by Selena Kitt
Crap.
“Jay… honey?” I cringed at my own invasion, but I turned the knob and eased the door open. “What is it?”
She was face-down on the bed, her hair in a long braid down her back—to keep it out of chubby, grasping baby-hands, I was sure—wearing a pair of her new jeans and a pretty, paisley peasant blouse. She was fifteen, but to me, she looked so little and vulnerable in the middle of that double bed.
“Are you all right?” I went over to sit on the edge of the bed beside her, putting a hand on her back. She flinched but didn’t say anything. “Are you sick?”
“Yes.” She nodded into the pillow, not pulling her face from it. “I’m sick. Very sick. Go away.”
“Do you need anything?” I stroked her hair, smoothing the little flyaways down. “Some Tylenol? Pepto?”
“Noooo.” She shook her head, sounding like she was holding back a sob. “Just… go away.”
She took a deep breath and turned her face to the side, away from me. I could see mascara smudged on the pillowcase. Poor thing. She’d been crying.
“Please, Katie,” she whispered. “Just go away. I want to sleep. Okay?”
“You sure?” I squeezed her shoulder. “I could get some ice cream. We could hang out and talk about… whatever…”
“Noooo!” She howled, turning her face into the pillow again. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs, and just watching her broke my heart.
“Okay,” I relented, knowing now that whatever had happened, I was going to have to ask Sabrina. Jay wasn’t going to tell me, at least not tonight. “Do you want me to turn the light out?”
“Yes, please.” She sniffed as I went over to the door.
“If you need anything, we’re right down the hall,” I told her softly, flipping the switch to leave her in darkness. “Goodnight, Jay.”
“G’nite,” she whispered as I shut the door behind me.
I padded back down the hall and found Tyler sitting up in bed, his ear to his cell phone.
“Right. No, I get that. Of course.” Tyler waved me in and I shut the door behind me, going to sit cross-legged on the bed beside him. “I totally understand... I will. Okay. Yep, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Tyler tossed his phone on the bed and looked at me.
“Who was that?” I asked, although from the look on his face, I thought I already knew.
“Jay’s no longer welcome over there.” Tyler put his head in his hands for a moment, shaking it.
My heart dropped to my toes. “What happened?”
“What happened?” he repeated, looking at me, incredulous. Then he was up, stalking around the room. He grabbed a pair of jeans, yanking them on. “Holy fuck. I knew taking this girl in was a bad idea. Goddamnit, Katie…”
“What?” I asked again, watching him pull on a t-shirt. “What are you talking about?”
“Sabrina says she came onto Rob.” He stopped the stalking when he got to our door, his hand on the knob.
I stared at him, aghast. “She… what?”
“You heard me.” He pulled the door open and stormed down the hall.
I sat there for a moment, paralyzed, trying to make sense of his words. Jay came onto Rob? What did that mean, exactly? I mean, I knew she had a crush on him once upon a time. Rob was the reason Jay had finagled her way onto our tour bus. She had believed he was her “true love,” and of course, thought that if she showed up, Rob would fall immediately in love with her.
But she’d been a kid then—just twelve, at the time. And her interests had grown since then. She still loved Trouble, but she wasn’t obsessed with Rob Burns anymore. At least, that’s what she’d told me, in emails, and during the conversations we had at least once a month.
Of course she told you that. If she told you she was still madly in love with him, would you have taken her in when she showed up on your doorstep?
“What in the hell were you thinking?” Tyler’s voice boomed down the hallway and I leapt off the bed, heading after him. He was standing in Jay’s doorway, the door open, light on. “Is that what you came here looking for? You wanted to fuck a rock star?”
“Tyler!” I called, horrified, as I hurried down the hall. “Tyler, don’t!”
“Don’t?” He turned to blink at me, incredulous. “Are you kidding me? This little slut shows up on our doorstep, we take her in, we buy her a whole goddamned new wardrobe, and how does she repay us?”
“Ty, stop,” I whispered, seeing Jay sitting up on her bed, face in her hands, sobbing. “Let me talk to her.”
