A Billionaire for Christmas

No one in the band told outsiders about this because fans shouldn’t see the sausage-making. Killer Valentine’s “hard-working rocker” public image would be tarnished, if not downright obliterated, if anyone knew about what was plastered to the underside of the touring stage.

He reached over Raji’s leg and pulled some of the sheets over his sticky groin. “Nobody ever thinks about how the groupies get backstage. In the arenas, you can’t just walk from the house to the backstage areas. There’s security and a bunch of roadies. Someone will stop you unless you have a backstage pass.”

She shrugged. “Oh, come on. Groupies always get backstage.”

“Yeah, but the roadies aren’t benevolent elves who guide groupies on their quest to fuck a musician. They are the trolls under the bridges. I mean, some of them are great. I hang out with them a lot. But they’re trolls. They’re gatekeepers, and they want to be paid, usually in flesh, to get past them.”

“Oh,” Raji said, her voice much lower.

“Don’t get me wrong. I like the tech guys. A lot of them have had hard lives and rough childhoods. They ended up on the road when they couldn’t handle a regular job or the usual social interactions. Most of them are generous to a fault, even to stupid newbie musicians, but I don’t want Two-Tooth Tommy’s sloppy seconds, either.”

Raji’s expression twisted to be more and more horrified. “I never thought about that.”

“Yeah, well, I do.”

“I’m glad you do. Jeez.”

“Yeah, and you might wonder how I know this.”

Her slim eyebrows rose in horror. “Come to think of it—”

He drew in a breath. “There are pictures, Polaroids, thousands of them, plastered to the underside of the US touring stage, all of them depicting what young women will do with roadies to get backstage to ‘meet a rock star.’”

Raji’s eyes widened, and her dark eyes were already so large and sweet on her face that she looked like a fawn to Peyton.

He said, “Yeah, so there’s no fucking the groupies who wander backstage. As for the rest of it, when I get drunk, I have just as bad of a hangover as the next guy, except that I’m usually in a hot, swaying bus or a crowded airplane getting slapped around by turbulence while I’m hurling. Not to mention that KV has a hard-line anti-substance-abuse policy written into the contracts now.”

Raji breathed, calming down a little. “You don’t think of rock bands as having a substance abuse policy. I mean, I’m drug-tested all the time for work. I was kind of worried that you might be covered with a fine film of cocaine that might light up my next whizz quiz.”

Peyton laughed. “I’ve never done coke. Or heroin, for that matter.”

She flopped back on the bed. “Yeah. Me, neither.”

“You know what happened to Rade Delcore, right?” he asked.

Raji said, “I know about Rade. I’m a Valentine Victim, remember?”

“Oh, jeez. You’re in the fan club. Well, Rade’s death is why I have a job, so I’m a walking reminder to the whole band, every day, of that horrific night.”

She frowned, a cute little moue and pucker of her slim eyebrows. “That sucks.”

“And as for seeing the world, I see the insides of buses, planes, and cars. I see the wings of stages and arenas, and I see hundreds of lookalike hotel rooms. Everywhere looks the same, no matter where my phone’s GPS says I am.”

“But the screaming crowds—” Raji said.

“—The ringing eardrums,” Peyton muttered.

“Making music—” she mused.

“—Not my music. Xan and Cadell are the primary songwriters. Tryp chips in a few songs.”

“So you don’t write music.”

Peyton looked over at the other wall. “Not since I joined the band. They had all the music they needed for the next album before I signed the contract, and I’m not really a band member. I’m an independent contractor, a hired musician for the next year with an option to extend.”

“But you’re a rock star.”

“A reluctant one.”

“But every guy wants to be a rock star!” Raji insisted.

“You keep saying that, ‘rock star.’ It’s losing its meaning.”

“Still!”

“I didn’t ever want to be a rock star.”

“Then why are you still in KV?”

Peyton’s hands tightened to fists on the bedsheets as he searched for an answer. “I don’t know.”

“Dude, you need to look at your life. Now, me? I’ve got everything worked out. I’ve worked my ass off to get stellar grades all my life, got into the best universities and a damn fine medical school and residency programs, and I’m right up there with the best residents in my year. I go into the hospital every day and every night and every waking minute of my life. I shank clogged arteries and malformed ventricles. I saw through bones and cut out hearts and sew them into other people. I battle the other residents to be the head of my class and make damn sure the attending physicians know it. I fight the God of Death every damn day and win. I’m within a few years of a magnificent job offer at a top hospital, as long as I keep fighting, every day. Then, I will save people’s lives and rake in a boatload of cash while doing it.”