“What?”
“Her shoes!”
“Her shoes?” I repeated completely lost. We’d gone from talking about missing musical instruments to shoes in the same sentence.
Narrowing her eyes at me, Skye’s eyes darted between Dickson and me, both of us sitting on the edge of our seats wondering what type of weird-ass reaction Skye had to that pizza. “Cassidy’s missing shoes. I remember what happened!”
14
SKYE
“I remember what happened!”
I don't know why I hadn’t thought of it before. It made perfect sense but had completely skipped my memory. I guess it hadn’t seemed important at the time, but maybe in the bigger picture it was.
“What happened?”
“Someone stole them from her hotel room in Philadelphia.”
“What do you mean stole them from her hotel room? She never told me her room had been broken into!” Hayden seethed, the vein on his forehead popping.
“Because we don't know that it was.”
“What do you mean?” Dickson encouraged while we both watched Hayden digest the information. Hell, if he knew everything that happened on tour, everything that went wrong, every fan that got a little too close, his head would probably explode.
“We don't know if it was broken into or if it was one of the staff in the hotel,” I started. “We’d been to the stadium for sound check in the morning and then stopped to grab lunch. The plan was to head up to Cassidy’s room, eat, reply to emails and take care of a few things before she had a nap. But when we got up to her suite, someone had already been in there and made themselves at home.”“What happened?” Hayden spat through gritted teeth.
“Nothing at first. I mean, no one was there when we went in so we didn’t think much of it. We went inside, sat down, had lunch and made a few plans. When Cassidy went into the bedroom to grab her laptop, one of her dresses was scrunched in a ball in the middle of her bed. It was weird. That was the dress she was planning on wearing that night so the day before we’d had it cleaned and hung in the closet. There’s no way she would have left it on the bed.”
“I’m not liking this,” Dickson interjected as he drained the rest of his beer before getting up and grabbing us all another. Probably a good call. I had a feeling we were all going to need one, or something stronger by the end of the night.
“She came back out and told me about the dress. I thought it was weird but brushed it off. Finishing up what we were working on, I was just about to head out when she went into the bathroom. Cassidy called my name and I went to find her. She was standing there, staring at the counter where all her makeup had been tipped out. The place reeked of her perfume. Like someone had bathed in it or something. By now we were both a little freaked. Instead of touching anything, we started checking the room seeing if anything else was out of place or weird.”
“And…” Hayden growled, sending a shiver down my spine.
“And it wasn’t obvious at first, but then we figured out someone had been through her clothes. Everything was out of place and there were a few things missing.”
“Define a few things, Skye,” Dickson said, shooting a look at Hayden telling him to stand down.
“It wasn’t much. A purse. A bracelet. Some lingerie. And a few pairs of shoes.”
“And she didn’t think to tell me?”
I could tell Hayden was livid, and part of me felt bad for being the one to break it to him, but at the time, when Cassidy had begged me to keep it quiet, I agreed with her. There was no point upsetting him or worrying him when he couldn’t do a thing about it.
“She didn’t want to worry you,” I admitted softly, hating the memory.
Maybe if we had told him things would’ve turned out differently. I don’t know how and I don’t know what he would’ve done, but I couldn’t help but think “what if?”
It was too much. Hayden blew his fuse. “She fucking died! I lost her. And had I known…”
I had two choices. I could sit here and let him blame himself. Let him work himself into an early grave right alongside her, or I could stand up, pull up my big girl panties and tell him what he didn’t want to, but desperately needed to hear.
I was never the girl to keep her mouth shut and I wasn’t about to start now.
“You would’ve what? Joined her on tour? Quit your job and become her personal security detail twenty-four seven? Wrapped her up in cotton wool? Hayden, nothing you could’ve done could’ve saved her. I couldn’t save her and I was there.”
“Bullshit! She kept this from me! You kept this from me! Fuck!” he boomed as he bounced to his feet before hurling his beer bottle at the wall, watching it smash and liquid slide down the plasterboard.
