Ransom(91)

“Dude, come on. You can trust Levi. He does everything for us. He was probably just mad because he had to leave the glamour of all this.” Lennon gestures around the stark rehearsal space, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“If the two of you are finished chatting, I’d like to get started,” Cash calls out.

“Don’t worry about him,” Lennon mutters. “He’s just pissed because you’re stealing some of his bad-boy rep. He can’t compete with going to jail. I bet he’s losing out on tons of tail over it.”

I laugh for the first time in days and go to join the band. As I pick up my guitar, I realize I feel slightly better knowing that Lennon at least seems to have forgiven me. The other boys will come around. Besides, there’s only a week left of the tour. Maybe what my brothers and I all need is some time apart.

And maybe I’ll finally be able to get Daisy to talk to me again.





Chapter Twenty-eight


Daisy





“I was thinking barbeque for dinner tonight,” Levi says, coming to sit next to me on the back deck. He places a cup of coffee in front of me.

I smile at him. “Thanks. And barbeque sounds fine.” I direct my attention back out to the lake. I think I hear him sigh, but he doesn’t say anything. “Okay, I’m ready,” I say. “Give it to me.”

“There was no mention of you on People.com or Instyle,” he says. “TMZ has some pictures of Daltrey going into rehearsal with a blurb about the situation, but nothing new. There’s some Twitter gossip, and a few things on the band’s ConnectMe page, but it’s definitely decreasing. All in all, not too bad.”

I release the air from my lungs. This was our new routine. Levi would go into town in the morning, so he could get a cell phone connection. He would then check the gossip sites and report back. He said it made me a masochist, but I assured him that in my unfortunate experience, it was better to know than to imagine.

The first few days were the worst. There were stories on nearly every major news site, both celebrity centered and not. Levi tried to convince me that the stories were actually fairly positive. Reporters had found a lot of the garbage that had been written about me in high school. They were portraying me as a cyber-bully victim—no argument here—and Daltrey as my righteous defender. As far as we could tell, no one had the pictures. Yet.

“Thanks, Levi,” I say, reaching for my coffee.

“It was nice, you know. Being in town. There are cute little shops and stuff. Restaurants. Maybe we could spend some time there this afternoon.”

I snort over the paper rim of my cup. Levi has been trying to get me to go into town since we got here, thinking it will be good for me to get out. Every day is the same, him thinking of some new “plus” and presenting it to me as casually as he can.

He laughs. “I’m not fooling you, huh?”

“You can never fool me, Levi. You’re just not a natural actor.”

He places a hand over his heart. “You’ve shattered my dreams.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I had no idea you’ve been dreaming of stardom all this time.”

The laughter falls from his face. “Actually, I think I may have had my fill of being close to celebrities.”

I gape at him. “What are you talking about? You love working for Ransom.”

“I don’t know. I might be over it.”

I shake my head. “I can’t believe that. This was just a blip, Levi. One weird week that got out of control.” I clear my throat, knowing I need to say the thing I’ve been trying to say all week. “You should really get back to work. I can’t keep you away from your job like this. I’ll be okay on my own.”

He shakes his head. “Nope. Out of the question. I’m not leaving you.”

I glance at his phone lying on the table. Since there’s no reception out here, he called my dad and Paige on one of his first trips into town. I’ve been surprised to find that I’m actually dying to talk to my dad, though he’s never been the one I turn to for emotional support. But the desire is not strong enough that I want to risk going into town myself.

“I could go down and stay at my dad’s,” I say, though it’s pretty much the last thing in the world I want to do. I would be too close to home there—my old home, the place where the world fell apart around me. The very thought makes me shudder.

“You should see your face right now,” Levi says, smiling sadly. “As soon as you said you could go to your dad’s, you looked like you were about to be sick.”

I stick out my tongue at him. “I did not.”