Insider (Exodus End 1)

Logan chuckled and squeezed her close. “That rhymes.”

“Maybe I should try getting into the music business,” she said. “I could write lyrics for your new album.”

“Uh, let’s not and say you did.”

She huffed at him. “Are you trying to stifle my creative genius?”

“I’d rather encourage it. You’re coming back on tour with me, right? You have to finish your book. Your mom and grandma will take good care of Birdie. If you need to get home, we’ll get you home. I don’t know why you’re hesitating—don’t you want to stay with me?”

“I do,” she admitted, but there was one more thing holding her back. “But I’m not sure the band wants me there.” There, she’d said it. How could she spend weeks in close quarters with four people who hated her guts?

“I don’t give a fuck what they want. I want you there. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you with me. We belong together. Always.”

She stood on tiptoe and captured his lips for a kiss. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it.”

He deepened their kiss, heightening her arousal, filling her thoughts with nothing but him.

Always.

Thirty-Nine

As Toni stepped onto Exodus End’s tour bus, her stomach took residence in her calf-hugging boots. She clutched the strap of her messenger bag and tried to swallow her queasiness. Would these guys ever accept her apology and let her close to them again? Or would she be forced to leave? The wall of muscle and mean that suddenly appeared in her path did nothing to put her at ease.

“No fans on the bus,” Butch said, his mustache twitching with disapproval.

“Then I guess I’d better leave,” she said.

“Is that Toni?” Max said from the back of the bus.

“Logan actually did something right for a change,” Steve said with a laugh.

“Toni’s back!” Reagan cried, nearly knocking Butch on his ass as she shoved him aside to grab Toni in a rib-crushing hug. “I’m so sorry I yelled at you. And that I pushed you. And I thought you were responsible. I should have known you weren’t a backstabbing whorebag. We’re going to get back at those bitches, aren’t we?”

Well, considering one of those bitches was her mother, probably not.

“Welcome home,” Dare said, his green-eyed gaze warm and inviting. Toni knew he reserved that look for people he trusted.

“It’s good to be back,” she said with a happy smile.

“What? No one cares that I’m back too?” Logan said, shifting sideways so Toni wasn’t blocking their view of him.

“Not really,” Reagan teased, but the guys smacked him around a little to let him know he’d been missed.

With the man she loved at her side and a bright future before her, Toni no longer had to reach for her stars. They were right there beside her.

June 2

Dear Journal,

It’s been a while since I wrote. I’ve been super busy. Today is the last day of Exodus End’s North American tour. We’re heading to the UK in two weeks for the Download Festival. I can’t wait to get that first stamp in my brand new passport. The band has the next two weeks off while their equipment ships overseas. Of course, I had to record footage of them loading the semis on the freighter, so Logan and I are currently down at the docks. Yes, it was cool to see the cranes lifting those big containers, knowing the tour was packed inside. Yes, this is all going into the book. I don’t know if I’ll ever completely finish gathering data for this book. I’ll probably need to break it into two volumes. Or maybe three.

Logan and I plan to spend the next few days in Key West—he insists I’ll love parasailing and sex in the ocean (sharks, anyone?)—before we head to his place in Southern California. Apparently he has a dirt bike track on his property, and he wants to teach me to ride. Not sure how I feel about that one, but he already ordered a bike for me, so I have to at least try it out. We’re going to California because I’m his date for Sed Lionheart’s wedding next weekend. Jessica will be such a beautiful bride—even if she has packed on a few pounds (don’t tell her I noticed)—and I’ll get to see Sinners in tuxedos! It should be a blast. Then Logan and I are heading north to spend the rest of our vacation time with my family.

Birdie can’t wait to show Logan her new horse. Mom is probably rethinking her decision to read her Black Beauty now! She says Birdie has even more energy since her pacemaker was implanted. I can’t imagine how that’s possible. I miss her to pieces, but since we’ve been using Skype to talk almost every night, at least I get to see her smiling face on a regular basis.

