Page 107 of The Sounds of Her

“They’re not in New York.”

“What? Where are they?”

“Vermont, they went skiing.” When she gets no response she laughs again, but it’s not with humour. “Yeah, they’ve gone on vacation. They won’t be back for at least a week.”

“Jesus… I don’t even know what to say to that.”

“It lets me off the hook, I guess. And I didn’t make it easy for them to let me know they were going out of state.”

“They can’t afford to be going out of state,” I point out. She doesn’t say anything. Fuck. It’s hard to tell the best way to handle this when she’s a million miles away from me. I wish I was with her.

“I don’t know, Archer, I still haven’t found out about their finances, but pulling something like this is typical of them.”

“Did they know the date you were due back home?” I ask, my fist clenching.

She hesitates for a few seconds. “Yes.”

Those fuckers. Gotta hand it to them, they take being the world’s biggest dickheads to a whole new level. Speaking of dickheads. “What about Campbell?”

“I’m meeting him, today actually. In about an hour.”

“You don’t have to meet him, Brooke. You don’t owe that asshole anything. It’s your mom and dad you need to talk to.”

“I can’t avoid him, Archer. He’s been calling.”

“Block him.”

“Archer,” she sighs. “I don’t avoid confrontation, and I am not scared of Roman Campbell. But,” she goes on before I can protest any further. “He’s coming here, to my office, so I will be surrounded by people. Not that I think he is stupid enough to do anything. I’m not concerned. And you don’t need to be either. This is a problem I have to deal with.”

It’s good it’s on her terms, I still don’t like it, but keep my mouth shut. I don’t want her to think I’m overstepping, no matter how much I hate the idea of it, she’s right.

“Besides, I have a plan and Roman is just the first step.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I know what I’m doing, and you’ve got nothing to worry about. Can we talk about something else?”

“If he tries anything, Brooke.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, it will not come to that. I have about ten minutes before I need to take a work call. What’s New Zealand like?”

“So far, a barrel of laughs.”

“Shit, it’s been bad after what happened?”

“Yeah, we’ve moved to an apartment instead of a hotel, for security purposes, so we’re all on top of one another. I have no space because every time I turn around one of them is right there. B is video calling at all hours of the day and don’t get me started on Dale. We barely even knew he was with us before this leg of the tour. Now he’s watching our every move, reporting back to Bianca.”

“It all went downhill when I left,” she jokes.

I go quiet, she doesn’t know the half of it. Last night when we got back, they decided to have some food and drinks and watch TV and I couldn’t get over how much I missed Brooke being there, not just with me, but in the group. Like Elsa and Jenna, curled up with Nick and Adam. I never thought I would say I can relate to Jordan and his maudlin ass, missing Alessa.

“Well, you only have a few more shows to go.”

“It’s still over a week till we’re done. Shit, I never say stuff like this because I love what we do, being on tour is a fucking rush… I’m actually looking forward to it being over.”

“Why?”

Well that’s a loaded question. “I miss home.”

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