Groupie/Rock Star Bundle (28 page)

He may have believed that San
Francisco was staged to capture him, but finding out about the
pregnancy scare would have been a lot more convenient for our
relationship had he not been there.

Worse, I can’t be entirely sure I
didn’t say as much to Galen as we stumbled toward the
elevator.

I leaned heavily on him as we
staggered in, and I think I may have given him my room number
because he was instantly in charge of half-carrying me to my room
from the moment the doors shut.

I was on the bed as soon as the door
closed behind Galen for no other reason than it was the only way to
stop the room from spinning.

Galen emerged from the bathroom with a cool
towel. I wondered how he could be so sober. Oh that’s right, I
thought to myself. I stole all his drinks.

He perched on the side of the bed
and gently wiped my brow with the compress. “Tell me about
Lourdes,” he said softly.

I shook my head. “It’s a secret,” I think I may
have said out loud.

“It’ll do you good,” he reasoned. “Did you know
about the baby when you started dating Vanni?”

I shook my head. Then I nodded. It was hard to
say, considering Vanni and I never truly “dated.”

“Let’s go back to the beginning,” he said.
“When did you find out about the baby?”

“Vegas,” I murmured.

“When was that?” he asked.

I shook my head. Who could remember? It felt
like a lifetime ago. “My head hurts,” I tried to explain, but Galen
pressed on.

“Did Vanni send her back to South America? Or
did she go on her own?”

I shook my head again. Why was he
asking me all these questions I couldn’t answer? I closed my eyes
to shut out the light that was suddenly too bright for me. “I need
you to go,” I murmured as I turned my back to him.

He bent closer. “Not yet, Andy. Let’s talk some
more.” He rubbed my shoulders slightly. “What does Vanni plan to do
about the baby?”

“Nothing,” I slurred. Then, finally, “It’s not
his baby.”

The next thing I knew it was
morning, at least according to the clock sitting on the nightstand
in my hotel room. I was still fully dressed, with a blanket tucked
around me. I sat up suddenly, only to be rewarded with a pounding,
monstrous headache. There was no sign of Galen, for which I was
mostly relieved. I never invited strange men up to my hotel room,
especially in the kind of state I was in. That I wasn’t naked and
robbed (or missing a kidney or two) was a miracle.

I realized that my cell phone was ringing
persistently, and that must have been what finally roused me. My
eyes focused on the number on the caller ID. It was
Jacob.

“Hello?”

“Andy!” he exclaimed in what sounded like
partial relief. “Where have you been?”

“My room,” I stated. “At the hotel.”

“What happened? Did you and Vanni have a
fight?”

I rolled on my back and stared at the ceiling.
Was that all it had been? “You could say that.”

“Please tell me you didn’t talk to
anyone,” he pleaded in an ominous voice that immediately punched
through my hangover fog.

“What do you mean? Talk to anyone about
what?”

“About you. About Vanni. About anything.” Jacob
hesitated only momentarily. “It’s out, Andy.”

I gulped hard as I scooted out of
bed and headed over to my laptop computer, which was already open
on the desk. I got a sick feeling when I realized I had left the
computer on my email server.

My gut sank the minute I went online
to search for DIB.

“A source very close to the band, and romantic
interest of the lead singer, admitted to one of our reporters that
Lourdes Roemer is pregnant but that Giovanni was not the father.
Further investigation suggests that Jasper Carrington is the father
of Roemer’s baby, and has orchestrated her trip to South America to
have their lovechild in private so that his marriage to his
megastar wife Athena will not falter before contract
negotiations.”

For a full minute afterwards I
couldn’t speak. I don’t even think I breathed.

“Andy, what did you do?” Jacob asked
softly.

My throat closed shut with both guilt and
regret. I had done it. Really done it. But I hadn’t done it on
purpose. Had I?

“I met this guy yesterday,” I forced out, but
knew that there was no real way to justify spilling my guts to
someone I had never met. “He invited me to see the band. I thought
being up front with someone else would show Vanni that he wasn’t
the only one who could get someone else.”

Jacob sighed. I knew what he was
thinking. He didn’t have to say a word.

“The concert was a pissing contest between
Vanni and me, and I got so mad I got screaming drunk after the
show. I guess… I guess I must have said something…”

“Not just something, Andy.
Everything.”

My stomach suddenly felt as though it was made
of lead. “How bad is it?”

“It’s not good,” he answered. “You might want
to get an earlier flight.”

But I couldn’t. Not before I faced the people I
had wronged the most. I confessed my sins first to Iris, who
listened to my tearful story and heartfelt apology quietly. Finally
she said, “You weren’t hiding anything, Andy. I knew what was going
on. I just hoped it would end peacefully and quietly, for all our
sakes.”

She went on in painful detail about how Vanni
had this reputation of romancing certain women for the chase, then
dumping them flat before things could get serious. She stated he
was very rarely ever monogamous; he just played the game carefully
so no one girl ever really knew about the other. She also explained
that generally he always chose a girl with whom he had an instant
“escape clause,” or reason he could disengage when things got too
serious. “Often these are the very same reasons he fell for these
girls in the first place,” she said. “But no matter what kinds of
romantic promises he makes, Vanni is not a happily ever after kind
of guy, Andy.”

I nodded. I didn’t bother to tell her he hadn’t
really made any promises. Those were just my own skewed
expectations behind the loving words he had whispered.

It was all part of the illusion.

