Heavy Metal (A Badboy Rockstar Romance) (9 page)

“I can handle it,” I insisted.

“You really want to go out there?”

“Yes.”

“Hang on a second,” Brandon told me and then left the room. 

Unsure of what was going on, I perched on the armrest of a couch and waited.

Several minutes later Brandon returned with the bodyguard who had helped us escape the restaurant.  “Steve will take you out front,” Brandon told me.  “I’d do it myself but I can’t exactly go out there without causing a riot.  I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Alright, have a great show!” I smiled.  Then I followed Steve out front. 

“Thanks,” I said after he had found a space right up front for me to watch the show.

“No problem.”             

He wasn’t leaving.

I looked at him questioningly.

“Brandon asked me to stay out here with you and make sure you don’t get more than you bargained for,” he explained, answering the question I hadn’t asked aloud.  “Pretend I’m not even here.  Everyone else does.”

When the show started, I almost did forget Steve was there.  It was difficult to concentrate on anything except what was happening onstage – not to mention off.  The energy in the room was palpable, and as the excitement grew, I couldn’t help but get drawn into it.  It was contagious. 

The chaos that erupted all around me as the band took the stage was unreal.  I couldn’t take my eyes off Brandon.  He was right out front, hyping up the crowd and then screaming into the microphone.  He was godlike onstage, storming from one side to the other like he owned the place. 

The noises coming out of him weren’t just ear-splitting.  They were emotionally wrought, melodic wails of anger, longing and pain.  They transformed the entire venue and clutched at my heartstrings.  He was so intense.  He was so incredible.

The crowd screamed along with Brandon.  He had them spellbound, eating right out of his hand.  It was really something to behold.  The gentle spirited, kind hearted man I knew was like a different person up there in the spotlight, bold, edgy and unapologetic.  I loved his rough edges.

Though I wasn’t sure heavy metal was necessarily my music genre of choice, I found myself caught up in the moment, transfixed by Brandon’s heartfelt, gutwrenching lyrics.  It was impossible not to feel what was going on all around me.  The entire atmosphere had shifted.

Then the moshing began.

At first I didn’t realize exactly what was going on.  I saw some shoving off to my right and initially thought a fight had broken out.  But as I cautiously watched, I saw a large group of guys deliberately crashing into one another as they banged their heads, completely caught up in the music. 

I was relieved there was no fight, but Brandon hadn’t been kidding about the violence.  When a bodysurfer went sailing past and, out of control, nearly kicked me in the head, I decided I’d had enough.

The only problem was that by then, moshing had broken out all around me.  I was pretty much trapped right in the center of it.  I was terrified someone might inadvertently stomp on my foot or worse, accidentally knock me to the ground.  That seemed like a great way to get trampled.

By then I had completely forgotten Brandon had sent Steve along to watch over me.

I only remembered when Steve reached in and pulled me out of the eye of the storm.

Grateful for his presence and utterly relieved, I allowed him to lead me to safety.  When the huge, brawny bodyguard lifted me up over the guardrail, handing me to a security guard who was standing in the aisle, I was finally able to breathe again. 

“Thank you,” I gasped as the music wrapped up and Steve led me backstage.

“Don’t thank me, I was only doing my job,” he shrugged.  “Thank Brandon.”

*****

Shortly after I arrived backstage, Brandon appeared. 

“What did you think?” he asked, wiping sweat from his brow as he cracked open a bottle of water.  His voice was hoarse and it was no wonder – how could anyone scream at the top of their lungs night after night the way he did?  It was a miracle he didn’t have chronic laryngitis! 

“It was definitely...an experience,” I replied, still somewhat shaken from my close call in the moshpit.  “I won’t forget it anytime soon, that’s for sure.  Are you all done for the night?” I asked, having missed the tail end of the show.

“Not yet,” he replied as the fans’ chants began to grow louder and more insistent.  “We’ll wait for five or ten minutes, catch our breath and then go back out for the encore.”  He looked thoughtful and then predicted, “I think you might want to see the encore.”

A few minutes later, the band took the stage again to the roar of thundering applause.  I stood at the side alongside a few crew members and one of the girls from the tour bus.  After two ear shattering, fast songs, the lights dimmed.

The spotlight shone on Brandon.  The other guys set down their instruments and momentarily cleared off of the stage.  Out front, Brandon picked up a guitar and then sat down on a wooden stool one of the crew members ran out with.  He adjusted the microphone, setting it at the proper height.

Then Brandon leaned forward and, in that signature husky voice of his, spoke.

“I want to try something new tonight.”

His voice was scratchy from all it had endured, but in a sexy, gravelly sort of way.

“Lately somebody special has been on my mind a lot.  She’s inspired me to write this song, and I’m going to warn you all right now that it’s a ballad.  There’s no screaming, no wailing on the drums...it’s just me and this guitar.  Are you guys ready?”

A cheer rose up from the audience.

Brandon smiled and squinted a bit under the bright spotlight.  “This goes out to the woman who woke me up.  Until I met her, I didn’t even know I’d been asleep all these years.  She knows who he is,” he said, casting a look over his shoulder towards me.

As he began to strum the guitar, I was frozen in place.  Had Brandon really written a song for me?  Had he just said I inspired him?  And what was that about me waking him up?  No one had ever said anything remotely as nice as that about me before.  I could hardly believe it.

When he started to sing in a low, quiet, soulful way, I forgot how to breathe.  But my euphoric, starry-eyed admiration quickly took a sharp turn when the words of Brandon’s ballad started to sink in.  Horror quickly turned to anger as I listened to him in a state of absolute shock.

