12. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
Xane
There are two things they never tell you about the music industry that are equally true.
One, touring is what makes the money.
Two, touring fucking sucks.
Playing live to massive crowds night after night might be the best feeling on the planet, but waking up in a hotel bedroom every afternoon and barely having five minutes to chill between travelling and performances and everything fucking else starts to turn the whole experience into a living nightmare.
I’ve been counting down the seconds to our first real break in more than a year, and our bassist is now telling me, barely two nights before we have a week of vacation time, that we’re booked in for some stupid fucking bullshit interview on the very first day we get to relax.
I don’t always think about committing mass murder, but when I do, it’s usually because of something Kian did.
Right now, he’s watching me with his big, expressive blue eyes, hands clasped together in a pleading pose on the backstage sofa, as he leans forward, making a section of his thick dark blond hair fall over one eye. “She’s the one, Xane. And it’s literally the only shot I’ve got at meeting her.”
“Fuck off. I’m not dealing with press on my vacation time.”
I get back to changing the strings on my Gibson, no longer paying the chatterbox of our pack any attention. Unfortunately, ignoring Kian does not make him go away.
“Oh, come on. I never ask for anything!”
Riley snorts from where he’s leaning against the wall at my right side.
It’s hotter than hell tonight and our drummer has been standing around in his boxers, drinking beer from his ever-present icebox since we got backstage.
Despite his cage-fighter build, he doesn’t sweat half as much as the rest of us, so he hasn’t even showered since we got off-stage.
He’s kept his brown hair close-cropped since I’ve known him, and he looks more like a mafia heavy than a musician, at least until he’s standing around in his underwear like this.
I don’t need to look up to know Kian’s giving Riley a death-stare.
“Oh, please,” Riley scoffs. “You were begging me to go find you one of those stupid flavored beers all of five minutes ago.”
“That was nothing. Forget I asked.” Kian’s tone turns cold.
I look up to catch Riley rolling his dark eyes at the kid.
Kian’s a few years younger than the rest of us, and he’s the youngest of five in his family. We knew the minute we met him he was going to be a pain in the ass, spoiled little brat, but then he blew us away with his unique talents and we had to admit he was perfect for our set up.
He’s not a bad guy. He can be a bit fucking much, that’s all.
I put down my re-strung guitar. We have a little time before we need to leave for the hotel, and it’s not my main guitar for this show, anyway. I can tune it in a few minutes, and it doesn’t have to be tonight. We’ll have some time pre-show tomorrow. It can wait.
Kian clearly can’t.
“Why exactly does meeting this reporter mean more than the much-needed vacation we’re all long overdue to take? Who is she?” I raise my eyebrows at Kian while I wait for his full explanation.
He chews on his lower lip and looks down.
“Reporters are bad news, Ki,” Riley butts in. “Whatever you think she’s going to do for you, I can guarantee that’s not what she’s interested in, and I can walk out there and pull a dozen random women from the audience who’ll do it a million times better.”
Kian’s wearing a disgusted expression when he looks back up, and all I can do is shrug back at him. Riley’s always been the ladies' man of the group, even if he hasn't seen that much action lately. He knows what he’s talking about when it comes to women.
“You want me to go grab …” Riley offers, straightening up like he’s ready to go check who’s still hanging around near the back door.
“Fuck no,” Kian complains. “Bring me back a strawberry beer, or don’t bother coming back in here.”
Riley raises his eyebrows, turning his gaze to me.
“Get the beer and come back,” I instruct, knowing Kian’s only trying to get a second to talk alone with me, and Riley won’t leave at all if he figures that out.
“Fine,” Riley agrees. “But I can’t promise I won’t be gone long enough to bang one of the hottest groupies in the hallway first. So, don’t bother us if it gets loud out there.”
Kian makes a puking sound as Riley puts his empty bottle down next to his icebox.
Riley rolls his eyes as he leaves the dressing room.
The door slaps shut, and Kian lets out a breath.
“I thought he was never gonna leave.”
He gets up and goes over to the door, opening it to peer out before he closes it again, firmly.
“Okay. What’s going on?” I ask, suddenly wide-awake.
Kian turns back to me, taking his cell phone out of his pocket as he moves toward me.
“You remember when we picked up the sponsor for that travel hotel company?” he asks.
“It’s kind of hard to forget,” I mutter, nodding at the bundle of room keys on the dressing table.
