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And now we were on a flight to London.
I’d taken the first-class ticket Sasha had bought me from L.A. and used the credit to buy two business class tickets out of JFK.
“My stomach is off,” Jesse mumbled when she got up to go to the bathroom for the fourth time.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I just popped some antacids. I’ll be fine.”
“We land in an hour,” I said. “We’ll go right to the hotel. We can get something to eat, and then maybe take a nap before I meet up with the guys.”
“Have you reached out to them?”
I shook my head. “I know, I’m a chicken shit, but I don’t know what to say. I have the itinerary and all the addresses, so I’ll just show up for soundcheck.”
“What if they hired someone to replace you since they didn’t hear from you?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. I guess I can call Sasha once we land.”
“Not Kingston?”
“Kingston isn’t talking to me right now.”
“He said he needed a little space. He didn’t say he never wanted to talk to you again. And this is business.”
“I don’t want to think about him right now. I have to get my head on straight for the gig, and I can’t focus if my heart is actively breaking into a billion tiny pieces.”
She reached over and took my hand. “You’re going to be fine. He doesn’t have the power to hurt you.”
“He kind of does. I love him.”
She squeezed my fingers. “He’s not Larry. Have a little faith. You can fix this. It might take a little time, but a guy who’s done all the wonderful things he’s done for you isn’t someone who’s just going to walk away because of a misunderstanding.”
“It wasn’t a misunderstanding—I lied to him.”
“You didn’t tell him everything about your past. It’s not the same.”
“He asked me point blank what was going on and I told him nothing.”
“So you’re victim blaming yourself? How fucked up is that?”
I sighed. “I’m not blaming anyone. I’m just tired and sad and scared. I don’t want to lose him. I don’t want the band to kick me out. And I really, really don’t want the fans to hate me.”
“Do you know how many people hate the Kardashians? And they’re billionaires. I’m pretty sure they laugh all the way to the bank.”
“I’m not them.”
“No, you’re Devyn Cates. The badass bass player for Onyx Knight. That isn’t some fantasy, Dev. That’s actually who you are.”
“Today.”
She shook her head. “No, dammit. You are the new bass player for the hottest rock band in the world. Right now. This is your life. Okay, some shit is currently going down, but you didn’t kill anyone. You didn’t molest a child or beat up an old lady. You were an adult who made the adult decision to do something a little risqué, for lack of a better word. Not illegal. Not even immoral, unless you’re a bible thumper or something. Hold on to that, Dev, because you are not letting this derail your life like it did before. Just because that stupid record company didn’t like what you’d done doesn’t mean the rest of the world will feel that way.”
“They’re already making a huge deal out of it.”
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?”
“I don’t know, Jess. This is hard.”
