Page 44 of Too Little Too Soon
He was already on the bus, sitting in the lounge area, when she stepped on with her sister, Riley, Oz, and Carina. She gave him a quick glance—shit, was that heat in her eyes? He did not need to see that—before settling across from him. Maria sat next to her, and Riley climbed into Ava’s lap, handing her a book that she apparently wanted her aunt to read.
The bus lurched forward, and they were on their way to Pittsburgh for tonight’s show. Travis settled in and watched Ava read to and then chat with her four-year-old niece.
Okay, maybe he was picturing her with her own kid, and why the hell was that so damn sexy?
Was it because he was also imagining that kid was his?
Jesus, he really was going off the rails. With a shake of his head, he pushed off the couch and headed back to the bunks, sliding into his and flipping on the little battery-operated light he kept in there. And then he perched his glasses on his nose and started writing.
This was all too much—or maybe too little—too soon. Hey, that might be a good song title. Especially given the lyrics flowing from his pen. They were all about wanting too much, taking too little, wishing things were different…yeah, looked like his frustrations were going to translate into a new song for their upcoming album.
That should have been a win, right?
Except he didn’t feel any better by the time they pulled up to the arena. But he didn’t have a choice anymore. It was time to get his head on straight. It was time to rock out.
And forget, for a moment, what a cluster fuck his life was.
An hour later, they did a sound check. When everything was ready to go, they headed backstage to devour the buffet that had been set up for the band. The food came with a price: some sort of media gathering. Lots of bloggers and photographers and a few people from local radio stations. A rep from their new label was there, too, schmoozing the media on the band’s behalf. Talking about the success of the tour, dropping hints that a new single might be released soon.
Travis did his part, chatting, joking, laughing—assuring the press that yes, he did love his current band, and no, he had no intentions of leaving this one. He’d split from Dog Daze seven years ago, and the band wasn’t even relevant anymore—were they even still together?—yet they continued to dog his steps, pun absolutely intended.
Ava, he noticed, was absent, but that wasn’t conspicuous. Yeah, Maria had hired her, but that was totally separate from the record label, and they didn’t know her or even care if she was around.
Travis did, though. Even if he shouldn’t.
Mitch Montgomery, the guy from Silver Lining, sidled up next to him while he was momentarily alone. “Preference?” Mitch asked, displaying the beers he held in each hand.
Travis took the IPA. “Thanks.”
Mitch lifted the other bottle to his lips before saying, “So, your stalker is back.”
Travis nearly choked on the swallow he’d just taken. “Fuck. Who told you?”
“She did, actually. Not on purpose, of course. But we’ve kept tabs on her social media accounts after what happened in Denver.”
Denver. That was where it all started. Only their second concert after signing with Silver Lining. The nine-thousand-seat venue had been packed to the gills with new fans.
Travis’s stalker had secured herself backstage passes. He remembered meeting her. Curvy, blond, way too young for him even if he were into obsessed women. And man, she had been obsessed right from the get-go.
She’d cornered him in the meet and greet room and told him all about how Dog Daze was her favorite band in the world, how she’d been in love with him even back then—Christ, she’d probably only just hit puberty at that point in her life—how utterly devastated she’d been when he left the band. She said she tried to message him through his social media accounts, but everything had gone unanswered.
Probably because he’d shut everything down after leaving the band. It had all been tied to Dog Daze, and for a while there, he hadn’t been into the scene at all. He’d left and gone to work at a construction company in LA. He had a nice nest egg courtesy of Dog Daze’s moderate success, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to live off those royalties forever.
Construction had been the perfect choice at the time. It was grueling physical labor, lots of hours, and allowed him to shut off thoughts of returning to the music scene for occasional days at a time.
When the young blonde chick cornered him at the show in Denver, he’d been polite but aloof, partially because he didn’t want to tie his current band back to Dog Daze, and also because the girl had given him the creeps.
His instincts had been spot on, because she came to every show, almost always managed to get backstage afterward; constantly tried to finagle ways to be alone with him.
Then the social media obsession kicked in. She posted constantly on Insta and Twitter and Snap Chat and TikTok, tagging Demigoddess Revival, gushing about Travis and what a great guy he was. Which would have been fine—he didn’t manage their accounts, so he didn’t have to deal with responding to all those comments—except her posts became more suggestive, and their fans were starting to buy into her crazy little fantasy.
When Maria finally tried to gently tell her to back off, the chick took a turn for the psycho and announced that she was pregnant—and the kid was Travis’s.
He shuddered. What a publicity nightmare that had been—and not just because it wasn’t true but because the chick had been seventeen at the time.
Statutory rape age.
The label had stepped in, issued a statement denouncing the claim, and made a vague threat to sue for defamation if the girl didn’t chill the fuck out, pronto.
