Consumed (23 page)

Like the last time I flew from Atlanta to Nashville, this flight is depressing, and I’m sick to my stomach by the time I step off the plane. The nausea only gets worse as I check my text messages while Gram drives home. There’s one from Tori and two from Ashley. Tori’s message is upbeat, letting me know that she can’t wait for me to come to Los Angeles soon, but when I read what Ashley wrote, my heart freezes mid-beat.

9:52AM:
Please tell me the band isn’t really breaking up?

9:54AM
: Because if they are, I still love you but that SUCKS!

I’m shaking as I Google Your Toxic Sequel, and it takes me several tries to type coherently enough for the search to yield something worthwhile. Once it does, I scan the newest gossip articles. Sleaze Cop, Buzz Online, and Alternative Entertainment—they all say the same thing: Your Toxic Sequel is calling it quits. And it’s all because of one of the member’s relationship with a certain redhead from Music City.

This can’t be happening.

As soon as Gram and I get home, I quietly turn down her offer of eating lunch in the kitchen and race upstairs to my bedroom. Clutching my phone, I call the first person I can think of to confirm the news. Kylie answers happily, speaking theatrically into her phone, “Hello beautiful! I’m so pissed that I missed you this morning, and—”

“Is the band breaking up?” I blurt out. 

Kylie quiet for a few seconds but then she releases a laugh. “Why the hell would you think that?”

“I—” I grip the edge of my computer desk and ease down into the rolling chair behind it. “It was on a gossip website, and one of my friends asked me about it.”

Kylie sighs. “Babe,” she says in a serious voice, “I thought I warned you about this a long time ago. Never, ever read the crap they write online. It’s almost always wrong, and you’ll drive yourself crazy worrying over it. But to answer your question, no, the band is absolutely not breaking up.”

“Thank god,” I say in a rushed breath.

I hear Wyatt whispering something to her in the background, but after she tells him to give her a few minutes, she comes back on the line. “Alright, tell me what’s going on.”

Once I start talking, it’s almost like it’s impossible for me to stop. I walk back and forth across the hardwood floor of my bedroom, telling Kylie everything from the issues with Sam to the YTS fan forums. The only thing that I leave out is Lucas’s proposal. It seems wrong to bring that up when the wounds from last night are still so fresh.

“I’m so sorry, babe,” Kylie murmurs once I’m done talking. “God, why didn’t you say anything?”

A painful cry rips from the back of my throat and I realize that I’m crying. “I—I didn’t want to screw with Lucas’s music.”

Kylie makes a disgusted noise. “Screw Lucas’s music. You—you’re what’s important. Music will never be more important than you.”

Even after Kylie has to go five minutes later, those words are what stick with me.

After I send Ashley several messages to reassure her that YTS is definitely not breaking up, I spend the rest of the day doing laundry and helping my grandmother clean the cabin. Because she’s so observant, I make an extra effort, so she won’t notice how torn I am. But following dinner—which Seth comes over to help eat just to leave in favor of a frat party afterward—she tells me in the politest way possible to go out.

I cast a sideways glance to where she’s sitting in her recliner, her feet propped up as she watches an episode of one of her favorite reality shows—the one with roses and ridiculously gorgeous people “looking for true love.” 

“Are you trying to get rid of me, Gram?” I tease.

Turning the corners of her mouth up, she motions her head in a negative motion. “No, I’m saying that I’m an 80 year old woman. You look like you could use a little company.”

Kicking off my pink flip-flops, I lie down on my side and smile over at her. “You’re 79, Gram. And I’m just fine staying right here.”

Keeping to her schedule, Gram goes to bed a couple of hours later. Alone, I watch TV until my brain begins to hurt. As I climb the steps to go upstairs, I reconsider my grandmother’s suggestion to go out. Pulling out my phone, I send Ashley a message asking what’s going on at her parents’ bar tonight. Twenty minutes late she messages to tell me about a Five Finger Death Punch cover band, and a few minutes after that, she sends another text. 

10:39PM:
I hope the silence means you’re getting dressed? I’m not working tonight, so I’m all yours.

After I drag on a pair of jeans and a white tee shirt with leather shoulders, I drive downtown. I loop the nearby area twice before I resign myself to parking in a paid lot several blocks away from The Beacon. I pay for my parking ticket at the automated machine, slide it onto my dashboard and grab my bag from the front seat. 

I don’t hear someone coming up behind me, so I jump when I turn around to find a tall, lanky guy standing next to the front of my car. His face is worked into a pinched, angry scowl, and instinctively, I take a step back. 

His nostrils flare. “You’ve. Fucked up. Everything.”

Backing up a few more steps, I shake my head quickly, darting my gaze around the empty parking lot in panic. “I think you’ve got me mistaken for—”

“Sienna? The bitch that’s going to ruin Lucas’s life? No, I don’t have you mistaken.” Seething, he moves closer towards me, reaching deep into his pocket for something. 

My chest constricts and I struggle to find my voice. When I do, it’s small, barely audible. “No, I think you have me mixed with someone else, I—”

“I followed you from your house, you lying bitch,” he yells. And this—this is when the true fear sets in. I try to take off in the other direction, but he tackles me to the ground, knocking me onto my back. My head hits the ground with a sickening thud, and the air whooshes out of my body. 

