Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance (71 page)

S
houlder to shoulder, Scarlette stood with the winners of VIP passes to the West Stage of the festival. Rattler was on the last song in their set, and she was indulging her favorite pastime lately—watching the sweat glisten on Gage’s cut and inked body.

A smile still hovered on her lips from Gage’s wink a few verses ago. Almost two weeks had passed since he’d roused her that last night in Milan, insisting she not miss out on a bit of fun—outside the room. They’d danced the rest of the night away in the clubs in the Navigli district and had scored souvenirs—their favorite Marvel comics in Italian from a huge comic book shop tucked among the clubs on the canal.

In the dark morning hours afterward shrouded in the backseat of the cab, they’d kissed. Those long luscious rock star kisses she couldn’t get enough of. Then, with a respectable distance between them, they’d entered the hotel, ridden up the elevator, and separated to their respective rooms.

They’d had mini dates and had kissed a few times since when they could sneak away without raising eyebrows. Neither of them spoke of what this meant. It was as if they didn’t want to break a spell. She tried to remain in a mindset of enjoying these spontaneous moments as they came without analyzing them to death—and without guilt.

A phone call with Logan had officially ended a relationship between them that had never been. That’s how she felt anyway despite Logan’s claims of true feelings in a trapped situation. He’d apologized and even though her traitorous body and heart had absolved Gage before they’d left Milan, it had been three calls and several texts later before she’d been able to accept Logan had been in an impossible situation and forgiven his part.

As the last song wound down, she made her exit. If watching Gage perform was one of her favorite things in the world, then watching groupies throw themselves on him was her least favorite thing. It was best she wasn’t around. She paused at the hospitality tent to grab a cold drink and a couple of snack bags. When she offered the same to Jal, a giant of a man who was now her shadow, he shook his head. Afterward, she texted for a runabout cart to carry them to the bus.

 If she remembered the tour itinerary correctly, they were leaving around dark and traveling through the night. They’d worked their way gig to gig by bus for the better part of this week.

The afternoon was muggy, and she considered for a second before remembering they were in Amsterdam. When Landon had bemoaned the heat at one of the recent festivals, Gage had sarcastically told him he’d have fond memories of the heat when he experienced the humidity of The Netherlands. Landon had snarked back something about Gage always flaunting the fact that he was a tour veteran.

The cart slowed as it approached the sleek row of tour buses. VIP wristbands adorned the arms of the group milling the area. Several burly security personnel, dressed in black with white identifying letters kept the group corralled.

The fans stirred when she and her giant shadow alighted from their transport, and she made her way toward Rattler’s bus.

“Scarlette!” One cry was quickly followed by another and then another. This had occurred a couple of times since Milan. Word of her tagging along on the Rattler bill must be making its way around the internet. She waved, and as unobtrusively as possible hid her face behind a curtain of hair.

Maybe it was again time to go all out rock star with glasses and a hoodie. After the first several frenzied months of her re-debut into rock society as Scarlette Conterra Rock Princess, the following months of peace had been nice while it lasted.

The security near their bus nodded politely to her and, along with Jal, positioned protectively in front of her as she punched the code in. The cool air when she pulled the door open refreshed her face. She stood for a moment in the empty living area, acclimating and enjoying the peace. Carrying her snack, she paused in the galley.

First, she made sure the cherry mix was in the fridge, which would ensure the guys could wind down when they returned ready to relax or sleep. Next to the cherry chill as Landon had dubbed it, was energy booster bars she’d baked the morning before.

She considered relaxing downstairs, but knew soon enough one or more of the guys would return, and she didn’t feel like talking. After washing up in the tiny bathroom, she climbed to the top story and folded into her bunk.

Propped on one elbow, she maneuvered enough to plug her guitar in and settle headphones on her head. After adjusting the airflow into her area, she drew the thick accordion privacy curtain. Lying down, she positioned the guitar across her stomach and began to play. Her eyes drifted closed while she strummed, and she lost track of time.

She woke to noise inside the bus. It took only a second to register they weren’t rolling yet, so she hadn’t been asleep long. Removing her headphones, she heard more than one giggling girl.

And…

Her ears strained…

Landon…

And…

No other voices. But that didn’t mean anything. Parting the curtains, she peeked outside her bunk and found all the other bunks darkened. But that didn’t mean anything.

She checked the time on her phone while fighting the urge to pee. Apparently, she’d been asleep less than an hour. After squeezing her legs together, she gave up and went to the upstairs facilities. And as long as she was already up and about, she crept down the stairway. A part of her was very curious if Gage was downstairs with women draped all over him.

“Right there, hold, hold…” Landon’s voice, crooning, and before she could run back up, certain she was about to get an X-rated eyeful, he yelled, “Yes! Holy fuck. That’s good stuff! Have the rest.”

And she gaped at the sight in the front lounge.

Landon was offering a ‘straw’ in the form of rolled currency to a topless young woman who all but sat in his lap. The gal took it and bent to the white bump lining the spine of the human table in front of them. Scarlette shuddered to think how dirty the bus floor was and wondered how drunk the nude woman must be crouched on all fours with no thought of the germs.

“Okay, your turn.” He motioned the gal wiping her nose down, and the gal on the floor up.

Scarlette backed without a sound up the stairs, and the horrific scene disappeared from her vision, but the audio continued.

