“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” I asked.

Kayla shrugged. “I figured you would’ve looked Grant up. Done your research. Figured out just how fucked up his past was thanks to trusting a groupie.”

I sighed and leaned back against the cab. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this changed everything, but it certainly painted Grant in a new light. I had no idea that he’d been in a relationship with a girl he met on tour. A girl he stood beside for nine months because he thought he’d knocked her up in a moment of passion in the back of his bus and wanted to do right by her. A woman who’d ultimately betrayed him when the kid popped out and it turned out it wasn’t even Grant’s.

And we’re not even talking about the sort of scenario where the baby comes out and it’s a different color or anything dramatic like that. It definitely wasn’t the sort of situation you’d see on daytime TV or read about in some scandalous article your great aunt Mildred forwarded in an email. No, there were plenty of pictures on fansites that depicted a happy Grant standing in the hospital with what he thought was his new baby daughter. Pictures from before his manager insisted on a paternity test before Grant signed any birth certificate and it turned out whoops, mommy was trying to use someone else’s baby as an anchor to connect her self to Grant in a more permanent manner.

Talk about a sordid story. It really made my heart go out to him. It also made me wonder if maybe he’d been a little more sincere than I gave him credit for when we were together. I’d assumed he was a womanizer and all that stuff about wanting to settle down was just part of the array of tools he deployed to get into unsuspecting or naive girls’ pants, but knowing the back story made me wonder if there wasn’t more to it.

It made me wonder if I hadn’t made a terrible mistake by completely abandoning him. Twice.

“Kayla, in the future I want you to be right behind me whispering any relevant Twenty Promises information in my ear at all times. I want you to remember that when it comes to this band I know absolutely nothing, and I need someone there to translate and fill me in on relevant info that will keep me from making a complete ass of myself. Again.”

Kayla nodded. “Got it. So do you think that was true what he said about Blake pining for me all this time? He never tried to get in touch with me or anything.”

I shook my head. “I just don’t know. I don’t know what to think about anything that comes out of Grant Thompson’s mouth, but I’m going to find out one way or another tonight.”

The cab pulled up to the arena, nothing but the biggest for Twenty Promises. Especially now that they were riding high on the strength of this new single, “Mia’s Song,” that I hadn’t even heard in its entirety yet. Sure Kayla had tried to play it for me when we were getting ready in the apartment, but I nipped that one right in the bud. If I was going to hear this song then I wanted to hear it for the first time in person with him playing it.

That seemed only fair considering he wrote the damn thing about me.

As we pulled up to the arena I looked out at the crowd gathering and I felt the hair starting to stand up on the back of my neck. There was a crowd gathered there and they were all holding up signs. Those girls definitely hadn’t been there at the last concert. At least they hadn’t been there when I walked in, though to be fair I’d arrived a little late because I was busy having a dinner date with the man who ended up being the lead singer for the damned band, but I was pretty sure Kayla would’ve said something about an angry crowd like this if they were there before.

“That’s new,” Kayla said.

Okay, so they were definitely new. And what did their signs say? I stepped out of the cab and got a good look. And immediately wanted to turn right back around and hop into the cab but it was too late. The guy was already speeding off. I guess Kayla took it upon herself to pay him.

The signs were all about me. “Where are you Mia?” “Who is Mia?” “We know you’re here!” “You can’t have Grant!”

Okay, so those signs were definitely going from a little crazy to downright hostile. It was enough that I didn’t want to go through the crowd. I was suddenly terrified. All of the crazy visions I had of women at one of these concerts ripping me apart were suddenly hitting me again, and it was all I could do not to turn and go running. Of course the movement would probably draw their attention which would be even worse.

“Well there’s something you don’t see every day,” Kayla said.

The crazies were milling around in front of the arena entrance. Milling around right in front of the Will-Call ticket booth. Damn it. Grant mentioned that he was leaving tickets for me, so of course I would have to go to the ticket booth to get my tickets. And of course the craziest of his fans would be picketing that booth in an attempt to keep me from getting into the concert and having a chance with Grant. I’m sure in their crazy minds preventing me from making it to the concert was also preventing me from getting in the way of whatever fantasy world relationship they’d constructed for themselves.

“We’re going to have to find another way in,” I said. “I don’t care if it’s talking to security or something, but there’s no way I’m going near that crowd of women.”

“I think you’re being crazy Mia,” Kayla said. “It’s not like they know what you look like or anything. How could they?”

