ARROGANT BRIT (A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE) (52 page)

Chapter 23

Trent

My father used to say
there’s no rest for the wicked.
That’s
primarily because it was true.

And I was plenty wicked.

Not even a full two days
after being back home, I had to disappear off to make a press appearance with
the rest of the band. We were going to be interviewed and placed in a bit part
for an upcoming summer film.

Apparently, the director was
a big fan.

He’d written this scene
where we were performing onstage at a concert for the protagonists. We were
more a set piece than anything, but even I couldn’t turn down the opportunity.

I hated the idea of dragging
Angel along, though. After all, she’d been trapped in the back of a bus for the
tail end of our nation-wide tour.

I felt she could probably
use the rest.

When I pitched this promo to
her, she agreed.

“It’s only a couple of days,
right? Would it be okay if I just relax down here? Go have fun, and I’ll be
waiting for you when you come back…”

“I’ll hold you to that,” I
smiled wickedly, climbing across the couch to kiss her deeply.

But I had to get my rest
that night, since I was hopping a plane at 4 in the fucking morning.

Instead of tearing her apart
in bed, I got a halfway decent night’s sleep.

She was still curled up
beside me, sleeping away, when I kissed her goodbye on the forehead.

“I love you,” she murmured
quietly.

I paused.

What?

She rolled over, deep in
sleep, and I was left to deal with what that meant to me…what it meant for us.

Oddly?

I
wasn’t bothered with the idea. In fact…

Hearing it cemented
something in my head.

Something strong.

Something we could build a
foundation from.

I whispered loving words in
her ear, watching a dopey, slumbering smile cross her lips.

With that, I quietly slunk
downstairs and picked up my packed bags, stepping out the door. Locking it
tight, I threw my shit into the trunk of my car and gunned it for the airport.

It had apparently rained overnight.
The streets were slick with overlooked rain; the reflections of the streetlamps
so late in the morning gave the roads an otherworldly glow.

I liked it.

Lights, rising from the
darkness.

Reflected in all that was
here.

It suited me.

I dropped the car off at a
private lot near the airport, handed the keys to the valet, and strolled
towards my destination with my suitcase in hand.

My chucks splashed
indiscriminately through my own reflection in the puddles.

The night was cool, and
greatly refreshing. A light mist hung around from the passing of the rain.
After so much time on the bus, it was nice to have this rejuvenation in the
air.

“Hey, bud.”

I growled inwardly.

Someone was nearby…

But I couldn’t tell where he
was.

“Bud. Talkin’ to you.”

There.

Some tall, lanky guy in dark
rags was loitering in the shadows just ahead. Hanging out near the airport.
Stepping out from the dark to confront me. Looking for easy prey.

He thought that I fit that
bill.

I almost laughed.

“Your wallet and your
phone,” he growled, flicking out a particularly vicious switchblade.

I continued walking up, and
he took a step towards me. As he saw that I wasn’t going to comply, he assessed
me briefly, deciding that I was somehow bluffing in my confidence.

Fucking strung-out junkie.

I was half a foot taller and
a lot broader.

“Stop,” he growled again.

“Fuck off,” I replied
coolly.

He was tense.

Probably wasn’t used to
this.

Criminals lacking
imagination never know what to do when people don’t act according to plan. It’s
early in the morning, the roads are deserted, and he has a knife.

The plan says, the victim
stops.

The victim is terrified.

But me?

Hah.

I am, sure as shit, no
goddamned victim.

The downside is that this
tends to make a tweaked-out thief like him unpredictable. When the script in
his head goes awry, even
he
doesn’t
know what he’s gonna do, half the time.

Two choices:

Back down.

Strike.

But I had this guy pinned,
and I knew exactly what he was gonna do. As he jumped forward with the knife, I
easily sidestepped him. Channeling my momentum into a wide swing, I brought my
suitcase up in a sharp arc.

He whirled back around to
face me, but the case connected with his head, throwing him off balance and
against a nearby building. As he reeled from the blow, I dropped the case to
the side, stepping forward to try and tightly grasp his wrist.

