Axton

I didn’t go back to the farm right away. Maybe I didn’t want to answer questions from my bandmates. Or Dallas’s friends. Truthfully, it was because I didn’t know how to look Dallas in the eye and tell her how sorry I was that the woman who had brought me into the world had been such a bitch to the woman I’d been brought into the world to love.

So I just drove Wroth’s SUV around until I felt like a pussy and had to go home to face everyone. It was only just after eight when I entered the house. The first thing to catch my attention was the overpowering delicious aroma of tomatoes and garlic. The scent alone was comforting and I relaxed a little as I walked through the quiet house.

In the kitchen I found everyone, including Liam in his wheelchair, sitting at the table eating overflowing bowls of spaghetti. No one was talking because they had their mouths full. When they saw me standing in the doorway of the kitchen, everyone paused mid-chew to focus on me. Marissa didn’t even hesitate to jump to her feet and rush to the stove. “I bet you must be hungry. Come and join us. Linc made so much that I’m going to freeze some and stock the bus so that we have a few decent meals for the road.”

I took the bowl of noodles and thick, rich meat sauce and sat down at the table. There was only one seat left, between Devlin and Wroth, so I sat down and grabbed a slice of garlic bread from the basket in front of me. While I took a bite of the best freaking spaghetti I had ever had in my life, my eyes went directly to Dallas.

She shot me a quick look before turning her attention back to her food. That one look told me so much and I wasn’t sure if I could still stomach the meal in front of me. My mother had hit her mark, just as she had wanted to. How had she known that Gabriella was the key to shattering the closeness I’d worked so hard to achieve with Dallas over the last three weeks? How had she known that with a few catty sentences, she would rip open a wound that I had been nursing to heal for what felt like a lifetime?

And how the fuck was I going to fix it?

Dallas

I’d never been in a tour bus before. I know, it’s surprising considering that two of my closest friends were married to rockers. And that I had dated an actual rock god for several months.

When two mammoth buses pulled up in front of Wroth’s house, I was shocked speechless for a few minutes as I took it in. They weren’t what I had been expecting, that was for sure. I’d been expecting some crazy artwork on the buses pronouncing them OtherWorld’s sex caves. There wasn’t.

The buses were black and gray in color with no artwork in sight to scream who was on board. At least forty-five or even fifty feet long, with blacked-out windows, and growling from the power that was behind the engine, they were almost intimidating. When I followed Wroth and Marissa onto the bus that was supposed to be my home for the next three months, I was even more shocked. Maybe I was expecting shag carpets on the walls and cots to sleep on. Who knows, but reality was a far stretch from what had been in my mind.

As soon as I walked onto the bus there was a driver’s seat that was closed off from the rest of the bus with a door. Stepping through that door I came to a living room. An actual living room. Carpets on the floors, lamps on end tables, a recliner, long couch, and even a flat screen in one corner that was already on some news channel and I realized that it must have been connected to a satellite. There was a table with a cup holder on each corner as well as bench seats on each side.

Walking through the living room I came to a narrow hall with closed doors on each side. Curious, I opened the door on the right and found a pantry stocked full of nonperishable foods. Turning, I peeked inside the door behind me and found a toilet and a small sink and even a hand rail. I nearly laughed out loud thinking of traveling down the interstate going seventy miles an hour, holding onto the rail so I wouldn’t fall off the toilet while I did my business.

Past the narrow hall there was a door that I slid open and found what Liam had described to me as the roosts. Three bunks on each side with individual gray curtains covering each bed area. Sliding one of the curtains back on a middle bunk I saw that the bed was brand new and made up with white jersey sheets and a fleece blanket.

Dropping my backpack on the bed, I kept exploring. Another door stood in my way and I opened it to find a small kitchen. Very small. Just a sink, a small stove top and a huge refrigerator that took up most of the space. I shrugged and kept walking.

Another door, which I assumed was the end of the bus, took me into what was the bedroom. There was a shower in the corner with the glass frosted out to allow a little extra privacy. The bed was a twin and already made up for Liam. The rest of the room was set up as if it were a physical therapy room. All the things Linc had said he would need for Liam’s therapy had been provided along with some weights that I knew Linc would appreciate since he wouldn’t be getting his daily workout like he normally would. In the last four weeks he had resorted to running on the farm, and when it came to lifting weights, he’d started lifting random animals over his head. When that hadn’t been enough he would lift me and Natalie over his head. He had wanted to add Marissa to the pile, but Marissa had a thing about heights and was too nervous.

“What do you think?”

I turned around from examining the closet to find Linc helping Liam into the room. I gave Liam a smile that didn’t quiet reach my eyes before turning back to the closet that already had his clothes hung up inside. My smile rarely reached my eyes these days. As much as I had wanted to put Sharon Huntington’s bitchiness behind me and move on, it lingered; replacing some of my memories of my mother with fresh material to run through my head on repeat.

“Not what I was expecting,” I told him as I closed the closet door and turned around to try and get him comfortable. It wasn’t ridiculously early because we didn’t have to be in Florida until nine that night. Panama was the first stop on the tour and OtherWorld wasn’t scheduled to take the stage until nine, so we had plenty of time from what Natalie had told me.

Liam laughed as he sat down on the bed and then pulled his legs onto the mattress. “Yeah, I bet. This is the tame bus, though. Emmie didn’t have time to get it the way our original bus is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m sure the fridge isn’t stocked with nothing but Monster energy drinks and booze this trip, but there won’t be much more that’s changed. So if you want an energy drink check out the crews’ buses. Still, we have a stack of video games that we do nothing but play in our down time on the other bus. Seriously, there is every console known to man over there with every game made for each. We get them even before they are put on sale, because Zander knows someone who hooks us up.” He laid his head on the pillows and chuckled up at the ceiling. “There are two flat screens in the living room since the living room is so much bigger. Everyone fights over the bedroom so we had it taken out and everyone sleeps in the roosts. Ever tried fucking a girl in one of those?”