“There she is!”

A girl was pointing at me with her mouth wide open screaming and it was hard not to make a comparison to a cheesy old zombie movie or that one about the pod aliens taking over the world. As she screamed all the other girls staring turned to look and then they were moving towards me en masse.

I didn’t stop to think. I just grabbed Kayla by the arm and then we were sprinting. I wasn’t sure where we were sprinting to, I just knew we needed to get the hell away from that crowd of crazy concert goers before they really and truly ripped us to shreds. I needed to get in there to see Grant, damn it, and I wasn’t going to let a bunch of girls who merely fantasized about getting with him ruin my chances of maybe actually getting with him again.

We ran up the steps towards the arena. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Maybe I was still trying to get as close to Grant as possible. I needed to at least hear him out. I needed to know if I’d made a terrible mistake by turning him away.

Meanwhile behind us there was a giant cry being taken up. It seemed that the crazies were forming the core of the group chasing me, but once other girls realized what was going on they were starting to chase after me as well. Yeah, I could definitely see a girl who faked a pregnancy, or I guess it would be more accurate to say she tried to fake the paternity of her pregnancy, would come from a group of these nutters.

We reached the entrance when we were barred by a ticket holder of all things. She stood there with a scowl on her face.

“No ticket, you’re not coming in,” she said.

“Are you serious? Those women are chasing me!”

The girl looked over my shoulder and then back at me. And she smiled. No, what she did wasn’t a smile. That was a full on grin. A big wide grin that said she knew exactly what she was doing by quite literally leaving me to the wolves. She must be a fan too. She must have her own fantasies about Grant that were never going to come true, but at the very least she could make sure they also didn’t come true for the one girl near this arena who had a chance.

Damn. Twenty Promises fans really were crazy. I’d had a taste with Kayla, but it was nothing compared to how deep this insane rabbit hole could actually go!

I turned to the crowd. I figured this was it. I figured this was the way I was going to die. It would probably make the news tonight. The world finally finds out who “Mia” from “Mia’s Song” is after she’s ripped to shreds by some crazy Twenty Promises fans. Talk about a headline. Traffic Floozy would probably be all about it considering how she was hanging all over Grant earlier during that interview.

I suppose in a way it was appropriate. Ripped apart by the very people I’d looked down on for so many years right when I was on the verge of maybe joining their ranks, depending on how tonight went. I guess I knew how tonight was going to go now, though, and it was going to be with either me in a morgue or a hospital room. Maybe both depending on how bad the beating was and how long it took for the killing blow to do its work.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I heard Kayla let out a terrified shriek. I felt something slam into me. From the side.

Huh. That was odd. There was that crazy ticket bitch behind me keeping me from getting into the arena and relative safety. There were the crazy wannabe groupie bitches in front of me acting like some sort of horny zombie horde that was out for eliminating the perceived competition rather than going for my brains.

There shouldn’t have been anyone off to the side unless maybe one of the girls had decided to pull a flanking maneuver to keep me from escaping. Not that I figured an angry mob had that sort of thinking ability. Besides, some of the girls in that angry mob had been beasts, but they definitely didn’t look strong enough to lift me up and carry me like a football player running a touchdown.

I opened my eyes. The pavement was flying past me underneath in a blur and the disappointed cries of that crazy crowd was coming from somewhere behind me and to the right. Definitely not where I was expecting. I was expecting them right on top of me starting the beating or the ripping or whatever it was they were planning. I knew it didn’t seem like it was going to be particularly pleasant.

Only it wasn’t going down like that. No, there was a strong dark arm wrapped around me. I turned to look in the other direction and Kayla was looking just as surprised under a similarly beefy looking dark arm attached to a very muscular body that was pumping and carrying us away from the angry crowd as though we weighed nothing. I tried to twist around to look at our rescuer, but he grunted and squeezed and I figured it would be better to keep movement down to a minimum.

We ran like that for a couple of minutes and then our rescuer was putting us down. I found myself being put down in front of what looked like a side entrance with a bunch of security people forming up. I looked over my shoulder and realized they might be needed. Our rescuer had been ridiculously fast, especially considering he was carrying two of us like we were so many sacks of potatoes, but the angry crowd had apparently followed and it looked like they were gaining ground.

Damn.

