Cry For You (Fallen Star #2) (4 page)

"So, what are you guys planning?"

"Just a few shows and the summer festivals, like I told you. There's been an offer for me to do a film soundtrack too."

"Wow, that sounds amazing." I'd never really thought about people writing music for films. It was just there. It'd be a great project for Tex though. All the time though, I was wishing she'd leave.

Finally, we were alone. Tex grabbed me before I had a chance to talk about those ground rules. He kissed that spot on my neck that drove me nuts and, when he kissed there, the whole concept of logical thought disappeared from my brain. His hands ran under my shirt, squeezing my boobs while he kept kissing my neck. I wanted to wrap my legs around him, right there.

Then I froze.

There was a face at the window. I was sure it was a face. Chills ran through me.

"What's up, Ruby Red?" he asked.

"Nothing, I thought I saw something at the window and wondered if Hannah had come back."

"I didn't hear a car," he said and kissed my neck again.

I hadn't either but I dragged him into the bedroom. No way was I hanging around the kitchen. I didn't like the prickling feeling of someone outside watching me.

I chucked my phone across the room. Hopefully that would shut the bloody thing up. I couldn't answer it. Just like I couldn't answer it yesterday or the day before or any day this week. It would only be my supervisor ringing to see if I was coming to work. Since she was the one who'd told me not to come in unless I was capable of working, what was the point of talking to her?

I had to go back to work sometime or I wouldn't be able to pay rent this month. I considered it. I could give my landlord a sob story and ask for extra time to pay but my landlord had a heart of stone and would demand the money or kick me out. He wasn't the sort who worked within the law and he had goons.

Hell, I couldn’t even visit my lousy mother to get rent money since the last time I did that, she caught me with my hand in the cookie jar, the cookie jar where she kept her spare money. She said she wasn’t going to keep money in the house any more. It wasn’t like she needed it for anything important.

Anyway, maybe it’d be a bad idea to get evicted even if it was a shit box apartment. The place was one room with a tiny bathroom. The walls were covered in FORSAKEN posters that hid all the cracks and the bubbles in the yellowing beige paint work. I had a stove without a working oven and a wobbly table that held my computer. The blinds were down because the only view I had was of a graffiti-covered brick wall and an alleyway where late night partiers went to puke.

Every night I could hear the couple on one side alternate between fighting and having noisy sex. They hated me ever since I told the landlord they had a cat. I didn’t have a cat so why should they? On the other side, the Asian student was quiet but he cooked food that smelt so weird and wrong. And once the smell seeped into my apartment, it permeated everything. I told the landlord about that too but he didn’t do anything.

My clothes tumbled out of a fallen down wardrobe, the rest in a chest of drawers with only two drawers functional. That was my life. All broken and rotten, but it didn't matter. I didn't really live here. I lived in a world of my own creation. I'd go through my DVDs and decide which concert I wanted to watch and lose myself in my real life – the one with Tex O'Malley.

Now I didn’t even have that.

I'd barely been able to get out of bed since That Night. What was the point? Life was no longer worth living. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I'd have never believed it. Him with that woman. That whore. That evil bitch. Her there parading her body around and him obviously coming from the bedroom. Nothing else in this world could've hurt me like that. You could throw me face first into a fire or tie me on a rack and stretch my muscles out of their joints while giant rats gnawed at my flesh. That'd be a lark compared to the pain that woman had caused me. Who was she anyway? Some trumped up little harlot with a face like a ferret. I bet she even had a ginger minge.

The obvious solution was to destroy her – but how?

Two days ago, I'd actually worked up the strength to get out of bed. I had a secret hope blossom in my soul that she'd just been a random groupie he'd picked up.

She'd gotten lucky for the night then he'd kicked her to the curb without even asking her name. The guy was only human. He had needs. I couldn't fault him for that. Until he actually met me, he needed to have some kind of outlet. Hell, if you found out a 31-year-old guy was still a virgin, that'd be scarier than him having the occasional one night stand.

The woman looked like the same chick he’d been with at the festival but I hadn’t seen her up close then and maybe Tex just had a thing for skanky redheads. I could dye my hair red if that’s what he wanted.

