Page 93 of Give Me What I Want

Bea giggled as she rubbed the places we had pinched, fingers brushing so sweetly over his shoulder. “Don’t do it again, though.”

“I won’t.”

Mav was still weak when we got home the next day, but we had an interview to attend with Maggie Bellows the following morning, and Garth was refusing to re-schedule, insisting that the label wouldn’t allow it, and that he’d kept the truth from us, but we were in fact on thin fucking ice.

“Maggie would understand,” Bea insisted, trying to reason with him, but he wouldn’t budge. “Can we do a video call instead? Mav isn’t ready.”

“He’s going to have to get ready, Beatrix. I’m sorry, I genuinely am, but if you don’t do this it’s your whole future on the line.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell us this weeks ago?” Ro hissed, grabbing the phone and holding it close to his mouth, even though Garth was on speaker and could easily hear him. “Why are we on thin ice anyway?”

“They are tired of the bad publicity you bring. The drama, it’s not good for their image,” Garth said, sounding fed up.

“We’ve been getting great publicity since Bea and I started dating,” Ro argued. “What more do they fucking want?”

“They want you all to smile and be polite and not get into any trouble. The leaked photos, the rumours of breakups, that video of that argument, all of that coming off of the back of Mav’s arrest back in May, the Jordan rehab thing, sure you spun it to sound a hell of a lot better than the truth, but it hurt your image.” Garth sighed. “There are plenty of stories that you guys never saw, and not everyone buys the whole dating thing.”

“But we’reactuallydating, we’re together for real,” Bea argued, shouting like a frustrated child not getting her own way. “This is bullshit!”

“Make them buy it then, sell yourselves better. You can’t rely on your pure talent to keep the label happy.” I was sure that Garth was squeezing the bridge of his nose, I could picture him, pacing and pressing.

“Fine, I’ll tell everyone that I’m in love with all three of my bandmates. We can do this interview and come clean. If the label wants a love story, they’ll damn well get one. And what’s more, is that it’s the truth. No more acting, no more faking.” Bea looked smug, but her eyes were narrowed, as though sheknewwhat Garth would say next.

“Beatrix, you cannot do that!” Garth shouted. “They’ll drop you in a second if that comes out.”

“So you’re telling me that our happiness doesn’t mean shit to them and that we have to keep our real feelings secret, even though I can guarantee nothing bad will come of it? Look at One Last Time, they didn’t getanybacklash for their situation.”

“They did, but you were too wrapped up in your own shit to have heard about it. That girl was pinned as a whore for months. They were just damn lucky that when Elijah called looking for a new manager, we found Hillary.Sheis the reason their publicity got better, she goes above and beyond her job role for them.”

“Then you should too!” Bea was screaming, snatching the phone from Ronan.

“For a price,” Garth said after a long pause.

“Name it,” Ro rasped, glaring at the phone.

Garth sighed, then whispered. “Double what you pay me. Double it and I’ll delay the interview, get the label off your backs for five minutes, and work out how to let you come clean without ruining your careers.”

“Done,” Ro said, not bothering to confer with any of us, and hung up the phone, tossing it onto the coffee table.

I got up and silently left the room. I wasn’t the guy who argued, but something about all of that had felt so wrong. Ro had taken charge, fine, whatever, but… he could’ve taken a minute to talk to us all, to include Mav in this.

“What the hell is going on out there?” Maverick asked as I walked into his bedroom and sat down on his bed, leaning against the headboard and tipping my head, staring up at the ceiling.

“Don’t stress yourself over it, dude.” I twisted my head to look at him with one of my killer-watt smiles. “How are you feeling?”

Mav rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to break, tell me what’s going on.”

I looked back up at the ceiling, searching for the least stressful way of telling him. Sitting up on my knees, I started to explain. “So, the label are being cockwombles, Garth is a gold-digger, and Bea is the queen of honesty.”

Mav blinked a few times, then snorted a laugh. “Again, but with alittlemore clarity, please, boo.”

It was nice to hear him laugh, but I felt a twist in my stomach at the sound, realising how many times I had heard him laugh and presumed that the sound had meant that he was perfectly fine. How had I not seen how bad things really were? Had I been too focused on his smiles to notice how often they weren’t sitting on his face?

I scrubbed my hand over my smooth, freshly shaved chin. “The label wants us to stop being naughty children and do as we’re told, so they want us to attend an interview tomorrow morning. Garth is trying to get us out of it for now though, but he wants lots of money, like…a lot, cheeky wotsit. And Bea wants to… erm… well, I don’t know if she was just saying it because she knew Garth wouldn’t want her to do it, or if she really meant it, but she wants to tell the world about us all… you know, being together and shit.”

Mav’s eyes widened, and then he groaned loudly. “Fuck me, can you lot do nothing without me around?”

“We’re hopeless without you,” I confessed, tilting my head and shrugging a shoulder.

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