Finally I turned to look at my rescuer and I blinked in surprise. I recognized the guy. I didn’t know his name, but I sure as hell recognized him. From the way Kayla was staring she recognized him as well. The guy had been sitting outside Grant’s bus when Kayla and I made our early morning escape.

“You!” I said.

“Me!” he replied in a deep rumbling voice and with a huge smile on his face. He extended a hand and I took it. The guy was strong, but then again I don’t know why I should be surprised that he was strong after he’d just pulled that strongman number with me and Kayla.

“You can call me Jake,” he said. “Grant hoped you might show up and thought there might be some trouble, so he sent me out there to keep an eye on things. Good thing too.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the crowd of women who were approaching, but they seemed to be slowing down as they got closer to Jake and his security team. There was something about the way those guys looked that made me think they were maybe a little more skilled than your conventional event security that was provided by the arena. They had a look in their eyes that said they’d been to this war zone before, surrounded by crazy women trying to get through to rip someone to pieces, and it wasn’t fazing them in the least.

It was actually kinda comforting to be in the middle of a group like that. Especially after being convinced I was on the verge of meeting my maker.

“So what’s the plan now?” I asked. “There’s not a chance we’re going to get through those crazies to get our tickets.”

Not that I thought there was much of a chance of getting through into the arena even if we did manage to get our tickets. I thought about that crazy bitch who left us to the crazy fan girls. I’d have to go around the entrances trying to find some older guy who wasn’t an obvious Twenty Promises fan, and by the time we got around to that we probably would’ve been pulled apart whether or not we had security keeping an eye on us.

Something told me that crowd of crazy was only going to multiply exponentially with every passing moment.

Jake laughed again. He seemed to do that a lot. He actually seemed like a pretty cheerful guy for someone who’d probably seen some shit if he was running security for Twenty Promises.

“Tickets? You don’t need tickets to get in there if you’re with us,” he said. “In fact I’m going to escort you right to front row center where my guys can keep an eye on you.”

I breathed a sigh of relief at that. If this is how the crowd acted when we were outside the arena I didn’t even want to think about how bad it would be when we got in there and were in the middle of the crowd. I could only hope that people wouldn’t get as rowdy inside the arena as they did outside.

I felt like Cinderella going to the ball as we made our way through the backstage parts of the arena. I wondered if we were going to go through the area where the band was getting ready, I thought I could hear the sound of electric guitars being tested somewhere in the distance, but unfortunately we didn’t see any of the guys.

Or maybe that was fortunately. Being in the arena, knowing he was around here somewhere, thinking about everything he’d said on the interview earlier and what an idiot I’d been, if I did happen to see Grant backstage there was a good chance I’d jump him right there and then he wouldn’t be able to get anything done because he wouldn’t be able to take the stage.

I could see that headline just as clearly as I could see the one about getting ripped to shreds, though this one was a little more pleasant. For me at least. “Thompson Misses Concert Banging Love of Life.” Love of his life? Maybe that was taking things a little too far, but a girl could dream right?

Finally we were passing into the arena proper under the watchful eyes of Jake and his security people. We were moving up to a seat in the front row center. They’d apparently changed the configuration of the concert for this second leg of the tour because there wasn’t a giant phallic stage thrusting out into the middle of the crowd where they could walk around and interact with people.

We took our seats and I breathed a sigh of relief. What a night. Going from having no idea Grant was in town to coming down to the arena and nearly getting ripped apart to sitting front row center where I was finally going to hear this song he’d written that seemed to be tearing up the charts. Talk about one hell of a roller coaster of an evening, and it wasn’t even over yet.

I looked over to Kayla and grinned. She did the same, reaching out to take my hand. She gave it a squeeze and we both turned to the stage staring with the sort of anticipation that was usually the sole domain of crazy fan girls.

I suppose that was another big change from the last time I was at a Twenty Promises concert. I might not be as crazed as some of those girls I’d seen out in front of the arena, but I was definitely feeling like a crazed fan girl. I was about to see Grant Thompson and I couldn’t wait. My body was on fire thinking about that moment when he was going to pop out on stage with his guitar in front of him looking every inch the sexy rock god that he was.

The lights went down. The crowd started screaming all around us, and I was screaming right along with them. I couldn’t wait for Grant to take the stage.

Kayla had fulfilled that old middle school promise at long last. I fucking loved Twenty Promises. One member of Twenty Promises in particular. I just hoped he was still willing to love me back.

I was about to find out.