by Meg Buchanan
He stood with his hands on his hips studying the board with the levers and switches and what looked like amps and a computer. “Because that’s what I do. I’m the one who knows the most about electronics.”
Geneviève nodded. That made sense. “Do you play here all the time?” She still couldn’t quite work it out. Cole said he had to work tomorrow but she thought they were a band.
“No, we just do this in the weekend.” Adam went over to the desk, sat on the floor and reached behind something. He pulled out some leads and stood up. “Up until Friday I was at university. I’d just started my masters in electronics.”
“Really?” she asked. “And you have given it up to go to Australia and play with the band?”
He nodded as he coiled up the leads. “The others have all too. Cole is a manager at a racing stables, Noah’s been doing engineering, Luke and Isaac work for Luke’s dad as builders.”
Geneviève sat down on the chair in front of the desk. “That’s why they are making the crates?”
“Yeah, I don’t think they’d trust the rest of us with a hammer. Cole’s pretty useful, but me and Noah steer clear of that stuff.” He bent down and reached under the desk again to unscrew something.
Watching Adam work wasn’t bad. He curved and rippled in all the right places and something amazing was developing between them. Something that had nothing to do with Mason or her past. She was still not quite sure what was happening, but it felt good.
“That’s a very big decision for you all.”
Adam stood up. “Yeah, especially as it could just be for three months but Luke’s hoping it will turn out to be more. What about you?” he asked.
“I studied psychology and English at the Universidad de Montevideo.”
“English?” He looked up from under the desk. “That explains a lot. I didn’t think you could learn what you know in a year.”
“No, my family live on a farm near Tacuarembó, but I wanted to travel so I left and studied languages at university. Then I met Mason. Now nothing.” Geneviève shrugged and lifted her palms, then swung the chair around a little and watched Noah and Cole working on the stage. She wanted to forget about Mason and start again.
“Cole’s nice,” she said after a while. “He’s the drummer, isn’t he?”
Chapter Nine
Adam undid the cords from behind the interface. Bloody Cole, every female in the universe liked him. What did Cole do that nobody else did? He slid out from under the desk. “Yeah, how did you know that?”
“He is taking care of the drums.”
Fair enough. What did that make him? The sound engineer? But he could play everything the others could. And he mightn’t be the showman Luke was, but he could sing. Maybe he should tell her that.
He rolled up the cords and put them in a pile. He should get some masking tape and label everything in case he wasn’t putting it all back together. He’d been dealing with this gear for so long he could just look at a cord and know where it went. “Do you want to go and ask Isaac if he’s got some masking tape in that tool box of his?”
Geneviève frowned a little. “Will he know what I’m asking for?”
“Yeah.”
She got off the seat and went over to Isaac. Adam watched her as she walked away from him. Beautiful, sweet and nice. And she liked being with him. She was perfect. He piled the interface boards on top of each other and put them on the table. He should have asked Geneviève to borrow a tape measure to work out the dimensions the crate for this stuff needed to be.
She came back holding the roll of green tape. She gave it to him and sat again. He found a pen and started ripping off bits of tape and labelling the cords, and Geneviève went back to rocking on the chair.
“What do you play, Adam?”
“The keyboard.” He put the first roll of labelled cords with the boards.
“Who is the lead singer?”
“Luke.”
She turned and watched Luke pulling a pallet apart with a claw hammer. “Yes, it would be him,” she said. “He thinks he’s in charge, doesn’t he?”
Adam nodded. “I guess he is. He organised this gig. And he’s done all the work putting this trip together.” He’d never really thought about Luke being in charge, but Luke had always been the one pushing to keep Stadium going.
“Do you only play the keyboard? I saw a guitar in your room.”
He shook his head. He needed to get some bubble wrap he couldn’t just pile everything into the crate. It all needed to be protected. Maybe Luke had already thought of that. He seemed to have thought of everything else.
“No,” he said. “I can play the guitar and violin too.”
“Three of you play the violin?”
“Four,” he said. “Luke does too.”
“Isn’t that very unusual?”
“Yeah.” Then he grinned at her. “But you should see the teacher.” And Geneviève laughed. He liked it when he made her laugh. Her face lit up.
“Do you take turns playing everything?”
“No Isaac and Noah are better on the violin and guitar than me, and Luke’s the better singer so I stick to the keyboard and backup.”
“Would you play for me?” She smiled up at him.
“Later. Maybe. I need to go and ask Luke something.” He bent down and kissed those lips. God, he liked the way she looked, and spoke and moved and laughed. He liked everything about her.
Her hand snaked up to his shoulders and she kissed him back. He lingered, his hand went to her hip and he pulled her closer, because even though he only intended the kiss to be a touch of the lips, even in that awkward position, her sitting, him standing, the hunger that had been in him since she walked into the bar last night surfaced again.
The need to fuck her and the memories of earlier came flooding back as he went with the deeper kiss she seemed to want. Finally, he tapered it off, lifted his head and touched his forehead against hers.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he whispered.
