Chapter 1
Roanna
Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Creak.
I cringed as I counted the steps then the creaking of the board just outside my bedroom door. Six steps. One long, loud creak, followed by two more steps. Each step was softly muffled by the thick, plush carpet, but somehow, I heard every one of them.
This house was huge but old. Some ancient woman with too much money and no family left it to become a children’s home for girls. It was beautiful, unlike all of the other foster homes I’d lived in starting when I was nine. When I first got there, I loved it.
It was safe. No one bothered me.
No one tried to touch me.
There were no boys like at the first foster home I landed in after my mom succumbed to the disease she picked up from hooking up with one too many random guys. I doubted she knew who my father was, and I really didn’t care about finding out.
But then the couple who ran the home retired, and the house was turned over to another married couple. A woman who treated the other girls and me more like the orphans in Annie—times ten—and a husband who licked his lips every time he saw any of us bending over. Dear old Daddy Warbucks wasn’t going to show up and whisk me away from this hellhole.
Nor would he save me from the monsters who went bump in the night—or worse, came creeping into my room.
My palms began to sweat more and more, and I tried to breathe through my mouth to fight the nausea rolling in my stomach.
“I don’t want to be here,” I whispered to the still-empty room. “Take me away from here. Please. Someone. Save. Me.”
But there was no savior ready to knock down the heavy, expensive front door on the first floor. No one raced up the stairs as my bedroom door opened slowly so his wife wouldn’t hear him enter my room. Not that she would anyway. The old cow was a lush and out cold by nine o’clock every night thanks to all the gin she drank by the gallon.
“Wake up, Ro.”
I clenched the covers tighter in my fists, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Wake. Up.”
The door closed without a sound, yet I could hear the clicking of the lock echo through my head. I huddled under my pretty turquoise comforter, the one my last foster family gave me before I was moved here. I hadn’t wanted to leave them. Mostly because the kind lesbian couple hadn’t been a threat to me. They smiled and called me “sweetheart” and never came into my room without knocking first.
His scent reached me, and I began to gag.
I don’t want to be here.
Tears burned my eyes and throat, my nose began to run, but I didn’t make a sound aloud. In my head, I was screaming. Begging someone to save me. To stop what was about to happen before it happened.
Again.
But as long as he was coming into my room, that meant the other girls were safe. I didn’t have to worry about Aubree, the new little girl who arrived yesterday, being paid a visit from Sicko Stan, scaring the hell out of her and scarring her for life. Or him going back to London’s room like he tried the week before. She puked all over him when he tried to touch her, and ever since, he had stayed clear of her and her urge to purge.
“Ro, wake up!”
A hand grabbed my arm, tearing the covers off me, and I screamed…
Heart pounding, I jerked upright in bed, my eyes frantically flying around the room as I tried to figure out where I was while the images stuck in my head slowly began to fade.
Aubree still had hold of my wrist, gently shaking me. “It’s okay, Ro. You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you,” she soothed in that tone my best friend only ever used with me. “I’m here. You’re okay.”
Unable to find my voice, I could only nod as I fell back against the pillows. Gradually, my heart rate lowered to something resembling normal, and I scrubbed the tears from my cheeks with my free hand. Eventually, Aubree released me and offered a bottle of water.
Fingers still shaking, I took it and gulped it down thirstily.
“It was just a dream,” Aubree tried to remind me, but we both knew it wasn’t just a dream. Dreams ended when you woke up, maybe they lingered for a little while, but they eventually faded.
This was no dream. It was a vivid memory, one that haunted me day and night, whether I was asleep or awake. I lived with it, and I hated that something that happened so many years ago could still have so much fucking control over me. I let the memories have the power—or so one psychologist once told me. Even though I was out from under that roof, and I had people who loved me and would do anything to protect me, I still allowed him to have all the power.
Aubree pushed her tangled blond hair back from her face, her lashes droopy with sleep. “Think you can get back to sleep now?”
I nodded, even though we both knew I was lying. Still, she knew I wanted to be alone. So she stood, pulling her sleep shirt down over her panties, and headed for the door. “At least try. We have a big night tonight.”
I tried to smile, but the ghosts were still haunting me, and not even the thought of the Blonde Bombshells taking the stage at First Bass for the very first time could make the dream fade.
As she left my room, I pulled the covers up to my neck and tried to do the breathing the therapist taught me after the foster home was shut down.
Sicko Stan was out of commission now; I had to remember that. He couldn’t touch another girl even if he wanted to. After Aubree, London, and Genesis beat the hell out of him that last night they found him in my room, he no longer had much of a dick to hurt anyone with. All that blood, spraying across the white sheets of my bed from where Aubree had cut him, mixed w
ith my own as I—
Nausea had me out of bed and running to the bathroom across the hall. I barely made it to the toilet in time to empty the celebratory dinner we’d had the night before. The vegan burger tasted like ass as it left my mouth, my taste buds burning from the stomach acid. I didn’t stop until it was all out, then fell exhaustedly back against the side of the tub, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
I had to stop this shit. It was hard on my throat. Fucking up my voice wasn’t something I was willing to risk now that we were finally getting a chance to prove ourselves. Getting this contract with Harris Cutter was the best thing ever to happen to my soul sisters and me. I couldn’t let them down by ruining my voice.
First Bass was the type of club people went to just to be seen. The VIP floor was nothing but A-listers, every one of them some celeb who could make or break a person if the whim hit. Since moving to LA the year before, I’d seen my fair share of celebs, and I still didn’t get the hype.
Who cared that they were in movies, their faces on magazines, their names talked about in every circle, rich or poor?
They were just people, for fuck’s sake.
It wasn’t the celebs on the second floor of the club I cared about. It was the normal people who waited outside for a chance to get in on the first floor who deserved my full attention.
Seeing how big the crowd was made me want to run and hide. I felt suffocated just looking at the many faces. I was a freak, unable to so much as speak when this many people were surrounding me. Yet as soon as I stepped out onstage, it was like I became a different person. I thrilled at the number of people looking at my soul sisters and me. When I was up there performing for them, I was able to let go of my past; there were no ghosts who held my mind prisoner. I was able to be the real me, the one I would have been if Sicko Stan hadn’t broken me.
Peyton shifted from one foot to the other, the heels of her killer boots clicking annoyingly. I wasn’t close to her like I was London, Genesis, and Aubree. Those three had been with me through the worst years of my life. They were my soul sisters, the only people in the world I trusted. Peyton, with her long blond hair expertly colored and silky soft, her eyes appearing bigger than they really were thanks to her makeup, and her expensive wardrobe, was in a whole other league than the rest of us Blondes.
Her life was as different from mine and the other Blondes as night and day.
She was daddy’s little girl, a trust fund baby who was only hitching a ride with the Blondes on her way to her solo music career. Peyton didn’t know a single thing about feeling hungry because food was scarce and her mom was off fucking around with who knew what kind of guy and there was no way of knowing when she might come home. Peyton didn’t know what it was like to go to bed and dread falling asleep because the nightmares weren’t dreams but memories.
No, all Peyton knew was how soon she could get a new car because the one she was driving was so last season. Or how to pout because her father had put a limit on her credit cards after she blew five grand on a pair of shoes.