Arrogant Brit

I was also struggling to understand what I was really hoping to accomplish with all of this.

Seriously? Bringing her onto the bus?

Taking her back home with you?

What the FUCK are you thinking?

I couldn’t explain it, but I barely had the energy to keep standing. Instead, I gave a brisk nod to the others – who quietly returned my acknowledgement – and stumbled towards t

he back of the bus.

Once in my room, I spotted Angel seated on the edge of my bed. Her backpack was slumped in a corner, still zipped up and ready to go.

With a heavy sigh, I let my fatigue finally settle in. Was it worth it? Was it worth ostracizing my band, my manager, and my entire meal ticket for this chick?

Angel looked up at me softly, a few strands of her hair falling in front of her eyes. It was clear that she sensed the conflict – hell, maybe she’d even heard that asshole talking shit.

“I can go if you need me to,” she whispered sadly.

“Where I need you is here,” I murmured.

What? Seriously?

It was like my mouth was running without me. First, there was my hesitation with the sex when I climbed back on the bus, and now this. My brain wasn’t participating in any of this, not since I’d descended upon her in the middle of the night.

But is that better, or worse?

I didn’t really have an answer. It seemed like my heart and my tongue had grown cozy together – too cozy. I needed to be smarter than this. I knew that I had to think rationally about this sudden change in the dynamic… after all, I’d just invited who was supposed to be a victory fuck onto my bus for the rest of the tour, alienating my band and our manager in one fell swoop.

But the way that she looked at me, and that pain in her eyes, told me that somehow… somehow, I’d made the right decisions.

Maybe because I didn’t think about them, I wondered.

Angel was looking at me, watching me think to myself. As the fatigue of the night finally overcame me, I sank down to the mattress and pulled her into a deep embrace. With my mind finally quieting down again, I collapsed into the bed with her, allowing the world and its stupidity to fade into blackness.

Chapter 18

Angel

I slept the best I’d ever slept when I woke up that afternoon, curled up in Trent’s arms. He was knocked out solid, quietly snoring away, and I watched this beautiful, strange rocker murmur and shift in his sleep.

This had been fast, but it had felt real.

I didn’t quite understand it, and I could tell that he didn’t, either. Not really, at any rate. He seemed the impulsive type, and he’d completely thrown me off-guard by almost backing down from the sex last night… and by inviting me into his world like this.

I’d heard his bandmates. They’d sounded pissed.

But he’d stood his ground, the alpha male that he was. It was clear what he wanted, and that he’d make concessions with them to have it. He could probably have told them all to go to hell, but I’d seen that he did care about them – especially onstage.

Do they fight a lot when they’re not performing?

Is that what it’s like to work with people like this?

Eventually, he woke up too. Once we’d climbed out of bed and freshened up a little, Trent laid down the single ground rule: stay back here. He made it clear that other members of the band had expressed some discomfort in having me around, and that he’d had to agree that I’d stay in his bedroom or in the adjacent bathroom.

I’d been too tired to really think much of being a complication, particularly in the madcap dash to get back to the bus and finally rest. It wasn’t hard to figure out the math once I dwelled on the details.

After all, I was on a bus with a bunch of guys who probably didn’t appreciate someone being thrust upon them at the last second – especially not a girl, regardless of the fact that I was apparently fucking their leader.

It was fine by me. I liked his room – it was kind of sparse, and not terribly big, but that seemed like the kind of thing Trent would favor. It was a little larger than my small backroom at the Riverton Bar, but it was free of the odds and ends that cluttered and dominated the space.

“I don’t need much,” he told me at some point after we’d woken up. “Not on the road, at any rate. My place is a little different…but I like to keep my distractions minimal when I’m on tour.”

“But what about me?” I chuckled coyly.

“I make exceptions,” he whispered, his fingers threading into my hair and exposing my neck for his hungry lips. “Exceptions for cute girls who know how to ride my cock the right way.”

Oh good, I thought to myself. So the arrogant asshole thing’s going to stick around for a while.

Oddly, I kind of liked it.

But we couldn’t play for too long.

Trent and his band had another gig.

The single, curtained window in his room didn’t tell me much, and my host kept me plenty preoccupied for a short while. But as he left to practice with them before the show, he told me where we were.

“Houston.”

“We’re in Texas? We just sailed through Louisiana and I didn’t even know?”

“Yeah, guess so.”

“But Houston is so far…”

“And now you understand why I was speeding,” he told me a little gruffly. “Steven might be a total asshole of a manager, but he’s generally competent. Generally.”

Before he left, I reminded him to take his pain medication. With an appreciative smile, he dug the orange bottle out from a hidden spot in his closet, and then popped into the bathroom to swallow it with a cup of water.

After he left, I stayed put. I flipped through some books of his, realizing that I should have tried to find something to keep myself preoccupied. But it wasn’t like I actually had anything like that back home, anyway.

I’d mostly spent my time tending to the needs of the bar, occasionally walking further into town and occupying myself at the single, small bookstore that we had.

At least there are different books here.

A few hours later, after the night had fallen, Trent finally returned to the bus. He planted a quick kiss on my lips before going to wash off in the shower. When he came back into the room, I was preoccupied with thought.

I knew that I had to tell him.

“There’s something you need to know about me,” I reluctantly blurted out.

Briefly, just for a fraction of a second, a look of penetrated concern flickered across Trent’s face. With the blink of his eyes, it was gone, replaced with his cool, smooth confidence.

“What’s that? You’re not really from Alabama? Secretly a government agent? Betrothed to another man?”

I shook my head, trying to not take personal offense to that last one. I knew he didn’t mean it. He had just sensed that this was bad.

“You know how I freaked out in the car earlier this morning?”

Trent looked genuinely troubled for a moment.

“Yeah. There’s a specific reason for that?”

“There was an accident,” I told him.

“An accident.”

“I was in the car with some people – I don’t really remember who. Just a group of us. The driver, he was going too fast, taking too many risks…we hit something and I was thrown from the vehicle.”

“Oh my God,” he spoke, his face growing pale. He covered his eyes, looking incredibly guilty. “I had no fucking idea. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know,” I told him.

“But were you…were you hurt?”

“Well, it was a high-speed collision, and I was ejected from the car,” I snarked lightly, before toning myself back. “I mean…yeah. I was hurt pretty badly.”

“What…how did you…?”

“How did I survive?” I asked, almost bitterly. “I don’t know. I was thrown into some trees. Luckily, I wasn’t too mangled up. But I was in a coma for, like, weeks.”

“And your friends?”

“They didn’t make it,” I told him, fighting back tears. “I think the driver did, but the rest of the people in the car, they all died on impact. Getting thrown out saved my life.”

“And your memory?”

“Yeah,” I continued, struggling to recall the details. “It’s kind of fuzzy. I lost a lot of my memories from that point and back. The doctors told me that they d

on’t know how I woke back up. But the damage was done. I barely remember a thing from before the accident. Hell, the accident itself is totally gone. I only know what happened because I was told.”

I realized that Trent was squeezing my hand, staring deeply into my eyes.