form a convoy, every gas stop wouldn’t be together, unfortunately. That was why they recommended you be on the bus with the people you wanted to travel with when the buses left. We had to get from South Carolina to Florida, but there wasn’t a show until tomorrow. It was hard to make sense of. I went where she told me to.

  After Florida, the band had the big show in Atlanta, where Ransom had said his parents would be. I didn’t understand why they’d go to the show in Atlanta when they lived in Chicago, but again, I went where Indie told me to and today that meant all day on the bus with her.

  Ransom messaged me first thing in the morning to say hi but also to let me know that while he was on a bus with his bandmates and I was on Indie’s with her, he’d rather be with me. They had a lot to figure out, he said.

  “Why do you keep checking your phone?” Indie asked. She sat across from me at the table in the little kitchenette on the bus. There weren’t too many places to go as we barreled down the road on the way to Miami.

  “I don’t.”

  “You do.”

  We held a stare-down. I didn’t want to admit that I kept checking to see if Ransom had messaged me. She already knew. That didn’t mean I wanted to admit it.

  “Well.” She slapped her hands on the table. “After we get settled at the hotel today, we’re going out.”

  “Out?”

  She scowled my way. “You remember ‘out.’ It’s what you used to do before that asshole came along.”

  “You mean Ransom?” I asked back with a smile.

  “No. The other asshole.” She headed back toward the bedroom, unsteady on her feet when we hit bump, and I followed. We’d arrive at the hotel in about an hour and would need an overnight bag. “Listen, just a low-key dinner for the two of us.” She grabbed a bag and began tossing stuff into it.

  “What about Cross?” I folded my arms under my breasts and leaned a shoulder against what would be the door jamb. The bed room had this sliding accordion thing instead of an actual door.

  “What about him?” She glanced over her shoulder at me before returning to her packing.

  “Won’t he want to spend the night with you?”

  “Always. And I want to spend every night with him. But sometimes I need to spend it with one of my best friends.” Indie turned to me with her hands on her hips. “So let’s go out and eat something fattening and delicious? Who cares about the guys? They can entertain each other.”

  “You know what? That sounds perfect,” I finally agreed.

  That was exactly what we needed. An actual girls’ night out. We’d done a pretty good job of avoiding news altogether the entire morning and promised to continue to do so. Though there was a moment when Indie went into the restroom where I quickly scrolled through a couple of social media sites, searching for any news of Courting Chaos and in those quick moments I saw my name more times than I cared to.

  Fuck.

  I wasn’t the man-stealing whore some of those fans were calling me. Indie had told me about some of the things that had happened with the women her father had dated over the years. Even her mom way back when Kissing Cinder had been huge and she’d accidentally gotten pregnant. I believed the things Indie had told me, but being part of it… that was something different altogether. My phone buzzed in my hand as
I scrolled through one of those sites. Ransom’s face smiled at me as I snuggled against the side of him filled me with warmth. We still hadn’t discussed the boyfriend label thing, but he’d been the one to change it and I wouldn’t undo his work. Not yet anyway.

  “Hey,” I answered, hoping he’d hear the smile in my voice.

  “Hey.” There was some noise in the background that became quieter, like he was walking away from it.

  I decided to help us have some privacy by climbing into my bunk and shutting the sliding shade door. “What’s up?” I asked once I was settled.

  “A lot of grunting and scratching.”

  I laughed because I’d thought he’d had an actual reason for calling. Not that he needed one. I’d sit there and listen to him breathe if that was what he wanted. “Sounds fun.”

  “Right? I’d hoped we would at least meet up at a gas stop and we could switch buses.”

  I giggled. “I’m enjoying my day with Indie. So much, in fact, that we’re going out tonight.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Girls’ dinner.”

  “Just girls?” He sounded like a disappointed kid on Christmas morning.

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Well, we’re supposed to work on some new music anyway. With Booker gone, there’s only so much we can do.”

  “Wait.” I flipped over onto my side. “Booker’s gone? Where’d he go?”

  “He had to go up to Chicago but will be back before show time tomorrow.”

  I wanted to know why Booker had gone but wasn’t about to ask. I could have and Ransom probably would’ve answered. But since he didn’t offer it up the first time, I figured he would’ve told me if he had wanted me to know.

  “So,” I began, “you changed your name in my phone.”

  “I did. And I did it one-handed because I’m a talented man.” The mention of his made me realize he hadn’t complained at all about the one he’d hurt in the fight with Chris. Which meant he must not have really injured it and that made me feel less guilty.