AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Layla
It’dbeenfivedayssince the she-devil had shown up. Five days since I’d had to watch her rub herself all over the guys and brag about fucking Jones in a tent. Five days since I’d stopped and talked to the guys about how I was feeling. It wasn’t good, but I assumed they knew that.
We’d hit a different city every day and I spent my days building sets and getting them perfect for two different bands and then I spent my nights taking the sets down before I crawled onto the bus and slept wherever I landed first. We’d barely talked and we’d barely touched. The jealous part of me wondered if they had better options around since The Homewreckers had shown up. The women in the band were all stunning, all five of them. They weren’t all horrible like Miriam, either. It was easy to imagine them with the guys, making perfect little rockstar babies.
My mood had taken a sharp dive into a disaster area. Everything had been going so well before Matthew showed up with Miriam and ruined it. Even Jagger sounded different on the phone when I did have the time to talk to him. The whole world felt a little greyer and I was pissed about it.
I’d never imagined my job feeling so…draining. It hadn’t felt that way when I was just working with JAX. Being around Matthew and Miriam so often just left me exhausted, though. I didn’t feel excited to get up and work. I knew that the day would just be another day of pretending like the guys and I weren’t together so my professionalism wouldn’t be called into question. Pretending like I wasn’t with them meant I was free for the woman of The Homewreckers to talk about JAX when I was just trying to do my job. I’d been forced to hear so many things that I’d never wanted to hear about the guys. Rumors about their dicks and their sexual history went right under my skin because the amount of life they’d lived before me made me feel inconsequential.
We didn’t have another break for four more days, but I was coming apart at the seams already. I wasn’t sure I’d make it four more days. When I saw Matthew coming my way, I wasn’t sure I’d make it another half a day.
He sat next to me on the floor and started coiling the cords with me. He never helped me so I was automatically suspicious. As if sensing my mood, he smiled. “I come in peace. Promise.”
I grunted. It was late and I was too tired to do much more.
“You seem tired, Layla.” He cleared his throat and when he looked back at me, he looked worried. “Part of the reason I didn’t want you in this job was because of how much I worried about you, Layla. People hear that country accent and see your sweet face and they just take everything from you. I did the same thing, I realize now. You’re so giving and kind that you don’t question people when you should. Like me. You should’ve told me to go fuck myself three years ago. I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough for you.”
I squinted at him. “Are you drunk?”
He laughed. “I’m buzzed. I wish I was drunk. Maybe it’d make this next part easier.”
I leaned away from him automatically. “What are you talking about?”
“At the bar with everyone… I saw Jones go into the bathroom with Miriam.” He sniffed. “I shouldn’t cry to you about this, Layla, but I thought she cared about me. She talks a lot to make herself sound wild, but she’s not like that. At least, I thought she wasn’t. She said she was loyal to me, but she wasn’t.”
My chest tightened. “Maybe you didn’t see what you thought you saw.”
He let out a bitter laugh. “No? Look at this and tell me what you think.”
I closed my eyes and turned my head. I didn’t want to see whatever he was going to show me. I didn’t want him to be there, talking to me. I wanted it to be the guys. Instead, they were at a bar and I was listening to my ex cry about the woman he cheated on me with. I tried to remind myself that they’d offered to stay and help me, but the offer sounded hollow in my head.
“Look at it, Layla. You need to see who he is.” Matthew gripped my chin and the feeling of his skin on mine made me want to scream. “Look.”
I glared at him, begging my brain to not look down at the picture he was trying to show me on his phone. I didn’t want to see. I wanted to go back to a time before Matthew and Miriam showed up. The morbid part of my brain that stared too long at car wrecks won out and my eyes flicked down to the picture. There it was. In full color. Jones holding Miriam’s wrist and pulling her into the bathroom after him.
My chest cracked but I refused to cry. I swallowed the ball of emotion in my throat and forced my shoulders back. I was stronger than that. Making myself be objective, I looked at the picture again and studied the two of them. Miriam looked dainty next to Jones and it made him look even larger. I could only see their side profiles, but they looked good together. I knew the media would eat them up. Their couple name would be carved in stone before the ink on the tabloids was dry. Joriam? Mones?
Matthew heard my snort of laughter and pulled his phone away. “What’s so funny? I know you’ve been sleeping with him, Layla. He’s cheating on you, just like she’s cheating on me.”
I leaned back against the wall behind me and smiled. “I was thinking about their couple name. Mones. It’s a little on the nose, but they’re rockstars. They can get away with it.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
I turned my head to look at him and sighed. Matthew and I were cut from similar cloth. Not the personality type, but the average person type. We weren’t rockstars. We were average people. Nice people in nice clothes, driving nice cars with nice kids in the back. “Maybe it’s not them.”
“It was them, Layla! I watched it with my own two eyes.”
“No. I mean… Maybe they’re not the problem. Maybe people like them are just sucked towards other people like them. The beautiful people gravity field, or something. Maybe we’re the problem for trying to hold onto people too big for us.” I let my head rest on the wall and looked up at the ceiling. “Some nights I just want to go home and see the stars again. In the sky, instead of on a stage, far enough away that they don’t hurt.”
Matthew leaned against the wall next to me and put his hand over mine on the floor between our legs. We were just two idiots thinking we could tame the stars. He was still an asshole, but knowing he could hurt over the same things as me made him feel more human. In my heartache, I must’ve been delirious because I even found myself thinking that maybe we could be friends after everything settled down.
“You’re one of the beautiful people, Layla. I’m sorry I made you think otherwise when I hurt you with Miriam.” Before I could inform him that he hadn’t made me think anything, he was grabbing my face and leaning in to kiss me.
I panicked and swung my arms to get him away from me. The back of my wrist connected painfully hard with his face and we both gasped in pain at the same time. My wrist throbbed but I ignored it as I shoved him away from me and climbed to my feet. “What the fuck, Matthew?”
He held his nose and swore. He no longer sounded like he was heartbroken over Miriam. “Jesus, Layla! I think you broke my fucking nose!”
“Was this all just some ploy to fuck with me?” I hated the way I sounded hopeful. It was so easy to hear how much I didn’t want it to be true that Jones had taken Miriam into that bathroom.