Every hotel we stay in now is provided by those mid-tier assholes. I’m sick to death of seeing their beige and brown logo keychains dangling from every key I ever hold.
The hotels all look the fucking same, they’re all painted fifteen shades of beige with bland art on the walls and plain white sheets on every bed.
When you’re basically trapped in hotel rooms outside of working hours it gets tedious fast.
Their luxury suites are basically standard hotel rooms with a tiny bit more space for an armchair and lamp table, and they give us access to 24-7 room service, which was one of the stipulations of the contract.
If one of us wants a hamburger and a newspaper at four a.m., one of their staff needs to go out and get it for us.
Free digs every night we’re on tour sounded great when we signed the contract, and in all honesty, the money we saved with the deal makes it worth it a thousand times over.
But I had no idea how crazy it would drive me to be in basically the same room every night, staring at the same beige walls, waiting for the same bland dinner to arrive.
That’s why this vacation is so damn important.
I need the change of scenery before I lose my mind.
“What does that have to do with this interview?”
Kian glances up from his phone. “I’m getting to that.”
I let out a defeated sigh. “Don’t tell me there was something in the contract about this. I’ll kill that lawyer if he fucked up our vacation time …”
“It’s not the contract,” Kian cuts in, starting to smile.
He looks up, his bright eyes sparkling. “Here.”
I frown as he passes me his phone. “What?”
The picture isn’t super clear until I have the phone in my hand, but something about it captures my full attention the second I see the blonde woman holding the guitar.
“Who is this?” I ask, as I try to drag my gaze away from her pretty face.
It’s impossible. Her eyes are too compelling, and those lips …
“That,” Kian starts, in a smug tone, “is Pack Orion’s one true mate.”
The second his words sink into my preoccupied brain I let out a snort.
Trust Kian to buy into the fantasy we’re always selling on stage.
I force myself to stop staring at the blonde woman.
“She’s cute, I guess,” I start, handing the phone back with a bit more effort than I’d like to admit. “But true mates are a fairytale ideal, Kian. They don’t exist in the real world.”
“That’s not what you really think,” he says, as if he knows something I don’t. He gazes at the image on his screen, and then he looks back up at me. “Tell me one look at her didn’t make you feel something.”
Christ, sometimes I swear he’s part-Omega.
“Like I said, she’s cute. And she’s got good taste in guitars,” I add, while I wonder what exactly made me feel something when I looked at her face.
Pretty women make up most of our fan base, and plenty of them are musically inclined.
The combination is nice, but I can’t say I’ve felt anything more than a fleeting attraction for any of those women.
“But you don’t believe in fairytales?” Kian asks, rolling his eyes. “Well, her name is Sapphire Faris, and she works for a magazine our sponsor just bought. I called them and told them we’d do an exclusive end of tour interview if it was with her, and if they paid for our stay at Golden Sands.”
I blink at him. “Wait … what?”
He smiles. “Obviously, they agreed. Not only that, but they said they’d pay for four whole weeks at Golden Sands, which works out pretty well considering you’ve been moaning about how much we’ve been touring for the last six months.”
“A month?” I ask, blowing out a breath. “But we have …”
“Press shit for three weeks?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “It’s all cancelled. It’s not really an exclusive interview if we go and do all that other shit after it, is it?”
Holy fucking shit.
“You cancelled all of it?”
“And before you go mental at me for having the audacity, I cleared the idea with Trick and Riley already. They agreed we could use a proper vacation. It’s been a few years since we took more than a week or two at a time, Xane. This was long overdue.”
He’s not fucking wrong, but I don’t need to be happy about it.
“All of that press tour shit is what works for us,” I snap.
He doesn’t look impressed. “It works for the tours. It doesn’t work for us.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about now.”
I take my phone out of my back pocket, ready to start fixing everything.
“Don’t even think about it,” he warns me. “Trick’s been ready to quit for the past month. If you cut this vacation to a week, he’ll walk. We’re not robots, Xane. We have needs. This break is happening whether you really want it, or not.”
“Trick’s always threatening to quit,” I mutter.
“Yeah, well, this time he means it. I know you think the band is everything, but there’s more to life and none of us are getting the chance to see that while we’re constantly on tour. Something had to give. Don’t tell me you don’t see that. You haven’t written anything in over a year.”
“How the hell do you do that?” I ask, putting the phone back in my pocket.
“Do what?” he asks, like he doesn’t know.
“You always find a way to make your bullshit make sense.”
