“How you doin’, Nashville?” Cooper shouts into the microphone. The crowd roars. He places a hand to his ear as though he couldn’t hear them, and shakes his head. “Hmm, I didn’t quite catch that.”
They scream again, and still he shakes his head. Cooper glances at Levi, “Quinn, you catch that?”
“Nope.” Levi says, leaning into the microphone in front of him. “I didn’t hear Jack shit.”
The crowd roars again. This time, stamping their feet on the stadium floor.
“Now that I heard.” Cooper chuckles and places the microphone back in the stand as Byron—one of the roadies—runs on stage and hands him a guitar and a pick. Coop places the strap over his head, and strums. “Alright, so this next song is a little bit of an ode to Zed,”
The crowd cheers, and some over-excited fangirl screams, “I wanna have your babies, Zed.”
He laughs and leans into the mic positioned above his kit. “Err, thank you strange American girl who I’ve never met before, but I’m sterile, got measles as a kid, so … no babies here.”
“Screw the babies, let’s just fuck,” the girl calls out and she’s pushed towards the stage by the crowd.
Zed smiles, and it’s damn near infectious. You can’t be in the same room as Zed and not fall even a little bit in love with him. He’s like a really overgrown three-year-old. “Think you can handle it?”
Levi steps up to his mic. “Please. There’s all of two inches to handle. Sweetheart, you want something to handle?” He spins his guitar strap around so his crotch is unobstructed and grabs his cock. “I got more than enough for you to handle.”
“Yeah, he should know, too. He handles it often enough,” Cooper says, and Zed beats the drums like at the end of a bad joke.
“Marry me, Cooper?” a girl from the front row screams, holding a sign above her head.
“Marry you?” he says, raising one brow and giving her his mischievous grin—my mischievous grin. “But, sweetheart, I barely know you.”
She responds with some whore-mouthed wisecrack about them getting to know one another on the tour bus, and he laughs and shakes his head, walking to the other side of the stage where he stands beside Ash. “Ash, tell me something?”
“Something,” Ash says. He grins and his adorable dimples pop out. The women in the audience practically turn rabid with their screams. He turns back to Cooper. “What do you wanna know, man?”
“Tell me why the women always wanna marry me, but never want to fuck my brains out?” Coop screams into the microphone. His question is met with an almighty roar from the crowd and Zed counts them in.
“This song’s called blow,” Coop growls through the intro.
Jealousy washes through me, white hot and searing, but I tamp it down. This is part of their job, and it shouldn’t matter that he’s suggesting to other women that they should have sex with him. It’s not part of the deal. None of this, whatever this is that I’m feeling, none of this was part of our unspoken agreement.
Coop’s eyes find mine as I stand in the wings, and his gaze is cold and challenging. Does he want me to suffer? Is this all just to hurt me because of what happened in the limo yesterday?
Taint play two more songs, each more scathing than the other, and with each of them Coop spends a good portion of it looking at me as he sings the lyrics. I’m beginning to sense a theme. Songs about heartbreak and betrayal were nothing new for the band, and even though these songs were written for another woman, there’s truth in them for us too. Which is disturbing.
I wait until he turns back to the crowd before I walk away. I’ve taken maybe five steps before he sings a bum note and I know that he has seen me. I don’t turn back. Instead I walk casually through the back room, ignoring Deb, Leif, and the rest of the road crew who aren’t manning the soundboard or waiting in the wings to switch out guitars. I head past security on the back door, basking in the tepid Nashville air, pushing through the throng of scantily-clad women muttering things like, “Who is she?”
“I don’t know, but if she was backstage then why the hell was she leaving?”
“Oh my God, you guys, it’s her. The redhead,” another girl says, and I turn and look at her with a curious expression. A petite blonde girl beside her squeals, “You’re so fucking lucky. I mean, Coop and Levi? I would die; I would like literally die. Is he really as big as everyone says he is?”
I stand there blinking at her as if I’m simple, my heart hammering against my ribcage. How does she know that?
“I … I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammer and then I wander away, so rattled that I’m shaking from head to toe. How does anyone outside of the band and the road crew know? I mean, it’s not like the three of us walk around holding hands, or fucking in public, for Christ’s sake.
I had planned on heading straight to the tour bus because we’re leaving right after the show in order to make it to Georgia, but I’m too flustered. Instead, I start walking and wind up at a hot dog place several blocks away.
I sit in a booth and I shake until my dog is delivered, and then I shake some more. My Coke has too much ice, which does nothing for the way I’m trembling. There’s no way she could have known anything was happening. I mean, it’s just a lucky guess, right? The press had been blowing up a possible Ménage angle between Coop, Levi and me since we were papped in Vegas. An overzealous photographer had snapped a picture of Levi and me in the lobby, taken from behind as he pinched my arse on the way to the elevator. That, along with shots of me and Cooper had been splashed all over the cover of a gossip magazine—but now the images were showing up on social media and various Taint fan-sites too.
The paparazzi had snapped a picture of Cooper and me attempting to leave the MGM Grand in Vegas, then they’d taken several more of us inside the lobby. His hands had been on my shoulders as he’d begged me to help him escape being a celebrity for one night.