So, I'd dressed in all black and put on a cap so I could sneak around in the dark and gather information. I'd paid them a visit. Secretly. Just to confirm that it was true. I parked my car down on the road and climbed up the hill through the building site, thinking that the crunch of my footsteps on the gravel drive would alert them. On such a still night, the sound would carry.

I saw the glow of light from the studio window but didn't want to get too close. If I pressed my face up to the window, they might catch me. Although, if Tex was there alone, I could pretend to be lost and need directions. At first, I couldn't make out much in the dark then I found the washing line. It had her stuff all over it, like she was bragging. Look at my knickers hanging up here next to Tex's. The hate coursing through my body gave me a renewed strength and I crept closer.

I could see them through the studio window. Ick. They were getting all mushy. As I suspected, it was the same girl from the festival. How could he even stand to kiss her? I wanted to look away but couldn't take my eyes off them until she dragged him into the other room and I could no longer see a thing. I'd driven back home with tears in my eyes, not able to understand what had happened. What did he see in her?

Even then, I had to go back more than once, just to confirm things. And to do a bit of damage.

She was a witch using black magic to ensnare him. That was the only possible explanation. I needed to break that spell.

In every crisis of my life, every sorrow and every defeat, one thing brought me back from the brink. That was listening to FORSAKEN. Tex's voice was like a healing touch. Smooth and refreshing, it'd sweep away all my pain. What a betrayal. I couldn't even listen to him now or it'd start a fresh batch of tears. I didn't have his music to heal me. I just had hurt and pain. And sleep. That was the only time I could escape this agony.

The phone rang again. Smashing it into the wall obviously hadn't taught it a thing. I'd tell that supervisor to shove her job. I didn't want to work. I wanted to drown myself. Literally drown myself. What was the point of working and earning money.

I answered the phone but it wasn't my supervisor. It was Tony.

"Where's my car?"

"Huh?"

"My car. My pizza delivery car? You took it home the other night and you never came back."

Bloody hell. I'd meant to take it back but I could never deliver another pizza again. I couldn't even go back near the pizza place. The smell of pizza was the smell of my personal defeat now. It wasn't like it was his only pizza delivery car. He had the other one.

Anyway, before I took it back, I needed to clean out the vomit from That Night. I'd been very distressed. When you get that upset on a stomach full of pizza, it's going to turn nasty.

"I took it back. I parked it out the back and put the keys through the letter slot. If it's not there, someone has stolen it."

"Someone has stolen it and that someone is you. You don't wanna mess with Tony."

Was that a threat? A genuine mafia threat? I'd be swimming with the fishes? Well, that would save me the bother of drowning myself. Let them come for me.

I hung up the phone and took the battery out. It wasn't like Tony knew where I lived. I'd given him a fake address and fake ID. Maybe he could track me down eventually but it'd take him a while and he wasn't real bright. I mean, if you have crazy tracking down people skills, you aren't going to waste your time opening a pizza shop.

Or would you? That's how I'd stalked Tex. Had I ever ordered pizza from Tony? Did he have my home address in his system somewhere? Hell, the mafia
were
coming for me.

Since I was up anyway, I might as well get something to eat. Not pizza. I'd never eat pizza again. That's how evil that bitch was, she had even turned pizza against me. I found some fried chicken in the fridge. I sniffed it and it smelt okay so I ate that, washed down with the remains of warm, flat Coke from the bottle beside my bed.

Well, that perked me up, like a slap in the face.

And what I realised was this – I'd been a sucker. A dumb sucker. And my pathetic little excuses for revenge wouldn't cut it. I needed a plan. That's exactly what was needed here. I needed to get this bitch where it hurt. She'd taken everything that mattered in my life from me and I had to do the same to her. That wasn't a revenge for red hot fury. It was a slow burning revenge. A revenge that took planning and finesse. It'd be like the pinnacle of my life's work.

She'd been laughing at me when I ran out of there. Cackling like an evil cow. I'd never forget her red hair flying around her as she threw her head back, crowing with glee at my defeat.

