Release: A Ransom Novel

by Rachel Schurig

  “Thank you for being nice to me,” I mutter, opening my eyes again. There are two of him and I have to blink hard to get his face in focus. “I shouldn’t have come out.”

  “Don’t you let him keep you from having fun,” Cash admonishes.

  “But I’m not having fun. I’m...” I shake my head, trying to think of the right words. I definitely drank too much too fast. “I’m drunk,” I finally say.

  Cash laughs. “Just follow me, Paige. I’ll take care of you.”

  It sounds so nice, to just follow someone for once. Ever since I left Karen back in Tennessee I’ve been struggling to forge my own way. Without her to help me with my schedules and my task lists, my brain gets too scattered, too unfocused. When I was with Reed that focus came back, but without him it was hard, way too hard, to figure it all out. All I want to do is close my eyes and let Cash twirl me around the dance floor—not thinking, not planning, not focused or unfocused—just dancing.

  So, I do exactly that. I lean into him, balancing myself in his strong arms, and I let him lead me. I feel better than I have in weeks, since the day in Frankenmuth—maybe even before that. There’s nothing to worry about, no Reed to stare at and wish for. Just the darkness behind my eyelids.

  After a few songs, I realize how nice it feels in Cash’s arms. The last person to hold me closely was Reed, all those weeks ago when he found out about the baby. The thought of the baby makes me feel sick again, and I clutch Cash tighter, to keep from getting dizzy. He responds in kind, bringing his hands down lower on my back to keep me balanced. His hands are different than Reed’s, just like his arms are different. It’s a nice kind of different.

  I open one eye, testing whether it will make the room spin. When only one of his face appears, I open the other eye, looking at him. “I had a crush on you,” I say, not really sure why I’m telling him. It seems important, somehow, that he know.

  He looks down at me, that familiar Cash smirk on his face. “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah. You were the one that I picked.”

  “That you picked?”

  “Yeah. You know. Like, who I would want.” I try to waggle my eyebrows at him but it makes me feel sick when his face jiggles so I stop. I can tell that he’s trying not to laugh, though I have no idea what’s funny.

  “That was before you met me, though,” he points out.

  “True. You’re not as sexy now. That I know you, I mean.”

  He throws back his head to laugh and I realize what I said. “Sorry, Cash. That was, like, really mean.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he assures me. “You’re a really funny girl, Paige.”

  “Thank you!” I beam at him. It’s so nice when people are nice. Not all sarcastic and glaring like his stupid brother.

  I try to remember when it was that I stopped having a crush on Cash. Before we met the band, Karen and I had both decided Cash would be the one we would want to hook up with in some alternate reality where we were able to hook up with rock stars. He had always seemed the sexiest to us, with that bad boy, doesn’t-give-a-fuck streak. So when had that changed? Now when he smirks in that way I used to find so sexy, I normally roll my eyes.

  “It was the skanks,” I say out loud. “That’s why you stopped being sexy. Because I saw you with all the skanks.”

  He shrugs, still smiling. “What can I say? You only live once.”

  “What’s it like?” I ask, studying his face. He’s still every bit as cute as he ever was, dark where Reed is blond, cocky where Reed is serious.

  “What’s what like?”

  “Sleeping around. With people you don’t care about, I mean.”

  He narrows his eyes a little, as if considering. “Sometimes it’s exciting. Sometimes it’s just fun, not to have any worries or ties. And sometimes it’s lonely.”

  “Lonely?” I don’t like the sound of Cash being lonely. He’s been too nice to me tonight to be lonely. When I frown, I feel sick all over again and have to clench my fingers on his arms.

  “Maybe we should go sit down,” he says, sounding worried. “Or get you some air.”

  I shake my head. “You said you’d dance with me. No take-backs.”

  He chuckles softly. “Okay.”

  “Why is it lonely?”

  “It’s not always lonely,” he assures me. “You don’t need to worry about me, Paige. Like I said, it’s usually fun.”

