“What in the ever-loving love fuck?” Mack yelled as the sound of several sets of feet stomped their way toward us.
Lawson and I broke apart. I stepped in front of him to put me between him and my brothers. His chest brushed against my back. Or maybe it was his abs… I wasn’t sure. Either way it was solid and his hands settled on my hips to steady me.
“One guy fucking manhandles her,” Van yelled, “and you take that as an opportunity?”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Van,” Lawson said, a lot calmer than I expected him to be.
“Get the fuck away from our sister,” Bonham told him with a tight voice.
“Hey,” I yelled to get all of their attention. I was the only thing keeping my brothers from getting closer to Lawson. “Everyone on the other side of this bus just witnessed a humiliating fucking moment of mine. Could we all go somewhere more private so they don’t get to hear another?”
Lawson pointed at the bus farther away from the crowd. “Our bus is right here.”
I turned and pushed Lawson the way we needed to go and kept glancing back at my brothers just to make sure they weren’t doing anything shady behind me.
Once on our bus, I nudged Lawson again to go toward the barrier between us and the driver, though Clay wouldn’t be up there right now. He’d probably be sleeping on the roadies’ bus. My brothers filed in the other way, though none of them decided to take a seat. Lawson leaned against the barrier as if he didn’t have a worry in the world and put his hands in his pockets. Everything was so casual, considering the intensity the day had taken.
My brothers each stood there with a tense jaw as they puffed up their chests like they wanted to look tougher than they were. A silent threat to Lawson.
“Now,” I said after a deep breath. “I—”
“Are you OK?” Mack asked before I could finish my sentence.
“Yes. I’m OK.”
“But like really OK?” Van asked but all of my brothers were watching me carefully.
I took a deep breath. “Yes. Really OK. He didn’t hurt me exactly. Scared the shit out of me. Disgusted me. But I’m not injured.”
“What the fuck, Daisy?” Mack said once they were sure that I wasn’t hurt. “What the fuck was happening out there?”
“No shit,” Van so helpfully added. “Did he force himself on you?”
Lawson stood up straight. “Fuck you, Van.”
“Come closer and say that,” Van countered as he took a step forward. Lawson did the same.
I jumped in front of Lawson because I knew he wouldn’t run me over to get to Van. Bonham moved in front of Van and braced himself against Van’s chest to keep him from advancing. Of all my brothers, Van had always gotten in the most fights.
Once the yelling calmed down, Lawson nudged me from behind and said, “Daisy.”
“OK.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s be clear. Lawson didn’t force himself on me back there and don’t ever say anything remotely like that again, Van. Or any of you. He wouldn’t do that to anyone.”
“But—”
“No,” I snapped. “Lawson and I have been seeing each other for weeks.” I glanced back at Lawson. His jaw was still tight, but he was watching me, silently encouraging me to keep going. “I guess technically since before I came to ride on his bus. If kissing counts.”
Bonham groaned. “It fucking counts.”
“OK.” I held my hands up, wishing that everyone would take it down several notches. “We’ve been seeing each other for weeks. He kissed me out there because I asked him to. I wanted to get the taste of that…” I shook my head. “Anyway. No forcing. We’re together. You can all calm down now.”
“What the fuck, Daisy?” Mack said, the weight of his gaze making me shorter than I already was. “So you’ve been sneaking around behind our backs?”
I held up a finger. “Not exactly. I wanted to be the one to tell you because…” I waved my hands around in front of them. “Well, this. But we’ve been busy. We haven’t really had a moment alone since Lawson and I—” The less details with my brothers, the better. “I was going to talk to you tonight at dinner. But you two”—I pointed to Van and Bonham—“were busy with whatever you were doing and you”—I pointed at Mack—“were on the phone the entire time.” I dropped my arms to my side and sighed. “I just haven’t had the chance and I was afraid you’d explode like you are doing right now. You act like I’m still nine and not a full-grown woman. I don’t need you to protect me like that anymore.”
“Uh, hello?” Van yelled. Lawson shifted behind me. He obviously didn’t like the way Van was speaking to me. Still, I kept my place in front of him so he wouldn’t get any farther. “Did you not just see what happened out there? You need more protection. Not less.”
“That’s a special case,” I told him. “I don’t need your protection from Lawson,” I said to be clearer.
“I don’t get it,” Van continued, though he wasn’t yelling anymore. “We thought he was a safe bet. He wears a suit, for god’s sake. Dad wears a suit.”
I narrowed my eyes on him. “Yeah, and Dad still got Mom pregnant four times.”
The four of them were quiet for a second.
“Fucking Christ,” Daltry said, but it came out like a groan. “You’re talking about sex and you’re our little sister.” The air in the room thickened. “Did you get our sister pregnant?” The four of them advanced again.
Jesus. This was never going to end.
Their voices jumbled together as Van began pacing. He did that when he got really angry.
“No, he didn’t get me pregnant,” I said with as much disgust as Daltry had used when he’d asked the question.
Van was feeling caged in as he couldn’t get very far with his pacing. He headed to the back of the bus then back again. With him, it was usually a good idea to let him keep moving to get some of the energy out before he exploded.
