Finding the Rhythm

by Leigh Louden

  Devon Montgomery (37), was unavailable for comment today, as the scandal of his numerous liaisons with young girls was uncovered. Not only was it discovered that he had impregnated the daughter of his ex-manager, Donovan Joseph, (54), but an insider claims that when confronted with the news, Montgomery demanded that she 'get rid of it.' After further investigation, the Daily News can report that she isn't the only 'baby momma' Montgomery has made such demands of. Several other women, varying in age from 15 to 24 have come forward with similar stories. The police are said to be making enquiries.

  * * *

  I couldn't read any more of it but knowing the boys would be very interested in this new development, I scooped up a copy of the paper and bought it along with my beverage.

  I went to my room, had a shower, and headed back down to breakfast to meet everyone else, the paper tucked under my arm. I sat and waited for the right time to share my discovery.

  "Ready to hit Bristol?" Ethan asked as he bit into his slice of toast.

  "I'm looking forward to this one," Ally chimed in. "I haven't been there in years!"

  "What the hell took you to Bristol?" Smith laughed.

  "I had a friend in University of West England, and he took me to Pop, Bubble, Rock in Lanes. That's where our gig is, right?"

  Smith laughed and shook his head.

  "Sure is, Allycat," I confirmed.

  "Is your hand okay?" She was genuinely concerned for me.

  I grinned at her sympathy for me and nodded, showing her the lack of damage.

  Smith looked at her. "Have you decided what you're going to do with the information we have?"

  She shook her head.

  "I think it has to be Ally's decision," Ethan added.

  I pulled the paper out from under my arm. "About that..." I put the newspaper down on the table where everyone could see it. "I spotted this when I was out for a run earlier."

  Ally took the paper from the table and studied the front cover. Not for the first time where Devon Montgomery was concerned, I watched the colour drain from her face.

  "It's gone public?" Her voice was low, and Smith took the paper from her, scanning the front page.

  "Damn." He passed the Daily News over to Ethan for him to view the cover.

  "Wow, I didn't think it would get out like that." He looked at Allison. "Sorry, Ally."

  She swallowed and looked around absently. "I, uh, I feel sick. I think I'm going to head up to my room until we need to go, okay?" She wasn't really asking us, but she looked like a lost little girl, asking permission.

  Ethan looked at her with compassion and touched her hand gently. She pulled her hand away like it had burned her. "I just... I can't." Without saying another word or making eye contact with any of us, she got up and left the table.

  I patted Ethan on the shoulder. "Don't take it personally, mate. It's not you."

  He shrugged. "I know. It's just..."

  "It kills to not be able to fix it for her," Smith finished.

  "I hear ya, guys. I hear ya," I agreed, my eyes falling on the doorway she left through.

  Devon Montgomery was turning into the nightmare that never ended. It wasn't enough that he was a cheater. It wasn't enough that he had claimed my virginity when I was seventeen. It wasn't enough that he had broken my heart and ruined our band. No, Devon had to have a scandal attached to him. A seedy, disgusting scandal, and no doubt, now I would be sucked into it.

  I'm not sure what good I thought that it would do, but I lifted my laptop and went straight to Google. I put in Devon Montgomery and hit 'Search'.

  My stomach flipped when the 'Top Stories' section was filled with images of young women snapped trying to get away from the press, with headlines about what he had done, what he had said, and the ages they were when they were with him.

  Suddenly, I felt too warm, and the room felt too closed in. I needed to escape. I needed to be anywhere but where I was. I grabbed my phone, my room key card, and I headed for the lobby and front door.

  I hit the pavement outside and just started to walk. I didn't know where I was heading, I just needed to get away. Away from Devon. Away from Don. Away from Dragon Zion.

  About fifty minutes later, I found myself at the Waterfront Park. I found somewhere to sit and just stared out at the water.

  I was barely there five minutes and my phone started to ring. 'Unknown Number' flashed on the screen, and without thinking, I answered.