  “Fun.” I like to have fun. I’ve made a practice of trying to have as much fun as possible, as often as possible. There are too many things to get sad about, if you let yourself. The sadness I felt when I miscarried the baby my boyfriend didn’t even want made me practically comatose for weeks. But still, I hadn’t learned my lesson. Just look at me now—drunk off my head because a boy I like doesn’t like me back. What’s the point of that? Isn’t it better to just have fun?

  I look at Cash, suddenly remembering all the times I stared at this face on my dorm room wall while I fell asleep at night. He really is cute, just like I remember. And his lips look really nice. “You’re fun,” I whisper.

  And just like that I’m kissing him. I don’t give it a ton of thought, beyond the idea that he’s cute. And his assurance that hooking up with someone you don’t care much about is fun. I could use some fun tonight.

  His lips feel soft under mine, parted slightly, but something’s not quite right—he isn’t kissing me back. I don’t like that at all. How can I know if it’s fun if he doesn’t kiss me back? So, I press my lips harder against his, running my tongue along his mouth a little. That seems to do the trick—he groans a little before returning the pressure of my kiss.

  Before I can decide if I like kissing Cash or not, there’s a sound like a growl close to my ear and then Cash is falling away from me and I’m off balance, stumbling until I trip, my butt hitting the floor, hard. My head spinning, I look up and realize Cash didn’t fall away—someone pulled him. The same someone who is landing a monster punch on his face right now.

  “Reed!” I scream, struggling to sit up. “What are you doing?”

  He doesn’t answer and then Cash is straightening up and letting out his own loud snarl, swinging a punch at Reed that lands right on his nose. I scream again, terrified by the looks of rage on their faces, by the fact that they’re actually hitting each other. Daisy told me it happened all the time, that they were always at each other’s throats, but I couldn’t believe she meant like this.

  I try to stand, to get between them, but a wave of dizziness pushes against me. I have to balance myself with both hands on the floor before I can even look up again. Daltrey and Lennon have come from somewhere and are attempting to get their arms around their older brothers, trying to pull them back. I think I hear Sienna shrieking nearby and my head pounds in protest. Then Daisy’s at my side, shouting my name. Everything is too loud, too confusing. My head is spinning and I’m sure I’m going to be sick.

  “Stop them,” I manage to get out.

  “Frank and Benny are here,” she assures me. “Don’t worry. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re getting out of here,” she tells me, getting her hands under my arms so she can heave me into a standing position. I have to lean on her for a full ten seconds before the room stops spinning.

  “I’m way too drunk,” I mutter, suddenly furious at myself. This was all my fault. I shouldn’t have kissed Cash—shit. My head snaps up in the direction of the brothers, who are still screaming at each other even as their bodyguards pull them apart. Did Reed seriously just attack his brother because I kissed him? I catch sight of Sienna on the outside of the fray—which is now attracting most of the club-goers, who are pressing in on us closer and closer. She’s in tears, still screaming something at Reed. I don’t see the cameras and I say a silent prayer they missed the excitement. Does Sienna have the editing power to keep stuff like this from making the final cut?

  “Come on.” I look over, thinking the voice belongs to Reed, but it’s Daltrey, slippi
ng his arm around me and pulling me away from the crowd. Girls on either side of us, realizing who he is, start yelling and reaching for him. I lose Daisy’s hand and I’m suddenly terrified we’re all about to be trampled. But then, Frank is at our side, pushing the crowd back. If he’s with us, I have no idea what’s going on with Reed and Cash, or Lennon for that matter.

  But I’m too scared, too confused, too sick to go back. Instead, I lean against Daltrey and let him lead me out into the night air.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Reed

  My head feels like my brain is struggling to escape from my skull. The pounding is so intense I feel like puking every time I move—on top of the fact that I feel like puking from the sourness in my stomach. Why did I have to drink tequila?