“I’m done.” Tyler held up his hands, glaring at Jay, and then at me. “I want her out of here. I want her on a plane tomorrow back to Kansas or Missouri or whatever rock she crawled out from under.”
“Please.” I put my hand on his arm. “Don’t do this. I’ll talk to her. I’ll—”
“Whatever.” Tyler turned and stalked back down the hall, slamming the door to our bedroom behind him. I knew why he was angry—and I couldn't blame him. If Jay really had come onto Rob, the way he said, then the fact that Jay was underage, and a runaway, put an even bigger wrench into the works. That was the sort of publicity Arnie would have a heart attack about—even he didn’t have the power to spin that the right direction.
“Jay, what happened?” I asked, closing her door behind me and coming to sit by her on the bed.
“I’m so sorry, Katie,” she whispered, lifting her head to look at me. Dark tracks, wet eyeliner and mascara, streaked her face. “It wasn’t what it looked like. I didn’t mean anything. Rob tried to tell her, but—”
Whatever she was going to say got choked off in a sob and Jay buried her face in her hands again. I moved to sit by her, putting an arm around her shoulder, and she turned to me, wrapping her arms around my neck.
“I ruin everything,” she choked, her body shaking with sobs.
“No, you don’t,” I soothed. “You didn’t. I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding. We’ll fix it. In the morning, I promise, we’ll fix it.”
“But you heard him,” Jay whispered. She was curled up against me, almost fetal. I rocked her like a baby, too, kissing the top of her head. “He wants me to go home.”
“He’s just… he doesn’t know it was a mistake.”
I closed my eyes, feeling tears sting them. I didn’t know what had happened, but if Jay said it had been a misunderstanding, I believed her. I loved Sabrina dearly, but she did tend to go overboard with the jealousy. She’d gone through several nannies because she thought they were coming on to Rob. Granted, some of them really had been—but she might have jumped the gun on one or two.
“I’m sorry, Katie, I’m so sorry,” she said again. She was trembling, so I pulled her covers up, wrapping them around her. “But I can’t go home… I can’t… you don’t know…”
“I know,” I assured her.
“No, you don’t!” she wailed, sobbing again. She cried so hard I thought it would tear her apart. I tried to calm her, and finally, she did settle down, her breath coming in hitches, like babies do after going on a crying jag.
“Here.” I handed her a water bottle sitting on the night stand. “Drink this.”
She did, sniffling and wiping at her face. Her nose was red and so were her eyes.
“Come on, lie down,” I suggested, pulling the covers up and rolling her head ono a pillow. “Try to go to sleep. Things will be better in the morning.”
“Lies.” She sniffed, but half smiled, curling up with her back to my front. “Will you sing to me?”
“I can’t sing,” I said, stroking her damp cheek.
“I don’t care.” She closed her eyes, her breathing slower now, more even. “Sing anyway.”
So I sang her a Trouble song—a sweet, slow song that Tyler had written just for me, for our wedding. I warbled off-key, but Jay didn’t seem to mind. I sang until I thought she was asleep, her breathing deep. It was quiet, then, peaceful.
That’s when she whispered, “He came to my room.”
My heart lurched in my chest, my breath caught. “Who, Jay?”
“My stepfather.” She didn’t open her eyes, but her eyelids fluttered, and I saw a pained look cross her face.
I swallowed. “Did he touch you?”
“No.” She swallowed, too, pulling the covers up to her chin, as if she couldn’t get warm enough. “But he would have. He was going to. I couldn’t stay anymore. I couldn’t let him.”
“Okay.” I put my arm around her, feeling the slight tremble in her limbs. I’d suspected as much, even though when I’d asked in the past, Jay had skirted around the subject. “It’s okay. You’re okay now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, barely audible. Now that she’d confessed, her body relaxed. She started drifting off to sleep.
I couldn’t help my own tears. I tucked her in and kissed her forehead, turning off the light before slipping out of her room.
Tyler was sitting up in bed when I came back to our room. He looked up and apologized before I could even open my mouth to tell him what she’d said.