Fiery red hair and skin of porcelain

Oh, you’re quite the sight – and you don’t even know it

You don’t think anyone’s listening when you cry at night – but I hear you

You don’t think you can do any better than him, but the way he treats you isn’t right

I hate to see that fear in your eyes

Such a beautiful, sad girl

Don’t give up, because you’re stronger than you know

Don’t give in, because you’re stronger than you know

You’re stronger than you know

The song went on for two or three more verses but by then I wasn’t even hearing it anymore.  Instead, I was silently seething, mortified and deeply hurt by what Brandon was doing.  The sense of betrayal I felt was all-consuming.

When Brandon came offstage a few minutes later, made a beeline for me and asked me what I thought of the song he’d written, I didn’t hold back.

Chapter 08

“What do you mean I’m an asshole?” Brandon demanded, looking stunned and more than a bit confused.  “What are you pissed off about?  I don’t get it.  I thought you’d like it.  I wrote it for you, Hayley.”

“You didn’t write it for me,” I retorted through gritted teeth, not wanting to make a scene.  “You wrote it
about
me so you could sing it for tens of thousands of people.  Do you have any idea how that made me feel?”

“What’s the issue?”

“It’s...
exploitative
!” I exploded, struggling to find the right word to convey how I felt.  “Is that all I am to you?  Is the only reason you’ve kept me around because I’m some sick, sad, pathetic muse?  Is my life entertainment to you?  Is that it?”

Brandon’s face fell.  “No, of course that’s not it.”  He was quiet for a moment and then asked, “Hayley, look, can we go somewhere private and talk about this?”

“I don’t know.” 

I wasn’t used to talking about the things that bothered me, because Carl never would have listened or cared anyway.  I was used to bottling everything up and filing it away, never to be spoken of ever again.  Brandon’s request to discuss what had upset me felt foreign and strange.

“We can go into that room over there,” Brandon suggested, pointing to a door down the hall from the dressing room.  “I think it should be empty.” 

He looked like it was taking every ounce of willpower he had not to break down and for some reason that only made me angrier.  How dare he get emotional about what he’d done to me?  How dare he try to make me feel guilty for being upset?

“Fine,” I muttered, feeling myself inwardly shutting down.

He tried to guide me by putting his arm on my elbow, but I immediately jerked away. 

“Don’t touch me!” I snapped.

“Sorry.”

We went into the room down the hall and Brandon shut the door behind us. 

He offered me a chair but I declined, choosing instead to stand there glowering at him with my arms crossed.  He pulled the chair over so that it was directly in front of me and sat down, staring up into my face with an expression of earnestness that made me start to second guess myself.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he said.

“What’s going on?  What’s going on is that you decided to air my dirty laundry in front of everyone without so much as even asking me first!  You completely ambushed me!  You didn’t even ask if it was okay first.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his tone sincere.  “It’s what I do...I write songs about people I know and places I see and things I experience.  I guess it was presumptive of me but I honestly had no idea it would upset you.  If I’d known, I never would have done it, Hayley.  I won’t sing the song again,” he promised.

“The damage is already done anyway,” I muttered.  “Did you see how many people had their phones out the whole time to record the show?  It’s probably already all over the Internet.”

“Sorry.”

“You already said that,” I grumbled.

Brandon said nothing.  Instead he looked up at me, patiently waiting for me to spill my guts.

After a brief but tense standoff, the real issue finally exploded out of me like a detonated bomb.

“Is that really what you think?” I demanded, my pride wounded and my feelings hurt.

“What do you mean?”

“That song makes me sound pathetic,” I told him accusingly.  “It makes it sound like I’m some dimwitted moron who settled because she didn’t know what else to do.  If you had any idea about the situation I was in at home...Carl was the lesser of two evils,” I reminded Brandon. “I did what I had to do in order to survive, okay?  You have a lot of nerve to make it sound like –”

“Hayley,” Brandon calmly but firmly interjected, bringing my angry tirade to an abrupt halt.

“What?” I snarled, doubly upset that he was now interrupting me.

“Did you listen to the whole song?” he asked quietly.

“What kind of question is that?  I was standing there the whole time, wasn’t I?” I shot back.

“Yes, but did you listen – I mean really listen – to the song?”

“What are you getting at?” I demanded.  “Get to the point, if there is one.”

“I don’t know if it matters...if it will make you any less angry...but the song wasn’t about how I see you,” Brandon explained.  “It was about how you see yourself, and how you are capable of so much more than you realize.  I think you’re amazing.  I only wish you could see it yourself.”

That threw me for a loop, mostly because as much as I hated to admit it, he’d pretty much hit the nail head on.  Maybe I wasn’t even angry that Brandon had written a song about me.  What I was actually angry about was how true it had been.  The truth, as they say, hurts.

“Hayley, I think you’re beautiful and smart and the best listener I’ve ever met,” Brandon told me.  “I meant what I said about you waking me up.  I have so much respect for you and everything you’ve gone through.  I’m really sorry if I made it seem like I was trivializing it.”

“It kind of did.”

“That wasn’t my intention at all, I swear.  I would never knowingly do anything to hurt you.”

As much as I wanted to remain furious – because it was easier to feel anger than anything else – I believed Brandon.  I believed him wholeheartedly, with every fiber of my being.  So I dropped the tough girl act and uncrossed my arms.

“I may have overreacted,” I admitted.

“It’s okay.  I screwed up.  I’m an idiot.”

I finally met Brandon’s gaze, and the second our eyes met I felt the last of my defences dissolve.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me too,” he replied.  “Should we hug it out?” he offered, opening his arms to me.