“Of course I know how hard he works. He tries as hard as he can to keep a clean image. And she’s lying,” I insisted.
“Of course she’s fucking lying! You think I don’t know my own band? But what does that matter? The damage is done. This is how it starts. He’s going to be scrutinized now, and they’ll find something else, and then something else, and another…”
I shook my head.
No. He’d knock Steven out if he were here.
“Of course, Trent doesn’t listen to reason, either,” Steven continued. “He’s gonna run this entire thing into the ground for a hot piece of ass, isn’t he? It’s not even just him you’ll drag back down into the dirt with yourself. You’ll be taking the whole band with you.”
My breath caught in my throat.
“No…that can’t…”
“If I were you – and I am so glad that I’m not – I’d ditch town. It’s still fresh in his head. Trent hasn’t totally invested in you. You’re still just some groupie to him, you know? You can get out without hurting his feelings.”
“But that’s not true,” I answered sadly. “We talked so much… he went out of his way to try and prove how much he cares…”
“And you fell for that? What are you, fucking eighteen? Do you know how many girls that asshole has made feel special right before he rips their heart out?”
The sound of his raucous laughter was like a pail of icy water to my face. It snapped me out of the daze I’d been in for the last few days – no, the last few weeks.
I’m just a distraction.
A liability.
His laughter started to die down, and Steven looked at me with something that vaguely resembled pity.
“You see it now,” he told me sympathetically. “How stupid you’ve been. You thought you could change him? You seriously thought that you would be the one girl in the world who would improve him?”
I turned away.
I spoke the only words I could.
“I don’t have any money,” I told him.
“Of fucking course you don’t. Do you think he’d just leave you his credit card or something? He doesn’t trust you, honey. He never really has.”
The words stung. I wanted to run and hide and never come back up for sunlight.
“I can’t get a bus without money.”
Steven went silent.
I looked up at him, afraid that he was angry. But no… he was merely calculating, weighing options in his head.
“Listen. Pack your shit. I’ll take care of the bus ticket. And I’ll even toss you a few hundred bucks to get you on your feet when you’re there.”
“You would… do that?”
“Of course,” he told me. He wasn’t smiling. “You think I’m a bad guy? I’m just doing my fucking job. Ironing out the creases. Cutting off loose ends. It’s what I’m supposed to do. Doesn’t mean I’m a prick. Trent just paints me that way because he doesn’t like it. Who would? I’m sympathetic…”
I nodded quietly.
“Like I said, pack your shit. I’ll have you on a bus in the hour. Where do you need to go? Back to Riverton, or wherever it was called?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I can’t go back there… Not after the way I left…”
“Smart thinking,” Steven agreed. “Maybe you’re more intelligent than I would have figured. So, where are you going instead? Pick a spot, honey. I can have you on a bus to Miami, or Philadelphia, or wherever the fuck you wanna go.”
I sighed heavily. There was only one other place in the world for me… one other place where I knew I really deserved to be. It’s where I should have been all along.
A place so terrible I shut it out.
A place so awful I never thought about it.
I took a deep breath. “It’s time I went back home.”
25
Trent
Two Days Later
I knew something was wrong the second that I stepped foot into my house. Compounding, rising dread twisted its way up in the back of my head, like smoke in the darkness.
I’d felt it from a mile away.
And I didn’t like it.
“Angel?” I called out.
No answer.
Maybe she’s asleep, I wondered. I couldn’t bring myself to believe it, though. No…something was definitely wrong.
I dropped my things at the door, scouring for any signs of a break-in. The front door was unharmed, and I didn’t spot any broken windows on my way to the stairs.
Hopping two at a time, I ascended up to my bedroom. Our bedroom. Flicking on the light, I peered around the room like a hunter sniffing for prey.