“I just want to try again. I’ll get sober. I’ll go to rehab even. And I’ll stay this time. Just as long as you promise me we can try again. We’ll make more music together. You and me. Like before. But better.” Spittle flies out of his mouth as he speaks. I fight to wriggle out of his hold, but it’s useless.
“I don’t … I don’t want that,” I tell him.
“You do, Cassie, you do. It’s what you’ve always wanted,” he mumbles as he tightens his hold and squeezes around my calves. He rubs his head against my thighs, and I swear I could throw up.
“You…” I try in vain to get him off me. “You have no clue what I want. What I really want.”
He stills and looks up at me then. “Is it true?” he asks in a low, sinister hiss, like he just instantly sobered up.
“Is what true?” I freeze, startled by the ice in his stare.
“You and her. Pia Lindberg.” He spits out her name, like it’s poisonous, and I could hit him, thump him, kick him for that alone.
“Let me go, Stephan,” I say.
It’s a great surprise when he does what I ask, so much so I pause before I rush to stand. He’s still on his knees, looking at me, waiting for my next move, but as soon as I start to walk towards the door, he moves too. I make it three steps before there’s the vice of his hands around my ankle and I’m pulled down to the ground. I land with a heavy thump, my eyes closing on impact. I’m confident I’ve gotten my hands down, that I haven’t hit my head, but then I feel something warm and wet run down the side of my face. Then there is a sharp, piercing pain drilling into the side of my head.
Groaning, I bring a hand up to my right eye, which I can’t open for some reason, but my fingers never make it to my face.
And it doesn’t matter if I can open my eye or not, because everything, everything inside and out goes black anyway.
CHAPTER 27
PIA
“Three more nights,” Jon sighs. “Three more nights and then back to sunshine and blue skies and surf.”
I shoot Jon a piercing look from the other side of the taxi’s back seat. “We’re in Madrid, dickhead. It’s pretty sunny here too.”
“But there’s no surf, no waves,” He gazes longingly out at the crowded pavements of Gran Via. It’s just us in the car, the others in another taxi ahead of us, possibly already at the hotel.
“Look at you, London boy,” I tease, poking his leg. “Missing the beach and the fresh air.”
“I miss my own bed,” he grumbles before looking over at me. “Fuck, am I getting old and boring like you?”
“Maybe,” I shrug with a very contented smile on my face. Not that I have much to be contented about; I’ve not spoken to Cassie in weeks, and I don’t know when I’ll next see her or how we’ll make it happen. I don’t even know if she got the postcard I sent mere minutes after she left my hotel room.
But the European leg of our tour ends in three nights, and we’ll be back in Los Angeles for a week’s break. I know that Cassie is already in LA. But I also know she flies to Mexico City next week for the final leg of their tour. I don’t know if she’s busy or resting, writing or recording, or if she even plans to stay in California for that time.
I don’t know, and I haven’t dared to ask. Yes, it’s true. I, a woman who isn’t afraid to punch men twice my weight or pull the hair of racist wannabes in New York nightclubs, am too afraid to find out if the woman I’ve been fucking wants to see me again.
Even if I don’t see her, just going back to LA makes me feel like I’ll be closer to her, and I choose to take pleasure in that.
“Three more nights,” I tell Jon. “And then we’ll be on our way home.”
“Home? You never call LA home. You haven’t called anywhere home since London, and we left there four years ago.”
“Well, things can change,” I say, and because he’s looking at me like he’s trying to read a book in a foreign language, I look back out the window.
“You know,” he says after a few minutes of silence. “I would have done it.”
“You would have done what?” I turn back to him, confused.
“I would have pretended to be fucking her.” He shifts in his seat. “Cassie Everard. And not just because that would have gotten me a lot of street cred. But because it would have helped you.”
My mouth goes dry as the full implications of what he’s saying, what he knows, settle inside me. But then I notice his kind eyes and annoyingly handsome smile, and I relax.
“I know you would have,” I say. “But she didn’t want to. And I don’t blame her.”