by Anna Paige
Sure enough, as soon as the bell above the door announced my arrival, the entire table grew quiet and somber.
Fucking figured.
I marched right over and took a seat at the end, leaving two empty chairs between myself and Ethan.
E leaned over and handed me a menu, giving me a small, uncomfortable smile as his eyes darted in her direction. Was he warning me to behave or sympathizing? I couldn't tell from his expression, and I honestly didn't need his warning or his fucking sympathy. Ethan was the peacemaker in the group, but even he should know when a situation was irreparable.
Some things are meant to stay broken.
I kept my eyes on the menu until the server came and took our orders. I wasn't particularly hungry, but I ordered a huge meal because it was what I always did, and damn if I was going to let any of them know all this was affecting me so much. I'd choke down my breakfast and try not to notice her, pretend the flash of cerulean from her thin summer dress wasn't a beacon calling for my attention, and that I couldn't smell the faint traces of her shampoo in the air even over the scents of bacon and fresh biscuits.
I wouldn't let myself want her.
Never again.
I wasn't sure how long I sat there, but it felt like forever. No conversation from the others, just awkward, loaded silence. Drinks were delivered to the table with barely a muttering of thank yous, and more time passed. I was thankful for the quiet, really. Nothing left to say anyway.
I should have known it wouldn't last, though. Like always, Kane couldn't leave well enough alone.
"So, Aubrey, have you heard back from your boss yet?" My brother's voice was pointed, bordering on a taunt.
"No. He probably won't be in the office until this afternoon." Her tone was all business, crisp and unaffected.
"I really wish you'd reconsider. You could keep staying on my bus, and you don’t have to barricade yourself in the bedroom like last night." Kane's voice was getting louder, garnering for my attention, goading me. "Don’t feel like you have to go just because…"
Go?
"You're leaving?" My voice was flat, angry, and much louder than I intended, as I stared at the wall for a moment, letting my eyes fall closed as I fought for composure.
She didn't respond.
She wouldn't speak until I looked at her; I knew that.
And if I looked at her, I was gone. I knew that, too.
But I did it anyway, because I had no self-control when it came to her.
I looked over and saw the glint of unshed tears in her eyes. I watched as she blinked them away and straightened her spine in defiance. I zeroed in on her mouth just as her lips parted, and she began to speak, her words like a dagger to my heart, the heart I swore would never be hers. The heart that betrayed me and let her in anyway. The heart she stomped on and threw away like so much garbage.
"I have no reason to stay," she said, expression blank. "I'm handing the assignment over to Trish, as soon as I can get in touch with her. The job should have been hers to begin with, so I'm letting her have it. My presence here is too disruptive, causing fights and harsh words. It’s better if I just go. I’ll give Miles my recommendation that the band not have another chaperone, but Trish may show up anyway. I can’t control what they choose to do after I’m gone. I only know I can't do my job like this. I can’t continue to be where I'm not wanted."
"Not wanted?" Anger boiled up from my belly, burning in my chest as I glared at her, shooting to my feet. "Not fucking wanted?"
"Kade…" Ethan tried to calm me, rising from his chair, but one pointed look had him retaking his seat without another word.
I refocused on Aubrey. "That's really what you believe, isn't it? You've been quick to think the worst of us all from the start, so I shouldn't be surprised. You know, for someone with so damn many degrees, you aren't very smart." I ran my hands through my hair, pushing the long blond strands out of my face. "You want to leave, go. But don't you dare say it's because you're not wanted here. You're being a coward, plain and fucking simple. You did this, sweetheart. Own that shit instead of laying the blame at someone else's feet and running away."
Our waitress appeared at my back, a huge tray of food balanced precariously on her shoulder. I relieved her of the tray, setting it on the table as I pulled out my wallet. "Sorry for the spectacle, miss." I counted out three hundreds and dropped them on the tray. "All this food looks delicious, but I've lost my appetite." I tipped my head at her and left the diner without looking back.
My appetite wasn't the only thing I'd just lost.
•••
An hour or so later I was on the bus, sprawled out on the couch drinking my breakfast with my baseball cap pulled down over my eyes when I finally heard Lennox climbing on board.
"Don't even start, Lenn." I cut him off before he could speak. "I didn't make that much of a scene, especially given what I wanted to do…"
"And what did you want to do, Kade?" Aubrey's voice cut through the alcohol-induced haze.
I reached up with one finger and pushed the hat up off my eyes. She was glaring at me from the landing beside the driver's compartment. Her eyes were red and puffy, though she'd clearly tried to hide that fact with a fresh makeup application. Her dark hair was pulled back into a messy knot, something she usually only did when she was washing her face in the mornings, which proved I was right about the fresh makeup.
I hated that I knew her morning routine; it showed entirely too deep an interest on my part. In my defense, the tour bus was one of the largest available, but space was tight, and with tight quarters comes forced familiarity. How could I not notice her when she was usually no more than ten feet away? Hell, I'd have noticed her from ten miles away.
She watched me from her spot at the front of the bus, her arms crossed over her mid-section as if she were cold. It was a protective stance. I'd seen her use it before—the night that guard snatched her up—but she’d never needed it with me. Until now.
