Page 23 of Ravaged For You

“You want to do the report instead?” I ask her. “I’ll happily give it over to you.”

She snorts. “No way. I don’t want that kind of pressure, not in a million years.”

I sigh. “Great.”

“Think of it this way,” Marie says, pointing at me. “At least you got to talk to Ravaged, and now they know your name. How many girls get that opportunity?”

I roll my eyes. “What an opportunity of a lifetime.”

* * *

Not content with just sending an angry email about the rent, my landlord also posts a very threatening letter under my door. I read it when I get home. It’s the same set of points he was getting at in the email.

“Lovely.”

I put it away on a desk, just wishing it would magically disappear, and I go and make myself a cup of tea in my tiny little kitchen.

“Hopefully, I won’t spill this one over any bad boy celebrities,” I mutter to myself like a madwoman.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I check the message that’s just come through. My mother. Of course it is.

Honey, I’m going to need another hundred.

That’s it. That’s all she sends me.

I really don’t have the spare hundred to gift her at the moment. My bank account has been wrung dry.

Stand up for myself? Yeah, not against my mother. I can’t do that.

I put away my phone, just like the landlord's letter, in a vain hope that if I ignore it, then it’ll go away. Feeling overwhelmed and with nothing else to do this evening, I sit down next to my laptop with my tea and fire it up.

I’ve decided I’m going to deep dive into Ravaged tonight. Find out everything I need to know to write this damn report. I guess that means I have to know as much about them as a super fan would, so that’s who I have to become. I go straight onto the fan sites and social media to start my research. It isn’t hard to piece together Ravaged’s history from all the stuff about them online.

Like Marie told me at the arena, the boys are all from the same small town. Crystal River. They met at high school when Drake held auditions for a band. They sort of just launched into the stratosphere from there, really. Gigs around the country and then their first album, No Foundation, which went global. They just grew and grew until they’re at the chart-topping stage they’re at now. I scroll through various articles and interviews, skim-reading. They literally are the biggest thing in music at the moment. They outsell everyone except for Tainted Lives, their closest competitor.

No wonder they want to defeat their rival band. They both really hate each other, even beyond a commercial beef in the press. I can tell this is a real rivalry between two bands. Between two groups of men who hate each other with a passion.

I watch all the videos Marie sent me the other day before the performance. Music videos. Talk show appearances. I watch the boys talk and sing and play.

God, they really are gorgeous, aren’t they?

Axel is a total dick, sure, but there’s something in the way he plays that bass. So freaking talented. No wonder he gets away with all his crap when he’s got skill like that.

I go deep into the night really trying to paint a picture as to what this band is truly about. I should just sign up at their fan club right now.

But this isn’t about enjoyment. If I’m to pay my rent and have enough cash to send to Mom, then I gotta do this research. I gotta do this damn report.

I start typing. Piecing together what I’ve learned and what I think. I doubt myself with every word. Winston was right when he called me a perfectionist.

It’s well past midnight when I start to drift off, dreaming about Axel and the way he stared at me in that meeting room. He was trying to test me. Play with me. And I pushed back. That made him go quiet.

I wonder what went through his head then.

Maybe, just maybe, I passed his little test.

11

AXEL