Page 92 of Revelry

My stomach roils. I was already concerned enough about getting paid for this job while sleeping with two members of the band. When the record company had tried to milk what we had to make a buck, I’d felt even worse, but this?

He’s been paying me the whole time?

He may not have intended it this way, but by paying me a wage and fucking me at the same time, he made me a whore.His whore.

Another thought occurs to me—perhaps this had been his plan all along. One last fuck you to the girl who broke his heart, and if you make a few bucks out of it in record sales in the meantime then it’s all gravy, right? Dread slowly creeps into my heart. I don’t want it to be true, but how can I tell any different? What if it had all been fake? What if it had all just been a bid to sell more records?

I’d like to believe that that wasn’t the case, but how can I be sure? The answer is I can’t. And that kills me, because everything I felt for the both of them was real. Everything Ifeelis real.

“You didn’t know any of this?” Leif asks, pulling me from my reverie. “I thought for sure you knew.”

I shake my head. I replay all of the times we’d been alone. The times when he had said that I meant something to him. All of the time he’d had to tell me about this, and didn’t. My gut twists, and I get up and run for the bathroom, retching into the bowl. When I’m done emptying the contents of my stomach, I brush my teeth and splash my face with water, and then I exit the bathroom.

“Hey, you want something to drink?” Leif asks, and I graciously accept the water he offers.

“Thanks,” I whisper, dazedly staring at the contents of the cup.

Leif runs a hand over the back of his neck. “Listen, I feel shitty being the one to tell you all that.”

“It’s not your fault, Leif.”

“I know, but—

“It’s okay, really. I just need to talk it out with Cooper.”

The roar from the stadium can still be heard, loud and clear. I contemplate leaving right now, but if I do I’ll regret it to the day I die because I have to see his face. I have to see the look in his eyes as he tells me that what Leif is saying is not true.It can’t be true.I sit down heavily in the booth and sip more of the water Leif gave me. I bury my head in my hands. It’s pounding from all the vomiting and the questions I have.

“You feeling okay?” Leif asks, and his voice washes over me as if I’m underwater. I shake my head as if to clear it.

“What?”

“You wanna come lie down?” Leif crouches down in front of me. He’s close. Too close. His breath is on my face, the scent of Jack Daniels washing over me. My stomach lurches again. It cramps painfully, and Leif asks again if I want to lie down.

“No. I’m fine,” I say, though I feel anything but. My tongue is thick in my mouth, heavy as it butchers my words.

“You look tired, Ali,” Leif says, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. “Come on, I’ll take you in the back. You can sleep.”

“No. I don’t want to. James,” I murmur. “James is sleeping.”

“Fuck,” Leif says, his voice sounding so angry and far away. He stands, and his blue eyes gaze at me with such hatred. He’s nothing like his brother. “James is here?”

“Sleeping.” I close my eyes, because sleeping sounds so good right now.

“Shit,” he says. I blink up at him, but I can barely keep my eyes open. “We’re moving this thing forward.”

“What?” I say, but at this point I’m not even sure I’m making words so much as just thinking them. I open my eyes. Leif has his phone pressed to his ear and he’s whispering into the receiver, staring down at me with such contempt that I shrink back. Or I try to shrink back, but I only end up slumping against the booth.

“Then find a way to get past security,” he hisses into the phone. “She’s leaving. This is our only chance.”

“Only chance for what?” I ask, but my thick tongue swallows the words, and I can’t keep my eyes open. My mouth is dry and my limbs are heavy, but they’re floating, too. I’m weighed down, yet weightless. My skin tingles. I close my eyes, and then I really am weightless. I drift. I float.

“No, move her to the couch.”

I blink up at Leif, but it’s not his face I see. It’s someone else’s. He’s middle-aged, with sandy-blond hair and deep-set lines in his overly tanned face.

“I know you,” I say, but I don’t know if it comes out as anything at all.

“Gonna make you famous, sweetheart.”

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