Well, I'd be the one having the last laugh. I'd crush her to the ground and stomp on her and then I'd laugh. I'd never stop laughing. She'd be like a maggot crawling in the dirt and I'd have Tex and my life would be complete.

Step one of my plan had to be finding out more about her. I had to know everything. That meant going to work so I could get phone records for starters. There'd been a second phone number for Tex's address at the pizza shop so step one point (a) would be to go back to the pizza shop and get that number. Step one point (b) was to use that number to get all her details from the records at the call centre. The perfect combination of information-getting. That’s why people have jobs.

Step two would be to use that information to destroy her.

That also meant ringing Tony back and sucking up to him. I needed that job for at least one more night. I'd have to have a good story to tell him. My mother was dying of some horrible disease and I was temporarily out of my head. That would require more than just a phone call. I'd have to go in person and put on the tears. Tears worked every time.

Then I'd have to go back to the call centre. Should I try the sick mother thing there? I think I'd done it before though – maybe more than once. I needed something else for them. They were short staffed though so I'd get away with some lousy story. Maybe some gory details of female problems.

And suddenly, my stomach rumbled. I'd hardly eaten a thing in a week. That fried chicken didn’t count. What the hell was I thinking? I'd get scurvy and die if I didn't get some food into me.

-0-

It hadn't taken much to get her name and some basic details but this chick was good. She didn't have much online, that's for sure. No Facebook account, no other social media. Was she a ghost or something? I needed much more dirt. I couldn't spy on her 24 hours a day. Not with being back at the pizza place and at the call centre. She didn't even have any personal calls in her phone records. Just calls to the pizza place and other stuff like that. No parents? No family? No friends? That was just freaky.

I’d been checking some things at home because there is a limit to the electronic trail you wanted to leave on a work computer. I snooped around as much as I thought possible the night before but I’d woken up with the brain wave to use her initials. That still was a bust.

The lists of facts I had about "Ruby" was scarily short. She sure as hell didn't have a job because I never saw her leave the studio. She must just sponge off Tex. And she had no social life that I could see. Obviously, she was not an appropriate girlfriend for Tex. She seemed like a bit of a dead shit to me.

I needed to google information on becoming a hacker. That would be a life skills enhancement. There couldn't be
no
records of her at all. She’d even got her phone fairly recently and I couldn't find any prior number for her. The whole situation stunk of suspiciousness to me. Who hides their past that well? Only criminals. I wondered the best way to find out if she had a prison record. There was a "prison bitch" look about her.

I snooped around the fan forum to see if anyone had any dirt on Tex having a girlfriend. There was nothing there. Of course, some of those lamers were all uptight about posting personal details. The way I saw it, if you are a superstar, your life is fair game.

The only gossip I could find was the rumour about Brownie getting engaged. That had been floating around for a while. Good luck to him. I always thought of him as the little brother type. It was sweet that he was getting married. I mean sweet in the way that I would probably end up being BFF with his wife when I married Tex.

While I was online, a message popped up.

New shows!

Was I seeing things? My stomach flopped with excitement. I'd be buggered if some bastard would get those tickets before I did. I had to go to those shows. Nothing would stop me. Getting tickets even took priority over my revenge plan.

Was it even coincidence that the show was announced as soon as I decided to get revenge? I thought not. It was like I’d received a stamp of approval from Tex for my scheme.

Because they were smaller shows, the tickets would be available at the venues as well as online outlets. I'd stake the place out and make sure I was first in line. Then I'd not have to freak about my dodgy internet connection and stupid server crashes and all that kind of bollocks. Doing it the good old fashioned way, that was best. That way the spoils go to those with the determination. No guts, no glory.

I checked the clock. Only 20 minutes before I needed to sign in at work – and it was a 25 minute commute – but I couldn't leave the internet when news like that had just broken. I needed to plan my strategy. There was a good five minutes of my train ride where I was out of phone signal and anything could happen in that time.

I posted on the forum to see if anyone wanted to wait out overnight with me. It meant more competition for tickets but I'd feel like an idiot sitting out all night on my own and, I guess, other people had to go to the gig not just me. It never hurt to be social with people once in a while. That's how you got people to do favours for you. Hell, I'd even take them pizza. That was even better for getting favours from people.