Page 14 of The Heartbreakers
“I’ll admit the brother was collateral damage,” Oliver said, waving his hand in Drew’s direction. Then he fixed his gaze on me. “But she isn’t innocent.” He kept his face straight as he spoke, but I could still see his anger, a raging gale captured behind his eyes. “No offense, but you had it coming. Sorry, not sorry.”
I heard my knuckles crack before I even realized my fingers had curled into a fist. My blood was pumping so fast that I could feel it rushing in my ears as I took a step in Oliver’s direction.
“Stella,” Drew said in a warning voice. He wrapped his hands securely around my shoulders and held me in place. I knew he was only trying to prevent me from doing something I’d later regret, and I resisted the urge to shove him off.
Oliver was a complete and total ass. Admittedly, I had been harsh with my critique of the band, but while that wasn’t very nice on my part, I still had the right to my own opinion. Did Oliver retaliate against everyone who was critical of the Heartbreakers? And did he really think I was going to roll over and let him get away with it just because he was famous? The fact that I still found him attractive made me seethe even more.
I was about to tell Oliver off, but then JJ cut in. “You’re just pissed because she dissed your music,” he said in my defense. The way JJ said “your music” sounded as if he’d eaten something that had festered at the back of the fridge for weeks. Wasn’t it all their music? I momentarily forgot my anger as my ears perked up.
JJ’s comment made Xander laugh, but all the air in the room suddenly felt thin and I couldn’t help but tense. “You should have seen his face when we got back to the room,” he said. “Just fuming! I haven’t seen Oliver that pissed since he fell off the stage in Atlanta.”
“I wasn’t mad because she doesn’t like our music,” Oliver snapped.
“What is it then?” JJ shot back. Oliver stared at him, his jaw tightening as if he was trying to come up with something good to say. “Well?
“Screw you, JJ,” Oliver spat out. He jumped up from the couch and bolted out of the room, disappearing down one of the suite’s many halls. The slam of a bedroom door echoed back to us.
“That was a little prima donna of him,” Xander said.
“Hmm,” JJ replied, scratching his chin. “On a scale of humble to Mariah, I’d say he’s only at diva.”
Xander shrugged, and Alec wasn’t even paying attention; he was lounging in an armchair with his headphones on, head moving to a beat. All three boys seemed so unaffected by what had just gone down that I wondered if they normally fought like this.
They might have been used to it, but I wasn’t able to let things go so easily. “I want to have a word with him,” I said, pointing in the direction Oliver had gone. I tried to keep my voice steady so I sounded civil, but everything came out choppy and sharp.
“Be my guest,” JJ said. He held out both hands in invitation and gestured to the hall, the grin on his face so full it looked goofy.
“Maybe that isn’t such a good idea,” Drew said, but my glare shut him up quickly. It had been his idea to come up here, not mine. I would have preferred staying in our sauna of a room, sweating our asses off, but now Oliver was going to hear me out whether he liked it or not. After giving my brother one last pointed look, I nodded a quick thanks to JJ and marched off, my previous embarrassment long gone.
• • •
He was out on the balcony.
After searching through a series of empty rooms, I stepped inside the master and glanced around. With the curtains pulled back, I quickly spotted him through the glass door. A surge of heat flushed through my body, making my chest and cheeks burn, and I stomped across the room, my anger refreshed.
“What do you want?” he asked when I pulled back the sliding door.
His back was to me, arms folded neatly against the railing as he stared up at the sky. I had expected him to sound furious, but all his previous anger was absent and his voice came out quiet, layered with exhaustion. It was strangely jarring, and I took a step back.
Oliver turned when I didn’t answer. “Oh, I thought you were JJ,” he said, a scowl flickering across his face when he saw me. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
I opened my mouth to snap back, to tell him he couldn’t go around treating people the way he was treating me, but something over the edge of balcony caught my attention and I stepped up to the railing. Far below us on the ground, swarms of people crowded the sidewalk. They looked like specks from this high up, but I knew they were all teenage girls waiting to meet their idols. “Whoa,” I gasped, unable to contain my surprise. “All those people down there?”
Oliver’s gaze flickered from the stars down to the street, a distant look on his face. “Here to see us?” he said. He rubbed his arms as if he was cold. “Yeah.”
I couldn’t comprehend the number of girls waiting outside the hotel. The band had to deal with this every day? The thought made me dizzy.
I didn’t regret my decision to be homeschooled, but sometimes being at home all the time was difficult, and I often wondered what high school was like for a normal teenager. Whenever those thoughts bothered me, I would lie in bed and stare at the walls of my bedroom to make sure they weren’t shrinking around me. I often felt they were, suffocating me slowly as they closed in on all sides. It was like the cancer had trapped us and was holding us back from the rest of world. I knew Oliver’s situation was completely different, but I wondered if his lack of privacy ever made him feel like a prisoner, trapped, the way I did by Cara’s sickness.
“It must be overwhelming.” I didn’t know what else to say. There was a painful twinge inside my heart, and I pressed my hand against my chest.
“You get used to it,” he said with a shrug. His answer was so full of indifference that he sounded like he was merely reciting a well-known fact. I had no answer, and he turned back to the darkness suspended above us. Only then did a calm expression soften his face, and I was reminded of the smiling boy I’d met at Starbucks, not the famous prick I had witnessed a few minutes ago.
I joined him in stargazing. “I don’t think I’d ever get used to that,” I finally responded.
“That’s what I said in the beginning.” Oliver raked his fingers through his hair and then turned to me. “Look, Stella, I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have tricked you and your brother like that. But you—”
“Wait,” I said, interrupting him. I didn’t know why I suddenly felt the urge to apologize, especially when moments ago I had stormed in blazing with every intention of making his night as horrible as mine. It was like, in a strange way, I understood how it felt for Oliver to have the world shrinking around him. “Don’t. I’m the one who should be sorry. I acted like a total bitch. You just…”
