Trevor grabbed for his phone where it rang on his nightstand.

The sound had jolted him awake. His heart slammed in his chest as he pressed the answer button.

“We gotta hop the bus and head to Philly. Get your ass up.” Colton sounded overtly peppy.

Trevor pushed himself up against the headboard. He rubbed his aching temples and wished that the blaring sun wasn’t so bright coming through his penthouse windows. How did morning come so fast?

“What time is it?” He groaned.

“Almost eleven.”

“Shit.” Trevor couldn’t believe he had slept that late. “We had a wild night last night, eh?”

“We were celebrating,” Colton gently reminded him.

“Right.” Trevor nodded with chagrin. “Hell, I can barely move.”

“That’s because you were dancing on the bar and you fell.”

“I fell?”

“Yeah. I’m sure it’s all over social media by now. Great publicity, boss.”

Trevor tried to recall that little mishap but couldn’t.

“I’m getting up. Did you need something else?”

“The guys want lunch. Grease and carbs and bloody Mary’s. Meet us. One hour.” Colton gave the address, sounding way too alert to be suffering from last night’s celebration.

“How the hell are you not hung over?” Trevor asked suspiciously.

“I drank tons of water and threw back two aspirin when I got home,” Colton admitted.

“Of course.” Trevor threw his hands into the air. “That old trick still works, huh?”

“I guess so,” Colton chuckled. “Are you in or out?”

Trevor took a long, deep breath. “Yeah. I’m in. Be there in thirty.”

Trevor hung up, hoping that a steamy shower would at least help get him up and moving. He texted his driver a time to meet him, then got his ass in gear. The shower felt too hot. Cars outside the apartment beeped too loudly. The sun was too damn bright!

Shit, he was getting too old for this.

Throwing on old jeans and a worn tee-shirt, he slipped into his boots, grabbed his packed duffle and headed down to the waiting car. Having a driver and a limo was new, but hell was it sweet. Getting through downtown Chicago had never been easier. As a kid, he would ride the subway or walk where ever he needed to go. Only the wealthy hired drivers and no one in his memory had every taken a limo.

Now he had both.

Observing out the window as they drove, he thought of Emelia. Her family hadn’t had money for luxuries like limos. Hell, he didn’t know much about her back then and he sure as hell didn’t now. She had two brothers of course, well, one. The one who had survived, he had moved away. The other had been buried six feet under. He’d been by her house once. It had been modest. Simple. Cozy in that way homes are when they’re filled with a loving family.

And then, he’d changed that.

“Here we are, sir.”

Trevor snapped a look at the driver as he parked in front of the restaurant. Giving his brain a moment to reset, he waited for the driver to open his door and fetch his duffle. He had no sooner slung the bag over his shoulder when a small mob of paparazzi hurried toward him, cameras flashing.

“Trevor! Trevor Jameson, over here!”

The attention took him by surprise. He smiled for a beat, letting them click a flurry of pics before he hurried into the building. He found the others in the far back, aware of the stares and whispers as he walked through the restaurant. Trevor smiled. Would he ever get used to this?

“What’s up?” He pulled out a chair next to Roman and tossed his bag on the floor. A security guard stood watch by the table, hands crossed in front of him, legs spread wide apart. He gave Trevor a quick nod.

Their waitress was a petite thing with thick blonde hair piled high on her head. Her grin was infectious, and he could tell she was holding back her enthusiasm over having them at her table in order to keep it professional. Her cheeks pinked as she took their order. Colton flirted with her a little, making her gush and tremble. Trevor pulled his sunglasses down from the top of his head and covered his eyes. He’d had enough adoration for one day. He wanted his bed and lot of peace and quiet to get rid of this hangover.

“Oh my God, it’s really them!”

The sound of young female voices shrieking behind their table cut right through his head. One of the women approached as far as the bodyguard would let her, her eyes wide and hopeful.

Trevor grimaced. She and her friends wouldn’t stop making those horrible noises until they appeased them.

“Hey, come here.” He waved her over. She glanced back at her friends. “Yes, all of you. Come here.”

Pulling a pen from his back pocket, Trevor signed his name on a couple napkins from the table and passed them around to his band members.

“Hello, ladies.” Asher turned lazily in his chair and gave them a wink as he handed them the signed napkins, which only resulted in more shrieking.

“Thank you! Thank you so much!”

“Can you sign my shirt?”