“That bastard,” Tyler said hoarsely, wrapping me in his arms and kissing my tears. “We can’t send her back there.”
“I know.” I nodded against his chest.
I had no idea what to do.
I just knew I wanted to help her, any way I could.
Chapter Seven
I woke up briefly when Tyler got up at some ungodly hour to shower. He had the read-through today, he reminded me when I protested his getting out of bed. I woke up again when he kissed me goodbye, whispering that he’d see me for dinner.
“What am I cooking with my girls tonight?” he asked when I snaked my arms around his neck and tried to tempt him back to bed.
“Filet mignon,” I murmured. “Asparagus and baby red potatoes.”
“Sounds almost as delicious as you.” He nuzzled my neck, smelling clean and fresh from the shower. “Listen. I’m gonna call Rob and straighten this whole thing out today, okay?”
“Should I call Sabrina, then?” I winced at the thought. If she really believed Jay had come on to Rob, I probably wouldn’t get a word in edgewise during the lecture.
“No, just wait until after I talk to Rob.” Tyler shook his head. “I’m also going to make an appointment with a lawyer.”
“Divorcing me already?” I teased.
“Never.” He nibbled at my collarbone and I let out a little sigh. “But we need to find out what sort of legal ground we stand on here, with Jay.”
“You mean it?”
I’d been afraid, in the light of day, that he would reconsider the idea. Jay had shown up at our doorstep unannounced, at the worst possible time—the spotlight was on Trouble more than ever before now, and everything was tumultuous and upside down. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d insisted on putting her on a plane back home the minute she stepped off. But he hadn’t. Because he knew she was in trouble, and mostly, I think, because he was sweet and concerned, and he really wanted to help. And because he loved me and would do anything for me.
“Of course I mean it.” He pulled back to look at me in the early morning light. The sun was barely up. “I told you we’d work it out—and we will.”
“My knight in shining armor.” I kissed him, tasting toothpaste. “I love you, Ty.”
“Love you, too, baby.” He slowly withdrew, heading toward the door while I burrowed under the covers. “See you tonight.”
Then he was gone.
I told myself—ten more minutes. Just ten more minutes and I’d get up, shower, and go wake sleepyhead Jay so we could get breakfast. She was a typical teen—she loved sleeping in. It was summer vacation, so I indulged her. Besides, I’d always been an enthusiastic fan of sleeping in whenever possible, and when you were the wife of a rock star, late nights were common, so sleeping until noon started to become “the norm.”
But Tyler’s schedule had changed a lot, since he’d started shooting Album. Directors weren’t just morning people—they liked everyone to be on-set at insanely early hours. It wasn’t uncommon for Tyler to get up at three in the morning, to be on set by four or five. They had to do make-up before they were ready to shoot, but Tyler said he spent a lot of time in his trailer, waiting around.
He’d invited me to go with him, whenever I wanted—and I’d gone with him a few times. But me and five-in-the-morning didn’t get along very well, and when I was overtired, I got extremely cranky, which just made for stupid arguments about nothing. That wasn’t good for anyone. So Tyler said I should stay home and sleep. Sometimes I’d join him for lunch and hang around the set until dinner time, on shooting days. But today was just a read-through—they weren’t filming the next season yet.
I should have set an alarm, but I didn’t. Instead, I closed my eyes and drifted off and the next time I opened them, it was almost eleven. I checked the time on my phone, seeing Tyler had texted me at eight—*yawn* miss you, love you—and then there were Sabrina’s calls from the night before that I hadn’t returned.
I knew I was going to have to get Jay to tell me what, exactly, had happened with Rob. She’d said it was a mistake—a misunderstanding of some sort—and that Rob would confirm that. Maybe Tyler could just find out from Rob, I thought as I turned on the shower, and I wouldn’t have to ask Jay at all. I didn’t want a repeat of last night’s tears and apologies. She’d been through enough.
I took a long, hot shower, thinking about calling Sabrina. She’d clearly overreacted, sending Jay home like that. Who had dropped her off? I wondered. Had she called Jesse and made him pick her up? Or had Rob taken her? No—it had to be Jesse. She wouldn’t have let Rob be in a car alone with her.