“Nope. No, no, no. Off with the pants. There you go. Oh yeah, honey… You know what? Put the heels back on… Now get down and give me a smooth surface…”

“You have to keep your back very straight.” An offer of advice allegedly from the original ‘table.’

Scarlette reached the landing, turned and ran to her bunk where she ripped her headphones from the amp, plugged them into her phone, and brought up the music app. With music cleansing her ears, other thoughts flooded in.

How long had Landon been using? How long had she stupidly been boosting him with vitamins and organic energy while all the time he was back to stuffing synthetic speed up his nose?

This entire venture was a failure. She was nothing more than a babysitter—and not a very good one apparently—to drug addicts.

She’d been through several Fire Flight songs, lost in the catacombs of her mind when she heard shouting. Lifting one of the noise-reducing earbuds, she listened.

“Just get rid of the girls. Get ’em out, right now…”

“You get the fuck out…”

“Scarlette is upstairs...”

“Really? Get her naked and get her down here. We’ll make a movie―”

Cringing at the thud of the punch that followed, she leaped from the bed and flew to the bottom deck. What followed was a brawl of epic proportions. She had to call Jal to break it up.

Their departure was delayed while Landon was stitched up. The tour manager accompanied the drummer to the first aid station. Alone with Gage, Scarlette wet paper towels and dabbed at his scrapes while he grumbled about the other man’s piercings that were the cause of the blood on his knuckles.

“You shouldn’t have hit him.”

“Don’t start on me.”

She was startled and stung by the vehemence in his voice. Wadding the paper towel in her hand, she decided he could take care of himself. Screw him. But when he spoke next, she realized his tone had stemmed from the adrenaline not yet drained from his system.

“I’m not that angry person anymore. I wasn’t looking for an excuse to fight. Truthfully though, I might’ve been waiting for an excuse to hit
him
.” He hung his head as he dabbed at his arm with a paper towel. “And then when he came at me like a rabid ape… If he wasn’t going to stop, I wasn’t either.”

“I wasn’t bitching at you. I was…”

His eyes were suddenly all over her face, stopping on her lips as she spoke. But now that she’d trailed off, thrown by the intensity of his regard, his charcoal gaze met hers. “You what?”

“I was…”

The pad of his thumb landed on her lower lip.

“…was wanting to hit him myself…”
Sweet heaven
. She became putty beneath his touch every time, particularly this one. The smooth stroke of his thumb with just the right pressure and gentleness. His strokes paused and his brows arched. “I wish I’d let you get the first punch in then.” When he resumed the ministration, she touched her tongue to his thumb and felt a groan lodge in her throat. Dampened, it felt, as always, like a kiss. When seconds ached by, she opened her eyes to his, having just that instant realized they’d drifted closed at some point. Was he deliberately dragging this out? She tasted him again, and slid her hands over the stretch of his tee shirt.

“Are you gonna kiss me or not?”

“If I say ‘not?’”

For a second, a disappointed stab pierced her heart until she registered the tone had been sexy and light and she fired the same right back at him. “Then I say cut this shit out.”

His mouth crashed to hers, urgent and then tapering to tender. She could handle the fires of pent-up passion. It was the tender moments that always riled an internal rebellion. The tiny stabbing second of fear a moment ago, was enough to tell her how paranoid she was about his affections. After all, he’d shown he was capable of pushing her away in a fit of jealousy. She never wanted to put herself in that position again.
Right?

Still it was a Gage kiss. The damn rock-star technique. Her hands ignored the push-him-away signal her brain sent and instead glided up, locking to the back of his neck. His palm cupped her head, and his thumb, deprived of her lips, tickled the contours of her ear.

She became seated on the table, eventually hanging from him when the passion of the kiss and his weight progressively forced her back.

A shout and then an ensuing conversation between two men just outside the bus walls brought them both from their passionate stupor. As he straightened, pulled her to her feet, and turned, swiftly pulling open a cabinet, she was forced to acknowledge how vulnerable they were to discovery. Any one of the bus crew could walk in at any moment.

“I’m making some popcorn. Let’s watch a movie.” He began pulling out the makings.

“I don’t wanna be down here when they get back.” She threw a glance at their movie-watching couch.

“We’ll watch it up there.”

Once, only once had they watched a movie, both crammed into his bunk. She couldn’t even recall what movie. That’s how distracting it had been to lie against the heat and hardness of his body—as ‘Sis.’

Did he remember what movie it had been? She skimmed her gaze over his broad shoulders and down his back to the masculine flow of his waist into the eye candy of his ass.

“Grab you a drink and go on up. I’m doing it up extra spicy. That cool?”

She mumbled some sort of verbal affirmation and realized she’d just agreed to all of the above by answering that nonchalant question. No one was smoother than Gage.

Upstairs, she dropped her pomegranate juice onto her bed—yes, he had her addicted to the stuff now—and took a moment to make use of the bathroom.

She dilly-dallied around with her hair, checked her face for blackheads, and stray brow hairs, and anything until she heard his tread on the stairs. Emerging, she found a bowl filled with popcorn and a few napkins on her bunk next to her juice. The same rested on Gage’s bed. He was holding his tablet and turned to her. “What are we watching?”

Instead of deliberating movies with him, she found herself blurting, “He was doing coke.”

Gage’s eyes stayed on the tablet for a few seconds too long, before he looked up.

“Landon was fucking doing coke.” She repeated unnecessarily; she’d already seen the resignation shadowing his eyes, and his answering blink told her what she suspected. It had been no surprise to him. Gage knew. “How long?”