“Yeah, they’re all good guys.” I stepped back into the hallway. “Where do you think she could be now?”
“The last text I got from her said she was going home. And I told her to go because I was with Simon and he said he’d get me a ride…”
“But he didn’t.”
“But he didn’t…”
“And you ended up with Liam?”
She started crying again.
I was trying to imagine how it had played out, and every possible scenario was ugly and seemed very un-Simon/un-Liam like to me. But what did I know? How well did I really know these guys? And how crazy was I to have trusted my daughter with them? I excused myself and rejoined Hayes in the suite.
“Desmond isn’t answering his mobile,” he said. “Neither is Fergus.”
“She’s a mess. We can’t just leave her there. Let’s just let her sit in here until her phone charges and she finds her friend and we can put her in a cab and send her home.”
He shook his head, his eyes wide, his hair sticking in sixty-nine directions. “She can’t come in here. She’s freaking out. I told you I don’t do well with women who freak out.”
“Is she a woman or a girl? Because she looks like a girl to me.”
“She’s borderline.”
“Hayes, that’s someone’s daughter.”
“I understand that. But she can’t come into this room.” He said it with such conviction it alarmed me.
“I’m just going to make sure she’s okay and call her an Uber.”
“She can’t come into this room.”
“Who are you?”
“Right now? I’m Hayes Campbell. And I can’t have that girl’s DNA in my room.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Look at me, Solène. I’m completely serious right now. I cannot have that girl’s DNA in my hotel room. I don’t know what happened with Simon and Liam, and I love them like brothers, but I cannot get involved.”
“Fine. Fine. I’ll take care of it. But tell your friends they can’t fuck underage girls and leave them crying in the hallway.”
His hands were at his head, pulling at his hair. “See. This is why I don’t mess with anyone under thirty.”
“That’s because you have mommy issues.”
He cocked his head. “What?”
“You heard me. Just go. Go back in the bedroom. Go lie down in your own DNA. I’ll take care of it.”
*
“How old are you? Be honest with me,” I said to the girl, back out in the hallway. She’d eaten off most of her lipstick and I found myself wondering whose dick she’d sucked.
“Sixteen.”
Shit. “How old did you tell them you were?”
She paused. “Eighteen.”
Fuck. “You are not supposed to be here.”
“I know. I just want to go home.”
“Do you need to go to a hospital?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? This would be the time to go if you’re going to go.” I felt awful throwing Simon and Liam under the bus. Where was Desmond and why wasn’t he handling this?
“I’m sure. I’m okay. I just need to go home.”
I sighed. “Okay, I’m going to call you an Uber.”
“Thank you,” she said, looking up at me, her brown eyes smeared with mascara. Like a baby panda. What the hell had they done to her?
“You look really familiar to me,” she added then. “Do you have a kid at Windwood?”
My heart stopped. Fuck. “What’s your name, honey?”
She told me.
“Where do you live?”
“Brentwood.”
“I’m going to go inside for a second. Stay here. Don’t move. Okay?”
Hayes was lying in bed, texting like a demon when I returned to the bedroom.
“How is she doing?” he asked.
“She fucking goes to school with Isabelle.”
“Holy shit.”
“Ya think?” I’d located my purse and was tearing through my wallet. “I’m giving her cash for a cab. I can’t have an Uber car on my account taking a sixteen-year-old girl back to Brentwood. How the hell did I end up here? I did not sign up for this. This is not cool, Hayes.”
He sighed deeply, placing down his phone. “I called the front desk. They’re sending someone up to make sure she’s okay, and they’re going to put her in a courtesy car and take her home.”
I spun to look at him. “Did you really do that?”
“I really did that.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded. “You’re welcome. Will you come back to bed now?”
*
In the morning, things were not pretty. My head ached, my body ached, I was no longer twenty-four. Hell, I wasn’t even thirty-five.
We showered and ordered up room service, and then got back in bed. The shared realization that we were running out of time. That he was leaving. That things would not be the same. I was starting to get a feel of what life on tour might be like for him. And I did not like it.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he said. His voice was craggy, his eyes red, but he was still beautiful to me.
“She was young.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I want to believe that if that were Isabelle, you would have helped her. You wouldn’t have left her out there in the hallway crying at four in the morning.”
Hayes sighed. “Obviously I would have helped Isabelle because I know Isabelle. But there are so many, Solène. There are so many. And I can’t know them all.
“Come here,” he said. He pulled me into him, tucking me into the crook of his arm. “I’m going to tell you a story, okay. But don’t say anything until I’m done.”
“Okay…”
“Two years ago, we were in Tokyo, on the Fizzy Smile tour. We were staying at the Palace Hotel, like on the twentieth floor. Incredible views. And after our show, this girl came back to the hotel with me. She wasn’t super-young. Like twenty-three or something. When we were done, I said to her, in the most polite way possible, ‘This was lovely, but I have a very early wake-up call tomorrow and it would probably be best if you didn’t spend the night.’ And she looked at me like she didn’t understand what I was saying. I mean it’s possible she didn’t understand what I was saying, because I speak like five words of Japanese: ‘hello,’ ‘please,’ ‘good luck,’ and ‘thank you for the fish.’”
I looked at him dumbfounded.