Surprisingly, the fucker was
agile.

He dodged my grip and
slipped to the side, lashing out with the blade in an unpredictable volley of
jabs.

We were back to square one.

Only this time…we were both
ticked off.

“Couldn’t make it easy,
could ya?” He grumbled. “Just had to go and make this a fucking mess, didn’t
ya? You piece of shit!”

“Go the fuck home,” I
commanded him.

He merely grit his teeth,
taking a ridiculous defensive stance. His blade still stood at the ready,
catching just the slightest bit of light.

Nobody else was out here.

It was just him and me.

 
“The wallet, and your phone,” he
repeated.

Out of my peripheral, I took
in my surroundings…and a dangerous but workable idea formed in my head.

“Go to Hell,” I grinned.

With a snarl, the bastard
lunged again.

I was ready. I dodged out of
the way, carefully planting my sneakers against the ground. He whipped around
and whirled towards me again, but I jumped backward and gave his strike no
purchase. His desperate lunge put him off balance. Out of control…

He was right where I wanted
him, lined up to be on the receiving end of one solid punch. A certain
satisfaction rolled through me as I connected.

I watched him clutch at his
gut as he stumbled back from the blow, but he managed to maintain his grip on
the switchblade. Carefully but swiftly, I delivered a kick to his head before
throwing my weight into a shoulder tackle, pinning him by the chest up against
the wall as I scrambled to get control of his arm.

Persistent fucker that he
was, the switchblade was still in play, but he couldn’t maneuver it with my
grip. I twisted his arm round into a submission worthy of my wrestling days
back in school.

“Drop it,” I growled.

He chose to spit into my
face…

So I broke his arm.

He screamed, finally
relinquishing the blade to the wet concrete as he fell to his knees, I grabbed
him by the scruff of his neck.

“Wrong time for this shit,”
I told him. “I just came home with a girl who makes me crazy and now I have to
leave her for a few days. Unlucky for you, I was already pissed off. I ever
catch you on the streets again, I’ll
break a whole lot more than that arm…”

I let go of him, and he
curled up against the slick ground. The junkie probably wasn’t even listening
to me through the sobbing and the pain.

I pitied him, almost.

Not enough to feel bad for
him.

But enough to whip out my
phone and call the police. I waited a couple of minutes as a cruiser pulled up,
the officers dragging him off the pavement and throwing him into the back seat.
I recounted what had happened as quickly as I could. With this minor detail to
my night over, I bid the officer goodbye and nonchalantly lifted my suitcase
back up from the ground. I had a flight to catch.

As I continued walking up to
the airport, I wondered why I even bothered. A month ago, I would have left him
there on the street to rot away, broken arm and all. Wouldn’t be the first
time… My past was full of dark alleys and fights I had no business winning.

He had dared to challenge
me.

Dared to try and overwhelm
me.

And he had paid the price.

As I walked through the
revolving door into the international airport, I realized that I had been
changing. It had been so subtle, but I felt… different. I felt like I was
becoming something more, maybe, as weird as that sounded.

I felt like a better man.

All because of that girl.

All because of Angel.

Chapter 24

Angel

I woke up the following
morning, temporarily disoriented. At first, I didn’t recognize the ceiling
above me – I knew it was going to take a few days at least for me to get used
to that.

But then there was Trent’s
absence. It took a moment, it finally came back to me.

The
film cameo.

He had to do some promotion
with the rest of the band, and that meant taking a few days away to film their
scenes and do some video commentary for the blu-ray extras.

So, I lay around in bed for
a while, enjoying the feeling of his sheets and the freedom of just being here.

It didn’t matter that my
past was gone.

It didn’t matter that I
didn’t have a job.

It didn’t matter that I had
no money.

For this moment – this
beautiful, shining moment – I was alone in the expensive house of a rising
rockstar, the same very rockstar who fucked me whenever I wanted it.

And it felt
good
.

I clamored out of bed and
threw on one of his shirts and a pair of my panties. Satisfied, I wandered
downstairs to rummage up some breakfast.