That hurt more than it should.
She wasn't speaking, just studying me with quiet intensity. It was starting to make me squirm, which I found annoying.
I took a long swallow of my beer and quirked a brow at her. "You know, I read somewhere that if someone holds your gaze for more than six seconds it's a sign that they either want to fuck you or kill you."
Her eyes widened but she said nothing, still attempting to stare me down.
I sat up slightly and gave her an expectant look. "Well, which is it? Should I grab a condom or hide the knives?"
"I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that you read," she tossed out, but her expression had softened.
I wasn't on deck to break out the condom just yet, but the look on her face let me know I could leave the knives where they were.
At least for the moment.
I pushed myself to a sitting position, careful not to knock over the line of empties on the floor, and motioned for her to take a seat. She eyed the half-dozen bottles at my feet as she moved to the couch across from the one I was sitting on and folded herself into the corner.
"We hurt each other good this time, huh?" Her question was rhetorical, of course. We were both practically bleeding on the floor.
"Yeah." I managed to force the word out between clenched teeth, my chest burning with the pain of it. We’d been getting off on arguing from the beginning, but this… this was real pain, not foreplay.
"How did we end up here? Why does everything feel broken between us?" she asked on a ragged sigh.
I forced myself to meet her eyes, forced out a truth that neither of us wanted to acknowledge. "We were never meant to take it this far. It feels broken because it is, just like I always knew it would be. Everything between us started with a lie, and now another lie has ended us."
“Kade, I didn’t lie. And it hurts more than I can say that you are so quick to believe otherwise.”
“I talked to Clay,” I told her, ignoring her professions of innocence, waiting for the look
of shame I expected to flash across her face. It didn’t come. “Called him late last night to check in on things on the mountain.” I didn’t mention that I’d been a hair’s breadth from shitfaced at the time, for fear of revealing just how bad I was hurting.
“Has the press converged on them?”
My head throbbed, and I wondered idly if I needed to stop drinking or just drink faster. “A few reporters, nothing like I expected, actually. They’ve gotten a lot of attention out of this, you know. We expected that they would eventually—when the parents began to post pictures to the web—but not because we were running around bragging about what heroes we are.”
“You didn’t. And neither did I.” She sounded so damn sincere. God, I wanted to believe her, but I couldn’t be naive just because I had feelings for her. “So, what else has happened in Denson? Anything negative to report?” She’d shifted into her business persona, probably a defense mechanism.
“They’ve had a massive influx of requests, applications for kids who want to attend.”
“That’s good right?”
“Not when over half of them were fraudulent. Not even kids, just con artists looking for information about being at the camp for the next celebrity performance.” The whole thing made me angry, but that, that was what pissed me off the most. People looking to exploit something meant for deserving children.
“The staff vets the applicants, though, right? They’ve done that from the beginning. I remember Talia walking me through the selection process. She was so sad they couldn’t accommodate everyone who applied, and I remember her mentioning a few applications that were denied because of fraud. People looking for free vacations.”
“Yeah, generally the children are referred to MM by their own doctors, but there is an application available on their website for those who are interested. It’s not easy to get past their screening process under normal circumstances, but this whole thing is just going to make the cons smarter, and bring in even more of them. That’s why we weren’t going to publicize or comment on the appearance. Without us drawing attention to it, it would have been a page two story that never got much coverage. Now, it’s everywhere, and the phones at the retreat are ringing off the hook.”
“Nothing about you guys is page two material. It was never going to be a blip on the media’s radar, but I understand what you were trying for and I respect that. Altruistic deeds are just hard to hide when you’re at the level of stardom that TotC has reached. I know that seems like a bad thing now, but eventually the staff at Milly’s Mountain will weed out the scammers, and they’ll be left with lots of new names to add to their list of children to help. More attention also means more interested contributors, maybe even expansion so they can accommodate more children. It’s not all bad, Kade. You just have to shift your focus to see that.”
I nodded reluctantly, knowing she was probably right. Clay had said much the same thing when I talked to him. But regardless of any positive outcomes, the truth of the situation remained. Someone had written and posted that press release. Someone who claimed to be her. My eyes found hers, and I ignored the squeeze in my chest, the way she looked at me like I was the one who’d betrayed her.
I needed to know the truth, but dammit, I also dreaded what that truth might be. “Tell me again that you didn’t do it. Make me believe it, Aubrey. Because this shit is killing me. I don’t want you to leave, but I also can’t be here with you until I’m sure.”
I wanted sincere words, an attempt to convince me of her loyalty. Unfortunately, that’s not what I got.
She just shook her head sadly, looking down at her hands, clasped together in her lap. “I can’t make you see the truth. If you wanted to, you would have already, Kade. If you cared about me as much as I thought you did, you never would have walked out of here without talking to me first. Your first instinct would have been to defend me, not abandon me.” Her eyes came to rest on mine. “I’m leaving when we get to the coliseum this afternoon. I’ve already arranged for a car. I’m going home, and when I get there, I’m not going to stop until I prove I didn’t do this. When I have my proof, I’ll be sure to pass it along to Jimmy so he can notify the band.”
