Page 1 of Stay A Little Longer
Chapter One
Fuckin’ Heath motherfuckin’ Barber could go fuck himself.
Trent Thorne had been betrayed by a man he’d thought he could trust. The man he’d considered his best friend. The man that he’d convinced himself he was in love with. The man that he’d been delusional enough to believe just might be in love with him too.
He white-knuckled the steering wheel and cursed his ex-best friend for the millionth time. He was an idiot. An idiot to have ever thought Heath reciprocated his feelings. An idiot to have ever said those three little words, to have ever said a thing about how he felt or who he was. A major idiot for ever having believed he could have it all.
He’d told Heath his biggest secret. The one thing he kept from everyone but a trusted few in his inner circle. Nobody on the outside knew. Not his record label or his band. Certainly, not the millions of people that bought his albums or the legions of women that threw themselves at him. He’d told Heath that he was gay and it had turned out to be the biggest mistake of his life.
Heath’s reaction to his confession had been swift and brutal. He’d recoiled and he’d called Trent a liar. He’d said Trent had been lying to him from the moment they met. He’d said Trent had been lying to him every day for two years. Been lying ever since he’d hired the retired professional athlete as his trainer and then his personal assistant. Heath had been the person in his life he was closest to only he’d said that he didn’t know Trent at all.
And the thing was, Trent hadn’t been able to deny it. Of course, Heath didn’t know him. Very few people could say they did. Not the real Trent. Not Trenton James Thorne, Texas native, long lost brother and exiled son with an unhealthy fear of firearms and dying alone. Because to be Trent Thorne, country music superstar, charmer and all-around lady’s man, he couldn’t be himself.
He couldn’t be gay.
That had been made clear to him from the day he set foot in Nashville and in the years since, covering up and hiding his truth had been as much a full-time job as performing or recording. The first time that spotlight had hit him and the crowd went wild, he would’ve sold his soul to the devil to make that feeling last.
In a lot of ways, he knew now that he had.
He’d sold himself out for the money and the fame and the success of being worshipped by a bunch of strangers. Because he’d just wanted to play his music and he’d thought it was the only way. Because his manager, his record label, and his throng of adoring fans wanted the Trent Thorne that wiggled his hips and winked at all the girls, that sang bro-country anthems about hooking up with hot chicks down by the lake and crooned about soft bodies in moonlight.
Nobody wanted the real Trent Thorne. They never had. They never would.
The cell phone vibrating in the center console of his rental called him a liar now too. It hadn’t stopped ringing all day. Not since the news broke. It seemed the entire fucking world wanted a piece of therealTrent Thorne now and it was all because he’d trusted the wrong person, fallen for the wrong person, shown his true self to someone that hadn’t liked what they’d seen.
Heath had fuckin’ outed him.
Considering it washislife being broadcast over every entertainment outlet in the western hemisphere, Trent was a little fuzzy on the details of how it had happened. He’d woken up to his ringing phone this morning. His manager, Rick, had said something about Heath telling a friend who told a friend who told someone that wasn’t a friend… or something like that.
It sounded so cliché. High school drama multiplied to the umpteenth level. Trent almost could have laughed. Almost. All of his carefully laid plans, skillfully guarded secrets, and he’d been outed by a game of telephone gone awry.
The entire fuckin’ world knew he was gay now which meant life as he knew it was over.
Just that fast and just that easily, he was done in Nashville. He knew it. Had always known it would be the end of his career if he trusted the wrong person with his true identity and it got out.
But he’d thought he was in love with Heath which was just so goddamn ridiculous in the bright light of today that he had no explanation for how he could have so monumentally screwed up.
He didn’t love Heath. He never had. He’d loved theideaof Heath. Loved the idea of having someone that was his, that knew every part of him, that he didn’t have to hide from. Someone he could trust with the heavy weight he’d been carrying for so long. But that wasn’t Heath.
Somewhere along the way, amid the hiding and secrets, things had gotten all mixed up and now he’d lost everything that he’d built on the foundation of that one lie. No more adoring fans. No more career. No more Nashville lights. He’d have been run out of the city by all those powerful classic country folks that abhorred his “lifestyle choices” so he’d done them a favor and left before they could get the torches burning.
Rick had tried to convince him to stay, to fight it, to deny it. It was just rumor and conjecture after all. Nobody had any actual proof or facts to back up their stories. It was all hearsay.
He could have fought it. Denied it. But Trent had made a promise to himself a long time ago, a compromise with his conscience, that if, or rather when, he was outed, then that was it. He wouldn’t lie about who he was anymore. No more hiding, no more lying, and he wouldn’t go back in the closet.
It may not have been his choice to come out. He may not have any say in how his record label reacted to the news. He might lose his representation. He might be blacklisted in Nashville. But for the first time in a long time he had a choice in how he lived his own life.
He was free. Or at least as free as a man on the run could be. He knew he couldn’t outrun the impact this would have on his life but he needed to escape the media firestorm for a little while and figure out what his future looked like once the dust settled.
The cell phone began vibrating again almost as soon as it stopped but when he glanced down at it there was a name instead of an unknown number. Trent sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face again. He didn’t want to talk to anyone but he knew he couldn’t keep ignoring this particular phone call.
It said a lot that she’d called eight times already. He hadn’t heard from his mother. Hadn’t heard from his brother. But she’d called eight times and he supposed that kind of friendship made her his true family and his only real friend.
He hit the hands-free button on the steering wheel to answer and tried for a lightheartedness that he definitely wasn’t feeling, “This is all your fault.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.” The female voice on the other end was heavy with remorse.
Trent frowned and couldn’t help but drop his eyes to the phone again to verify he was speaking to Lemon Kelly. The small-town girl turned country music superstar was like a sister to him. She knew the truth, had known almost from the moment they met. He’d trusted her instinctively and it had paid off. She’d helped him cover his lies by being her normal, sassy, flirty, gorgeous self and he adored her.
