"Good luck," Fay yelled after me.
I rushed into the station, then realized I needed a ticket. The board said there was a train in five minutes, then over an hour's wait for the next one. I fumbled through my pockets, searching for coins for the machine. I fed them in, my fingers barely functional in my haste. I was just short. Surely I had more coins on me.
I had notes, but the damn machine didn't take notes.
I tried my card. Nope. No dice.
I kicked the machine, but that didn't help one bit.
I patted my back pocket. Empty. My front pockets. Also empty. Then I remembered the inside pocket in my jacket. Phew. A couple of coins. Enough to get my ticket.
Before I could put them in, the machine reset itself, and all the coins I'd paid in clanged to the tray below, like I'd hit the jackpot. This was no jackpot, though. The board said I had two minutes to go. I bashed the buttons again, then slammed the coins into the slot as fast as I could. I needed to be on that train, ticket or not.
As the machine processed my payment, I tapped my hands on the side.
Hurry up, hurry up.
The ticket finally slid into the tray. I grabbed it and raced to the barriers just as the train pulled in. Running and dodging disembarking passengers, I made it onto the damn thing. Who knew catching trains could be such so nerve-wracking?
Then there was nothing to do but sit. My heart pounded from all that running and drama, so that I wasn't sure what do with this nothingness.
I could call her. But maybe surprising her was better. She was so damn evasive.
But some people hate surprises.
No. Surprising her was definitely the best option if I wanted to get an honest response.
Rose was keeping something from me, but I didn't need to know what that thing was; I just needed to know whether she had feelings for me. If I could be sure of that, I'd do whatever it took to break through any obstacle in our way. Obstacles were there to be broken. Nothing would stop me, if only I knew she felt the same.
The train stopped at a station. Why did it need to stop? That wasted time when I could be with Rose. Damn other passengers.
I got out my phone, wishing I'd thought to take more photos of the two of us together while I could. I had a couple of shots, but not nearly enough.
There was one of the two of us in the back of the limo. She sure looked happy in that. Her eyes shone and that smile melted my heart. That had been a great night. A few more photos of us walking around the city. That was all, and I looked damn stupid in every single one of them.
The whole train ride became a rollercoaster of emotion. One minute I felt sure she'd welcome me with open arms. All the doubts she had could be swept away. The next minute, I'd become convinced that I was on a fool's mission. She'd laugh or be horrified that I'd returned when she'd thought she was rid of me.
I had promised I wouldn't bother her after I left Amsterdam. I'd never once broken a promise in my life, but she'd lied to me about her feelings.
Maybe I should've gotten something to give her. Flowers. I'd said I'd give her flowers. I got out my phone to order some, but she'd never given me her home address. I should've asked her, but it was too late now. I knew where she worked, that was all. I'd done a million things wrong, and not asking for her address was one more thing on that list.
The train stopped again. I had no idea how long this trip would be. We'd been on the bus less than an hour, but the train would surely take a lot longer, with all this stopping and starting.
The train started again. The buildings were more modern out here, not all that quaintness you saw in the city center. People whizzed along paths on bikes. Others walked through the towns. All of them going about their everyday lives without any idea of the earth-shattering events going on inside me.
As we got closer to the city, the buildings got more squished together and more picturesque. We also stopped more often. The train became quite crowded.
Finally, we arrived.
I jumped off, unsure of which way to go. There were trams, but which one should I catch? The area around the station wasn't familiar at all. I saw a cab and waved it down. What the hell was the name of that cafe?
"Just a minute," I said. "Just a minute."
The cab driver grunted.
I flipped through my phone, looking for clues. I'd been there just the other day. Then the name came back to me. I told the cab driver, and he gave a nod.
Not long now, and we'd be reunited. If she wasn't working her shift, I'd sit there and wait for her. It was an all-night cafe. She'd be there eventually.
Elijah
"SHE QUIT HER JOB. TODAY. Left us short-staffed, too," the guy in the cafe said.
"No way. No fucking way."
I ran my fingers through my hair. This could not be happening. She couldn't slip away from me again. Not like this. Was this a nightmare?
I went to ask for more details, but the guy pushed past me, taking coffees to a table. I waited for him to return. I tried calling her, but she didn't pick up.
"Seriously, buddy," I said when he returned. "I need to find her. It's urgent."
He shrugged. "Sorry. I have no idea where she could be. Not my problem."
I got out my wallet and tried to hand him a bunch of notes, but he shook his head. What was with this guy? Anyone would talk for that amount of money. It'd be about a week's wages for him.
"Even if I took your money, I couldn't tell you anything. Now, could you clear out of the way so you aren't blocking the customers?"
This place was my only connection to Rose. Leaving here would be like giving up, but there was nothing else for it.
Before I could make it to the cafe door, someone grabbed my sleeve.
"Meet me in the side alley in five minutes," the waitress said. "I'll be on my break then."
I turned to smile at her, but she'd rushed off.
When I got outside, I found the alley. There were a few milk crates next to a door. That looked like the door to the cafe kitchen. A few minutes later, the waitress came out.
"You looking for Rose?" she asked. "You Elijah?"