My eyes fell on a clock.

Half past noon.

I
must have slept GREAT.

I was halfway through a
delicious, crisp ham sandwich when I heard the knock at the door.

My heart seized up.

Don’t
answer it.

I hesitated briefly.

Just when I thought it was
gone…

KNOCK,
KNOCK, KNOCK.

There was a muffled voice
from the other side, and I thought I distinctly heard my name. But the voice
was familiar somehow, and curiosity got the best of me…

I came over to the door,
peering through the peephole. There, pacing angrily on the other side, was his
band manager.

“It’s an emergency!” He
shouted.

Without thinking, I unlocked
the door and popped it open. It didn’t even occur to me that I wasn’t wearing
any shorts…not until Steven’s face fell onto mine, and his eyes briefly trailed
downwards.

“What’s the matter?” I asked
him.

“Ah, so you
are
here…I figured you probably were,”
he smiled.

I suddenly didn’t like this.

“Trent’s not home,” I told
him, starting to close the door.

His palm flew out and caught
it, and his devious smile only widened. It sent a careening strike of fear down
my spine.

“You and I need to talk,” he
told me. “About the other day. About the mess you’ve made.”

“No, I don’t think that we
do.”

I didn’t know what he was
talking about, but I knew I wouldn’t like it. Instead, I tried to close the
door again, but he was surprisingly strong for such a thin frame.

With his other hand holding
the door ajar, Steven pointed his bony finger into my chest, glowering down at
me.

“You’re already fucking
things up for Trent. How long did you seriously think that you could fuck
around here?”

I was flabbergasted.

“
Excuse
me?”

“You’re a goddamn liability,
just like I said you were gonna be! Nobody ever fucking listens to me, do they?
I had you pinned from the start, but
nooo,
Steven’s just the asshole manager…
”

My curiosity finally
erupted.

I knew it was a mistake…but
I
had
to.

“What on Earth are you
talking about?”

He looked legitimately
surprised.

“You… wait, you don’t know?”

“Know
what?
”

Steven’s face curled into
surprised menace.

“Ohhhh…you’re in for a world
of fun.”

He whipped out his
smartphone and began fiddling with it for a minute. By the time he’d pulled up
a webpage for me, I was thoroughly confused.

But that confusion quickly
turned to horror.

It was a highly trafficked
celebrity news and gossip site called “Web News Now”, or WNN for short. Right
there at the top was the latest article:

RARE:
Trent Masters spotted harassing employees, treating mystery woman. Sugar baby,
or sexy new fling? Interview inside!

“Go on,” he whispered
wickedly. “Read it.”

Swallowing my hesitance, I
opened the article. Inside were the cell phone pictures we had seen before –
the ones that the attendant had deleted off of her phone – as well as a few
others after we had left her company.

“I don’t… but
how?
” I asked. “We made her delete
these! We watched her do it in front of us!”

“You’re
that
naïve?” Steven snarled. “By the time you two spotted her, she
could have already emailed them to herself or texted them to friends or let
them upload to the fucking cloud. There’s all sorts of ways to keep them. That
would be bad enough, but Trent got the girl
fired?
”

My spirits sank as I
continued reading.

Sure enough, there were a
few paragraphs of speculation – about Trent in public with me, buying me
clothes, and then about my relationship to him…

But after that, there was
the interview.

Turned out, that girl – who
went by the shortened “Chel” for the interview – had taken offense to Trent
snapping at her. She’d leaked the photos intentionally, by the sounds of it,
and during the small interview she went on the absolute warpath.

WNN: Meeting Trent must have
been fun, right? What was he like in person?

CHEL: Complete paranoid
jackass.

WNN: Oh? Care to go on?

CHEL: He was cool at first,
but the longer I was talking to him, the weirder he sounded. Like he was a
loose cannon or something. Then, he lost his shit at me for absolutely no
reason at all like a total f*cking douchebag.

WNN: And that’s why you
reached out to us? With the photos and the interview?