  Of course, the booze is only partially responsible for the pounding in my head. The blows that Cash managed to land on my face hurt a hell of a lot worse than any hangover. Someone that much shorter than me should not have been able to inflict so much damage.

  It’s your own damn fault, I tell myself. I had no business attacking Cash last night. I can’t even say for sure why I did it. I don’t remember making the decision to go barreling after him. I do remember watching him dance with Paige, my anger increasing by the minute. I got the feeling he was intentionally goading me, like he was using her to try to prove his point. And it pissed me off.

  When I saw his lips on hers, I lost it. I completely lost it. There wasn’t a single thought in my head except getting to him and getting his hands off her, of getting her as far away from him as possible. And it had felt good, at first. Punching him was like releasing all of the anger and frustration I had been feeling for weeks now. I was pissed about the Sienna situation, pissed about the cameras, pissed that Cash was so condescendingly smug about his read on my feelings. Pissed that I was constantly putting the band first, in every situation. I was pissed about my life.

  And, maybe more than anything else, I was pissed that I had no right to stop Paige from kissing Cash. Because I have no claim over her. Because she can’t be mine.

  And I took it out on my brother. I sigh and readjust the ice pack over my face. My dad had been pretty pissed when he brought it by earlier, but I had staved off a lecture by puking quite spectacularly in front of him. He promised me we’d be revisiting the situation later.

  There’s a knock on my hotel room door and I curse under my breath as the sound reverberates in my head. I pull myself from the couch, pressing the ice pack more firmly against my split eyebrow, and go to see who it is.

  Sienna stands in the hallway, as perfectly put together as ever. She seems to be the only one to have gotten through the preceding night without harm—physical harm, at least.

  “Hey,” I say, opening the door for her. She just stares at me for a long minute. I know I look like crap. Cash split my lip and my eyebrow and my eye is quickly turning black and blue. Which isn’t even to mention the greenish tinge my skin seems to have taken on since I woke up an hour ago.

  “Can I come in?” she finally asks, and I move to allow her to enter, doing my best not to wince in pain.

  She stands in the middle of my hotel room, arms crossed. “Reed, I’m going back to L.A.”

  “Your flight’s tomorrow,” I say, still not getting it. She smiles—but there’s no joy in her face.

  “I’m going to L.A. now because I’m done here. We’re done.”

  “Sienna—”

  She holds up a hand. “No, Reed. There’s no point. We’re done—we’ve been done since Christmas. I was just too stubborn, too proud. But this...” she gestures around my mess of a room. “I can’t do this.”

  “I’m sorry about last night.” I push away from the wall, my head pounding, and attempt to cross the room to her, but she shakes her head, her face hardening.

  “If you think I’m going to hang around and beg for scraps when you’re clearly in love with someone else, you’re delusional.”

  I stare at her. “What?”

  “Oh, give me a break, Reed. When I first saw how you were around her, I assumed it was a sex thing but this—” She points at my face. “You love her. I’m not going to torture myself wondering why you fell in love with a slutty college chick with an eyebrow ring when you could have me. I’m cutting my loses. I’m out.”

  “Hang on.” I’m not sure what point I want to argue, her assertion that I love Paige or that she’s a slutty college kid. But Sienna doesn’t let me argue at all.

  “Look, we’ve both made mistakes here. If you’re expecting me to cry and beg you to reconsider, it’s not happening. I’d rather get on the plane with my pride intact.”

  “If you don’t want to be with me... or pretend to be with me, that’s fine.” I rub at my forehead, wishing the pounding would stop for long enough for me to figure out what was going on here. “But what about the baby?”

  Her expression is pitying, as if she can barely stand to be in the presence of my naivety. “There’s no baby, Reed.”

  The room shifts around me and I have to reach out to grab the wall beside me. “What?”

  “There hasn’t been, for a few weeks. When I went to the doctor...” she shrugs her shoulders, as if she misplaced my favorite CD or something, no big deal. “They couldn’t see anything and my hormones weren’t going up like they should. He said it never got very far along.”

