Chapter 4
Daisy
We were driving through the middle of nowhere Wyoming, and my wolf was on edge again.
Usually once it was subdued with the drugs Ronnie gave me, I would get at least a few days or even weeks until it became problematic again.
But lately that wasn’t the case, and right now I was feeling worse than ever before.
I pulled on a thick sweatshirt to buffer my skin as the itching resumed.
I didn’t want the others to notice because I was sick and tired of living life in a fog all the time.
One day kept fading into the other. And on the road, it was even worse because I had no idea where I was, what day it was, or even what time it was.
My only indicator of time at the moment was the setting sun. At least I was pretty sure it was setting and not rising.
The constant state of confusion was heavily wearing on me.
“Hey, you’re awake,” Cash said. “You’ve been out a long time, Sleeping Beauty. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
My head was still swimming some. I should have been used to it by now. It felt like these feelings were my normal these days.
“Good. You’re up. Cash, excuse us. We need to talk,” Ronnie said.
Cash gave me a sympathetic look. They all knew better than to intervene. My previous guitarist had and he’d been sent packing the very next day. Jed showed up shortly after that. Knox tried when he could, but not to the point of risking his job. I still appreciated the effort.
Ronnie looked at me and scowled.
“You look like shit.”
I wanted to tell him to stop drugging me all the time then, but I just kept my mouth shut.
It pissed me off that I couldn’t stand up for myself when it came to him. His constant reminders of how I’d be nothing without him had settled into my heart and mind as truth a long time ago.
The thrill of performing kept me going and helped me put up with it all.
I loved being on the stage. I’d been doing it professionally since I was twelve years old.
The stage felt more like home to me than anywhere.
Singing was all I’d ever wanted to do, but I wasn’t allowed to sing on the bus unless the boys and I were working through a new song.
It annoyed Ronnie when I did. A lot of things annoyed Ronnie.
But he’d been good to me, and I was pampered like a little princess.
Still, there was a part of me that feared everything would just disappear one day. So, I did as I was told, when I was told to do it. Whatever Ronnie said was gospel and I obeyed—like his pathetic little puppet. Except for this one time.
I’d been seventeen and thought I was ready to take on the world by myself.
I’d been safe and pampered much of my life and thought I knew everything about the world and the music industry.
He’d been furious over my one act of rebellion, and let’s just say things hadn’t exactly gone the way I’d expected.
I thought I had it all figured out. I knew everything I was doing was important to my, and Ronnie’s by extension, career. But I was the most important part of all of this.
One day, everything came crashing down when I didn’t feel up to doing an interview, and I let Ronnie know that I was not doing it.
I’d just accepted two Country music awards.
People loved me. I had reached a point in my career that I could finally choose what I wanted for a change and it would be okay.
Everything wasn’t going to just fall apart because I was too popular and I knew it.
I was ready to take control of my own life. After all, I was practically a grown up.
The second I’d announced my decision Ronnie slapped me across the face so hard it made my head spin.
He’d never hit me before that day. It had never even crossed my mind that he might.
“You will do exactly what I tell you to do and only what I tell you to do. Do you hear me? Do you honestly believe you’d be anything without me?
I created you. When I say jump, you say how high.
When I tell you to get ready for a damn interview, you better rush to prepare.
You are mine, Daisy. I own you, and you owe me everything.
This attitude of yours is over. It’s time to grow up and face the hard truth.
You are nothing but a replaceable commodity.
You want to sing on that stage? You want people to know your name?
Then you damn well better do exactly what I say, when I say it. Now go.”
The honeymoon was officially over.
What I’d learned in my brief rebellious stage was that he made it so I got to perform.
I was traveling the world because he organized it.
People knew my name because he told them.
They sang along with my lyrics because he promoted them.
And they loved my music because Ronnie had put it out to the world. And I believed him about all of it.
Nothing had been more important to me than that. So I got back in line and tried my best not to cause trouble.
