Chapter Twenty-Five

Indie

 

 

This was why Eric had hated me so much. He’d been afraid I’d catch something he didn’t want anyone to know about and I had. I could’ve ripped his balls off right then and there. My weeks of work gone just like that. Damn. Longer than weeks when I took my laptop into consideration. I should’ve been better about backing shit up.

“What can I do?” Cross asked, placing his hand on my hip and nudging my face up so he could see me. “What can I do besides go in there and beat the shit out of Drink? Because that’s going to happen either way.”

I snorted, then said, “No. You can’t do that.”

“I think I can take him.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said as I shook my head. I was sure he could take Eric with his anger alone. “I’m sure you can, but you can’t. It’ll just cause more problems.” Then I sighed. “Besides, once my dad finds out about all this, you probably won’t need to. He’s older. Let him be the one to go to prison.”

Cross barked out a quick laugh. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be laughing.”

“Why not? It’s funny. I mean this”—I waved my hands over the mess that my bus had become—“isn’t funny, but what I said was.”

“I love that you can make jokes at a time like this.”

When I looked back up at Cross he had a small grin on his face and I knew it was honesty, not sarcasm.

“Cross, I swear that there was a picture of Eric with the girl everyone’s talking about on the internet. There was also one of her and another girl coming off the bus.”

“Hey.” Cross leaned in and grabbed each of my arms. “I believe you. Yeah, it sucks that we don’t have it now, but we’ll find another way to get him out.”

“Dad probably knows a guy,” I said.

He chuckled and wet his lips. “Not that way. We’ll find another.” Then he pulled me into his arms and held me tightly.

We stood like that for several moments and honestly, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. Though maybe not standing in the middle of a shredded paper storm would make it better.

“So really, what can I do?” he asked.

“Help me clean this up?” I suggested.

“Absolutely.”

First I used my hand to brush all the paper off the table. Next, I did the same thing to each of the bench seats while Cross went to find a broom.

“There’s a small one under the sink,” I told him.

He squatted down, opened the cupboard, and pulled out the handheld broom and dustpan. He looked from it to the mess, then to me. “Maybe a vacuum would be better.”

“True.” Yet still, we worked to clean up. “How angry must he be to do this?”

“He’s an idiot.”

“Obviously,” I said back. “But he took the time to tear up every picture. And he didn’t just tear. He shredded. That’s a lot of anger.” I stopped cleaning and sat down on the floor. My hands began shaking and my body felt like it was vibrating. “And I was uncomfortable around him already. Maybe I should get Dean to follow me around.”

“You think Drink’s going to do something else?”

“Uh… yeah. Look around. He came in here and destroyed the thing I spend most of my time doing. If he knows I saw the picture in the first place, who’s to say he won’t make sure I can’t say anything?” I took a deep breath. “He kind of scares me.”

“Hey.” Cross slid in beside me and stretched his legs out in from of him before putting his arm around my shoulders. “I’m not going to let that happen. He’s more bark than bite anyway.”

I wasn’t sure I believed him on that.

“And if he kind of scares you, you do a great job of not showing it.”

I looked up at Cross, enjoying our closeness. His body heat radiating into mine somehow calmed me, made me feel better. A little bit anyway. “I’ve had practice. There are great guys out there and then there are assholes. Among the assholes, there are aggressive assholes. And when you’re the daughter of a super famous rock star, you get a lot of the aggressive because they assume you think you’re better than they are.”

“We’re going to come back to some of that, but where do I fall?”

As if he needed to ask. “You’re one of the good guys, Cross. Of course, you’re one of the good guys.”

“You should stay on my bus tonight,” he said.

My eyes widened and my mouth parted. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Clearly, we were something to each other. But were we there?

“Calm down,” he said. “If Drink did this, I don’t want him to catch you alone. If you’re on my bus, he won’t come there. You can hang out inside the venue until after the show, we can still have that movie on my bus, and then you stay. What do you say?”

“Uh… ”

Cross smiled and shook his head. “You can stay in the bedroom. I’ll sleep in one of the bunks.”

“What about Ransom?”

“He won’t care.”

“I mean, where does he sleep? My dad’s had his own bus for so long I never know how you guys work that. Is it whoever brings home a girl gets the bed?”

Cross’ body shook with laughter. “Not exactly. We usually trade off. Back when all four of us were on the bus, I’d just always sleep in a bunk. They’re pretty comfortable.”

“I know. I’ve spent many nights in those.”

“But now that we split to two, we trade. By the month. This is my month to have the room. And you’d be surprised how little some of the women care about where they do whatever they’re going to do.”

I raised my brow at him. Not much surprised me anymore. “Then, yeah. I think staying on your bus is a good idea. But I’ll sleep in a bunk.”