I stare down at my uneaten hot dog, hating to waste food because several weeks ago I would have given my left tit for a meal this size. I’d been starving, homeless, I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from, and I would have finished every bite of that damn hot dog. I pick it up and as I’m biting down on the dog, a flash goes off. Sauce and mustard fly out the other end, squirting onto my hand and I blink back stunned stars. What the fuck? Why would someone snap me eating a hot dog? People are such arseholes.
When the starburst finally clears, a small girl with purple and black emo hair smiles sweetly at me as her and a friend saunter off talking animatedly over her phone. Fucking children. I wipe the sauce from my fingers and set the rest of the hot dog back in its basket, then I leave and wander further down the street to a bar, where I pay a ten-dollar cover charge to see some shitty band, but I pay gladly because I miss this. I used to drag Brad to see live gigs all the time. He went mostly for the booze and because he knew I wouldn’t shut up about it.
I take a seat at the bar and order a beer. Americans drink their beer at least 10 degrees warmer than they have a right to—it kinda makes everything taste like piss—but so far I’ve found a few good dark ambers that I can swallow. It’s nothing like a Toohey’s, of course, but when in Rome …
I tap my foot along to the beat and think about my Grams. She’d be proud of where I am, or at least she’d be proud of the fact that I was in America, somewhere I’d always wanted to go. I’m not sure she’d be so proud of the fact that I was sleeping with two rock stars, but Grams was young once. She may not have understood it, but she’d accept it because they make me happy. Or … sometimes they make me happy.
I glance back at the stage. The lead singer wears a baseball cap. That’s his first mistake, right there, but he has charisma. He’s no Cooper Ryan, but he has a cute smile. The crowd claps half-heartedly as he comes off-stage and heads for the bar. Even the pretty blonde bartender looks bored when the guy leans over and asks for a drink. The singer’s gaze rolls over me, and he leans against the bar and watches me drink my beer.
> “Hey, can I buy you a drink?” he asks.
I laugh, because I don’t know what it is about me that attracts his type. Is it the lucky red Cons? The red hair I can’t be bothered dying? Or is it the fact that I’m so completely oblivious to the supposed swagger of rock stars that it makes me seem unattainable and therefore like someone they should pursue?
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
I raise my plastic cup to him. “I already have a drink, sorry. I’m sure you’re a really sweet guy.”
“Not that sweet,” he says, and he attempts to smirk. The only thing that pisses me off more than a smirk is a bad smirk. A smirk that doesn’t work.
“You’re not from here, are you?” he asks.
“No, I’m not. That’s a keen observation though.”
“Where are you from?”
“Australia,” I reply, and skull the remainder of my beer.
“Well then, Australia, now that you’re finished, you gonna let me buy you that drink or not?”
“No, I’m really not,” I say, and stand up from the stool. “To be honest, I already have way more rock star than I know what to do with. So thank you, but no thank you.”
Realisation dawns on his face. “Wait, you’re the redhead.”
“I am a redhead, yes, again, very keen observation.”
“I saw your video.”
“What video? What are you talking about?”
“The video with you, Cooper Ryan and Levi Quinn.” He arches a brow at me and prompts, “In the elevator?”
The blood drains from my face. I feel it. There one minute, and gone the next. I stagger a little on the spot, and Smirky grabs my elbow to steady me. “That was you, wasn’t it? Fuck that shit was hot. You know, if you want a future in porn I know someone.”
Oh my god. I sit down hard on the stool and he grins at me. “Wait till I tell Mikey about this. Hey Mike!” he screams across the bar to the stage. “I found the redhead.”
Everyone in hearing distance turns to look at me, and I shoot up from my seat, sprinting from the venue. I run as fast as my feet will take me, and I have no idea where I am, but the streets are dark and I think I’m in a less than desirable neighbourhood because the buildings all around me are run-down, some with missing windows, some completely picked bare of building materials that might have been of a use to someone.
My phone rings, the shrill sound echoing into the empty street, but I ignore it in place of bending over and vomiting on the pavement. And all over my lucky red Cons, which aren’t so lucky any more, it would seem. My phone rings out and then starts up again immediately. I let it ring as I bend over, clutching my stomach, trying to rid my body of the bile, and then, because my day couldn’t quite get shit enough, it starts to pour. Fat raindrops hit my face and body.
This time, when the phone rings I answer it. “What?”
“Where the fuck are you?” Coop says.
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you answer your phone? What the fuck, Ali? You disappear when I’m onstage. James said you were accosted by groupies, and then you just sprinted off into the night by yourself. Do you know how stupid that is? Where the fuck are you? The bus is ready to leave. I’m getting in a cab and I’m coming to find you.”
“I don’t know, okay?” I mutter, on the verge of tears. “I have no idea where I am. I’m lost and I’m cold and they know.”
“Who knows? What are you talking about? Are you high?”
“No, I’m not high,” I snap. “Everyone knows, Coop.”
“Ali-Cat, you gotta talk to me, babe. Everyone knows what?”
“About us. Levi, you and me.” I swallow down the lump in my throat, tasting bile. “There’s a video.”