As the man sits on top of me, I struggle to breath. To think. To fight.

“Get off of me,” I wheeze. 

When I open my mouth to scream, his fist slams into my stomach—once, twice. The only thing that stops the third hit is that I guard my belly with my hands, and then, the blow catches my wrist. Burning pain shoots through my arm. The next time I try to scream, his hands close around my throat. 

This guy could kill me. 

This guy could kill me, and he knows where I live. 

My hands fly up to his arms, pushing and scratching. I scrape my fingernails into his skin, dragging roughly as my head starts to spin and my vision clouds. He lets out a howl, moving his hands from my throat to the sides of my face where he squeezes hard. 

It’s the worst physical pain I’ve ever felt.

But it’s not cutting off my ability to make a noise. 

This time, when I scream, it comes out. Hoarse. Broken. Dripping with fear. 

His palm crashes into my face, making me dry heave. 

Reaching out, I drag my fingers over the ground as I try to find something, anything that will help me fight this man off. When my fingertips tangle into my key chain, I grasp it and jab it up at the man’s face. 

My car key makes contact with his cheek, and he falls off of me with blood rushing down his face. I stumble to my feet, trying to gather my bearings just long enough to run. In the distance, I can hear someone yelling, but I’m not sure from where. 

“Come here, bitch,” the man growls, lunging towards me. 

I don’t think. 

I act. 

My thumb closes down on the pepper spray Sinjin gave me, and I hold it until the man crumbles to the ground, screaming and grasping at his face. 

I don’t release the trigger until two men come racing into the parking lot. 

Because when I do let go, I lose consciousness altogether.

Lucas

“You’re drinking, Luke.” Arching her eyebrows, Kylie stirs the tip of her finger around her own drink—cranberry juice and Sprite. “A lot. You should call her.”

I down the rest of my beer, my seventh or eighth since coming backstage. “Jesus, I haven’t missed your nagging,” I say. Kylie’s mouth drops open, but I stare straight ahead to where Cal’s grinning for pictures with Brady and a petite brunette. “Five minutes ago you were saying how amazing you thought the show was.” 

Sitting her drink on the floor, my sister rests her elbows on her knees and cocks her head, her dark hair falling to one side. “It was amazing. But now you’re getting drunk, and I’m getting worried.”

She’s been saying she was worried since she met up with us in Atlanta this morning. She was worried after talking to Sienna this morning and after we had lunch with our mom and dad. And then again when I missed the sound check late this afternoon. 

 Nobody had asked where I was, but my sister wore that disappointed, straight face when I ran into her backstage right before going on to perform. She knew I went to Sam, but I didn’t tell her that my ex was nowhere to be found or how I discovered that she really has moved—there are new occupants in that fancy ass apartment I used to pay for. And I sure as fuck wouldn’t tell Kylie that the reason I went to see Sam had nothing to do with money. 

After all this time, she wouldn’t have bought it anyway.

“I’m ready for this shit to be over,” I say, dropping my head back against the couch. 

“The tour?”

The tour. This lie I let myself crawl deeper inside. “Yeah.” I release a bitter laugh. “The tour.”

“Ugh. There are so many things I want to say to you—”

“Have I heard them before?”

Kylie is quiet, and I lift my head to challenge her eyes. She lifts her shoulders and then drops them. “Some of it, yes.”

“Then I’m not fucking interested. I get it. I know where I fucked up.”

“Lucas—”

I nod at Wyatt who’s talking to two female reporters and ignore the way the quick movement gives me a headache. “You flew here to see your husband, not to babysit me.”

Her cheeks are sucked in as she slides off of the couch, and her brown eyes are hard as she stares me down. “Trust me, babysitting your stubborn ass is the last thing that was on my schedule for tonight.” She stalks off, and when she reaches Wyatt, he glances over her head at me, his expression grim. He places his mouth against the top of her hair for a few moments, and when he looks back up again, he mouths something. A threat.

So I do the only thing that makes sense.

I grab another drink.

For the first time during this tour, I’m not up at seven fucking AM. I stay in my compartment, in my bed, letting what’s left of Sienna’s sweet scent torture my dreams. She’s everywhere and nowhere, and I know how much I’ve messed up. 

I should have just told her.

It would have made everything a hell of a lot easier, and maybe—maybe I’d be able to move on.

My phone vibrating from beneath the pillow is what finally drags my ass out of bed. I swing my legs over the side of the mattress and study the unfamiliar Nashville number on the screen for a few seconds before answering. I’ve heard the voice on the other line before—Sienna’s brother—and it’s not something I want to wake up to at 10AM. I’ve gotten into it with this little shit before, and I’m prepared to do it again, but then I stop and listen to what he’s saying.

That Sienna has been hurt. Badly.

Attacked. 

Beaten in a parking lot. 

And by one of my fans.

When the call ends, I’m numb. The feeling comes back a little at a time, and once it’s all there, I finally realize that the broken noise resonating through the bus belongs to me.