  “You... you didn’t... there’s no baby?”

  “I’m sorry. Like I said, we both made mistakes. I should have told you as soon as it happened.”

  “You’re damned right you should have!” I shout, clutching the wall harder for support. “You let me believe that we... that I was going to be a father. How could you do that? Why would you do that?”

  “Reed—”

  “For your TV show? Is that what this was about? You didn’t want to lose your precious storyline?”

  “That’s partly it,” she admits calmly and I want to cry out in frustration, want to scream at her until her steely facade crumbles. “I didn’t want to deal with a miscarriage and being dumped on national television. I realize that was a mistake; that I should have just had the producers edit out any mention of the pregnancy, but I didn’t.”

  How can she be so calm, so unaware of how fucked up this is? There’s a slight twitch under her left eye, but other than that, she seems completely and totally unaffected. “Why?” I bellow, unable to keep it in.

  She flinches slightly. “Because I really did want you,” she says, her voice quiet. “And I knew you would at least give me a chance if you thought the pregnancy was still ongoing.” She meets my eyes and there’s almost a challenge there, as if she’s daring me to judge her for it. “I wasn’t ready to let you go.”

  “Fuck, Sienna.” I rub my forehead. “This is so fucked up.”

  “Well.” She swings her bag onto her shoulder as if she’s finishing a business deal. “At least, now you’re off the hook.” She meets my eyes and that vulnerability is there again. “We both know you didn’t want to have a baby with me. We both know you didn’t want to be with me. Now you don’t have to.”

  I shake my head. If she thinks there’s any bright side to this betrayal, she’s insane. She walks to the door and I can only gape after her. How could this be it—the child I didn’t even know if I wanted never existed and she’s just walking away, calm as can be. Who does this?

  “Oh, one more thing,” she calls from the door. “We still need to talk about the premiere next week.”

  “The premiere?” I ask, perhaps more shocked by this than anything else she’s said. “You think I’m coming to your fucking premiere?”

  “It’s your premiere too,” she reminds me. “I think it will be best if we don’t announce the split until after, and still attend as planned.”

  “You’re insane,” I whisper, staring at her as if I’ve never seen her before. Have I seen her before? Who is this person?

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” She raises an eyebrow. “And don’
t pretend that you’re so much more moral and strong-willed than I am, Reed. You’ve been perfectly willing to go along with this farce for months now. Even though you were in love with someone else.” She shakes her head, looking at me almost as if I disgust her. “I wonder what that’s been like for her.”

  A sudden image of Paige falling to the dance floor flashes through my mind. The hurt on her face, the confusion, as I pushed her roughly aside. But then Sienna is opening the door and stepping out into the hallway and the image fades under the horror of what just happened in this room. “I’ll have my people call,” she says, before letting the door shut behind her, leaving me alone to contemplate what in the hell I’m supposed to do now.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Paige

  “Here,” Daisy says, shoving a mug in my face. “Drink this. It will help.”

  I peer down into the contents of the steaming mug. “What is it?”

  “Coffee blended with butter.” She makes a face at me. “I know it sounds totally gross, but it’s a good hangover cure. Daltrey told me about it—there’s no one better for hangover cures than someone in a rock band.”

  I hesitatingly take a sip. It’s strange, but not totally disgusting. It sends immediate warmth into my chest and I take another, longer sip. Even if it doesn’t help with the hangover, maybe it will help me to not feel so cold and empty.

  “You wanna talk about it?” she asks quietly. “If not, I can get Karen out here in a few hours.”

  “Karen has class.”

  “It’s the weekend. You think I wouldn’t get her a plane ticket if you needed her? You think she wouldn’t skip class if you needed her?”

  I can’t help the tears that spring to my eyes at her words. It’s nice to be reminded that I have friends—really, really, good friends—even if everything else in my life feels like a total mess.