PLAYED - A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE (35 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
…”