CHEL: I just think that the
world deserves to know how much of a creep and an asshole Trent Masters really
is.

WNN: You didn’t provoke him?

CHEL: He was buying clothes
for this vapid bitch who clearly didn’t know what she was doing. I worked at
the store, so I thought I’d do my actual job and, you know, help?

WNN: And that’s when he lost
his temper?

CHEL: Yeah! He threatened
me, and I decided to peace out away from that. But when she came out in our
clothes again, we have to keep an eye on the clients, right? So I dutifully
hovered out of the way.

WNN: And when he saw you, he
was angry.

CHEL: Oh, he lost his shit.
They both did. And that’s when he made a scene to my manager. I thought that
might be the end of it, but no, the jackass made some phone call and got me
f*cking fired.

WNN: Just for doing your
job.

CHEL: I used to think he was
totally cool.

WNN: Don’t meet your heroes,
as they say.

CHEL: Yeah. He even said
that to me before he pulled my livelihood out from under me. I’m a college
student, putting myself through school, and some rockstar high school dropout
decides he’s going to screw my life up? Not cool, dude.

WNN: Not cool indeed.

CHEL: And the girl didn’t
try to stop him or come to my aid at all. She just watched him tear my life up.
She’s probably f*cking him. I wouldn’t be surprised if they wanted to get rid
of me to have a quickie in the dressing room.

WNN: Tell us about this
mystery woman.

CHEL: Woman? Nah, dude, this
groupie chick is
way
out of her
fucking league with a guy like him. Didn’t see much of her. She had obvious
lovey dovey eyes for him. I mean, what girl who likes a bad boy wouldn’t?

WNN: You think she’s a
groupie?

CHEL: Or a prostitute. She
certainly dressed like the kind of hooker a rockstar would go for.

WNN: Think that’s his
girlfriend?

CHEL: No way. Trent Masters
doesn’t date. And even if he did…after he flew off the handle at me and ripped
out my only way to make a paycheck, I pity ANYONE who winds up stuck with that
low-life, grade-A son of a bitch.

WNN: Thanks for your time,
Chel!

CHEL: Thanks.

I looked up from the phone with
horror and regret plastered across my face.

“She’s lying,” I told him in
futility.

“I don’t care if she made up
every fucking word,” Steven glowered. “The truth is, you’ve been a liability
from the start. A
distraction
. You’ve
been around my client for weeks, now. Did you know that he’s not returning my
calls, texts, even my emails?”

He poked his finger into my
chest again.

“Trent’s too wound up with
you
. You’ve been keeping him preoccupied
from his duties to the band, to his
manager
,
to everything.”

“He
just
got back! He’s relaxing!”

“Yeah. And as careful as he
is, he’s back
one day
with you and
then something like this shit happens. Did you know that he’s
never
been caught by the paparazzi? Not
even a single cell phone picture? Guy is clean as a whistle. You come into the
picture, you fuck it up from the word
Go.
”

“He should be back tonight,”
I told him. “I don’t have a phone…I can wait for him and tell him to talk to
you. That it’s urgent.”

“Little late for that,
sweetie,” Steven growled. “You see,
my
job
isn’t to fuck Trent.
My
job is to
make sure that he stays on the straight and narrow. And you have made my job
this much harder.
”

 
“So, we’ll wait for him to get back, and
then we’ll talk it all over and find out what we need to do.”

“Nuh-uh. Ain’t gonna fly.”

He crossed his arms and
looked at me expectantly.

“So…
what
, then?”

“You make a decision,”
Steven told me pointedly, tilting his head. He was almost
grinning
. “You either decide to stay here and continue distracting
your little rockstar crush, or you let him
move
on
with his life and continue making the magic happen.”

“You…you want me to leave?”

“Of course I do. You’ve been
a thorn in my side __– and
his
–
since the start.”

“That’s not true,” I told
him furiously.

“No? Do you have any idea
how hard he works to keep this band together and out of trouble? And now he’s
publicly pissing off fans and getting coverage on the biggest paparazzi site on
the web.”

“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
…”