“FUCK!”
“I’m going to go home.”
“What are you talking about? You’re not going home. Tell me where you are and I’ll come find you.”
“I don’t know where I am, Coop. I don’t know what I’m doing.” Tears fall down my face in a torrent, washed away by the rain. I bend over, clutching my stomach again, though I know there’s nothing left to purge. “How did we get here?”
“Fuck, Ali, don’t fucking freak out on me now. Look around you. Where are you? Is there a street sign?” I peer up the road, locating one. “I’m on Wiltshire Street.”
“Wiltshire Street, now,” he says, I assume to a cab driver because I hear his door slam and the soft rumbling of an engine in the background. “I’m in the car. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, okay? We’re going to sort this out. We’ll figure it out, just … no more talk of leaving, you got me?”
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Ali?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry, babe. This is all my fault.”
I shake my head, as though he could see. “No, it’s not. It’s mine.”
After twenty minutes of standing in the freezing cold rain, a cab pulls up and Cooper jumps out before it’s even pulled over to the curb.
“Ali,” he says as he wraps me up in his arms. He smells like sweat and cologne, a heady mixture.
“Fuck, you scared the shit outta me.” He pulls back to look at my face. “You okay?”
My teeth chatter and my whole body quakes as I nod, and then I shake my head and lean into him.
He doesn’t say anything about the vomit on my shoes, or more than likely on my breath, and I appreciate that. Instead, he bundles me up in his coat and hurries me inside the cab, instructing the driver to take us back to the stadium. When we pull up outside the lot at the back, there are more than just fangirls waiting—set up around a barricade is several paparazzi.
Levi, Zed and Ash all pose for photos with fans and sign pictures and skin for the awaiting fans while the photographers go to town on the free picture opp. That is until the cab door opens and Cooper steps out, and then the vultures descend.
Stadium security presses the crowd back, but the paps sneak through, catcalling to Cooper, “Who’s the redhead?” and “Is it true the video was a publicity stunt?”
Cooper’s face is stoic, until one reporter asks whom I like having sex with more, and Cooper freezes. He lets go of me, and whirls, fists ready to fly, but Levi gets there first. He smacks the guy out in front of everyone, and all to a barrage of flashing cameras. I bury my face in my hands as I’m ushered into the bus by Zed, while Ash and Levi push Cooper inside after us.
“Guess we know who top dog is in the bed room,” another pap calls, but the damage is already done.
“Fuck!” Cooper shouts, kicking the shit out of the coffee table.
James peels away from the edge of the curb, but the throng of bodies is so tight we’re not moving anywhere. I stand, shivering in Cooper’s coat, and Deb hops up from the couch, springing into action.
“Ash, get Vanessa on the phone.” She points to Levi. “This idiot needs a lawyer’s council before we cross the border and leave the state. And we need someone on the phone to that hotel. Find out who uploaded the tape. That shit needs to be taken down now.”
Ash pulls his phone from his pocket and wanders off towards the back of the bus.
Deb continues barking directives, “Cooper, if you don’t calm the fuck down right this second, I’m gonna have Zed strap you down, and imagine what that’s going to do for publicity.”
The windows on the tour bus are tinted, but that means nothing when you have a telescopic lens and a big-arse flash, or so we’d learned when we left San Francisco and pics were snapped of the boys chugging back a celebratory beer at the dining table as we’d pulled out of the lot there.
“I can’t believe you hit him,” Coop sneers at Levi.
“What, like you weren’t gonna do the same thing?”
Cooper grinds his teeth. “Yeah, I was.”
My teeth bang together. I know I should try to get warm, but I’m in shock. It’s kind of a stupid thing to be in shock over, because it’s not like I just got beat up, or raped, or had a car accident. I
just made a colossal mistake, and the whole world now has a front row seat.
“I think I’m gonna be sick again,” I mutter, and my knees give out a little. Zed catches me, and I stare up at him like a deer in headlights.
“Jesus Christ, someone get her in a fucking warm shower,” Deb says.
Both Coop and Levi make a move towards me and come to a stalemate. Deb throws up her arms and says, “Fucking hell, will you two idiots pull your goddamn heads in?”
Then she leads me away from them and into the tiny bathroom. Once inside, she shuts the door and bends down to untie my shoes. “Eeew, gross.”
“Oh yeah,” I say through chattering teeth. “I kinda threw up on my shoes.”
“Ya, sure did,” she exclaims, and then mutters something about not being paid enough money for this job.
“You know, you’d make a good manager,” I say.
“What?”
“You’re bossy, and you handle those boys better than anyone.”
“Well despite what they’d have the public think, there really isn’t that much to handle. They’re a bunch of idiots.”
“Yeah, I kinda got that.”
“Listen, as kinky as the press are gonna make this shit out to be, I know that’s not why you’re here. But you need to be prepared, they’re gonna have a field day with this shit, and no one is going to spare the feelings of a cute redhead who is banging two of the world’s hottest band members. This very well could ruin your career and theirs. So you all need to sort out your shit.”
Revelry (Taint #1) Page 21