Part of me understood Sabrina’s anger and her slight paranoia. The last thing Trouble needed was a scandal, at this point. Things were already precarious, with Tyler leaving the band and things so up the air. They’d managed to recover from the scandal when Catherine had told the press their secrets, but it had been a long, hard road. For a long time, Catherine had played the victim, and Sabrina had been vilified as the fan-slut who had gotten pregnant and ended Rob’s relationship with Catherine.
Then Catherine had gotten really desperate—shooting Sabrina had ultimately landed her in a mental hospital. I don’t think it surprised anyone that Catherine committed suicide, after talking to the press and telling them about what had happened when they were just kids.
Except that it hadn’t been a suicide, had it? Dante Marotta’s reach had been long. He would have gone to any lengths to keep his secrets hidden, and that included putting an end to Catherine, who had dared to tell someone about them.
He would have ended all of us, I thought with a shiver, as I got dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. I’d told Jay we’d go swimming in the ocean today, but we could change into our suits later. If things had gone differently, we all would have ended up like Catherine.
But Dante was in jail, as were quite a few more high-profile people involved in the child prostitution ring he had been running. The scandal had been bad—but Rob and Tyler and Trouble had managed to keep their noses clean, and their deepest secrets—that Tyler had been the one who pulled the trigger, killing the man they’d all believed was their father—still secret.
I knew what Sabrina was worried about, having Jay around. If there was any hint of impropriety, the press would have a field day. It was what I’d been worried about, when I found Jay and her friends on the tour bus. The implications would be horrible, even if nothing had ever happened. It might be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law—but in the court of public opinion, it was more like “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Thanks to Arnie’s spin, Trouble had miraculously managed to keep their reputation, even if it had been slightly tarnished.
But the press had a long memory. Just the word “under age” would bring up old articles with phrases like “links to child prostitution.” Trouble didn’t need that sort of trouble, now or ever. That’s what Tyler was worried about, that’s
what Rob and Sabrina were worried about, and I knew it was a real danger.
That scared me—but I also knew that Jay needed us. She needed our help. And entrusting her to a system like child welfare scared me even more. I’d heard Tyler’s stories about living in foster care. I didn’t want that for Jay.
One thing at a time, I told myself as I made my way down the hall to wake her up. First, breakfast. Then swimming. That was one thing about living near the ocean in California—almost every day was a good day for a swim. Then, tonight, we’d all make dinner together with Tyler. And we’d clear this thing up, with Rob and Sabrina.
Then, we’d talk to a lawyer, and hopefully he’d have a game plan.
Because we really needed a game plan.
“Jay?” I knocked on the door and waited. She didn’t answer—not even a mumbled, “go’wayit’stooearly!” I knocked again. “Jay?”
I cocked my head, listening for the sound of running water. There was a bathroom off her bedroom, another reason I’d chosen it. A fifteen-year-old girl needed her own bathroom, given how much time they spent preening and pruning and strutting and selfie-ing. I’d never understood bathroom selfies—who wanted to take their picture with a toilet, sink and plunger as a backdrop?—but girls Jay’s age took hundreds of them.
“Jay?” I opened her door, peeking in. I expected to see her dark head barely visible under the white-daisy comforter—I’d let her pick that out while we were at Macy’s the day before, to replace the plain, “boring” navy-blue one that had been on the bed—just a snoring lump under the covers.
But she wasn’t there.
And the bed wasn’t just empty. It was made.
She’d been living with us a week, and she’d never once made her bed.
“Jay?” I called, louder this time, although part of me already knew it was a futile effort. “Jay, honey? Breakfast!”
As if I could tempt her with waffles and bacon.
I crossed her room and knocked on the bathroom door, but it swung open when I did. It was unlatched and dark. I flipped on the light, seeing all of her makeup, various bottles and tubes, were gone off the counter. I don’t think I was even breathing when I opened her closet. All her new clothes were hung up, still there.