Before Trevor could respond to the request, one of the women hurried over to him and lifted her shirt, revealing a very nice set of breasts cupped in pink satin.

“On second thought, can you sign my bra?”

She handed him a Sharpie and did a little jiggle. Her breasts bounced, drawing every eye at the table and then some. Trevor sat upright and cleared his throat. Taking the marker, he made quick work of scrawling his name over the cup of her left breast.

“Alright ladies, time’s up.” The bodyguard shooed them away.

“Thanks for coming.” Lucas gave them a send-off wave.

Trevor grunted. “Thanks for coming? This isn’t a damn album signing. It’s breakfast.”

Lucas sank in his chair and spread his hands with a wicked grin. “Hey, if the ladies are going to take their time to rub their adoration and titties all over me, who am I not to be polite?”

“Just because you’re hung up on a chick you can’t have. Dun, dun, dun.”

Asher’s comment drew all eyes to him. Roman put his elbows on the table and accepted a Bloody Mary from the waitress.

“You know, Burt mentioned some appearances and signings coming up. Have we seen that schedule yet?”

“Way to change the subject,” Lucas said casually as he stuffed a hot and crispy French fry into his mouth.

“He didn’t discuss it with me, but we’d better review it. Our time is getting thin as it is.”

“Yeah,” Asher agreed. “Maybe we should tell Burt to calm down.”

“He’s like a Chihuahua,” Roman laughed. “There’s no stopping him. His hyper level is off the charts. That’s why he’s the best in the business, and he’s all ours.”

Burt was good; there was no disputing that. But he didn’t hesitate to do what he thought was best for the band yet was quick to dismiss ideas from anyone else. Trevor’s food was set in front of him, the smell going through him with a sickening aroma. He had been an idiot to think he could eat.

After his little run-in with Emelia last night, he had drank, even more, to forget what a dick he’d been to her. Hadn’t worked. She was still the first thing he had thought of when he’d gotten woken up this morning.

“Speaking of Burt, are we going to revisit the issue of getting our shit in front of movie people?”

Trevor looked at Roman, curious about the smooth tone of his voice.

“Yeah, I’m not giving up on that.”

Everyone plowed through their food, except for him. He moved fries around on his plate instead.

Roman finished chewing. “Not sure how well you remember Emelia from school, but—”

Asher perked up. “You knew the sound check girl in school?”

“Briefly. Sort of. I don’t really remember her.” Lie. Big, fucking lie.

“Anyway, aside from her brother that was, you know, the other brother moved to LA. Any idea who he is?”

Irritation crept up Trevor’s spine. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Both.”

“No, I don’t know who he is.”

“Campbell Greene of Nightshade Productions. His studio produced that big hit Tom Cruise movie last summer.”

The fork slipped from Trevor’s fingers. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“No. I’m not.” Roman continued eating like he hadn’t just dropped a massive bomb. There was silence in the conversation as everyone resumed eating, but Trevor’s mind was racing too hard. Too damn hard to consider putting anything in his mouth.

“Well, it’s obvious what you need to do,” Logan said around a mouthful. “You get after her for a piece of ass and for an introduction to her big shot brother.”

Trevor’s jaw clenched. “Don’t make me fucking punch you. No more of this conversation.”

Everyone finished up in silence, but he knew what they were all thinking. This was an open door, a freaking offering on a sliver plate. All he had to do was grab it. But he wasn’t going to use Emelia like that. His interest in her was a double-edged sword. Plus, if he outed himself that he did know her, that he did remember her, it would open the whole Pandora’s box surrounding her younger brother’s accident. He couldn’t afford that kind of spotlight on him and could never let her know what he knew about that night.

Unless she offered up her movie producer sibling on her own, he wasn’t going to revisit it again. No matter what.

The band filtered out the back of the restaurant to the waiting tour bus. Trevor was the last to get on, took his time going up the heavily polished chrome steps. The decked out, blacked-out bus was a tiny city, offering everything they could possibly want while on the road. He tossed his bag in his private room in the back before grabbing a soda and taking a seat by Roman who was looking out the window. 

“I guess I’ll take the aisle,” Trevor joked as he plopped down beside his best friend.

Roman smirked. “There are plenty of other seats on this tour bus you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” Trevor sighed and rubbed his arm, the one with the tattoo of an Eagle soaring over a snowy mountaintop. He had chosen it because it represented the freedom to be who he wanted to be and go where he wanted to go in this life.

