Page 21 of Tattoos and Heartbreak
Wait. That didn’t make sense. They’d known what room I was in. They’d known that I was in there—or they would have if they’d called or bothered to knock. It wasn’t like I’d just up and disappeared in the middle of the night or something.
I was the lead singer of one of the bands on tour.
Why would they have left without me?
And a better question: Why would Anna have left without Lila?
I grabbed her hand and hauled her toward the stairs, my mind turning through the information so quickly it was going to make me sick. The tour had a specific schedule, yes, but that schedule was at least kind of flexible. Especially when it came to the timing for moving on from a hotel. I knew the next city and it wasn’t that far away. Maybe a two-hour drive? Three if you were driving slowly.
Why were they in such a hurry that they’d left us here? Just because we overslept? That didn’t make any sense.
We got down the stairs and to the reception desk in no time flat and I paused, trying to bring my charm to the forefront. I wanted to know what was going on, and yelling at the poor kid behind the desk wasn’t going to help me do that.
“Excuse me,” I asked, striving for a reasonable tone of voice.
The kid turned to me and his eyes widened. “Rivers Shine.”
I gave him a quick grin. “That’s right. Lila here says she’s talked to you and that you told her everyone has already left. Is that true? The whole tour has already gone?”
“Th-That’s right, sir,” he stuttered.
“I’m not a sir,” I said quickly. “Did they happen to say why they left without waking me up first? Or what they thought I should do about it?”
His face, which had been pale up to this point, suddenly broke out into a smile. “They didn’t say anything about it, no. But they did leave you a note.”
A note.
They left me a note?
This was all starting to feel like some colossal joke. Everyone on tour—including my best friends and band mates—had left me behind and gone to the next town without me. Anna had left without Lila. And they’d done nothing more than leave us a note?
“Can I have it?” I asked, knowing that my voice now sounded tense and unhappy.
He nodded and slid an envelope across to me, looking like this was all really entertaining.
It wasn’t.
It got even less entertaining when I read the note.
It didn’t say much. Just a couple of lines from Taylor about how they’d noticed that Lila and I hadn’t been getting to spend much quality time together and that they’d decided to remedy the situation.
They’d left us here together on purpose.
So that we’d have to find our own way to the next town.
LILA
“Ican’t believe we’re doing this,” I said as I ducked around the corner and scanned the street in front of us. There was no one there—as expected—and the cars were limited to two: a red truck and a brown sedan of some sort.
“I can’t believe they left us,” Rivers said from right behind me, his hand on my back as he leaned over me to look out of the alley as well. “Actually, scratch that. I can.”
I turned to look up at him, shocked. “You can believe that the guys in your band, plus your roadies, plus your techs, plus your agent, all left you sleeping in your hotel room rather than waking you up to get on the bus, where you could have gone back to sleep?”
He gave me a very wry, very sarcastic look. “Of course I can. Welcome to the music industry, Lila. They’ll do anything if they think it’ll make for good publicity. I’m more surprised they talked Anna into leavingyou.”
I was surprised about that as well, and when we caught up with everyone in the next town, I was planning to have a conversation with her about that. And the fact that she’d taken my car with her.
I didn’t know what her motives were, but they weren’t good enough. We’d never deserted each other, no matter what, and I wasn’t feeling very happy about her having deserted me now—with Rivers Shine as my only companion.
