Chapter 16
My shoulders tense up as if I feel a weight burdened on them as I turn again to Asher.
“I’m not getting the right beat,” I remove the headphones, fed up now with how this song is progressing.
“It’s not Ash’s fault,” Jagger says. He has barely spoken to me since he discovered my menage with his two bandmates and stormed out of the movie room last night.
And I cannot even begin to explain what the fuck Haze thought he was doing when he waltzed in and took a seat as if it were a live porn show.
I avoided breakfast this morning by driving Storm to find Catalina at Brittney’s and had breakfast with them. I didn’t bring up what happened between the guys and me because if there was anyone who doubted them more than me, it would be my caretaker and my best friend.
Instead, I texted Ash to let him know I’d meet them at the recording studio instead of driving with them. He’s the only one from all of them who didn’t seem like he wanted to bite my head off. But he’s the most sensitive, and I said some cruel things, but he just replied to my text with an okay. Usually, he’ll send me an emoji or some funny GIF. We’ve gotten pretty close these past couple of weeks, and I enjoy his company, and I may have fucked that up now.
But I’ve also been craving him like crazy. All of them. Living with them under one roof and a broken vibrator does nothing to help the old longing I once had for them. But multiply that lust by ten because these boys morphed into men.
Men who walk shirtless around the pool area and sometimes even indoors. Who will also spend hours in the basement gym and wrap a towel around their waist when they walk into the sauna room, and I know there’s nothing under those towels.
They were hot before, and millions of teenage girls would have supported that statement, but now they have unholy, rock-hard, grown-up male bodies and sinfully attractive faces.
Last night? With Asher between my thighs and Callum all over my face, just took our strictly neutral relationship to a whole new level, and for five minutes, I believed everything I felt was real.
Except the Evans brothers had to wag their tongues the wrong way. I can’t even believe I just stood there naked in front of Haze and allowed him to eye me up as he did.
Stupid, perverted, sick—
“Maybe if you got serious for five minutes …” Jagger’s voice trails off because I stopped listening after the first few words.
“I am serious, you douche!” I snap back. “I’m here, aren’t I? It’s not my fault all of you are out of tune.”
“Focus, Eden. You’re not here!”
“That’s not true! Just stop it, Jagger. It’s not my fault you’re sexually frustrated!”
I regret those words as soon as they leave my mouth.
His eyes grow wide. “I suggest you stop Eden.”
“Maybe you want to talk about last night? Is that it, Jagger? Sit around a fire, roast marshmallows, and talk about our feelings?”
I’ve just stepped way over the line, but I’m fuming at him. How dare he think I’m not taking this gig seriously.
“Eddie, stop,” I turn to Haze, and I have no idea why he cares today, but I can’t stop my eyes from narrowing as I glower him.
He and Callum are sporting swollen faces, and neither are talking to Asher, so something obviously went down in the movie room after I stormed out.
“No,” Jagger interrupts. “Obviously, Eden needs to say something. She started this shite.”
He looks at me with so much irritation. “Spit it out, darling. Don’t fanny about, if you’ve got something to say, then let”s have it. Get it out of your system so we can get on with our job.”
“I’m doing my best here,” I mumble, not liking the spotlight he’s suddenly given me.
“Why are you even here, Eden?” Jagger looks at me; he’s more frustrated than annoyed. “How serious are you about this band?”
“I’m serious about the music.”
“Bullshite!” he exclaims, and both brothers step forward and are one pace away from getting between me and Jagger.
“Mate, take it down a notch,” one says. “It was just a bad note.”
“No, it isn’t,” Jagger insists. “Are you trying to sabotage us? Make sure we fail? Try and play with our feelings?”
“Is that what you think last night was about? You weren’t even there!” I scowl.
“She has a point, Jagger,” Asher gets up from his stool. “Let it go, and we’ll try the new notes again.”
“I’m here. I don’t have to be,” I explain, even though I damn well don’t feel he deserves an explanation. “You asked me to be here. I don’t even want to be here. I’m risking everything to be here!”
Jagger furrows his brows.
“You’re right. I did ask you. For the music Eden. That’s all.”
“You think I’m after something else? For fucks sake Jagger, it was ten years ago!”
“Not how I saw it last night.”
“He’s not wrong there,” Haze pushes himself into the conversation. “What are your plans, princess?”
I feel like I’m being backed into a corner, and I’m not liking it.
“Let it go,” Ash steps in front of Haze as a warning.
“Mate. I took your hit last night, but today is another day, and I won’t be taking your shite again.”
“Something else, huh?” I butt in referring directly to Jagger since he started this shit. “All I ever wanted to do was play music. Did I want to leave the Vixens? You know the answer to that. I never had a choice. I entered Sonics with one thing in mind: to focus on the music. But your sixteen-year-old dicks saw pussy. All four of you were relentlessly trying to get in my pants for one year. You think I dumped you and fled because of a sex video I released, but it wasn’t me that took that video nor released it.”
“You fled, Eden. You never even waited to hear from us. That was your guilt, and you couldn’t face the backlash.”
