Page 9 of The Rogues

“Now, welcome to the show, once again, the members of the rock sensation known as The Rogues: Lennon Bellwether, Remi Ainsworth, Malaki Blakely, Jamie Morrison, and frontman, Cyrus Darlington!”

“Has there been any kind of culture shock since you’ve started living in America?” Renee, one of the hosts, asks. Her smile is kind, her professionalism the most stellar I’ve ever seen.

“Loads,” Lennon nods.

“It’s a lot bigger,” Malaki jokes, then motions toward Jamie. “But Jamie is from California. We used to come visit every now and then before starting the band, so it’s not entirely new to us.”

“Right, you’re from Kiss Cove,” she recollects as she looks at our beta, her smile somehow bigger. “There’s been quite a few stars from that little town of yours.”

“A few, yes.” Jamie nods.

“There must be something in the water,” the other host, Byron, comments. “But you spent your summers in Bristol with the guys, is that correct?”

I breathe easy for a moment, knowing they are talking about Jamie’s upbringing and dual citizenship rather than asking me stupid questions about possible hook-ups and implying I’m a man whore.

I wish I could flash the bond mark on my wrist. I wish I could shout to the world that I’m in love, that we’re a pack. Malaki and Jamie are out, their relationship public, but they had different plans for me. They want to sell the story that I’m obtainable, that anyone could run into me at a pub and convince me to take them home. Although I understand, it gets harder and harder every day to keep up the facade.

Most days I wish we hadn’t signed that contract agreeing to keep our pack life a secret.

“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard that Vicious Velvet are going back on tour,” Byron says, bringing me back to the present. His eyes are on me, watching for any type of reaction, but I just give a lopsided smile.

“I don’t know why. Their last tour went on for ages,” I say. “Is the world really ready to endure that again?”

It’s a low blow, one that I’ll probably panic over later, but it holds a bit of truth. Six months is the average, but ten months? That’s too long to be on the road, even for someone like me who loves to perform.

Their question isn’t really about the tour though. What they really want to know is: did I hear about the tour from everyone else or did I hear it directly from the source?

“I’m sure their lead singer wasn’t too keen on the idea, either,” Renee ignores him, her eyes suddenly slit-like, a viper waiting in the grass.

Damn, Renee. I thought you were nice.

“Cleo is a firecracker,” I respond vaguely. “If she dislikes something, she isn’t going to shy away from saying it.”

I try not to snort at my own words. Despite being forced to continue on this lie, my words are very true. Cleo Del Rossi is someone you don’t want to mess with. She is moody, disorderly, and—dare I say it—vicious, just like their band’s namesake.

“Has she voiced that to you? When was the last time you saw the dark angel of rock ’n’ roll?”

I grit my teeth, wondering why I even try with those “do not ask” lists that are given to our teams. I always put Cleo and Vicious Velvet on there, and yet my team always ignores my requests. They want people talking about our past relationship, our fake relationship.

When our music started reaching across the pond, things started to change rapidly. We were unsigned rowdy boys from Bristol, and we were excited to get recognition that wasn’t just from our local pubs. We had a decent name for ourselves in England, but nowhere near as popular as we are now. Getting signed at Midnight Records helped with that. It felt like a dream come true, but then the fine print came back to haunt me.

I shouldn’t be completely cynical about it, though. Thanks to this little scheme my label concocted, The Rogues is one of the biggest names in rock right now. Anything that helps my pack prosper is one I’m willing to take, even if it meant pretending to date the princess of rock ’n’ roll, no matter how much I despised her.

Luckily, Jamie understood that I didn’t have a choice, but I was still sick to my stomach every time they made me go on a fake outing with her, and we went everywhere. Restaurants, basketball games, on a fake vacation to the Maldives (where I basically talked to Jamie all day and night on my phone, despite the beach photoshoot they pawned off as paparazzi photos). We were in each other’s lives constantly, pretending to stay at each other’s penthouses, talking about each other in interviews like it was this very real thing happening in our lives. I can’t believe people bought it, too. There were video edits and posts about us all over the internet, people shipping us, sleuthing on our whereabouts and how we met.

And when we broke up, the internet took sides on who was right and who was wrong, even though we both posted statements on our social media pages stating it was “mutual.”

Not to mention, Cleo has a drug problem, and I don’t want that anywhere near my pack. It made her irrational every time we were forced to see each other, and when I couldn’t hold my tongue about it anymore, it immediately put me on Cleo’s shit list. With her secret out in the open between us, everything turned sour. She was completely enraged knowing that I knew, that I potentially had ammunition toward her and her reputation.

Ammunition that I was never going to use, for one, but she didn’t need to know that. Maybe the fear of her secret coming out could make her do the right thing for once and get clean.

If only.

I think that’s why the narrative got a bit construed after the fake breakup. Suddenly, I was the villain. She would make backhanded comments anytime someone asked about my band or me in interviews, and that started the rumor mill for what actually happened between us. Many theorized that I cheated, or flirted too much, or put down her music.

After a while, I started throwing my own grenades into the mix. If she could imply I was an asshole, then I could imply she was erratic. It revived my character for a time, let me feel more powerful in the facade, but it got old very fast. I wasn’t someone who took personal digs, but it started becoming expected of me, the rivalry between our bands and us fueling the controversy and heightening the publicity for both of us.

I don’t want to fight with anyone. I just want to play my music and let my pack live out their dream.