Madelynne Ellis - Come Together

‘Elspeth didn’t have to come,’ he said. He hadn’t forced anyone to sign up, and, to be perfectly honest, he thought the band might be happier without her. He didn’t really want her around, acting as a constant reminder.

‘You’d seriously do this without her? We’re honouring her dead husband, and you’d leave her behind? She’s the most right out of all of us to be included. I wish to God you’d admit that, instead of constantly trying to co-opt her grief.’

‘Co-opt her grief,’ he muttered, flabbergasted by Rock Giant’s gall. Xane and Steve had been best friends since they were eleven. They’d been lovers for nearly eighteen months, and had been to hell and back together several times over. Just because Steve had ultimately chosen Elspeth didn’t mean Xane’s feelings for the guy were any less sincere than Elspeth’s, or any less intense – assuming Elspeth was capable of that level of depth. He doubted the authenticity of everything she’d ever said to him, other than her delight in screwing him up when she said goodbye.

Rock Giant did so love acting as her knight protector, though. ‘You know the bit that really doesn’t add up, Xane?’ he continued, determined, it seemed, to stir things up. ‘It’s the fact that you make like you’re so devastated because the pair of them dumped you, but then you dive into bed with Dani less than twelve hours later. That’s not the action of someone who’s lost the love of his life. I don’t think you were in love. I think your pride got hurt, because they chose one another over being with you.’

‘Shut the fuck up.’ Paul didn’t know a damn thing. Only what Elspeth had told him, which would be half-truths at best. Xane slapped his hand against a poster they passed, and tore it from the wall. He really was trying hard not to let this devolve into a fight, but connecting his shin with Rock Giant’s nuts was looking increasingly appealing.

‘I say we vote on your girl coming along.’

Xane sucked the ring that pierced the centre of his lower lip, and wished he’d already applied his full mask of stage make-up. The veneer of pan-stick white mixed with blood and kohl made schooling his expressions so much easier. Rather than engage in a pantomime back and forth, he simply shook his head. They weren’t voting. If it came to it, he and Dani could ride on the main bus and anyone who objected to her presence could bunk up with Ash on the sleazemobile – the rust-bucket of a bus that was ostensibly meant to house the road crew but inevitably became Ash’s shagging pad. Somehow, he suspected Dani’s presence wouldn’t be quite so objectionable to them when faced with that prospect.

Honestly, he didn’t know what the hell they could find to object about her anyway. She wasn’t exactly high drama. She was the sort of girl mothers dreamed you’d bring home. Most mothers at any rate; his had never given a shit.

‘She’s coming, and that’s the end of it,’ he muttered. ‘If you don’t like it, take your bass and stuff it up your arse.’ He was getting one thing straight from the outset. He wasn’t going to be walked all over or taken for granted any more. This band was his outfit. He wrote the material, he was the creative force behind it. Every bugger else was replaceable. He expected a little respect.

To his astonishment, Rock Giant clapped him on the back. ‘OK, bring your girl, but try and cut Elspeth some slack, please. She is genuinely a mess right now. Losing Steve’s hit her bloody hard. It’s hit us all hard, I know, but …’ He shook his head. ‘You’ll see.’

You’re dead to me, Dani, if you go with him. Dead – like your father. Men don’t love. They only think with their dicks. He’s using you. He’ll discard you, just as soon as he’s sucked all the goodness from you.

She made Xane sound like a vampire.

Dani’s finger hovered over the delete button. As mementos went it was a strange one to want to preserve. Then again, it summed up her mother perfectly – batshit crazy, preachy, lacking in genuine understanding or warmth. It also succinctly summarised why Dani was here and not with her mum, locked inside the religious commune that’d been her home since the age of eleven.

Xane might tempt her to sin, but he sure made it a lot of fun, whereas being a good girl the whole time was deadly dull. She didn’t want to turn into the sort of sanctimonious leech her mother and the other women of the Sisterhood of St Agatha’s were. She wanted to live and love, experience what the world had to offer. And yes, it totally did help that the world in this current context happened to possess washboard abs, the voice of Lucifer and waist-length hair the colour of midnight.

Xane Geist could turn her insides mushy with a single glance. He rocked her goddamned world. Hers and a couple of million other folks’ – but she was the only one he was taking on tour.

‘Dani Fosbrook?’

Dani peeped up from her phone screen. The voice didn’t belong to Xane, nor to anyone else she recognised. Although, to be fair, she couldn’t see much of the man’s face, because of the asymmetrical cut of his blond hair. Crew, she gathered, given his Black Halo ‘Requiem for the Damned’ T-shirt and khaki cut-offs stuffed with guitar strings and bits of electrical cable.

‘I’m here to take you backstage.’

Hallelujah! She’d been sitting waiting for someone to fetch her for far too long. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but ever since a certain video clip of her and Xane together had gone viral, she’d become an object of curiosity – the rock star’s girlfriend. Hence the queuing fans with their faces pressed to the glass doors.

Unbidden, her escort hefted her suitcase, proving he had muscle hiding beneath that lean physique. She’d squeezed most of her worldly possessions into that bag.

‘Ready?’ He swiped them through a set of security doors.

Dani trotted along behind him. She’d never been more ready in her life, though she was nervous about properly meeting the rest of the band. It didn’t matter how many times Xane told her it’d be all right, she couldn’t entirely quell her butterflies. Black Halo were massive, and she’d been a fan of theirs for eternity. She still regularly pinched herself to check her relationship with Xane was real. Also, she wasn’t sure how much they blamed her for Xane skipping out on them after their last live performance. They might consider her major trouble.

‘First tour with the band?’

She nodded.

‘Mine too. I guess we’ll be seeing a fair bit of one another.’ He pushed back his curtain of long hair, revealing a pair of intriguing mismatched irises, one pale-green and one hazel. Both shone with excitement. ‘I’m Luthor.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’

He gave her an endearing lopsided grin. ‘You’re not what I was expecting.’

‘Meaning?’ she asked, fearing the worst. People didn’t seem to like that she and Xane were together. She still wondered at the miracle of it herself. It didn’t seem to matter how often Xane said he loved her, part of her still expected him to wake one morning and wonder what the fuck he was doing with her – a screwed-up nobody, not especially pretty or clever, and with welts across her soul and body that might never heal.

For the most part, she didn’t even dress like a rock star’s girlfriend. She currently had on a pair of old jeans, a faded long-sleeved T-shirt and only a smidge of make-up.

Luthor shook his head, reinstating the curtain of hair over his eyes. ‘I only meant that I didn’t know he had a steady girlfriend.’

‘Where’ve you been living, Mars?’ She’d have bet money on the whole world having seen that video.