Page 8 of Revel
“I’d f*** her,” Revved’s front man Revel Slade said of Taylan Ash at the Grammy Awards, “but her lyrics say absolutely nothing other than she clearly hasn’t had her cherry popped.”
Dad reaches for my shoulder, squeezing it. “I’m warning you now, T. Don’t fall for him.”
My eyes widen. “Why would you say that? He’s a monster. . . I’d never.”
Dad shrugs. “I’m just. . . .” He pauses, clearing his throat and straightening his tie. “I don’t want you to get hurt, and if Breckin means anything to you, you won’t give Revel Slade the time of day.”
If Breckin means anything to me? Obviously, my dad doesn’t know Breckin like I do, and he’s not up to date on the things he’s done recently. I settle with, “It’s going to be fine.”
It’s when I’m alone with Bella in the car on the way to the airport, our entourage of SUVs behind us that it hits me what this could mean. I’m not sure I belong on the same tour with Revved, let alone Revel. While I’ve certainly earned this right to perform, and expand my abilities as a performer, we are in fact completely different performers. You’d never see my fans at one of their concerts, or at the very least, admitting to going to them. They’re like Motley Crew and Nine Inch Nails had a baby with Prince and out came Revved.
I’m more like Taylor Swift and Mariah Carey bred a redheaded freckled-faced pop princess. I write songs about young love and my dream world that’s nowhere close to reality. They write about death, sex, drugs, women, and suicide. A world I’m completely unfamiliar with.
Cradling my face in my hands, I let out a shaky breath. “What have I agreed to?”
Bella’s pretty brown eyes light up. “Only the best party of our lives!”
PRINCESS IS LOOKING FOR A KING
REVEL
Standing next to a car, I hide my bloodshot eyes behind my signature black lenses, my leather jacket pulled up at the collar protecting my too-sensitive skin from the cool breeze. Do you notice the tight set of my jaw and the impatience in my stance? The way every muscle in my body is tensed and rigid?
It all leads you to one theory on me, doesn’t it?
What is it? I’m curious.
Okay, I’m actually not. Just know, it’s somewhere between an arrogant indifference I’ve perfected and vulnerability.
We’re set to leave this morning, first night of the One Vibe tour starting tonight in Portland, Oregon, and though I still have no interest in doing this tour, or seeing Hensley today, here I am fucking standing, waiting, and she’s here, hanging on my arm like nothing happened between us over the last three months.
Everything happened. I can’t stand this bitch, and the idea of her clinging to my arm in an attempt to act like the past doesn’t exist, bury her mistakes, triggers my barely controlled tendency to cause some serious mayhem. Despite what everyone says, I don’t lose my temper just to lose it. There’s always been a legitimate fucking reason for it.
I fight the urge to grab her by the neck and slam her head into the side of the car. Brutal, I know, but if you knew the ways she took everything I had to give and destroyed it, you’d understand why that is.
“Why are you so tense today?” she asks, tightening her arm around mine, her brown eyes as tortured as the day she crashed into my life.
Letting my sunglasses slide down my nose, I stare at her above the frames, blowing smoke in her face. “You’re a cunt.” I could go on here. I could air her dirty fucking laundry around the world, but I don’t because that means letting people into my world, feeding the gossip mongers who are always waiting by the side for any juicy slip of my private life. No, at this point I give her what she deserves and what she deserves is my fucking cold shoulder.
Hensley rolls her eyes, pushing away from me with a shove. “You’re such an asshole sometimes.”
“Honey, you haven’t seen me being an assholeyet.”
Having spent most of her life in and out of foster care, I met Hensley when she was sixteen and a runaway on the streets looking for someone to take her in. Incredibly talented, she wrote a few songs for Revved and then eventually, she and I started, and it was hard to break free, even though our relationship was toxic.
Lost in a memory I want to burn from my brain, the one of her telling me she’d gotten pregnant with someone else, the band converses around me. It’s like a cloud of words, by who, I’m not sure, but I hear things like:
“Why do we have to do this?”
“Diversity.”
“That’s bullshit. Nobody wants diversity.”
“Thank you, Cruz.”
“Don’t talk to me.”
“You can’t stop me from talking.”
