Page 100 of Revelry

I shake my head. I’m about to hit end, but I don’t know what I want. I want so badly to talk to him, but it’s just going to open wounds that have barely even scabbed over. I set the phone down, firm in my decision, and then my hand reaches for it, hits okay, and I press the phone to my ear.

There’s heavy breathing from the other end, and a woman’s voice in a very thick French accent says, “Oh Levi. Oh god, I love the feel of your big cock inside me.”

I close my eyes as tears spill out through my lashes. My heart squeezes painfully in my chest. I’m torn between hearing more and wanting to hang up on him. I have so much guilt where he’s concerned, so I figure I probably deserve to hear all this and more.

“I miss you,” he says with a shaky breath. He sounds drunk. “I fucking miss you so much, Red.”

I suck in a sharp breath, and cover my mouth with my hands so he won’t hear my sobs.What can I say to that? That I miss him too? That it hurts too much to hear him fucking someone else?Why would he do that to me? Even as I think it, I already know the answer—because he’s drunk and hurting. He gave me his heart, and I broke it. I walked away and broke us all. But what we had wasn’t natural. It was never going to end well, because it was destructive, and it was never just about the fucking. Maybe in the beginning it had been, but they had opened me up to a whole new world, and I feel the loss of it with every second that passes.

“Levi,” I beg on a sob. I don’t know why I’m begging. What can either of us do? But I think that one little word between us erases all of the distance these last few weeks apart have caused, if only for a moment.

“Ah, fuck,” he groans into the earpiece, and I wonder who he’s with, and what she makes of him calling someone else while he’s fucking her. “Fucking love you, Red.”

I hear him come; no, I don’t hear it. I feel it. I feel that betrayal across the ocean, across time zones and the hundreds of kilometres between us. I wait until he rides out his high, and then I steel my voice and say, “Don’t call me again.”

“Ali,” he slurs, but I don’t hear any more. I can’t. I don’t even end the call—I just drop the phone and sink to the floor in Tim’s lounge room.

“Hey, Al, you okay?” Tim says, coming towards me. He picks up the phone. Levi is screaming my name into the receiver. Tim puts his ear against it and speaks low into the mouthpiece. “You call again, and I’m gonna kick your fucking arse.”

“Who is this?” Levi says, and he’s alert now—I can hear it through the receiver. If I know anything about Levi, it’s that he’s an angry drunk. And right about now he’d be ready to punch someone’s lights out. “Who the fuck is this?”

“Your replacement,” Tim sneers into the phone, and hangs up before Levi can utter another word. To hear him, so desolate, so lost and so hurt, and to know we caused that—that I caused that? It destroys that last little vestige of my strength.

The sobs break free from my chest and they don’t stop. Eventually, Tim carries me into his bedroom. He places me on the bed he used to share with his ex and lies down behind me, pulling my body tightly against his. It’s not a sexual thing—it never could be anything sexual between us. It was nice to have someone champion for me. It was nice, but it makes no difference. My heart is still just as broken as it was the second I’d heard him come inside another woman, because with one thoughtless phone call he cheapened everything we shared during those weeks on tour.

Iglare at my phone and slide it back into my pocket when I see that there’s no text back from Ali. I’d been drunk last night after the show, and I’d gotten it into my head that I should drunk dial, only with texting, because she’d always responded well to those in the past. Drunk Cooper had thought that this was a fucking brilliant idea. Only when I’d pulled out my phone and brought up her number, I had stared at the blank text screen for too long, and wound up typingI miss your wild pussy, referring to all the times we’d talked about her vagina needing a leash. At the time of my drunk text decision-making, I’d thought it conveyed the fact that I missed her while also saying I missed her vagina. In the harsh light of day, I sounded like a fucking arsehole. It was a fact that was no less true—I did miss her wild pussy, but I missed so much more than that.

I sit in the venue’s green room, drinking an Italian beer that I can’t pronounce while the guys chat to a bunch of VIP groupies. Levi’s been AWOL since the second we came off-stage, disappearing with a bottle of liquor and a hot brunette. A blonde with a pixie-cut sits down on the couch beside me, braving the frosty reception I’ve given any woman who came within a foot of me tonight. I know, I sound like a spoiled douche, and if Ali were here right now she’d likely kick my arse and tell me to go treat my fans with the respect they deserve, but I’m burnt out. Weariness has wormed its way through my bones. It eats at the core of me and there is nothing left.

“Ciao.”

“Hey,” I say, tilting my bottle of beer towards her.

“That was a great show.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you want to go somewhere? You want to er … get away from here?”

I turn my head and take her in. She’s cute, and her cheeks blush bright pink as she waits for my answer, which of course reminds me of Ali.

“Yeah, I really do wanna get away from here,” I murmur, thinking about going home, seeing Ali. Even if it’s only for an hour—even if I spend the next month regretting it, because it just makes the wound that much deeper. Hell, I’d settle for five minutes alone with her.

“Great,” she says, her eyes dart away from me, glancing down at her small hands curled in her lap. “I know a place we can go that’s quiet. No one will recognise you, and if they do they won’t pester.”

Shit. “Uh, what’s your name?”

“Sophie.”

“Sophie, right,” I say, and then I sigh because, well, what the fuck else do you do in this situation? “Listen, I didn’t mean—”

“I knew it,” she interrupts, and a sweet smile spreads across her face. “You are in love with the redhead, with Ali. My friends didn’t want to believe it, but I knew. So where is she?”

“Home.” I sigh. “She’s home.”

“But you are here.”

“Yes, I am.”

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