“You guys are being crazy,” I told them.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?” Van yelled from the rear of the bus.
I furrowed my brows since I had no idea what he was talking about. At least not until I slid to the left a little. The door to the bedroom was open and the light was on. We didn’t really turn lights off much anyway.
“Oh shit,” I muttered when I realized he was talking about the harness system the Courting Chaos guys had installed before I’d ever ended up on his bus.
“Is that a… harness?” Bonham asked. Anger filled all my brothers’ faces at the same time and everybody was moving again.
“Hold on!” I put my hands up again. This time, my brothers listened to me.
Lawson cleared his throat and moved me gently to the side so that he was next to me. “That was a joke. A fucking terrible joke, but a joke nonetheless. The guys had it installed for me a while ago. As a joke. I couldn’t figure out, or didn’t have the time to figure out, how to get it down. I don’t know what kind of tools were used, but I don’t have them.”
“Do you think we’re stupid?” Daltry asked. “She might be innocent, but we’re not.”
Somehow the innocent comment offended me. I snapped back and said, “Innocent? I haven’t been that innocent since Ethan Martinez asked me to his senior prom when I was in tenth grade.”
Van gagged as the others curled their upper lips back in disgust.
“We didn’t need to know that,” Bonham countered.
“You’re coming back to our bus,” Mack said. It wasn’t a question. It was a demand. A demand I wasn’t going to abide by.
“Absolutely not.” I shook my head. “Lawson and I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m not leaving this bus, but I will talk it out with you all if you want to.” I pulled my phone from my back pocket. “But we’ll have to do it in the dressing room. I’m not going on stage without showering what the fuck just happened off me.”
“Let’s go,” Mack ordered them while pointing at the door.
“To be clear,” I said loudly. The
y all stopped and turned to me. “I will talk to you guys about this as much as you need. I’ll answer questions and reassure you, but I will be sleeping on this bus tonight.”
“We hear you, Daisy,” Mack said as he pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew when I was or wasn’t going to budge and this time, there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d give them an inch.
Chapter Eighteen
Daisy
The guys went out first, but I didn’t follow right away. Instead, I hung back to talk to Lawson.
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
“For what?”
“Everything they said.” I shook my head at the memory. “That was really awful of them.”
“It was,” he agreed. “But this is exactly why I didn’t want to hide from them.”
Well, yeah. If I would’ve known all this was going to happen, I’d have insisted on talking to them sooner. But what Lawson couldn’t know was that my brothers were going to react the way they did no matter how they’d found out.
“I know,” I told him. “And I swear I tried to talk to them.”
He shook his head as he stepped forward and took my hands in his. “Doesn’t matter, Daisy. After everything today, I can’t be mad at you.”
“Well, I guess that’s a silver lining.”
Lawson sighed and brought his hands up to rest on my shoulders. “Do you want to cancel tonight? Given everything that’s happened, no one would blame you.”
“Absolutely not,” I said automatically.
“You sure?”
“Yes. I’m not letting that guy keep me from performing.”
“OK.” He quickly wet his lips. “Then you better go take your shower.”
Lawson leaned down and pressed his lips to mine. It was a different kiss than the one out by the bus. That one had served a purpose, but this one, his gentleness, was about him letting me know how he felt.
When he pulled back, he took my hand in his and led the way off the bus. Outside, he didn’t let go of that hand, either. Now that everyone knew what was going on between us, there really wasn’t a reason for him to. He didn’t stop until we were standing at our dressing room door.
“Want me to come in with you?” he asked.
I shook my head. “In the shower?”
He chuckled deep in his chest. “Don’t tempt me. Your brothers are in there. I meant come with you to face them. They were awfully pissed off.”
“It’s better I deal with my brothers myself.”
“You sure?” he asked. “They’re going to give you shit and I don’t feel right making you face that alone.”
A small laugh bubbled up. “Of course they’re going to give me shit. They’re my brothers. But this is kind of a sibling thing.” I pushed up onto my toes to give him a quick, reassuring kiss. “They just want to make sure I’m OK. That you, the big bad wolf, aren’t making me do anything I don’t want to be doing. I’ll be fine.”
“Fine.” He sighed. “I won’t get to see you before you go on then, so I’ll find you after.” Lawson leaned in closer. “Do not leave this building without me or Cal or one of your brothers.” I raised an eyebrow at his demand. “Please,” he added.
Now I smiled at him and said, “I will not leave without one of you.”
Hopefully soon we’d be able to drop me having a babysitter but for now, I’d take it. Sure. The crazy fan was now probably in police custody but until I knew for sure, I’d gladly accept a big, strong guy ushering me around. Especially if that big, strong guy was Lawson.
Right as I was about to turn the knob on the dressing room door, Barrett called out to me, causing me to pause.
“Are you OK?” she asked, pulling me into her arms and holding tight.
“I’m fine,” I reassured her. Man, news really did travel fast.
“You sure?” she asked again as she released me. “I saw the video. Felt sick to my stomach. I can’t believe he violated you like that.”