“I think I do. I feel it too,” she said just as quietly. She gave a little smile and touched his lips gently. “I want to love you every time you touch me.”
“Lucky all this packing up won’t take long.”
She smiled again and nodded. And the way her hair fell over her face and her lips moved almost made him decide to leave the packing up to the others and go back to the flat.
No. Just imagine Luke’s reaction. He’d go out of his way to embarrass the shit out of both of them. “Back in a minute,” he said.
Luke had bubble wrap, and corrugated cardboard, and wrapping tape.
“Have you worked out how much room you’ll need,” asked Luke, surrounded by deconstructed pallets and an ice cream container full of bent nails.
Isaac came in carrying a mitre saw. “We need to decide whether we’ll build one big crate or two smaller ones.”
“I’m nearly there. I’ll have more idea in a minute.” He looked back at Geneviève. She had the leather pack back thing she’d bought at the Base up on her knees and was fishing inside it.
Luke nodded in the Geneviève direction. “What’s the story with her? Why’s she still here?”
“She likes me.”
“I’d worked that out. Minutes ago, I wasn’t sure you’d be sticking around to finish up here.”
Adam looked over at Geneviève and watched her pull her phone out of the bag. “Me neither. Still tempted to head back to the flat.” He didn’t think she’d even turned the phone on since he handed it to her at the mall. Probably not a bad idea to leave it turned off. Her husband might still have the contacts to track it.
“Doesn’t she have a home to go to? She didn’t look like a stray last night,” Luke commented.
Bloody Luke could never mind his own business. Then he saw Geneviève look at her phone, gasp and put her hand to her throat. She’d seen something on her phone that frightened her. She looked up and over at him, eyes wide and terrified.
“That doesn’t look good,” said Isaac.
“No, something’s happened.”
Adam headed over to her. “What’s wrong?”
Geneviève shoved the phone at him like it had bitten her. “You read it.”
He turned the phone, so he could see the screen and read, “I’m coming to get you bitch.” And the message box showed it had twenty other unopened messages.
He looked up. “Mason?” Geneviève nodded. “What about the rest?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t want to see them if they are all like that one.”
If they were all like that one, he’d go to the police. This Mason had already tracked them once and chased them. Now threats, and Geneviève said he’d been violent.
“Do you want me to read them?”
Geneviève nodded again and gave him her pin.
He opened the phone. There’d been a heap of calls too, and voice messages.
First, he read the text messages, all pretty much along the lines of the first message he saw. Threatening and abusive.
“Does this husband of yours get drunk when things don’t go right?” That’s what the stream of messages read like. Like Mason had gone home and got drunk when he couldn’t find his wife. “There’s a heap of voice messages too. Should I listen to them?”
Geneviève nodded again.
“I need another pin,” he said when he tried to access the voice messages.
“It’s the same one.”
He put it in and sure enough it opened the voice messages. She sure wasn’t security conscious. He listened to the messages, all abusive and threatening.
“Jesus,” he said when he’d turned the phone off again. He wasn’t going to let Geneviève anywhere near this man, husband or not. “I can see why you left him.”
Geneviève bit her lip and gave him a half smile. She stood up from the chair and came over to him. “Hold me, Adam. I don’t feel safe anymore. What if Mason finds me again?”
He held her, his chin on her hair and tried to figure out what to do. But they were safe here, and there wasn’t much chance Mason could track them to the flat, but what if he could? What would they do then?
Back at the flat Geneviève still clung to him. They sat on the couch. He had his arm over her shoulders and she curled into him.
At the pub all the others had seen Geneviève look at the phone and saw her reaction.
“What happened back there?” Cole asked.
Adam looked at Geneviève not sure how much she wanted the others to know.
After a moment of hesitation, she moved away from him a little and dug her phone out of her pocket. Then she opened the messages and handed the phone to Cole. “I found some messages from my husband.”
“Husband?” Tessa asked from the doorway.
Geneviève shrugged. He loved the way she could say a million things with a shrug.
Cole read what was there and shook his head. “Just go to the police. You can’t let him intimidate you like that.” He handed the phone back.
Geneviève smiled at Cole and put the phone into the front pocket of her hoodie. “But Mason is scary.” Adam felt that little curl of jealousy again. She’d said she liked Cole and she’d let him read the texts. But it was him she’d turned to when she was frightened, and it was him she was curled into now.
“I don’t want to have to deal with him, he makes me freeze up inside.”
Tessa disagreed. “You really can’t let him get away with it,” she said. “Fight him.”
Adam looked over at Tessa. Up until last night he’d thought she was the most beautiful girl around, but not anymore. Luke could have her and she could have Luke, they deserved each other. They were both fools.
Geneviève shook her head. “No, I want that part of my life to be over and to have nothing more to do with him.”
“What do you want to do now?” Adam asked her.
“I want to hide a bit longer and not have to think, is that all right?”