  "Is that Allison Watts? Miss Watts, it's Philip Newton here from the News of the Day. Is it true that Devon Montgomery has been arrested?"

  "What?"

  "Devon Montgomery has been arrested. Did you know? Do you care to comment?"

  "No." I hung up the call before they asked anything else.

  What the hell. Devon had been arrested? I didn't think my stomach could twist up any further. I knew that, given everything I had been up to in the last week in particular, that it shouldn't really bother me what happened to Devon now, but there was something about it that just seemed to leave me feeling sullied.

  The man I had loved, who I had had my heart broken by, had managed to change the entire dynamic of our relationship into something sinister. This wasn't the man I had loved and lost my virginity to. This was a predator, and my virginity had been a trophy. It wasn't love; it probably never had been on his part. It was me being a pawn in the game he liked to play. A sick and twisted game where there really were no winners. Just damaged little girls and a creepy bastard.

  I didn't get any more time to dwell on it when my phone rang again. I pressed the green button to answer.

  "Ms Watts, this is Bernard Lovell from the National Inquirer. Have you any comment to make on the arrest of your former lover Devon Montgomery?"

  I didn't even bother to answer them this time. I just hung up. Again, the phone rang. I hit reject. And again. And again. And again.

  I lifted my hand and was about to walk to the railing and throw my phone into the sea when I noticed the name on the screen.

  'Vinny Richards calling...'

  I didn't say anything when I picked up.

  "Allycat, are you all right? Where are you? We’re all worried sick!"

  "Have you seen it?" My voice was low. I was broken.

  "Seen what? He didn't release that video, did he?" Vinny sounded angry when he mentioned the video.

  "No. He's been arrested."

  Vinny covered the mouthpiece, but I could still make out his voice faintly. She says he's been arrested. Google that shit will you, Smith? "Where are you?"

  I wasn't all that sure other than at the waterside. "I don't know."

  "Ally, you're scaring me." I could hear the stress in Vinny’s voice. I should have felt guilty that he was worried about me, but all I felt was numb.

  "I've got to go." I didn't wait for his reply, I just ended the call.

  She sounded so lost that my heart broke the second I heard her. She didn't tell me where she was, but I had to find her and make it all okay for her.

  "She's not okay, is she?" Ethan looked pained.

  "Nope." I shook my head.

  Smith tapped on his laptop, and then turned the screen to us.

  Devon Montgomery arrested on sexual offence charges, including indecent assault of a female under sixteen.

  "Jesus Christ." Ethan gasped as he read the selection of headlines.

  Smith nodded. "And this is the man Ally lost her virginity to. I can't imagine how fucked up that must feel."

  "I need to find her," I stated, tapping on my phone, remembering that we had all started to share our locations with each other the last time Devon showed up and Ethan took a cut to his face in Sheffield.

  There she was, a little blue dot moving along the waterfront. "Smith, find out everything you can about this arrest. Ethan, get on the phone to Patrick and find out what he can do legally to keep Ally as far out of all this shit as he can. I'm going to go get my girl." Patrick was our lawyer; he handled anything we needed. Ethan and Smith
agreed with my plan, not that I really stuck around long enough for them to voice any real complaint. I was out the door and heading for the lobby as fast as my legs could get me down the fire stairs.

  Once out on the street, I managed to grab a taxi right at the door of the hotel that had just been dropping off another fare. "Listen, mate, I'll give you ten times your fare if you can get me to the Waterfront Park as quickly as you can!"

  My little lost girl was just sitting there, staring at the water. Her phone rang as I approached, and I watched as she pulled it from her pocket, looked at the screen, and launched it into the water in front of her.

  "You threw your phone in the water," I said, by way of announcing my presence.

  "Vultures just keep calling." She continued to stare at the point where her phone had disappeared.