I sat forward, elbows on my spread knees, fighting the urge to go to her. “You don’t have to go back there to get your proof. You’re running.” I hated how small I sounded, how broken.
“Neither Trish nor Miles are answering my calls. I don’t know what’s going on back at the office, but something is up. I can’t wait for them to get back to me; this is too important. To me, at least. I need to be the one acting on my behalf, anyway, not Miles. It’s me who’s being accused, and it needs to be me who clears my name. I always said alone was better, anyway.” She wasn’t looking at me, but I caught a glimmer of tears in her eyes as she stood.
“Aubrey, wait…” My voice was barely above a whisper, my body refusing to move no matter how much I wanted to reach out and stop her.
She kept walking, halting near the steps with her back to me, the light from the windshield illuminating her shaking shoulders as she spoke. “Goodbye, Kade.”
“Warden, please don’t…”
Her parting words were spoken on a long exhalation, so quiet that I thought maybe I imagined them. “I love you.”
I dropped my head into my hands, fisting my hair as I heard the door click shut behind her. For the first time since I was thirteen years old—watching my mother being loaded into an ambulance after what my father had done to her—I gave in to the pain that consumed me, and I cried.
Chapter Fourteen
Aubrey
I hated leaving them behind, even if most of them didn’t seem fazed by my departure. Ethan and Jared weren’t openly hostile, thankfully, and even managed to give me strained goodbyes. Lennox seemed on the fence, not looking particularly happy about any of it, though he wasn’t exactly mourning my leaving. Kane was the only one balking. He told me over and over that I should stay, let him help me prove my innocence while I fought things out with Kade.
I told him I appreciated his support, even if he still wasn’t sure I was telling the truth, but I needed to go. I couldn’t fight two battles at once, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to.
Kade didn’t leave his bus all afternoon, no matter how much I knew Kane—and possibly Lennox—had tried to get him to talk to me.
It was better that way. We’d said all that needed saying.
And seeing him again would almost certainly break me.
No, it was better for everyone if the last time we saw each other was the last time.
My rental car was right where I’d requested it to be. I tossed my bags into the trunk and threw my purse into the passenger seat, almost frantic in my need to get away. I’d refused to let Kane walk me out, didn’t even ask for help with my stuff.
I knew if I didn’t go right then, I might do something stupid like go to him one last time, kiss his soft, full mouth, and beg him to fight for me, to believe in me the way I believed in him.
No, no, no.
Get in the freaking car, before you make this worse.
I glanced back at his bus. The thick sunshade was pulled down over the windshield, hiding the interior from prying eyes. Most of the time, it was at least cracked a bit at the bottom to let in natural light. Not today, though, and I knew it was his doing.
With a long heavy sigh, I climbed behind the wheel and shut the door, the sound one of finality. One door closing but no new one to open.
Everything was stonily silent, a sharp contrast to how things had been since I’d joined the band on tour. From the moment I’d locked eyes with Kade Edenfield, everything had been loud, from the fights, to the sex, to the way my blood pounded in my ears whenever he was around.
Loud and alive with possibility.
That constant thrum of excitement was gone now, replaced by a dead quiet. Fighting was noisy and had come easily to us. Our lovemaking had been like music in my ears, every touch and taste amplified until I could
actually hear myself falling.
After the last word was spoken between us, long after the fall—when the last note of our love song had faded on the breeze—all I was left with was a resounding silence, the unmistakable sound of letting go.
I started the car and shifted into drive, glancing once at the rearview mirror as a flash of long blond hair caught the light between two of the buses. I could feel the heat of his eyes as he watched me pulling away, probably thinking he was out of sight. My foot hovered over the brake momentarily, but I shook myself and looked ahead, accelerating as the man I loved slowly disappeared from view, and I lost myself to the overwhelming silence.
•••
I stopped to stretch my legs—and buy some ibuprofen for my post-crying headache—a few long, torturous hours later. After taking a walk around the gas station parking lot to clear my head, I climbed back into the car to the sound of my phone ringing.
Trish.
I gritted my teeth as I thumbed the button on the steering wheel, setting the call to speaker. “Hello?” I barely kept the contempt from my voice. Why couldn’t Miles have called first, dammit.
There was a rustling sound on her end, and a barely whispered, “Maybe I shouldn’t do this.”
“What? Trish? Hello? What the hell?” I was getting irritated.
“Shhh…” she whispered again and I realized it wasn’t Trish at all. “It’s me, Nina. Something big is going down and I think it has to do with you. I’m in her office and I’m leaving this line open. She’ll be back in a minute, so mute your phone and just listen.”
“But why?” I shout-whispered back, feeling like an idiot.
“Because I’m a nobody. People won’t believe me. But they’ll believe you.”
I nearly laughed out loud. Clearly, she hadn’t been apprised of my current situation. “Who’ll believe me? About what?”
There was a shuffling and I heard a sharp intake of breath. “She’s coming. Please don’t make me regret this. If you get the chance to take her down, for god’s sake, do it.”
