Hide and Seek: A Rock Games Novel: Vol. 2 by Nicole S. Goodin (16)

I was in love with her.

I wasn’t one of those guys that went around denying the truth.

I love her.

I knew she was feeling something for me too. She may not have been in love with me yet, but I knew she felt something.

I caught her looking at me often enough and she always had a smile on her face when I was around.

She was calmer when I was near and when we were alone, and really together, I felt like I was seeing the version of herself that she kept hidden under that layer of false confidence she wore like a second skin.

The same way I wore my cool, composed armour to face the world, Hannah wore a loud laugh and a smart mouth. It was her shield, her way of being fearless.

I could see right through it. I always had.

I saw the beautiful, down-to-earth woman that she was under her makeup… I saw the fragile heart she held close… I saw the insecure mind she kept hidden… I saw it all.

I saw her.

And I loved everything I saw.

I knew damn well I could never walk away from her – not unless she didn’t want me there, but I couldn’t carry on like this. I didn’t want to have her once and then have her ripped out from underneath me again.

I couldn’t watch her battle with herself any longer.

I could see it in her eyes that she didn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth anymore than I did.

She wanted more than this, but she was scared.

I could almost smell her fear from across the room; it was so obvious she may as well have had it tattooed across her forehead.

I was going to ease those fears, even if it took me the rest of my life.

If she was there with me then it would be a life well spent.

The minute I got back from this trip, I was going to tell her how I felt, and she was going to hear it whether she liked it or not.

I tapped out a text to her as I waited for Parker to finish his interviews.

Her instant reply made me smile.

I was chuckling to myself and scrolling through my Facebook, waiting for her reply when I saw it.

Holy fuck.

This was not good.

This was bad – epic proportions kind of bad.

Shit, shit, shit...

I knew Hannah would see it. She had an addiction to gossip and one too many subscriptions to those stupid celebrity apps.

I had about three minutes if I had to guess, before she laid her eyes on what was taking over the internet.

I was wrong.

My phone dinged with an incoming message.

Jesus Christ.

It was worse than I thought.

The image of Parker and his ex-girlfriend, Katie, stared back at me from the screen of my phone. That silly bitch, Shelley Corbett’s words making a mockery of everything I knew to be true.

‘When the baby momma is away, Parker will play’

It was complete bullshit – and ‘baby momma’… for fuck’s sake.

Friggin’ Lotte.

She thought she was so damn funny, but that fake pregnancy stunt she’d pulled a little while back had turned into a total logistical nightmare for me.

I had reporters contacting me at all hours of the day and night trying to get the scoop on the ‘pregnancy’.

As if my day wasn’t busy enough already.

This Facebook post was going to make everything a thousand times worse.

Hannah could not tell Little Red about this. It would break her heart. Even if she had the sense to realise that it wasn’t true – that Parker would never do that to her, she was still going to be crushed.

I hit the green phone button and hoped to God that Han would pick up.

It rang and rang.

“Hey, you’ve got Hannah, if you think I’d want to call you back, leave me a line, if I won’t – then don’t bother.”

“Fuck!” I hissed. “Hannah, if you get this, keep that shit to yourself. You know Parker would never do that. Just let me fix this.”

I knew I was too late. Hannah was loyal to a fault when it came to Charlotte and she wouldn’t have even considered keeping this from her.

I would have been the same way if the roles were reversed and it was Parker that might have been getting screwed over.

I tried calling three more times and I even tried Charlotte too, but to no avail. It was obvious that the girls were in crisis mode now.

I was just going to have to do my best to manage this shit storm from here.

This might have technically been my job, but I didn’t have much of a clue about what to do when it came down to it. I didn’t have any experience in damage control… Park and me, we were just figuring this all out as we went along.

We could really use a publicist right now…

I had to think like Parker. I had to decide what action he’d want to take…

I knew that the moment he got wind of this, he would want to talk to Lotte. If he couldn’t get her on the phone, then he would do anything in his power to get to her.

He’ll want to go home.

That wasn’t exactly going to be an easy task, since the private jet wasn’t due back until tomorrow, but one thing we did have on our side was celebrity status.

Fortunately for him, rock stars had a lot of power.

I pulled up the number for the airline and prepared myself to do some serious name dropping.

* * *

I’d left it as long as I possibly could. The flight was boarding in an hour and a half and we still had to get over there.

I’d had no luck getting hold of Shelley fuckin’ Corbett or anyone else that might have been helpful.

I was out of ideas other than going to talk to Park.

The douches in suits weren’t going to be happy, but they could kiss my ass.

It wasn’t like Parker needed to brown nose anyway.

I decided to give Hannah one more call before I hunted him down.

It rang three, four, five times and I was just about to hang up when she answered.

“Shit, Jasper, you’re persistent, I’ll give you that. I’m kinda busy right now, but you can tell Parker that if this shit with this Katie chick,” she sneered the name, “ turns out to be true, I’m going to cut off his balls with a knife then feed them to him on a fork, piece by piece, you understand me?”

I was about to answer when I heard Little Red’s voice in the background, yelling for Hannah to get off the phone.

“I gotta go,” she hissed before hanging up.

I didn’t even get a word in.

“Shit,” I muttered.

I dialled again, and it went straight to voicemail.

She’s gone.