  I stepped into her space and pulled her tight against me, wrapping my arms around her. I waited and felt the tell-tale vibrations in her body that told me she was sobbing. I kissed the top of her head gently and just waited.

  "I feel so disgusting," she mumbled into my chest in a voice so low I almost didn't hear her.

  "You are the least disgusting woman I've ever met. In fact, I think you're the most amazing woman I've ever met." She looked up at me, and time stopped. In that instant, it was just her and me, and no one else in the whole world existed.

  "I wish I felt amazing," she said, without looking up.

  "You feel it to me." I squeezed her that little bit tighter. "I understand how you're feeling, more than you know, but you can't let it define you. You can't have it be everything you are."

  "You had your virginity taken by a man who turned out to be a paedophile?"

  Nice. Sarcasm.

  "No. My mother's cougar best friend when I was fourteen."

  Confused eyes looked up at me.

  "My mother was an eternal drunk. One of her usual bar bunny mates came on to me, totally shit faced. I was young, stupid, and just learning the fun I could have with my dick. I thought I was such a stud. What I really was, was a child who was used and taken advantage of."

  She tucked her head in against my chest again and squeezed me tight in return.

  "Let's get you back to the hotel." I kissed the top of her head again and held her hand as I walked her back to the waiting taxi.

  The guys tried to talk to me, but I was numb. I just couldn’t take it all in. The first man I had ever loved was the stuff of nightmares. He had used me when I was too young to know any better, and while I had been building a life with him, he had been cheating on me. Was it cheating if the girls were too young to consent? He was making other girls pregnant. He was fucking other people. I just felt sick.

  Patrick did his best for me. He tried to keep me out of it as much as he could. We had a few injunctions granted so some of what the press wanted to put out never made it to print. But it was hard, and it was vile, and I just couldn’t deal with it.

  Music was the only thing that saved me; the only thing keeping me holding on. I felt guilty. Guilty that I was pushing the guys away after how wonderfully they had welcomed me into their Dragon Zion family. Guilty that I didn’t see what Devon was really like and stop him. Guilty that I was this silly little naïve girl who believed every lie he ever told me. But once on stage, I played my heart out. I poured all of my emotion into the tracks and kept the tiniest sliver of my sanity that way.

  I had been seventeen when Devon and I got together, and while that didn’t make me one of his victims, the fact that I was a virgin seemed to play directly into the darker side of his character. I spoke to the police at length about it all; my age, my virgin status, the finer details of his behavior towards me, did I notice this and that. They offered me counselling for abuse victims, and I think that was when it really hit home. That last semblance of sanity I had been holding onto just melted into nothing.

  I felt sick. I felt as though all those years with Devon had been one big hideous lie, a joke that I was only now finding out I was the punchline of.

  I gave my virginity to a man who had a thing for underage girls, and who reveled in taking their virginities. I wasn’t special to Devon Montgomery; I was just another trophy he had needed to claim.

  The last nine years of my life were obliterated in mere days as more and more information came out about Devon’s involvement with girls.

  The press hounded us mercilessly in every town we stopped at for a gig. Every time I left the hotel, they were on me like a pack of wild dogs, looking for some snippet of bitterness, some token soundbite, or a photo of me in tears or looking like I was locked away crying over Devon and this whole sorry mess.

  I did cry though. Away from the cameras and journalists and prying eyes. Vinny happened to knock on my door at just the right time.

  * * *

  “Sweetheart.” His voice soothed me, and he wrapped his thick arms around me.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Shhh!”

  I couldn’t quieten though; all these thoughts were rolling around and around in my head.

  “You don’t need to keep torturing yourself with this. He’s really not worth it,” he reassured me, and as much as I knew he was right, I just couldn’t get my brain to disengage.

  “It’s like I’ve been told I’m just someone’s fetish-fulfilling wet dream.”

  Vinny’s chest rumbled.