“Yeah, you can hide here.” He pulled her closer. None of his flatmates objected to the idea. She had four days to decide before he left so she didn’t have to make any decisions yet. With the amount of cash he’d seen in her purse, she could go wherever she liked once she did decide.
Cole stood up. “I’ve got to go.” He turned to Luke. “Do we need to do any more with those crates?”
Luke shook his head. “No. they’re nailed up and got addresses on them. Harry said he’d see they got on the truck. They should be waiting for us in Brisbane when we get there.”
Isaac and Jess had left as soon as everything was finished. It seemed strange when Isaac stowed his guitar and violin behind the seat in the cab. They’d all been playing together for four years now and Isaac wouldn’t be with them anymore.
“What are you doing about getting to the airport?” asked Cole.
“Hire a van. We all go together on Thursday?” Luke suggested. “The flight’s late enough that we won’t need to stay overnight in Auckland.”
Adam and Noah nodded. “Sounds good.”
“Okay, see you Thursday then.” Cole slung his roll bag over his shoulder and Keira went outside with him. Adam guessed they’d said their goodbyes already, but it still might be a while before Keira came back inside.
“Right, what are we doing for dinner?” asked Luke.
Geneviève lay in bed, curled up around Adam. Sated, satiated, or whatever the word was. She stroked his cheek and he moved enough to capture her fingers with his lips.
“You were going to play the guitar for me.” She freed her fingers and traced the shaped of his lips. He really was lovely looking. But with his friends he seemed completely overshadowed.
“Maybe tomorrow. I’m happy just staying still.”
But the way he stroked her hip and the curve of her waist she didn’t think that would be true for very long. They’d fitted a lot of sex into a few hours and this just felt like a pause.
“Can I listen to something by Stadium then? You must have a recording what you do somewhere.” Her brothers both played the guitar and they were recording themselves on their phones all the time.
He turned over and found his phone on the side table. Swiped through a few screens and handed it to her.
“This is ‘Train Wreck’, Isaac wrote it.”
For some reason she’d expected a video but all she could see was wavy lines. “What is it about?” she asked.
“Isaac’s never said. But he wrote it when he and Jess were going through a hard time, and I think it’s about that.”
“What happened?”
“Their baby died, and they were having trouble dealing with it.”
“Isaac and Jess?” She’d sensed something wrong between those two friends of Adams, but she wouldn’t have guessed that. The death of a child usually put a strain on the parents’ relationship. She’d learned that at university too. “Poor Isaac and Jess. How could someone cope with that?”
“They didn’t, you can hear it in the music. And the way Noah plays his part on the violin makes it even more discordant.”
She listened to the track right through. It sounded sad and jarring but beautiful in some way. “I love it, but you’re right it is very sad,” she said and slid the bar to the next track. “What is this one?”
He listened to the first few bars. “Lonely’. Isaac wrote that too.”
This music sounded different to anything she’d heard before too, but sad.
“Does Isaac write any happy songs?”
“Not many.”
She slid to the next track.
“Stardust,” he said.
“Is that you on the keyboard?” she asked.
“Yeah. The guitars are Noah and Isaac. That’s Luke singing the lead. That’s me coming in there.”
She could hear the two different voices. Adam sounded the way she thought he would. Like brown velvet. “I like the way your voice sounds. Are there any on here that are just you?”
&n
bsp; “No.” He took the phone off her when the track finished and put it back on the cabinet. “Why?”
“Curious. Why don’t you sometimes take the lead.”
“I told you Luke and Isaac are better than me.”
She turned over, lay on her stomach, and rested her chin on her fist on his chest. “Who said that?”
He lifted his head off the pillow to see her.
“No one said it, it’s just the way it is.”
“You should have your turn. It’s not fair you don’t get a chance.”
He laughed and pulled her up the bed a little. “I don’t think Luke would like that.”
“Luke’s a bighead,” she said.
“No Luke’s all right.” He rolled her over and nuzzled at her breasts, then her throat and then tasted her lips while his hands roamed over her belly, her hips and then gently between her thighs. She pushed against his hand as his fingers moved inside her again, and he watched her face as he did it.
She loved the way he seemed to like everything about her body, the way he touched and stroked and tasted until she went over the edge again and again. No stopping as soon as he climaxed either or having to have showers every ten minutes like with Mason, because her liked her so clean she felt antiseptic. As he moved his mouth down her body again she curved into him to encourage him to keep going.
“That’s not what you said last night.”
He looked up surprised. “Did I say something about Luke last night?”
“You said he was the ugly one.”
“Oh that,” he said. “I was cross at him and Tessa. It doesn’t matter now.”
Chapter Ten
Adam woke to screams and an empty bed.
“Adam! Adam!” It took him a moment to realise he’d heard Geneviève screaming his name and it was morning. Then he heard it again. “Adam! Help me!”
He leapt out of bed and scooped his jeans off the floor. He stumbled out the door pulling them on and then ran down the passageway.