I nodded. "Yes. Yes to both."
"You don't look like a famous rock star," she said, eying me up and down suspiciously.
I probably didn't look my best after that rush to get here. If I was shattering her illusions about famous rock stars, I couldn't help that. I wasn't sure what she'd expected.
"I am. Do you have any information?"
"How much did you offer Hans?"
I pulled the notes out. "But I want concrete details."
"Yeah, I've got her home address. You'll have to be quick, though. She's moving on."
I nodded. She pulled a pencil from behind her ear and a pad out of her apron. As she handed the address over, she started giving me directions. Which tram to catch, that kind of thing.
I waved my hand. "Don't need it."
She shoved the money into her pocket with a huge grin. "Rose won't be the only one quitting this hellhole," she said.
I jumped into another cab, and we took off. I could just imagine the type of place where Rose lived. One of those gorgeous old buildings, sun-filled and sparsely decorated, with a just a few precious things about the place. Sophisticated and classy, just like her. There'd be plants, and maybe a piano. I didn't even know if she played the piano, just that I could imagine her with one.
The cab whizzed across the city. I checked my watch. This ride was taking much longer than I'd thought. I'd assumed she lived close to the cafe, but we were headed back out to the suburbs. Maybe she hated living in the city, with all the noise and distractions.
I tapped my fingers on the window frame. That waitress had said to hurry, that Rose was leaving town. Rose had never mentioned that to me. I needed to get to the bottom of things, and I had to get there before it was too late.
The cab pulled up outside a nondescript apartment building. Was this the right place? I guessed it had to be. That, or the wait
ress had duped me for the cash. Damn, I hadn't thought of that until now. She'd be long gone with my cash. Nothing about this building fit with my image of Rose.
I checked the apartment number on the bit of paper, then paid the cab driver and rushed inside. As soon as I walked in the front door of the building, the smell hit me. Cabbage and pot. And a swampy smell, maybe from the canal nearby. Nothing like Rose's sweet perfume. Despite the city's reputation, I'd never noticed the stink of pot so strongly anywhere else.
I got into the elevator. Thankfully, that wasn't as skunky. I'd never been a pot smoker, so the smell of it turned my stomach. Damo banned drugs around the band, which was fine with me. Sex had always been my drug of choice.
It wasn't so smelly when I got to Rose's floor. I found the door and knocked, praying that she'd be there. She had to be. Music played inside the apartment. Not our music. Nothing like our music. It was some experimental electro trance music. No wonder she'd hated my song if she listened to that. I was all about the rock.
I knocked again. The door opened.
It wasn't Rose, though. A dude stood in the doorway--a scrawny dude with long hair and a wispy beard, wearing an "I heart Amsterdam" t-shirt. He held a spatula in his hand, like I'd interrupted him in the middle of cooking.
If my feet worked, I'd have run. He was the last thing I'd expected. Either I had the wrong address or something was seriously wrong.
Elijah
"IS ROSE HERE?" I FINALLY spluttered.
I wasn't sure if I wanted him to say he had no idea who Rose was or not. My stomach churned. Either way would be bad.
"Eh? Rose? No, I think she went to the shops to get garbage bags. She's moving out, so she had a ton of stuff to throw out. But I'll check her room."
Her room? He'd said "her room", not "our room". I could exhale.
He walked away without closing the door. I wasn't sure whether to follow him, but he turned to me.
"Come in, man. If she's not here, she won't be long. You can wait for her." Then he called out to Rose, but got no answer. "Take a seat," he said.
He moved some boxes off the threadbare sofa. I sat down, the springs half collapsing under me. This apartment wasn't what I'd expected. It was more like a stoner share house. As well as the sofa, there were mismatched chairs covered in sarongs. The paintings on the wall looked like they'd been there for a long time. The formerly orange tones of the sunset in one had faded to a greyish brown. Snack food wrappers and pizza boxes covered the wonky coffee table, and a battered acoustic leaned against the wall.
The guy disappeared through some beaded curtains.
Did Rose really live here?
Not that I was any kind of decor snob or anything. My apartment at home didn't look much better. I'd moved in years ago, when we'd still been struggling to make money, and I'd never changed a thing. But that was me. I'd expected something different from Rose.
Maybe it was a different Rose. The girl at the cafe had been confused. It wasn't such an uncommon name.
I should make excuses and leave.
I got up and went through the bead curtains to tell the scrawny guy. He stood in a messy kitchen, stirring something on the stove.
"Instant ramen, man. They call it instant, but it always takes forever."
He stared into the pot. That ramen was well past done, but I didn't want to tell him that.
"I might come back later..."
Not point trying to justify myself to this guy. He didn't matter, and he wasn't really listening, anyway.
Before I could say any more, the door slammed.
"She's home," the guy whispered.
I parted the beads, looking out into the living area. Rose stood in the middle of the room. When she saw me, the grocery bag dropped from her hands.
"Elijah! You aren't welcome here. Get out."
That was so far from the reaction I'd hoped for. Her eyes blazed, and I almost obeyed, but something about the way her shoulders drooped stopped me.