“This bus is the bomb,” he mentioned, glancing around.

There was a full out kitchen with top of the line, stainless steel appliances. There were leather couches and huge flat screen tv’s. Bathroom with a tub and a shower. Private sleeping rooms.

“Can you believe all this is ours?” Roman looked down at his phone. 

“I tell you what, man.” Trevor adjusted in his seat, getting comfortable. He tossed a neck pillow around his head and leaned back, sighing contentedly. “If you had told me this would be my life, you know, back then—I would have never believed you.”

“Yeah, me either.” Roman chuckled. “I thought you were full of shit when you said we were going to make something of ourselves back then.” 

“My guitar was the only thing that used to soothe me and calm me down in those days,” Trevor reminisced.

Roman grinned. “My parents are just as proud of you as they are of me.”

“I highly doubt that,” Trevor scoffed.

“It is true,” Roman protested.

Trevor groaned. “I never felt like I belonged.”

“You belonged more with us than those shitholes, alcoholic, sorry excuses pair of parents you had,” Roman countered.

Trevor glanced at his best friend, who knew his history, inside and out. Roman was the only person on earth who could get away with talking like that about Trevor’s past or his parents.

It was a sore subject in Trevor’s life, a wound that he rarely wanted to tear open or revisit. But it was times like this when they were on a tour bus filled with luxuries and heading to another city with adoring fans that Trevor just had to take a step back. He had to relish in his fortune, and it made him appreciate the pain and struggle and poverty of his past life that much more.

“Your parents were the kind that every kid should have,” Trevor confessed.

He cringed at the memory of his early middle school days. He had wander home from the bus stop secretly dreaming that he would get home and be met by a family that loved him.

Instead, he was usually met with parents passed out drunk in the middle of the day. He’d peel beer bottles from their unconscious grips and clean up the cigarette ashes from the coffee table and whatever mess they’d made. He would comb through the help wanted ads in the newspaper, attempting to aid his father in snagging up a job. Even when his father managed to land a job, he never held it for more than a month, two at the most.

The only thing that had gotten him through those times of turmoil and prevented him from derailing on a path of destruction himself was music. He had played guitar and sang until he wanted to collapse from exhaustion.

Mr. Bailey was his early music teacher at school, became a mentor for Trevor, someone he could look up to and depend on. Up until that point, Trevor had never experienced what it was like to have an adult in his life who wouldn’t hurt him, emotionally or physically.

He had looked forward to those guitar lessons week after week. It was the one thing in his life that brought him of joy, up until Trevor went to live with Roman his senior year in high school. By then though, Trevor had mastered his natural talent and decided to offer to teach his own lessons for some extra cash on the side while he and Roman pulled together the best band they could.

He glanced over at Roman. His best friend had been through it all with him. Roman’s parents were the best and always had his back. He should have been more grateful to them, should have tried harder to be a good kid and not do what he’d done.

Instead, he rebelled. Bucked against his new school and everything that came with it. He had tried focusing on his music, but with the system putting his parents in jail and the courts trying to stuff him in foster care, he just snapped. If not for Roman’s parents offering to take him in until he was legal age, he might have done worse than what he had.

Though, the pain and suffering he had caused was horrible enough.

God, poor Emelia. Dumpling. He had called her Dumpling. It was a vague memory, but there none the less. He’d been an total fucking asshole to her, to her brother. To a lot of people

Was she in his life again for something crazy, like redemption? Or, a second chance? Maybe it was a reminder that things could have been much, much worse.

Trevor studied Roman. His blonde facial scruff had been growing in for the last several days. Usually Roman preferred to stay clean shaven, just like Trevor.

“What do you think would have happened if I never moved in with your family?” Trevor pondered.

Roman sighed and stared out the window as the trees and the world blurred past them. The bus was on the move now, gaining speed. The miles blended into one another as they rode along.

“Fate plays mind tricks,” Roman said. “Who knows how either one of us would have ended up. I’d like to think that somehow, we’d still be here, on this tour bus together.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m always right, you know.” Roman quipped.

Trevor didn’t respond.

The pair grinned at each other. “I’m going to get some shut eye,” Roman declared.

“Good idea.” Trevor leaned his head against the back of the seat. The hangover in him demanded sleep. Maybe it would keep the dreams away — the memories. Perhaps, for once, with Roman beside him, he would shut the demons down and dream up a way he could take back the past.

And make everything right.