Page 66 of Carter

I should have realized they came hand in hand.

Twenty-Four

He was MIA from the house for the five days that followed. He said he was spending time with Jared to write lyrics, but I knew it was just his way of staying away from me.

I thought about what I said to him all that time, and I realized I was absolute in my decision. I wouldn’t take it back. If he wanted me, here I was, but I was not going to take this friend bullshit for one more minute. It was terrifying waking up and having nobody to talk to. It was even more terrifying realizing my decision meant I was essentially alone now.

I didn’t cry anymore.

I was just angry.

We avoided each other when I worked. He watched me while he sat with the guys, but his face was usually screwed up in a glare. I was sure he was waiting for me to crumble and come crawling back to him. By the fourth day, his glare had turned into something less dissecting. He looked melancholy, and even when that look seared me on the insides, I kept my distance from him.

On the fifth morning, a hand nudged me awake. I opened my eyes immediately, hoping it was him. Instead, I was greeted by Rome’s face.

“Leah, we’ve gone viral,” he said to me.

He knelt beside the bed, tapping his cell phone against his chin.

I frowned in confusion. The hell was he on about? “What? How the hell did you get inside?”

“I’ve got the spare key to the suite, and you’ve been hiding out in here for days now. You know it’s noon, right? Anyway, doesn’t matter. We’re all over the internet. Some girl posted up a video of us last week, apparently she’s the daughter of some celebrity or whatever the fuck, and there’s something fucking crazy like two million views in six days.”

I rubbed my eyes and immediately sat up in bed. I was shocked. I couldn’t even speak for a moment as I digested his words. He was watching me carefully, a soft smile on his face.

“Who told you? When did you find out?”

“Jared just called me fifteen minutes ago,” he explained. “He told me there were links all over his Facebook of the video. There are hardly any thumbs down either, and it’s been shared forty thousand times already.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah!”

“Let me see the video.”

He handed me his phone. “It’s already on there. Just press play.”

I swiped the screen and watched it. The video was in surprisingly good quality, and it was one of the band’s catchier songs. It wasn’t at the bar but at another gig they’d taken a while back. My chest warmed hearing Carter’s voice, singing with his hands wrapped around the microphone, looking like he was made for this. His heart poured out of him with his words, and I knew it was because of this very fact that made this song a particular hit.

The girls could be heard screaming just as the video ended, and I ended up scrolling through the comments below thevideo. The response blew me away, and a lot of the positive feedback had to do with Carter’s incredible vocals and, of course, his remarkably good looks. One person wrote,“This guy’s got everything: amazing voice, sexy as hell, and the song is fucking wicked.”

I laughed and shook my head in disbelief before I looked up at him. “This is insane, Rome.”

“You’re telling me.”

“And this chick that took the video is hot shit, you said.”

“She’s got a massive following.”

“Do the other guys know?”

“Jared said he’d call Leo up, and Carter’s crashing his place, so of course he knows.”

I felt a sting in my chest. Carter should’ve been the one here telling me about this.

“So what now?” I asked Rome. “Is this going to change things for you guys or something?”

“Jared said it might land us some more gigs. Our Facebook page has definitely blown up, and to think, Carter thought it was pointless having one before.” He scoffed and shook his head. “We’ll probably start our own channel on Youtube and try promoting ourselves some more. We’ve sent out our demos a long time ago, but with this video, you never know, we might hear back from somebody. We’ll put a bit of money in advertisements for gigs. If we get some more stuff out, we might get a bit of a following.”

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