My phone call to Alana was much tougher.
Because I couldn’t remember exactly what was said the night before,
I had no idea if I had spilled the beans about her baby. It wasn’t
mentioned in the article on the gossip site, but compared to the
Lourdes/Jasper shocker it really wasn’t even really
news.

She, too, listened quietly as I bore my soul
and begged for her forgiveness. Unlike Jacob and Iris, whose
disappointment in me was much harder to hide, Alana surprised me by
being openly understanding immediately. She confided that Iain was
actually glad I had spilled the beans on everything because it
could mean they would be out from under Jasper’s controlling thumb
– and that was more important to both Alana and Iain than some
misplaced loyalties.

Alana did, however, reiterate what
Iris told me about Vanni. She too said she had hoped it would run
its course quietly and then I could move on.

When I finally asked Alana what the story was
behind Kat, she admitted that their relationship was intimate, and
that Vanni had been flirting with her since he and Jasper
auditioned her in December.

They were together New Year’s Eve, when the
band played with dancers for the first time. It was right after he
pledged his love for me, and he was already looking for a way
out.

“Why?” I cried into the phone, and I
didn’t even care how pathetic it sounded.

“That’s just who he is,” she reasoned softly.
“He needs more love than one person can give him. That’s what makes
him a star. Bright enough to shine for everyone, but far enough
away that he can never really be caught.”

Alana came by the hotel within an
hour, and sat with me while I sobbed on her shoulder. She sat with
me at the computer and told me the best way to ward off the scandal
was to get ahead of it. She gave me the green light to announce
about the baby on the website, but included another juicy nugget of
information. She held up her left hand so I could see the ring now
sitting on her third finger.

“You’re engaged?!”

She nodded, too full of happiness to be mad at
anything else. “He popped the question last night.”

I put my arms around my friend, both
completely happy for her and completely envious that the man she
loved was mature enough to commit himself to her, to their child
and to their life.

We crafted the announcement and
posted it on the band’s website before noon, when I would have to
start packing for my lonely trip back to Nashville. It was my last
labor of love to the band, whose future I had unwittingly
decimated.

Just as Alana walked out the door, Vanni walked
in. They didn’t say much as they passed, but I could tell when
Vanni closed the door behind her he was not pleased she had been
there. He knew that our secret dalliance was a secret no
longer.

“I hope you’re happy,” he said quietly after he
sat on the bed next to my luggage.

He had a lot to be mad at me about,
but I wasn’t about to let him play victim. Not knowing what I knew.
“As a matter of fact, I’m not happy,” I said as I continued to
pack.

“Why did you do it, Andy?”

“Do what, exactly?” I asked him. “Follow you
around the country like an obedient little lovesick groupie? Fall
in love with you? Catch you screwing around months after you
declared your love for me? Or blow a secret wide open that only
helps you look better?”

He stood and faced me, but I went on,
undaunted. “Because I should really know what I did wrong in this
scenario. That way I know exactly what gives you the exit strategy
you need so you don’t have to answer for all the stuff you
did.”

“I never promised I’d be exclusive,”
he said quietly.

“You never promised you wouldn’t be, either,” I
retorted. “Which is really the only right thing to do, especially
if you’re asking people to have sex with you without the added
protection of a condom.”

That hit him square in the jaw, just like I had
hoped. So he deflected. “I just never thought that you’d be the one
to betray the band,” he said softly.

“I never promised I wouldn’t,” I reminded. “I
mean, isn’t that how it works in your world? No one makes any
promises so they can do whatever feels good in the moment with zero
accountability.”

“Did it feel good?” he wanted to know. “Did you
sleep with this asshole too?”

So he put two and two together. Was
that what he was really mad about? I turned and slammed my suitcase
shut. “I don’t think that’s your business anymore,” I said as I
zipped it closed.

He grabbed me by the arm and pulled
me to him. Everything he wanted to say was held back behind a
snarl.

I didn’t struggle. I didn’t even flinch. “Want
to compare notes?” I asked softly. “Want to share with me how you
slept with Kat not even a month after you told me you loved me? Did
you have a good New Year’s, Vanni? I really want to know who gave
you your midnight kiss.”

He clutched me tighter, clearly seething in
anger, but he said nothing. We stood there for a long moment before
I finally said, “Well, at least I know now what you meant by taking
it slow. You know, if you had told me about Kat then I’d have been
happy to remove myself from the equation. You didn’t have to keep
leading me on with all your empty words of love when I was nothing
more than a convenient lay.”

With that he thrust me away from him with a
snarl of disgust and unspent rage. “Think what you want,” he
finally muttered between clenched teeth. He spun on his heel and
headed for the door.

With every step he took away from me I wanted
to chase after him and plead for him to stay. I wanted him to take
me in his arms and swear he still loved me, that we could somehow
make it work, that it wasn’t truly over.

But with a slam he closed the door on me and on
everything we had, leaving me to gather the pieces of my broken
heart and figure out how to live without him.

New York City, April 2009

Talia

I was so excited about New York I could barely
sit still on the plane. I couldn’t wait to see Giovanni again, and
the closer we got to the date the more I dreamed about him. I
dreamed about those eyes and that hair… those lips. I could still
remember how they touched me in Salt Lake City.

I could tell then he wanted more but I had to
hold him off just a little longer. I wasn’t free yet, and I wanted
all that behind me when we finally got together. Instead I sent him
stories through his email. He couldn’t answer them yet, of course.
But he didn’t need to. We were connected on a spiritual level to
where I could read his thoughts. I closed my eyes and I could
travel through time and space to wherever he was, and I knew
exactly what he was doing when he opened up his email and read what
I was going to do to him.