Xane dragged his gaze away from his friend long enough to turn to face his lover once again.Fear, hurt, and confusion were all there in his mismatched eyes.“If you’ve an explanation, I want to hear it.”
He shook his head.Spook’s demons weren’t his to share.
“Right.Then I’m going over there.”
“Luthor—wait.”
“Xane—”
“Oh, fuck!”Xane cut him off.Bloody Ava, again.He ought to have been playing closer attention, because now the bitch had gone and got a gander at Spook’s mucked up face, and her eyes had lit like it was Christmas.Everyone knew Spook Mortensen was not the troublemaker among them.He was the blinking UN peace-keeping force.Hence, if you possessed any smarts at all you had to wonder why he was sporting a shiner and split lip.Ava, for all her many faults, wasn’t dumb.
“Oh, sweetie, what happened?Who did this to you?”she screeched, loud enough for Xane to hear her across the room.“You poor thing.”
Did anyone actually believe her feigned sympathy?The woman was an alligator.He could see the cogs turning in her head.Cue her gaze sweeping the room for the rest of the band, and giving them each the once over for signs of injuries.
Rock Giant’s hands…click…trouble at the top…click.She might as well have been composing the next Black Halo takedown article aloud.
“Shit!”How had he not realised she had a photographer with her?The guy was with her in a flash, his oversized camera right up in Spook’s face.
This was going to go south fast.It was as if he could already hear Spook screaming inside his brain.
“It’s all still on the rocks, then?Makes sense of why you’re all so quiet tonight.”
That got her nothing, which could hardly have been unexpected.Everyone knew Spook didn’t do interviews; or rather he never spoke a word during them.Anything of that ilk, Spook was strictly there to provide additional eye candy.The rest of them did the talking.
“Punch up, was it?You and Rock Giant.Must have been right as you got off stage.What did he do?Stand on your lead?Scratch your purple baby?”
The bitch was deliberately speaking at top volume to attract attention.
“Doesn’t look like you hit back?Are there sides, or is it you versus the rest of them?I notice none of them have been over to talk to you.”
She was absolutely beaming.“Your fans are going to be seriously gutted when they learn you’re on the verge of quitting.”
“I’m not quitting.”Spook’s words were barely audible, said as they were into the lurid blue cocktail in front of him, but Xane was practically psychically linked to him.He heard him perfectly well.
“Get out of his face, Ava.And stop inventing trouble.”
If he could’ve physically inserted himself between her and Spook he would have done.As it was, he had to content himself with being close enough.
“Mr Geist,” she oozed cheerily, leaning in and kissing him on both cheeks.
His mouth was instantly full of bile, which he was sorely tempted to spit at her in the hopes she might dissolve.
“Nice of you to finally say hello.”
Nice!
“So—” She lifted her hands and formed them into an arrow-head shape pointed at Spook.“—this is why you’ve been acting as a decoy?Didn’t want me to see the truth about your fucked up little band?Shit, mustn’t let Ava see we’re still on the rocks.”She fluttered her overlong false eyelashes.
“What’s up?Your thrall over them slipping?Can’t quite keep them all in line anymore?Add one too many to your fuck team?”She flicked a gaze at Luthor, let it linger at the level of his waist, and scowled.“No, I’ve got it.”She further pissed him off by twisting a lock of his hair around her finger.The bitch had no right to such intimacy.“They were squabbling over you, and which of them gets to warm your bed tonight, and who only gets to suck your sidekick’s dick.”
Xane pulled away from her, sacrificing a few hairs in the process.
Ava laughed, flashing him her porcelain-enhanced pearly whites in a way that made his fists clench.
Luckily for her, he didn’t hit women.
Both Ash and Paul were now on their way over.This was going south fast.
