There’s a pause. “Huh. We had the final draft couriered over a few weeks ago.”
My head is a whir of questions, but I close my eyes and breathe, trying to keep my focus. “I really need to ask you about tour expenses. Have you billed for that yet?”
“Didn’t Billie tell you?” he asks. “Minus expenses, your cut of ticket sales was two hundred and eighty grand. We just cut that check last week.”
“So…I won’t owe anything?”
“Hell, no, Shiloh. That tour was pure gold.”
When I look at Billie, cringing on the couch, I know.
Me, the kid who used to con all my classmates, just got conned.
Chapter 25
Tro
When my phone rings, the sound splits my head in half. I pull my pillow around my ears. My first thought in the morning is always the same as my last thought at night. A heart-shaped face. Whiskey eyes full of fire.
Lucky.
All at once I’m wide awake and grabbing for the phone. The empty Jack bottle I’m sharing my bed with this morning falls to the floor with a thud and I’m relieved to find that’s the only thing other than me in my bed.
Last night is a blur, but as I blink my eyes open and they begin to focus, the destruction all around me is enough to know the snippets of memory I have are accurate.
I squint at the screen, knowing who I need it to be. There are things Lucky needs to hear, things I need to say out loud before I self-destruct.
It’s not her.
I’m so busy being disappointed at who it’s not that it takes me a second to register who it is.
I hit connect and bring the phone to my ear. “Hey, Kate.”
“How’s world domination coming?” she asks.
I rub my aching head and take a second before answering to decide if I need to run to the bathroom, or if the feeling I’m about to puke will pass on its own. “Fucking not good,” I say honestly.
“Been reading stuff on the internet about a rift in the band. You guys okay?”
I take a deep breath as my stomach settles and drop my head into the pillows. “Not by a long shot.”
“Anything you want to talk about?” she asks.
I shake my head as if she can see it. “Just some shit I need to work out.”
“You always land on your feet, Tro. No matter what’s going on, I have no doubt you will now.”
“Thanks. So…” I add when it occurs to me Kate’s never called just to shoot the shit, “everything okay there?”
“I’m not sure,” she answers tentatively.
I pull myself up to sit with my back propped on the headboard. “What up?”
“There were cops here asking for you a little while ago.”
The image of Lucky pressed between me and the mattress, the electric sensation of her skin on mine, her warm, wet mouth devouring me, flashes in my mind. My body predictably responds. Did someone report me? Who would know?
My next thought sends a rod of cold steel through my gut.
Grim.
He fucking narced me out to the cops because he thinks me being into Lucky is ruining the band. There’s no one else who would pull this shit.
“What did they say?” I ask, trying to tie all the loose ends together in my mind. What would Grim know? What could he have told them?
“Nothing, which really pissed me off. I tried flaunting my feminine wiles and everything. I think they must have been gay.”
I smile despite the sinking feeling in my gut. “Musta been. Those wiles are damn near impossible to resist.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” she purrs, a smile in her voice.
“You better fucking believe it.”
“But, seriously, Tro. They looked all business. And when I told them you were out of the country, they got all cagey like they were afraid you might not come back if you knew they were looking for you. They asked when you were coming home and tried to make out like it was no big deal either way, but I could tell they were all worked up over something.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them if they want to know your schedule, they should Google you.”
I huff out a laugh. “Hard to hide when I’ve got fifteen thousand pairs of eyes on me every night.”
“Anyway…I just thought you should know. They told me not to mention to you they’d been by. Which, of course, means I called you as soon as they left.”
“Thanks, Kate. You’ve always got my back.”
There’s a pause. “Yeah, well…that’s what friends do, right?”
“See you in a few days,” I say, then disconnect.
My eyes scan the destruction all around me, the evidence of my meltdown last night, and I press my hand to my face. My lower lip’s cracked and swollen from where Grim managed to get a right hook off before I made him pay.
I open my texts and check for anything new from Jamie, but there’s nothing since three this morning, just after they got Grim to the hospital.
He’s gonna be okay, dude, his text says.
So, Grim is going to survive. But the band’s not.
I can’t do this anymore.