Shortly after, my wolf started to surface.
He’d taken me to a cabin for a few days and taught me how to shift and how to control it.
He also blamed it for my “momentary lapse in judgement” explaining that wolf could make me irrational and rebellious.
He told me I had to control it at all times and listed off all sorts of terrible things that would happen if I didn’t. And I believed all of it.
I was terrified of my wolf.
The craziest part was that I vividly remembered living at home in the wolf Pack.
I remembered watching the Pack runs. It wasn’t uncommon to see wolves around and they had never been scary or a danger to anyone, at least not that I recalled.
But Ronnie dismissed all of that reminding me that I had been safe living in the Pack, but this was the human world.
And again, I believed him.
The first year he allowed me to stop on the tour at least once a month to shift and spend time in my wolf.
I loved that time. But with each passing year those times had grown more and more infrequently.
Unless I was showing signs of extreme distress, it never happened.
And sometime in between those early trips for relief the two of us shared, he started drugging me.
At first he told me it was to help stabilize my wolf on tour so I could handle everything better and when we were too busy to take even a day off for some wolf time.
I trusted he knew what he was talking about.
And when doubts surfaced, his words, reminding me of how I would be nothing without him, continuously played out in my head. Every time I even considered rebelling again, I remembered that one day he’d laid hands on me for disobeying.
There were things I’d blindly trusted him on and there was fear he’d instilled in me to keep me in line.
As I got older and wiser, I started learning the difference.
It gave me a false sense of security that I somehow had the upper hand with this discernment, yet the fear overshadowed the trust more and more every year.
And I never tested him again, but that need to be free and rebel against him grew within me like a cancer.
Ronnie was staring at me like he was trying to read my mind or something. Then shook it off.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
“Nothing. I’m just trying to wake up. How long have I been out?”
“Only a few hours.”
Was he being serious or not? I couldn’t tell. Cash made it sound like a lot longer than that.
I hadn’t even made it to my small bed toward the back of the bus. There was a much larger, much nicer private bedroom at the very back of the bus, but Ronnie claimed that one for himself. I was the star and didn’t even get a real room to travel. Something told me that wasn’t normal.
Yet there was a small voice in the back of my head reminding me that I wouldn’t be anything without him.
I hated that voice. It was bullshit, because I logically knew that without me, he would have nothing. He wasn’t some big-time manager with a bunch of famous clients. He just had me. That was it.
“What are you thinking? You have a crazed look in your eyes that I don’t like.”
My jaw locked. I knew better than to engage. Nothing good ever came from it. But it was almost like I couldn’t stop myself this time.
“I don’t see why we can’t stop. We have a break until my next concert. Why didn’t we all fly home and regroup first? It makes no sense.”
His left eye started to twitch, and I knew I shouldn’t have questioned him.
“You are not going home. Keep it up and I’ll cut you off from your parents permanently. You will rest up while being hidden away in a hotel, so we don’t have any incidents like we had in Memphis last year.”
I cringed. That had been bad.
I had decided that I wanted to go out to a restaurant to eat.
I had dressed in plain clothes and wore a hat.
No one should have recognized me at the little hole-in-the-wall I’d chosen to sneak out of my hotel and walk to.
Soon after I ordered, the paparazzi were there taking so many pictures and yelling questions at me, I felt trapped and almost shifted out of fear.
My suspicion was that Ronnie found out and alerted the media, but I had no concrete evidence of that.
Only the fact that Knox had quickly found me and gotten me out of the situation made me wonder. I’d never asked though.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Don’t second guess me again, Daisy. Nothing good will come from it.”
He stood up to leave, and I jumped up to continue the conversation.
“The guys could have at least flown home, even if you wanted to continue keeping me captive.”
What the hell was I saying?
I’d never spoken to Ronnie like that before, at least not since I was a young na?ve pup who thought she’d known everything.
“What did you just say?”