I roll my eyes with irritation, “Your repetition borders on annoyance, Jagger. Get over yourself. I know I have.”
“You talk like an idiot, Eden. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Name-calling is childish, Jagger,” Asher calls out in my defense, but I don’t need anyone fighting my battles.
“Of course, I talk like an idiot. How else could you understand me?”
Jagger is not one to take my sarcasm lightly. He crosses his arms and wears a tight frown that creases his forehead. His patience is wearing thin right now, and he’s one minute from bursting a blood vessel.
I’m so close to telling them the truth. I bite my tongue because I’m not sure I can trust them with this information.
“When the news broke, I was hounded by the media. They stood outside my gates, and my phone went off the hook with reporters wanting exclusive interviews. I only wanted to get in touch with one of you to reassure me that you had nothing to do with the video. I left you a ton of messages because my heart couldn’t believe any of you could betray me like that. But you all went awol, complete radio silence. The media was beginning to talk about the band breaking up and that you were going to part ways with me. But I deserved an explanation, and I got nothing. I was alone in my big assed home, Catalina was in New York, and then Oliver Jones phoned to see how I was and said all of you were in England recording the new album. He was going on about how I was going to be fired by the record label. It hurt that none of you were there, unreachable. It destroyed me.”
A tear falls from my eye, and I quickly wipe it away because they don’t deserve any tears from me. There’s so much more that happened, but they can never know.
He’ll find and kill me if I talk about what happened.
“Eden—”
“Stop!” I say, interrupting Haze. “All of you want to know, so I’ll tell you everything, and then I’m gone. Forever. I’ll be packing up my stuff and heading home.”
I take a breather because even now, after all these years, recalling that night still affects me in more ways than one. My hand automatically goes to the thick vertical scar on my chest; it’s a reminder of what stress does to me. The guys” eyes quietly travel to where my hand is, and it’s a solid cue for them to calm the fuck down.
“That night, it wasn’t just the scandal and your betrayal that caused me to flee. It wasn’t my career that hit a downward spiral either. For almost a year, I had come under the interest of a stalker. At first, we thought it was an overactive fan, maybe even several. It started when we began touring the new album. It was a misplaced item here, a cryptic note there. Initially, I dismissed these anomalies as the quirks of my chaotic life. Then, the game was escalated with obscure emails and general photographs taken of me from afar. We realized it was far more sinister than games you might have played with me.”
I’m not lying. This is how it started. I should have been more aware, but how the fuck would I have guessed how far it would have escalated to being drugged, kidnapped, and so much more.
“Who’s we?”
“And why didn’t you tell us?”
“Oliver Jones,” I reply. “I informed him that I started to feel unsafe. Catalina and I always felt as if someone was following us whenever she drove me somewhere, like this unwanted dark shadow stalking us. Then, unusual gifts started coming through my mailbox. I told Oliver about what was going on.”
I know they won’t want to hear this next bit.
“Initially, the three of us thought it was one or all of you trying to get me to quit the band.”
“We never wanted you to quit, Eden,” Hazes says quietly, contemplating everything I’ve just admitted.
“But none of you ever made me feel part of it.”
“That lasted about a few weeks,” Jagger says and then looks at Haze and Callum, “Maybe a few months, but we all realized the chemistry we had was something special.”
“And we had always fancied you,” Haze adds, “Some more than others, for years,” he looks in Asher’s direction.
I know Ash was silently infatuated with me for years, and I wanted him to make a move on his feelings for so long too. I had crushed on all of them from our days on Tone Wars.
“How come Oliver never told us anything?”
“Because I begged him not to. I wanted to play so badly with you. I came from an all-girl pop group where we weren’t allowed to play instruments, and instead, we danced and shook our bodies like we were on freaking stripper poles without the actual poles. I was happy to be in a proper band. Then, a few months later, we happened, and I knew you weren’t my stalker.”
“Did you inform the police?”
“I wanted to, but Oliver insisted he would take care of it. He didn’t want any negative attention towards the band. He was the one who found the house in Bel Air, and he assured me it was secure with a safe room and a security system, which he had updated just before I moved in. I didn’t have much choice in where I wanted to live or the kind of house. It was like, here’s a house, it’s safe.”
“Son of a fucking bitch,” Callum continues to curse as he paces the room.
“And when you realized we weren’t the stalker, why couldn’t you tell us? I don’t get it, Eden, we were your boyfriends. We could have protected you, keep you safe.”
I watch each of them. Even Callum stops to stare at me. All four pairs of eyes are waiting patiently for an answer.
“Because Oliver believed you would have stopped all the tours and wrapped me up in cotton wool.”
“We would have. It’s called protecting what was ours.”
“And I agreed with him,” I say, trying to ignore what Haze just said because those words strike a deep cord with me. “We needed to focus on our jobs without distraction.”
“Except you didn’t.”
“When I moved to Bel Air, it stopped. Like he lost me or something. It was weird.”
“So, for my understanding, Oliver knew about us.”