“Me, either,” I told her. “How’d you even know it happened?”
“Dixon was scrolling through Twitter and started seeing your name pop up.” She said wet her lips. “He saw the video then showed me and everyone else.”
I rolled my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. Just as I’d suspected. Everyone everywhere was going to see it, which meant someone was going to either show or send it to my parents. “Fuck. I need to call my parents. Everyone gets to see my humiliation.”
“No way,” she said with more force than I’d ever heard from her. “That is not your humiliation. It’s his. He violated your space, not the other way around.”
“I know. I know. Do you have any idea what they did with him or could you find out?”
“I saw Cal not long after,” she said. “He told me that the guy was arrested. What he did to you was an assault. When the cops ran his name, turns out he has a couple of outstanding warrants from stalking an ex-girlfriend. They told Cal, though Cal said they weren’t supposed to.”
“Good.” There was a sudden relief that washed right over me. At least there was no chance that guy would be around me for a while. “Oh.” I snapped my fingers. “My brothers all know about Lawson and me.”
Her eyes grew wide. “What happened? Why do I miss everything?”
I chuckled. “I’ll tell you all about it, but basically, they caught Lawson kissing me after everything happened.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Exactly. But now I need to hop in the shower because my skin is crawling over that guy touching me in any way.”
Barrett took a step back. “Yeah, of course. We’ll talk later.”
“Barrett,” I said so she wouldn’t walk away. “Was the video awful?”
“Yes,” she told me right away. “It was awful because I was horrified to see someone touching you against your will. You shouldn’t think about how it made you look. It made it look like some douchebag was using his strength against you. The guys were livid.”
They would be. Especially after what they’d found out about their former bassist last year. He was still in jail, as far as I knew.
“Thanks,” I told her.
“I’m going to go see if Lawson has anything he needs me to do.” She wet her lips quickly. “And maybe see how bad of a mood he’s in after seeing you assaulted that way.”
“He seemed fine when he left a minute ago.”
Barrett snorted. “I’m one hundred percent sure he wasn’t fine. I’ll see ya later, Daisy.”
Finally, I was alone to enter our dressing room.
My brothers were there, all in various states of undress, as they were getting ready for the show. We were going to have to multitask this one. Van and Bonham were on the couch, shirtless, putting their shoes on, as if that made any kind of sense. Daltry was over by the clothes wrack, shirtless and without pants, fingering through his options of what to wear tonight. Mostly our stage clothes were exactly like our street clothes. They were only separate for travel and to make sure they got cleaned and back to the dressing room in time for the next show.
I had six or seven complete outfits that I mixed and matched depending on how I felt that day. Same for the guys, I assumed, but once in a while, one of us would wear the same thing we’d been wearing all day.
Mack was the only one of the guys completely dressed because he didn’t go on stage. He didn’t have to change.
“I’m going to hop in the shower super quick first,” I told them before they’d even noticed I’d entered. “Can one of you call Mom and Dad while I’m in there?” I hurried over to the clothing, grabbed the first pair of jeans my fingers touched, along with a sparkly tank top. It was kind of my signature to wear something shiny on stage. “Apparently, the video of today is everywhere. Someone’s going to show them.”
“Fuck,” Mack muttered. He hadn’t thought of that, either. “I’ll call them.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket then added, “You better hurry because I’d hate to cancel tonight last minute if the five of us don’t
get a talk in before showtime.”
Damn. He wasn’t messing around. But would he really cancel before we talked? I wasn’t all that sure one way or another.
After the quickest shower of my life, complete with hair washing, I came out in my newly picked clothes. At first I’d thought I’d pin my hair up and not get it wet. But then I’d thought better of it. I wanted the entire incident washed away from me. With my limited time, I’d just have to put my hair up into a bun. There wasn’t enough time to dry and style.
“OK, go,” I said as soon as I came out, my bare feet slapping against the floor. I grabbed a brush to get started on my hair.
Mack cleared his throat. “Called our parents. Talked to both of them. Explained what happened.”
“And?”
“They’re worried about you and Mom says if she doesn’t hear from you personally tonight or tomorrow, she’s coming to find you.”
“Got it,” I told him, but he let out a small laugh. That was our mother. “I’ll call her. What else?”
My four large brothers suddenly got very quiet. I dropped the brush from my hair and looked at them. I even raised my eyebrows, but still, they didn’t say anything.
“Guys,” I snapped. “This is your chance. I’m not moving to your bus, so out with it.”
“Are you really all right?” Bonham finally asked.
“Yes. That guy didn’t hurt me. He scared the shit out of me, but he didn’t hurt me.”
“He’s lucky security got between us and him,” Daltry told me and I knew he wasn’t just talking. My brothers would’ve ripped that guy apart if they’d had the chance.
“I know. Next?”
“What the fuck, Daisy?” Mack took the lead. Didn’t surprise me a bit. “You and Lawson?”
“Yes.” I didn’t have to defend us to them. That wasn’t what they were looking for.
“Daisy. Come on.” Van finally spoke up. “He’s too fucking old for you.”
Daisy (Pushing Daisies Book 1) Page 17