He laughs. “Does that mean you’re going to let me get away with it?”
“We’ll see.” I’m not completely ready to admit he might have done the right thing. “About the reporter …”
“I knew it! You did feel something when you looked at her picture,” he starts, excitement in his tone.
I shake my head. “Reporters are bad news, Kian. They dig for dirt when it comes to celebrities.”
“She’s working for our sponsor,” he reminds me. “She’ll write the fluffiest fluff piece you’ve ever read. Besides, we don’t even have time to do anything the media could use against us. We’ve got nothing to worry about.”
He sounds sure, and maybe he’s right.
When it comes to dirt, there’s really only one story in our past that could be used against us, and it’s not something Kian or Trick were a part of. Riley doesn’t do much more than grunt on press tours, and I know what I should and shouldn’t talk about.
That only leaves one last concern, and it’s not a big one.
“What makes you think this reporter is … something special? How did you even find out about her?” I ask, not able to put it the way he did.
It’s easy to write songs about a mystery woman who would complete our pack, but it’s not so easy to talk about true mates as if they’re something more than a fantasy.
Kian’s cheeks flush, and I know it before he can answer.
“She’s a fan,” I state flatly.
“It’s not like it sounds,” he protests.
Maybe this is for the best.
If it’s a groupie he’s got a thing for, he’ll get over it pretty fast.
Or he won’t, and we’ll be down one genius bassist and piano player.
“I was checking fan sites for tour reviews online, and I found a reposted blog with her picture attached. She wrote about our band being an inspiration for her own music. When I did a search on the image I found a slightly less flattering picture of her in a suit jacket, and I realized she basically works for our sponsor now, so that’s how I got the whole exclusive interview idea. ”
He shrugs, his cheeks almost neon-red now.
Oh, he likes this woman.
Based off a single picture.
That’s kind of crazy, but at least he seems to know it.
“So, you found this wannabe groupie online, and you think it’s a smart idea to have her spend time alone with us,” I summarize to drive the point home.
It might not be too smart, but it’s not the dumbest thing any of us have ever done.
Riley’s done worse in his sleep.
I know I’ve made some stupid mistakes in my time.
Trick might have skipped that part of rock stardom, but he skips a lot of the parts.
I can’t be too mad at Kian for letting a member of the fairer sex cloud his judgement.
“She’s not a wannabe groupie,” he complains. “She understands we’re different from other bands. It was all in the blog post. If you don’t want to meet her, fine, but I need this, Xane. I need it like I’ve never needed anything before in my whole entire life.”
He sounds so fucking earnest.
As demanding and spoiled as Kian can be over dumb, little things, he’s never done anything this extreme to get what he wanted before, and if I’m being honest, it doesn’t feel like a completely selfish request.
“Well, we could all use a decent vacation,” I admit.
A month at a luxury resort on a private island sounds like heaven to me, and clearly Trick and Riley already agreed to Kian’s little plan so they must really want this, too.
“You definitely already told Trick and Riley?”
He nods quickly. “I mean … I told them I could get us a month’s vacation in exchange for an interview.”
“You didn’t tell them about …”
He shakes his head before I can finish the question.
“I wanted to check with you about that first. In case I was wrong about her being ours,” he confesses. “Since she’s more likely supposed to be mine, I’d rather not tell them about that.”
Huh. I’m not sure what to make of that but considering Riley avoids reporters like they have the plague, and Trick’s the shyest lead guitarist on the face of the planet, I doubt Kian will have to worry about either of them making a move on his woman.
“Okay, sure,” I murmur.
He grins like he just won the lottery.
I want to ask to see her picture again, but I manage to contain that thought.
She’s not mine. I don’t want her to be.
If Kian wants to have some fun with her, he can go ahead.
I’ve had enough female troubles for one lifetime.
All I want is a fucking rest.
“You won’t regret this,” Kian assures me, still giddy as he moves to lay down on the couch by the far wall, phone pressed to his chest as if he’s trying to keep that picture close to his heart.
“Well, we’ll see about that.” I move back to the other couch.
My guitar is on the stand where I left it, waiting to be tuned.
I concentrate on tuning it, while Kian sighs softly on the other couch.
His eyes are closed when I’m done, and he’s smiling like a lunatic.
Poor kid. He thinks he struck gold with this plan of his.
That blonde with the good taste in guitars is going to break his heart.
I’d bet my last dollar on it.