  “Don’t you dare!” I scolded, looking up at him. My gaze was met with playful, cheeky eyes. I couldn’t help it, a laugh bubbled out of me too. I shook my head at him and blew my nose with the hanky he offered.

  He kissed my cheek. “That’s my girl.” He smiled.

  “Is your mind ever out of the gutter?”

  He grinned. “You said ‘wet dream’. You know I’ve the mental age of a school boy for things like that.”

  My mind wandered to the idea of a school boy of four or five, looking very like Vinny, but with my eyes. Shit.

  “Child.” I snorted, breaking that line of thought.

  “Princess,” he retaliated, and pulled me tight against him, his mouth capturing mine as he did.

  * * *

  Next time, it was Ethan who had to deal with my overwrought emotions. He collected me from the police station where I was answering their questions for a second time.

  * * *

  “Seat belt.”

  “I know.” I sniffed.

  “Want to talk?”

  I looked at him and thought about it for a moment. “No. No, actually I want to get angry.”

  Ethan glanced at me from the driver’s seat before pulling out into traffic. “Okay. Let’s do something about that.” He turned the car sharply in a U-turn and headed in the opposite direction.

  “Where are we going?”

  Ethan smiled. “You need to burn off some of that anger.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, we were outside an old converted warehouse.

  * * *

  “What’s this?”

  Ethan took the keys from the ignition and opened his door to get out. “Come and find out.”

  I got out of the car and followed him into the large sprawl of building. The space had been subdivided with a main atrium full of sky lights and plants and sofas down the middle. Ethan took my hand and led me to the big double doors at the very end of the space.

  Ed’s Boxing Gym.

  “Ed’s?” I looked at him puzzled. “Do you know Ed?”

  He nodded. “I do, and so do you. You’re looking at him. E. D. Ed.”

  “This is yours?” I was shocked. Ethan hadn’t once mentioned having a business away from the band.

  He greeted a few of the staff by name and led me to the punch bags in the corner.

  He handed me gloves and helped me lace them up. He placed his hands on my hips and showed me the best stance. He held the bag still. “Picture Devon’s face.”

  I hit the bag and it swayed against Ethan.

  “I thought you hated him?”

  “
I do!”

  Ethan braced himself against the bag. “Then show me.”

  Again, I pulled back my right fist. This time, before I launched it at the bag, I thought about my anger at finding him cheating. I thought about how hurt I felt to have the good memories of the last nine years smashed to smithereens because of everything I had found out. Next time, I swung my right fist forwards into the punchbag; my left quickly followed. I started pummelling the bag, noticing Ethan stumble with my first punch, but then sturdy himself for the rest of my barrage of anger.

  * * *

  An hour later, my arms and hands ached, but I felt so much better than I had when all this mess first came out.

  “Arms hurt?”

  I nodded. Ethan took my right arm in his hands and skilfully manipulated the muscles, repeated it on the left arm, and then moved behind me to start into my shoulders. As soon as his thumbs hit my neck, I let out a soft groan.

  “Feel good?”

  I nodded, the ability to form words having left me. He grabbed my arms and shook them out, and in that instant, I felt so much better than I had in a while.

  “Let’s get you back to the hotel before Vinny comes to hunt me down,” he whispered against my ear.

  I laughed and nodded.

  * * *

  I was so grateful for everything the guys were doing, but there was still a dark cloud over me I just couldn’t shift, and I wasn’t sure what could be done to ever change that.

  Ally decided that the information we had on Devon should be passed to the police. It was no longer a weapon; it was evidence that could lead to a stronger conviction. He was pretty much screwed regardless. One of the girls he got pregnant lied. She didn't have an abortion, she had a son. DNA had confirmed that he was Devon's, and her age at the time of the boy's birthday, confirmed by her birth certificate and his, proved that Devon had been with underage girls. She had been one of them. His future was pretty bleak. He was going to prison, and not for a short spell either. He'd never be bothering her or anyone else again.