Page 37 of Give Me What I Want

“Alcohol might work,” I suggested, calling after him.

He came to a halt, turned, and raised a brow at me. “You want to waste good alcohol?”

“You want to waste good petrol?” Mav countered, stepping in with his arms folded over his chest.

Jordan shrugged, flicked his hair out of his eye, and walked off. He didn’t argue with Mav, but his disapproval of my suggestion was clear in the way his shoulders stayed hunched and his mutters, although inaudible, still reached us until he disappeared out of sight.

“We need to be careful,” I said quietly, giving Mav a serious look.

“Go and get some cloths from under the sink, and a bowl of soapy water. Let’s see if we can get at least some of this off while we wait. And let’s just pray that no one saw this and took photos. The last thing we need right now is more bad publicity, not after that video.” Mav tilted his head up to the sky, eyes closed, and inhaled, chest expanding as he filled it with fresh air. For a moment, I thought that he might scream, but he didn’t. Instead, he twisted his neck until I heard a light crack, then exhaled and dropped his head.

“It’ll all pass,” I said softly, hoping that there was some truth to my statement. Then I made my way back onto the bus, ignoring the screams of what I really hoped was pleasure, as I filled a bowl, grabbed some cloths, and snuck back out.

Half an hour later, with the help of an extremely irritated Garth and a bottle of nail varnish remover, we had the front of our bus gleaming, the black paintwork sparkling in the midday sun, just in the nick of time as Ro and Bea came plodding down the steps, hand in hand, looking tired, happy, and calm.

Mav and I exchanged a look as we opened up the lower storage compartment that held some spare equipment and a garden chair set that I had bought last week.

‘We keep this to ourselves’, he silently said, his eyes widening for a second.

I nodded in agreement, then pulled out the table, setting it up as Mav grabbed chairs. Jordan had gone inside to make drinks with our manager, and I hoped that they would be having the same conversation, only with more actual words.

Bea might have thought that Garth was out to get her, but I had to try to believe that he wasn’t. I had to cling to this ray of hope that he was a better man than she thought, after all, he might have been MIA for the leaked picture drama a couple of weeks ago, but he had helped with both the video and the spray paint drama today. A man who wanted to ruin her career wouldn’t have done that. Would he?

Unless… No. No, I couldn’t let myself overthink. But a small part of me did wonder, had it been Bea that the culprit had wanted to upset and expose, or all of us?

11

“Iwant to stage something,” I decided as I switched the TV off and untucked my legs.

“What do you mean?” Cole asked from beside me. He had been drawing on my back with the tip of his finger as we sat and watched a film, and now he had moved on to tracing tattoos on my arm.

Pulling away from him, I gave him a quick smile before explaining myself. I loved how touchy-feely he was, but I needed to concentrate. “It’s almost been a month since the last big article came out about us…”

Since that morning in Cardiff, the reports seemed to mostly be praise about our shows, the occasional candid picture from one of our days out, or positive speculations about the future of my relationship with Ronan. There had been no more videos, no rumours of a split between us or the band, no leaks of any kind.

“We still don’t know who it is that has been out to get us, but I have a plan to find out. Well, it’ll narrow things down at least.”

I had all of the guys’ attention, even Jordan’s. He had barely been able to look at me in the last month. It seemed that his disapproval of my bedroom activities wasn’t something that he could easily drop, but he rarely voiced his opinion, only dropping the occasional snarky comment in passing.

“I think that we should do something notable in front of different groups of suspects,” I said with an excited grin.

“Oh, here she goes.” Mav rolled his eyes. “You want to set a trap to catch the bad guy?”

I tried to glare at him, but I was too proud of my plan to manage more than a quick squint his way. “Exactly. Mav gets it. Then tomorrow, a story will no doubt come out, and voila, we have a smaller suspect pool to work with.”

“Or,” Ronan said slowly. “We don’t do anything, and we just enjoy the fact that it’s been a month, and maybe it wasn’t even one of our crew. You know a fan could’ve quite easily snuck up to the bus, and as for the picture, hackers exist.”

“You thought that someone was out to get me.” I turned on him, looking at him as though I could turn him to dust with a glare. Trust Ro to be able to snap my mood with great goddamn ease.

“And now I don’t. You know I hate to admit it, but I can be wrong sometimes. It’s rare, but it’s been known to happen.” He smiled, all toothy and teasing.

“Ugh,” I groaned. “So no one is on my side here?” I glanced between my bandmates, finding myself met with apologetic faces and small shrugs.

“We have enough to deal with keeping your fake relationship going, let alone adding fake drama to our agenda, let’s just put a pin in your idea, okay?” Mav said gently, as though he knew I might explode. But not at him. I refused to fight with a man who was so close to breaking point.

“Fine,” I grumbled, softening as my eyes met his tired ones, bloodshot, dull, and dark. I wanted to hold him until all of his hurting passed, but he hadn’t even reached the top of the hill yet, there was worse to come. Steve was still with us, but each day when Mav video called him, he seemed worse.

Yesterday I had sat with Mav during his call, raking my fingers through his hair as he spoke to his uncle, pretending to be strong for the man who looked moments away from drawing his final breath. He was so thin, his skin sallow, grey. It was breaking my heart just to look at him. Steve had always been so supportive of all of us. He had cheered us on in our earliest days, and he had given a million pep talks to each member of our band. So I raked my fingers through Mav’s hair and tried my hardest to follow his lead and smile.

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