She wasn't dressed in the fancy clothes she normally wore but had on a hoodie and yoga pants, with her hair scraped back in a ponytail. She looked more beautiful than ever.
"Hey, Rose, that's not real friendly," the guy called from the kitchen. "This dude came to see you. He seems pretty cool."
She just clicked her tongue and left the room.
I followed her.
"Rose? Rose? Sorry to intrude, but I need to talk to you."
I walked into her bedroom. The room had a dampness that gave the impression it'd never get warm, not even in the middle of summer.
Rose crouched on the end of the bed, the only available space with the large suitcase open beside her. Clothes and things sat in it as though she'd finished packing but hadn't quite made the commitment to zipping the case yet.
"Please, Elijah, I don't want you here," she said, looking up without actually looking at me. "You promised you wouldn't look for me again."
"Yeah, well, I lied. But I think you lied too."
I stood in the middle of the room, not sure what to do. I put my hands in my pockets and tried not to look around, not wanting to seem to pry. Then I took my hands back out again. I'd have sat down beside her, but there wasn't room on the bed.
"Is that guy... Are you..." I wanted to ask if she was dating him, but the words didn't work. I'd turned into a blithering idiot.
She waved her hand. "Bruce? No. He's an expat who rents out his spare room."
At least that was something. I'd have killed that guy if I thought he'd ever touched Rose.
"And you're leaving?"
That was stating the obvious. Of course she was leaving. Good thing. Bruce didn't seem like a reliable housemate. He seemed the type who'd go sleep leaving the gas on in the kitchen or get busted in some kind of raid.
"It was only a temporary thing. It's all only temporary things."
I didn't understand the sadness in her voice.
She turned to the suitcase and began refolding her things even though they seemed to be already folded in perfect piles.
"They don't have to be," I said.
I wanted to gather her in my arms, but again, she'd put a wall between us.
She sighed. "I'm not the person you think I am. Everything you think you know about me is fake."
She could say that, but no matter what she was like on the outside, inside she was exactly the person I thought she was. She was the most amazing person I'd ever met in my life.
She kept folding those clothes, though. Not looking at me. Freezing me out. But I refused to be frozen.
Then she zipped the case shut with a finality. "I have to go, Elijah. I need to get to the station. And you should go back to your rock star life. You have it all, everything anyone could dream of. I was just another temporary thing."
I stepped over and took hold of her hands. This close, I could smell her perfume. The perfume that had haunted my dreams since the first night.
"It doesn't matter, Rose. I don't know what you have going on, but nothing matters to me but you. You can't fake who you really are. The two of us together--you can't fake that."
She looked up and smiled. "You don't know the first thing about me."
That look told me everything. If I had had any doubts about how she felt about me, that look overwrote them all. She'd never need to say she loved me in actual words, because I'd seen her face, unmasked and open. With that mask down, she was all longing and needs.
She might have a bunch of stupid shit going on in her head. but that shit meant nothing. The look only lasted a second, but it would linger inside me for the rest of my life.
She'd said I didn't know the first thing about her, but I did know the first thing, which was. The first thing was that she wanted to be with me just as much as I wanted her. I could stand here and talk until her cab arrived. I could say all the words, but words only went so far. I wasn't a talking man; I was a man of action.
"You're coming with me," I said.
"No." Her voice was
barely a whisper.
"I'm not taking no for an answer. Sorry, Rose, but I'm overruling you."
Her eyes widened.
I lifted her off the bed and into my arms. She'd be leaving this place and getting into a cab, but she'd be leaving with me. I'd carry her if she wouldn't come with me herself. I didn't want to take away her free will, but she'd taken that away from herself by being unwilling to follow her heart.
She struggled a little, not as much as I'd expected. Then she wrapped her hands around my neck.
"Bruce, can you open the door for me?" I called out as I grabbed the suitcase and headed out of the apartment toward the rest of my life. "I need to get this woman out of here."
Elijah
"WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING at?" she screamed as we headed to the elevator.
"You're being an idiot, Rose. I'm not letting you spend your life in misery. We belong together. That's all I know."
"Well, at least let me down. This isn't comfortable."
I set her down as we got into the elevator.
"What we have is an amazing thing," I said. "I can't just throw that away. You were the one who told me to go for the things I wanted in life."
"I did?"
"Yep, when I was fifteen years old and thought I'd amount to nothing in this world. I'll never forget it. You stood in that classroom, the sun streaming like a halo around you. No one had believed in me before that."
She smoothed her hair, pushing the loose strands back behind her ears. "I can't remember that at all. Where are you taking me?"
"I'll book a hotel for the night. I'm taking you there, and I'm going to slowly peel the clothes from your body and pin you to the bed until you scream with more pleasure than you ever imagined possible."
My gaze flitted over her, taking in the way her body flushed. She crossed her legs, and when she lifted her gaze to mine, that look scorched me. The sooner we got to a hotel, the better.
"And after that?"
"There is no after that. Every day of our lives will be pleasure. But you're coming on tour with me."
Rock Mayhem: 8 Complete Rock Star Romance Novels Page 61
