Page 18 of Drum Me Away
We stood behind a family with three clearly sleep-deprived children all under the age of five, and Lucas continued tapping away at his phone. He suddenly said, “A-ha!” like a kid who had figured out the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle. “We are so staying here.”
“Where?”
He laughed and turned his phone around so I could see the screen. “A treehouse!”
CHAPTER7
Lucas
At four o’clockin the morning beggars couldn’t be choosy when it came to securing a place to stay that would let us check in within the next two hours. Although who the hell wouldn’t want to spend a week in a freaking tree house?
To ensure my rental request was accepted, I threw out the fact that two members of DarkHeaven would be staying there. This felt like a justifiable reason to use our fame to our advantage.
The owner responded in thirty seconds flat, even mentioning that they’d gone to our show in Seattle last week and it had been “fucking amazing.”
Half an hour later, we had the keys to a rental vehicle and the GPS called up for the fastest route out of the city. Which was any option we chose at this point, since who the hell else was out and about at this time of the morning?
Faith was asleep in the passenger seat and we were nearing our destination, so when I saw a Walmart Supercenter, I exited the highway. We should grab groceries now, because Roma had less than a thousand residents, and who knew how well stocked the local grocery store would be. Or what time it opened. And I was running on fumes at this point. Once we hit our destination, I had a feeling I’d crash for at least a solid six hours, if not more.
It was 6:04 when I parked, and the place opened at six. Which meant I basically had it to myself. I left Faith sleeping in the car, and with my trusty baseball cap on my head, rushed up and down the aisles, grabbing the basics and all the ingredients for a few homecooked meals, because honestly, it’d been two weeks of restaurant dining at this point, and the idea of getting into a kitchen and prepping food myself sounded pretty damn good.
Checking out was a breeze, not surprisingly, and when the cashier, who was probably in her late teens or early twenties, kept tossing me covert glances, I grinned and took off my cap.
Her jaw dropped. “Holy crap, you’re…”
“Lucas Lloyd. From Darkheaven.”
“Holy crap,” she said again. “It’s you.”
“Yep. It is.”
She glanced behind me. “Where’s Faith?”
It probably should bother me that our fans assumed we spent every moment together, and yeah, toward the end of our last tour, it had started to get under my skin. That and a million other little things I normally was able to blow off. Faith walked into the kitchen that morning, and suddenly, I couldn’t carry that load anymore.
Now we were playing Dahlia’s latest game and I was enjoying myself and guess what?
It didn’t bother me at all anymore.
“She’s trying to keep a low profile,” I said.
“So she’s here too?”
I winked and offered up an enigmatic smile. The cashier furrowed her brow like she was calculating something in her head and then stopped scanning my items. “Shouldn’t you be in Denver? No, Kansas City. Your next concert is tonight.”
Uh-oh, sounded like I had a super fan on my hands.
“What are you doing here?” She waved at her surroundings. “This isn’t Kansas City. Not even close.”
I was sure Faith didn’t want anyone to know what was going on in her personal life. She was a highly private person, and now that I knew she didn’t get along with her family, I understood why.
“We aren’t supposed to be here,” I explained. “Someone connected with the band had a personal issue, so we had to cancel a few of our upcoming shows, and now we’re basically hiding from the public eye.” This was all true and didn’t implicate Faith at all.
The cashier’s eyes widened again. “Whoa. And you picked here to hide out?”
I shrugged. “It’s small. Remote. Quiet.”
“That’s for sure,” she said with a snort. We both glanced down at the conveyor belt. “I don’t even know what to do.”