We were on our own now.

I jogged around until I got to where Parker had been doing his meet and greets and was currently schmoozing the label execs.

“Park, man, we need to talk,” I whispered in his ear.

His whole body tensed. He knew this wasn’t going to be good news. I never interrupted him when he was doing his thing.

He nodded stiffly at me and turned back to the suits. “I just need a minute with my manager, something’s come up.”

Something came up alright.

I tipped my head towards the dressing room. There was no way I was breaking this to him out here where anyone could see or hear.

“What the hell is it, J?” he demanded as soon as I heard the click of the door shutting behind us.

“It’s bad news, man. You’re not gonna like it,” I warned.

“Just fucking give it to me, I can’t take this suspense bullshit… you know that.”

I sighed and reached into my pocket for my phone. I pushed a few buttons and found the post I was looking for. I shot him a sympathetic look as I handed it over.

He shook his head at the photo in front of him and frowned. “Katie?” he asked in confusion. “What the hell has this got to do with anything?”

“Look at when it was posted, and check out the caption.”

I watched as he read the thing word for word.

“That fuckin’ bitch!” he bellowed. “I’m gonna end her for this.”

He was pacing the room now, his go-to move when he was freaking out.

“I think you’ve got bigger problems right now,” I told him quietly.

He froze and went white as a ghost.

“She doesn’t think it’s true, does she?” He stalked across the room and got right in my face. “Holy shit, man, have you talked to her, or to Han?”

I clamped my hands down on his shoulders. “Calm the fuck down,” I instructed. “I spoke to Hannah.”

He let out a relieved breath.

Not such good news…

My expression must have been telling the story because his face paled.

“It wasn’t good. She told me to tell you she was going to cut your balls off and feed them to you with a knife and fork, and then I heard Charlotte yelling at her in the background to get off the phone.”

He stared blankly at me.

“I didn’t get a word in before she hung up, and now I can’t get hold of either of them.”

“Get me on the next plane home, J, please.” His voice was broken, and I could tell he was barely holding it together right now. Charlotte was more important to him than anything… I couldn’t imagine him being able to function if he lost her over this.

“Already booked,” I told him. “Get your shit, Park, these suits will have to manage without you… we gotta go, right now.”

* * *

I took a piss and headed back out to find Parker.

I couldn’t wait until we got back and he sorted this shit out with Lotte.

He’d been a jumpy bastard the whole flight, and I wasn’t sure I could handle sitting next to him and his twitching leg for much longer.

I pulled my cell from my pocket and powered it up.

I reasoned with myself that I should try and call Han again, but in reality, I just needed a little more time away from Mr. highly strung.

I pulled up Han’s number, but changed my mind. She wouldn’t answer me earlier so there was no reason she would answer now.

I pulled up Facebook, intent on checking out just how far this garbage had spread now.

Social media might have been Parker’s best friend most of the time, but it certainly wasn’t doing him too many favours right now.

I skimmed past a picture of Charlotte and Parker before freezing and back tracking.

A smile spread across my face as I read the caption.

“Missing this guy right now, but at least I know he’s taking a piece of me with him wherever he goes. Shelley Corbett, let’s play a game of spot the difference, shall we? (And I’m not talking about the blonde piece of ancient history) #Don’tLetTheTruthGetInTheWayOfAGoodStory #FreshInk #LookingForTrouble #NiceTry #PSI’mNotActuallyPregnant”

Charlotte didn’t take any shit from anybody.

Parker was going to be stoked beyond belief with this. His woman had his back one hundred and ten percent.

I headed back over to where Park was sitting, his obvious agitation still rising.

He jumped as I sat down and made some comment about me taking a shit.

I wasn’t listening, I was too busy being in awe of Charlotte Watson. I laughed loudly, the whole situation was suddenly incredibly funny now that my best friend’s relationship was no longer at risk.

“Park, man, I think I just might love that girl of yours,” I told him, still staring at my screen.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded, grabbing the phone from my hands.

A huge grin spread across his face as he took in the post on the screen in front of him.

“It’s a shame she couldn’t tag Katie.” I chuckled. “She’s got sass that girl, and hell… I like it.”

This was how a relationship should work.

She had his back and he had hers. They were a team.

This was exactly what I wanted with Hannah. I wanted it all.

“Well damn,” Park stated, still smiling like a fool.

“Yeah, man,” I agreed. “That’s epic.”

* * *

“We’re going to scare the shit outta them, you know that, right?”

“They’ll be asleep.” Park shrugged.

“Exactly, man… don’t you know how creepy it is to sneak into a woman’s apartment in the middle of the night when she’s asleep?”

“I’ve got a key.”

I shook my head and chuckled. “Yeah, too bad she doesn’t know that.”

“Technicality.” He smirked.

Parker was still a total sociopath when it came to Charlotte. The sneaky bastard had had me take her keys and make a copy one day.

I knew I probably should have said no, but hell, I’d always been more of a yes man and it was bound to give me some type of entertainment at some point anyway, I’d reasoned.

Apparently, that time was now.

“Hannah’s liable to beat our asses with a frying pan or something, you realise that, right?”

His step faltered. “You’re right, that chick is crazy, but I’m going in anyway.”

“I’ll walk behind you.”

He flipped me the bird and slid the key into the lock.