Things with Logan are wonderful. He’s shoved me out of my comfort zone so many times, I’m not sure I even have a comfort zone anymore. I’ll just hang on for the ride and see where he takes me. The rest of the guys in the band are doing well. I’m worried about Reagan, though. She hasn’t been herself since that first tabloid article was published. Reporters hound her and Trey constantly. Trey’s good about brushing them off, but they’re really wearing Reagan down. I wish she’d stop reading those damned articles. Each time a new one comes out, she sinks a little lower. Steve still wants to confront Susan about starting this shitstorm. Unfortunately, the bitch disappeared as soon as Mom announced she was planning to sell the company. I still don’t get why Susan thought she could follow Exodus End on tour to get dirt on them. Did she really think Steve wouldn’t recognize her? She lost a lot of weight since he knew her, but she was his sister-in-law for five years; he’s not that clueless. Hopefully she’ll turn up one day. I’d really like to hear Steve cut her down to size. And if Reagan ever runs into her, I don’t think Susan will survive the confrontation.

I have to go now. Logan is waving me toward the sailboat he just rented. Sex on a boat—just a typical day in the life of Logan Schmidt. But for me, it’s another adventure of a lifetime.

I’m-in-love-with-a-rock-star,

Toni

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I hope you enjoyed the first book in the Exodus End series. There were many times that I believed I would never finish Insider. About a quarter of the way through the book, I got a horrible case of writers’ block and for months I couldn’t write anything. Being stuck is a horrible feeling, so to get past my block I started working on the Sole Regret series and put Insider on the back burner.

In hindsight, I blame Shade (aka Jacob Silverton) for getting me off track. If he wouldn’t have sent those black roses to Reagan stating he was fed up with his lead guitarist, I never would have started wondering about a vocalist named Shade (of all things), his tragic lead guitarist, and the band that has to put up with both of them. That’s when I became fixated on Sole Regret and took a detour, letting Exodus End’s story churn in my subconscious while I concentrated on writing other books. That worked great. At first. Words were flowing again. All the band members of Sole Regret were being noisy and demanding their stories be told. I was so relieved to be writing. And then one day, I decided I missed the guys of Sinners and wanted to write about their weddings.

I never expected writing Sinners at the Altar would be such an emotional process. When I finish writing a novel, I grieve. It’s like letting go of a pair of close friends. And finishing the Sinners series was like losing a dozen friends all at once. I know that’s why I got stuck on Insider so soon after the final Sinners book was released. I was afraid to get attached to the characters and it was at the quarter mark that I felt myself growing attached to them. I thought writing the Sinners’ wedding stories would remind me that the characters weren’t gone. They were living their happily-ever-afters off-screen. But instead of the pick me up I anticipated, writing their weddings made me grieve them all over again.

Unfortunately, finishing Sinners at the Altar made it hard for me to go back to Sole Regret. Damn it! It wasn’t because I had lost interest in them. I became afraid of how I’d feel after I finished their series, which is a more lengthy series—probably because I dread it endin

g. After I wrote Tease Me—Sole Regret #7 (a book twice as long as intended)—I finally convinced myself that I couldn’t put off Insider any longer. I had to finish the book even if it killed me. So thinking what I’d written must suck big wind, I went back and read what I’d started two years before and… I loved it! I couldn’t figure out why I’d stopped writing Insider in the first place. So while it took me two years to write the first forty-thousand words of this book, it only took four months to write the additional one-hundred-twenty-thousand. Actually if not for the two year hiatus in the middle, the book took about six months to write—which is about average for me. It’s that damned long hiatus in the middle that needs to never darken my doorstep again.

I’m still writing Sole Regret books. Still writing Sinners shorts. And will continue to write the rest of the Exodus End series. I do hope I never have to contend with that writers’ block bullshit again. I now know what to expect when I finish the Sole Regret series and the Exodus End series—crippling loss as I say goodbye to characters that become more real to me than you can imagine. So maybe I’ll deal with it better next time. Or maybe not. But I know if I don’t let myself get attached to these characters, I can’t expect my readers to care about them. So I’ll suck it up and deal with it! I just wanted to let my readers know why it took so long to write this book.

Before I leave you, I need to thank the people that helped make this stubborn book a reality. Thanks to Beth Hill, editor extraordinaire and the one who usually talks me off the ledge during my monumental meltdowns; Cyndi McGowen, fantastic friend, concert buddy, beta reader, and the best book-signing assistant (aka bitch-Olivia) I could ever ask for; Charity Hendry, who I’m sure can design graphics in her sleep—she designed Exodus End’s logo and the cover for Insider; my mom Paula and aunt Pam, friends by blood, fans by choice, beta readers by demand; the Writing Wombats, kindred souls who gave me the courage to self-publish this series; and most importantly, to all my fans, who remind me why I devote my life to making fictional rock stars come alive. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart!