Page 68 of Give Me What I Want

19

I am 1 in 4.

We had come to an agreement about Jordan in less than ten minutes. The hard part though had been deciding how and when. Three days on, we still hadn’t worked that one out.

Jordan had stayed out for the night in Barcelona, we had no idea where he had been, nor did we care. He came back to the bus the following morning, ate some breakfast, then decided that he was going to travel to Milan on One Last Time’s bus.

Our friends didn’t know what had happened, yet, but they were suspicious. He had spent all of his time with them and not us, and both Elijah and Cece had cornered me to ask what was going on. But until we had spoken to Jordan, we weren’t spilling the tea. Garth had actually made us swear that we wouldn’t, supporting our decision and asking us to be careful with how we broke it to him too. He didn’t want a huge scandal on his hands. He knew that there would be fall out, that we couldn’t let him go without an explanation to the world, but we could try to do it all with minimal damage to our name.

Mav dropped his head, burying it in his hands, and groaned loudly. “For the last fucking time, you cannot just throw him out of the bus window when we leave here.”

“Why not?” Ronan said, head tilted, brows raised. “You keep saying you’ll just toss him in a bin, what makes your idea any better?”

“My idea is a joke,” Mav explained, again, raising his head and staring with tired eyes at Ronan. “You keep making violent suggestions like you really mean it.”

“Maybe I do.” Ro smirked, getting to his feet and heading to the door, propping it open and staring across the lot. “Look at him, happy as Larry, hanging out withourfriends.” Ro’s top lip peeled back, and I came to his side, peering out of the open door.

Jordan was outside, across the lot, with the drummer from One Last Time. They were sipping beers, lounging on sunbeds, with sunglasses on, even though it was seriously overcast today. I could hear the drummer’s booming laughter loud and clear as Jordan said something that had clearly tickled him.

“We should tell them,” Ro muttered.

“Not yet,” I said gently, stroking the skin behind his ear and tracing the lines of his newest tattoo. “If I can keep it from them, then you can too.”

Ronan shivered, then glanced my way. “Then we need to hurry up and tell him he’s out.”

“What do we tell the world though?”

I stared across the lot, watching Jordan sip. Sip, sip, sip. It was all he ever did. And then it hit me. I turned to the others, “Rehab. We tell them he went to rehab.”

“That’s not a permanent solution,” Mav said with a sigh.

“Okay, fine, maybe not rehab. But we could blame his drinking and drug abuse. Ithasbeen getting out of hand recently.” I stepped away from the door, leaving Ro still staring.

“She’s right,” Ro agreed. “It would be a clean story, no one really gets hurt.” His gaze darkened as he finally drew it back into the bus. “Although I still seriously want to hurt him.”

“You broke his nose,” Mav reasoned. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No.” Ro snapped.

Sitting down on Cole’s knee, I got comfy, then said, “We’re hurting him by taking away his career. I don’t think we could do anything worse to him.”

“Do you feel bad about that?” Cole asked, kissing my shoulder.

I thought about it, just like I had for the last few days. “No, I don’t. What he did was unforgivable, and he’s not even tried to earn our trust back. He knows he fucked up, yet he’s over there, hanging out with our friends, acting as though in a couple of days we’ll let him come ‘home’, and forget about it all.”

Ronan came to sit beside us, spreading wide across the space left on the sofa. “He’s delusional.”

We all nodded in agreement. “So that’s settled, now we need to tell him.”

“I’ll do it,” Ro said, tossing his head back and closing his eyes, relaxing into the sofa.

Mav snorted. “Absolutely not. I hate to be the one to say this, babe, but it should come from you.” He was looking at me, pity in his eyes as he attempted to give me a smile.

“I know.” I sighed, then snuggled further into Cole’s embrace, twisting my body so I could nuzzle into his neck, something I was enjoying getting to do since he hadn’t let his beard grow back. “I’ll do it tomorrow, let’s get tonight’s show out of the way first.”

Mav got up and stretched, his top rising enough to show off those delicious lines on his toned, tanned skin that disappeared beneath his jeans. “I’ll go and tell Garth.”

He went to the door, pulling it open just as a red-faced Cece appeared in front of it. “I need to talk to you.” She was pointing at me, an irritated look on her face as she stormed up the steps and shoved past Mav. He shrugged, then made his way outside, followed by Ronan, who declared that he wanted nothing to do with girl drama.

---