“I never told him; he never asked. I believed he assumed something was off when you stopped female groupies backstage and traveling with us on the tours.”
“Eden, all this doesn’t add up,” Jagger hasn’t warmed up to anything I’ve just declared. “If the stalker disappeared when you moved to Bel Air. And it wasn’t just the media craze or our trip to England. What else made you flee like you did?”
Dammit. I need to give the same watered-down version I told Brittney because they cannot know anything.
“That night, I was alone in the house. I was always a stickler for security, and it was all on. I had my laptop in the kitchen with me, the cameras were working, and then he appeared. He was in my home. On the screen, I saw him entering my bedroom.”
I pause momentarily and shut my eyes because I don’t want any of them to bear witness to the pain I still suffer. My stalker and his men still live deep within the dark shadows of my mind. He invaded it years ago and never left.
With my eyes closed, I retell everything that happened to me that night. The knife, the threat to kill me if I talked.
“I didn’t hesitate after he was gone. I drove straight to LAX, got on a plane, and ended up in Mexico. I had fled with just the clothes on my back. I called Catalina and Brittney, and they arranged for my stuff to be stored and gave the house to a broker. Catalina and I moved around in Mexico for around eight months as backpackers. She urged me to return to the US, but I was done with music by then.
“As soon as I disappeared from the limelight, so did my stalker. I went back to LA to sort out some legal stuff, and on my way out, I stopped by my storage unit, looked at everything, and just took my old guitar with me. Then, I made a quick stop at the animal shelter and picked up Storm. I rented a house on the outskirts of Palm Springs; Catalina insisted on coming with me, and a year later, our neighbor told us about non-commercial land the state was auctioning in the desert. I used the sale money from the LA property and bought just over eight hundred acres of dirt and sand. I had no idea what I planned to do with it. Initially, I thought I would buy land and live in a large caravan. So that’s what I did for a year until the house you saw was finished.”
“Eight hundred fucking acres? That’s like the entire Mojave Desert!”
“Actually, it’s thirty million acres. But I bought enough to keep nosy neighbors out of my business.”
“Must have been lonely.”
“Maybe, but after what I went through, loneliness was my only solace.”
“And you never heard from this stalker again?”
“Until I arrived here two weeks ago. I got an unknown text message on my first night, then strange things started appearing.”
“Like what?”
I shrug my shoulders. They’re probably just intrigued.
“Symbols appearing.”
“Symbols?”
“Ones I have on my body that no one’s seen.” Then I think about that again. “Unless they’ve been intimate with me.”
“And how many people have you been intimate with?”
I purse my lips together, refusing to entertain them with an answer.
“It’s best I leave,” I say instead.
“Probably,” Jagger says bluntly, and my heart drops with the way he says it. “I’m sorry I interrupted your life.”
My eyes narrow at him, and a hint of irritation sweeps my entire body.
“Fuck you, Jagger.”
How dare he.
“Jagger, that’s really out of order,” Ash says, and before I can say anything, Jagger passes me my phone and I take it.
I honestly don’t know if I’m angry or disappointed. Maybe hurt a little too.
“She never was in this fully,” he says to Ash and then turns to me directly. “Your lyrics were half-hearted, and your mind distracted. Last night was something that should never have happened. This is a job; we’re not teenagers anymore, and maybe you sought comfort in Ash and Callum, but we’re not starting anything here. Not with you, not ever.”
I’m taken aback by his harsh words. The other three attempt to sway his decision, but the only thing I hear are his words repeating in my head.
“So you’re firing me?” I glare at him with disbelief as my irritation heightens.
My words hang in the air, and a brief silence settles between the five of us.
“Everyone is entitled to making a mistake. Even myself,” Jagger finally replies, remaining solid on his decision.
“No, you’re not!” Haze exclaims. “Who the bloody hell put you as chief?”
“I’m band leader. I make decisions on what’s best for the group.”
“I don’t give a flying toss if your band wanker!” Haze’s voice becomes harsh. “I’m financially supporting this!”
Their voices trail off as I leave the men arguing and head out of the studio. As soon as I’m outside, the bright LA sun hits me. I feel a sudden grip on my shoulder behind me, causing me to gasp loudly.
“I’m sorry,” Ash says apologetically, realizing he scared the living daylights out of me, knowing I have some crazy stalker up my ass. “The lads inside, we’re being complete plonkers. We need you, Eddie. Despite Jagger being a wanking prick, he needs you. He’s just being a stubborn arse.”
I can hear the remaining three inside still quarreling with each other.
“You guys never used to argue,” my eyes go to his hand, and he puts both into his pocket. But I already spotted the swollen knuckles and put two and two together when I saw the bruised faces of the Evans brothers.
“We did all the time. You just forgot.”
“Yeah, but not like this.”
Silence falls between us. I can see Asher wants to say something but hesitates.
I take my cue to leave him. I can feel his eyes on my back, but I don’t turn around because if I do, it’ll be my breaking point. These four men are the banes of my existence. My biggest weaknesses. If I see the hurt once more on Ash’s face, it’ll ruin me.